On 3rd February 2015 Ashgate Publishing formally published my first book, a collection of essays entitled, “Gramsci and Foucault: A Reassessment.” The first conversation with the publisher was in January 2011, so this book has taken four years to complete. I first started reading Foucault and Gramsci myself, however, in 1995, so you could say it has been twenty years in the making. I wrote a call for chapters, distributed it widely, and chose a selection of the abstracts that were submitted to me to make a collection. Then they wrote their chapters and I organised each to be reviewed, (they rewrote them based on the reviews), formatted and edited them, indexed them, and wrote my own, too, and an introduction to the lot which you can read – also available via a link on the publisher’s webpage. I was greatly honoured that one of biggest names in the field of critical theory today, Stephen Gill, at the prestigious York University, Toronto, Canada, agreed to write a Foreword for the book. Two other big names wrote testimonials for me, for the back cover, too. It’s a great first volume, and I am suitably proud! It remains, nonetheless, just the start: there is much yet to do!
Author: blogministrator
Marriage and Honeymoon
Colin Kreps threw his lot in with me – and took my surname – on 27th August 2014 – and we went back to Skye, and then for a week on the Isle of Arran, for our honeymoon. There is a full website detailing the ceremony and the honeymoon at http://www.davidandcolin.co.uk/
Northumbrian Megalithic adventures
In May 2014 Colin and I spent a week in Northumbria, discovering stones, and especially rock art.
Aberdeenshire 3
Today, after a lie in, we went for a walk at Burn o’Vat – a huge meltwater kettle hole left over from the glacial times that shaped most of the landscape in Scotland. Here we found that it wasn’t just a hole you could look into, but one you could walk into and examine from its bottom – very impressive!
From there we took a walk around Lock Kinold – 4.25miles in total – past delightful little coves of water lillies and bullrushes, overlooking ancient lake villages, in the shadow of more recent Celtic Cross stones. A really lovely walk indeed.
Lastly, on what was turning out to be a quiet day after Monday and Tuesday’s excursions, we paid a visit to the nearby Balronald Wood, where there is a recumbent stone circle with a (later) central cairn. This site is completely overgrown and uncared for, but clearly still visited by those who have respect for it.
Click on any picture in these blog posts to see all the photos in the Aberdeenshire set on Flickr
Aberdeenshire 2
Today’s excursion was simpler and more scenic. We headed first due east to Crathes Castle. This was the seat of the Burnett family from 1323, when Robert the Bruce gave them lands. According to one information sheet at the Castle, (though reported as ‘disputed’ on the web, e.g. Scotweb, who suggest they may have been French) the Burnetts were originally Anglo-Saxon nobles from Bedfordshire, displaced by William the Conqueror, and two branches of the family exiled themselves to Scotland, one branch ending up in Aberdeenshire. The Castle here now was built by Alexander Burnett in 1596, and its contents largely destroyed by a fire in 1966, at which point the then Laird gave the place to the National Trust for Scotland, who have restored it well, and filled it with lots of historical nik-naks to surround the scant remnants of Burnett family life that survive.
My principal interest in visiting, however, is that in the ‘Warren Field,’ a short walk down the hill from the Castle, in 2004, archaeologists found the footings of a huge Neolithic Timber Hall.
This came to my attention in July this year, when a National Trust news story arrived in my inbox revealing that further study of what had been excavated pointed to a Mesolithic Soli-Lunar Calendar in the same field. Yes – a Mesolithic Calendar, dating some five thousand years older than any time measuring device in the Middle East, to 8000BC in Aberdeenshire. This is quite Earth shattering news for the world of Archaeology, and the Birmingham University Archaeologists who did this work are to be congratulated on this ground breaking work. Follow the links for more information.
From Crathes, we took road to the coast for a light lunch in a seaside pub in Stonehaven Harbour – a lovely sleepy fishing village fond of its rugby.
Taking the scenic route home, we headed south-west first down to Fettercairn, and then back north-east up the Cairn o Mount road, getting an amazing view of Stonehaven from 1493ft above it!
Finally, on the home stretch, we stopped at Aboyne cemetry to walk up the path into the woods and visit the delightful little Aboyne Stone Circle – just five stones remaining of what looked like could have been 8 or even 10. This seemed of a much older lineage than the Early Bronze Age recumbent stone circles we saw yesterday, but sported, nonetheless, a fine fleshy-pink granite stone amongst its remaining stones. Lovely ambience, under the trees, a peaceful, magical place.
Click on any picture in these blog posts to see all the photos in the Aberdeenshire set on Flickr
Megalithic Megamix in Aberdeenshire
So here we are – my partner Colin and I – staying in a little cottage in Royal Deeside, exploring Aberdeenshire. As is my wont – and indeed much of the reasoning behind the choice of location – a good part of our holiday will be devoted to visiting ancient sites, and, after arriving late Saturday and having a lazy Sunday, today has been our first major excursion into the ancient landscape around us.
We devoted today to visiting the major recumbent stone circles in the area – so called because of the style of circle unique to North East Scotland, which incorporates a massive horizontal, or recumbent stone, flanked by two standing stones, and in which the rest of the stones taper in height gradually away from the recumbent stone to the shortest one directly opposite. The two flankers are also generally one tall and thin, the other short and fat, and – as today’s experience seemed to suggest – the masculine/feminine suggestion in these flankers was sometimes accentuated by the taller, thinner flanker looking decidedly phallic.
The first circle we visited, we didn’t realise until the end of the day, would be the one with the finest ambience, views, and overall ‘vistor experience’. Tomnaverie, near Tarland, proved to be not only one of the finest examples of recumbent stone circles that we visited today, but with by far the best feel to it.
The next we visited was Midmar Kirk, in the graveyard of a church built right next to it in the late 18th century.
The best thing about this circle was the flesh pink granite penis stone – the Balblair Standing Stone – a short walk away from the circle hidden in a little wood.
Then we visited Cullerlie Stone Circle – a fairly fine example of the style of circle, but yards from a working farmyard where farmers and tractors bustled about their business during our visit.
Then Easter Aquhorthies, a very massive recumbent stone, but the whole circle wrapped in a 19th century kerb with a 20th century barbed wire fence a few feet beyond it. It was impossible to get any real perspective on the site, and the ambience was definitely not helped by the four old ladies sitting on the recumbent with their packed lunch. I made it quite clear that I thought they were distinctly lacking in respect for a historic monument, and – to their credit – they moved and got out of the way so we could take our pictures and try to gain some appraisal of the circle.
Lastly, at Loanhead of Daviot, we found again the peace, space, a good view, and some of the ambience we had experienced at Tomnaverie, and would call this the 2nd best of the day.
It remained only for us to make the trip across the harvested wheat field for a closer look at the much depleted and uncared for Balquhain Stone Circle, before beginning our journey back to our cottage in Ballater. The most impressive stone at Balquhain is of course the white quartz pillar!
The day would not have been complete, in the Valley of the Don, without a visit to at least one of the several Pictish symbol stones, displaying the now lost symbolic language of this 7th century Christian people. Nor, without a picture or two of the imposing Bennachie mountain – literally the ‘breast mountain’ – that overlooks the entire valley, and which is visible from most of the circles we visited.
Finally, the day was only complete with a tea – or martini – at the delightful Kildrummy Castle Hotel, after a gentle walk in the lovely gardens for which the ruins of the 13th century English conqueror’s castle forms a picturesque backdrop.
Click on any picture in these blog posts to see all the photos in the Aberdeenshire set on Flickr
Outer Hebrides ’13
In the Spring of 2013 Colin and I went to the Outer Hebrides. As in the past, I elected to drive to Skye first, and we stayed overnight at the Flodigarry Hotel on the northern tip of the isle.
We were lucky enough to get upgraded to their premier room, overlooking Flodigarry Island in the bay below the hotel, and this is where I proposed, and we became engaged.
The following morning we crossed from Uig to Stornoway, arriving on Lewis midday. We stayed in Valasay – the same cottage I had stayed in in 2006, where you have to cross ‘a bridge over the Atlantic’ to get from Lewis to the isle of Great Bernera, to get to the cottage – and spent a few days exploring Callanais (my third visit here), and the Butt of Lewis on the very northern tip of the isle – the windiest place in the UK.
Then we drove south through Harris, from Leverburgh to Berneray, across the causeways to North Uist, where we stopped to visit its magnificent Stone Circle at Pioball Fhinn. The causeways then continue across to the little isles of Benbecula, of Grimsay, and on to South Uist, where at the Hebridean Jewellery shop and workshop we got our engagement rings (which say ‘Gu brath’ [‘For Ever’] in Gaelic script).
Finally, we took the ferry across to the Isle of Barra where we stayed in a cottage for a week, visiting the isle of Vatersay to the south, exploring the local archaeology, and of course taking the boat out to the castle in Castlebay.
Sailing back to Oban, finally, the fortnight came to an end with the drive home from there.
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GLOBAL WIERDING
– the ‘Chocolate Bar’ those aware of Climate Change hope the ‘Yet-to-be-convinced’ will bite into. Face it – we’re already fucked – the unprecedented weird-out in global weather patterns over the last few years is warning enough to the observant – but the least we can do is warn the idiots who haven’t got it yet about the floodwaters/dustbowls/generation-defining storms that are coming for them right now…. I’m off to the house-and-veg-garden-on-top-a-hill I’ve been dreaming of moving to…(I hope)
Interesting dilemma
I am quite a fan of the Apple ecosystem, with my iPhone 4S, iPad2, and MacAir. But I also enjoy – and use – many Google products, too, such as Docs/Drive, and, of course, on my smartphone, GoogleMaps. It is interesting to see Tim Cook apologising for the poor quality of Apple Maps in iOS6. However, until it is clear that this has greatly improved, although I may update the iPad, I am very reluctant to upgrade my phone’s software to iOS6, and thereby lose the GoogleMaps app native to iOS5. The war between Apple and Google is starting to seriously interfere with my enjoyment and use of both!
The Moors – Sept 2012
The North Yorks Moors are, it must be said, completely covered in the traces of our prehistoric ancestors. Although obviously the traces in the lowlands have not fared anywhere near as well as those on the heights around Britain – particularly since the advent of agribusiness in the late 20th century – it seems also true to say that there was something special, for our ancestors, about the uplands – especially when certain high peaks could be seen for miles around, and monuments set with sightlines to those peaks. There are several such ‘sacred hills’ in the North Yorks moors (Roseberry Topping and Freebrough Hill especially), and you can see at least one of them from all the various neolithic monuments, from circles to cairns, and the Bronze Age barrows that followed them.
In a few days it is not possible to capture much of this heritage, only to attempt to take in a representative sample. My sample, additionally, included only those sites which I could access in an hour or so’s walk – there and back – so I certainly missed some sites which are deeper into the interior. Nonetheless, I think I managed to see some interesting monuments, including High Bridestones and the nearby Beacon Howe, Ramsdale Stone Circle, and the Brow Moor Monument and associated rock art features. I also stopped off at Whitby Abbey, Helmsley Castle, and on my way back home, The Twelve Apostles Stone Circle on Ilkley Moor.
High Bridestones is a much distressed monument, comprising a number of standing and recumbent stones, and it is frankly unclear whether this is a stone circle and/or a stone row, although I have seen it described as both online. To my eye, there were only the three stones, in a row, that were standing, but one seemed to have sufficient large recumbent stones nearby to potentially have been a circle. There are also – reputedly – the Low Bridestones nearby, but I couldn’t find them, unless, indeed, what I had found were High and Low Bridestones and they were closer together than it seems on the map. This was a tricky business, working out quite what I was looking at!
The nearby Beacon Howe, with a single stone standing at its summit and two at its foot, offered astounding views across the moors, and one wonders what (probably) Bronze Age chief lay buried here, overlooking the more ancient site of the Bridestones. The later Bronze Age monuments, celebrating as they seem to more individual burials, clearly mark a break from the seemingly more communal mortuary practices of the past, whilst at the same time gaining some of their sanctity through association with – by direct sightline – the older Neolithic monuments. This is perhaps at its clearest at Stonehenge, where a great number of individual Bronze Age burial mounds surround and overlook the older monuments. But it is also clear up here on the North Yorks Moors.
Further east, overlooking Robin Hood’s Bay and Ravenscarr, is Brow Moor, the focus of Smith and Walker’s book on Rock Art, and the Stoupe Brow Trail usefully takes one from a little carpark all around the moor visiting each mound and several of the earth-fast rock art stones. I was blessed with glorious sunshine for this walk and easily found the Brow Moor monument – carefully reburied since its excavation save for the single standing stone, and the single recumbent stone opposite, that were visible beforehand. This Neolithic mound with inward-facing rock art stones provides, according to Smith and Walker, a link to what they suggest may have been a trail from Millin Bay on the east coast of northern Ireland, via the Isle of Man, Morecombe Bay and the Aire Gap, to Flamborough Head and beyond to Scandinavia. The three-tiered cosmology of sky, earth, and underworld (familiar in ancient Peru and Australia, let alone Northern Europe) represented at sites along this trail through rock art, present a really interesting theory.
Ramsdale Stone Circle, on Fylingdales Moor, provided not only an easy walk from a little carpark by the road (welcome on the same day as the much longer around Brow Moor) but amazing views across to Brow Moor itself, and north towards what may indeed have been Roseberry Topping in the distance. Eerily, there were the remains of a sheep’s skull, broken into many pieces, strewn around one of these three standing stones, adding atmosphere to the place!
Whilst in the North Yorks Moors, of course, it would have been churlish not to visit, in addition to Rievaulx, and see first hand that classic view of Hammer horror movies: Whitby Abbey, where there is also an excellent little museum, and fine views over this little seaside town. The finest view though, is from the summit of Blue Bank at the very eastern edge of the moor, near Beacon Howe and the Bridestones, from where one can see the whole bay – and indeed the Abbey itself.
Being in Helmsley for the week – I couldn’t leave without a visit to its castle, and enjoyed the surprise of surviving 16th century wood panelling in the one remaining complete building of this medieval stronghold. I confess though it was quite satisfying to see how the great tower that was the visible symbol of Norman overlordship – looming over Helmsley’s market square – was felled by the Parliamentarians who destroyed this Royalist stronghold in 1644.
It remained but to delight – on the last night in Helmsley – in the truly brilliant gastronomy available at The Star Inn in Harome, 2 miles away, where much of what one is served is grown out the back. This was a really fantastic meal – truly fine dining with the freshest of ingredients!
Leaving my little one-bed self-catering cottage early on the last day, I took a detour on the road home to stop off on the edge of Ilkley Moor, for one last moorland walk up to the Twelve Apostles stone circle, a delightful (restored) circle of twelve small standing stones, with possibly the finest 360 panoramic vista of any circle I’ve ever seen – especially on what felt like the most glorious weather of the whole of 2012!
To view all the photos from this holiday visit Flickr