Author: Seb Palmer

If, like me, you love churches, this is an interesting website…

Also of interest to church lovers, the rose window, a website with lots of photographs of stained glass and other churchical treasures!

Took mum some belated birthday gifts today, and had a delicious brunch. Very nice!

Nice to see mum mobile and moving about freely, after the long and arduous period of hip-replacements and healing, etc.

All in all, a lovely time was had.

Enjoying our garden…

Just seen Peter Chan, on the BBC iPlayer, watching Gardener’s World.

Love his trees. Love his philosophy. Love his Monet shirt!

Must find out more about him, and bonsai. Would love some beautiful bonsai in our home/life!

A little later…

Ok, so Peter runs Heron’s Bonsai, a place we’ll have to visit! I’ll find out more in dew coarse. But that’s it for now, f-f-f-f-foulkes…

St Leonard’s, Leverington

I’ve stopped at this church many times. It’s always been locked up/closed. I rang the only telephone number I could see – which turned out to be that of the local rector/priest (or whatever the name is!?) – and she, a lady called Sandra, showed up and let me in.

Here’s a gallery of images of the graveyard and porch, on a wet grey day. Really hugely atmospheric. Love it! This is what you see when you arrive here. It also looks fabulous on a bright sunny day.

I love the above view. The moss and the ivy. Life, richly vegetative life, overcomes, over-grows, death. Beautiful.

The wooden beams spanning the areas ‘twixt the arches are a Victorian addition. Sandra said they are structurally superfluous! They have lovely richly carved corbels, at their bases.

The lectern pictured next was covered with a bin bag! Sandra removed that for me, so I could get a decent photo. Thanks! She told me it’s a very valuable 14th or 15th C. piece. The bin bag keeps off bat-poo!

Here are the more interesting (i.e. stained-glass) windows:

The chief glory of St Leonard’s, perhaps? is the ‘Jesse Window’. I had to ask Sandra what a Jesse window is/was. Well, it’s Jesus’ family tree, basically. (Later in the day my pal Pat quipped, ‘How do they represent Jesus as himself and also his own father?’ Of course they don’t.)

Sadly my photos of this wonderful window aren’t great. I’ll have to re-visit and photograph it better. Pane by pane, methinks.

I asked how this had survived Henry the VIII and Cromwell, etc. Apparently it was taken down, dismantled, and stored. When restored it had to have large amounts of missing stuff renewed. It’s terrifically well done. This window alone makes a visit to St Leonard’s an absolute must.

I couldn’t spend long here, alas. But I will certainly be going back. It’s a terrific place.

The wet, grey, rainy day wasn’t at all a bad thing. In fact it made this wonderful place that bit more enchanting. Sandra was lovely. And the verdant lushness of the setting was breathtaking. What a fab’ visit!

All Saints, Moulton

As I drove home, earlier today, Bagpuss and I spotted another spire. Initially I had no thoughts of stopping. But it turns out that, 1) I drove right by it, and 2) it was open. So, why not stop and take a look?

I beamed with totally unconcealed schadenfreude, on spotting the Tory placards at the above (very pretty) house.

Unlike St Leonard’s, I was able to walk in to this open church, without needing to call a keyholder. They’d just had a tea or coffee morning. Which I’d just missed. They also had a book stall. Many churches do nowadays.

All Saints appears to have two, possibly even three fonts! There’s the one that greets you upon arrival. Then there’s another to the left. And a third stone basin is propped against a column. Odd!

I always like to check out a churches’ roof. And any other interesting wooden stuff, like rood screens. I like this one, with the fan vaulting and carved heads.

And then there are all the funny little stone niches. And carved stonework. There’s almost always loads to see and enjoy.

As is so often the case, there are some interesting stained glass windows.

Whilst I missed out on hot beverages and cakes, etc, I did pick up several sachets of plant seeds, for Teresa. These were free. And what they contain, I don’t know. Nor did the church-folk.

And then, at last, it was time to go…

Teresa is watching The Masque of Mandragora – hence the above screenshots – an old Tom Baker Dr Who story.

I’m not a fan of Dr Who, as a whole. Only during Tom Baker’s tenure, do I think they hit a genuine sweet spot. I won’t go into why here and now. I think I’ve done so elsewhere.

But, whilst I’m indifferent to most Dr Whos, and downright loathe the more modern incarnations of what has become a dead donkey of a franchise, I adore Tom Baker era Who. Mandragora is utterly wonderful.

And it’s some of the incidental music (as well as the attention to period feel and detail: costumes, hair-dos, scenery, etc.) that launched me on the path that leads to this post.

Some of this period music put me in mind of stuff I’ve heard by David Munrow, the tragic manic early pioneer of the renaissance (read more about him here).

Teresa and I love this music. So I’ve ordered some Munrow CDs. Can’t wait to further explore this old and enchanting sound world.

I wonder if the above is available on CD? And if so does it sport this extremely cool cover? There’s a quest for me!

* Only joking. no doubt it’s some kind of weird early music instrument.

Well, well, well… a Labour landslide!?

My first thoughts – after a hallelujah – are along these lines; Labour inherits a dis-United Kingdom that has been thoroughly trashed by decades of ‘neo-liberal’ casino style disaster capitalism, aka modern Toryism. So don’t expect a quick fix!

Whilst the mere existence of Farage/Reform is very worrying, I’d like to thank these loathsome folk and their ‘orrible supporters (more on this below) for taking votes away from the Tories. Every cloud has a silver earring, as Count Arthur might say.

Here are a few things Labour needs to do now they’re in office:

• Start the process of rejoining the EU.
• Nationalise utilities, such as water and electricity.
• Bring public infrastructure back into public ownership: nationalise trains. Invest in road repairs, etc.
• Make good on Corbyn’s promise to bring free internet to all.
• Hold criminals to account. I’m talking about Tories profiteering whilst others die: Covid, the NHS, Grenfell, etc.
• Root and branch reform in public institutions, such the NHS, schools, etc. Root out PFI style Tory (or even, sad to say, New Labour) arrangements.
• Invest in and expand the NHS. Bring dentistry back into the fold.
• Crack down on gambling, and the whole utterly repulsive casino culture so ardently fostered by Toryism.
• Work at rebuilding an intelligent culture. Something years of populist Toryism – maybe more their lapdog media, perhaps, than the party (?); definitely a truly toxic partnership – has so sedulously worked against. The massive growth of yob culture – in which people are proud to be stupid (!?) – needs to be arrested and put in reverse.

Whilst I’m elated at seeing the Tories out, we don’t want a repeat of Blair-ism, where the left is so far to the right it often out-Tories the Conservatives (stand up Blair, and even more so, Brown).

I’m filled with foreboding, along the lines that 75 years of mostly very destructive right wing rule (rendering the name ‘Conservative’ a prime example of Orwellian Newspeak!) cannot be remedied in one term in office. The damage Toryism, esp’ post-Thatcher, has wrought is so massive, it’ll take ages to repair.

Sadly the Tories still won in our constituency. Unbelievable! I can (almost) understand farmers remaining staunchly Tory. They are after all landowners. And – adopts Patridgean tone – inbred idiots. But all the working class Tories? Insane.

A good number of these Daily Mail reading cretins have voted Reform. Makes one shudder. But, returning to a previous theme, at least these dullards have taken away from the Tories.

Andrew Parker was filmed by Channel 4 News while canvassing for Reform UK, calling Rishi Sunak a “f****** p***” and advocating using migrants arriving in the UK by boat as target practice for the Army.

from the Bishops Stortford Independent

It’s pretty sobering – or should be frightening, maybe even sickening? – to realise that most of the folk you live amongst are sub-bovine morons.

As well as the more obvious hordes of tracky-wearing shaven-headed tattooed pinch-faced racist Gammonry, there are those who look fairly normal and respectable, but are still essentially pus-filled sacs of right-wing bile, fed at the poisonous teats of our red-top gutter press.

I just hope, pray even (atheist tho’ I am!), that, 1) We get a real Labour/left-wing government, bold enough to really reverse the many ills of Toryism, and 2) that they are given the great deal of time that real radical change will require.

Sadly I think in our current cultural climate brains are rotten, and attention spans too short. We shall see…

PS

Farage’s response? He tried to blame it on the media, saying it was ‘a total and utter set-up’, claiming Parker is an actor, insinuating this was a paid role. Ofcom are not investigating.

But let’s let Parker, a true meat n’ potatoes Reform-ist have the last word:

He [Parker] said it was about time “we got rid of this Third World filth that’s over here, about time British values come first”, adding: “If you don’t like it, f*** off.”

He also aimed abuse at the LGBTQ+ community after saying it was “about time the British people could fly their Union Jack holding pride”. He added: “Talking about pride, you f****** lot can f*** off as well.”

A bit more of Andrew Parker’s eloquent Reform-ist ‘straight talk’. From the same source.

Watching Paul of PDBass celebrate Glide is great. It also lead me to discover that Pleasure got together to perform live, in their home town, Portland, only last year!

This prompted me to muse on missed musical moments. For example, I just missed seeing Arthur Verocai bring his 1972 album to the UK. How could I let that happen?

I had a system some time ago, whereby I rewarded my own good behaviour – using lolly saved – with weekly and monthly rewards. Those habit, both hood and bad, ceased. But then the music buying one kind of came back, only more freestyle.

And over the same period an already present interest in J-Jazz, or Japanese jazz, grew somewhat. Partially thanks to this terrific book:

So it was that some of my rewards, under that aforementioned dispensation – and poss’ even the above book itself? – were CDs of J-Jazz.

Later on I discovered that not only did/does Japan produce it’s own fab’ jazz, but they also reissue stuff from elsewhere, even the US, the birthplace of jazz, that’s either nigh on impossible to get elsewhere, or way too costly.

One particular development of note for me, is the Mainstream records reissue series. Hear the lion roar!

I’m particularly interested in the stuff released in ‘72. But most of the 300 Series is of interest to me. And it all started with dad’s record of organist Charles Kynard, Your Mama Don’t Dance.

Only yesterday another batch of Mainstream reissues arrived from Japan, including the three-CD set pictured at the top of this post, by another keys player, Mike Longo. These three CDs were just ¥1,800, or £8.75. Amazing value!

Longo is or was perhaps best known, back in the day, for his tenure with Dizzy Gillespie.

Another nice old church, spotted on my travels. This one near Rutland Water and Oakham.

It’s getting to the point I feel I should start mapping or cataloguing all the churches I’ve been to. Just to get a picture of what I’ve achieved, and keep track of things. And also so I can start filling in blanks.

St Mary The Virgin is a pretty lovely church. And yet another reminder, we’re any needed, what treasure troves these places are.

The village of Edith Weston is as pretty as the church. The last few shots in the final gallery, above, attest to that.