Short Break in Wales (4): St David's Cathederal and Bishop's Palace

For reasons best known to themselves, but I suspect tied to my earlier remarks about the quality of the farmland, the Welsh liked to put their churches and cathedrals as close to the shore as possible. I'm willing to bet that there isn't a book on the Great Cathedral Boom of the 11th and 12th centuries that answers the questions a modern person would ask: how was it financed? where did they get all the labourers and craftsmen? and why was the so many craftsmen spare? what else wasn't being built while the cathedrals were? and why on earth were they built so often so many miles from anywhere, so damn big?

I didn't get the usual shots. The ruin is the Bishop's Palace. Cromwell and others really had it in for Bishops.

Short Break In Wales (3): Poppit Sands

Poppit Sands is hidden at the end of yet more narrow roads: you can very easily miss the right turn in St Dogmaels, which is less a village of itself and more a suburb of Cardigan. My parents used to take us down to a farm in St Dogmaels for a fortnight in summer. This would be back in the days of, well, after the opening of the M50 Ross-Spur and before the start of the construction of M4. Look it up. Anyway, the local beach was Poppit Sands. I had memories of it being wide at low tide, but not of it being vast. This is the view inland.

It's approached along this road. Really. This is one of the best beaches in Britain and it's approached by a single-lane country road.

What makes Welsh beaches special is this: sea, sand... and if you click on the photograph, you'll see cows. There's workable, in fact high-quality, farmland to within yards of the shoreline. Which tells you that there are no strong winds whipping the salt water onto the land and making it hard growing.

 It's all lush and gentle. They have coastguards on all the major beaches, with flags of mysterious (to me) significance, and they have decent if not European-quality cafes as well.

 The river in these shots is the Teifi - hence the official Welsh name Aberteifi for Cardigan.

Personally, I believe that no English childhood is complete without a summer holiday spent on beaches like this.

Soho Square Muggy Monday

About a week or so ago, it was very warm and humid.  This what happens to Soho Square when that happens. Someone comes along with a lorry and tips five tons of late-twenty / early-thirty somethings all over the grass. That this many people worked in Soho not in catering amazes me, but then the place is jammed with movie industry support businesses and various internet companies, and this is where all these folk work.

Click on the pictures: full-size and lots of detail.

Short Break In Wales (2): Newport Beach

You can see this beach as you drive through Newport on the A478, but to get to it, you have to drive a couple of miles along narrow, windy roads. It's worth it. This is the town.

...and folks sure like their boats in this part of the world...

...you can park on the beach to go windsurfing...

...or laze on the sand-dunes...

Short Break In Wales (1): Mwnt

Mwnt is a secret. Almost. There are no signposts, as there are to Newport Beach or Whitesands, and it's at the end of some narrow, twisting roads with a couple of left turns you could miss if you aren't used to looking for those old-style signposts. When you get there, it's beautiful. The locals come out in the afternoon to do a little fishing or just walk up the hill and kiss. It's a large cove at the bottom of steps that are steeper than this makes them look (that's a tea-shop and wet-suit hire emporium at the top, with facilities). Above the beach, miles from almost anywhere, is the church, which is still used for weekly services.

How To Manoeuvre A Sten Line Ferry, Fishguard Harbour

One fairly hefty Stena Line ferry at her moorings at Fishguard Harbour

... starts to move sideways...

...and then rotate...

...before straightening out...

....and heading off to sea

It's done with bow- and stern-thrusters, water-jets that add an astonishing amount of manoeuvrability to even a large-ish ship. It took about three minutes to spin the ship round. 

Cool: The Complete Handbook (Harry Armfield)

Back in the day a guy called Harry Armfield wrote a book called Cool: The Complete Handbook. Amongst other things it has the best movie list, reading list and music list I have seen. Armfield describes Classical Cool, whose icons are Steve McQueen and Miles Davis. Cool is not about accessories you had - though some, like the Zippo lighter, are iconic - not was it about being pretty, though that helps. It was about how you comported yourself: with a certain individuality, a touch of anti-establishment attitude, and an ineffable distance from the concerns, values and rules of everyday life. It is logically possible to be a parent and cool, but so far no-one you know has managed the trick. (What teenagers call "cool parents" is a different thing.)

Classical Cool can embrace a wide range of people and callings. There are cool mathematicians (Alexander Grothendieck, who eventually quit his teaching job and became a hermit); there are cool physicists (Richard Feynman, who did his physics in a strip club in Rio, picked up air stewardesses and looked like a handsome cowboy); there are cool magazine editors (Anna Wintour), there are even cool programmers (Linus Torvalds, godfather of Linux) and politicians (Winston Churchill). Cool had an unresolved relationship with drugs, and is as austere as a Palestrina Motet. It's restrained, understated, off-beat, non-conformist: it's a sibling of the idea of the Gentleman. Classical cool is masculine. There are classically cool women, but not many. Feminism is not cool, nor is therapy, and anyone who holds intimacy and closeness to be amongst the highest of human values is never going to be cool.

A number of Amazon Marketplace suppliers have second-hand copies Armfield's book and a couple of weeks ago, when I was thinking of those lists, I ordered one. It was as good as I remember it. It was written in 1986. You may not remember 1986. I think I was there at the time, but I don't remember a lot of it. 1987. That was the year that followed it. David Harvey, in his best-seller The Condition of Post-Modernity, identifies 1972 as the year when the old world was replaced by the post-modern world. I will beg to differ. It was 1987. The second summer of love, Ecstasy was actually made of MDMA, Balearic beats finally made sense and the behemoth that is dance / club culture rose from the deep. Classical cool as a cultural force vanished by 1990, the exact symbolic moment being when Kate Moss was chosen for the cover of the Third Summer of Love issue of ID magazine.

Dance culture was the opposite of Classical Cool. It was based on taking a drug that made you love everyone around you. It needed you to dance for hours, mostly like a prat, with unstoppable enthusiasm. It isn't about the Art, it's about the Vibe: the audience don't care how the DJ's get the sound, as long as they get it. Classical Cool was never compatible with day jobs, capitalism or careers and it was pretty much closed to the masses. Dance culture is populist and the Opium of the Office Worker. Cool is the moving camera of Robert Altman: Dance is 3-D and CGI.

Dance / Club Culture doesn't care who you are or what you do, as long as you are prepared to put on tonight's themed costume join in the crowd. All you need for entry is whatever it takes to get past the bouncers. All the nerds making their wonderful dance music of whatever genre are not cool. The Yahhovians I see in my building every day are variously funky, trendy, a couple are hot, but none are cool. Nobody playing Angry Birds has ever been, is now or ever will be cool. Classical Cool is too austere for these times, when people need distraction from the ghastly economic and employment uncertainty they face on a daily basis, as well as the now seeming financial impossibility of their ever living the lifestyle.


If you are under forty-five, read Armfield's book, and you might understand why certain of your older relatives and co-workers can't quite take you seriously. If you are under thirty, the world it describes will be simply quaint. Read it and learn. Then both of you move on to Bernhard Roetzel's Gentleman.