Mid May Time Capsule with Australia Garden at British Museum Greylag Geese and Goslings and The Orbit Tower http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2012/05/15/mid-may-time-capsule
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Mid May Time Capsule with Australia Garden at…
http://distributedresearch.net/news/mid-may-time-capsule-with-australia-garden-at/
May 17 2012, 5:34am | Comments »
-
I posted to youtube.com
Sitting on top of the World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsrf4CpgU7c&feature=youtube_gdata
- Tags:
- Music
- Andy Roberts
- folk
- original
- may
- Sitting On Top Of The World
- Haverfolk
- song Song Composition Type
- May Month
May 3 2012, 12:25pm | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
The Orbit Tower 12th May 2011
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5713579794/
AndyRob posted a video:
The Orbit Tower 12th May 2011
May 12 2011, 11:18am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
The wacky world of May Day
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/30/the-wacky-world-of-may-day
From a horned Justin Lee Collins, to a big biscuit tin with the face of a vampire cat, Stuart Goodwin rounds up some of the best bets for a bonkers bank holiday and May Day.
This article titled “The wacky world of May Day” was written by Stuart Goodwin, for The Guardian on Friday 29th April 2011 23.05 UTC Another long weekend – yay. But also boo. Because with the big wedding out of the way (my auntie Doreen’s, it’s her third), you might be struggling to think of things to do. But worry no longer! May Day is a treasure trove of, how shall we put it, eccentric British days out. Basically Christmas for grown men who like lobbing around with bells on their toes, your May Day weekend starts here … Jack-In-The-Green Festival Hastings, Sat to Mon Traditional May Days have tended to go one of two ways; fire or fauna. For fire go to Edinburgh. But in Hastings it’s all about the shrubbery. Essentially a garland competition that got out of hand, where folk used to sport tasteful daisy chains, some poor soul now has to spend the bank holiday drowning in leaves, roaming the streets like a panto triffid. Thankfully, some nice morris men are on hand to make him feel less of a prick. Cerne Abbas May Day Dorset, Sun For fans of impressively chalked tips, there’s two options this week – but if you can’t be doing with the snooker in Sheffield, join the Wessex Morris Men at dawn on this hillside near Dorchester, home to the Cerne Abbas Giant and his 40ft alabaster cock and balls. There’ll be singing, there’ll be dancing, there’ll be dew. Also present will be the Dorset Ooser, a masked morris man that’s basically a startled, oversize Justin Lee Collins with horns. Dorset Knob-Throwing Contest Cattistock, Sun More knob-based fun in Dorset, albeit of the non-phallic variety. A “hard, dry, savoury biscuit”, the Dorset Knob is ideal for throwing about. Current record: 26.1m. Not only will the Knob appear in the main event, it will also star in a Knob & Spoon race, Knob Darts and a Hunt The Knob competition. Thomas Hardy was apparently partial, although it’s unclear if he was ever a proud owner of a commemorative “I’ve thrown a Dorset Knob” carrier bag. Stilton cheese rollingCambridgeshire, Mon Note: not the event at the sharply-inclined Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire, scene of many broken limbs and jolted tail-bones.That’s now cancelled, due to danger, so head to Cambridgeshire, where teams coax a large wheel of cheese along a disappointingly flat high street. Risk of paralysis: minimal. Meh. Rochester Sweeps festival Kent, Sat to Mon Three days long this, but the main event is a flashmob of gleeful Dick Van Dyke wannabes, evoking a time where men were men and children could reasonably be asked to scrape toxic dust off brickwork that nobody ever sees. Eliza Carthy features, so we’ll tread carefully for fear of having to give her two pages of a future issue where she tells us off for making light of dying artforms. Padstow ‘Obby ‘OssCornwall, Mon Apparently a stallion, but really an oversize biscuit tin with the face of a vampire cat – the ‘Obby ‘Oss plucks women from the crowd, drags them ‘neath his cloak and daubs them with coal, all in the name of aiding fertility. Yep, that old chestnut. Evidence from last year showed the ‘Oss to be sporting a smart pair of white old-school Nikes.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogThe wacky world of May Day
Related posts:Millions will watch as Boat Race is re-branded as ‘world-class event’ The world wide web is shrinking Online CoP meets face to face
- Tags:
- General
- Travel
- cornwall
- Day
- may
- Features
- weekend
- vampire
- Bank Holiday
- The Guardian
- Article
- culture
- May Day
- Wessex
- The Guide
- bonkers
- Cambridgeshire
- cerne abbas giant
- daisy chains
- Dorchester
- dorset
- Hastings
- Kent
- morris men
- Oss
- Padstow
- Rochester
- stallion
- Stilton
- Stuart Goodwin
- The guidelines
- vampire cat
- wacky world
April 30 2011, 6:50am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
A misplaced May Day dream for the masses
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/29/a-misplaced-may-day-dream-for-the-masses
May Day by John Sommerfield describes a society on the edge. The parallels with today are obvious – but it’s the differences that make it worth reading.
This article titled “A misplaced May Day dream for the masses” was written by Sam Jordison, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 29th April 2011 14.15 UTC It might have associations with people in funny clothes performing arcane rites and with Oxford students getting smashed off their gourds, but most us don’t think about Tories when we think about May Day. As several union leaders have already pointed out, the party’s current desire to replace May Day with Trafalgar Day (supposedly to “lengthen the holiday season”) is not practical so much as ideological. May Day might feel like a natural part of the calendar – but it has only been marked by a bank holiday since 1978, introduced by a Labour government to mark international workers’ day. And that, of course, is why the rightwingers don’t like it. They’d like it even less if they picked up the book that I’ve just been reading: May Day by John Sommerfield. This was written in 1936, but has just been reissued, with excellent timing, by London Books. It describes a society on the edge. The rich are getting richer and the poor are paying for it. The authorities clamp down on protest with the cynical use of force. Someone on a march is killed in an “accident”. The success of a march leads someone to comment: “I don’t think there’ll be so much damned squeamish argument against arming the police.” The parallels with our current troubles are obvious – but it’s the differences that make May Day worth reading. Sommerfield describes a few days in the lives of dozens of different characters across London, showing them at work, at play, down the pub, in bed, making love, feeling regret the day after, giving birth, dying, plotting to overthrow the bosses, plotting to undermine the workers. It’s a broad, ambitious sweep, but it’s all heading in the same direction: the inevitability of a general strike and the exultant victory of the Communist point of view. By the time Sommerfield was writing, Stalin had embarked on one of the biggest murder sprees in human history, but Sommerfield pants for Soviet Britain. So much so that he frequently loses all restraint:
“Then into this sudden pool of quiet splintered an alien voice, a hoarse shout of ‘Workers, all out on May Day. Demonstrate for a free Soviet Britain!’ … This rang in a million ears. Eyes remembered the chalked slogans on walls and pavements. The slogans, the rain of leaflets, the shouts and songs of demonstrators echoed in a million minds.” He also gushes:
“The printing presses were spinning themselves dizzy. There had never been so many leaflets before. They fell like rain, they were scattered like machine gun bullets.” Sommerfield loved his leaflets. He was also absolute in his convictions. For him there are two races in the world – rich and poor and that is where all conflict will lie. “Soon a lot more people will be having to take sides,” he wrote. They did indeed – but not in the way he thought. They would be fighting against fascism, not for “Soviet Britain”. There are plenty of things to be said in the book’s favour, particularly in the ambitious way he looks into so many lives around London, explores their living conditions, and lays bare their pleasures and pains. There’s also plenty more to be said against his writing which veers from the ridiculous to the not-too-bad and never really gets close to the sublime. Yet it’s as an attempt at social realism that it is most fascinating – and most flawed. In 1984 Sommerfield wrote a new forward for the book acknowledging how few favours time had done for his “1930s Communist romanticism”, but also said he hoped the book could be read as “an historical novel – worth reading, now, I hope, in relation to our own times.” To an extent it can. But I read it more as a reflection on a lost past and an exercise in folly. Possibly, it is harsh to judge Sommerfield’s May Day, for getting things so spectacularly wrong. It’s a novel, after all. It deals in fiction, not fact. But then again, while I was reading May Day, I couldn’t help thinking of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novella with the same title. It’s just one mark of Fitzgerald’s genius that his reflections on the day – although written in 1920 – still apply. The protests he describes seem hopeless, futile, distorted by absurd mobs on both sides: “all crowds have to howl”. The rich are oblivious at best, unforgiving and condescending the rest of the time. The tragedies he depicts are universal – but also painfully personal. His lead, Gordon Sterett, is a penniless, struggling artist who has never found his feet since returning from the First World War, but who has found booze and bad company. He is drowning in the tide of history, but his problems are more individual than any Sommerfield manages to describe. He is more real. So too is the world around him. The clothes are smarter, the dancing is more formal and the drinks sound more exotic. No one has a smart phone and radicals print their views on paper. Otherwise, Fitzgerald could be writing about today – or forever. His despair and defeat for the small man rings far more true than Sommerfield’s misplaced dream for the masses. May Day is a crushed dream. It makes the Tory vendetta against the holiday seem even more than usually petty.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogA misplaced May Day dream for the masses
Related posts:TV review: Jamie’s Dream School The Kindle and the Tube TV review: Jamie’s Dream School
- Tags:
- London
- labour
- Art
- politics
- calendar
- Oxford
- may
- march
- crowd
- Bank Holiday
- Government
- Article
- culture
- Protest
- Society
- International
- Blogposts
- Books
- Fiction
- Books blog
- Demonstrators
- Students
- May Day
- Romanticism
- Student
- demo
- worker
- conflict
- Communist
- 1920
- F Scott Fitzgerald
- F Scott Fitzgeralds
- fascism
- history
- holiday season
- john sommerfield
- labour government
- Sam Jordison
- Soviet
- Stalin
- union leaders
April 29 2011, 9:47am | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
Thrift Cornwall May 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3548653244/
Andyrob
Cornwall May 2009
May 20 2009, 5:55am | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
Houseboat Cornwall May 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3548651828/
Andyrob
Cornwall May 2009
May 20 2009, 5:54am | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
Cornwall May 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3547838841/
Andyrob
Cornwall May 2009
May 20 2009, 5:53am | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
Newquay Cornwall May 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3548649496/
Andyrob
Cornwall May 2009
May 20 2009, 5:52am | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
Cornwall May 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3548648474/
Andyrob
Cornwall May 2009
May 20 2009, 5:51am | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
Tamar Bridge May 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3548646526/
Andyrob
Cornwall May 2009
May 20 2009, 5:50am | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
Plymouth May 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3547833971/
Andyrob
Cornwall May 2009
May 20 2009, 5:49am | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
Cardiff May 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3548644066/
Andyrob
Cornwall May 2009
May 20 2009, 5:48am | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
Severn Bridges May 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3548642868/
Andyrob
Cornwall May 2009
May 20 2009, 5:47am | Comments »
-
I posted to flickr.com
Severn Bridge May 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3548641942/
Andyrob
Cornwall May 2009
May 20 2009, 5:46am | Comments »
1
