Chucking it In

I was tempted to title this blog 'At Last I am Free' but the Robert Wyatt reference is perhaps a little over considered. 'Chucking it In' could be a Dr Feelgood album title, and feels slightly earthier; more Canvey, more me. Yes, so I've finally chucked it in, after twenty seven years at the university enough suddenly became enough, the camels back bent one bit too far, the end of tether was reached, and, thank goodness, they let me go.

I may not have the severance package exactly in my pocket yet, but the dopamine levels certainly shift upward. I smile in the street. People use the word 'elated'; like you must be 'elated'. They use the word freedom a lot too. I'm not sure exactly what I feel personally, all I've noticed is that propensity to smile in the street and a sudden recognition of records that suddenly seem highly appropriate in a way they never did before; Ramble On, Freebird, Further on up the Road; all these have acquired new significance as if made exactly for me, and when they suddenly crop up in one pub or another, it's as if the gods are smiling on me personally.

Why did I do it? is it time of life or time of man? Both. We have to build our house in Wales or we will never do it. Meanwhile, education is being decimated by both technology and endless stupidity. This, of course, a consequence of capitalism/consumerism/call it what you like; but over all it has become impossible to render the spade as a spade, or accept the shovel, the chance to shine becoming the endless pursuit of so called innovation, with the product the equivalent of extravagant Christmas decorations; useless and trivial. 

I supposed for a long time I've functioned as some kind of hand brake on my own institution's fantasies, but brake pads eventually fade. Now I look at that long list of posts floating in on Facebook; lovely stuff from students complimentary on this or that. That makes me smile too, but I know now, it's time to fly away, yes, Fly Like an Eagle, that's it, just like that.

Aldington at Bledlow

That's not Peter Aldington, the creative force within Aldington Craig and Collinge, but me standing in-front of the trike and Adlington's award winning housing at Lyde End in Bledlow of 1977. It could have been Peter, in some parallel dimension, for he also sports quite a beard, and certainly in terms of empathy, there is so much for me to admire here. I wish I had but a small percentage of his talent. As it was, when I met him long ago, he admired my sketchbooks, but it's in the marshalling of physical building material that Aldington should be admired; in the detail certainly, and in the care of conception. This is a masterful arrangement of wall, roof, and infill panel, reminding me of the rigorous work of Ted Cullinan when in California (Marvin House,1960, below), but knitted more agriculturally in to the Chiltern village setting. It even manages, in it's quality, to doff it's cap to lord, master and enlightened patron Lord Charrington across the road, who undoubtedly recognised quality when he saw it (he died this week) reminding us of some old school values sadly disappearing.

It is tempting to say Aldington created a repertoire of building details from first principles (and I learnt a few of these when working for Donald Wilson as he set about fashioning doors and windows for some cottages in Dorset in 1980) but they are unusual. To set plate glass directly in to a brick wall with the aid of not much more than craftsmanship and mastic is unconventional, so is letting glass slip down to eliminate the cill (a Wilson trick) and you might expect a high risk of failure. However, returning to Lyde End after forty years the place looks as fresh as a daisy; all that bespoke stuff worked!

In a world now obsessed by smooth, floating singularity, transfixed by the malleable in all senses, this is a refreshing return to the world of articulation part from part. Each element is not expected to do everything, but to play it's part and find expression in doing so. A concrete beam slips six inches further out than where it might stop, a window detail within clapboarding is different to that within masonry. Each material either goes around a corner or finds itself butted and secured against something else. Further, nobody has forgotten the garden and the husbandry that mirrors that of the building art, they compliment each other; after all, a rose is not a tulip.

Cardiff via the Lighthouse Road

Cardiff city centre is one of the most pleasant of any large city, largely down to it's urban grain of streets and arcades. The arcades accommodate the smaller businesses that keep the place lively, as opposed to the deadening effect of yet another John Lewis. That's not to say that Cardiff doesn't accommodate those behemoths too, but if the department store dies as a type, the multiple arcades could sustain all sorts of activity. 

Conventionally, you'd drive into Cardiff on this dual carriageway or that, but we dropped off the A48 at Newport to take the coast road (B4239) via St Brides and Peterstone; the Lighthouse Road. It's not much more than a track crossing the salt marsh and must be the strangest way to enter a city imaginable. These are the badlands, not literally perhaps, but certainly an area yet to be caught up with; an area of rubbish and wildlife and tethered horses, catteries and kennels and shacks. For somebody from Essex, it has charm. Approaching from the east brings you in to the docklands and Rumney; roundabouts, trucks, potholes and anonymous warehouses; lots of them, and ahead, the acrid air of demolition. The road skirts the remains of the big piece of industry (above) in a fog of dirt and suddenly your in a line of filthy traffic moving like some kind of ragged military convoy; signposted to Cardiff Bay.

This I suppose, is regeneration, but you can't be happy about it. The buildings of our 'new' industries are hardly less depressing than those of the old; stock built wrap arounds sporting various attempts at pattern making; as two dimensional as the means of their production; that occasional wonky angle nursing a sterile meeting room; or an atrium of bad chairs. This kind of architecture has now began it's march on the city centre itself, and it's a terribly sad thing. Such buildings are essentially good for nothing. They are as thin as the bank notes and contracts they represent. 

On The Road

This is one of those seemingly innocuous on the road photographs, we're beneath the castle in Chepstow, where a gang of pubs conveniently huddle, even one with a beer garden overlooking the car park, which is handy for us, because the trike gets a good deal of attention. And we didn't know any of those things were there, other than the castle, we just guessed, took our luck. 'We'll find something somewhere around here' we say, pointing at the map, and we generally do. There we sip our mineral water and enjoy a cheese and onion sandwich as if it were ambrosia. Notice the difference? Of course, on the road there's no beer during working hours, and you feel grateful for everything. I joke with Julie that we should treat riding like mountaineering, and the discipline, and effort, for somebody more used to just thinking aloud, is unbelievably gratifying. For instance, in the situation above, you have to know where the bulldog clip is that you use to attach your parking ticket to the windshield, you have to have discovered that bulldog clip as the best solution to Pay and Display on the trike, and have probably solved that 'problem' several ways that were less simple. Tessenow's maxim, 'The simple is not always good, but the good is always simple' comes to mind.

Technology beyond a certain level, such as Sat-Nav, would just take the enjoyment out of it. But we plan and pay a great deal of attention to the technics, the equipment, the packing and the strapping, the state of the battery, the petrol gauge, tire pressures, the speed limit; we look after our gear, we do not 'script' the 'experience' beyond one thing, when you arrive at your final destination there is always that same, brilliant, feeling. Part of that must be that riding means concentrating, anything can happen, but sometimes, as yesterday on the A48 between Chepstow and Newport, where we saw hardly another vehicle on a perfect road, and could spin along at a constant 50mph, it felt fantastic.

Most people realise that living out of hotel rooms is an art, or do they? With so little stuff (not even a book to read) there are little tricks; do your washing while your taking a shower, like treading grapes!

All a bit Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Well yes, but it's better than living in a paranoid technological bubble.