Hidden in the woods

Northcliffe Park has a large area of woodland. A lot of the trees are oaks, which tend to have wonderfully twisted shapes. There's abundant wildlife there too - squirrels, birds and even deer if you're lucky and quiet enough to spot them. Lately, other interesting things have appeared...

There is this 'Sound Horn', a curious wooden cone, which invites you to sit in it to hear the sounds of the forest, amplified. My hearing needs more than amplification (!) so I can't vouch for its effect but it's a fascinating idea.  

The horn has been placed there by NEET - Northcliffe Environmental Enterprises Team. They work at the Northcliffe allotments to enable people with learning difficulties to live inclusive and fulfilling lives, growing vegetables and plants for sale, doing woodwork and running a café there. They have also been instrumental in getting this willow arch erected - part, it seems, of an intended arts trail through the woodland. 

The 'den' apparently started life during the COVID lockdown, people adding branches to it as they took walks, symbolising hope and connection during that very strange time. 

It being near Halloween, there were a few ghoulish additions! 

In the allotments, a couple of rather amusing 'scarecrows':

 

The Big Sing

Our Shipley Churches Together wanted to commemorate Bradford's City of Culture year, and decided on an event called 'The Big Sing'. Hosted in Saltaire's beautiful United Reformed Church, we spent an afternoon and evening enjoying praising God through many wonderful songs and hymns of worship. 

The event started with a recital by members of Hallroyd Brass Band, who also happen to be celebrating their 80th anniversary, founded at Hallroyd Methodist Church in 1945. That was followed by a lively session of singing by our primary school children, with Shipley singer-songwriter John Froud, who regularly goes into schools to lead assemblies and workshops. 

There was organ music too, making use of the URC's pipe organ, installed in 1890, which occupies pride of place at the front of this 'Cathedral of Congregationalism'. 

My own church, St Peter's Shipley, then led us in 'Christian songs through the decades', starting with one of my personal favourites 'How Great Thou Art', which actually has a long history beginning as a Swedish poem from the 1880s. It was heard in Ukraine in the 1930s, having been put to music, then translated into English and published in 1949. It became popular here and in the USA in the 1950s, thanks to the evangelist Billy Graham. It's a wonderful song. 'Shine Jesus Shine' (Graham Kendrick) from the 1980s is a belter of a feel-good song, as is 'My Jesus, My Saviour' by the Australian Darlene Zschech written in 1993. Another of my personal favourites is 'In Christ Alone', that wonderful encapsulation of the Gospel - the good news of Christ - with words by Stuart Townend (a Yorkshire lad) and music by Keith Getty. 

In the evening there was a celebration of church music with strong links to Bradford and this part of Yorkshire. There's a surprising richness of history there, and the minister of Shipley Baptist Church, Keith Jones, guided us through it - dressed in very appropriate attire for the wonderful setting we were in, and with all the clarity and gravitas that one might have expected from a Victorian pastor.

All in all, a very good 'do'. 

 

Out and about in Saltaire

Out and about in Saltaire - trees rapidly turning autumnal and beginning to drop their leaves. (The sound of leaf blowers is everywhere! Such noisy contraptions.)

The stretch of Victoria Road outside the Victoria Hall was closed to traffic when I walked down. They are filming again but there wasn't a lot to see... some classic cars, a van full of props...   

and the Victoria Hall unaccountably now 'Sowerby Bridge Town Hall'. (I felt quite affronted!) Sowerby Bridge is a town in neighbouring Calderdale and did in fact have its own Town Hall at one time, nothing like as grand. I didn't see any filming going on, though it looked as though they might have been within the Victoria Hall itself. I gather they are filming 'Ink', a major film about Rupert Murdoch's media empire, starring Guy Pearce and Jack O'Connell and directed by Danny Boyle. (Wonderfully creative chap, who masterminded the fabulous 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony.)

 

Royal Yacht Britannia #4

Edinburgh #14

It's said that the Queen's favourite spot was the Sun Lounge, teak lined and with large picture windows providing wide views of the deck and beyond. She often used to take breakfast or afternoon tea in here. It offered privacy from the rest of the ship, with a well-stocked bar, and the family congregated here to relax, listen to music and play board games. 

(Above it was another deck where the family used to play deck games. That's now covered by the Visitors' Tearoom.) 

Behind the sun lounge are the main bedrooms. Again, you can't go into them but they have had viewing windows inserted into the walls. The Queen and Prince Philip had separate but interconnected rooms, both ensuite. The Queen's was prettily furnished with floral fabrics, plenty of wardrobes, a large dressing table and a writing desk. The embroidered silk panel above the bed was specially commissioned. 

The Duke of Edinburgh's bedroom was rather more sombrely decorated to suit his personal taste. No lacy pillowcases here! 

Across the hallway, the rooms used to be a nursery suite when the royal children were small, but then this room became 'The Honeymoon Suite'. The only double bed on the yacht was apparently brought in when Charles and Diana had their honeymoon on Britannia. There are sixteen other bedrooms on the decks below, used by the royal family and other guests, along with a VIP suite - two ensuite bedrooms and a sitting room - used by the most senior guests, including President and Mrs Clinton in 1994. 

It was all rather fabulous and I thoroughly enjoyed my tour, followed by tea in the Visitors' Tearoom - proper leaf tea served in a silver teapot, with a tea strainer and china cup. I can quite understand why, during the decommissioning ceremony for the Yacht, the Queen was seen to shed tears. It was clearly a very special place for her, especially when the family took their annual cruise around the Scottish Islands. A place to relax, cosy and comfortable, away from the glare of publicity.  

That's the end of my Edinburgh photos. Hope you enjoyed them. 

Royal Yacht Britannia #3

Edinburgh #13

In contrast to the cramped crew quarters, the State Apartments on the rear decks were bright, light and airy. The comfortably furnished Drawing Room served as a place for the royal family to relax and also as a reception room for official functions. When the doors between it and its Anteroom and the State Dining Room were opened up, it could accommodate 250 guests. The baby grand piano is firmly bolted to the deck. A Royal Marine band member would sometimes play softly in the background, as people relaxed after dinner. It's also said to have been played by various members of the family, and by Noel Coward at one point.

The elegant staircase leads up to the bedrooms on the upper deck. (There are also lifts.) On either side of the staircase were two offices, one for the Queen (below) and the other for Prince Philip. You couldn't go into them but viewing windows have been cut into the walls. Even when on state visits and on holiday, the Queen was still expected to work on official papers. 

Beyond the offices, the State Dining Room was where the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh hosted their guests. Sir Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Rajiv Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, the Reagans and Boris Yeltsin are some of the powerful figures who've been invited here. Dinners were meticulously planned. It took three hours to set the places, with the position of each piece of cutlery carefully measured with a ruler! 

All the clocks on board Britannia are now set to one minute past three, the moment when Her Majesty stepped off the Yacht for the last time. 

 

Royal Yacht Britannia #2

Edinburgh #12

The tour of the Royal Yacht was very comprehensive and there was a lot to take in. It was powered by steam turbine engines running on fuel oil, so the engine rooms were full of complicated machinery but it was very, very clean.

Crew quarters were all below decks. It wouldn't do to be claustrophobic! But it was all smart and bright and rather mid-century in style. The Officers' Wardroom was where the senior crew ate. Dinner in the evenings was a formal affair, in uniform. One of them would begin by saying Grace (which had to be in rhyme!) and dinner ended with a formal toast to the Queen, when the Marine band would play the National Anthem.

The Wardroom Anteroom was where they'd relax and unwind, a sort of gentleman's club afloat, out of bounds to the junior crew. They'd watch TV, listen to the radio, play games and take part in fiercely contested quizzes. The 'wombat' on the ceiling fan was a sort of game of tennis, with two teams, a lot of noise and much batting about of the poor stuffie. 

You can perhaps spot the wooden monkey in the cabinet. No Officer was allowed to touch him and yet every day he mysteriously appeared in a different place. 

There were other bars and messes where the junior crew members relaxed and took their meals. The ship had two galleys where meals were prepared for the crew, and a separate Royal Galley staffed by chefs from Buckingham Palace when the Queen was onboard. 

The sleeping quarters were - to my eyes - unbelievably cramped, with very little headroom. Given that the crew were obliged to change uniforms numerous times a day, it must have been bedlam. On the website it says the crew slept in hammocks until 1973, the last Royal Navy ship to do so! 

The yacht had a huge laundry, which apparently got very hot, especially when in the Tropics. It had a well equipped sick bay and operating theatre, staffed by a Naval Medical Officer, a nurse and a physiotherapist. The Queen was attended by her own Royal Surgeon. 

It also had a shop - a NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute shop) - and its own tiny Post Office.

Given that many of the crew chose to spend their whole careers on the ship, it must have had its compensations, but it sounded to me like a hard and busy life. 

'When a sailor became a Royal Yachtsman on Britannia, he entered a world quite unlike any other in the Royal Navy. His orders were nothing less than to 'strive daily for perfection'. Each man was hand-picked to meet the very highest standards, and each and every one chose this special ship for the honour and privilege of serving Queen and country.'

Royal Yacht Britannia #1

Edinburgh #11

The other treat I promised myself when I was in Edinburgh was a tour of the Royal Yacht Britannia, now moored in Leith Docks. It was HM Queen Elizabeth II's private yacht, from its launch in 1953 just before her coronation to its retirement in 1997. 'It provided the perfect royal residence for glittering state visits, official receptions, royal honeymoons and relaxing family holidays. For Great Britain, it was a majestic symbol of the Commonwealth and a proud ambassador generating billions of pounds in trade deals. For the Royal Family and 220 dedicated crew of Royal Yachtsmen (Yotties), it was home.' It travelled more than a million nautical miles in its 44 years of service. It's now in the care of a trust and is a major visitor attraction. 

The only part that is not original is the glass structure on the top deck, which has been added as a restaurant and tea room for tour visitors. 

I hadn't realised that you can't really see the ship from the dockside. You'll have to be content with a photo of a photo (above top) and the little bit you can see from the accessible quayside. Visitors access the ship through a shopping mall (!) into a new visitor centre. It was, however, a most pleasurable experience right from the start. Staff are uniformed, very smart and very attentive, making you feel like royalty yourself! There's an audio guide for the tour but, since I couldn't hear that, they provided me a with a fat file with the entire transcription, so that I could stop at the various points and read all about it. It was truly wonderful. 

In the visitor centre there were many photos and displays of information. The original ship's wheel is there. In line with most naval vessels, for safety, the wheelhouse is below decks, and instructions were relayed from the bridge to the wheelhouse through the voice pipes. 

There's also the original ship's compass (below). The one now onboard is a replica.

Look how many people it took to crew the ship! Twenty Officers and 220 yachtsmen, hand-picked by the high ranking Commanding Officer, generally a Rear Admiral. Some yachtsmen were posted there for two years, while others served their whole careers on Britannia. The photos below show the ship's company on one of the early tours and at its retirement. 

When the Royal Family were on board there was always a band of the Royal Marines on duty. There would also be members of the Queen's Royal Household: chefs from Buckingham Palace, her Private Secretary, the Queen's Surgeon and her dressers and maids. 

'The crew's duties ranged from ensuring the slope of the royal gangway was never steeper than 12° to arranging the royal flowers; from daily diving to search the seabed beneath the Yacht to polishing the silverware. In temperatures of up to 120°F, they manned Britannia's 'state of the art' laundry, yet remained as pristine as the ship herself at all times. The junior Yachtsmen had the arduous task of scrubbing the two-inch thick teak decks each day to keep them in perfect condition. They were also called on to work at the many prestigious state banquets and dinners held on board.'

The Royal Barge was used to transport the Queen to and from the Royal Yacht Britannia, and played a ceremonial role in the Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the Thames. Also aboard, there was often a Land Rover and a Rolls Royce. The latter had to have its bumpers removed to fit it into the ship's garage! 

Andy Goldsworthy, Fifty Years #2

Edinburgh #10

Given that I've been a fan of Andy Goldsworthy for some thirty-five years, it was a joy to revisit some of his early work made in the 1970s and 1980s. There were photographs he'd taken of many of his woodland creations. In those above, he'd torn leaves and arranged them very precisely, stuck down with spit. His works can last a few seconds to a few days, but nearly all of them - with the exception perhaps of his stone sheepfolds such as the one at Yorkshire Sculpture Park - are ephemeral: from the earth, back to the earth. 

Foxglove petals wrapped round twigs, rowan berries in a sinuous line, nuts, leaves, stones - these are his materials. 

I find these works intriguing, not least for the patience involved in creating them. The autumn leaves below each have a torn green leaf, stuck with water or spit, to form a very precise line. 

There was a whole room full of photos of work Andy has been making since 2009, still ongoing, documenting a fallen elm tree near his home. It died of Dutch elm disease, finally collapsing across a stream. He's been returning to explore and work with the changes, cracks, splinters ever since. The bright yellow he's used a lot is the leaves of other elms, torn and papered over the darker wood, held only with water or stitched together with grass. He's exploited the violence with which the tree fell, exposing fissures and broken boughs. I actually found it quite moving in a strange way... homage to a once mighty tree. 

In the early days he also made short films, many of which are rather amusing, since he often uses his body as part of the art.  There was one of him crawling slowly through a hedge;  another of him lying - as if dead - on a slab of rock. It was only after several minutes that you realised it was raining and he was making a 'rain shadow', only visible once he stood up to reveal the dry shape. Another that intrigued me was a slow moving piece where he was simply wringing his hands together, but gradually you realised that he was squashing a fistful of blackberries, as red juice started to ooze like blood. 

As I said yesterday, the artist's thoughts, experiments and creative processes are at least as interesting as his art. It's the same with David Hockney. Long may they both continue sharing their creations. 

See HERE for the gallery website about the exhibition, with more photos.