990520.1423 the kingfisher

casting off from the quay at agnes bound for st mary’s . about fifty day-trippers , mostly towards the senior end of the spectrum . a beautiful day . blue sky and enough breeze to raise white crests . this feels like summer .

my time on gugh is coming to an end . rhondda returns tomorrow morning and although she has said there is no hurry for me to move i do not wish to outstay my welcome . my next habitation remains unresolved . when i arrived it soon became apparent that finding accommodation for the summer was going to be difficult . demand far exceeds supply and it is a constant struggle for islanders’ children to get places of their own . as my work here proceeded i realised that i would need to spend an increasing amount of time on st mary’s , the island where the council , the duchy offices , the secondary school and most of those who are becoming involved in the digital workshop are situated . for the last few months i have been putting out feelers , hoping that something would come up . every promising lead has come to a dead end , and i sense some anxiety in myself about this .

it is not hopeless . if all else fails i can live in a tent . but this would pose problems for my equipment and for my work .

yet i maintain my faith that everything will work out .

we round newman point and begin our approach to hugh town harbour , now filled with yachts flying british and french ensigns .

last week a yacht crossing from the azores was wrecked on a rock off annett . its master was making the passage single-handed and it seems he may have fallen asleep after four days crossing the bay of biscay , coping with high seas and an unreliable autohelm .

a german visitor staying on agnes phoned the coastguard around two in the morning reporting a flare . mike hicks , the island’s senior coastguard , was roused and went round the shore with a torch . but he saw nothing . the yacht had struck hard on the rock and filled with water before a mayday could be transmitted . its master resorted to a liferaft which luckily drifted to agnes , making shore at troytown . his yacht was floated off on the next day’s high tide and towed at a snail’s pace to st mary’s , filled with inner tubes to keep her afloat . it was the most pitiful sight .

990521.2321 gugh

preparing to leave for london tomorrow morning . i’ll have to be across the bar by nine or the tide’ll cut me off . rhondda got back this afternoon and didn’t seem too disturbed by the state of her house / cats / plants after a couple of weeks under my care . amazing.

: cH

990517.2348 gugh

those half-baked thoughts on tv provoked more responses than anything else i’ve written . it seems that more of my friends are thinking about it than i realised . i’d like to broadcast some of their responses . hope that’s okay with everyone concerned .

from stefan schutt
<
I remember nights in front of the TV while I was in high school; my sister and mother motionless, emotionless, inert, the blue light flickering on their faces.

I remember getting fidgety, feeling uneasy with the random grab-bag of information straming its way into our brains, undigested, unending.

I remember eventually escaping to another room, finding things to do (in Whyalla, a small steel town in the South Australian desert, there’s not much to do in the “outside” world)

You could borrow Karl-baby’s “opiate of the masses” phrase to describe this phenomenon – but at least some versions of religion encourage reflection, spritual initiative, personal evaluation. TV – at least in its mainstream form – encourages you to be passive, or to react, knee-jerk, from the impotent comfort of your living room.

For the information you get is ready-made, packaged, polished, perfect – what more could you, the amateur, in your infinite lack of knowledge, possibly contribute to that?
>

from margaret crosthwaite
<
It’s scary stuff – I get a deep sense of horror in moments of ‘conciseness’ when watching TV with other people, addictive gazes on our faces…

– it seems to lower people into a ‘base’ state and what is absorbed in this state of ‘surrender’ informs our attitudes, decisions interactions with others throughout our whole lives … and once seen can not be unseen.

I was quite interested in this subject when I was at college and decided to take a fresh look at the design of television remote controls (there are a whole load of issues related to power/control/gender/life stages that are reflected in how/who uses the remote control).

I did a range of different concept designs – but the simplest was to have more than one remote control to diffuse the power. It suddenly seemed absurd that only one person should have the access to control and others watching seemed handicapped to do anything to influence what was watched or turn it on/off. ( I used the metaphor of a ‘fruitbowl’ containing a number of simple remote controls which was offering control to everyone equally)
>

from sebastian neerman
<
i think the strongest attraction comes from our fascination with stories. Myths, parables, sayings, heroes, songs, historical anectodes, jokes…. the papers, TV… they’e all creators. and they all rely on shared familiarity. the basic stock of stories to any culture will always be limited. Subjected to the familiarising, we then bring the infinite to it and it forms us in our own ways. add some salt, stir and wait for 5 mins…

During a chessgame with an imp, the introspective, intellectual Steppenwolf realisedthat he was nothing but a collection personalities/characters like the pieces on the board. Taken individually in their crude extreme form, they seemed to reflect nothing of his own nature. In sum, he saw the contour of his own face. In a seedy Berlin cabaret bar, moved by the jazz and booze (!), he overcame the morose faustian streak that had been aflicting him. he learnt to start laughing with the rest of the world.
>

from rosie rayner
<
I have not watched TV for two years. I find when I watch it that the subliminal images are very powerful and that I am deeply effected by their demands. I remember and Iceland advert making me thing that I really should be married to some arian bloke baking for him and the kids. It surprised me that and advert could be that powerful.
>

from ash nehru
<
Ghod you do write a lot of bollocks sometimes.
>

with which i bid you adieu . the tide has ebbed the full distance of its current equinoctial springs . an amber crescent of moon rises low in a star-filled sky . the wind freshens .

: cH

990511.1904 gugh

over the last week i have watched some television broadcasts , having
previously seen none since arriving in the islands . i have sampled a range of programmes : news and current affairs , historical documentary , serial drama , mainstream comedy , off-beat comedy , advertisments . my primary response is of nervousness and distaste . i do not much like the society these products represent .

i have never invested a great deal of my time in television viewing . probably it reached a peak of fifteen hours a week in 1996 and fell away almost to nothing after that . but i have never so specifically avoided it as i have these last months . nor have i observed it with such a sense of critical detachment as i have this last week .

it is sobering for me to reflect how unquestioningly i viewed it in the past . from my earliest childhood the television set was there , situated at the focal point of successive sitting rooms . rooms symbolising familial privacy , security from the outside world , safety . in these rooms one’s behaviour was unguarded , trusting . and there , alongside my father’s , mother’s and sister’s voices were the multitude of other voices . each in its way as familiar as those of , well , my family .

of course i did not blindly accept all that those voices said , any more than i did what my parents said ( i was an impossible child ) . but i never questioned the act itself , the ritual of fixating on a bulging rectangle of glass , listening to the thin sound , reconstructing people and a world in my imagination . nor did i question how this act might over time be changing me . i was an intelligent child and i did not question these things . at university i studied critical theory and mass culture yet still i did not question these things . it took my relocation to a tiny island and an instinctive decision to fast from this habit before the questions became apparent . the experience is of a spell broken . i shall not see things the same way again .

what we have in our homes , wrapped in the innocent mantle of furniture , is a story-teller . one with the ability to bring numberless characters and scenes to life . traditionally we react differently to someone telling us a story than we do to a neighbour telling us his barn is afire and our help is needed . but the mechanical story-teller has overcome this boundary . by telling the same stories to enough people , by establishing shared familiarity with a range of characters , something is constructed which is able to pass as reality . of course we the audience are firmly in control , able to switch on and off , change channel at will . but in this relationship i wonder where the power really lies .

it is interesting . although my ethnography is expressly focused on this little community , i find myself reflecting quite as much on the world i left .

: cH

990505.2341 the gugh

well here i am , my first night of proper solitude . rhondda left at quarter past two . the rising tide called back the last few trippers some three hours later . i watched , fascinated , as the strip of dry sand narrowed with each wave until finally the water was unbroken . the gugh had a human population of one .

it does feel odd . from where i am working i can see the sand bar , or the water which covers it , just by looking over my left shoulder . throughout the evening i found myself periodically staring out that way , seeing the puckered grey surface of the water where the tide flowed over the sand .

the party on sunday night to celebrate the conclusion of the gig championships was a marvellous affair , located on a farm in the middle of st mary’s . a stage had been built from scaffolding , polythene and wooden palettes . this stood at one end of field , its boundaries defined by bare grey trees which reached up and met thirty or forty feet above the ground . it was like the skeleton of some crazy gaudi folly . in the centre of this space an enormous bonfire had been laid . coloured lights were strung along the trees and across the front of the stage . elsewhere two barns housed a bar and a barbecue .

it had been a blazingly gorgeous day . but as the sun sank a fog descended and with it an expectant hush . i arrived early with < touching cloth > , the evening’s main band . after a rudimentary sound check we wandered up to the bar . then it seemed as if the place was suddenly thronged with people . most of the evening is a blur . i was up on stage for a few songs , playing my soprano sax with appropriate gusto , but i suspect it was generally inaudible . the fire was damn hot . i think i took some photos . everyone seemed to be having a good time . especially james watt , to whom i spoke for the first time having conversed formerly by email . somehow he managed to demolish ten feet of granite wall through the sheer force of his dancing . didn’t do his ankle any good though . i remember walking up to watermill along the moonlit road with gaz and button .

monday was a quiet day .

: cH

990501.2345 the gugh

a different room . unambiguously a study . twin-pedestal desk , floor-to-ceiling books , pictures of boats , quills , paint-brushes , a red and white striped model lighthouse , friendly clutter .

my boxes jiggled across behind johann’s tractor this morning , myself following close by bike . i was rather reminded of the music hall song which begins < my old man said follow the van > , though the absence of a cock linnet did spoil the effect . there was a real sense of passage as we crossed the sand bar , waves nibbling on either side , and achieved the islet from which i now write .

my goods deposited we returned to tamarisk farm and spent a pressed hour making the place ready for the arrival of the year’s first proper guests . it was heartbreaking to leave , but bearing in mind i was originally expecting to be there only until the end of february i must consider myself a lucky sod .

this weekend the islands are hosting the gig world championships . i may have explained before , but a gig is conventionally a wooden boat of around fifteen feet rowed by six men each of whom takes one oar . historically they have played an important role in the islands’ life , and still each island fields at least one boat and crew for weekly races during the summer . agnes’ representative is the shah , a splendid vessel built in the 1870s and painted bright blue .

in recent years the sport has been gaining popularity elsewhere , and the championships now attract more than sixty boats from britain , the netherlands , germany and the states . the opening event was on friday evening , with all the crews lining up off agnes and racing to st mary’s . the sea was smooth and a fog hung across the islands . it was beautiful and mysterious to see the flotilla of gigs and spectator boats weaving across the water in the flat light , shadowy islands discernable on all sides . the whole thing is delightfully unpretentious . everyone just gets on with what they’ve come here to do .

i watched a couple more races today , then came back across to gugh to start unpacking . the rising tide was almost across the bar by the time i realised i needed to stock up on groceries . i made the shop and got what i sought , but my feet got a wetting on the return as i leapt from stone to stone amidst the rising water . somehow this seemed an appropriate baptism .

: cH

990419.2317 tamarisk farm , st agnes

it is now ten weeks since i established myself in this house . in some sense i cannot credit the time has flown so fast . in another i feel i have been here forever , and ten weeks seems far too small a measure .

in any case , i must turn my thoughts to packing once more and prepare to move . although i have until the end of the month , i must venture to the capital ( by which i mean to say london , not hugh town . my perspective is not yet quite so local ) as i have school business next week . few days remain when that is accounted .

it seems my next move shall be to a still more remote situation , a prospect which thrills me . this island of st agnes , most remote of the scilly group , is partnered by an islet called gugh ( pronounced nowadays to rhyme with < few > , but in former centuries as < goo > ) to which it is connected at low tide by a bar of shifting sand . this land was uninhabited between the neolithic period and the 1920s , in which decade a mad scotch farmer leased it from the duchy and determined to bring it to productivity . he built a house and a barn , both with aerofoil-shaped roofs of reinforced concrete to deflect the prodigious winds . he kept cattle and pigs and fowl and planted shelter belts as a prelude to cropping . but the soil is poor and i think it was not a great success .

the barn is now converted as a house , inhabited by rhondda wraith and alan reekie . the old house itself is rarely habited . indeed alan is most of the time required at his boat yard in faversham , on the east coast of britain . so rhondda lives there for long stretches on here own and seems very happy , for twelve hours each day cut off from the rest of the world . she has invited me to stay there awhile , as she has engagements on the mainland and the cats and garden must be tended . the only possibility for greater remoteness than this lies five miles away , standing one hundred and eighty feet tall on the bishop rock , a light to mark the western extent of the archipelago . johann was telling me that a bbc reporter spent a month there in the late 1940s and had to be brought off in a straight-jacket having gone quite mad . in those days there was a crew of three to keep him company . now it is unmanned . but with a satellite phone , a laptop and several month’s supplies …

yesterday conditions were favourable to the year’s first expedition under sail . johann and i took out joffy’s customised silhouette for a sedate potter round smith sound in the light breeze . i loved every second of it but felt terribly rusty and clumsy . i cannot wait for the next chance .

from the water i spied a white undulating mass in the water against some rocks . by this morning it had been deposited by the high tides just outside tim and sue hicks’ campsite at troytown , the decomposing remains of a pilot whale . fifteen feet of greyish-white flesh with ribs sticking out and a few teeth still left in its mouth . tim stood over it looking rather wistful , steeling himself for the task of towing the stinking putrefying mass back out to sea and hoping it would wash up on someone else’s island .

today it is cold , wet and windy . the sea has got big again and i spent several delighted hours on the rocks with apocolyptic geysers and plumes of spray filling the air around me .

oh , and last night i put together an introductory site for the digital workshop . nothing much to it yet . http://www.scillonia.org.uk if you’d like to see a handful of photos from february and march .

: cH

990414.2237 old town , st mary’s

greetings from the the lock , stock and barrel , in whose restaurant i sit , writing by a candle , the only customer . eurotrash is projected on a big screen in the main bar . the handful of customers laughs dutifully at each saucy gag .

990415.1339 watermill , st mary’s

sitting outside gaz and button’s wooden cabin in the sun , surrounded by bluebells and snowdrops . i hear birdsong , the wind in the trees , the woody chatter of bamboo wind-chimes . this is the far northern end of st mary’s , an intimidating distance of two and a half miles from hugh town . this end of the island , in fact almost anywhere outside town , is referred to as < up country > , the term used to suggest somewhere vaguely but prohibitively distant .

.1533 hugh town , st mary’s

perched on a mooring weight on the quay , awaiting a boat back to agnes . the wind has dropped after several days of gales . my friends christian and james were down from london over the weekend and we had an entertaining trip over to st mary’s on monday . we squeezed onto the lyonesse lady , the sturdy steel vessel which conveys freight and supplies between the islands . the channel between agnes and st mary’s is deeper and more exposed than those between the other islands . so once we left the lee of the island we were exposed to the huge grey rollers sweeping in from the open ocean , each one high enough to obscure all sight of the surrounding land as we sank into its trough . the lady , surely handled , shook and leapt as she pushed onward , spray flying across the deck . the three of us spent most of the trip grinning like idiots as we braced ourselves against the bulkheads . james’ little waterproof camera finally came into its own .

everything seems rather quiet now after two successive weekends of visitors . first my parents and caroline over easter , then christian and james last weekend . these were all first time visitors to agnes , though my parents have been to the islands before . it’s been a delight to see everyone and show them round .

on sunday the first fully-fledged seaweed experiment was undertaken . we harvested a quantity of delicate green sheets of sea lettuce from cove vean , steamed it for several minutes and combined it with sea spinach , chopped flowers and stems of wild garlic , steamed alexander stems and walnuts . christian took over for the final stages and deftly produced a pasta sauce . the seaweed contributed a delicate tang which i find hard to relate to any other flavour . the whole ensemble was quite delicious , all the better for knowing that most of its components had been picked with our own hands just a few hours before .

this meal followed the previous day’s feast of two grey mullet caught by kitt legg , baked with lemon and olive oil , to my mind the finest fish taken from these waters .

990416.1524 tamarisk farm , st agnes

i’ve just help johann drag joffy’s heavily-customised silhouette from the life-boat shed ( where we dragged it with christian and james’ help at the weekend ) to the bottom of the quay , from which the rising tide will lift it over the next hour . the technology for accomplishing this is simple : a plank underneath the boat’s centre keel with a loop of rope at one end by which it can be dragged slowly by tractor , with hands supporting both sides to keep the bilge keels from scraping the ground .

today the water is totally still and flat . it’s almost as if the week’s storms never happened .

: cH

990401.1933 st mary’s

o golly , this is beautiful . i’m sitting on a crate down at the rechabite quay , looking across hugh town’s harbour with samson , bryher and tresco hazy on the horizon . the sun sets behind the garrison , sillhouetting the elizabethan star castle . the tide is high , the sea laps the granite quay . a couple of youths circle the grass to my left on their bikes . two people and a dog on the narrow crecent of sand . forty odd vessels slowly turn on their moorings .

these days have been rewarding . more threads woven into the fabric , some delightfully unexpected harmonies discovered .

several hours this afternoon were spent with julia mackenzie at her house on the strand , playing through various pieces on two pianos . my reading is not as sharp as it was , but i enjoyed it immensely . julia was for many years the islands’ music teacher . more recently she has been director of music at a series of prep schools around the country . now she is back to stay , and the islands are the beneficiaries of her energy and passion .

i first met julia through henry doughty , head of music at truro school when i was there , assistant organist at truro cathedral and my first organ teacher . it was henry who first introduced me to these islands . i discovered from julia that he and his wife francesca will be here next week . we plan a surprise for him . he has no idea i am here .

i should head for the main quay now , where the spirit is due at eight to collect johann from a council session . the sky is huge and striated in purple and orange . it must look magnificent from castella downs on agnes .

990402.2010 tamarisk farm

whew ! just back from an exhilarating cycle round wingletang downs , bumping and sliding over the granite , sand and bramble . this was the test run for johann’s newly souped-up machine . when i first arrived i was happy to discover an ancient mountain bike in the shed . but my first enthusiastic sortie down to the post office ended smartly with the ping of the rear deraileur falling to bits . johann and i took a few inches out of the chain , reducing the number of gears from eighteen to , er , one .

undaunted i ordered a new part from a cycle shop in penzance . it arrived just as i was leaving for st mary’s on tuesday . i spent several hours this afternoon with a socket set , some wd40 and the ingenious little omni-tool adam gave me last year . the gears are working , the tyres are taut ( though profoundly wrecked ) , the brakes just about work , the saddle sits three inches above the instantly-crippling position in which it was rusted solid . in short the thing works . there remains a lingering sense that the hopelessly corroded and worn-out beast is liable to collapse at any moment , but until then it’ll be a lot of fun .

whilst i was on st mary’s nick kindly trusted me with his gorgeous aluminium creature . i couldn’t find the lights , so i was blessed with the experience of speeding along the deserted lanes by moonlinght from gaz’s cabin at watermill . an experiene further heightened by the fact that i was just a little the worse for wear . quite a contrast to my late-night journeys across london , with their mournful street-lamps and poisoned air .

tomorrow my parents and caroline arrive for easter . i pray they see some of the divine weather of these last few days , but fog is forecast .

: cH

990330.1555 kingfisher of st mary’s

just leaving the jetty on agnes on the flood tide , out into the grey lumpy roadstead . i’m off to st mary’s for a couple of days .  tellingly , this is a tripper boat . laid up through the winter and only brought into service during the tourist season . the escalation of visitors over the last week has been quite noticable . mainly people staying on st mary’s and visiting agnes for the day . on such a small island the influx of just ten or twenty people makes a surprisingly large impact . no longer are one’s walks likely to be solitary . on this boat there are nine other passengers , none of them islanders . two bird-watchers with their mighty binoculars . a couple of elderly ladies traveling together , muffled up to the chin against the wind . a middle-aged couple cooing rather sweetly over one another . a dour-countenenced couple and their young , well-behaved , daughter . easter is one of the busiest times of the year , after which there’ll be a hiaitus until june .

a remarkable success last night on the web . as long-term readers will know i’m curious to perform culinary experiments with seaweed . last night i fed the cue < edible seaweed > into alta vista and top of its list of returns was a site devoted to cooking and eating seaweed . i’ll send out the details when i get back to agnes . so , those of you who are planning to visit me : be warned . there are liable to be some strange delicacies in store for you .

: cH

990326.2345 tamarisk farm

here i am again , lying in bed with my psion glowing up at me from the pillow . it seems a long time since i last wrote under these circumstances . my initial frenzy of writing has calmed down a bit , much as predicted . for the first month every step brought its rush of intense new experience . now i am becoming more deeply engaged with my environment and my work . there are still frequent moments of joy and absorption , but i no longer feel the same need to rush to my keyboard and detail each one .

i am conscious that my record has to date been exclusively positive , something i think worthy of comment . the basic truth is that i am loving what i am doing , but it is also true that i tend to look at my circumstances in a positive light . furthermore , when one takes such a leap as i have , departing from normal expectations , there is a pressure to prove oneself not to have done a foolish thing .

none of this would matter , but i have claimed this string of despatches as a part of my work . a record of what it was like for me to spend a year on an island . thus i should apply the same standards as i do to other elements of my documentation .

so i shall take this opportunity to record that i did feel a bit lonely earlier this evening . not for more than half an hour , and not with any great drama , but i had a wistful sense that i would like to be in a relaxed environment with some friends . the context of this is that i spent most of the period between four and eleven cataloguing and scanning slides . i took a short break to eat , but probably not more than twenty minutes . i am very content doing this work ( though the oft-crashing scanning software continues to irk me ) , but it would be even better if leavened with company .

there we are , i don’t wish to dwell on it . indeed it is worth mentioning that i sometimes experienced far more intense isolation in london , a city where one is ever conscious of things going on to which one is not party . and i would say i was a pretty social creature , latterly at least .  it’s been another sunny spring day here . i find it increasingly hard to make myself sit inside in front of a computer during daylight hours .

: cH