Author: Seb Palmer

Joni is/was astonishing. A one-off. She changed my life.

She broke my heart many thousands of times, not just through the artistry of her work, but also as an unattainable paragon of womanhood.

Now, after 40 odd years of being in love with her, and her artistry, I see her more as the flawed human she doubtless is, rather than the perfect Goddess that dominated my early obsession with her.

But solid – or rather fluid – and consistent throughout, are the humanity and artistry. Definitely the greatest female music-maker of modern times, bar none. And right up at the front of the line regardless of gender.

I’m a rationalist type of guy, who started ditching religion (it can take a while!) around the same time I started to fall in love with Joni. But it’s undeniable to me that the best art, such as she’s made in such staggering abundance, is kind of magical and alchemical.

I also generally hold that her ‘golden era’ was Song to a Seagull to Hejira. But then I hear something like this, and realise it’s the same gentle-spirited genius.

Love you forever, Joni. Thanks for all the joy and the tears down the years.

OMG!!! What an ecclesiastical erection St Peter’s, Walpole, is… and no mistake!

A pal told me recently that the Indian religious honourific Bhagwan actually means big dick! I do so wish that were true. But a quick look online suggests not.

This looks and feels like a shockingly grand edifice for such a small obscure location. Look at the entrance. And then inside the entrance; dig those bosses and the vaulting.

This is a truly breathtaking building. I found myself experiencing waves of mounting ecstasy just contemplating it. And how amazing is that!? The very building itself facilitates a kind of chemico-psychic reverie that one could easily call either simply ecstatic, or perhaps even deeply spiritual?

That the ceiling bosses, as you enter, demand your attention, and lift your view skywards, towards the heavens, is so utterly apt for a church.

I really must investigate exactly what it is about some church architecture that engages me so strongly. I think it’s a combination of associative ideas, pure aestheticism, and the hedonic chemical circuitry.

One thing that’s very striking about St Peter’s, bringing to mind Hardwick Hall – ‘Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall’ – is the abundance of huge windows. And the resultant light. Would these originally have all been stained glass?

There’s also a plethora of wonderfully worked woods. It’s truly astonishing. Everywhere the eye roves, it’s a feast for the senses, and in turn for the mind. And yet, whilst it simultaneously overwhelms one’s faculties, it also seems to soothe them.

No matter where you turn, there’s artistry of breathtakingly exultant quality, in stone, glass, metal, and wood. Lots of wood!

It’s also wonderful that such a treasure trove as this can lie open and unattended. Many churches now are locked up. Sadly due, one imagines, to thievery. I’m so glad St. Peter’s was open. It provided me with an epiphany of sorts, for which I’m truly grateful.

Churches, at least of this grandiose sort, always exhort the visitor to look up. And when you do… well, wow! The symmetry, the rhythms, the light, the accumulation of sensory input, all of it sublimely and divinely uplifting. Talk about a pleasing unity of form and function.

This church really is something very special. One of the best I’ve discovered in my recent ecclesiastical ramblings. I’ll be coming back here, for certain. Love it!

Been awake since about 5.30 am. ‘Cause that’s when Teresa wakes up! Had a weird night of strange dreams. Anyroad… I’m about to set off for North Walsham. Almost two hours away. Why? To buy the plan-chest pictured above (and below), from a chap advertising on Gumtree, for our Art Studio.

I’ve been after some plan chests for years. But they’re usually unaffordably expensive. I bartered the seller down on this, a little, making it worthwhile, despite the travel time/petrol costs. Setting off at 8am. That’s not really that early, I guess. But it’s early-ish, for me!

As soon as I get this home (getting the thing in the house on my own was an ordeal!), King Chester claims it for his own! What a star he is. Really take a good look at that beautiful face; it says, in a relaxed and frank manner, ‘All is well in my world. And all of this is my world.’

I had the day off today. A Sunday. It’s nice to stay home, spend time with Teresa, and do simple homely stuff.

We went for a walk by the river, after lunch. Which was lovely. The first three snaps of this post are from that walk.

Sadly, whilst the cozily lazy stay at home is lovely, it’s not free from anxiety, or other nagging worries, for me, alas.

Gillray’s irreverently bawdy take on a Biblical story, pictured above, is, I think, utterly wonderful.

But it also touches upon, if you’ll pardon such punnery, sensitive issues for me, around my hedonistic tendencies, and penchant for self-soothing indulgence.

But nuff’ said on such things!

Later in the day we played Scrabble. This was something of a Sunday institution for us, for quite some time. But we’ve lapsed of late. It’s nice to get back into it.

We also did a Joe Wicks seniors workout. Another regular routine that’s slipped. It’s astonishing how astonishing it is, every time we or I do it, the surprise one feels on reconfirming how beneficial a little exercise is.

For dinner Teresa cooked a chicken casserole with a cream n’ white wine sauce. Yummy!

We also attempted a viewing of another Norman Wisom picture. This is a more recent addition to tradition, as we work through a boxed set of his films.

This one, On The Beat, whilst occasionally funny, isn’t his best. Then Teresa broke from it, to web-chat with Patrick. I couldn’t face that. Feeling rather flimsy.

Rather than finish the rather lust-lacquer movie, I went to bed. At 7.30 pm. Where I’m typing this. Going to read Shelby Foote now, then listen to rain and go to sleep!

Columbo: A Stitch In Crime

We do love Columbo. Despite that they are quite patchy. This is a good ‘un, though.

It’s a little unusual, inasmuch as the primary crime, the one driving the whole dastardly plot, is thwarted.

But that doesn’t prevent the sinisterly suave Dr Mayfield (Leonard Nimoy) from taking lives. Oh no!

Also unusual is that the usually affable Lt. Columbo blows his top. But I’ll say no more, in the interest of avoiding spoilers.

Pete and Len’ had actually worked together about a decade earlier, in The Balcony. Read more about that here.

I do love Tom Hanks. And the whole Play Tone Hanks/Goetzman and Spielberg, erm… Axis? Thank to these guys we have not only Shaving Ryan’s Privates, Band o’ Brothers, and Pacific. But also Greyhound, and, coming soon, Masters o’ the Air.

I’m not a fan of the modern subscription model, which is becoming ever more ubiquitous. Maybe I’d be less bothered if I was wealthier? But as a pauper, it puts a lot of stuff out of reach. And both Greyhound and the forthcoming Masters are on Apple TV.

Anyhoo, with a free weeks trial – will I do the usual, and forget to cancel in time? – taken out with the intention of watching Masters, the first thing I’ve actually watched is Greyhound. And I utterly adore it.

Having read a number books on the Battle o’ the Atlantic, I’ve been a-hankering for just such a fillum. I’ve watched loads of older WWII Naval movies. Many of which are great. But it’s taken time for advances in movie making tech to make possible what this movie delivers.

Tom Hanks himself wrote the screenplay, basing it on the C. S. Forester book The Good Shepherd.

I won’t synopsise the plot. Suffice it to say it’s great to see this team bring their film making prowess to bear on this oft’ overlooked subject.

I could waffle on about political balance, historical accuracy, hindsight, and so on. But I can’t be bothered, frankly!

It’s just terrific fun to watch a film of this quality, on a subject I’ve been longing to see treated just this way. So, thanks, Hanks! And Goetzman, and indeed all who made this a reality.

As a footnote to all this, as so often happens, watching this sort of stuff, I want to dress up… in this:

And maybe even one of these:

There’s also an interesting sub-plot, concerning mess-mate Cleveland. I won’t say more on that, but it’s a laudable inclusion.

All in all, highly recommended. Esp’, of course, to the military history buff.

Phew! After absolutely aeons just putting this job off, I finally got around to doing it.

When Ol’ Ken Cole very kindly gave us his old shed, it came with a corrugated metal roof. Six panels. This was the only roof of the original shed. A junction of the wavy roofing with the straight wooden elements of the shed itself equals gaps, equals cold draughts!

So I put the corrugated roofing panels to one side, and fitted an OSB roof, covering that with roofing felt. The corrugated sheets have languished behind the shed, propped up against the fence, for several years.

I bought a box of self-tapping hex-headed screws from Wrights Tools. These include a kind of ‘gasket’ (?), to seal the hole where the screw fixes to the substrate. This entailed the purchase of some drill bit adaptors.

I tried doing a few of the screws with spanners. Each one took several minutes, was hard work, and was fraught wit the continual possibility of me dropping te spanner off the roof… which I did indeed do!

So, off to Screwfix, for a set of these (six, eight and ten mm):

Having the right tools for a job is sooo important. What took several minutes of aggravating and clumsy labour, I can now do in seconds. Bliss!

I did the whole job solo. Lifting the roofing sheets on to the shed roof was hard work. And gloves were essential. Esp’ having recently cut a finger very deeply. Once up on the roof, after years in outdoor storage, I dusted off the cack (and many spiders, some rather large!) from the sheets with a broom.

I had also cleaned all the detritus, inc as much guano – a few weeks back I’d removed all the dead leaves and branches – as I could remove, from the roofing felt, prior to getting the sheets up. I did one sheet at a time, working from the end that receives the prevailing winds (easterly at the time).

The overlap I opted for is just one ridge. The final sheet being the exception. A neighbour informed me that storm Isha is due soon! So I’m glad I’ve finally got this job – which turned out to be surprisingly easy (one I had the right tools and fixings) – ahead of a poss’ spell of Gould weather (snow is also forecast!).

Really this is a spring or summer job. And here I am doing it in the depths of winter. it was damnably cold. But manuel labia keeps one warm! Achievement is indeed more durable than joy.

Whilst these sheets cover the whole roof length-wise, eagle-eyed viewers may spot that they don’t quite cover it all width-wise. I could, I suppose, get another panel, and chop it up to add the necessary extra strip. But I doubt I will.

To photograph the whole new roof I leaned the ladder against the nearby tree. But even then I was too close to get it all in frame with the normal ‘photo’ setting. So I shot in ‘pano’ format. Hence the curved distortion of some images.

Hmmm!?

As daft as this is, and as annoying as I found a good deal of it, it almost/kind of comes good in the end. Just about.

I think I’m realising that whilst some films from this era have aged superbly (from Kind Hearts & Coronets to Went The Day Well?, plucking just two from the aether), others haven’t. And the comedies of the Boultings quite often, it seems to me, to fall into this latter category.

Ian Carmichael plays the titular role, and is a teacher …

I’d quite like to work up some art, out of all these images I’m beginning to generate, en-masse.

Tried to bring out more colour and contrast here. tweaking various facets, such as brightness, contrast, etc.

I like abstraction of the skies that the reflections in Ruby’s bodywork create.

I love being out and about in the countryside. It’s refreshing and exhilarating in a way that being stuck indoors simply can’t compete with.

On this day, I encountered several interesting buildings, inc several churches. First up was St Mary’s at Reed, a rather small and homely slightly out of the way little church. I love the quiet peaceful location.

Inside the church, folk were busy working. I wonder, do the chalked letters on the door mean it’s being restored? Are they carpenter’s marks? Note the damage to panel B+.

I should’ve taken more pics, I guess. But the presence of the guys working kind of put me off. They appear to be working on the organ. The organ is the other end of the church (behind me, in the above pic). They’re working the other end cause there’s more room to manoeuvre there.

It was a bit too busy and messy to get good pics inside, with all that was going on. So this was a very brief stop. Plus, in all honesty, there was t a huge amount of interest. I’d like to visit again. When the church is otherwise empty. See if that impression is correct or erroneous.

The fabric of St Mary’s is, like many churches, a right ol’ patchwork. Most notably there the dark patch atop the tower.

In the course of my travels I’ve taken to stopping and investigating churches. And the more I do it. The more I love these old buildings.

As a non-believer, in either religion more generally or Christianity in particular, there’s a strange tension in there somewhere. Or perhaps I just say that?

Truth be told, when I visit churches there’s no tension whatsoever. Usually instead a sense of exaltation. Which, I suppose, is something they were, at least in part, intended to evoke?

All Saints in Polebrook has some very nice stained glass. And I’m always drawn to ‘the lights’, as they’re sometimes referred to.

And it’s not just the light through the stained glass, but the light in churches generally. Mind you, that has been materially affected by historical changes: if stained glass was torn out, during the Reformation or at some other time (possibly in more Puritan times (ECW or shortly after?), and replaced with plain glass, it changes the quality of illumination inside, naturally.

This glass is dated 1928. I wonder, is all the glass in here of that vintage? Or is it a more mixed bag? This one, below, for example, looks very different… not of a piece, so to speak.

Well, a closer look answers that question, the above is dedicated in 1981. Very recently indeed!

And, as ever, the windows draw attention to the thickness of the walls. What amazing buildings churches are.

Two extraordinary lights, dedicated to Tev. Richard Hinds and Susannah Hatfield.

I’ve always found it odd how a religion that, in its secondary phase – i.e. New Testicle – professes for the most part to be a more pacifist ‘turn the other cheek’ type affair (never mind old Testicle exhortations, such as Thou shalt not kill), cosies up to the State and Power, and I’m particularly vexed by this in relation to war.

And Polebrook, abd one assumes the church, as part of that, has very strong very recent martial connections, with the WWII creation of RAF Polebrook, and the presence of the (?) Bomber Group. As it happens, I’m adding this blog entry retrospectively, whilst watching Masters of The Air on Apple TV, making this a very resonant theme for me, right now.

On leaving the church, and getting out into the countryside, it was a crisp and beautiful winter day, with partly clear and partly clouded – and rather dramatically so – skies.

I love the above pano’. And yet, as is so often the case, the rather puny camera on my iPhone fails to capture the awesome if rather empty grandeur of such simple yet sublime moments.