SACRED MOMENTS - The Blue Mountains Walking

'Twirling flowers are twirled by eyes, twirled by mind consciousness, twirled by nostrils, and twirled by flowers twirling. Every Buddha's practice,experience, and maintenance of the truth, twirls flowers to dance like butterflies in the spring wind.' #

Three of four years on from my having left London, it is the early 1990's. I'm living in Diss, Norfolk, running my own art shop there. Once a week I'd go to Norwich Buddhist Centre for an evening of practice and a talk. I'd travel up early and return on the last train. Invariably it turned into a very long evening, where I frequently would not get back home to Diss until well gone midnight. 

'Your practice as a descendant of yourself is endless'+

Despite this journey, I began attending the centre once, twice and occasionally thrice a week. Buddhism provided, not only a warm welcoming context, but a creative way of working with, for want of a better phrase 'all too familiar disquieting issues'.

'Understanding through faith is that which we cannot evade'+

On this particular night at the Buddhist Centre there was a compendium of short talks given by three people, on the connections between their work and Buddhist practice. I can only remember the content of one of those talks. because in that twenty minutes I was introduced to the writings of Eihei Dogen. And a lifetimes worth of love, affinity and inspired personal practice began.

'Flowers fall amid our longing and weeds spring up amid our antipathy'**

Any concept of 'soul' is in danger of being misleading. Particularly if you imagine it having an eternal persistence. Yet I believe the word 'soul' still has its uses. Soul for me, is a cover all term for a feeling for the totality of who we presently are. When that 'soul' connects with 'the vision and reality of the way things really are" it brings a sense of the sacred forth. When we sense the sacred in our experience, its because ultimate reality has been made conscious through an occurance in the present moment. These sacred moments can occur via anything, anywhere, anytime. They fill us with a sense of reality that is much bigger than just us and our individual being. That is why they are able to affect us. We recognise 'soulful' language when we hear, read or feel it. Words that bristle the hairs on your head, with a brief frisson of recognition. And sometimes, just sometimes, I can return to them regularly for continuing sustenance and a recharge.

'It is vital that we clarify and harmonise our lives with our work and not lose sight of either the absolute or the practical.'*

So in this short talk, the speaker was expressing in words their enthusiasm for Dogen's most well known and popular text - The Instructions to the Tenzo. In it Dogen playfully oscillates between practical tasks and profound interpretation. It's clear he saw no real distinction to be made here between the two. Dogen's ability to imply both perspectives simultaneously is, in my experience, quite unique to him. I've frequently found this exhilarating to engage with, the occasional emanations of bliss can result. A quality buried like a hidden treasure within his writing, captures something I've long been in search of.

'Be very clear about this; A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself'*

Now Dogen would most likely be extremely skeptical or even scathing of the use of words like 'soul' or 'the sacred'. But then he was like that about most language. He knew language had the power to mislead, to artificially reify what was really only a transitory useful concept. Yet he too was willing to exploit 'soulful' language, because he recognised its ability to suggestively place you within touching distance of the potential for Buddhahood, the sublime, the sacred. Imaginative language, however flawed, can nudge you in the right direction.

'A simple green has the power to become the practice of the Buddha, quite adequately nurturing the desire to live out the Way. Never feel aversion toward plain ingredients. As a teacher of men and of heavenly beings, make the best of whatever greens you have.*

There are far too many Dogen quotes over the years that have touched me in a similar way since then. That is why his writing has maintained itself as a major strand of inspiration in my spiritual practice. One I return to when ever my faith stumbles or becomes a little too arid. Once the enthusiasm was lit, I was off, reading as much Dogen as I could find. This is what soulful language can do, it can propel you on journeys of exploration. Inevitably that led me to Dogen,'s major philosophical work - The Shobogenzo, and to The Mountains & Rivers Sutra in particular.

Dogen was a skilled refined poet, who typically decried skilled refined poetry. You could say that he revelled in confounding his own contradictions. So you will find many rich poetic metaphors mischievously being played around with in The Mountains & Rivers Sutra. For Dogen language was not limited in its ability to express the ineffable, but imaginatively inexhaustible. Over the years I've compiled a number of Shobogenzo Pujas ( devotional rituals) of differing length. The Short Morning version I currently use quite regularly, concludes with these edited verses from The Mountains & Rivers Sutra. They contain a powerful metaphor of walking, as both an individual and a cosmic transcendental act.

'The walking of mountains 

is like the walking of human beings.

The walking of the Blue Mountains 

is swifter than the wind,
human beings in the mountains 

do not sense it or know it.
Being in the mountains
describes the opening of flowers 

in the real world.

People out of the mountains
never sense it and never know it,
people who have no eyes to see the mountains
do not sense, do not know, do not see,
and do not hear this concrete fact.

If we doubt the walking of the mountains,
we also do not yet know our own walking.
It is not that we do not have our own walking,
but we do not yet know
and have not yet clarified our own walking.

When we know our own walking,
then we will surely also know
the walking of the Blue Mountains'***

This need to 'clarify your own walking' encapsulates the vision I hold for what my spiritual life will forever be about. To walk with the Blue Mountains. For those in the mountains, walking in nature, climbing to the top of mountains can be a transcendent experience in and of itself. To reach a higher perspective where you can look down on the low valleys beneath. Only from such an elevated viewpoint can you begin to see the world for what it really is. The Blue Mountains walking appears as this unknowable realm of perception, until at some point we find that 'our own walking' comes into sacred alignment with it.

* Extract from Dogen's The Zen Kitchen To Enlightenment, Trans. Thomas Wright. Pub.Weatherhill.

** Extract from Dogen's Genjo Koan, Trans, Paul Jaffe, Pub. Shambhala

*** Extract from the Ch 14 Sansuigo, The Shobogenzo by Dogen.
Trans, Nishijima & Cross, Pub. Windbell.

+ Textual origins of these Dogen quotation lost.

# Extract from The Udumbara Flower, The Shobogenzo, Trans, Nishijima & Cross.  Pub. Windbell.

MY OWN WALKING - Journal April 2024

Recently a few people I've viewed on You Tube, whose opinions to a degree I respect, have converted to the Christian Orthodox Church. I've been intrigued, as I know very little about Orthodoxy as a faith. Though I do not necessarily wish to follow it. I do find the ancient mythos of Orthodoxy, its liturgy, rituals and music strangely captivating. The other worldly beauty of the stylised iconography - what's there not to like?

There is a movement in America, for young people to convert from being protestant, evangelical and atheist, to the Orthodox Church. Judging by the interviews I've seen, its predominantly young men, who appear generally to be looking for something with more meaning, rigor and challenge. Finding modern society, or the faith they were brought up in, lacking in integrity, too shallow, liberal, permissive and generally wishy washy. 

One chap was inspired by Donald Trump to challenge the religious status quo. Weird as that may seem, you might sense from it what a lot of this maybe in response to - a loss of confidence in permissive liberal democracy. This is a very different type of fundamentalism, to find a purer, unsullied, less reformed or moderated form of Christianity, by going back to basics, the earliest surviving version of the Christian Church. Bypass the Reformation - Skip over the smoldering corpse of Roman Catholicism - Find the Orthodox Church - Make Christianity Great Again.

The romantic in me imagines something of such ancient origin, still speaking to us today through the power of its rituals and liturgy. And in truth, vestigial remains of the earliest manifestations of formalised Christian Churches, does survive within it. Something established prior to the split from Roman Catholicism. Continuing unruffled by the world and its religious travails in the Reformation. In fact the whole idea of reform appears somewhat anathema to them, as they operate from a position of already being in possession of the Truth.

However mild a flirtation this may turn out to be, my interest in Orthodox Christianity is driven by a genuine enough desire to understand it better. To touch base with the earliest surviving manifestation of the Christian church. Many innate values I hold, are Christian in origin, however neutral or secularised they may appear now.  There is much I admire generally in Christian activism for social change. And as regular readers will know, I have an abiding love for Church architecture. My identity, for better or worse, has wobbly old Christian foundations.

My appreciation comes to a screeching halt, however, the moment I approach the nuts and bolts of Orthodox Christian faith, of what they actually believe. The somewhat bafflingly convoluted theological assertions on the nature of God and Christ, that underpin it all. Or their less than welcoming views on the LGBTQ + community. Then I get a 'woah there cowboy' moment. Take a more skeptical stance towards it, and re-experience with greater clarity some of the things that made becoming a Buddhist appealing.

None the less, I've had a non conformist Christian upbringing. There was my past involvement in Spiritualism, brief interest in Unitarianism, and my thirty plus years as a Buddhist, eighteen of those as a member of a Buddhist Order. All of them ingrained into my being, almost on a cellular level, informing who I am today. These days I've tended towards consciously embracing any contradictions in my current religious standpoint. To understand the values that underpin what I believe, the mistaken views, faults'n'all, etc. To not automatically let the Buddhist or Christian within me, rule them out as doctrinally inadmissible. 

Christian Orthodoxy, itself, has barely been touched by the advance of secularism and atheism. Its been largely able to stay relatively removed, aloof from it all, by maintaining firm allegiance to its founding beliefs. That steadiness, I recognise, has its appeal. Unlike the C of E, its not fallen prey to the temptation to adjust or compromise its beliefs, simply in order to court popular relevance. No heavy metal communion services, or discos in the nave, here. As a result many of Orthodoxy's beliefs about the woes of our contemporary culture, are defiantly, and I'll admit, somewhat worryingly, old school. 

The present crisis in masculinity, for instance, undoubtedly has some of its roots in post feminism, where men have found themselves distanced from traditional masculine behaviour and role in society. Confusion reigns because there is a distinct lack of a clear stance on the way forward. The Orthodox view, looks at our modern malaise and the meaning crisis, and does what it has always done and points back to long held traditional mores. 

The Orthodox Church insists the way to restore confidence to modern manhood is to restore the traditional paradigm. They are not alone in this. In their own way the appeal to younger men of Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, draws on similar ideas of reconnecting with traditional male role models. I can recognise that is what might draw them to the Orthodox Church. Its young men craving a firmer, less passive or mind numbingly nuanced, sense of personal purpose and meaning.

Marriage from an Orthodox perspective is a gift from God, one that demonic forces in contemporary society are actively undermining. People from the LGBTQ+ community being described as the primary demonic sources of this degradation of God's benevolence. Marriage in Orthodoxy sanctifies the union of man and woman for the purposes of propagating humankind. So any other form of marriage to them is literally a travesty.

I'd interpret some of these Orthodox viewpoints as primarily cultural ones, or at least not entirely scriptural in origin. If there are biblical sources for them,I'll bet they'll be largely citing the Old Testament as their justification, not the words of Christ, as recorded in the New Testament. Not that its that easy to separate the two testaments, I know. Christ had his Jewish heritage to contend with too. Being the Messiah is a weighty label.

Foundational texts of religions from the Axial Age, are rarely written down till hundreds of years after their founders death. If an identifiable founder can be clearly established historically at all. So there is always a discussion to be had, over to what degree one can treat religious texts as authentic or truthful.  Whether they are the original teachings of one specific founder, or a composite figure. All one can ask of religious teachings is - are they helpful? - are they effective? Whether they are verbatim the words of Buddha or Christ, demands a level of authenticity that is pedantic and impossible to verify.

The Buddha's teachings as they survive, have been structurally reformatted over hundreds of years, with countless revisions and grouped according to theme and length. The primary sutras are so repetitively formulaic, partly as a result of this re-editing for consistency. 

To connect with the Buddha's character, personality and undoubted charisma, you have to do a lot of conjectural imaginative reading between the lines. It's almost impossible through textual analysis alone, to clearly discern whether his teaching style evolved over his lifetime. Any sense of time and sequence is hard to pin down.

Christians in the immediate decades after Christ's death had to be quite improvisatory, eclectic, even anarchic in their religious practice. In a time of persecution and exclusion, things had of necessity to be more informal. The formalised rituals and firm doctrinal belief structures that we now recognise, were millenia in the making. 

Whole tranches of Christian texts, such as the Gnostic Gospels, were excluded from the Authorised Bible. because the philosophical views expressed within them didn't fit in the required narrative. The Bible has over the years, in this sense, said whatever its editors wanted it to say. Depending on how selectively it is quoted. What we read in the Bible today, has been edited for doctrinal uniformity by theologians, to keep even Jesus Christ 'on message'.

But then who am I to say? I'll informed, or misinformed, as I no doubt am in these things.This has prompted a thought. Like most people, I've not read the Bible as an adult. The last time I looked at a biblical text was in my school days at a C of E primary,  my comprehensive, or Methodist Sunday school. Perhaps now is an opportune time to re-read the New Testament, if only as a fact checking mission. A copy of N T Wright's recent translation of The New Testament is winging its way to me, as I speak. 

CHURCH LARKING - Churches In Sheringham

I thought I'd start off the new 'larking' season with one that is very close to home in Sheringham. In many ways Sheringham is interesting because it's a town with relatively recent origins. Yes, there was a small fisherman's village from Viking, pre-medieval times. But no early church either survives or was to our knowledge ever built here. Any money for the upkeep of a religious building went into the much larger medieval church, in the equally small fisherman's settlement, further inland, in Upper Sheringham. From medieval times Lower Sheringham was more a fisherman's Staithe for Upper Sheringham. A review of Upper Sheringham church will be coming soon.

Its not until Sheringham transformed itself into a tourist destination in the 19th century, that you find all the various church denominations beginning to appear in the town. How each has decided to represent itself is then a matter of choice, rather than an evolving development over centuries. Though Sheringham has always lived in the sentiments of another era. It has a lively and thriving Christian presence, from traditional through to evangelical. Each with its own style of architecture to represent their ethos, and the aesthetic values of the time when they were built.

St Peters Parish Church

St Peters is the daughter church to All Saints Upper Sheringham. The land and money to build it was donated by the Upcher Family, who kick started Sheringham as a seaside town. Opened in 1897, its a flint knapped church, with sandstone door and window tracery, aping its Gothic antecedents in a relatively restrained undemonstrative fashion, topped with a small shuttered belfry. 

St Joseph's Catholic Church

St Joseph's Catholic Church completed in 1936, was designed by a famous architect, Giles Gilbert Scott. The renowned designer of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, Bankside Power Station (Tate Modern). Also the iconic, now largely obsolete, red telephone box. You see here in St Joseph's his familiar architectural mixture of brick built, industrial style gothic, lofty and imposing. St Joseph's, at present, is the sole Grade 2 listed building in Sheringham, entirely because of this connection with Giles Gilbert Scott.

The Quaker Friends Meeting House,

The Quaker Meeting House is a hall and meeting rooms. Though built in 1936 the same year as St Joseph's, it architecturally represents the Pre World War Two, mid century modernist era in which it was built.  Its the first religious building in Sheringham not to be mimicking Victorian medieval Gothic architectural styling. For its time, this was an extremely contemporary forward looking building. With a mix of concrete and glass and an angular off kilter copper roof. Though not of a size to be impressive, it is a small stylish building, with clean lines and an optimistic uncompromising stance.

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St Andrew's Methodist Church

St Andrew's Methodist Church has a strikingly post war exterior, in the manner of the Festival of Britain. With its pierced angular spire and colourful mosaic exterior. Internally, the Chapel has a beautiful bay of dramatic stained glass as a back drop to its altar and lectern. Two Methodist chapels had previously existed within Sheringham since the 1850's. These were united in 1966, prior to the present impressively styled church being built, finished and opened in 1969.

The Salvation Army Hall

A Salvation Army Hall, was first built in Sheringham in 1895. The current iteration on that site is of a much more recent date, opening in 2011. Though stylistically it looks as though it was designed twenty years prior to that. With its strong bright blue paintwork. Its a fairly perfunctory piece of architecture, unfussy, no doubt practical, but architecturally not going to win any awards.

Lighthouse Community Church

The Lighthouse Community Church is one of Sheringham's more recent additions. Originally the Baptist Church, they arrived in the 1930's, meeting in private houses. Eventually founding a hall in 1952. The present building, opened in 2013, is post modern inspired, with a mix of red brick, concrete rendering, with a glass bay floor to roof and floating sheet glass insertions. Cleverly evoking associations with 1920's seaside architecture without being imitative. It presents an inviting and welcoming frontage, for what appears a very social community focused church.

The Life Church

Opening in 2019 The Life Church was before that a house church. It began the prolonged redevelopment of its current site from a previously badly dilapidated, long neglected building. An open plate glass frontage installed on two sides, makes the most of its corner position. Ensuring a transparency you can easily see through from outside, as you drive past it on the main roundabout leading into town.

FINISHED READING - Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino

This is the second crime novel by Natsuo Kirino to be translated into English. Following on from the rather brilliant -Out.  Grotesque, though undoubtedly an ambitious book, becomes drowned under the overloaded weight of it.  It ends up largely losing the immediacy, humanity and moral clarity of its predecessors intent.

The central character here is not even given a name. Though she is the main narrator, you instinctively distrust her not remotely likeable personality. She is the type of woman who chose, yet resents, living a life largely invisible to others. Everyone remarks and fawns over her younger sister Yoriko's beauty, as a result her elder sister cultivates an intense dislike of her. Who this elder sister is, feels constantly diminished by the over shadowing of Yoriko's presence. How can she even be Yoriko's sister?  Her sister turns into the source of all her difficulties in life. The elder sister is a humourless woman. It has to be said, she hasn't a good word to say about anyone, for very long. Often conspiring to engineer situations that will bring social pain or shame upon others. She has become, driven by her sibling rivalry, a bit of an all round shit.

We know from the start that both Yoriko and the elder sister's pretend school friend Kazue Sato, end up being murdered prostitutes. Through the progress of the novel, you hear other voices, extracts from Yoriko's diary, police crime reports, letters from her old Professor, the murderers purported background story. The latter appearing over half way into the novel, is a major upheaval to the narrative structure established so far. Presented in long unnecessary detail.

Whoever's story you are hearing, the same feeling persists of being told falsehoods. Convienient self deceptions tidying up what was in actuality much much messier. In real life you would not trust these people. The veracity of the world view they are recounting, is questionable. There's not many characters who remains comfortable to empathise with. Most end up chosing to be pimped for prostitution, or join a religious sect and murder just for the fun of it, or various other nefarious misfortunes. After a while you want these self absorbed narcissicsts out of your head. That said, Kirino with her characteristic acuity, does demonstrate that prostitution is one, admittedly desperate, way for some Japanese women to grasp a small amount of agency over their lives. But that agency, because it is outside the norm, always comes at a huge cost.

There were, for me, far too many moments whilst reading Grotesque, when I was all but ready to hold my hands up and cry enough!  It's been couched in terms of it being a character study. However, because these characters are so unpleasant or irredeemably self preoccupied company, it makes the story hard going for a lot of it's 400 plus pages. Then at 300 pages in, as we enter the final chapters, we are presented with the diary of Kazue Sato. Finally Kirino warms up the cold heart of this novel with strong shafts of what feels like a genuinely real person and situation, that breaks in and suddenly emotionally anchors it all. But by then it feels too late for this to fully redeem the whole arc of the novel.

Out, cleverly mixed the disturbingly macabre with the humdrum reality of ordinary urban peoples lives. The fundamental problem, for me with Grotesque is that it makes everything so damned hard to like. Characters are either irredeemably bland, vengeful. unappealing or truly awful. Emotional truthfulness feels to be absent. Too little of what is presented here rings true as an accurate representation of real life. You learn precious little of any value through reading it.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

FEATURE - The Jesus Prayer

 I'm finding listening to this Russian Orthodox Jesus Prayer restful and meditative sacred moment. One that draws me towards it to really listen to it closely. .

SACRED MOMENTS - To Non Conformism & Beyond

Me as a Parish Church chorister

I was brought up in a Methodist household. Non conformism being a gently informing quality within my family. Perhaps most clearly embodied by my Father. A unassuming man, who rebelled quietly. Like everything else about him as a man, it was rarely overtly expressed. 

Temperamentally my Father took an independent path as a matter of course. From an early career finding his feet working on building sites, to becoming a self employed joiner and running his own small hardware shop, moved from a town to a village in order to run a corner shop, briefly became a milk man, then returned to being a specialist bespoke joiner, and building his own house in his late fifties. Observing in his retirement, Methodism's very evident slow decrepitude and decline. It's congregation literally dying off. He ended up learning to live with it, in a type of spiritually resigned disillusionment 

As I write this, I'm recognising there is a personal legacy here. The idea. Lutheran in origin, of 'living your own truth'. A view I've picked up and held onto almost instinctively. Never quite comfortable conforming myself to fitting in, even in places and institutions I appear to have an affection for. Integrity existing in its purest fullest form, only outside of belonging to an institution. This status of outside looking in, is not entirely explained by my being gay, nor shyness, nor introversion, nor disillusionment. Though these have on occasions played their part. The circumstances of where and who I've found myself to be, frequently forged the direction life took.

Though the stronger personality traits are rarely the whole story. I also possess a self expressive extrovert side, that has to overcome the introversion. A love for the baroque that challenges the zen in me. The maximalist cohabiting within the minimalist. The desire for uninhibited devotional ritual, extravagantly expressed, and the purity of restrained austerity. These can be in contention, whilst both of them have their foundations in my childhood.

West End Methodist Chapel, Halifax

Belonging to anything involves a deal being struck between individual authenticity and any communal context you find yourself belonging to. It's often worth sticking with the constriction and irritations, as they do teach you a lot about oneself, but there can come a moment when they just don't. The dialogue between you and the context you are in can cease to be a fruitful one. This is the point at which I tend to depart. It's a familiar dynamic to me.

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In retrospect, Methodism in its 20th century manifestation, felt analogous to the dried out hay meant to sustain cattle through the austere months of winter. Certainly well intentioned, but past its best. It was a religion stripped of its soul. I don't have fond memories, sacred or otherwise, to make me look back on my earliest encounter with faith, with little sentiment or appreciation.

But then my Mother discovered that her son, whose poor left to right hand coordination made playing a piano far from fluent, actually possessed a fine boy soprano singing voice. With an expressive strength belied by my young age. Piano lessons became quickly exchanged for singing lessons.

Methodism, as a Protestant form of Christianity, is pared back to the bone to what is deemed fundamental. A Non Conformist Chapel is the Christian equivalent of a Zen interior. Functionality rules, adorned with a framework of sparseness. It has no standing choral musical tradition of its own to speak of. There is rousing hymn singing, the belting out of organ and voice variety, that is primarily communal and democratic in structure. My Mother, bless her, through Miss Gilliat my primary school music teacher, obtained an audition for me to join the choir at the Church of England, Halifax Parish Church. Into which I was accepted.

Exterior Halifax Parish Church

The organist and choirmaster, Neil Wade, was a small wiry man, probably someone I'd refer to these days as quietly camp, highly strung, with a nervous twittery demeanour. He possessed a broad passion for music that he skillfully communicated to his choir. A whole other religious world, a manner of devotion and ritual, was opening up to me. 

Singing enables a union of bodily experience with an expanded sense of oneself, and of the sacred drawing closer through its commonality. Music, it is thought, predates spoken language. Language being a development and elaboration born out of vocal tone and pitch. Playing or singing music is self expressive, connects with something other and is a collective experience. It forges a bond of belonging with the possibility of self transcendence.

To a child brought up within the minimalist aesthetic of non conformism, it all felt extremely exotic, intoxicating soul fodder. Richer sounds and rituals plugged me in to the sacred in a way I couldn't explain rationally. I loved the big set piece rituals at Christmas and Easter. The candles, the incense, the sense of theatre, occasion and importance, fully embraced by the act of dressing up in a red cassock, white ruff and surplice.

When my boy soprano voice broke, that was also when my close, and unquestioning, connection with Christianity began to crack. Retrospectively I've tended to couched my time as a chorister as solely based on a love for collectively creating beautiful music. It's a view that purposefully ignores its depths. Misplacing what music, in conjunction with ritual, had been putting me in touch with. This had altogether a deeper volition than simply being entertained by performing it.

Early in life I'd toyed with the idea that maybe I might want to become a vicar. But then in my teenage years came a small, yet significant rebellion. The wooden crucifix placed atop my writing desk, found itself replaced by a ceramic Buddha. A figure I didn't understand the meaning of at the time. I somehow knew it was an alternative. This was a foreshadowing of a future direction.

Interior Halifax Parish Church

My love for choral music fully blossomed in Halifax Parish Church, as did my 'church larking'. This was the first church, that on a weekly basis, I was able to explore in greater detail. Encouraged by the Church Warden, Mr Beavers, I had access to areas not normally open to the casual visitor. Halifax Parish Church is a classic example of how local church architecture evolves. With lots of very unique features that speak of both its local history and moral contribution to a Pennine wool town. Disparate, cranky elements, are somehow made to work together. All of it's external medieval ornamentation later to be soot blackened by the Industrial Revolution.

Interior Peterborough Cathedral

Many decades later I'm with a Buddhist friend taking in the glories of Peterborough Cathedral. Just pottering and pondering. We stand in its vast echoing trancept, whilst the choir struck up a rehearsal for evensong.  Instantly I recognise something about it, or in it. I physically shiver, a churning gut feeling, releases rushes of bliss-filled energy, I'm transfixed and tearful. Overwhelmed by the sense of  decades of loss. I'd missed the intimacy, this musical relationship. The original feeling for what was sacred, that I'd not been in such close proximity to, for far too long.

SCREEN SHOT - She Will

Veronica Ghent ( Alice Krige) an aging and ailing film star is travelling north to the wilder edges of Scotland. She has booked herself on a solitary retreat there. Having recently had a double mastectomy she needs rest, care and medication. So a nurse,( Kota Eberhardt ) is accompanying her. Ghent is a frail, almost skeletal individual, both physically and mentally at a low ebb.

On arrival she is highly distressed to find the place is full of lots of exciteable, very noisy people. She'd craved solitude, so now wishes to leave. Yet there is much that is strange and mysteriously compelling about the estate where she has arrived. A white haired woman drives around the grounds on a buggy, with a fox following her everywhere. She blithely reassures the nurse that everything will be fine if she stays til morning. 

The area has a background history in the making of charcoal and the torturing and execution of witches. So in the middle of the night Veronica finds herself awakened, in touch with elements that are distinctly pagan, possessing an ancient feminine energy. The muddy ground begins to bubble, respond and move towards her. In Veronica's past life as a child star, an old sore re-emerges that requires, not just resolution, but revenge. From the ground beneath her feet emerges something that wishes to heal her soul.

This synopsis is the basic plot outline for what is a quite remarkable full feature debut by director Charlotte Colbert. Hugely atmospheric, extraordinarly complex visuals, beautiful cinematography and creative use of editing. A fantastic score by Clint Mansell does most of the heavy lifting in the conjuring of feelings of foreboding and the magic in the landscape. It's also blessed by the eccentric talents of Rupert Everett and Malcolm McDowell delightfully chewing the scenery. Which all adds to its heightened style with depth and delights.

I absolutely love this film. It's off kilter visual quality is there from the beginning, as the train is filmed travelling northwards, dramatically cambering as it enters into a tunnel. Things develop slowly and gently build as the film progresses. This is not a grotesque jump scare horror movie. It's a haunting, mystically inclined, psychological tale that is carefully paced and composed. Through the rich evocative and artful use of sound and visuals Colbert has created another world within this one, that totally captivates you from start to finish. It's a film that will no doubt bare repeat viewing.

CARROT REVIEW  - 7/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 106 - Salutary Lessons

All the best shops have names that are either evocative of a quality, self explanatory, or enjoy a bit of extravagant word play. You may have already seen adverts for this company online,  called -  

SHUTTERLY FABULOUS. 

I bet the person who came up with that one loudly squealed and was very pleased with themselves, for more than a minute or two.

I keep by my bed a small plastic statue of Our Lady of Walsingham. After only a few minutes in strong light it will glow quite brightly for hours afterwards. Its 'magically" impregnated with luminous chemicals. It's a piece of religious ephemera simultaneously reverential and ridiculous. I am curiously very fond of it. I keep it underneath my bedside lamp, and if I should wake in the night, how brightly it glows indicates whether the night is still young or not. 

In my general tossing and turning during sleep, its quite common to shift my pillow and knock the Virgin to the floor, with the resulting pronounced clatter. This happened the other night. Hubby was sound asleep with only the suggestion of a light snore coming up from my right side. I moved the pillow, the virgin fell down wards, Hubby woke briefly and brightly said - ' morning' - and fell instantly back into light snoring.

Its the end of our third month post the shop. We now have three stockists of our handmade goods, up and running. One at Cottage Crystals & Beads in Sheringham, another at Seagulls & Samphire in Blakeney. And a couple of weeks ago we took stock to a craft shop, Studio Designs in Wells next the Sea. 

For the time being we're holding off on putting our stock anywhere else. Blakeney in particular looks like it will be demanding a lot of our time in the coming season, just keeping it well stocked. At present the making is a bit hand to mouth. So, until we have better back up stock, we are pausing taking on any further stockists.

Starting doing regular market stalls would also be akin to us opening another shop. So we may only undertake a few markets this year. As we move towards the summer season, we are having to maintain a focus of being practical and cautious. Bearing in mind Hubby also has a part time job to keep up with too.

Myself? Well I'm trying to find the right balance between - making for the business - being available to support Hubby where I can - with getting a grasp on this amorphous idea of being part time retired. Having spent most of my life being externally demand led, I'm having to learn how to be more internally self motivated. Not particularly skilled at this yet

.

This last week provided me with a salutary lesson. I strained a bit too hard during a swimming session. The hips and lower back the next day were extremely sore and inflamed. The strain of managing this made me extremely tired, very quickly. It has taken a good ten days for it to settle down. My capacity for pushing the boat out physically has revealed my current parameters.

Having some personal projects of my own, outside of Cottonwood, is proving essential. I'm well over half way into a knitting project of a sleeveless jumper. My painting archive requires attention conservation wise.  As the days get warmer, more of them I intend to spend outside in the garden, garage or workshop. It will also soon be time to start my 'church larking' again. I have exciting ideas for where to take myself off to this year. 

We attended a knitting group the other week. It was held in a high end yarn shop. So we were surrounded by racks of twirled skeins of hand dyed, hand spun yarns, costing a pretty penny for a mere 100gms. We sort of expected the knitters might likewise be well healed, and they did not disappoint.

I'm always impressed by women's facility to talk and knit simultaneously. If I try this I make mistakes constantly. There is also a very noticeably female power dynamic. Women can appear to be being helpful, whilst also being subtly undermining. One woman, who was a relatively inexperienced knitter, was obviously very proud of herself for daring to pull back and start again on a complicated patterned jumper. She was showing us her much improved second attempt. To which one lady declared 'You realise, of course, there is a way you could have done it much better on the back'. 

These were all independent women not short of a bob or two, so the subject matter was choice. The discussion explored the rapacious capacity of the Muntjac deer to ruin your roses. 'You should try having 500 trees' countered another, in a sort of proprietorial one upwomanship. One woman talked of the practicalities of setting up a preservation trust, to save the town's architectural heritage. Plus the difficulties of maintaining a flat in Knightsbridge. 

Then there came one woman's disapproval of a company that produced supposedly Eco bamboo toilet rolls, and finding out they're only 4% bamboo. As she'd invested in boxes and boxes of the stuff, she was absolutely livid. Going to contact the management to express her indignation at being sold such an eco porker. I found this simultaneously amusing. fascinating to watch, and alienating. This little knitting group was on entirely another planet. We will not be returning.

FAVE RAVE - Passenger

This ITV crime drama, has been billed as a cross between Happy Valley and Twin Peaks. And it does indeed pinch a few of its main tropes from these programmes. To which I would add, a dash of the supernatural from Stranger Things. But it wears this borrowed lineage very knowingly and lightheartedly. It casually references Broadchurch, that Andrew Burton, Passenger's writer acted in. Plus a passing witty reference to Vera, that Passenger's central star Wunmi Mosako, was on the cast of for a couple of years.

This playfulness with its humour, is one of Passenger's central charms. Set in the fictional town of Chadder Vale, somewhere in the Pennines, a short bus journey away from Manchester. But it might just as well be somewhere out in the wilds of Canada. When it opens, Chadder Vale is in the middle of an unseasonable heavy period of snow. A girl had gone missing, a dear stag is found disemboweled, something weird is going on in the forest, and a notoriously evil man has been released early from prison and is returning home. Five years ago Chadder was caught up in some sort of atrocity that no one can talk about, let alone come fully to terms with.

In the middle of this is Riya (Wunmi Mosako) a detective moved there from Manc Met. She believes something is disturbingly awry in the heart of Chadder Vale. Her boss constantly dismisses her ideas and undermines her, as her main aim is Chadder Vale winning The Best Kept Town award. Riya's sidekicks, Nish ( Arian Nik ) and Ali ( Ella Bruccoleri ) both are geeky and obsessed with meaningless questions of choice - sich as - 'which would you chose, to have completely white eyeballs or a crystal nose ?' All because they are being chronically under used. The main thing they are allowed to investigate is local bin thefts. A Swedish woman has apparently gone missing, yet oddly no one apart from Riya, appears at all concerned about it.

The story throws more than a few curve balls and bizzarely inexplicable occurances. Most of which never get adequately explained. The end of this first series makes it clear a second is most likely already in the can. It resolves a few strands, but leaves us with so much more left unanswered. I was for a change, not at all irritated by this unresolved state of affairs. I remain intregued and highly amused by this series, and hope its follow up comes soon.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

WATCHED - Three Salons At The Seaside

You'll find this little documentary gem in the I Player's Archive section. Originally made in 1994, this takes you into the arcane world of three women's hairdressing salons in Blackpool - Vanity Box, Mary's Way and Tricia"s. 

Though it's filmed on the 90's the world you are being shown here is several decades older, more 1950's - 60's. The decor looks straight out of the 1970's. One salon has fake laminate wood wall paneling that my Father once lined the walls of our front room with.

This period piece, captures a long vanished world of old fashioned hair salons. Hiding in the back streets of Blackpool. Places where you would meet socially, gossip and tell of your woes to the hapless trainee. Where most of your clientele are blunt speaking elderly ladies in orthopeadic shoes, legs in thick stockinette. One conversation between two eighty year old centres on one woman's fall, which she insists was not a fall, she 'were knocked over' by a car driven by another female pensioner.

The proprietor of Vanity Box seems the likely model for one of Caroline Aherns characters. She's obsessed with death. Keeps a list of customers, noting when they'd died, just so there's no confusion. Then there is the 'funeral handbag' with some mints and a bit of money in it, for customers to borrow to appropriately attend a service with. Then there is the tale of the customer who died on the upstairs toilet. Which doesn't bare thinking about.

It is, in short, a real hoot. Well worth half an hour of anyone's time. A bona-fide classic.

ART 'n' ab ART - Rule 4 - Consider Everything An Experiment

This short opening four day run kicks off the 2024 programme of art exhibitions at Cromer's Artspace.

It's based around the work of a community of artists from Art Pocket, who chose to focus on Rule 4 of Sister Corita Kent's ten rules to guide creativity. Rule. 4 encourages you to embrace the process, see everything as an experiment. Art as an ongoing unfolding, a personal revelation, that has no end goal as such. Just enjoy the experience of the ride. Which from an artists experiential level is fine. My doubts about it as a theme for an exhibition are largely from the viewers experience of it.

There are a wide range of expressive media on show here, from traditional drawing and painting, to assemblages and textiles. As an exhibition it fails to work, feeling as though its a bit half cock. If it's really a series of works in progress, that makes what you see here unfinished business. There is little sense of context, completion or resolution of any exploration. 

It's clear some artists have already chosen their form and medium, and I don't see this embodying an openhearted experimental spirit. There is a lot if very specifically worked out idioms on show here. 

That said their were one of two artworks that I found beautifully executed pieces. I hope there are better quality exhibits planned, as this was not a particularly great start.

CARROT REVIEW - 3/8

QUOTATION MARKS - Martin Shaw - Two Things

"In the Celtic tradition...
there are two things you need to grow
into a human being.

One of them is
a relationship with place, a landscape,
and that could even be a town.

And a relationship to story
if you don't have stories
wrapped around you
like a swan feathered cloak
you will be bound by anxiety
as you get older."

Martin Shaw - Storyteller & Mythologist

QUOTATION MARKS - Martin Shaw - Culture

"We live in a culture,
that trades growth
for depth."

Martin Shaw - Storyteller & Mythologist

SACRED MOMENTS - The Asterisks of Stars.

In 1988 I'm on a Nile Cruise on a tour of Egypt. And I've purposefully shut myself away in my cabin on the boat. Because, it was a surprise even to myself, to find I was sobbing my heart out. 

Prior to 1988, prior to this cruise, I'd reached a place of creative inertia, that would eventually prove the prelude to the end of my time of living in London. I had reached my thirties and wasn't at all happy or content with where I'd got to in life. My engagement with living, my job, the lack of any meaningful relationship, my performance art work, my culture vulture nightlife, were one by one wizening and drying up in a biblical style creative famine. 

Visiting Egypt, the fulfillment of a lifetimes ambition, was a conscious attempt to remove myself from this feeling of being submerged in the murky terrain that is a dead end. The holiday was meant to cheer me up, through reconnecting with a childhood love affair of mine. Here might be a way out.

A lot then, emotionally rested upon this trip. It couldn't possibly hold all the fantasies and expectations I was presenting it with. And a few days into a fortnights Nile cruise, was the moment it literally collapsed under the weight of them. In this beautiful place I felt the ugly disatisfaction of my existential position in heightened relief. Hence this tearful eruption, a cathartic release, whilst floating gently up the beautiful wide expanse of the Lower Nile.

I can't remember when my enthusiasm for Ancient Egypt had started. Though it appeared to capture me from a very young age. Nor what specifically set alight my fondness for Egyptian culture in my imagination. It presents itself to me as if it has always been there.

As a child I lost interest in reading fiction, and proceeded to voraciously consume non fiction books on ancient history I could find in the Library. I thought they were way better than anything 'made up'. Egyptian, Assyrian, Aztec, Mayan, Inca, whatever the civilisation, these intrigued me. To my young boyish imagination, they were an entirely magical other ways of seeing and interpreting the world.

So there I am standing in the flesh beneath the enormous range and monumental size of the Egyptian pantheon of gods and goddesses. Having watched the perfectly staged Son e Lumiere in the ruins of Luxor, Karnak and Philea, this trans-formative performance I found utterly breathtaking. 

Melding human with animal form, the Egyptian world of their deities begins a representative shift from animistic gods to archetypal human hybrids, which encompasses the cycles and dramatic forces at work in the natural world. Rich with an incomprehensible language, symbolic forms and mystical amulets. Here could be found the origins of Alchemy, a vast cosmically drawn life cycle and dramatic stories of deviousness ,murder and resurrection amongst the god realm, that predates the Greek, and the Christian story, by centuries, if not millennia. 

Egypt beyond the fertile strip immediately bordering the Nile, is largely an vast desert. A lot of it, though low and flat, is not lacking in theatricality. Dawn over the Nile is an awesome sight as you see the first shimmers of sunlight rise up and over the desert bound reed banks of the river. At that moment the Ancient Egyptian's complete obsession with it, makes self evident spiritual sense. Why wouldn't you want to worship this enormous glorious deity as it arose and descended so majestically in and out of the dark impenetrable swamp of the netherworld. Why wouldn't you worry that one day the Sun God Amun Ra might fail to return the following morning. The spiritual anxiety of our own mortality becoming transposed onto the burnishing bronze of our solar companions trajectory. Will we wake to experience another day, or not? Two existences become intertwined. Sun rises, like awakening in the morning, are sacred events.

On a temple visit, I was wandering around. I wanted to explore this temple on my own. Quite consciously separated from any tourist guide. I found myself quietly fascinated by its many side shrine alcoves and their wonderful acoustic properties. Just intoning, nothing too dramatic, for the space just took whatever my vocal chords threw up and hugely amplified it anyway. These vocal experiments attracted a guide, who gestured to me with his finger to follow him. He took me several flights of steps up to the very top of the temple. To one corner where there was a small cubicle like chapel. He obviously thought I was the sort of tourist who'd appreciate whatever this building contained.

The guide gestured up to its ceiling, where carved into, and stretched over and round it from east to west, was the cosmically vast form of Nut, the Egyptian sky goddess. Guardian of the daylight sky and the deep blue astrology of the evening heavens. Dressed in watery clothes, her nurturing pendulous breasts and outstretched arms, spanned a sky bedecked with the asterisks of stars. Nut protected everything beneath them, forming a womb like cocoon around earthly humanity. I was stunned, totally silenced by it, this was just one of the most deeply thrilling thing I'd seen the whole trip. I felt an instant sense of a bond forming between myself and the symbolic arche of love that Nut formed over the terrestrial world. As I've subsequently found elsewhere, female deities, they just get to me like nothing else does.

One evening the dry desert air led to a magnificently clear night sky, the sharpest I have ever seen. The Milky Way spreading out its cloudy band of stardust across the middle of it.  In the last ombre of dusk, I took a trip on the Nile in an Egyptian felluca. Sliding without a sound across the flow of a gradually darkening river. Grand rivers like the Nile act as the geophysical metaphors for life. From the lively vibrancy of the Blue Nile at its source, to the sluggish dementia of the Delta veins. Yet I was transported on it to an altogether calmer and less emotionally ruffled existence, beneath the bright sparkling jewels of the Canopy of Nut.