The Importance of Parks

I was on Wimbledon Common yesterday afternoon for a couple of hours. I usually go running on the common but yesterday I cycled there and did some walking. I hurt my right heel running the day before and it's giving me ,"jip."

If you look at a map of London you will notice that there are a lot of parks; green spaces. English towns and cities and all local communities have their parks, commons and recreation grounds. The emphasise is slightly different for each but fundamentally they are the same, they are large areas of trees, open grassland, ponds, lakes, recreation facilities and sports facilities provided for the enjoyment of the population and they are free. They are what make big cities, towns and communities human places to live. Parks keep us sane. Walking in a park, taking in the wildlife, the changing seasons, or perhaps playing a sport, keeps us healthy in mind and body.They are places where you can go and be silent within yourself, get in touch with your inner being before you once more enter the fray.They almost have a spiritual quality.

London has it's famous parks, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Regents Park, Green Park, Battersea Park, St James's Park, Primrose Hill and Battersea Common and these are just the well known ones. Every community has it's local park. Where I live in South London, The Sir Joseph Hood Park is my local. More famously there is the royal park, Richmond Park, two miles in one direction from me and two miles in the other direction is Wimbledon Common. I visit both regularly to walk, run and cycle.

Here are some pictures from my walk on Wimbledon Common yesterday.

AND here is a link to the common website: http://www.wpcc.org.uk/

The windmill in the centre of the common.Trees and shadows.

Wide open spaces. There are two golf courses on the common, London Scottish and The Royal Wimbledon Golf Club.
Gates and fencing.
One of the park keepers cottages. Park keepers or conservators are employed full time. They ride on horse back around the common and wear a fetching dark green uniform.
Christmas must be on the way.
Swans on Queensmere pond.
A walk in the woods.
Autumn yellowing leaves.
Light through the foliage.
A dead tree or a dinosaur as my youngest daughter used to call it.
A frosty morning.

Bonfire Night 5th November

The Scout Hut and grounds,  a few hundred yards from my house where our local Guy Fawkes celebrations happen on November 5th every year.














Quite a large crowd gathered to watch Guy Fawkes's effigy burn.




A policeman keeps order.

In England we celebrate Guy Fawkes night on November 5th every year.We have been doing this for four hundred years. Guy Fawkes was a Roman Catholic terrorist who, in 1605, tried to blow up The Houses of Parliament and the Protestant, King James Ist and all the lords and nobles of the time.Guy Fawkes, whose real name was Guido Fawkes, was born in York within a short distance of York Minster. For such a large undertaking as killing the King and the whole government,he could not possibly have been alone in his endeavours. In fact, although he is the most famous of the group, he was far from the most important. He was merely a hired soldier who knew about explosives and how to use them effectively to blow things up. There was a whole cabal of plotters who eventually were caught and paid for their treachery with their lives. They were hung, drawn and quartered. A brutal and vicious way to die.

You might say that plotting and terrorist acts have been going on throughout history, and so they have. So why is there so much significance placed on this particular, failed plot? It was the scale and audacity of their undertaking that shook the establishment. The plotters were brutally executed as a sign to deter others. King James wanted others, who might think of plotting against him, to realise that this sort of undertaking was not a good idea. He made villages and towns throughout the country remember the plot each year. They had to burn a bonfire and also burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes, to show what might happen to anybody who tried it again.

The celebration was so strictly observed it actually became a tradition.Eventually it was an occasion of fun and enjoyment. It was a happy gathering in the darkening, damp, cold, autumn days. Nowadays we eat burgers and hot dogs and wave glow sticks about while we watch fireworks go off and see the effigy of Guy Fawkes burn. Oh yes, we still burn him, after all this time.

Here is a link that provides more information about Guy Fawkes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

You've never seen the The Prince Wales like this!!!!!

Mordern tube station. The bottom of the Northern Line.
Cherry Pie Music, South Wimbledon.
Old milestone. Ten miles to Whitehall (and St Paul's Cathedral.)
"Georgie Porgy"
Young's beer is lovely. I have a pint once in a while!!!!!!!!!!
Such a nice day today I went out for a run around South Wimbledon. I always take a small digital camera with in case I see anything i would like to snap.

I came across The Prince of Wales. You've never seen him like this before. Would Jane have warmed to him more if she knew he was a pub?????

By the way, Youngs, is a great South London beer. It used to to be brewed in Wandsworth but they have moved their brewing premises out of London to a brand new modern complex.

Beer had been brewed on the site in Wandsworth since 1581.

Also a local, old milestone. It is a Georgian mile stone. The main road through the London Borough of Merton would have been the main coaching road to Portsmouth and Chichester. Originally it began as the great Roman road, Stane Street, that lead from the Roman, London Bridge, to the south coast.

The small local South London recording studio, Cherry Pie Music. Maybe, just maybe, the next great singer or band might come from here. You never know.

The tube station at Mordern, is the southern most station on the Northern Line. You can only go north from here.

LINKS:

The Prince of Wales: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/george_iv_king.shtml

Young's Brewery: http://www.pub-explorer.com/realale/youngsbrewery.htm

Jane Austen Day at the Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library Oxford has put a digital archive of Jane Austen's handwritten manuscripts, brought together from collections around the world, on line for us to read and enjoy. These are Jane's original manuscripts before editing; blots, spellings mistakes, crossings out,lack of punctuation, they include the lot.

For one day only..........................."Volume the first."

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/news/2010_oct_22

Jane Austen, The Original Writing

After studying over a thousand items of Jane's original, handwritten manuscripts, Professor Kathryn Sutherland, of Oxford University, has reached the conclusion that Jane's final, published works, were the result of extensive editing, and not by her.

"The manuscripts,.........., "reveal Austen to be an experimental and innovative writer, constantly trying new things."

I wonder if we will get a new set of her novels published, the unedited version?

Now, that WOULD be interesting!!!!!!!!!!

Jane Austen's style might not be hers, academic claims

Austen completed six novels in her lifetime

The elegant writing style of novelist Jane Austen may have been the work of her editor, an academic has claimed.

Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University reached her conclusion while studying 1,100 original handwritten pages of Austen's unpublished writings.

The manuscripts, she states, feature blots, crossing outs and "a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing".

She adds: "The polished punctuation and epigrammatic style we see in Emma and Persuasion is simply not there."

Professor Sutherland of the Faculty of English Language and Literature claims her findings refute the notion of Austen as "a perfect stylist".

It suggests, she continues, that someone else was "heavily involved" in the editing process.

She believes that person to be William Gifford, an editor who worked for Austen's publisher John Murray II.

Continue reading the main story

The research formed part of an initiative to create an online archive of all of Austen's handwritten fiction manuscripts.

The three-year project - in which King's College London, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the British Library in London were involved - is due to be launched on 25 October.

Professor Sutherland, an Austen authority, said studying her unpublished manuscripts gave her "a more intimate appreciation" of the author's talents.

The manuscripts, she went on, "reveal Austen to be an experimental and innovative writer, constantly trying new things."

They also show her "to be even better at writing dialogue and conversation than the edited style of her published novels suggest."

Jane Austen (1775-1817) completed six novels in her lifetime, two of which were published posthumously.

Analysis

Rebecca JonesArts correspondent, BBC News

Jane Austen is widely celebrated as a supreme stylist - a writer of perfectly polished sentences.

Yet after studying more than a thousand handwritten pages of the novelist's unpublished manuscripts, Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University has concluded that Austen's style was far more free-flowing and featured a limited range of punctuation.

Letters between Austen's publisher and an editor who worked with him acknowledge the untidiness of her writing.

According to Professor Sutherland, they suggest it was the editor who then intervened to sharpen the prose of one of English Literature's most popular writers.

NOT ALL IS LOST!!!

HALF AN HOUR AFTER FIRST POSTING THIS ARTICLE 8.30 am Saturday 23rd. October.

Just listened to an interview on the radio with Professor Kathryn Sutherland. She quoted some letters from Murray which prove that Jane's works were heavily edited but she also states that the original manuscripts show much greater emphaisis on dialogue. They are written as though somebody is actually talking, with pauses and reemphasise of words and phrases. It's like actual speech which includes colloquialisms and regional speech. Professor Sutherland thinks that people didn't write again like this until Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Jane was far ahead of her time. Professor Sutherland thinks this shows Jane to be a greater, more innovative writer than we first thought. The professor has been able to come to these conclusions by digitally bringing together all of Jane's original manuscripts from around the world and studying them together.This is the the first time they have been able to be looked at, as a whole body of writing, since 1845.

PHEW!!! So Jane is a greater writer than we all thought. There you are!!!!

Later still. Now 10.15am here is the I-Player radio link for the TODAY programme on Radio 4. The interview with Professor Sutherland about Jane Austen's works.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vg88h/Today_23_10_2010/

Mary Anning, the fossil hunter from Lyme

A contemporary sketch done of Mary Anning at work. By Henry de la Beche.
Mary Anning
Mary Anning lived at the same time as Jane Austen, in Lyme Regis in Dorset. A place Jane knew well. Part of Persuasion is set in Lyme. Jane's father, The Reverend Austen, knew Mary Anning's father. Whether Jane ever met Mary is unsure.

Here is a quote from the Wikipaedia article about Mary Anning.

"Mary Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was a British fossil collector, dealer and palaeontologist who became known around the world for having made a number of important finds in the Jurassic-era marine fossil beds at Lyme Regis where she lived.^[2] Her work contributed to the fundamental changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the earth that occurred in the early 19th century."

It is interesting to note that Mary was inspired to prove her local vicar in Lyme wrong.He was what we might term a "creationist," today. He thought the world was created in six days.Mary's work later inspired people like Charles Darwin. At the time of Mary Anning and Jane Austen people thought the world was only a few thousand years old. Mary Anning's discoveries contradicted this idea.

She struggled throughout her life to be recognised. This Wikipaedia article does her justice and I think is worth reading. It not only gives an incite into the life of Mary Anning but also the beliefs of her time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning

The BBC and The Royal Society, are commemorating 200 years since Mary Anning discovered her first fossil on the Dorset coast near Lyme.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11590505

The Reverend Charles Dodgson

LEWIS CARROLL(self portrait)
The grave of The Reverend Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in Mount Cemetery on the steep side of the hill opposite Guildford town centre.
Me and Lewis.
The Reverend.
The clock in Guildford High Street late autumn 2007.
The chapel next to Lewis Carroll's grave.

Lewis Carroll was the great mathematician, logician, philosopher, photographer and writer of fantasy. He died on 14th January 1898 at the age of 65 in the home of his sisters in Guildford Surrey.

I love reading his "Jabberwocky" out loud. It's sounds, rhythms and patterns are so uplifting. It makes me feel good.

BELLOW IT OUT TO THE WORLD!!!!!!!!

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

dshaw@jabberwocky.com