Whatever the name, the day's the same

October 31st is one of the celebrated days of the pagan year. It's a liminal time - a time between times and a period of change. Summer has changed to autumn and winter is looming large. For pagans it's an important festival as it marks the end of their year. They call it Samhain which means 'summer's end'. 

When Christianity arrived on British shores it found that it was impossible to stamp out the old beliefs because they were too deeply embedded in folk culture and the turning of the seasons. So the church absorbed them and re-labelled Samhain as Hallowe'en - the Eve of All Hallows Day (more on Hallowe'en on my blog here). 

But Samhain and Hallowe'en are not the only old festivals celebrated today. 

In my native Cornwall, Hallowe'en is called Allantide or Nos Kalan Gwav (eve of the first day of winter).

When I was a child, some towns held Allan Markets just before Allantide. These markets sold big red apples, known as Allan apples. The apples were then given as good luck gifts to members of the family. Some people would eat them on the night of Allantide, and some would save them for the day after. 

Many young girls placed them under their pillows instead, believing that they would make them dream about their future husband. Another Allantide tradition involves melting metal until it is a liquid and throwing it into cold water. When cooled, the metal makes a shape that is different almost every time. It was thought that the shape could predict the future, once again showing an unmarried girl who her husband might be. The shape of the metal was said to show the future husband’s job, so if the metal was shaped like a fish he would be a fisherman, if it was a brush he would be a road sweeper, and so on. And the game of 'bobbing for apples' has its roots in a form of divination. Even today, some people prefer Allantide to Hallowe'en, giving each other red Allan apples to celebrate and many Cornish shops will feature apples in their window displays. 

My own personal memory is of slicing an apple horizontally to reveal the structure at the centre and eating around the star shape. We all did it as kids. I doubt it occurred to any of us that we were creating a pentagram - an ancient symbol of protection. The pentagram was originally a symbol of the goddess, Kore, who was worshipped in many countries as widespread as England and Egypt thousands of years ago, but under many different names (i.e. Cara, Ceres, Carnak, Core, Car, Karnak, etc). Kore's sacred fruit was the apple. When cut through its equator, the apple has a near perfect pentagram shape inside, with each point containing a seed. Many Wiccans, Pagans and Roma still cut apples in this way and the Roma refer to apple cores as 'Stars of Knowledge.'

The apple has always been special and Apple Day is celebrated in October (see an earlier blog post here). Winter was a tough time for the poor and apples, if stored properly, will last for months. They were, quite literally, life savers. 

Meanwhile, in the Celtic sister lands of Wales and the Isle of Man they have their own celebrations today. 

In Wales it's Nos Galan Gaeaf. In south Wales, parties of young people maraud from door to door like modern trick or treaters. In Glamorgan, boys wear women’s clothing. Much more sinister are the gwrachod (meaning “witches” or “hags”) of Powys though. These were men who would go about in pairs, dressed as an old man and old woman, or in gangs dressed in sheep skins and masks, drinking heavily and demanding gifts. The lighting of a bonfire, or coelcerth, was a notable feature too. Close to the fires, people would be safe from wandering spirits, but the return home could be a fraught business. In the darkness lurked the Hwch Ddu Gwta (tail-less black sow) accompanied by the Ladi Wen heb ddim pen (the white lady without a head).

And over the sea on the Isle of Man they'll be celbrating Hop-Tu-Naa, believed to be the oldest unbroken tradition on the island. 

Many people continue the tradition of singing Hop-tu-Naa songs "around the houses" (which traditionally referred to waits going around visiting houses, especially those of the wealthy, and soliciting gifts) with turnip lanterns. In addition to this, many public Hop-tu-Naa events take place across the Isle of Man each year, most of which today include competitions for artistically carving turnips and the singing of traditional songs. As well as the many events run within local communities, the National Folk Museum at Cregneash hosts an event to teach the traditional Hop-tu-Naa song and to help people to carve turnips.

     

It's all to easy for us in the 21st century to forget that people didn't alays have high tog-rated duvets, central heating and shopping home deliveries. In past times winter was a killer. If the harvest failed or if you hadn't stocked up sufficiently with food and fuel, you were a goner. It's no wonder this festival was so important and why people fervently hoped that their pleas for protection were heard by their gods.

Stone Bothering

Another rambling video diary for you. Today I muse on my fascination for stones and my dislike of noisy helicopters. 

And here are a few photos from recent walks.

The pug and the Pythons

A new video diary. 

Today we have more hagstone hunting, Harris the pug guesting in a Python film, a very berried holly tree, a poorly ash tree and mud. Lots of mud.

The colours of Autumn (on a good day) are spectacular.

Squid Games

I often get asked, 'Where do you start when creating your sculptures?' That's a tricky one to answer. It's like an author being asked, 'Where do you get your ideas?' There is no single, easy answer. Inspiration can come from anywhere. 

This squid-like creature, for example, came about after rummaging in one of my junk boxes. I spotted an interestingly-shaped maple syrup bottle and the word 'squid!' popped into my head. Now, that may be because I'd watched a Stephen Fry-fronted BBC TV programme on mythical creatures (including the kraken) a few days before. But who knows? All I do know is that once the idea was in my head, it set me off looking for more squid-ish components. 

And soon, I had the basics of a structure.

As I've said in previous posts, things can change as you progress and one thing that definitely changed was the squid's 'tail'. After a clumsy accident, I'd recently knocked the propeller (an old computer fan) off the front of my mad steampunk train (see here) and realised that (a) I had a better front for the train and (b) the propeller fitted better on the squid. 

These happy accidents happen sometimes.

So, I added some greeblies, made two 'grabbers' from the nozzles of hand soap dispensers, and gave it a black primer undercoat. I then gave it a light spray of rattle can bronze to create an underlying metallic effect. But what colour to paint it?

Squid - like all cephalopods - have cells in their skin called chromatophores that allow them to change colour at will. Sometimes this is to express their mood or to flash a warning signal. Some scientists speculate that it may even be a simple form of communication. Like their cousins, the octopuses and cuttlefish, squid are pretty bright - some say smarter than a domestic pet dog.

As my squid is a machine it needed a fixed colour so I chose one that wild squid often display - a kind of pinkish/orangey/coral colour. So I started to build up the layers of paint and ink washes.

I then made a custom base from heavy foamboard and a few junk fish to swim alongside. 

And we're done!

Ockham and the Spaceman

Considering the ubiquity of the term ‘Ockham’s Razor’ it’s surprising to learn that Ockham didn’t coin it.

Nor did he particularly popularise the concept. 

He wasn’t even called Ockham. 

 Ockham is a village in Surrey and it was the birthplace of a 14th century Franciscan friar called William who studied theology at the University of Oxford. However, he also spent a lot of his time criticising the Catholic Church and, after being accused of heresy in 1323, he was summoned to a papal court in Avignon and kept under house arrest for four years while his crimes were investigated. As the hearing date approached, William and a group of fellow frightened Franciscans became convinced that a fair trial was unlikely. They therefore staged an escape and rode on stolen horses to the court of King Louis of Bavaria to ask for sanctuary. William eventually settled in Munich and spent the rest of his life writing critiques against Rome. He is believed to have died in 1347. 

But the one thing that William of Ockham didn’t do was invent ‘Ockham’s Razor’. 

The phrase wasn’t coined until centuries after his death and is attributed to the Belgian theologian Libert Froidmont (1587-1653). Quite why he chose to immortalise William in this way is a bit of a mystery as the ‘law of parsimony’ ie: ‘All things considered, the simplest answer is usually the best’ is much older than William and can be found in the writings of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Ptolemy and many other philosophers that he would have been familiar with. Even more surprisingly, there are times when William seems to argue against the concept, such as when he wrote: ‘Nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture.’ This suggests that, if William were presented with two competing ideas – such as the planets revolving around the Sun due to the force of gravity, versus the planets moving by way of God’s will and the actions of angels – he’d have chosen the latter because, while it may or may not be the simplest explanation, it carried the authority of his religious convictions. 

It’s ironic that the reasons why Ockham’s Razor is so named are neither simple nor obvious.

I mention this because I've always had an issue with the concept. Working, as I did, for several decades in the realms of problem solving, crime prevention and behavioural science, I quickly came to realise that Ockham's Razor only works in purely logical situations. However, almost any situation involving human beings is not purely logical. It's emotional and complex. There's often some baggage or backstory that affects the way that people react. There are all kinds of -isms to consider as well: sexism, racism, classism, genderism, leftism, rightism, even speciesism. Oh yes, there is speciesism. Consider your can of dolphin-friendly tuna ... it's hardly tuna-friendly is it?

I was discussing Ockham today in the context of a famous mystery - the Solway Firth Spaceman photograph.

The photograph above was taken on the23rd May 1964 by a fireman called Jim Templeton. In a letter to the Daily Mail in 2002, Templeton stated, 'I took three pictures of my daughter Elizabeth in a similar pose – and was shocked when the middle picture came back from Kodak displaying what looks like a spaceman in the background.'Templeton insists that he did not see the figure until after his photographs were developed, and analysts at Kodak confirmed that the photograph was genuine. So what did he photograph? Journalist David Clarke posited an explanation for the anomaly in the photograph in a 2014 BBC interview, concluding that the figure was the photographer's wife, standing with her back towards the camera, her blue dress appearing white due to overexposure. Templeton's wife, Annie, was present at the time and was seen on another photograph taken that day. 'I think for some reason his wife walked into the shot and he didn't see her because with that particular make of camera you could only see 70% of what was in the shot through the viewfinder', said Clarke. Annie Templeton was wearing a pale blue dress on the day in question, which was partially overexposed as white in another photo; she also had dark bobbed hair. It has been argued that the figure is actually Annie viewed from behind. But what about the space helmet? The Very Nearly Interesting Youtube channel has done some digging and has found compelling evidence that, by a thousand to one chance, Annie's head was silhouetted against the Moon.

   

Of course, Ockham's Razor - if we were to use it - would say 'It's a spaceman'.

OAP (Old Age Plant)

The oldest plant ever to be regenerated has been grown from 32,000-year-old seeds.

(A) Plant grown in vitro culture from seed of a modern plant. (B) Plant regenerated in vitro culture from tissue of fossil fruit with primary strictly female flower. (C) Plant regenerated from tissue of fossil fruit with both female (f) and bisexual (b) flowers.

A Russian team discovered a seed cache of Silene stenophylla, a flowering plant native to Siberia, that had been buried by an Ice Age squirrel near the banks of the Kolyma River. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the seeds were 32,000 years old. 

The mature and immature seeds, which had been entirely encased in ice, were unearthed from 124 feet (38 meters) below the permafrost, surrounded by layers that included mammoth, bison, and woolly rhinoceros bones. The mature seeds had been damaged - perhaps by the squirrel itself, to prevent them from germinating in the burrow. But some of the immature seeds retained viable plant material. The team extracted that tissue from the frozen seeds, placed it in vials, and successfully germinated the plants, according to a new study. The plants - identical to each other but with different flower shapes from modern S. stenophylla - grew, flowered, and, after a year, created seeds of their own. 

The new study suggests that permafrost could be a "depository for an ancient gene pool," a place where any number of now extinct species could be found and resurrected. Regenerated-seed study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Good tune, shame about the lyrics

Here's an interesting thing.

Back in 1972, Italian pop singer Adriano Celentano released a catchy song with the tongue-twisting title of Prisencolinensinainciusol. What's unusual about the song is ... it's complete gibberish.

By the 1960s, Celentano was already one of the most popular musicians in Italy. All of his songs until 1972 were performed in his native tongue. But many songs were finding their way into the Italian charts that were sung in English by people like Elvis Presley and The Beatles. So Celentano devised a song that 'sounded' English even though all he does is make English-sounding noises. There are no actual words in the song at all. 

Celentano's intention with the song was not to create a humorous novelty song but to explore communication barriers. 'Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did,' he explained. 'So at a certain point, because I like American slang - which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian - I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate. And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn't mean anything.' 

Seeing this pop up on Youtube recently reminded me of that other great gibberish classic, Kenneth Williams' Crepe Suzeette. The difference here is that Williams uses real French phrases and cliches strung together to create a comic song that is completely nonsensical.

   

Another unusual gibberish song is Haru Mamburu by Russian band Nogu Svelo. The song was a hit in their home country in the 1990s because, just like Celentano did decades before, they used  English-sounding nonsense words.

    

Then there's Chacarron by El Chombo from 2006. It soon went viral for its hilariously garbled lyrics. Here’s a sample of the incoherent words: 

'Ihni binni dimi diniwiny anitaime / Ihni binni dimi dini uan mor taime / Or ihni binni diniwiny ani taime / O Ihni binni dini one mor taime.' 

Every so often an intelligible word is sung, like 'play' or 'flow',' but the vast majority of the song sounds like a very drunk man hilariously attempting to sing. 

The song was weirdly popular and there was even a push to get it to #1 on the UK Singles Chart (which failed - it peaked at #20). It also became a popular meme overlaid on a video of Adam West as Batman dancing.

   

And let's never forget Zabadak by Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Titch.

We should also give an honourable mention to Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit, Beck's Loser and The Beatles' I am the Walrus as they all contain completely opaque lyrics as, indeed, does much of Bob Dylan's output.

The Margate Bookie

I've just got back from a whistlestop trip to the seaside to speak at the Margate Bookie literary festival. And when I say 'whistlestop' I mean just that. 

I took a three hour trip on a succession of trains, had a look around the Turner Contemporary art gallery, did a talk at Droit House on the pier along with fellow authors P J (Philip) Whiteley, Ivy Ngeow, Samuel Dodson and A B (Amelia) Kyazze. Then we all had a nice Thai dinner before getting a night's sleep at the Magical Margate Townhouse in nearby Cliftonville (see lower in this post) and then a three hour trip home again in the morning.

   

I, and my fellow authors, are all part of a new publishing venture called the Breakthrough Book Collective. Our idea was to bodyswerve the somewhat risk-averse and celeb-obsessed mainstream publishing world and to pool our skills to create our own small press imprint. We're taking a 'commons' approach where shared efforts yields shared results. And, here in our first year, we've published a novel and two collections of short stories - all written, edited, proofread, typeset, designed and published (and marketed) by members of the collective. Exciting times!

    

I also visited the Turner Contemporary art gallery to look at their latest exhibition, 'In the Offing', which features paintings by Alessandro Raho, sculpture by Tracey Williams, video and sound installations by Ashley Holmes, Hannah Rose Stewart, Blackhaine, Mark Leckey, Angusraze and many more. A splendid short trip.

And I must mention the extraordinary Magical Margate Townhouse. This is a four story building (five if you count the basement 'area') with loads of spacious high-ceilinged bedrooms - all with en suite showers, a cinema, a lounge, a huge dining room, a luxurious bathroom, a garden room ...

But my favourite feature was definitely the wardrobe that stands incongruously on the third floor landing. In keeping with the 'magical' name, you open the doors and you're in a secret children's play room - a Margate Narnia.

The house smacks of a seaside glory now, sadly, long gone. Elsewhere in the town the Lido has shut down and the old Winter Gardens pavilion is crumbling and the gardens themselves overgrown. And the whole place did smell somewhat like a toilet - I assume the heavy rains that accompanied the recent Storm Babet led to our inadequate and underfunded sewage system discharging effluent into the sea.

It's poor treatment for such a pretty and historic town.