I had my first proper gig poetry reading last night but luckily I didn't have to go very far in the rain - just round the corner from my house to the Lewes Arms pub where, upstairs, a marvelously chaotic poetry group called Lewes Poetry meets on a monthly basis.
In November last year I managed to squeeze one of my poems into an evening crammed with superior and highly experienced poets but last night I had a full section to myself, ten minutes or so in a crowded field of experienced, so-called, performance poets.
There seems to be a divide here between performance poetry - mostly performed in pubs and mostly, so it seems, of a comedic nature with very strict traditional rhythms - and "book poems" which are, maybe sadly, more written through and maybe also, more experimental over the form and the range of its content.
I am new to this game and I enjoyed myself immensely reading the eight poems that I managed to fit in. I came in the second half of the evening after an entertaining and humourous set by well-known Gloucester performance poet, Peter Wyton whose work is masterly in the way it is worn so lightly in his deceptively conversational style.
I felt that my stuff might be way too serious for this company but it was much too late to run away and hide so I went up onto the stage unclear about how well it would go down with those pints of Harveys beer. I just went for it of course as that is all you can do with my poems about death, rebirth and love and I hope they enjoyed it. They were all very kind afterwards even if there was a sense of us and them, or rather me and them, about the evening.
Variety is the spice of life and these kinds of events need to show poetry in all its different forms so I am unapologetic if I brought some "heavy" issues to the party. I also really enjoyed performing and would be sad if formal poetry becomes less tolerated in informal settings like the Lewes Arms than those splendid poems where poetry meets stand-up comedy. There is room for it all up there in that creative space above the pub where poetry can conjure up anything for a willing audience.
This is, I hope, just the beginning of other experiments with performing my work. As much as I like working in that solitary world that is the writer's study, there is an extra thrill to be had when you spin your words to a captive audience. So look out World, the Wolf is looking to find other interesting venues to show off in.
Thanks, by the way, to all of those friends that turned out last night in the rain - I hope you thought it was worth it.
It appears when you listen to politicians and others in conversation that we are all pro-nuclear energy these days.
Well it's so clean isn't it.
No nasty smoke, no digging up the earth or ruining the landscape with those horrid oil mines.
Also, we don't really like those elegant rows of modernist windmills that line our hilltops or marine horizons and we don't have much faith in solar energy in this country where the sun don't always shine.
So, quietly but surely, we the silent, not too bothered about voting, population of these isles have gone round to the nuclear option and dreams of cheap and clean electricity one day running all our computer games and even our cars.
So we turn a blind eye, as most of us have for decades now on that monument to the nuclear future, Sellafield on the beautiful Cumbrian coastline, Britain's high-level nuclear waste storage site run by the government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
It's not a good idea to think about Cumbrian seagulls these days though if you want to sleep peacefully in your nuclear-powered future.
As with many con-tricks, it is often the simplest of things that gives the tricksters away.
Take those Cumbrian seagulls. All they are doing is carrying on in their seagull way - flying around over Europe's most contaminated industrial site and then settling on one of those nice ponds inside the 645 acres of Sellafield's heavily fenced off territory. Apparently this land has become a virtual wildlife reserve, "overrun" in some people's eyes by stray carts, mice and, yes seagulls.
Those small Olympic pool-sized lakes that the seagulls enjoy swimming on are in fact holding ponds and the theory is that the water is a natural barrier to the metal boxes of uranium and plutonium kept underneath.
There is not problem in theory of course unless anything went wrong.
So far in the last ten years there have only been seven safety breaches there of as the chilling phrase goes "actual consequence." So we should be OK, I guess.
Well Sellafield's personable media relations manager was explaining the insignificance of this plague of seagulls. He tells us that there are 350 animal carcasses being stored in the site's industrial freezers because under the rules caracasses found on the site are not allowed to decay naturally because they are considered "putrescent nuclear waste."
You see! It is all perfectly safe in there, my ass! I know you can tell me that these are just sensible precautions but, come on, does that sound safe and clean to you?
I have never understood how nuclear power could ever be considered safe until we know how to get rid of his waste products. Sellafield has about 40,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste on this site, some of it there since the 1950s and which will not be considered safe for hundreds of thousands of years. How reassuring is that?
Nuclear power, let's remember Chernobyl here, is just another catastrophe waiting to happen.
So next time you throw some bread to some friendly seagulls just think that you are possibly feeding a future piece of putrescent nuclear waste and then look a bit closer to what the major political parties now all seem to agree on. Namely that we have no alternative to our future power supplies than nuclear energy.
So I guess it had to happen....tomorrow night I am doing my first full poetry evening and this morning my old friend the common cold turned up. Thanks common cold.
They always go straight to my voice too, colds - funny that.
Should I try some old remedies, I wonder?
Apparently the sure cure is to get into a very hot bath filled with sliced onions and mustard...ouch.
Sweating it out is one of the old-fashioned ways of getting shot of it, I know but onions? I am not sure about that. Maybe a footbath would be enough like they have in Laurel and Hardy films. Why do I think Laurel and Hardy have footbaths am I feverish I wonder?
Maybe I should go to my gym and have a sauna? Nothing like a trip out in the rain, changing into nothing, having the sauna and maybe spending some time in the steam room before coming out again into the rain. Do you think it would work? Maybe not.
I could do one of those steam inhaler things, leaning over a bowl of steaming menthol with a towel over my head.
Or maybe, the best thing would be to listen to all those feed-a-cold gurus. I am definitely hungry but then again I always am. I feel a refrigerator raid coming on - well I am ill.
Some people say you should just go to bed with aspirin and plenty to drink.
I have decided.....go to bed in striped flannel pyjamas with plenty of food and drink....maybe a few aspirins too, if I have to, and an absorbing book to read or even the BBC's wonderful Radio Four or maybe a Mahler of Bruckner symphony on my ipod and a teddy bear.
I am feeling better already at the thought of it. I won't do it though - there is a puritan hiding inside me. It is something to do with Scottish blood - dammit.
Oh well, an aspirin and a glass of water it is then. Cheers!
THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM ***** The Medieval and Renaissance Galleries
The spectacular new galleries at the grand old V & A are an essential view for anyone interested in, well, almost anything. Ten years in the making, these new galleries opened in December last year and now must be one of London's most impressive venues.
They say:
'This spectacular display will draw you back again and again' The Times
'A triumph' The Daily Telegraph
Wolfie says:
Fans of the National Gallery's Sainsbury's Wing with its Medieval and Renaissance paintings are now spoiled by a second institution in the nation's capital to celebrate in rich detail the glories of art betrween the end of the Roman Empire until the full flowering of the European Renaissance
If you think that a museum display of art and architecture from the this period of over a thossand years might be a bit on the dull side then you should think again.
The Museum has resigned its southwest wing and created ten new galleries dedicated a strikingly modern series of spaces to show their Medieval and Renaissance collection of more than 1,800 works of art from exquisitely tiny enameled jewellry
to the truly gigantic like this magnificently carved house frontage from a 17th Century London street.
or the equally impressive three-storey Dutch staircase which, like the London house, is given almost modern art treatment as it stands abandoned but vividly lit in the galleries glass ceilinged courtyard.
The works or art are, of course, magnificent but they gain an added dimension in the beautiful setting where light and space allow individual items to breath and to often take on a new significance after being cleaned up and removed from more familiar museum dusty dark settings.
Brilliantly lit glass cases allow details of carving on gold, ivory and ceramic to shine out at us when we get right up close and yet we can also experience a similar intimacy with large objects too. Like the complete monumental 14th. and 15th. Century altars and the wonderful carved Gothic pulpit pillars which dwarf the visitor and yet every detail can be seen with ease.
There is room too to allow you to think, at times, that you are in fact in a medieval Italian church with whole sections of original churches reassembled with altars, tombs and even walls placed in themed groupings.
Then you are taken out of that atmosphere into brilliantly lit abstraction where this plain but powerful wooden crucifix can renew its stark message free from ecclesiastical trappings.
We are in the world of the ecclesiatical for some of the time, of course but the exhibition is not restricted to the legacy of the princes of the church. Palatial, civic, military and domestic art is there in abundance and there is, in fact, much too much here to see in one visit. You could spend an entire trip, for instance, just looking at the detail in this massive wall tapestry with its vibrant scenes of bear and boar hunting.
The use of space, lighting and design is worth a visit itself but, importantly, the labelling too has cleverly free from bombast. It is clear and intelligible to anyone without previous knowledge of this golden period of European art and it also avoids accusations of irritating dumbing down.
The masterly Perugino altar piece of the Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Francis comes across as if it was newly painted without any of the over-awed comentaries that some other museums inflict on first time viewers. We are encouraged to enjoy each piece without any hint of elitist cultural baggage.
Therefore this beautiful piece of Medieval German stained glass, back-lit and set into a plain wall loses its churchy connotations and becomes a work of art in its own right so that we can sympathise with Moses' sore feet when God appears to him from that Burning Bush.
You too might have sore feet if you do the whole tour in one go but I solved that problem by going on from the Museum to Gessler's, an excellent Polish restaurant just down the road for a long lingering lunch of stewed goose stomach, breaded pork and a cream cheese pancake with cranberries with an excellent red Polish wine. Delicious - no need to eat for a week now.
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Saoirse Ronan, Michael Imperioli Director: Peter Jackson Running Time:135 minutes
Fourteen year old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is raped and murdered and views the consequences of this brutal act on her family from some a kind of purgatory unable to move on until things are cleared up on Earth.
They say:
"The Lovely Bones does a fantastic job with revered, complex source material. As terrific on terra firma as it is audacious in its astral plane, it is doubtful we’ll see a more imaginative, courageous film in 2010". Empire Magazine
"The Lovely Bones is hampered by Wahlberg’s inability to convey genuine emotion". Liverpool Echo
"The Lovely Bones is [Jackson's] most mature, self-assured and visually dazzling release". The Sun
"You wanna know what purgatory feels like? Sit through all two-plus hours of this lurid mush and you'll have a fair idea". News of the World
Wolfie says:
Alice Siebold's 2002 novel was lauded, as they say, by the critics and bought in massive quantities by the general public making it one of the great success stories of the decade. It tackled a powerful and difficult theme with imagination and set itself the ambitious target of coming to a degree of mystical as well as philosophical understanding of the consequences of bereavement with a challenging reinterpretation of life and death from a fourteen year's perspective.
"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone".
The fourteen year old in question, the plucky, quirky and charming Susie Salmon is played quite superlatively by Saoirse Ronan who never puts a foot wrong in this poignant tale of a promising and zestful life cut short. Her Susie, on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, is quite simply the best thing on screen for the whole 135 minutes and there are, believe it or not, some other good things too.
It is still a pity though that her talent is the main redeeming feature in this, Peter Jackson's latest adventure in the marriage of special effects and the spectacular countryside of his native New Zealand. I wondered at times if he would create a similar pastel-shaded Tolkienesque fantasy-world around a remake of Raging Bull. It is, as before with this director, a question of more is less.
He is of course masterly in many ways. The pace, suspense and visual ambition is impressive and he is served brilliantly by his cameraman, editor and design team but the central performance apart, there are few performances from the rest of the cast which rise above the level of pop video.
Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz as the bereaved parents star in innumerable little cameo moments where they walk through predictable situations without any attempt at depth. We feel that little Susie had a lot more insight into their characters than we are ever shown here.
Similarly, Susan Sarandon has fun in the role of the aging hippie grandma with her capacity for whiskey and straight-talk but she is putting on a party piece and we are never allowed to see beneath her caricature.
Stanley Tucci, as the creepy murderer, is the only actor, apart from Saoirse Ronan, whose character gives us pause for thought and his scenes consistently work best in the hands of the director.
Jackson has all the skills for the terrestrial side of the film but it is when we go to what we are told is a half-way world between Heaven and Earth, that things start to get stodgy and more than a little bit sugary as Peter Jackson lets his actually rather literal imagination go wild. This purgatory is the landscape from Lord of the Rings on acid and, apart, of course from its beauty, which is undeniable and the skill of the special effects which is inevitable in a Jackson movie, it shows maybe less originality than most fourteen years' visions of Heaven and gives us more than the odd moment of "pass the sick bucket". Is it rude to think that maybe one day Mr Jackson might actually grow up?
So, if you are expecting the film to fulfill Alice Siebold' s intentions, as quoted above, think again. We never care enough about the relationships between the members of Susie's family enough to see any of those "connections" that the novel explores. Mr Jackson lets his fancy footwork get in the way too much so the best that we can do is to mourn for little Susie ourselves and to admire the work of the very talented Saoirse Ronan and, of course, the thousands of brilliant technicians who work regularly with Mr Jackson.
Let us pray though that if we do ever wake up in Heaven or Hell that it isn't straight out of Peter Jackson's limited larder of visual tricks. How many holidays in New Zealand can a chap endure? I still think King Kong was his best movie - he is good at shallow and at fun but when he tries deep he comes over as, well, a fourteen year old.
I was in London's trendy Whitechapel district last night, just down the road from the Whitechapel Art Gallery at the Toynebee Studios' cool and friendly Arts Bar and Cafe where I arrived late, after a misguided set of directions from a friendly drunken lady with a mouth fool of hamburger who asked me for £2 in exchange for some well meant misdirections. Luckily I was too mean to part with my money and she was too nice to take offense when I walked off in the opposite direction. The friendly policeman was more accurate but, in the end, I was treated royally when I was rescued by Gareth, one of the actors from White Rabbit, the theatre company who were rash enough to want to perform one of my short stories.
I was the last to arrive, naturally, and I walked into a sold-out house which meant, I would guess, well over a hundred people sitting round small tables with cake stands laden with colourfully iced cakes and biscuits.
White Rabbit is a theatre group founded by the impressively pink haired and clad Bernadette Russell who was one of three actors performing a series of short stories including one of my own, Midnight Snack which was apparently selected from an entry of 80 submitted works. It felt good to have been just one of seven chosen from so many. Their monthly show is called Are You Sitting Comfortably? and it is well worth you going along if you are ever in London.
It was good too just being a part of this lively and highly professional event where each story was treated with real respect by the readers who had obviously put thought and imagination into each text. They held the audience enrapt and amused for two hours in the great story-telling tradition where all ears are focused on the power of the human voice. Whether we know it or not, we all love being read to.
My story was performed near the end of the evening by Gareth Brierley, not only a fine actor but also my rescuer from the streets of London.
I have read this story a couple of times, on-line and once to my very enthusiastic neighbours over dinner last weekend (they are very supportive people and I love them dearly) and I did pretty well on both occasions, I thought. I am not an actor but I did know what I had written so I thought I knew how it should sound. Hearing Gareth reading my words was an inspiration. He had obviously really concentrated on the meaning of every word as well as finding every possible nuance and effect. We can be guilty of under-estimating the craft of acting, these three actors last night demonstrated just how much work goes into making a text come alive.
I am not making any claims about the quality of my writing but I like mixing humour, irony and sadness and, even though I never spoke to Gareth about interpretation before his performance, he found every iota of meaning in my text and more besides. I was particularly excited by the way he managed to get all the laughs whilst holding the central poignant core to the tale. When writing alone in a small room at the top of the house, I have no idea how a reader will react, last night it was wonderful watching an audience intent on every word and laughing at every ironic aside. They also went quiet when the mood switched to pathos. I owe Gareth Brierley a lot for this.
Afterwards, the audience lingered and chatted over more than a few beers and wolfiewolfgang met his first audience, a lively, intelligent and very London mix of trendy enthusiasts mostly in their twenties and thirties. As an incurable show-off, it was great but there was an important lesson here for the Wolf. Fun though it was talking to these folk, there is something even more satisfying than taking centre stage, I found out, and that is when a White Rabbit speaks with your voice and runs with it.
Sometimes taking a back seat can be very comfortable indeed.
Here in England our distinguished department store Harrods, known for its posh clientele and for its annoying owner Al Fayed, has hit the headlines in the British press for turning away a bunch of young lads in tracksuits. Apparently they were also wearing trainers and some of them, Heaven help us, were even wearing baseball caps.
Harrods' spokesman stumbled over his excuses today but they apparently broke the store's rigid dress code and also the doorman turned them away apparently because there was a whole team of them and they looked "too big and suspicious."
This team of lads were in fact a team, as in football team, there would have been a clue in their matching tracksuits - they were members of Shaktar Donetsk Football Club, winners of the UEFA Cup and star players from the Ukraine whose individual salaries are somewhere in the region of £2 million a year and their shopping power is immense.
They were in London to play football against the London team Fulham whose most famous supporter is that same irritating man, Mr. Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods. Surely even this overbearing man could not have known who those young men were - if he had banned them intentionally to put them off their game then I would almost admire the man but no, the banning is just another example of that unpleasant mix still part of English society - snobbery and prejudice.
We are still not comfortable with the idea that young men in tracksuits might just be ordinary people not intent on shop-lifting, acts of terrorism or even casual hooliganism. These young men in particular were there to buy presents for their family and friends which they managed to do at another albeit less famous store.
I for one hope that they beat Fulham now so I have just joined their fan club.
Maybe we should get a group together and start a fashion for mass shopping in tracksuits. After-all shopping is a serious business - well worth getting into training for - and tracksuits would free up our movements for those infamous Harrods sales scrambles.
I went to the eye hospital yesterday to see the consultant about my double vision and found out that I will probably need to have an operation on my eyes next - yay! what fun. I go back in March to find out more.
I am still in recovery mode after feeling bad yesterday and can't fully wake up so I will be brief in telling you about the great woman who is my new eye consultant until another time.
She put me through a variety of examinations with drops in my eyes that made my pupils weirdly large and after probing and shining lights into them and making me roll my eyes in every possible direction, she concluded that I have got a problem with eye movement which might get resolved surgically or by a new lens prescription for my glasses.
She showed me all my brain scan photos too including the latest one, done in October, which I hadn't seen before. It was good to see that the haemorrhage had shrunk but a bit tough to see that is still there - like an old enemy still haunting me.
It was also a shock to see the original brain scan with its star burst of blood - I am lucky to be alive so I am not going to grumble.
I am not squeamish about seeing inside the human body and I was really interested to see these scans from different stages of my recovery but it was odd then that I still find it traumatic to see the haemorrhage again. It has been my companion for so long now that I find it difficult being objective about looking at it.
Maybe, when I get my next MRI brain scan in the Spring, that sinister circle of blood will have gone all together.
I hope so but I can still feel it there on the left side of my head reminding me that I still have to be careful. My annoying visual problems don't seem quite so bad in comparison.
That old overwhelming feeling of tiredness makes me stop writing this today. I am off for a lie down.
OK, I know it is raining but I have had a very sociable weekend being entertained by good friends who I find easy to talk to and whom I really like.
An old friend came to stay and he too was on good form.
Then yesterday I had my last kung fu lesson before my instructor flew off to China for a few weeks with some of my other martial arts friends.
On Thursday this week a theatre company called Are You Sitting Comfortably? are performing one of my short stories in London and the following Thursday I shall be doing my first proper poetry reading here in my home town of Lewes.
So things are good and I have many reasons to be cheerful.
The trouble is that I have still not recovered as much as I hoped from that damnable brain haemorrhage so whenever I throw myself back into life with any real energy, illness comes back to haunt me and I get overwhelmed by tiredness in a way that people without brain injury can never appreciate.
I am off to the Eye Hospital shortly about my still recurring double vision and so that now all too familiar hospital environment is about to encircle me again.
So I think of Ian Dury at times like these and tell myself to snap out of it....Ian Dury was much more inspiring than Julie Andrews and her "Favourite Things" - he knew that being cheerful takes a bit of muscle. Hey, I am OK now!
Starring: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore Directed by Tom Ford
It is 1962 and Jim (Matthew Goode), George's partner of sixteen years, is killed in a motor accident. That was two months ago but today George (Colin Firth), a university professor, is going to do something about it helped along by his boozey friend Charley (Julianne Moore) and an attentive and handsome young student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult). Christopher Isherwood's novel hits the screen with real style.
They say:
"Not only does it contain Colin Firth’s finest screen performance to date, but it was directed by tyro filmmaker Tom Ford (the fashion designer and former Gucci executive) with the sort of assurance one associates with Citizen Kane". Kansas City Star
"A Single Man may at times look as carefully arranged as a fashion magazine spread, but Ford has made an elegant, compassionate movie about the broken heart beneath one tailored suit". Capital Times
"For the most part, this is impeccably composed, astonishingly self-assured debut film-making. A Single Man is patently a labour of love, and you can feel Ford’s commitment to the content in every frame". Empire
"Fashion designer Tom Ford gets it spectacularly right first time round in his directorial debut". Screen International
Wolfie says:
It's not fair really. First the man becomes Gucci's greatest designer, then he becomes design god and just when you would have thought he has done enough, he comes out with his first feature film and it is a winner too.
It is not surprizing that Ford manages to hit every 1962 design button dead centre or that his film is a thing of beauty but it is much more than that - it is an extraordinary achievement on every level.
The melancholy mood of this painful day in the bereaved life of reserved English professor, George (Colin Firth) is sustained without sinking into maudlin indulgence and manages to find much ironic and dry humour even in moments of deepest adversity. Tom Ford should have been directing films years ago.
He is helped, of course, by what must be Colin Firth's best performance to date as the repressed, secretive and melancholy academic whose heart is breaking violently but silently. Firth's face, with its pained stiff upper lip dominates the screen and tells us more than any extended dialogue could ever do. The extended scene when he receives the news over the telephone is heart-breakingly powerful achieved with the minimum of histrionics and a sure touch with the simplest of camera-work. Students of cinema should see the film for this scene alone.
Julianne Moore is on cracking form too as George's unhappy, unlucky gin-loving friend Charley with limited time on the screen she still manages to put in a star performance allowing us to smell the gin on her breath and the pain in her heart as she totters more and more out of control.
Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult too do all that is expected of them with real screen presence but the movie is Colin Firth's and his Oscar nomination is the least he deserves for this brave and emotional portrait that does Christopher Isherwood's novel proud.
I feel that I am in the seat of power now after the fourteen months since I started this website.
It has been hugely enjoyable and at times quite demanding to keep the daily blogs going without pause and I have been amazed by the number of loyal readers who have followed me in this adventure.
One of the site's greatest helpers though has been my friend Will who has been my adviser and guide through so many stages in getting this on the air. I came on-line as an I.T. virgin and I have, to be honest, always struggled with the technical side of running this show - up until now that is.
Finally and triumphantly Will has broken through into the density that is my computer brain and now I can do all the things that anyone running a website needs to do - I don't mean I understand how it works but I know what to do as the bishop said to the actress.
My frustration has been focused on my inability to fill those chapter headings that you can see at the top of your screens but, as from today, they are open for your inspection because I have nearly brought them all up to date with articles covering the several main points of interest in my blogging life. I am hoping now that you out there will take a look and get into the habit of browsing up there.
"Music & Arts" now has pieces that I have written about my main passion in life and you will find a varied selection of topics close to my heart.
"Film Reviews" is pretty self-evident and has been running for some time now with reviews of the latest films from the Wolf's perspective. Monday's are the film review blog days - at least for now whilst so many good films are being released at this time of year.
"Photography" has been lying empty since the sight started but now I have begun to fill it. First up are some of my photographs taken in China in 2008 and my first experiments with my shiny new digital camera. Many more pictures are to follow.
"Martial Arts" has pieces about my main pastime: Kung Fu and includes an account of my visit to China in February 2008 when I studied under two Kung Fu masters. There are also acounts of my time at the regular Kung Fu summer camps run by my club but also some pieces on how Kung Fu has helped me in my physical and mental recovery from serious illness.
"Home & Garden" has monthly reports on another of my passions - gardening. I built a new garden here in 2008 and I have been following its' progress in words and pictures ever since. This section also includes pieces on my home town of Lewes and the surrounding Sussex countryside. You will tell from looking around in this chapter that I am a lucky guy top live in such a great part of the World. Come up and see me some time.
"Health" is the chapter where I have been documenting my recovery from a major brain haemorrhage which changed my life on 30th. October 2008. I have tried to show others just what it is like to suffer traumatic brain injury and just how slow recovery can be even for those as lucky as myself who has survived with most of my bits intact.
"Miscellaneous" is just that. It has pieces which might still entertain you from a wide range of topics - variety is the theme for the whole of this website so look up MISC if you want to relax.
"Contact Me" means what it says too - I would love to hear your views and opinions either in the comments section below each entry and at the bottom of each chapter section or by clicking on Contact Me and sending me an email.
I am nearly there - nearly up-to-date with the entries in these chapters but already there is a lot up there for you to read.
Meanwhile, here in the driving seat, I can now develop new ideas for wolfiewolfgang.com and bring them myself to fruition.
Thanks Will for getting me here and thank you all for continuing to read.
Whilst here in Britain the Church of England's General Synod was struggling to find a compromise between its homophobic, traditionalist, misogynist, evangelical, anglo-catholic and liberal factions over issues that the rest of us had stopped worrying about years ago, Michelle Obama held a party at The White House to celebrate the civil rights movement that helped to make her husband the first black American president.
Meanwhile today we can celebrate the 20th. anniversary of the release from prison in South Africa of Nelson Mandela.
None of us are perfect and neither is the World but, the Church of England apart, we can look society in the face today, certainly in our liberal developed and maybe more than slightly self-satisfied Western democracies and think that the times really are a-changin'.
So I am ignoring all the inter-family friction and the political difficulties in South Africa that are reputedly making Mr Mandela's final years less than joyful just as I am trying to ignore the potentially destructive anti-Obama movement in the States and the hysterical out-pouring of the evangelical Christians.
There was an opinion poll in Britain last month which showed that even if our politics is moving gently to the right in this country then at least our social attitudes have liberalised to a significant degree over the last decade.
So when a venerable old grey-haired man stood there in the White House the other day strumming his guitar and singing The Times They Are a-Changin' in front of Barrack and Michelle Obama, I wanted to sing along with him.
Bob Dylan too is not a saint but it might be true to think of him as a prophet when listening again to those songs of over 40 years ago when he seemed like a voice crying in the wilderness.
That thing known as the General Synod is in session this week but do many of us really care?
No is the short answer.
The Church of England's "parliament" is in session and they are in a right old state with the Archbishop of Canterbury trying bravely to sort it out. International Anglicanism is at risk of splitting and even the English Church is riven down the centre. Anglicanism, by the way, is really the good old Church of England plus other foreign churches that historically went along with the general ideas exposed by the C of E.
What those ideas were has always been a bit of a problem because it has survived as a strange muddle of doctrines that go back to its origins as a breakaway movement from the Roman Catholic Church when, in the 16th. Century, King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife and marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn.
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
So loads of different ideas got included in the new organization - old Catholic beliefs and trendy new Protestant ones were mingled together into something that down the centuries turned into a middle-of-the-road and very nice respectable part of the Establishment which most English people were happy to claim non-committal allegiance to on their passports and at their weddings, christening and funerals.
In England, it was non-controversial, sensible and rather dull to most of our eyes. More recently, in ecclesiastical terms at least, say in the last 100 years, it has gradually lost even that cozy relevance to most people's lives.
It is different overseas especially in Africa where it is vibrant and energetically evangelical and in the United States where it has moved with the times and now embraces what used to be seen as wrong - female and gay priests and now even bishops.
Well, England bumped along trying to ignore most of this until the last few decades where it became obvious that this broad union of middle-of-the road Christians was finally falling apart.
If most people don't go to church and also think that the Church of England, in particular, has lost its vision of society, those remaining members seem to have decided to rock the boat and finally stand up for what they really believe in and what they really disapprove of.
That sounds fair enough to me. After-all religious freedom has been fought and died for over the centuries and I would much rather live peaceably with my neighbours no matter what turns them on. They can worship tins of custard as far as I am concerned.
A tin of custard
So these Anglicans have been nailing their beliefs to the Archbishop's door. First it was women priests - you either loved them or hated them - and in the end the church went for women. Now it is time for some of these women to become Bishops and the fighting has started all over again.
A woman priest
A similar row erupted when the United States ordained an openly gay bishop.
Now even though society as a whole think women should be equal to men and homosexuals should have equal rights too, some people in the Church don't agree. It all comes down to what we think those early Christians believed.
The Bible has a passage in it, in Deuteronmy, where it warns men, amongst other things, not to waste their seed on the sand or to waste it on other guys either. This has led to the disapproval of all sorts of sexual habits which mostly don't concern us non-desert people, when we meet on the street.
A gay priest
We were also taught that all our bishops are ordained by other bishops in an unbroken line going back to St. Peter who was ordained, of course by Jesus himself. So, some people say, you can't have women priests or bishops because ordained Christians have to be male just like the original disciples. Some people also hold that the Communion, or Mass, is handing out Jesus' body through the ministrations of the male body of the priest making a female body somehow inappropriate.
The ordination of priests
If this was a discussion down the pub we would all probably change the subject pretty rapidly and order another drink but the General Synod is taking it all very seriously indeed.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, made a passionate speech about this yesterday. He is pleading for the members of his communion to come together and sink their diferences in the interests of Anglican unity.
He is a nice man, an intelligent man and a pious man, no doubt. He has a God-awful job too.
How can these people sink their differences.....some of them would go to the wall rather than take communion from a woman and others believe that homosexuals will burn in Hell and certainly shouldn't be preaching to them from the pulpit. We are not talking compromise here.
Maybe, a few people will decide that the Anglican Communion is worth preserving at any price - even if no one within it can say what they believe in. I suspect, however, that time has been called on this institution and that its many diverse sub-groupings should go out on their own and believe in whatever they want to believe in.
I for one would like us, as a nation, to keep all those lovely churches and cathedrals, the beautiful Cranmer Book of Common Prayer, the sonorous King James Bible, sung Evensong and those Nine Lessons and Carols. They are much too beautiful to have all those grumpy Anglican people fighting over and messing up.
The Choir of King's College, Cambridge
So let's leave the debate behind and listen to the king's choir singing choral evensong.
What's so special about a plate of potatoes? you may well ask. They do look pretty unglamourous there under the skylight window in my kitchen but they are a symbol of the new year for me.
These are Jersey Royals - well I don't live in Jersey so I can't call them that - they are International Kidneys apparently here in England. I am debating whether they should be up-ended for better results because this morning I started the potato chitting season where I am leaving these humble looking spuds out in the light for them to form shoots before p;lanting them out in a plastic planter system in my tiny back yard.
I am joining the burgeoning Spring here in Lewes in Sussex, England and my mind has turned to growing fruit and vegetables in a minute space that offers small garden gardeners just enough room for some harvesting fun over the Summer and Autumn.
Already this week I have planted a ferociously thorned gooseberry bush which I hope will harvest a large crop of red gooseberries called Whinhams Industry.
Packets of half-hardy annual seeds have arrived too so it will soon be time to start up the propagator and if that is not a moment of hopeful anticipation I am not sure what is.
It is easy at this time of year to see the bad things out there in the garden on a cold morning when there is the promise of a smattering of snow. Do I look at that jungle of dead clematis branches that are demanding to be pruned before February is over or do I admire the camellia on the other side of my paved courtyard which has already opened its first dramatically red bloom?
My eye is, in fact still drawn to those primroses flowering in their tubs at the end there and recently tidied up for their moment of glory.
Actually I like the dead branches and stems from last year - I keep them on to protect the plants through the winter and then enjoy myself with the secateurs as I clear them all away just when the garden is bursting with new growth. I love that moment when everything out there is crisp and clean and so I will be doing my big February bed weeding session too this week. If I am thorough now I will have less weeding to do for the rest of the year and the beds will be clean before I cover them in compost to get the climbing roses started.
The garden proper is up a flight of steps which is sprouting periwinkle and winter-flowering jasmin and the hardy remains of the passion flower fruits. Before going up there it is easy to forget the small back yard which is home to the dustbin and the logs but which has also got more and more crowded with pots which produced raspberries, strawberries and tomatoes in abundance last year and to which I am now hoping to add gooseberries, potatoes and peas.
I have also ordered a cooking apple espalier tree for that under-used wall - it will be the old favourite variety Bramley Seedling. It will be really good fun for a pruning addict like me to bully it into shape. It will have a germinating partner too. I have ordered a dwarf eating apple tree from the same nursery and it will sit in a pot down there with its more vigorous cousin.
The terracotta pots have Summer and Autumn Raspberries and my strawberry pot along with the tomoato pots which are currently planted with tulips and croci.
There is a small raised bed which I denuded of its scraggly and haphazardly planted contents last year and which has been the centre of attention for the local cats who see it as a perfectly prepared and rather luxurious cat litter. Energetic cat-attacks with my Japanese water gun hads ended their visits and the bed is now ready for planting.
In the upper garden there are encouraging shoots on the Goji berry bush which I hope will survive the still cold February climate so if all goes to plan there will be just enough produce in this little garden to keep me interested and to mark the passing seasons with a few culinary treats.
The Goji leaves are just the first of many as now everything is on the move out there. The climbing roses, the cherry tree and the rhododendron luteum are all about to burst their buds
and you don't have to look very far already for those early flowering bulbs. The snowdrops have made it first but all around them are profusions of thrusting green shoots from a number of different species of winter flowering bulbs which have always been a special part of the gardening year for me. I like to have something in bloom every month of the year even in a tiny garden like this one.
Sometimes I think those early daffodil shoots are just as attractive as the flowers themselves.
One of the attractions of a small garden is that everything is close to hand and as they grow, each plant shares its privacy with the lucky person who is nurturing them. Every plant has to earn its place in combination with its neighbours. The winter flowering Jasmine buds already look fine next to the periwinkle's glossy new leaf growth which line those steps up into the main garden. Jasminum nudiflorum, to give it its proper and, I always think slightly racy name, will flower and then supply this wall with it a rich green background for some less leafy shrubs.
Another plant that is close to hand is the wonderful Helleboris orientalis, or the Easter Rose as it is sometimes called. How perfect is this flower for so early a time in the year?
I have no need to pine for garden flowers though as those primroses keep up their subtly radiant show of delicate yellow from December through to the Spring. They really do earn their keep.
All this sense of hope started with that plate of potatoes. I hope all of you, even if you only have a very small space can get some simple pleasures like I do too from just growing things.
I had my first proper gig poetry reading last night but luckily I didn't have to go very far in the rain - just round the corner from my house to the Lewes Arms pub where, upstairs, a marvelously chaotic poetry group called Lewes Poetry meets on a monthly basis.
