Category Archives: People And Places
Liverpool Lights At Christmas-Time
We took the opportunity whilst in town this afternoon to have a look at the festive lights, switched on now a few days ago. This was a quick visit just to the Liverpool ONE area, so much remains for a return trip (and perhaps to write about again); but what we saw was great. The displays are fresh and varied and the mood is good.
Liverpool city centre felt like a place where people will want to come to enjoy their Christmas shopping. There’s something here for everyone.
Winter Solstice In London
Even in a great modern city like London, the Winter Solstice is not totally ignored.
Here, just behind the Angel Islington, preparations have been made to celebrate this Solstice in the local community Culpeper Garden, a small but beautifully stocked oasis amidst the bustle of urban life. There are still those who perhaps see mystery, if not magic, in the ancient calendar of the seasons. What though should we make of the massive snowman not a few hundred yards further along City Road? On the evening of the Solstice he almost seems to be awaiting his taxi as the snow continues to fall…
Women In Wigan A Century Past; Water And Gendered Sustainability Now
The 8th of March is International Women’s Day, an occasion to look both back and forward. We have here some photos and text reminding us gently how grim life was for working class women and children in the mills (and often for their mining menfolk too) a mere century ago. Happily, Wigan Pier and the canals are now a tourist destination alongside a modern Investment Centre; but around 1910 a different story – not least about the uses of water – was being told. The challenge remains to secure the same progress as we’ve seen here, in ensuring healthy and constructive lives for women and their families everywhere across the globe.
Here’s the text of this notice, displayed by the towpath at Wigan Pier:
TRENCHERFIELD MILL
When cotton was king
as told by a cotton worker circa 1910
It’s hot int’ mill wi’ lots o’ noise. On a nice day, we’ll take our lunch ont’ towpath an’ eat snaps* from’t snaps tins.
It’s a 5-and-a-half day week for us cotton workers, that’s 12 hours a day and half a day on Saturday.
We’ve all got nimble fingers , especially the Piecers’. They’re mainly children, who nip under the spinning machines to tie the broken cotton back together again.
Some of us work on the spinning machines and some on the carding machines. The mill takes a raw bale of cotton, cleans it, twists it and spins it into fine yarn.
The humidity in the mill keeps the cotton damp so it’s easier to spin without snapping.
There are five floors of machinery – all powered by the Trencherfield Mill Engine.
The noise is deafening – we stuff cotton from the floor in our ears to protect them. We communicate using ‘Me-Mawing’ – a mixture of sign language and lip reading.
We work in our bare feet because our clogs could spark on the concrete floor and set the cotton bales alight.
We wake early doors to the sound of the Trencherfield steam whistle summonin’ us t’mill for another day. But as they say – England’s bread hangs on Lancashire’s thread.
[* a snack favoured also by the men of Wigan, many of them miners, usually bread-and-dripping, with cold tea, carried in a flat tin called a snap-can - see George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier]
And here is the towpath which a century ago provided fresh air and respite for those mill workers as they ate their lunch-time snaps:
[Public display boards by Wigan Heritage Services]
The power of water
And so, strangely, we come full-circle.
Water – the canals, the steam – was the power behind the early production of textiles, employing many women and children in horrendous conditions, as the full logic of the Industrial Revolution took its vice-like grip on the emerging economies of what we have come to know as the ‘developed world‘; but even now in other parts of the globe water remains both a critical force potentially for good, and often an almost unattainable resource.
Women as water workers
Vast numbers of women and children in the developing world continue to toil many hours a day just to obtain water to sustain their very existence.
Life in places like Wigan was harsh and short for women and men, alike, a century ago. It remains, as Oxfam tells us in the topical context of International Women’s Day, particularly harsh even now for women in places such as Iraq, where water continues to be inaccessible for many.
The gendered meanings of sustainability
This is where we begin to understand what ‘sustainability‘ is really about…. the just and equitable distribution of basic physical resources and accessible socio-economic opportunities, for everyone, women as much as men, the world over.
In terms of future global sustainability and equity, as the Gender and Water Alliance also reminds us, water remains a critically gendered issue.
Read more about Gender & Women and about Sustainability As If People Mattered and Water; and see more photographs of around Liverpool & Merseyside.
Prague, Forty Years On (And The Velvet Revolution)
The events of the 1960s are simply history for many of us today, but a visit to Prague (September 2008) provides a reminder that for some, the memory of those events is still very much alive. The Czech Republic is now a vital, thriving and democratic country as a part of main-stream Europe, thanks to the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Yet there are plenty of Czech citizens who recall the trauma of those times as integral to their personal ‘lived experience’.
These thoughts became very focused for me today, when we took a walk around Prague with a citizen of that city, our good friend Dada. Our exploration began with a look at the gardens of the Czech Senate, which lie above the commercial centre of the city, simply designed yet formal and splendidly impressive all at once:
But as we wandered it became apparent that these were not just gardens; they were host also to an exhibition with more than token impact. For here before us was a real military tank….
And here too were notices about the objects on show, telling us (Dada explained) about the tragic events of forty years ago, in 1968: the failure of the Prague Spring which would have relaxed the grip of Communism, and the invasion of Czechoslovakia – as it then was – by Russia.
The reality of this invasion had hitherto been rather personally academic for most of us as individuals in (what was then) Western Europe; but here was a Czech citizen who had lived through it, explaining what it had meant to her, her family and her friends… and telling us how, later, these same people had been part of the extraordinary Velvet Revolution which was the basis of the transformation of the then-repressive Czechoslovakia into the present democratic state of the Czech Republic.
Mindful of these sobering thoughts, we left the graceful gardens and returned down towards the River Vltava, to the Dvorak Concert Hall (Rudolfinum) which had brought us to Prague, travelling with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra for their performances at the Prague Festival.
Outside the Hall was another exhibition of posters and photographs, relating the happenings of the invasion and its long aftermath.
In a way this felt surreal. Here we all were, discussing the events as history, but they had happened right where we stood, involving in critically personal ways people whom we knew as friends. For a while they had had no choice but to bear the crushing burdens of occupation stoically…
…. but eventually the protests grew to a great clamour, and after many long years, in 1989 the Velvet Revolution came about, mercifully without a huge toll of human life.
And amongst those leading this Revolution had been many writers and artists, including Vaclav Havel who was later to become the President of the Czech Republic, and his friend the musician Libor Pesek – a renown conductor who has had a long and close relationship with the RLPO, the Orchestra with which we were now visiting Prague.
Thus did the tale round upon itself. We stood there, in the heart of the Prague, testimony by our presence to the history and vibrancy of that great city, talking between ourselves as citizens of Europe and the world, and free to read, say and do as we wished.
No longer were the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution merely events on a timeline. They were instead vital elements of the spirit and understandings of real people, standing right next to us.
And that was something we pondered as we spent the evening in the Rudolfinum, hearing the RLPO concert which was the reason for our visit.
The concert, as we’d hoped, was a triumph; but, enjoying the music, we mused too that so much more so was the human spirit which had made it possible – the determination of a fiercely brave and proud people who, as we carried on our mundane existence in the democracies of Western Europe, had had to summon every ounce of endurance and strength to let the light of self-determination shine in their culturally blessed, historic city and homeland.
August Moon And Little Cat On Lykavitos (Lycabettus) Hill, Athens
Tonight is full moon in Athens, Greece, when by tradition everyone attends free events till late on the ancient sites; and this year there’s also a partial lunar eclipse over the city. But for this feral kitten, silently padding the very highest point atop Lycabettus Hill in search of restaurant diners’ scraps, it’s just business as usual.
Every year since 1953, the August Moon Festival in Athens on the night of the full moon – believed to be the most beautiful such event of the year – has been a celebration open to everyone, with free performances of opera, traditional dance and classical music on the Acropolis and Roman Agora, as well as events located in other unique and incomparable historic sites of Athens such as the Odeion of Herodus Attikus .
This is truly an occasion, if you are in Athens at the right time, not to be missed! (And if you’re somewhere else in Greece, you may still be lucky anyway – consult the Greek Ministry of Culture for possible events in other locations.)
Athens Music
Music in Athens, Greece, comes in all sizes and modes – from ancient instruments through traditional music, jazz and classical concerts and back to simple melody and rhythm.
This is a city comfortable with accomplishment of all kinds and in many genres, with events listed and unlisted. In the Summer, when formal venues are closed, the streets become a natural location for the more adventurous performer.
This informal piece looks at some Summer musical offerings in Athens. It includes (below) a list of links to and phone numbers for events which I discovered, though not necessarily attended or checked out. If you know more about these or other events which readers might find of interest, please tell us via the Comments box at the end of this article. Thank you!
The range of ‘street music’ in the capital city of Greece, Athens, is an eye-opener to those of us from colder climes. Athens is a city where the traditions of ancient and non-Western people meet those of us accustomed to the folk music and formal classical music modes of Northern and Central Europe. Here is a place where the cembalon of Eastern Europe is heard alongside African percussion, the guitars and bouzoukis of the Mediterranean (and later Ireland) and the brass instruments of every part of the world.
So there’s plenty of music, much of it very relaxed and informal, for visitors in Athens – and if you know of other events not mentioned below, please do tell us about them via the Comments box at the end of this page.
Whatever your preference, there will be something to enjoy – and to engage your interest and imagination. One of the great things about ‘street music’ is that it’s for everyone, young and old alike. Just as we have found when occasionally we can perform in public spaces in Liverpool, it’s the children who stop and listen and watch, often keen that they should not be moved on by parents or carers until they have heard their fill.
For some musicians however this is serious stuff. They have instruments and recordings of their work to sell, music to make to earn a crust. For others perhaps it’s a bit of fun, a way of passing time during the Summer months. It’s not difficult as a listener to tell who has which intention; but only rarely is there simply no evidence of skill when the performance, however fleeting perhaps as players stroll between cafe venues, begins.
But not all music is performed on the street. Athens has the attributes of all great capital cities – concert halls, an opera house (even if it does perhaps require relocation and an upgrade) and museums such as that for Maria Callas dedicated with whatever degree of enthusiasm to Greek classical music performers and composers of Greece – some of whom are listed (along with the main cultural venues around Athens) below, drawing for composers’ names on the cataloguing work done during the Athens Cultural Olympiad of 2004.
Nonetheless, there are forms of music which occur throughout the year in any city. Jazz bands and stringed instrument performers can play wherever they can find a space, and in almost any combination of instruments and performers; just as traditional dancers can congregate and entertain wherever numbers can be mustered – though certainly this is not how things happen at the treasure which is the Dora Stratou Theatre, a national institution to encourage traditional dance forms, offering performances throughout the Summer.
The choice is the listener’s. Formal or informal entertainment? Go for something new, or stick with the tried and tested? In Athens it’s best to have one’s listening mode in gear, ready for the next experience. It could even be during an unsheduled coffee stop. And who knows, you could even end up buying an instrument all of your own…
See more of Hilary’s photographs: Camera & Calendar
and read more about Music, Musicians & Orchestras, Travel & Tourism and Cities in Transition.
If you have recommendations for, or if you promote, musical events and venues in and around the Athens area, please post details (with contact information, indicating whether the occasion is regular, or one-off) in the Comments box below.
Some Greek music composers:
Yannis Andreou Papaioannou (1901-1989), Dimitris Dragatakis (1914-2001), Nikolaos Halikiopoulos-Mantzaros (1795-1872), Manolis Kalomiris (1883-1962), Alekos Kontis (1899-1965), Georgios Lambelet (1875-1945), Loris Margaritis (1895-1953), Dimitri Milropoulos (1896-1962), Andreas Nezeritis (1897-1980), Georgios Poniridis (1887-1982), Mikis Theodorakis (1925-), Marios Varvoglis (1885-1967), Alekos Xenos (1912-1995)
More information on events:
Athens Concert Hall (Megaro Mousikis), Vas. Sofias & Petrou Kikkali Street, tel: (from UK) (0030) 210 728 2333
Athinais Cultural Centre, Kastorias 34-36, Votanikos, tel: (00 30) 210 348 0000
August Moon Festival (free, on the night of the full moon, at a variety of ancient historic sites in Athens))
Dora Stratou Dance Theatre, 8 Stouliou Street, Plaka (offices) and Philopappou Hill (theatre), tel: (00 30) 210 324 4395 / (0030) 210 324 6188
Hellenic Festival, various venues, tel: (0030) 210 327 2000
“Melina” – Municipality of Athens Cultural Centre, Herakliedon 66, Thissio, tel: (00 30) 210 345 2150
Municipality of Athens Cultural Centre, Akadimias 50, tel: (00 30) 210 362 1601
National Opera, Akadimias 59, tel: (00 30) 210 364 3725
Technopolis (and the Maria Callas Museum), Pireos 100, Gazi, tel: (00 30) 210 346 1589
Vyronas Music Festival, tel: (00 30) 210 766 2066 or (0030) 210 765 5748
Aegina International (Summer) Music Festival [Tickets available at the "Eleni" shop next to the Aegina Port Authority building, tel: (0030) 22970 25593, & on the door.]
And more Festivals and events…
Snowstorm And Magic In Prague At Night
The first months of the year offer a drama all of their own in great Central European cities such as Prague. But the people and the life of the city carry on, whatever. It took just one day for the snow in that enchanting city to transform Prague into the frozen wonderland seen here.
See also:
Camera And Calendar
Prague Old Town, Celetna Street
Impressions Of Prague
Carbon-Neutral Villages, British And Czech Alike
Liverpool At Christmas
The few weeks as 2007 ended and became 2008 saw much festive activity in Liverpool. Here, the set for the BBC’s special production of the ‘Liverpool Nativity’ was surrounded by excited onlookers well before the performance started, but alongside all the high technology Saint George’s Hall stood serene, just as it has for the past 150 years.
Sudley House: Victorian Home Of A Mayor Of Liverpool
Aigburth is a long-established residential area within sight of Liverpool Cathedral. Amongst the many surprises in this enduring part of the city is the National Museum Liverpool’s newly refurbished Sudley House, tucked away behind Rose Lane, Carnatic Halls and Mossley Hill Church. Bequeathed to the City by Emma Holt, daughter of a Victorian merchant, it offers a major art collection.
Sudley House contains works by artists such as Gainsborough, Reynolds, Landseer and Turner. This is the only surviving Victorian merchant art collection in Britain still hanging in its original location.
The earliest resident of the house was Nicholas Robinson, a rich corn merchant, who bought the land and built the original house somewhere between 1811 and 1823. The architect may have been Thomas Harrison. Robinson was Mayor of Liverpool in 1828-9. He lived in the house until his death in 1854, and his two daughters continued to live there until their own deaths in 1883.
Sudley was then sold to George Holt, a ship owner and merchant, who made many alterations to the property. He acquired the art collection which remains in the house, which, with its contents, was in 1944 bequeathed to the City of Liverpool by his daughter Emma.
See also: History of Liverpool
Carols Round The Christmas Tree At Sudley House
Liverpool’s Ancient Chapel Of Toxteth, Dingle Gaumont Cinema, The Turner Nursing Home & Dingle Overhead Railway Station
Autumn Glory In Sefton Park
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Please see additional photographs at Camera & Calendar
More information on Sudley House and visitor arrangements is available here.
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
Amongst the more interesting modes of transport in Liverpool city centre last Christmas (2006) was this traditional vehicle, with its delighted passengers and good humoured driver. People waiting at the bus stop must have felt that somehow they were missing something rather special.
For more photographs please see also Camera & Calendar
For information on things to do in Liverpool click here.
