Old Institutions and New Housing

A New Year's Day walk around two former Institutions and some bonus infrastructure around my childhood home...

The walk started at the rebuilt Great Hollands Pavilion, which, in its former guise, housed my old playgroup.

Behind this building was the former Meteorological Office Research Station Beaufort Park. This was an outpost to the Met Office headquarters in Central Bracknell, which moved to Exeter in 2003, and was used as a Climatological Station from 1963. Since the move, the site was abandoned, and was subsequently demolished to have housing built on it.

I wasn't aware of the site being called Beaufort Park, as it was just referred to as the Met Office Research Station, so assumed this was merely an invented nod to its past, as with Kelvin Gate, the street built on the former headquarters site in the town centre.

The new houses on Beaufort Park are fairly conventional, but are located on an access road which mainly leads to a crematorium and the car park for the Pavilion. Aside from the park, and the primary school behind it, there are no local facilities - though this is a small group of houses, it is quite a car dependent development, though about 5 minutes walk from a half hourly bus route into Bracknell and Crowthorne.

A footpath leads into the woods from the back of the Beaufort Park site, through newly planted pine trees, giving a mildly seasonal feel to this New Year's walk, until it abruptly ends at a fence. I'd thought this would lead to a pathway through to Nine Mile Ride, the main road in this direction, but it didn't.

The walk through the woods was initially easy (this is looking back at Beaufort Park), so I was initially confident of getting to Nine Mile Ride quickly.

The initial pathway through the woods began to disappear into dense thicket, that needed to be pushed through by braking branches, and testing to see where it was possible to make a safe footing, while avoiding marshy ground and drainage ditches (I was mainly concentrating on not falling over, rather than taking photos)

Eventually, I got to a fence, which needed to be got through, and I managed to find a fallen tree which had crashed through the fence, walking on this tree over a drainage ditch would take me to Nine Mile Ride, behind the last thicket of bushes

A short walk down Nine Mile Ride takes us to a roundabout to Buckler Ride (pictured). We are now on the site formerly occupied by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, later TRL, which is still based here, albeit on a small corner of the site.

Crowthorne House, on a small turning to the left, is the headquarters of TRL, though they have shrunken further, and part of the building is let to other companies. The meeting rooms in the building are named (or at least they were when I was last here for a conference) after the different types of pedestrian crossings in the UK, which were mostly developed and trialled here. Behind the black hoardings is a bridge over the test track.

We return to Buckler Ride, then turn off onto Ireland Road. At the bottom of Ireland Road we turn onto the first section of the main test track that we can access, and from this point I am trying to trace the main test track, as John from Auto Shenanigans on YouTube did when he was down here a couple of weeks before me. Before TRL was privatised, young people were able to book driving lessons on the track before they would be allowed to drive on public roads, and my Mum reminded me that we'd actually booked for me to do this, but privatisation and new owners had put a stop to this and our money was refunded before I had a chance to be let loose on the test track at 16.

In the other direction, the track is blocked off as it is being turned into a residential street. In the distance is the black hoarding, it seems the road may have been flattened so the former test track would cross the approach to Crowthorne House on the level rather than the previous bridge, but I can't quite tell.

 

The centrepiece of the test track was a large circular area called The Pan, which was used to test junction layouts. Its last layouts were to test cycle junction and crossing layouts for Transport for London in the early 2010s, before the site was sold for housing.

This is what The Pan looks like now, with the stream that was originally culverted underneath exposed and an emerging wetland area in what was a huge expanse of tarmac.

 

 

Gabions are being used to keep the stream in check. I don't know whether this is also part of water and flood management, or a Sustainable Drainage System (SuDS), but looking at another part of the housing (which we'll see later), it may be

Road layouts on The Pan were observed from observation towers. Number 3 remains, but is fenced off

From here, I follow the north eastern loop of the test track

Initially, it seems there is not much of the test track left

...but eventually, the original test track appears

This is the start of the banked section, used for high speed testing

 

...which becomes more impressive as you get into the curve. This corner of the site is nearest to the park we saw at the beginning of the walk

Beyond the banked curve itself, the track has been pulled up

A small set of platforms has been built, allowing part of the bank to be used as an amphitheatre of sorts, and this contains an information board about the curve

I was really interested to see this, as the reason I was unable to see anything of TRL from the part closest to where I grew up is because that was above the top of the bank, so everything was through the trees past a big fence and below ground level

Taking the new path up the hill gets you to the small roads, which were used to test smaller junctions, signage and road safety

This old sign corresponds to the real Three Tuns crossroads in Slough, a large signallised crossroads that was part of a real world TRL experimental setup before this test track was built, and the yellow paint layer
appears to be reflective, a precursor to the retroreflective layer used on modern signs

The roads have been narrowed, as explained on the board at the top of the artificial hill in these tracks. This board also shows an overall aerial view of the site (before the main buildings moved to Crowthorne House)

Getting to the back of the Crowthorne House buildings shows a couple of outbuildings, which are possibly still used for vehicle testing.

The light was beginning to fade, so I started to make my way back - the southern part of the site will have to wait for another day. Heading north west from The Pan took me along what appears to be the deculverted stream, which now indeed seems to be used as a water feature and SuDS

Getting back to the junction of Nine Mile Ride and Crowthorne Road, on the way back into Bracknell, I noticed something else I hadn't before, or at least hadn't paid attention to what it actually was.

The sign is a marker for the A/T oil pipeline. This primarily carries aviation fuel (though it can also carry other petroleum products in separate batches with separation "pigs") between Avonmouth (via Aldermaston) and Walton-on-Thames, where separate supply pipelines meet and diverge off to both Heathrow and Gatwick Airports. Searching around, I could only find a hand drawn map from 1944, reproduced in an Open Access article in the Measurement and Control Journal. This shows the pipelnes built from 1941 to move aviation fuel for the Second World War, and repurposed afterwards to supply both RAF bases and civilian airports. Naturally, this too was eventually privatised.

The map shows a pumping station at Easthampstead. In 1944, five years before the designation of Bracknell as a New Town (which resulted in Bracknell being built out to this point), this area fell under Easthampstead Parish. I have not noticed what I would assume to be a nondescript and fenced off building that would house the pumping station, so perhaps this is something to look for another time...

"Come buy our orchard fruits…" : Some thoughts on "Goblin Market"

I am not a literary expert or critic, but I have been performing poetry, and using poetry in performance for 14 years. While today it's unusual to publicly perform poetry by someone else (in contrast to music, theatre and storytelling; where it's commonplace), I'd like to make a case for a piece I performed last night, and about twice previously - Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market".

Christina Rossetti was the sister of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founder; artist, writer and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. There's one of her poems that pretty much everyone knows, the Christmas Carol "In the Bleak Midwinter", but otherwise it's easy to dismiss the rest of her work as well-executed but worthy Christian poetry that's not terribly exciting. While I think that would still be doing her a disservice, there is one stand out piece in her œuvre which appears to have such a different character to her others.

"Goblin Market" was written (possibly) in 1859, and there is some debate as to whether or not it was a children's poem. The story wouldn't look out of place in a children's book, but the content, in parts, is laced with sexual suggestiveness. There is a sense of ambiguity about the piece - is it a metaphor for Jesus redeeming someone who has fallen to temptation (probably), does it refer (possibly) to temptation, rape and incest (maybe), could it even be about the perils of credit and shiny things which are not good for us in the long run (perhaps more suspect)…

In comparison to Rossetti's other works, the pace is relentless - the rhythms constantly change and sway, head off at a hundred miles and hour, suddenly stop and turn into something else - there is rapid-fire wordplay which must pre-date rap by over 100 years (the first minute of my performance tears through some 48 lines), there are tongue-twisters (lines like "Laura rose with Lizzie", where combinations of Ls and Rs and Ss and Cs seem to be arranged to deliberately catch out the reader), and there are 4 voiced characters in addition to the narrator (OK, one of them only gets 2 words). Some of this suggests to me that perhaps it is a children's poem, leading the reader into fluffing up their lines and raising a laugh or two, but from my perspective I consider it a real test of skill - at points the pace of the poem changes every couple of lines (something which isn't entirely obvious from the text unless you read it out loud) - in some ways the writing style is way ahead of its time, in that regard it's almost more of a story than a poem. The text begs to be unleashed from the page, setting free the bawling market traders, the fearful and excitable sisters, and the contrast between soft, tender lullaby as the sisters sleep and scenes with which may not be out of place in an action film. From my point of view as the performer on stage, it's a breathtaking roller-coaster ride.

(I've never travelled the whole length thus far - its 567 lines take me some 16 minutes to get through, and last night I read almost exactly half: 280 lines, taking just under 8 minutes)

Given the poem was written some 18 years before the invention of the phonograph, the first practical sound recording device, we obviously have no idea how it should have sounded, so why am I saying this? After a few readings of a text, you get the feel of the characters and the scenes, it starts to unfold in your mind's eye like a film. Once you've realised what's happening, the pace and voice becomes apparent - the text and form of a poem tell you what to do with it. What makes "Goblin Market" all the more remarkable for that is that, as far as I know, Christina didn't perform her work, although the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood organised poetry events (Christina appears to have had a turbulent relationship with the PRB, from publication in their magazine, "The Germ" and sitting for her brother's paintings to direct scathing attacks on them in some of her later work), but in my mind, it's so tempting to imagine this often sorrowful and reclusive woman standing in a room with the PRB, delivering "Goblin Market" with the pace and energy of a steam locomotive (for which, incidentally, the record at that time was some 80mph), but that probably never happened...

New Year's Resolutions are passé

Oh yes, it's another new year around the corner. People are trying to turn over a new leaf for the new year and make themselves better. I even tried it a couple of years ago... but New Year's Resolutions are passé, and resolving to do something you're not truly committed to is just a recipe for disaster and disappointment.

So I have some ideas, things I want to do in 2013. They may happen, they may not, but this is what I look forward to in the coming year...

1. Efficiency - making better use of limited time and money

Money's tight, time's tight, this is a no brainer. Trying to relax in productive ways and be productive in ways which aren't overly tiring.

2. Creativity - making new things

In 2012 I returned to performance poetry after a gap of nearly 4 years, and I've also started storytelling again. I'll also be making some new things with Python (as part of my PhD) and probably with Arduino. Oh, and there's other things that I want to get going, like rye bread, drawing and maybe even Linux on a Psion 5mx...

3. Exploration - trying new things

Some of this is above, but there will be explorations of the possible in one way or another...

Things to do in 2013...

Play: Bringing the experience of Make-Pla(y)ce to other things, in collaboration with Playful Leeds
Mapping: Trying to get an Open Source Geospatial group going as the first local initiative of OSGeo:UK
Writing: from the PhD to World Streets, Fictions of Every Kind and The Culture Vulture: if things go to plan there should be a lot more writing by me around the place... I may even write some new poetry...

So, have a Happy New Year, and let's see where it takes us...

If you can't get people excited about their own ideas, it's time to hang up your boots

Long personal rants are not to anyone's taste (that I know of), so I'll try and get this over and done with as soon as possible.

Yesterday was Park(ing) Day, a global celebration of public space in cities and a call to action to counter the ever-growing dominance of cars over people in our cities. It's an event that fascinated me since I saw early videos of it on YouTube. A small number of us came down, we had fun (I hope), things happened, and I like to think we went home fairly happy with the afternoon.

Last month, I organised a workshop on Community Engagement in Planning and Politics. A small number of people came down, we had an interesting discussion, and I like to think we went home fairly happy with that, and with ideas and maybe some enthusiasm for taking things further.

OK. So that's good. Friends and collaborators have come down and helped me out with my crackpot ideas. What would I be complaining about?

Neither of these were my ideas, and in neither of these cases did the people who were most enthused about them even bother to turn up.

Park(ing) Day Leeds 2012. What's missing? You?

Why does that matter? It matters because it shows that I demonstrate something fundamentally flawed - an inability to maintain other peoples' excitement about their own ideas, or it you like, a kind of anti-enthusiasm vortex.

The reason why this is important is that there has been, for a long time, an increasing need to change structures and systems in human society. In some ways, what fascinates me about Park(ing) Day is that it is a microcosm of the city itself. Cities only get built in the first place because of a kind of collective, individual decisionmaking. More than one person decides that something is a good idea (such as trading in a particular place), and makes it happen. You became part of this process when you moved to, or even were born in this city. The city continues to exist because people want to do things here: work, play, relax, make or spend money.

This is, of course, all very well in an Anarchist or Libertarian Utopia where it's assumed that individual and collective goals and ideals are the same, and that maximising your own welfare (in the economic sense) achieves the same as maximising the welfare of the city and its society as a whole. This is where I go out on a limb and say that I don't believe this to be true. I think that, as with the rest of life in a city, achieving both individual and collective happiness involves a complex set of compromises, whether it's putting up with noisy neighbours or doing things at personal cost and inconvenience (whether fundraising for a charity or carrying furniture half way across the city).

In the idealised version of the Ancient Greek "Polis", important decisions were made by calling all free male residents to a central location for a public debate and vote. Over time, we've moved from an idea of cities being collective negotiation and decisionmaking to devolving those responsibilities to elected representatives, then to not even seeing this to be of any benefit, and ignoring that entire process completely. Over time, the spaces and places in the city which belonged to all of us, and were used by all of us (the "urban commons", to expand a common phrase) have declined. The city used to belong to all of us, but only some were interested in it, and now only those who are interested in making money from these spaces consider them to be of enough value to maintain and use. For example, in Leeds (as probably everywhere else), the Public Squares only really exist because they provide a necessary breathing space to support financial transactions elsewhere in the city, and trade on their perimeters. What they also do is provide rentable space for commercial events. The use of them by the public for meeting and organising events is purely incidental now.

Those who have had the interest (largely from a financial basis) have taken over from everyone else. We've become so subservient to this so as to no longer think we're at any disadvantage, to no longer think we've been "sold out" by people before us. Do those people want what you want? Does maximising their welfare also maximise yours? Maybe it does - maybe I'm completely wrong about this whole thing, but I've seen nothing to suggest this.

In the last few years, with Transition activities in Leeds, Public Space education and performance with Make-Pla(y)ce and the Occupy movement, I have seen people who appear to share my views of needing to individually do things within a collective framework, in order to aim at changing the city's mode of operation to something we think will be better for us all. I've met many people who believe that we need to organise ourselves on a more socially and environmentally equitable basis, and that the people who have assumed control of our cities are possibly not able to deliver the best overall welfare for society or the planet, because their objectives are not aligned with those. I've met a lot of passionate and committed individuals…

 …but when it comes to the crunch, when opportunities arise to prise open cracks, to get together and make something bigger, people seem to retract. The last few months were full of conversations with many people about alternative modes of viewing and running the city in parallel with existing structures, I had many requests and ideas for Park(ing) Day sent my way. In both cases it was the same thing - people being enthusiastic and full of ideas and energy in conversation, then not turning up to back any of this up in front of other people.

Maybe I shouldn't doubt people I know to be hardworking and committed. I'm just not doing it for them any more. Over 3 years ago, I retired from performance poetry, something I'd been doing for 10 years. The time seemed right - audiences were no longer responding positively (or even at all), and I'd become sidelined at events. There was more dignity in giving up than carrying on, and in spending my time doing other things rather than being a figure of hate and derision.

I think that time is coming again. If I can't get people excited by their own ideas, it's time to hang up my boots. Notwithstanding the amazing help and support that people have given to their own ideas in things I've organised, it seems that I'm not really able to do this any more. I don't have the ability to attract people to a cause and keep them interested in their own ideas and in joining forces with other people. Maybe generally people want to be spoonfed, to have things done for them and handed on a plate. That's fine, you want a dictatorship, to be told what you're doing and to know your place. I imagine you're fairly happy now, but you're not in my target audience. I want to talk to people who want to do things, and want to do them enough to make them happen.

The logical conclusion, and one I've been thinking of for a while, is that it is me. This is fine - none of the things I've been pushing are my ideas, they're out there in the ether for anyone to do. All I do is present them as empty vessels and allow you to fill them with the things you want to achieve. I'm not an ideas person, and to be honest, my intellect and abilities are sapping away from me day by day with the Chronic Fatigue, or whatever else they eventually find out it is, so over time I'm going to be less and less use to any of this stuff anyway. There seems to be more dignity in giving up than carrying on, and in spending my time doing other things than being a figure of hate and derision.

The two things I've been talking about share one important characteristic, which is that they're things I've pushed on my own. Everything else I'm involved with is in collaboration with others. I think those things are doing well (but if you think not, let me know), so they'll continue. This is by no means a resignation from things that don't seem to be a problem, but a strengthening of something I said a while ago. I have no appetite for doing anything on my own any more. When I launched Carfree Leeds, a group to promote and support car free living in the city, as an idea, I said it would only happen if other people were willing to put the time and effort in to help me. That wasn't forthcoming, so there's no Carfree Leeds. It's not my fault, because I'm not responsible for your apathy. If Park(ing) Day looked somewhat smaller than you thought, or had been led to believe from previous events, then I'm not responsible for the apathy of the people who promoted it but couldn't be bothered to turn up themselves, or those who promised to put time and effort in, but decided that sitting at home and doing nothing was a better option.

If you don't want to step up at the end of the day and help make something happen, it's not going to. The people who change the world are not spectators - they don't sit at home spending all their time posting on Facebook and Twitter and blog sites, but take brilliant and successful ideas from around the world and try to apply them in front of an apathetic public and an even more apathetic professional and activist community - but they do this collectively. If I'm not someone worth working with, then it's polite to tell me to my face, to be honest.

But after all that, I'm going to the future anyway, whether or not you're interested in coming along for the ride… but if you are, you're going to have to help pull the cart...

Happy New Year / The Seven Habits of Mildly Effective People

The more astute of you may have noticed that there were no posts at all in 2010… I just didn't get round to doing anything on this. It's probably pretty much symbolic of how 2010 went in general - far too quickly for me to get a handle on anything. This was a year where TINWOLF appeared to nosedive, and where the world of my PhD continued to unravel, although on the flip side, make pla(y)ce had a wonderful 2010 with a series of fun workshops and performances culminating in a well-received piece for Light Night Leeds back in October.

Never mind, it's 2011 now. My New Year's Resolution is to get my life in order, and while it's easy to blame the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for everything, the truth is that I'm quite lazy, scatty and stubborn even without it. If I can overcome all these other things, it'll just be the CFS standing in the way of total global domination, and that's a far better place to be, I'm sure you'll agree.

Seven Habits of Mildly Effective People

I'm not sure I'm ready for all this self-help stuff (although I was contemplating the ISA Experience in the Autumn), but I thought I might start with trying to make myself at least mildly productive. All this "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" type stuff is all very well if you're already on the road to being a bit of a high-flyer, but if you're trying to reach a basic level of function it's probably far too advanced. With this in mind, I think I will start with developing some of the habits of mildly effective people and taking it from there…

1. GET UP

It's been nearly 8 years since I was doing the 9 to 5, and things tend to slip when you no longer have to get in for 9 o'clock every day. In order to be effective we need the time to be able to work (so getting in at 3pm when you have to leave at 5 is somewhat useless). Yes, Chronic Fatigue means being tired all the time, but a lot of people are tired all the time and still manage the 9 to 5, a relationship, a family, keeping the house clean, doing the cooking, doing lots of community and arts stuff and having a great social life. Everyone else manages it…

So time to stop being so useless, start getting up in the morning, and getting on the first step to being mildly effective…

2. SORT OUT WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO

There are a lot of ways of trying to sort out what you have to do. I've tried many of them and failed miserably. When I was at school, I used to keep lists of things to do. The ones written in red were overdue so needed to be done ASAP, and the rest were put in order of when they had to be done by.

This presents a problem nowadays… it's difficult to prioritise some of the tasks (except when "firefighting") and "do your PhD" or "make the world a better place" are large and nebulous tasks which are quite hard to split down into their component parts. Obviously, those are more like missions than individual tasks, and "go to the moon" was obviously split into things like "build a space capsule", "test your ability to withstand the g forces" etc. etc.

Sometimes I think of this stuff in the morning when getting up, other times I have kept "to do" lists on my calendar, on physical and on-screen Post-it notes, and on my home and office whiteboards. None of these seems to have worked for any great length of time…

There is another approach, called "Getting Things Done" which may work, but then again it might be more of a tool to help people who are already productive… maybe not procrastinating so much and finding out might be a better idea…

3. TRY AND FOCUS

Life is full of distractions… home has TV, books, the ability to use housework as displacement activity, and very occasionally a borrowed cat. Cats are the worst productivity tool ever.

Once the cat has decided to go and do something else, you still have the internet. If you work in an office with internet access, or indeed need the internet for work, there is also Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia. Also in the office are other people to talk to. When I worked at Loughborough University, we wouldn't be so ridiculous as to spend our afternoons working, coming up with amazing insights or discoveries - no, we'd get together in our little Portakabin and spend the whole afternoon chatting, only leaving at about 7pm because we were hungry and wanted to go home to cook and eat.

So focus has hardly ever been my strong point. Perhaps it's time every so often to turn the internet off, leave the office behind and sit in a café being productive over a cup of coffee. This is something I aim to do more of in the coming year, especially as we're blessed with some quite nice cafés around the University of Leeds and Hyde Park (of which I'll probably say more on another occasion)

4. DON'T GET SIDETRACKED

Point 4 is a reminder that point 3 is very important.

Don't get sidetracked, stay focus, leave the cat alone (he's not even yours for God's sake), and there's no need to find out what's been happening on Facebook for the last 5 minutes. Leave it. Get something done.

5. REST WHEN YOU NEED TO

Managing Chronic Fatigue is partly about understanding when you need to rest and when you can work. I've never been very good at this. The solution to this is obviously not to strain to stay up when you're really tired, and to try and go to sleep at a reasonable hour (perhaps before 3.30am…). This is probably the flip side of point 1.

6. HAVE PROPER BREAKS

Knowing you're not doing enough work leads to stress, stress leads to not being able to relax properly and to not being able to take a break without getting worried about work, which leads to more tiredness, which leads to things slipping more, which leads to knowing you're not doing enough work, which leads to stress, which leads to not being able to relax properly, which leads to… well, I think you get the picture.

Being able to get work out of your mind occasionally, on a weekday (or even a weekend) should hopefully lead to being more bright eyed, bushy tailed and productive when you're supposed to be working. Just remember not to mix work time and non-work time.

7. LEARN HOW YOU WORK

Apparently, we all have our own sets of rhythms of when our best times are for working. Some people are better at working in the morning, some in the evening or even late at night. With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome you start off working whenever you can, then forcing yourself to work, and in the end abandoning the whole thing as a lost cause.

It's been suggested I keep a diary of my good and bad days. I have ignored those suggestions (along with a whole range of other suggestions which could have made me Mildly Effective™… As well as charting good and bad days, and attempting to work more on good days and rest more on bad days, an understanding of your circadian rhythm will allow you to be more effective by allowing you to (hopefully) regulate your sleep/wake cycles to when you can work better.

Developing the 7 Habits

So my own personal task over 2011 will be to develop these habits, and hopefully end the year Mildly Effective™ and, even more hopefully, on the first step to being Highly Effective (or whatever the current buzzphrase is). At that point I can start to think about reading about all these time management and personal effectiveness things because I ought to be in a state where I might be able to cope with one of them… but we'll see…

The culture vulture strikes again

Once upon a time, there was a blog on MySpace. Actually, it's still there, but I hardly have the time to post on it any more. On this blog was a lot of stuff about arts events, and we seemed to get about 50 readers per post.

Anyway, since I've not even posted here for ages, I thought I'd try an arts post here to see what happens (if anything)...

It's OK to like...

It's OK to like the Pre-Raphaelites at the moment, what with a recent rebroadcast of a documentary about them on BBC4, and the dramatisation of "Desperate Romantics", a book about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood showing on BBC2. This bodes well for me, as I have long been an admirer of what might be called the wider brotherhood.

In this spirit, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where the original three painters of the PRB were students, and against which they rebelled so strongly before the Academy caught up with them; is hosting its first ever exhibition of the work of John William Waterhouse. Waterhouse was not one of the PRB, but was influenced very strongly by their style, especially in the depiction of scenes from Romantic poetry and Classical mythology (as well as the Odyssey and Iliad etc.). He's either the one who takes the Pre-Raphaelite depictions of women as femmes fatales or temptresses to their logical conclusion, or he's a pretender depending on your point of view.

The RA gathered some 40 Waterhouse paintings from around the world, together with rarely seen sketchbooks. Some of the great classics were in view, from "Hylas and the Nymphs" (normally in Manchester City Art Gallery) and "The Lady of Shalott" (the one in the boat, not the one in Leeds City Art Gallery!) to works now resident overseas (such as one of my favourites, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", which is based in Germany).

Waterhouse's painting style rests between Dante Gabriel Rossetti's passionate, seemingly hurried brush strokes and Millais' obsessive photorealism, with an obvious concentration of detail on features he was obsessed with, in particular hair, costume, and shiny metallic things - his paintings seem to draw the eye in certain directions, so to speak. A strange thread running through the paintings present (though possibly heightened by the notable absence of paintings such as "Miranda: The Tempest" is the almost total lack of sky, with scenes either framed entirely below the horizon, or in dense woodland. For example, "The Lady of Shalott" (in the boat) has only a small patch of sky visible, and evokes the sense of a coming storm, whilst the patches of sky visible in many of the Classical mythology paintings seem naïvely painted. "Miranda" (not the one in the tempest) has by far the best sky, while in other paintings (such as "The Magic Circle"), the sky is darker and overcast. These dark or absent skies add to the feeling of darkness or a closing in of space in the paintings, which is apt as many contain themes with a dark edge (apologies for the rant, but one of my former lecturers is a meteorologist obsessed with painted depictions of the sky!)

The titles of Waterhouse's paintings are a little confusing, possibly because several different scenes have been painted from some stories (for example The Lady of Shalott, Miranda from The Tempest and Circe from The Odyssey). Sometimes two paintings are popularly known by the same title because of this. That's not the only thing I find annoying about Waterhouse, but I will come back to "The Mermaid" later...

The subject matter, given its dark or non existent skies, is either Pre-Raphaelite in nature, or political and disjointed, such as the paintings of Roman Emperor Honorius, which show him tending to his pigeons rather than the needs of the empire. He was arguably far less political than any of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but certainly as fascinated by powerful female figures of legend and poetry, from Keats' "Lamia" and "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" to the Lady of Shalott, Circe and Medea. Many of these (including the sirens and mermaids) were figures of mystery and even fear, drawing men to their doom, and have been described as indicative of a misogynist streak - although this ignores the attraction many men have to 'dangerous' women, and whether the power and sensuality of many of the women shown can be interpreted as showing Waterhouse as having a sexually submissive nature is probably open to question. I would argue that he certainly fetishises the powerful woman, and doesn't necessarily depict them as totally evil - in "Jason and Medea", the sorceress famed for killing her children is shown preparing a potion (presumably medicine) while Jason looks at her in eager anticipation while Medea concentrates on getting the quantities right.

The nature of light within the paintings is also interesting. In view of the positions of these powerful women, the luminosity of their skin and brightness of their clothes often appears to be the main light source under a dark or non-existent sky, and metallic objects always seem to shine brightly. Waterhouse was obviously keen on the metallic sheens he was able to achieve, and was also very keen on costume, sometimes shown in the detailing of draping fabric, and other times in the patterning and cut of dresses. How much this was down to finding costumes for the models and how much was his own imagination (or even costume design) I don't know.

The notebooks were also interesting, although, as so often with notebooks in an exhibition, only one spread of each was visible. They gave clues as to his construction of scenes and also his drawing technique - the frontispiece of his book of Tennyson's poems, adorned with outline sketches of women's heads was something I spent ages looking at, trying to draw inspiration for my next session at Dr. Sketchy.

There is also the annoying. As much as I love most of Waterhouse's work, there are niggling things. Firstly, the Mediterranean phase. Waterhouse spent a lot of time in Italy, and produced some very nice paintings, but he does seem to romanticise Italy as a lazy place, where women lie amongst cushions and pigeons and revel in doing nothing. The women depicted don't seem to serve any purpose other than to be beautiful, whereas the characters from plays, poems and myths are doing things, or having things done to them (such as "Mariamne", being condemned to death). Secondly, is the painting which got Waterhouse his Royal Academy membership, "A mermaid" (which, curiously, on my print, is titled as "Resonance"). Where the Renaissance painters such as Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy (da Vinci even dissecting cadavers), and applied their knowledge of the human body to produce anatomically correct and possible poses, Waterhouse seems to have ignored all of this in his mermaid. Whilst the upper body is well painted (obviously from a live model, and one who appears several times in his work), the lower body, aside from the amazing detail of the scales, cannot possibly work (if I rabbit on here, it's because I also do a little mermology on the side). Her tail is far too long, more like an eel than any fish which might be supposed to be the tail of a mermaid, and the tail is far too small for her to actually be able to swim (mermaids, like fish and dolphins, steer with their tails, which need to be big and strong enough to do the job). The tail also has a ridiculously sharp kink, which would again be impossible given the necessary bone structure. All of this could have been avoided by using the Renaissance technique of trying to build the body up from its bone structure. Nevertheless, there is something about the image, as annoying (and annoyingly well painted) as it is, that I keep a print of this painting by my desk.

Waterhouse is often seen as a pretender to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, or an overly commercial artist with little to say, but I would disagree on both counts. The depiction of strong, powerful women, either devious or doomed, shows perhaps an awareness of the power women have over men and the terrible ways they have sometimes been treated, and maybe in that sense was of its time, between the restraint in 'polite society' of the Victorian era and the rise of the Suffragettes. Alternatively, Medea, Circe and Lamia (for example) are misogynist stereotypes of the beautiful, powerful woman as evil.

J.W.Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite is at The Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London until 13 September 2009. Entry £9 (£8 concession, £7 student, £4 unwaged with proof)

Gatecrasher

Before arriving at the Waterhouse exhibition, and after arriving at the Royal Academy on a heritage Routemaster bus (having changed off a heritage liveried Green Line bus from Bracknell), I managed to gatecrash the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. Cleverly, pieces were identified only by number, and only people with tickets had a catalogue to tell them what was what. I didn't see an awful lot as I worked out where I was and was worried I might get carted out, but there were a couple of highlights in what I saw:

In the Architecture Room, there were a couple of nice house designs, and a few for pavilions. Only one for Shanghai was recognisably tied to a place, but there was a nice piece of Urban Design in the form of a street reconstruction with a covering over the street and quite cool lighting. I'm not sure it would be residential with that level of street lighting though...

In the paintings, one of a nude woman, shown only in monochrome outline (possibly pastel) but with tattoos in full colour was interesting. There were also some huge pop art style flowers which I really liked, as well as some cartoon style art, influenced (as ever) by Japanese Manga and Disney (Piglet from Winnie the Pooh made an appearance on one of the canvases for some inexplicable reason).

The Summer Exhibition shows new work by reasonably established artists, although you probably need to pay for a ticket to find out what's what.

Summer Exhibition 2009 is at The Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London until 16 August 2009. Entry £7 (£6 concession, £5 student), or gatecrash and wander through pretending you've worked everything out.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

Design Art is the strange offspring of conceptual art, sculpture and furniture design, producing pieces which are usually of practical purpose but with their form derived from artistic reinterpretation of an idea.

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has brought together a number of works relating to storytelling, in particular themes from fairy tales in "Telling Tales". While often dealing with old or traditional tales (including Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Adam & Eve), the production processes are often quite modern (using techniques such as laser cutting and etching, for example). More modern fears are also dealt with, from nuclear war to psychotherapy, with mushroom cloud cushions and a sensory deprivation tank shaped like a skull.

On the fairy tale side were items such as the Robber Baron's lair, filled with golden furniture, a free standing bathtub shaped like a boat ("Bathboat" by Wieki Somers), and the "Fig Leaf Wardrobe" by Tord Boontje, where clothes are hung on the branches of a fig tree, and the whole wardrobe is surrounded in a dense matting of fig branches and leaves (this is a piece of furniture, so the whole ensemble is largely made of wood).

"Hide Away Type 02" by Dunne and Raby is a playful, convertible piece of furniture; a table that turns into a playhouse, and another wonderful piece is the "Storm Chair" by Stephen Richards, made of seemingly randomly placed sticks.

Telling Tales is at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London until 18 October 2009. Admission is free

You may also be interested in Adelphi Story Nights in Leeds, on the first Tuesday of the month from 8pm, at The Adelphi, Hunslet Road (bottom of Leeds Bridge), Leeds. Entry £4 (£3 concessions)

Future Fashion Now

The Royal College of Art, a short walk away from the Victoria & Albert Museum, exhibits selections of its students' work at the V&A's costume gallery. This year, a varied mix of designers and designs was in evidence, with designs including a shirt printed with the pattern used to make it, reflective ponchos and some interesting dress designs, and the use of digital photography for producing patterns for knitting machines.

Timothy Lee uses neoprene as a structural element, bonded to other fabrics to force and create shape. His jacket displays an über glamorous style with its high, turned up collar, held in place with neoprene. Another designer, whose name now escapes me, uses patent leather in a similar way, producing seemingly impossible angles on shoulders and bustlines, made of triangles of patent leather stuck to each other, although the effect does make the dresses look quite plasticky.

David Hopwood produced an evening dress made only of 12 layers of tulle, which of course become quite opaque (and thick!) when all layered on each other, but increasingly transparent as each layer falls away from the next. The design, with each layer cut smaller than the one below it, allows the dress' form to fade out along the draping back and train.

Iacopo Calamandrei is a name to watch - exhibiting a beautiful black evening gown with a deceptively simple cut, embellished only with a red band at the end of the sleeve, as well as a heavily structured dress with puffed up shoulders and side panels.

Future Fashion Now: New Design from the Royal College of Art is on until 31 January 2010 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London. Admission is free

That's more than enough rabbiting on from me...

I was lost, and now am found

Interesting day today, certainly one worth blogging about.

Today was the day of the Keighley mapping party, organised by Bradford Linux Users' Group. All very well, you may say, but it was my first mapping party, and with the Open Source GIS nature of my PhD, and my inability to code, it was time I learnt how to contribute something back to the community.

Those of you who work with me will know that mornings are not my forté, and having to get up at 7 on a Sunday is not the best way for me to start the day - never mind that the downstairs neighbours' burglar alarm went off at 4am - they're not around at the moment, and I was pretty sure my landlord wasn't going to answer the phone at 4am... It eventually stopped, and despite there being no signs of a break-in, the neighbours two floors down say they heard someone walking around...

So I duly went off to town, not quite bleary-eyed thanks to the espresso, to catch the 0900 train to Carlisle, getting off at Keighley. My plan was to go around with someone, using both my department's GPS unit (a Garmin eTrex Legend for the GPS-heads) and BuddyWay (which turns out to be a bad choice as it needs the phone to upload data via its mobile data connection); and record the experience with audio and possibly some photos.

...only that while checking through the stuff on the train, I happen to have left the digital audio recorder (which shares a pouch with my IrisPen) on the train. Oh dear. Carlisle is a long, long way away.

Anyway, so I went off with David Carpenter of Bradford LUG, mapping Keighley in the vicinity of North Street / Skipton Road. There's some interesting and convoluted local history to be gleaned from walking around, trying to classify streets, and occasionally getting drawn into conversations with residents (Keighley turns out to be quite a friendly place on a Sunday - even the Jehovah's Witnesses!) - and after I got back the data was unloaded via an expensive Orange data connection to the "cloud", then out again as KML files for Google Earth (and eventually for categorisation and loading onto OpenStreetMap).

We finished about 4, with one of the group suggesting that the 0900 to Carlisle ought to be making its return journey through Keighley soon. Sure enough, perusing the timetable it appeared that the next train to Leeds would be the return journey of the one I lost my voice recorder on (it takes about 3.5 hours to get to Carlisle from Leeds, and the train stays at Carlisle some 2 hours before returning... hardly the best use of resources...). I had asked at the station after realising I'd left it on the train that morning, and again about 4, but to no avail. I sat in the same location I had on the way out, and asked fellow passengers if they'd seen anything. Then I asked the conductor as he passed through. He told me to follow him, as the other conductor had had something handed in. it was a small black puch containing a voice recorder and an IrisPen. Stranger things have happened, I suppose, but I didn't get to make voice recordings, while £250 worth of my research kit went on a 200 mile round trip without me...

Back to Leeds (via reduced price items at Sainsbury's at a quarter to 5), I found a new sign had been placed outside my house. It showed the wildlife which could be found on Woodhouse Ridge (including the Tawny Owls which keep us awake some nights, and the butterflies we never see). Thanks to the Woodhouse Ridge Action Group for that - it must have been the project for this month's workday. I also asked my neighbours 2 floors down about the burglar alarm when it went off... there's no sign of our landlord by phone (we both call again), and eventually I hit on the idea of emailing him via Unipol's (the University housing office) website, which means they keep a copy. He arrives in about half an hour, and another half an hour later has sorted the problem - the alarm sounding a warning because the power's been cut as the downstairs neighbours have moved out.

So eventually, all is well with the world - apparently. It's been a strange and tiring day, so much so that I missed a very unusual gig round the corner (a Georgian folk choir at the Yorkshire School of Music and Drama) as I wasn't up to going out again. Oh well... tomorrow's another day!