TADS #54:Hook to Basingstoke (or Steadfast In Service).

Basingstoke's motto, Steadfast In Service, does not, as some of us with puerile minds might like to imagine, refer to the perceived performance of the town's infamously priapic statue the Wote Street Willy. Rather less interestingly it is believed it reflects on the quiet and industrious nature of the town's population. Hmmm.

 

Basingstoke has been much mocked over the years but having grown up nearby I became very familiar with the place, even briefly living there, and I came to love it. Although as a Tadley person, very begrudgingly. It was often portrayed as a shit town with good people or as Boringstoke back in the old days. Slagged off as a London overspill. But in recent years you're more likely to hear people refer to it as Amazingstoke. 

With their tongue only half in cheek! Reflecting on last year's Tadley TADS trek, Neil Bacchus said he loved doing a walk where many of us could sleep over and where we could meet for lunch again the next day. He suggested we do one in Basingstoke to start this year and I thought that was a great idea so I set about writing one - and then made it the 2023 season opener. From Hook to Basingstoke through areas that nobody on the walk (despite an approximate combined 400 years of living in the region) had ever visited before. We even crossed rivers whose names nobody had heard before. There is, it seems, no end of surprises on our own doorsteps should we only take the trouble to look.

I'd woken early, taken the 363 bus to Crystal Palace, one train to Clapham Junction where I met Pam, and then two more. First to Woking and then on to Hook. At Hook station we met with Neil B, Bee, Tina, Neil W, and Denim Nick. So named because he used to rock the double denim with no little panache. I'd not seen him for about twenty years and even though he didn't recognise me until I took my woolly hat off it was good to see him again.

We walked along the A30/London Road through Hook (alas our friends Ben & Vicki, both of whom once lived in Hook, were unable to join us as they were in Manchester doing a Coronation Street tour). There was a major diversion where a new Sainsbury's is being built but it wasn't long before we reached, first time ever for me, The Shack Cafe and met with Shep, Laura, Adam, James, Gwen, and Colin. 

The Shack Cafe's got an interesting history. Ben sent me a link the day before the walk which told me it was first erected during World War I and has stood there ever since. It survived World War II bombing and it even survived a visit by Chas'n'Dave. They didn't get served though as the cafe was closed.

The best story was probably the one about a former owner Mr Baker who kept funfair rides in the land behind the cafe and used to ride a motorbike and sidecar round a wall of death with a lion in the sidecar. Pretty sure that would fall far short on both animal cruelty and health and safety fronts these days.

I had a delicious meal of crinkle cut chips, baked beans, bread and butter washed down with a cup of tea. Pam was very impressed with her veggie breakfast and Gwen's scrambled egg on toast with brown sauce looked pretty good too. Everyone seemed pretty happy and I was pleased to put my hands on my side and proudly announce a 'good turnout'.

Hook, initially, was a series of farms on the stagecoach route between London and Exeter. Inns sprang up to serve those passing through and eventually it grew into a village and now a small town with a population just shy of 8,000. The parish church, St John the Evangelist) was designed by Edward Maufe, a man more famous for Guildford Cathedral and St Columba's in Knightsbridge.

Thomas Burberry died in Hook, aged 90, in 1926. We left the cafe, crossed the A30, and cut down a lane by the side of The Crooked Billet pub and into the Whitewater Meadows. We briefly followed the Whitewater river. A pretty short river, it's just twelve miles long and eventually flows into the Blackwater which itself flows into the Loddon and, finally, the Thames).

It was a picturesque stretch of fast(ish) flowing water, gently rolling fields, and towering pylons above. Lots of different pylons including one that Shep decided looked like a Belgian pylon! We eventually reached the B3349/Reading Road and had to negotiate a short, roughly one hundred metre, stretch with no pavement before cutting in more open fields, sometimes with imposing solitary trees silhouetted against the greyish (but dry) sky.

Adam was using his GPS device to help me orientate the route and decided he'd call it Little Dave. This soon led to a few people singing the theme tune to 1970s kids TV favourite Big John, Little John and having a debate about the lyrics. A quick listen proved it's "what a way to grow" and not "what a way to go".

This was such fun that it wasn't long before we were crossing Green Lane (a road on the map, barely a path in reality) and the village of Rotherwick was in front of us. A pub stop would be happening earlier than usual but, even more surprisingly, we were actually running early. A two pint mistake, it seemed, was inevitable (there'd already been a 'two tea mistake' back in the Shack).

The Coach & Horses in Rotherwick is a nice pub. I'd visited on one of Alex's TADpoleS walks several years ago and we'd sat in the garden looking out at the countryside but it wasn't so warm today so we sat inside with Coco the dog. As Colin's protocol dictates he bought me a pint of Bunny Chaser from the Longdog Brewery and soon we were joined by Darren (who'd done a 5k park run in a fairly decent time that morning), Cheryl, Tommy, and Luca.

Not long after that, Tony, Alex, Grace, Izzie, and Freddie arrived. Now all fully recovered from a recent bout of covid. We'd now pretty much taken over half the pub. James had bought three one third pints of different ales (but still asked if he could try some of Adam's 1% beer) and it would have been easy to get a bit too comfy in there. Neil W felt so at home he loudly announced he was off to do a "pub poo".

Sat by the roaring fire, Tina got me my next drink. The Bunny Chaser was off but another local beer was on. Moondance from the Triple Brewery in Alton. I had that. It was good. They both were. We left the non-walkers there and headed off. There would be a lot of pee stops behind trees from that point on. For some of the men at least.

Rotherwick's a pretty little village. With a population of just over 500, its main attraction (apart from the pub, of course), is its small parish church. Donated, as was a nearby village hall, from an American couple in the 1930s, it looked pretty with the blossoming tree in front of it.

There's a small lake and an interesting looking house with windows that protrude out on to the street and, according to Adam, used to have a rocking horse in the window for years making it look like a shop. We followed The Street (there's really only one road in Rotherwick) on to Post Horn Lane before taking a right into Stroud's Green Lane which would slowly curl south and cut through Tylney Park Golf Club.

Some of the trees had had their barks partially removed and looked particularly photogenic. For the first time some of Basingstoke's taller buildings (the Fanum House, the tower block in Oakridge, and Skyline Plaze which replaced Fanum House as the town's tallest in recent years) and they looked farther away than I felt they should be. Perhaps this would be a longer walk than planned.

At least we hadn't made any wrong turns and - quite rare this - didn't all day. Eventually the path through the golf course became a road (of sorts):- Lone Barn Lane. This came out on Newnham Road where we turned right and, passing a sign incorrectly warning of ice, we crossed the river Lyde by a very beautiful old mill house.

The Lyde flows for just 6.2 miles (from Mapledurwell to Sherfield-on-Loddon) before joining the Loddon. The footpath took us through the enormous garden (it even had a tennis court) of the aforesaid mill house and through another field to the side of the railway line where we followed a thin path, and one with quite an unfortunate camber) along the edge of the fields.

We'd occasionally come off on to road for a bit but mostly be on this path until we reached Basing. Except, that is, for a brief part where we had to walk through a field with two horses in it. As soon as they noticed us entering their field they came over to give us the once over. They were stroked and cooed at. The black and white one soon lost interest and wandered off to eat some grass but the bay horse with the jacket on turned out to be something of a character.

In turns, that horse would follow us, walk in front of us, or even stand in front of us in what seemed like a half-hearted attempt to block us. Horses are big so I don't like to get too close so I was near the front of the pack as we trudged through their field. Then I heard a bit of a commotion and looked round to see Tina running and the horse running after.

She got out of the field just as a noisy train went past and this startled the bay horse again. It ran straight past Pam and back across the field, kicking its heels like a bucking bronco as it went. Tina had mentioned a few minutes before that she'd been chased, over the years, by both a goose and a pig. She can now add a horse to that list!

When we reached the footbridge over the railway line, Colin (a former Basing resident as a kid) knew where he was. When we passed Basing cemetery and entered Basing so did many others. There was a brief debate about the route we'd take to get to Barton's Mill and I lost. Neil W made it known he was not impressed with Barton's Mill as a pub. Too expensive (true) with rude staff (not my experience).

He felt there were better pubs in Basing but I was dead set on going to Barton's Mill for various reasons and, via some parts of the former Basing House, lots of cute thatched cotttages, some interesting topiary, and the curiously named Milkingpen Lane, that's what we did. The normal pub part was shut but they'd erected a heated tent to the side so we had our drinks in there. The staff were friendly but the drinks were indeed expensive and I must concede that Neil W was probably right.

The Loddon flows through the beer garden of Barton's Mill (Bugsy even won a rubber duck race there once) and sometimes Civil War reenactment societies meet there for drinks and role play. The Loddon is near the start of its 28 mile journey to the Thames in Wargrave here. In the river you can find bream, chub, roach, barbel, rudd, carp, and pike but, unlike the Whitewater it seems, no brown trout (or, if you prefer 'brahn traht').

The Enlightment era poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) invented a Loddon nymph, a kind of female nature deity called Lodona and I forced the walkers to listen to parts of his very lengthy, and quite confusing, poem about it. I was tempted to also read aloud about the cultural influences of the river and the history of its milling industry but judging by the reaction to the poem it was probably best I didn't.

I did, however, treat them to a recital of Edward Lear's limerick about Basing from his Book of Nonense:-

There was an Old Person of Basing

Whose presence of mind was amazing

He purchased a steed

Which he rode at full speed

And escaped from the people of Basing

That is one lazy last line, Lear and, all things considered, quite a shit limerick. It's no Owl and the Pussycat, mate. Though I did wonder if that 'steed' that he rode at full speed may have been a forebear of the one who had chased Tina earlier! 

Luckily, there is some more interesting history regarding Old Basing. Or at least I thought so. In the late 9th century Anglo-Saxon chronicle, during the reign of TADS favourite Alfred the Great, it was called Basengum and in the Domesday Book (1086, William the Conqueror) it had the name Basinges. First settled in the sixth century by a proto Anglo-Saxon tribe, the Basingas, during the ninth century it became a royal estate. In January 871 a Viking army defeated King Aethelred of Wessex and his brother, the future Alfred the Great. That became known as the Battle of Basing.

Neaby Basing House, closed as we passed, is a Tudor palace that was once the rival of Hampton Court in both size and opulence. Mostly now in ruins (though there's a drawing below of what it once looked like), it was built in 1531 as a palace for William Paulet, the 1st Marquess of Winchester and treasurer to Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Elizabeth was so taken by the place she told Paulet that if he was a younger men she'd marry him so she could live there. He was fifty years her senior.

During the English Civil War, the 5th Marquess - John Paulet - was a Royalist supporter of Charles I so parliamentarians besieged Basing House three times. Twice they were held off but in 1645, under Colonel John Dalbier, they succeeded in taking it. Oliver Cromwell himself arrived to personally oversee the takeover.

After a spell in the Tower of London, John Paulet returned to Basing House following the Restoration. Charles II had returned it to him. John's son, Charles Paulet,  the 1st Duke of Bolton, became wealthy due to supporting William II/William of Orange during the Glorious Revolution. He used his wealth to build a new home at nearby Hackwood and most of Basing House was demolished.

We continued along the brilliantly named Swing Swang Lane (Basingstoke's only real rival is Fuzzy Drove), down Basing Road (past the Hampshire Clinic), and under the A339 into Eastrop Park. A park rich in memories of drinking vodka, mucking around in the boating lake, and jumping in the paddling pool fully clothed. Eastrop Park takes you into the bright lights of Basingstoke and to a Wetherspoons pub called The Angel.

I don't like to give Brexit bellend Tim Martin money but my boycott ended with a visit to one of these cavernous drinking dens in Bognor Regis fourteen months ago and I was outvoted so we popped in for a quick one (I had a Corona, the supporting local beer thing had gone south) and to meet Helen who was joining us for the evening. Afterwards, we crossed Festival Place and passed the infamous Wote Street Willy, Chennai Express (recent winner of best Indian restaurant in the south), and the statue of Jane Austen and made our way to my dining venue of choice:- Agra.

It says something about the nature of the people of Basingstoke that a giant granite schlong is more celebrated than a statue of one of the country's most revered authors but the big question was probably why did we walk past an award winning Indian restaurant to go to another Indian restaurant?

Well, I didn't know Chennai Express would win that award when I booked it. Anyway, it looked very small. Agra is marginally bigger but it was a squeeze to get thirteen of us in (Denim Nick and Colin had bailed out for the evening session) but they managed and soon the Banglas were, inevitably, flowing.

I had a veggie dansak and a garlic nan and it was only the next morning I realised my pilau rice didn't come. Carole and Dylan had joined us for the meal and it was good to hear the news about their new shower and Dylan's studies. I, of course, read out some Basingstoke history and listed some notables.

The earliest known settlement in the area is a Neolithic campsite from around 3000BC and the Willis Museum has flint and axes from even earlier (Palaeolithic times, 10,000BC). In 1086, in The Domesday Book, Basingstoke is noted as being a weekly market site. Cromwell is believed to have stayed in Basingstoke during the siege of Basing House and in the 17th century malting, brewing, and the cloth industry became important in the area.

Hundreds of years later there was even a band called Cloth doing the rounds! In 1839 the railways came to Basingstoke and in the 19c the town moved into industrial manufacture. Steam engines, traction engines, threshing machines etc; Thornycroft's, making buses, coaches, and trucks, became the town's largest employer. In 1856, Thomas Burberry opened his first store in the town and, one year later, Alfred Milward opened his first shoe shop here.

Brewing continued to be so important that the brewer John May was three times mayor of Basingstoke. The town suffered very little World War II bomb damage but big change came when Basingstoke, along with other towns like Ashford in Kent and Swindon, was rapidly developed as part of the London Overspill plan. The Malls were built and later Festival Place, the town was full of West Ham fans watching the football scores through the windows of Radio Rentals, and the town even twinned with Alencon in France, Euskirchen in Germany, and Braine-l-Alled in Belgium.

Getting closer to Europe! Imagine! So those famous names, those notables, it's a mixed bag. Wikipedia lists Jane Austen, Sima Kotecha, Waldemar Januszczak, John Arlott, E.O. Higgins (wtf? he pulled me out of a bed at his brother's house in Belfast once), Carl Barat, Steve Lamacq (hmmm), Shelley Conn, Liz Hurley, Shaun Udal, Ruth Ellis, Tanita Tikaram, Ramon Tikaram (who I used to see in the subway busking his sister's Good Tradition before finding fame as an actor in This Life and Happy Valley), the golfer Justin Rose, footballers like Tom Cleverly, Alex Bogdanovic, Dean Francis, and Kit Symons (who went to school with Tina and stole her skipping rope), Thomas Burberry, Kathy Smallwood-Cook (she went to my school and I think you'll find she's from Tadley), Dr Hilary Jones, Sarah Ferguson the Duchess of York, and Arthur Wellesley the Duke of Wellington.

Quite a list. A jolly old time was had and afterwards, after a brief hello to Trugnug, a few of us went to The Tea Bar for more drinks and to hear a covers band, a pretty decent one to be fair, play songs by The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, and The Kaiser Chiefs. I left before they ended their set with Sex On Fire and, of course, Mr Brightside.

Which was a pity as you hardly ever get to hear those songs! I took a taxi back to my folks in Tadley. Next day they dropped me in Basingstoke and Neil and Bee treated me to cheese omelette, chips, and a can of Coke in Poppins before I headed back to London feeling very satisfied that the first walk of the ninth (NINTH) TADS season had gone so well.

Thanks to Pam, Neil B, Bee, Tina, Neil W, Denim Nick, Shep, Laura, Adam, James, Colin, Gwen, Darren, Cheryl, Tommy (& Luca), Tony, Alex, Grace, Izzie  (& Freddie), Helen, Carole, Dylan, Teresa, Dad, and Mum for being part of this event and thanks (again) to Pam, Adam, Tina, Neil W, Bee, and Colin for the mappage and snappage provided here. A walk is only as good as the people who come on it and this one was particularly good. TADS reconvene next month, April, for a walk over Box Hill from Dorking to Reigate. It's called Flowers Of Romance and some of you will be able to work out why.

Pyramids of Lithuania, Music of the Deep:M.K. Ciurlionis & the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

"One must carry light within oneself. It has to dispel darkness for all on the road so that they may find light in themselves and walk on rather standing in the darkness" - M.K.Ciurlionis, 1900

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis was a new name on me. A long one too. The surname is pronounced Chur-lon-iss as I heard a slightly grumpy invigilator tell a visitor when I was attending a retrospective of the artist's work at the Dulwich Picture Gallery recently.

Ciurlionis (1875-1911) didn't live very long (he died of pneumonia aged just 36) and his painting career was even shorter. Every work in the Dulwich show, M.K.Ciurlionis:Between Worlds, was made between 1902 and 1909. It's quite a body of work though. Symbolist painting hovering on the edge of abstraction, full of pyramids, gods, angels, fantasies, fairies, altars and lightning. Ciurlionis, like William Blake or Hilma af Klint, created his own world.

Morning (1903/4)

 

Or at least transformed the existing world to a shape of his own imaginative liking. Born in the spa town of Druskininkai, Ciurlionis immersed himself in both the natural world around him and in Lithuanian folklore. As well as painting he became a proficient pianist (by the age of five!) and studied at the Institute of Music in Warsaw and the Conservatoire in Leipzig.

Halfway through the exhibition there is a small room where you can listen to some of his music and, of course, the curators haven't missed the chance to expand on their theory that the rhythms and textures of his music are reflected in his visual art.

Rex (1904)

Lithuania, we learn, was the last European country to adopt Christianity in 1387. Before then there had been a dominant mix of paganism and pantheism, a worship of the natural world. As things changed Lithuanian folklore, it seems, fused with more Christian beliefs to create a kind of syncretic belief system. Certainly that's how it looks when you consider a work like 1904's Rex.

Rex is a godlike figure. The big white beard is the clear giveaway. He's an omnipotent creator, spirit, and protector and he'll crop up often in the work of Ciurlionis. Elsewhere, the artist will concentrate more on light, be it from the sun or the moon. Sometimes how that light would play on the sea. A sea that, for Ciurlionis, represented infinity and eternal life. Although in Ship, below, the waters look choppy and dangerous. Life looks fraught. I'm reminded of Turner's Snow Storm:Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth.

Ship (1905/6)

News (1904/5)

News, at first glance, appears to be almost entirely abstract but closer inspection reveals a large bird flying over the mountains and, to the mind of Ciurlionis and his admirers, bridging the gap between the heavens and the Earth. In Lithuanian folklore, birds were associated with the soul.

It's a nice painting. I also like Night. Clearly Ciurlionis was familiar with the then popular Japanese prints and possibly also with the nocturnes of Whistler which this painting reminds me of. It shows a figure from Greek mythology ferrying souls across the River Styx into the underworld.

Night (1904/5)

Forest (1906)

Between the fourteenth and the eighteenth century, Lithuanian and Polish histories were intertwined as Russia grew more poweful and, this will sound familiar, began to occupy parts of each country. In Lithuania, 'Russification' took hold. The Lithuanian language was banned in schools and in print. Those that tried to smuggle books in Lithuanian into the country faced the threat of imprisonment or deportment to Siberia.

This history informed the work of Ciurlionis but so did the tumultuous times he lived through. The Russian Revolution of 1905 saw some concessions made to Lithuania (including reversing the ban on the language) but it wasn't until the artist had passed, after the end of World War I, that Lithuania was given it's (brief, at the time) independence.

This means Ciurliunois was reliant on Russian, and Polish, authors and composers in the main as influences. This also, I rather suspect, is why he was so keen to bring what he could of Lithuania into his art, and his music. All that was left for him to use was folklore and tradition. Most of which had been kept alive by the working classes.

Although it's equally possible this is how he'd have chosen to paint anyway. He enjoyed cycles of paintings in which he could tell stories and sure enough several of them are on display in Dulwich. They tackle subjects as big as the creation of the world and use Goethe's colour theory. Musical instruments appear alongside fantastic worlds inspired by the architecture of the ancients. A whole new world is created, Again, it's not too far from William Blake.

Raigardas (1907)

Sometimes he looked closer to home. Raigardas is a popular walking spot near where Ciurlionis grew up but, crucially, one with a folktale attached. Raigardas is said to have been, in the past, a wealthy city whose citizens behaved indulgently and thus incurred the wrath of the god of thunder who punished them, rather harshly you might think, by having the ground swallow them up.

Legend has it that the sunken city comes to life at night and you can hear both the tolling of the bell and the wailing of those stuck underground. It's quite a bleak story for such a pretty painting. It shows that Ciurlionis had a moralistic thrust behind his work as well as a fanciful one. A political one too. The Sorrow series have been read as the artist's commentary on political protests he'd witnessed in Warsaw. The thrusting black forms believed to be representative of protestor's flags.

Sorrow (1906/7)

Daybreak (1906)

 The Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Scorpio (1906//7)

 The Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Virgo (1906/7)

The Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Aquarius (1906/7)

Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Pisces (1906/7)

It's a stretch but let's go with it. What we can see with more certainty is that Ciurlionis seemed to be more at home when he was dabbling in more airy-fairy, or ethereal, belief systems. I'm always astounded, and disappointed, when I meet a person who takes astrology even remotely seriously. The letters of Ciurlionis suggest he was one of those people and the fact that he was interested in the idea that zodiac signs date back to ancient Indian vedas doesn't really excuse him but his Zodiac series of paintings are rather lovely.

Probably best enjoyed as art for art's sake without having to worry about your star sign. But then I would say that, I'm a Virgo. I like facts. One fact that nobody seems certain on is who pioneered fully abstract painting. Debate has raged on for about seventy years now. The Estonian art critic Aleksis Rannit, back in 1949, delivered a lecture in Paris in which he placed Ciurlionis in that role ahead of Kandinsky who is more often given that distinction. Before going on to suggest to the audience that Kandinsky had probably been inspired by, or even copied, Ciurlionis.

They certainly both exhibited in St Petersburg salons in 1909 and it is known that Kandinsky invited Ciurlionis to send work for includsion in a Munich show. Though the invitation arrived too late for Ciurlionis. It seems strange, then, that Kandinsky's widow later claimed her husband had never once set eyes on the work of Ciurlionis.

Summer (1907)

The Sun (1907)

I'm torn. For me, Ciurlionis' work, though impressive, is not fully abstract but then neither is all of Kandinsky's. It's a debate I'm not going to find an answer for here and it doesn't seem to be one that particularly concerned Ciurlionis during his shprt life. He was more concerned with Hinduism, Ancient Egyptian sun worship, and the cult of Prometheus.

Best seen in an amazing series from 1909 called SONATA NO.7:Sonata of the Pyramids. In it we can see pyramids and other towering peaks surrounded by palm trees and lit by a selection of suns. Bridges connect worlds on blurred horizons. It is a triumph of the imagination.

SONATA NO 7:Sonata of the Pyramids:Allegro (1909)

SONATA NO 7:Sonata of the Pyramids:Andante (1909)

SONATA NO 7:Sonata of the Pyramids:Scherzo (1909)

SONATA NO 5:Sonata of the Sea (1908)

Another 'sonata', SONATA NO 5:Sonata of the Sea, was completed when Ciurlionis was staying at the seaside resort of Palanga near the Estonian border. After swimming out to sea, the artist had become drawn to the patterns of sand and fascinating plant life below the waves. The sea he's painted looks far too dramatic to be swimming, or observing plant life, in. In fact it seems to owe more than a small debt to Hokusai's The Great Wave (Under the Wave of Kanagawa).

Ciurlionis once commented that the monotony of Lithuanian folk songs reminded him of "the eternal movement of the sea" and how "one hears in them an almost religious longing and unearthly sorrow". Ciurlionis thought a lot about music and art combined and as metaphors for life. He said he imagined "the whole world as a great symphony", the people being the notes and his home town the melody. He'd have surely been pleased that the avant-garde artist and theorist Kazimir Malevich described Ciurlionis as "the most talented member of the Russian School at the beginning of the century".

Ciurlionis, as with many who love music, also appreciated the power of silence. In a letter to his future wife, Sofija, in 1908 he asked her "to listen to silence" and told her he'd "like to compose a symphony from the murmur of the waves, from the mysterious language of the ancient forest, from the twinkling of the stars", and from his own "immense longing". Sweet. He even painted silence.

Silence (1908)

I rather like it. It stands in wonderful contract to his more fantastical, allegorical, and mythical creations. Inspired by the Symbolists, Ciurlionis would reject progress and modernity while at the same time turning out to be one of the most modernist artists out there. He looked back, or sideways, to look forward and if he didn't always reach the levels of transcendence he aimed for he can't be faulted for not trying.

1909's The Altar looks like an architectural caprice but is believed to reference "the seven steps in the theosophical creation of humanity" (the celestial sphere begins on the fourth, keep up!), The City imagines a future architecture which seems to owe a lot of the architecture of the past, while Lightning powerfully captures the brutal force of nature. Or, perhaps, nature gods.

The Altar (1909)

The City (1908)

Lightning (1909)

Fantasy (The Demon) (1909)

They're all great paintings and I don't necessarily feel the need to share Ciurlionis' belief in the supernatural, or higher forces, to enjoy them. In Prelude (The Knight Prelude), the artist has reimagined Vilnius, Lithuania's capital, as if the skyline has been dominated by that titular knight and in Fairy Tale of the Kings he's conjured up a dome, held by a queen, that holds an entire world inside it. Its own sun, its own moon, cities, constellations, and even other worlds. Then it's all pared down again for a sun dappled trip to the beach for some angels.

 

Prelude (The Knight Prelude) (1909)

Fairy Tale (Fairy Tale of the Kings) (1909)

Angels (Paradise) (1909)

Angel (Angel Prelude) (1909)

This word of angels, fairy kings, gods, and queens can get a big D&D, a bit Game of Thrones, a bit Michael Moorcock and none of that stuff, with the exception of Hawkwind, have in the past been a big drawer for me. But, with Ciurlionis, you don't have spend several days of your life watching television (I do enough of that anyway) or leaf through 800 odd pages of, sometimes badly written, fiction.

You get to be the interpreter of his vision. In your own time and at your own pace. The show ends with 1909's Rex. It's pretty big, you can't see that here of course, but it's widely held to be the artist's most celebrated work. Perhaps that is partly down to its size or maybe it's because it's a rare work he made on an actual canvas. I'm not sure. To me it's as good, but no better, than a lot of the rest of his work. That makes it very good. I enjoyed my visit to the world of M.K.Ciurlionis. It was nice for a holiday. I'm not sure I'd want to live there though. Somebody might talk to me about astrology.

 Rex (1909)

These Boots Are Made For Satan.

I'm a gout guy. Yep, one of those dudes who has gout and keeps banging on about it. I've had gout in my big toe (standard), I've had gout in my hand (painful and lasted for fucking ages), and I've had gout, most recently, in my knee (painful but, luckily, fleeting). It's not nice. It's a condition that men fall foul of more than women but some women do get it. Women who have had gout and given birth have reported gout to be roughly as painful as child birth.

And you don't even get a cute baby at the end of it. Plus you can get gout a lot of times. The average amount of times a gout sufferer will have a gout attack is considerably more than 2.4. Thanks to the brilliant NHS staff at King's, and a daily dosage of allopurinol, it's now - mostly - under control but should I have suffered a gout attack in the 14th century there'd have been no allopurinol and there'd have been no NHS.

I may have found myself, especially if I lived in or near Buckinghamshire, visiting a certain John Schorn in North Marston because it is said he had a cure for gout. A cure for gout, it seems, that he'd channeled from God. Last night's London Fortean Society talk, John Schorn:the Rector Who Conjured the Devil Into A Boot, with archaeologist Wayne Perkins at The Bell in Whitechapel was all about Schorn, or Schorne - the spelling varies, his life, and his legacy.

It was quite a long talk and when you consider that not that much is known about Schorn that seems quite risky. Luckily, Perkins was an engaging and compelling speaker, his manner reminded me a little of Stewart Lee, and even when he went off an incredibly lengthy diversion about boots, shoes, and shoe lore he still managed to take most of the, admittedly modestly sized, audience with him.

Schorn was the rector of St Mary's Church in the Buckinghamshire village of North Marston. Studies that Perkins and others have made in and around the church have shown that, before Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, this church would have been very in to superstition and fairy tales. Which, to be honest, is all religion is anyway. That and suppression.

Almost perfectly formed circles engraved into the south facing door were made in the church so that sunlight would seep in to the building at various times of days. Which, before any of us wore watches, was a good way of telling the time and making sure that the various masses took place when they were supposed to.

Schorn, supposedly both a pious and learned man who liked to dress all in red, seemed to lead something of a cult in one of the chapels of the church. It was more ornately decorated than the rest of the church. If you're a fan of Catholic tat you'll know the kind of thing. Best of all, there was a small alcove at ground level in which gout sufferers could poke their foot and be miraculously cured.

I'm a tad cynical about that and my suspicions about Schorn's powers were only heightened when I discovered he'd also claimed to be able to heel toothache and that he could make water appear at will just by banging his staff on the ground. There was a drought at the time so that would have been very useful. The fact that the water produced had miraculous healing powers, of course it did, would not have been sniffed at either.

But Schorn's biggest claim to fame is that, somehow, he managed to conjure the devil himself into a boot. It's not clear how he actually did that but there are plenty of images from the time and the following decades and centuries which show an almost jovial little Satan, sometimes with wings but sometimes not, poking his head out of the boot.

It's even said that Schorn's devil in a boot was the inspiration for the jack-in-a-box children's toy. Following Schorn's death it seems the miracles didn't stop happening. A skeptical view would be that the church needed money and that pilgrimage sites meant pilgrims which meant money. But plenty did believe and many pilgrims travelled from far and wide to visit St Mary's Church and be healed by the ghost of John Schorn.

After the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury and Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, North Marston became the third most visited pilgrimage site in the whole country. Pubs in the area were opened and many of them were called either The Devil or The Boot. One was even called The Devil In The Boot Inn. The village water pump, to this day, has a carved devil that pops his head up when it fills up with water.

That's him at the top of this blog. Cheeky little chappie, isn't he? Despite never being canonised, Schorn came to be regarded as a saint. A popular, or populist, saint if you will. In the years following his death his remains were moved to St George's Chapel, Windsor and Henry VIII is said to have made a pilgrimage to visit him there.

Schorn was in exalted company in Windsor. Henry VIII himself ended up there as did many other monarchs (Charles I, Henry IV, Edward IV, Edward VII, George III, George IV, and William IV) and various other royal spouses and hangers-on. Elizabeth II is in there now but, alas, Schorn won't get to 'meet' her because at some point room was needed for a more celebrated grave and Schorn, as some "long-forgotten" country vicar, was moved out.

But, to some, Schorn is anything but long forgotten. Admittedly I'd never heard of him until the LFS announced this talk but with the help of imagery from the likes of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Nicolas Poussin, Wayne Perkins was able to bring John Schorn, or Schorne, to life for a couple of hours last night. Although looking at the state of the world now it seems the devil escaped that boot a long time ago.

Thanks to Wayne Perkins and thanks to the London Fortean Society for another fun evening. Thanks also to Dewi, Jade, Paula, and Tim for the devilish company although no thanks to Dewi for asking me to buy him a pint of Fruli strawberry beer which cost an eye watering £7.95! I did - and he can take it as a St David's Day gift. The devil, it seems, is in the details.