on picking up pevsner once again

I take up my barely surviving Pelican copy of Nikolaus Pevsner’s Outline of European Architecture and wonder about the man and his observations.

The man was born in 1902 and was one of those who brought professional scholarship to England. A wider vision nourished among the broad expanses of a continent - though in the wartime years of the early 1940s German origins were played down. (After 1939 Germany was the ‘evil “them”’ against whom, as though crusaders from the Age of Chivalry, we were battling while the blood of our survival gently ebbed from our veins.)

The book is about architecture. Not Elizabethan Tudor Georgian Regency Victorian; but Romanesque Gothic Renaissance Baroque Romantic. My friend Francis G Grubb had introduced me to ‘Architecture’. He took me to Southwark Cathedral. Pointed out the columns of the nave. The stonework of the clerestory. It was my introduction. It has taken me far and wide ever since.

As I picked up my 1945 paperback a few minutes ago and drifted my mind across the table of contents and a few sentences and pictures here and there, I began to muse on the idea of Europe. I’d never really thought about it before. It was there on the maps in my schooldays. So far as I was concerned it had always been there. But this morning, after a peaceful night, I let my mind loose to explore.

The Greeks – of course – had a word for it. Evropé was one of those human women visited and mated by a god. All-Father Zeus. In ancient times.

In the year I taught second form European History, everything began with Carter & Mears in Rome on Christmas Day in the year 800. So convenient. So easy to remember. And before that? Rome, republic and empire, was the keynote. An origin, so they taught us, of our civilisation. Not so simple a question after all.

Pevsner’s Europe is only partly a geographical expression.

A shadow on the wall of Plato’s cave?

francis cameron, oxford, 28 september 2012

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at the end of A Day for Ronald Hutton

It is Sunday 16 September 2012. We are at the Conway Hall in London. The Centre for Pagan Studies has mounted A Day for Ronald Hutton. I recall their Day for Doreen Valiente in 2009. I recall their Day for Gerald Gardner the following year when I spoke my own heartfelt tribute to Dafo.

Doreen Gerald and Dafo are now among the Old Ones. Ronald is still with us, speaking with brilliant shining eloquence and passion. There was, too, a fine programme from other speakers : Rufus & Melissa Harrington; Prudence Jones; Philip Heselton; Peter Nash.

I may, at some time in the future, say more about each of them and their talks. For now, though, it's a general impression that occupies the forefront of my mind.

We are all, each of us, that much older than we were when last we met.

My mind goes back to that First of May in 1995 when two of us went to Avebury. Not for a ritual. Just because it was Beltane. It was good to go to Avebury on Beltane Day.

For me, there may have been a subliminal preprompting. The outcome was entirely unanticipated. In the village shop, beneath a small stand-alone table, my eyes were drawn to a modest stack of magazines. I bought one. It was my introduction to Pagan Dawn and to the Pagan Federation.

And in June 1995, at Blacklands Lakes in Wiltshire, there was Michael de Ward's In the Presence II, where I first heard Ronald Hutton and Prudence Jones - and where I first spoke on parallels between the Pagan and the Christian liturgical years. Fred Lamond was there then, though not with us today at the Conway Hall. I'm glad to have heard him on other occasions and to have read what he had to say about the Bricket Wood coven.

A display ad led us to our first Pagan camps. Oakleaf made an impression which created its tangible after-image down the centre of the field when most of the tents had been folded and stowed away, their occupants homeward bound. Steve Jones was prominent at that camp. We continue to meet now and again. Steve is here for Ronald's Day. Steve, like me, notices the apparent lack of young people. He doubted there was anyone younger than thirty in the hall.

I recall my first Pagan Fed annual corroboree. Rufus Harrington impressed me then. He's impressed me every time I've heard him speak.

But we are, each of us, that much older than we were when last we met.

Our Day for Ronald was largely occupied, as is so appropriate, with thoughts of history and different historians with their differing interpretations. That is as it should be.

Ideally, the study of the past prepares us for the future. And it's that particular aspect I find myself involved in just now. In a few weeks' time I shall be 84 years old. I look forward to leaving this physical. I look back to look ahead. What have I done with this life? How shall the books be balanced? What loose ends might there be for me to tidy up next time around? What may I leave behind, knowing I went as far as needs be? What have I begun that deserves to be a marker for where and when and to whom I shall return?

So, on this Day for Ronald Hutton, the words from the platform and the interpolations of the questioners leave me with ample thoughts to mull over.

'twas well done ..

francis cameron, oxford, 18 september 2012

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diana with bill taylor, june 1987

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spit bridge, december 1978

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homegroups

 

I’m trying to get my computers to talk to each other. Shouldn’t be too difficult. They all run on Win7. I’ve done my best via the Control Panel. Just managed to get #2 machine to send a file to the printer which up to now has only responded to machine #1. So far so good. Now what I want to do is exchange files  (docs, photos) between one computer and the other. Not been able to find the right Help files so far. Hey ho, the wind and the rain ..

 

 

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SydCon july 1969

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new jeanette winterson

My inner voices suggest I go into our local Waterstone’s. I diverge. There on the table in front of me, the new Jeanette Winterson is on display. The back cover promises This is Lancashire. This is Pendle. This is witch country. Can a man be maimed by witchcraft? Can a severed head speak? ‘Based on the most notorious of English witch-trials, this is a tale of magic, superstition, conscience and ruthless murder.’

Enough! Leave the keyboard and take up the daylight gate.

francis cameron, oxford, 06 september 2012

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café by the serpentine, 5 september 2012

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