Kei's School Leavers' Ball

Kei and James attending the JAGS Leavers Ball at Club Eve in New Burlington St

Kei's School Leaving Ceremony 30th June 2007

The leaving ceremony at James Allen's (JAGS) at which Kei received the arts prize, the poetry prize, a Russian prize and the prize for the girl who had made an outstanding contribution to the whole school. Click the heading to see a video of the presentation

What Charity Dinners Should Be....

A charity dinner. It's easy to raise money for charities connected to the sea in Britain; some even have more than they need. It's actually volunteers they are short of...

Favourite Places

Another favourite place. Do you know it?

Edith Wharton

But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.

The Fullness of Life

Favourite Places - Stowe

Another favourite place. Do you know this view?

Litchfield Church - St Cecilia's Prayer

The little church of St James the Less, Litchfield, on a summer's morning. My parents, Patrick and Annette, are buried here and I was christened here.

Fortunately, the vicar, Hamilton Lloyd, is very much of the old school and uses the Book of Common Prayer and King James's Bible in his erudite and amusing services.

This poem deals gently with the pain caused to the older generation by the adoption of modern forms of service

St Cecilia's
They have brought you up to date, Lord, down at St Cecilia's
They have pensioned off the organ and they are praising with guitars
They have done it for the young ones, we want to draw them in
But I do wish they could worship without making such a din

For I am growing rather deaf, Lord, and when there's all that noise
It gets so very hard, Lord, to hear your loving voice
They have written brand new hymns, Lord, with tunes I do not know
So I hardly ever sing now, though I did love singing so

They are very go-ahead, Lord - they are doing Series 3
But the words are not so beautiful as the others used to be
They have modernised the Bible, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed
When the old ones were so perfect that they filled my every need

My mind's not quite so agile as it was some years ago
And I miss the age-old beauty of the words I used to know
It's very clear to me, Lord - I've overstayed my time
I don't take to change so kindly I did when in my prime

But it can't be very long before I'm called above
And I know I'll find you there Lord and glory in your love
Till then I'll stick it out here, though it's not the same for me
But while others call you 'You' Lord, do you mind if I say 'Thee'

Mavis Clark

A more recent song takes aim at evangelicals and 'The Peace' to good effect 

Summertime

Koko isn't sure that she likes bruschetta, but is keeping her eye on it in case she is invited to try some...

Dulwich Park

Where Koko often has her morning walk....

Chelsea Flower Show 2007

Chelsea was quieter than usual and the show gardens not particularly special, apart from the Japanese moss garden (seen with its water window) and several of the tiny gardens hidden beyond the picnic area (see Le Jardin de Van Gogh above). But it's been the most perfect spring this year that most people can remember and the country's gardens are blooming early and spectacularly

Peace

People talk of world peace. But how can you ensure peace in the world? Here is the formula for it.

“If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character. If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home. If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.”

It may thus be seen that the first link in the chain leading to world peace is righteousness or dharma. Dharma is only another name for right action. But the prerequisite for right action is right thought. In other words, peace should start with the individual and gradually spread wider and wider right along the line - from the home or family to the village to the nation, etc., till finally, it encompasses the entire world.

Sathya Sai Baba

Kei's Art

One of my daughter Kei's textiles

What happens when our digital footprint suddenly disappears from the screen?

What happens when our digital footprint suddenly disappears?

I'm not sure that most people have thought of it - perhaps because they mainly communicate with people they have actually met and therefore have other links with. However, there are some practical things that we should be doing to help others deal with our affairs, now that almost all our business and much of our private lives are conducted on line. A note for your family giving them usernames and passwords for your computers, e-mail accounts, address books, (Plaxo is terribly useful here as you can access it from any computer from the web and it also copies address books and notes across different computers), bank accounts, PayPal, Flickr, Genes Reunited, websites like this blog, Facebook etc.

Send a copy to your executors as well so that they can rummage around easily if you don't make it down to breakfast one day.

Legally speaking, one should make a 'digital will' - to include things like your photos. You can even leave your iTunes collection to someone!

Happy days and pass the pinot!

Mother Teresa

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
Attributed to Mother Teresa

And more wise advice here

Jane Austen

Jane Austen's house in Chawton


Chawton House, near Jane Austen's own house. Owned by the Knights for generations, Herry used to go to dances there

One of my favourite pieces of writing is Lord Grey's essay on Jane Austen:

Jane Austen is to me the greatest wonder among novel writers. I do not mean that she is the greatest novel writer, but she seems to me the greatest wonder. Imagine, if you were to instruct an author or an authoress to write a novel under the limitations within which Jane Austen writes!
Suppose you were to say, "Now you must write a novel, but you must have no heroes or heroines in the accepted sense of the word. You may have naval officers, but they must always be on leave or on land, never on active service. You must have no striking villans; you may have a mild rake, but keep him well in the background, and if you are really going to produce something detestable, it must be so because of its small meannesses, as, for instance, the detestable Aunt Norris in 'Mansfield Park'; you must have no very exciting plots; you must have no thrilling adventures; a sprained ankle on a country walk is allowable, but you must not go much beyond this. You must have no moving descriptions of scenery; you must work without the help of all these; and as to passion, there must be none of it. You may, of course, have love, but it must be so carefully handled that it very often seems to get little above the temperature of liking. With all these limitations you are to write, not only one novel, but several, which, not merely by popular appreciation, but by the common consent of the greatest critics shall be classed amongst the first rank of the novels written in your language in your country."
Lord Grey of Falloden - The Falloden Papers

24 Hrs of Flickr

Each person can post one photo to Flickr to make a composite image of the world on 5th May 2007. Mine wasn't a very exciting day.....

Brilliant Ad in the City

How many of these great buildings have you been in?

A Study of History

My favourite historian, Arnold Toynbee, holds that civilizations are ruled by charm (of the 'creative minority') as the result of which the people 'suspend disbelief' in their government and allow themselves to be guided without rebellion. He argues that the breakdown of civilizations is not caused by attacks from outside. Rather, it comes from the deterioration of the 'creative minority', which eventually ceases to be creative and degenerates into merely a 'dominant minority' (who force the majority to obey without meriting obedience). He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their 'former selves' as the result of which they become proud - and lose their ability to 'charm'.

2016: I have come across this marvellous quote in the context of the Referendum disaster: “As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too,” he wrote. “Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action . . . Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.” Gore Vidal’s 1992 The Decline and Fall of the American Empire:

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Nooooooooo!

Nooooooooo!, originally uploaded by Wolfiewolf.

The History of Intimacy

'I see humanity as a family that has hardly met. I see the meeting of people, bodies, thoughts, emotions or actions as the start of most change. Each link created by a meeting is like a filament, which, if they were all visible, would make the world look as though it is covered with gossamer. Every individual is connected to others, loosely or closely, by a unique combination of filaments which stretch across the frontiers of space and time...To feel isolated, is to be unaware of the filaments which link one to the past and to parts of the globe one may never have seen.

The age of discovery has hardly begun. So far individuals have spent more time trying to understand themselves than discovering others. But now curiosity is expanding as never before...To know someone in every country in the world, and someone in every walk of life, may soon be the minimum demand of people who want to experience fully what is means to be alive. The gossamer world of intimate relations is in varying degrees separate from the territorial world in which people are identified by where they live and work, by whom they have to obey, by their passports and bank balances... but the art of encounter is in its infancy.'

Theodore Zeldin - An Intimate History of Humanity

Favourite Wines - the Whites

One of my favourite wines - a 'Far Niente' from California. It probably has the most beautiful label of all. I had it for my birthday supper...


A slightly different wine but if of similar quality - Devil's Lair from the Margaret River area of Australia, where others that I also love - such as Cullen and Vasse Felix also live. Roll on summer! And - while we're about it, come and have a drink in the garden!
.

The Tale of the Heike

The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things;
the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline.
The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night;
the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.

Spring in London

More images of spring in London; one of the sunniest on record. This Banksian is the first to flower in the garden and the lilacs are spreading their scent far and wide

Shankara - I Am Shiva

Om. I am neither the mind,
Intelligence, ego nor ‘chitta’
Neither the ears, nor the tongue,
Nor the senses of smell and sight,
Neither ether, nor air,
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

I am neither the ‘prana’,
Nor the five vital breaths,
Neither the seven elements of the body,
Nor its five sheaths,
Nor the hands, nor the feet, nor tongue,
Nor other organs of action.
I am Eternal Bliss and awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Neither fear, greed, nor delusion,
Loathing, nor liking have I,
Nothing of pride, of ego,
Of ‘dharma’ or Liberation,
Neither desire of the mind,
Nor the object for its desiring.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Nothing of pleasure and pain,
Of virtue and vice, do I know,
Of mantra, of sacred place,
Of Vedas or Sacrifice,
Neither I am the eater,
The food or the act of eating.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Death or fear, I have none,
Nor any distinction of ‘caste’,
Neither father, nor Mother,
Nor even a birth, have I,
Neither friend, nor comrade,
Neither disciple, nor Guru.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

I have no form or fancy,
The All-pervading am I,
Everywhere I exist,
And yet I am beyond the senses,
Neither salvation am I,
Nor anything to be known.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Spring Coming Early in the Country

A fine old wisteria struggling with the evening chill on the terrace of Danesfield House, Marlow

The City

My office stands in the shadow of the Gherkin (Swiss Re) but our building is being redeveloped and is being let to run down. Millers will move about 100 yards to their new office in 2008.

The top photo shows current rebuilding in the area.



Waiting for friends in The Sterling, the pub under the Gherkin, my 'local' in the City.

The Stanzas of Dzyan

The Eternal Parent [the great Matrix], wrapped in her ever-invisible Robes, had slumbered once again for seven eternities.

Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.

Universal Mind was not, for there were no Ah-Hi [the serpents of limitation] to contain it.

The seven ways to bliss were not. The great causes of misery were not, for there was no one to produce or get ensnared in them.

Darkness alone filled the boundless all, for Father, Mother and Son were once more one, and the Son had not yet awakened for the new wheel and his pilgrimage theron.

The seven sublime Lords [levels of consciousness] and the seven Truths [the structure of the universe] had ceased to be, and the universe, the son of Necessity, was immersed in Paranish-panna [the highest truth], to be outbreathed by that which is and yet is not. Naught was.

The causes of existence had been done away with, and the invisible that was, and the invisible that is rested in eternal non-being - the one being.

Alone, the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless in a dreamless sleep; and life pulsated unconscious in universal space, throughout that All-Presence which is sensed by the opened eye of Dangma [the perfected seer].

But where was the Dangma when the Alaya [the eternal parent - the matrix] of the Universe was in Paramartha [state of supreme reality] and the great wheel was Anupagaka [without parents]?

The Stanzas of Dzyan - the first of seven

See also The Scientist and the Universe

See also Hilma af Klint

St Peter's Eaton Square

View of St Peter's across Eaton Square gardens. My parents were married here in 1944

Drapers' Company Dinner

A dinner at Drapers' Hall with guests

The View from Old Winchester Hill

The view from the hill over Stocks south towards the coast, in summer after harvest

Aspects of this view appear several times in this Journal, as I grew up here. Click the links for some of them.

Stocks History from the Archive

View from Old Winchester Hill (Country Life)
Views from Old Winchester Hill (Flickr)
Kei running up Old Winchester Hill

Old Winchester Hill

The iron-age earthworks on Old Winchester Hill are clearly visible on this hazy spring morning.

The view of the hill from the south shows Fauld's new house built where the cottages once stood

1 Corinthians 13

Though I speak with tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.


Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself; is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not her own; is not easily provoked; thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.


Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part and we prophecy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.


When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

Click on the heading to hear the Winchester cathedral organ

Drapers' Almshouse Teaparty 2007

Tea for the residents of the Drapers' Almshouses at Drapers Hall. Click on the heading to hear us singing 'Daisy Daisy'

The House of the Rising Sun

Photo Jim Goldsmith
Back in 1967 again - driving home from the White Horse in Droxford took exactly 4.5 minutes - the time taken for Eric Burdon to sing The House of the Rising Sun on a primitive battery-powered disc player on the back seat of my car....

Click on the heading for a Google Map of the route - though I actually took Watton Lane to avoid the rozzers...not because I'd been drinking because in those days I only drank coke!

Click on the link below to hear Eric Burdon again...

Spring in London

London's magnolias spell spring as do the exuberant double petal plums that seem to colour the air around them. But the fallen camellia flowers show that they can flower earlier - some even in winter.

Japan in Spring

The plum blossom comes out about a month before the more famous cherry blosom, but many Japanese prefer its more restrained beauty. This was at Kitano Tenmangu

Cliveden

Another favourite place. Click on the heading for the story of the Profumo affair which began here...

Favourite Food

Beautiful Japanese food! I had already eaten the cod (in the yellow bowl) and was starting on the rest. Tofu came later on a brazier, but my favourite tofu skin - 'yuba' - can be seen here bottom right. Delicious!

Favourite Music

Thomas Tallis - Spem in Alium

This was one of wolfiewolf's earliest favourites, which he used to play with his brother Piers on an old gramophone. With thanks to a friend, Nigel of the Thomas Tallis Society and to Zenera for showing me where to find this amazing music site

A Good Year

A favourite film

A similar place - lunch in Sausse