At 120 pages, mostly
containing pictures and a reasonable amount of white space (which in
design terms is commendable), this falls into the category of sales
brochure rather than serious analysis.
Monday, 23 July 2018
Sunday, 22 July 2018
British Rail Designed 1948-97 by David Lawrence
The British Rail
Corporate Identity Manual published in 1965 gave expression to the
idea of total design – absolutely ever part of BR was considered
with every detail intended to give a unified message about the values
of the organisation. Transport had long been a pioneer in marketing
and design – London Transport set the standard while we remain
fascinated by the railway posters of the 1920s and 1930s.
Post-war constraints
on resources and the challenges of bringing the “Big Four”
together (who hadn’t actually fully resolves the challenges of
“Grouping” two decades earlier) meant that British Railways
struggled with its identity. There was a step change when British
Railways became British Rail – and perhaps against the odds somehow
they got it right.
The monolithic BR
Blue gave way in the 1980s to sector identities and then in the
mid-1990s to the shadow companies ahead of privatisation. David
Lawrence clearly feels every step away from BR Blue is a step in the
wrong direction – is this ideological, it went hand in hand with
the move away from Nationalised industry to the Private sector, from
public service to commercial imperative. While the sectors brought
diversity to the BR identity I feel it continue to hold on to the
importance of quality design – I my room as I type the “art work”
is 3 BR livery style sheets from the era of the sectors.
With privatisation
railfreight seems to have retained good design, although with the
advantage that their focus is their locos – EWS now DB, GB
Railfreight, and DRS all have clear identities – in the passenger
sector some have been good such as GNER, SWT, and recently GWR,
others have been dreadfully but I won’t name names.
It is a fascinating
topic, but despite the rich material David Lawrence has written a
fairly boring book. I am a geek about trains, I am a geek about
design, if you write a book about train design that doesn’t excite
me you are in trouble…
Sunday, 15 July 2018
Musing of a Clergy Child by Nell Goddard
This book made me
say “yes absolutely” and “wtf” in equal measure…
There are different
sections …
It starts with a
poem - Clergy child’s lament
“I didn’t choose
it
you called my
parents to it …
‘Incarnational
ministry’ they call it
‘Invasion of
personal space’ I respond …”
But the end point is
being drawn into the calling too – the experience of some but not
most Clergy Children – for most the lament goes on, the Church has
blinded them to the God it claims to represent.
So we have Tips for
Clergy Children – for the most part I agreed with these - the life
of a child in a vicarage is a vibrant but at times problematic –
Nell’s parents seems to run a very “open house” policy, my
didn’t but we still lacked private space. Clergy should have
professional boundaries between them and “the parish” if not for
their own sake, then at the very least for the sake of their
children.
Next were Letters –
of these most powerful was “A letter for when the church has hurt
you” and from another Letter “ vicars are human too, they often
end up listening to the one who shouts the loudest and forget to hear
the quiet voice of their child, just as needy but drowned out by the
din of parishioners’ pastoral problems.” - but while
acknowledging this pain they all end up on a breezy “Jesus loves
you” tone.
Finally Musings –
which I think had little to do with being a clergy child, but had the
same paradox of talking of the deep pain many feel but somehow ending
up very Churchy and the sense that if you just love Jesus a little
more your problems will go away.
I know this is
probably unfair but as a clergy child I don’t just carry scars
thanks to the Church but a few, still, unhealed wounds. I celebrate
that Nell has found a place deep within the Church, but I guess I
want to read the same book written by one of the many Clergy Children
that remain so beaten up by the Church that they can’t get across
the threshold…
Saturday, 14 July 2018
Mametz – Aled Rhys Hughes
Published to
coincide with the 2016 centenary of battle of Mametz wood in the
midst of the countless words currently being written about the First
World War these imagines stand out.
There is an essay
reflecting on them at the end of the book, but the main body is given
over to the imagines – speaking in a way that words fail to do.
Mametz is perhaps an
archetype of the futility of the First World War, significant loss of
life taking yards of ground only to retreat almost as quickly. Within
the wider narrative Mametz is a focal point for the Welsh collective
grief.
Aled Rhys Hughes, in
his foreword, explores what it is to visit these sites, the tension
of mourner come tourist or even voyeur – especially as he
photographs people photographing Dragon memorial (and themselves in
front of it) – we have to acknowledge these differing motivations
but it seems the pressure of social media makes it hard to be
completely in a place – if you haven’t posted a selfie then you
weren’t really there. While an older generation might feel taking a
selfie disrespectful, a younger generation might find not taking a
selfie equally disrespectful.
All the Colours of Light – Mary Lloyd Jones
A slim volume, 30
pages, with 4 or 5 lines of text pre page allows Mary Lloyd Jones art
to take the centre of the stage. Art full of movement and the power
of colour – sometimes paint is a static medium, but these works
sing.
Women Who Blow on Knots by Ece Temelkuran
I didn’t find this
an easy read, having to take it is small bites to allow time to
process. There was a powerful mysticism – what was fantastical what
fantasy.
A novel about women,
Muslim women, Muslim women in North Africa it explodes assumptions.
These are women struggling with the expectations of society but women
with power, vitality, dignity – and little time or use for men.
The issues of
language are explored, therefore it was odd to be reading in
translation, for example and one point:
“I went into
another room where they were teaching children Amazigh. There were
reading cards on the wall and Amazigh letters on the backboard. These
people were working to free themselves of a language they had been
forced to learn and to return to their mother tongue, and in the
middle of a war. It must have been something like reading history
backwards.”
And later:
“Now consider
this… Colonialism can even lead people to stop naming children and
flowers in their mother tongues. But only our language and its words
ring in our hearts. The heart is made up of words.”
For the English, and
first language English speakers more generally, the power of language
to shape identity often seems difficult to grasp – words are
neutral, we forget that some ideas can only be expressed in a
particular language, in particular the longings and laments of the
people under oppression can not be shared in the language of their
oppressors.
But alongside the
trespass I felt as a monoglot English speaker there was an equal
feeling of trespass as a man in a space owned and defended by these
women. I might not be the biggest champion of patriarchy,
nevertheless I remain a beneficiary of it. As an over-educated white
middle-class male I need to talk a lot about my privilege before I
get the right to talk of any experience of oppression. Western
society is run by, and for, guys like me.
There were moments
that powerfully make you stop and think …
“If someone has a
scar on her face and you don’t ask her about it she won’t think
you’re being kind, she’ll just think you didn’t see her face.”
… do we look away
from disfigurement to save their embarrassment or our own – does
our politeness render people invisible.
On the very last
page, the journey done, there is a final reflection …
“It was the first
time I understood what Madam Lilla had done for us all. We did not
need a god to love us if we had a courageous mother...”
The big loving
embrace of Madam Lilla, despite her complexities, is the
transformative action.
Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo
INCLUDES SPOILERS
The story of a 74
year old Barry who has spent almost all his adult life in London and
even longer in a covert sexual relationship with Morris brings
together a number of rich and interesting themes.
As with Hide by
Matthew Griffin the (homo) sexuality of an older generation is
explored – doing this alongside the dynamics of the Caribbean
community in London adds to the complexities.
That Barry and
Morris were both married doesn’t seem to have hampered their
ongoing relationship, but Barry’s marriage to Carmel has become a
cage trapping the pair of them.
We perhaps have to
wrestle with the tension of how “guilty” we should see Barry for
60 years of unfaithful marriage – what choices did he have as a Gay
Antiguan in the early 60s? But there are clear suggestions that he
allowed the situation to continue because it suited him just fine to
have a wife and a lover.
Although Barry has
decided to come out and leave Carmel during a time when she is back
in Antigua, I am not convinced he would actually of done it, and
Evaristo places the initiative into Carmel’s hands she learns the
truth while in Antigua and comes “home” to London and takes
control of the situation. While this is empowerment of her is a
positive dynamic, avoiding her remaining a victim, for me it denies
Barry of redemption – he never actually puts right the situation,
it is put right for him – he is found out rather than coming out.
But it is a tale
filled with great characters, told with pace and conviction, highly
enjoyable.
Everything I Found on the Beach by Cynan Jones
Once again Cynan
Jones provides a powerful narrative, rich and yet tightly written.
As with Cove the sea
has a central role, and landscape and sea are given a life that help
to draw you into the heart of the drama.
Ideas around
identity, and the struggle between your desires and the hand life has
dealt you, are core to this story – or stories, the intertwining of
different peoples lives, out of the blue these unconnected people
have profound impacts on each other.
Jones once again
resists happy endings, good people who try hard don’t always win
out in the end. But the “bad guys” are shown to have complexities
– there is little that is black and white.
To have a consistent
output of this quality is remarkable.
Catulla et al by Tiffany Atkinson
A playful collection
of poems – such as
Bad karaoke
The wedding night of my second trip
to Scotland two-by-two of us propping
up the bar of the Kilmarnock Travel-
odge in something less comfortable
which happens to be karaoke night
in these heels All day shy as a tree-
forg in my patterned dress and now
the whole room glitters Even my true
love says I shouldnae feel I have tae
as I launch my high notes at the tone-
deaf anaglytpa If the make-up runs
it’s just I haven’t splet since Thursday
and I’ve lived on crisps fro three days Only
dinna make me drive home on a hangover’s
slipped gears the sun on my forehead past
Dumfries still asking why indeed Delilah
Rain -
It started unremarkably,
like many regimes. We sat like children
making quiet things indoors. The rivers
burst their staves and soaked the folds mid-
country; they were schlepping people out of pedalos,
and punting through cathedrals saving cats. One lad
clearing out his granddad’s drain was still caught
when the waters lapped the record set in 1692.
Imagine. News teams donned their sombrer cagoules.
The house had more floors than we knew. In twenty years
we’d never spent so much time in one room. I’d no idea
you had a morbid fear of orange pips, or found French novelists
oppressive. On the seventh day, completely hoarse,
we took to drawing on the walls and staging tableaux.
In delirium all actions feel like role play -
protein strands against the ooze, the animals we made -
and rain, a steady broadcast on all wavelengths,
taught us everything we known about the tango. Only
when we grew too thin for metaphors was rain just rain.
We thought about the drowned boy, how he watched
the lid of water seal him in, for all his bright modernity.
Was it a Monday morning when the garden was returned,
tender with slugs, astonished at itself? Our joined hands
wer the last toads in the ark. We walked; we needed news.
Stories of Ireland’s Past Edited by M Stanley, R Swan, & A O’Sullivan
Following on from
reading Harvesting the Stars part of Ireland’s National Road
Authority’s archaeological publication scheme this volume giving an
overview of archaeology that the NRA funded during its 20 year
existence caught my attention.
Particularly
interesting is the way that the developer led nature of the NRA’s
archaeology had a significant impact on the knowledge gained. Digging
where the road was going rather than where you expect to find
interesting archaeology, indeed the NRA deliberately planned the
route of the roads to try to avoid known sites of archaeological
significance.
Much of the
importance of this body of new information therefore comes form
filling the “white spaces” on the archaeological map, with
evidence of the lives of those of lower social status and the rural
who are so often absent from the historical and the archaeological
narratives.
While it is mostly a
celebration of the good work done under NRA’s auspices the authors
were not afraid to point out concerns that some methodological
practices may have limited the insights that might have come for
particular periods and types of activity.
Although particular
sites are discussed these are exemplars rather than the focus. It
feels as if the opportunity to step back and reflect on the big
picture is not common and one that the authors of the various
chapters relished. I was also pleasantly surprised to find a friend
from University among their number.
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