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Dismal Weather Anselm Kiefer's Lead Cathedral; My Fracking Round Up


Rain all day, heavy rain, drizzly rain, a dismal mild climate change Sunday as the year draws to an end. We do not yet need the heating, but our new dehumidifier hums all night in the basement. I feel penned up, this was the first weekend in a long time we could have gone walking, but not a chance. Went up to London on Friday to see the Anselm Kiefer Retrospective at the RA; having done our prep by watching the Imagine feature on the artist the night before (the staggering humungous scale of his operations had a somewhat chilling effect on me). Very impressive exhibition however, and not too crowded at all, but I still ended up feeling most moved by the "Attic" pictures, that I first saw in the Liverpool Tate many, many years ago, and immediately co-opted into White Queen, my London-based, Wagnerian alien invasion story.

(Interestingly, the "Attic" picture I quoted, a copy of which hangs in Braemar's house, and gives Johnny a premonition of Liebestod, Parsifal I was the only print available on sale when we exited through gift shop. Maybe she bought it here! I didn't: just felt a little spooked, by a ghost of the fictional future.)

But also, okay, I admit, the mesmerising Aschenblume, and the Shulamith and Margarethe, and the Black Sunflower ones; and watching people make the alarm go bleep by peering too closely at the embedded diamonds in the leaden dirt (I forget the titles of that series, oddly enough). And Eis und Blut (pictured), which got me wondering, is that deliberately meant to be a leafless Linden tree, directly behind Kiefer in his father's uniform>. Or am I overdoing the references to the masters thing? (Lindenbaum, the Schubert song "that became a folksong" is Thomas Mann's leitmotif for the 1914-8 War, in The Magic Mountain)

But move over, I kept thinking. Move over, Holocaust, we are entering uncharted territory now, you are no longer the terrible, absolute, unrepeatable, high water mark you were. Our damnation is not in the past, it's engulfing this new century, and the huge mass of Keifer's evidence weighs against his ethereal promise of hope like a lead catherdral against a feather . . .

Installations of piled up paving stones, with a coulis of red grit, did nothing for me, however.


My Fracking Round Up

Still awaiting the verdict on Balcombe residents' High Court judicial review (held on 6th/7th November)

http://www.law-now.com/DirectMail/%7B1ECADDB5-4ED9-4AE0-BF9F-4389D32A6026%7D_shalegasupdatenov14.htm

On the other hand, Celtique Energie's appeal against West Sussex County Council (who turned down their application to drill at Wisborough Green, back in July) has now been lodged, and you are cordially invited to send in renewed objections (or to withdraw previous objections) before December 19th by email: Alan.Ridley@pins.gsi.gov.uk
or by post (3 copies) to:

Alan Ridley
The Planning Inspectorate
3/26 Hawk Wing
Temple Quay House
2 The Square
Bristol
BS1 6PN

Given the government's current leaked plans to drill everywhere! In the whole world!; their support for Ineos's monster raid on Central Scotland (devolved Scotland got anything to say about this??), and determination to remove all forms of regulation or local authority, there is hardly a cat in hell's chance that Greg Davies won't get his way, but weight of numbers is always worth something. You'll probably want to refer to the original application and objections, which you can find here: http://www.westsussex.gov.uk/living/environment_and_planning/oil_gas_exploration_and_frack.aspx

Why do I keep banging on about fracking, when there is so much else to complain about? I don't know, maybe because I started? Because I want to save the future? Because the need to halt climate change is real to me, and a passion for extreme energy extraction on the same page as "Climate Change Fund recieves $9.3bn pledge" just sets my teeth on edge? (not as irrational as it sounds, however.The trick is in that word "pledge"). Or possibly even the snake-oil lies being sold to believers, in contrast with the miserable, short-term yield that's even possible from UK shale gas and tight oil reserves?

"The government is increasingly indistinguishable from the fracking industry it's supposed to be regulating."

Caroline Lucas is dead right.


If 75% of fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground, there is no question the UK's shale gas and tight oil, derisory in quantity, corruptly financed, brutally destructive of the countryside, of the economics of renewable energy, and of the development of clean alternatives to petroleum based products, belongs near the top of the list.

Meanwhile, the skylark and the lapwing are on the Red List, can you imagine that, no more skylarks? And the hedgehogs too, so many humble, familiar commensals of ours, in this land, on this earth, just vanishing, and what is to be done? (there's something to done: on which more later...)

But it's dark outside my window, and the cats seem to think I should be heading downstairs. Glad to see another healthy response to my November Ann Halam giveaway, there's one more to come, dates to be announced. And finally, Amazon Anonymous has an action for you, boycott Amazon for your present-buying, this Christmas, and tell them you're doing it, to help them to become a better employer. I felt I could make the pledge without being too much of a hypocrite, as I personally only sell, I don't buy, and it does say Kindle usage at your discretion . But if you join me, spare a thought for those many obligate Amazon partners, the writers (including me) of ebooks and print books, and make sure you do keep buying books and ebooks elsewhere!

Happy New Year

Marking the change of the year a little late, we were in Durham last week for a squeezed down autumn holiday: a wet, mild couple of days in an apartment right down on the riverside. Mainly to see the cathedral, which Peter had never seen, and I remembered as amazing; glimpsed on a dark and rainy night in November 2000 when I was up here (by train) for a North East Books Festival as Ann Halam, in the middle of the worst floods. My, I had problems getting home, but it was pretty interesting, although very cold and wet, so I didn't really mind. Nothing had changed, the great sacred cavern with its amazing massive thousand year old pillars very thrilling and mysterious to enter on All Souls' Night. Faure's Requiem at Evensong, and then we walked about, recalling our dead; bringing them to mind, (& avoiding a student Pub Run). Durham town centre is relentlessly generic now, and we didn't find much else to do (very poorly researched trip, we hadn't noticed it would be the closed season), except to visit the Durham University Oriental Museum, a perfect gem of a place. I loved the Korean section, ancient and modern; also home of the famous boxwood Servant Girl, maybe the most beautiful single Ancient Eygptian work of art I have ever seen, 18th Dynasty of course; highly unconventional. What a nice face she has.

The Botanic Garden is where I found out about crinoid marble.




Durham cathedral is about to cash in its World Heritage Site First Class tokens btw, and explode into huge new shiny visitor's centres and beautifully restored monastic halls and I don't know what, so we got there just in time. Look out for the beautiful crinoid marble, esp in the North aisle, slender black glossy stems, blossoming in white frost flowers of fossilised Northumbrian sea-lilies.

Tired out after finishing my talk for Kent Anthropology department last night, I'll leave my latest fracking round up comments etc for next time.

Looking Forward to . . .

Reading The Goshawk again: in preparation for Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk. The first time I saw H is for Hawk advertised, and learned that goshawks like to play, I thought I'd go straight out and buy it, same as I did when I saw Otter Country. But after a few more double page spreads, all going on about how it's really about someone losing her father, and being devastated, and the mourning process . . . I decided to reserve it from the library instead. I'm 8 of 69 at the moment. I first read The Goshawk (which is interrogated by the modern austringer in H is for Hawk) when I was fifteen; thrilled because I'd loved The Sword In The Stone and Mistress Masham's Repose (not mad about the rest of his Arthur epic, however), and it was rare, and my mother had found it for me: and accepted T H White's foray into austringery (sp?) on his own terms, because what did I know? I now accept, with relief, that it is a bizarre and cruel book, but still I think worth a revisit, for old time's sake


Seeing and not-seeing . . .

Yesterday I followed the BBC live coverage of the Rosetta mission, what an absolutely amazing fear, that little bug, leaping onto the back of a flying comet; beyond the orbit of Mars . . .Fantastic. & from the sublime to the ridiculous, I have booked tickets to see Interstellar tomorrow night. I didn't plan to go near it (stick to Supercomics, mate), but then I got tempted to read the reviews on IMDb & they were so hilarious, and the negative ones so laugh out loud exasperated funny, I had to give it a whirl, in their honour.

Probably won't go to see The Imitation Game though; it's just too familiar, that story. I'll catch it on tv or Netflix later.

But tonight, the last episode of Kevin Spacey's House Of Cards. Which is brilliant, despite some slackening of tension in the mid-term. Loved the penultimate two episodes. Loved Robin Wright's implacable Lady Macbeth turn. And how will it end? I am happy to say I do not know. (know how the rather silly Ian Richardson one ended, obviously, but not this, and nobody is allowed to tell me).