these weird isles: Recent Episodes
yawn the post
Manchester - a city with a history of radicalism, where Marx and Engels plotted the overthrow of capitalism and where Dr Dee summoned Satan. Thanks to Tim Mortimer of Workhouse Disko for the industrial guitar.
Penwith, at the far south western peninsular of Cornwall, the tip of England, where, above the coastal villages, there's a landscape haunted by megaliths and ghosts of tin mines.
The English countryside exists laregly in the imagination. Much of it is a factory, and only 8% is accessible to the public.
In Malmesbury I found the tomb of Athelstan - the least well known first king of England. He was a lover of toast and hot air ballooning.
95% of the population of Ireland speak English as their first language. English is the first language spoken by the majority of people in Wales and Scotland. But these other nations reverberate with their ancient Celtic languages, they seep through, will never be suppressed.
Rochester, a city destroyed by an accident...and reborn through the fog of imagination.
Most of us spend far too much time in the pub. What makes them so wonderful? Four of us went to Bristol to find out. (Unlike most of these podcasts this one is recorded on a small hand held device. Quality is sometimes compromised. And we get drunk.)
Salisbury, Wiltshire - in the cathedral we find witches' marks, protection against evil: against spells, Russian agents and maybe green men.
Many in the UK seek comfort in the past, whether the Celtic twilight of Camelot, or pride in the innovations of the Victorian era. But peel away the fantasies and we're left with little - just overcooked roast beef and roundabouts. This is a rant about our obsession with the past - and obsessions in general, whether these are my own, or those of the nostalgic British public.
The East Riding of Yorkshire, where, after leaving the sunny landscapes of California, Bradford born artist David Hockney returned to live and paint. Hockney's art challenges how we perceive the world, some of his photographic collages are almost cubist, as this podcast is, fragmentary, lacking a straight chronology. Your mind does not think in simple, ordered steps. Your eyes and your mind are constantly moving. Hockney wants to reflect that. I can only try and use a similar method to describe him and what he does.
Through an entrance decorated with foliated faces and soot-shrouded beasts into a great room in which there is a five hundred year old whale bone, an orchestra, a composer, a chaos pendulum and several green men.
The cul-de-sac, at least in the UK, is very different from the dead end street. It is a haven and closer to paradise than you would imagine.
Cathedrals dominate the skylines of many British cities. Their development took place over a period of over 1000 years and represent one of the most astonishing artistic and technical achievements of western Europe.
Kinder Scout, a mountain plateau in Derbyshire, UK, where, in 1932 a mass trespass drew attention to the cause of the right to roam.
Is there a link between anti-depressant use and deprivation? Why does Blackpool have the most anti-depressant use in the UK? What is the matter with us? Is it Big Pharma or something else?
The first in a series of occasional episodes in which I attempt to find some of this weird isles' hidden green men.
Remembering an afternoon in Camberwell spent with artist Tom Phillips, admiring his Humament, his Cloopseend, not to mention his Hairy Balls.
The Isle of Skye, home of the Talisker whisky distillery and controversial psychiatrist and writer, Iain McGilchrist. Featuring the pithy analytical mind of my neighbour Lofty Hazelhurst.
Tea drinking in Britain was once a ritual, an institution. Tea was pivotal in two British wars, one with the embryonic USA, the other, China. Today, most tea is tasteless piss - a bag of dust dipped in a mug of boiled water - although grand old tea shops, like Betty's in Harrogate, try to maintain some standards, and hold back the rising tide: of coffee.
Cathy was so obsessed with Led Zeppelin she flew to Belfast, then took a train to Giant's Causeway just so she could lie down in the spot featured on the cover of Zeppelin's album 'Houses of the Holy'. We visit singer Robert Plant's old home and I consider his fascination with the word 'baby' and Lord of the Rings.
In which I explain how the M4 is a time machine: drive east from Swansea and you travel from a Viking settlement to Londinium, a great city of Rome.
Bram Stoker passes through a whalebone arch into a time shift, buys an ice cream from a van owned by Stranglers' drummer Jet Black. Sir Henry Irving morphs into Christopher Lee. Monkey Puzzle Trees do something even more astonishing.
Diane Perry became a Buddhist nun spending twelve years meditating in a cave in the Himalayas. Is that any way to live?
Glastonbury is the capital of These Weird Isles. Forget the Festival, wander into town. It is the epicentre of the age old longing for some half hidden Celtic twilight, a nostalgia for a time that never was, a home of sorcerers, eccentrics, tarot readers and crystal magic. If towns are rock bands, Glastonbury is Hawkwind.
The Potteries was once the centre of the ceramics industry in Britain. But the industry in this country was slow to produce porcelain, the secret of which was first discovered in Dresden by an incarcerated alchemist and trickster.
Rambling through a churchyard in Amersham to see the grave of Arthur Machen I discover the resting place of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the UK. A small amount of digging reveals the prosecution was led by a Buddhist, the same barrister who represented the Crown in the trials of Derek Bentley and also of Timothy Evans, both hanged, and both later declared innocent and whose unfortunate lives were told in major films: 'Let Him Have It' and '10, Rillington Place'.
Suffolk is a county of clouds, and on the coast, in a holiday chalet in Kessingland, we struggle to remember codes, and are not easily calmed by the decor. to get in touch via email: use 'these weird isles' as one word, then add @gmail.com
These Weird Isles - the second of two podcasts in which I explore Japan - islands as weird as the UK . I discover a space at the centre of the Japanese belief system and reflect on how the Japanese must perceive the British.
The South Downs is a one hundred mile long ridge of chalk laid down in the cretaceous period. Chalk is the remains of single celled creatures that drifted through the oceans around 140 to 66 million years ago. It makes up most of south east England and is a relatively young rock, but travel north and west and the geology of the UK gets much older. The science of geology deals with these huge time spans by creating aeons, eras, periods and epochs. But geology is not static. Change is everywhere. The world is not made up of things, only processes.Thanks to Tim for some beautifully volcanic guitar.
This is the 'Happy Valley' of Sgt Catherine Cawood, and the home of the Cragg Valley Coiners. Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate was born here, his wife, Sylvia Plath, is buried here. We stayed in a converted piggery on a hilltop, where jackdaws tapped at the window and the fog sealed us off from the world outside. Spoiler alert: a glimpse of the end of Series 3 is given away here.
A misguided attempt to record on site, an 'outside broadcast' which degenerates into a pub crawl. I'm joined by Caerleon resident and local historian Will O'Connell, a man whose knowledge of Caerleon he doesn't share with us here. Most of this podcast takes place in the Roman fortress town in south Wales. It's a fascinating place, but we spent most of our time in the pub. You'll learn nothing.
A trip to East Anglia, to the Fens and to Norfolk in search of finger in the ear folk singers, Brexit country and a vision of the future when the floods come and the UK becomes a minor archipelago, its lowlands lost and forgotten under the North Sea.(I drove east, not west, from Cardiff. This mistake was not deliberate. I am an idiot).
The dubious story of the Neanderthal brothers of Tregaron and the role of the equally reclusive cyberneticist Stafford Beer in world events.
George Orwell on Jura writing 1984, smoking roll ups and trying to shake off tuberculosis.
William Hershel, professional musician, amateur astronomer, discoverer of Uranus, built a telescope in Slough so huge it remained the biggest in the world for fifty years.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in Bath. Jane Austen lived there a few years before. Could the two have crossed paths?
The Cornish pastiche: Tintagel, a castle on a rocky outcrop, is this Camelot? No, it's not.
The Omphalos, Sandycove, near Dublin is a Martello tower and the setting of the opening chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses. 'Omphalos' is the Greek for 'navel', the centre of the ancient world. Ulysses is a navel novel.
Reg Presley, suddenly rich from the proceeds of a hit song, devotes his money and time to uncovering the secrets of the Warminster Triangle: UFOs, crop circles and the changing shape of planet Earth. Reg is voiced by Long John Silver.
Kathleen Schlesinger, born in Holywood, Belfast, in 1862, was a music archaeologist who published a major study of the ancient Greek wind instrument, the aulos. Her fascination with tuning systems led to lifelong collaboration with Australian microtonal composer Elsie Hamilton.
Thanks to Kate Bowan for sending me a copy of her article 'Living Between Worlds Ancient and Modern'.
Silbury Hill - the largest man made mound in Europe, built around the same time as the Great Pyramids, sits on the side of the A4 in Wiltshire. It's a sombre dome, a green whale, an alien submarine. Is it a monument to the Great Goddess? A watchtower? A swollen node on a ley line? No, it's a big cake.
A cuttlefish squirts sepia ink and creates a pseudomorph of itself to divert predators. With a little more know-how it could manufacture 3d sepia images of Weston's Grand Pier, its Big Wheel or Helicopter Museum.
Acton, London W3, where I discovered Welsh writer Arthur Machen in the library, slightly dishevelled, jacket all ripped.
Goat's Hole Cave, Paviland, on the Gower peninsular, south Wales, is the site of a prehistoric ceremonial burial, one of the oldest in Europe and earliest evidence of modern humans on these islands. There are many such caves nearby, eerie, ancient dwelling places, described by the painter Ceri Richards as 'black apples of Gower'.
In Cambridge, looking for the Wittgenstein Archive, we find a brick wall, a skip and a white slip-on shoe.
In Dundee the boots of a seven foot giant stomp up the street. 'Where is my creator?' it howls. Mary Shelley hides behind the settee.
The Roseland peninsular, Cornwall, almost dreamlike, but its castles summon up images of an era when England was threatened with invasion from France and the Holy Roman Empire. Now the invaders are the wealthy middle classes, ramping up house prices, reviving Cornish nationalism and interest in the Cornish language.
Completed in 1828, the statue of Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, dominates St Andrew Square. In 1846, Frederick Douglass, author, statesman, anti-slavery campaigner, visited Edinburgh. He would have seen that statue - but was he aware of Dundas’ role in delaying abolition? Do residents or visitors of the city realise Dundas amendment to William Wilberforce’s act led to the enslavement of a further half a million men, women and children? And this is to say nothing of the huge compensation granted to slave owners across the UK, and particularly Edinburgh New Town.
John Buchan can’t stop thinking about ham. Alfred Hitchcock is frightened of eggs. Charles Dickens is hungry all the time. In Broadstairs I eat British chips and wonder where the seventy eight steps are now.
I search for mesolithic footprints in the mudflats of the Severn Estuary, avoid a tsunami, then call upon Amy Adams, expert in alien linguistics, to decipher a chilling message.
An octopus searches for the location of a battle that took place in August, 1485. Facts are disputed. Five hundred years later the body of King Richard the Third is discovered in a social services car park in Leicester. The octopus studies the menu in the battlefield visitors’ centre and notices an absence of Welsh dishes.
Westray and Papa Westray, far northern outposts of the British Isles, once a Viking colony, where the plaintive call of the curlew sounds over white beaches of the most extraordinary beauty.
Batman meets Gwen John in the home of my maternal ancestors. I eat some local cheese then experience megalithophobia with the supreme exponents of psych-sludge, Neolithic Axe Factory. (With thanks to the hallucinogenic imagination of Alexander Velky - @alexandervelky - and the nuclear guitar of Tim Mortimer.)
A pint of beer in Guy Fawke’s birthplace, then a walk along the York Walls leads to the discovery of a cafe in one of the barbicans and a rumination on war and peace, life and death and a piece of cake.
Bass Rock, an island off the east coast of Scotland, where gannets live within a stabbing distance of each other.
A boat trip from Seahouses to the Farne Islands escorted by a squadron of puffins. Alfred Hitchcock makes a cameo appearance.