Ed Dowding

Well it seems I spoke slightly too soon, since Babs has sent me some videos from The Darkroom

Start with the  Darkroom event reel, and be sure, too, to check out their Projections at Kimberley.

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons.”

Doulas Adams, The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy

We were fortunate enough to welcome Nell and Robin to stay with us for a few days whilst they were down in the Pyrenees a few weeks back.

Robin creates some of the most awesome visual I’ve ever seen. Check these out, and then if you have the means, hire them. Epic.

Battle of Branchage from seeper and Flat E .

ACDC Vs Iron Man 2 – Architectural Projection Mapping on Rochester Castle.

Coop = S x (M+C)

Cooperation = Shared Commitment  x  (Mutual trust + Common interest)

via  New Start

Whilst I love seeing headlines like this

Leaders at the G20 summit in Canada agree the richest members will halve their budget deficits within three years.  (BBC News)

They beg the questions

1. Where is all that money coming from (or not going to)?
   Are they going to be creating wealth and making savings (“G20 stop being consummate consumers”), or will they just call on those countries who are in debt to them? (“G20 agree to deepen economic sorrows of the globally worst off”).
2. If they can do that, why didn’t they do it before, or not get into the situation in the first place? (“G20 agree to do their job properly at last”)
3. Why does it take agreement to make it happen? (“G20 members lack the courage to act alone, and are reassured by their cartel membership”)

All rather negative for a Monday morning, on what should be a good news story. Sorry.

Pretty much everyone wise who has picked up a pen for the topic of happiness seems to agree that it lies in the simplest of pleasures, mostly coalescing around the contentment of our animal selves.

TFL have eventually decided to release their data. (We were trying to get them to do this five years ago…)

Already there are a few great examples of what this data can do:

Stefan Wehrmeyer (who is looking for a job, if you have one going) has made a few great examples showing CCTV footage from along a specific route, and another showing access times using night buses.

YouTube – RSA Animate – Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.

I fully expect to be demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect sometime in the next 10 months.

It’s so damned lovely here.

The last few nights we’ve slept upstairs on the open deck so see stars above us, hear the river below us, and the birdsong and chirping crickets all around. It is serene, and it is beautiful. In the mornings the dawn chorus is simply huge. It’s like being awakened by the Anvil Chorus every morning, but sung by ten thousand beautiful, happy, hungry, enchanting birds.

When the sun rises over the trees, the day goes from “just about perfect beneath a loose duvet” to “amazing lying on top of a warm duvet”.

As I sit here writing this now in the cool of the evening, the bluetits are still racing to feed their young in the nest in the rafters behind me, swooping through the beams to leave the hanger with a speed and prowess to match any escaping Jedi.

In the last few days we have herded and sheared sheep,

had our weekly visit from the butcher, an archetype of French conviviality and happiness, who tosses out bones to the dogs whenever he pulls up,

drunk a homebrewed eau-de-vie made from nuts, put a roof on a barn (tip of the day, in case you didn’t know this one already: use superglue to fix cuts, especially deep ones which would otherwise require stitching. It’s great. 3 days later my ankle, which I cut to the shin about 2″ long, is in tip-top shape), seen new born lambs, ducks (update: An evil duck has eaten some of the baby ducks. Who knew ducks would do that?) , and puppies,

eaten another magnificent meal with Marie-Claude and Jojo -- fried duck this time, had a picnic at the top of the world,

made edlerflower cordial, learned how to bend and make animals collars from strips of ash, picked wild strawberries,

eaten some of our early peas, eaten our own strawberries, picked cherries from a neighbours tree, related tales of falling off mountains over evening pastis,

made soup, boiled the kettle, heated a room, and germinated seeds in one go,

learned how to earth up potatoes with a horse from our neighbours who do this on a field down the road in Chein Dessus,

had a barbecue with our families who came to stay, which was rather lovely,

been to whichever of our many local markets (one every day of the week, somewhere less than 25 minutes away),

leapt for joy,

and many many more wonderful experiences.

You only have to turn around or look up to be overwhelmed by the wonder of life here. Pause for even a second and you will hear birdsong, cowbells, bleating lambs, the river churning away, smell the kiwi fruit or the honeyed orange of the philadelphus, see ten thousand shades of green, savour the skills of the paysan craftsmen who worked the wood of this barn, see the balancing and distribution of energy as the clouds drift over the valley, the power of nature embodied by the mountain pushed up by Spain inching northward …

We are so lucky to be able to live this blended life wherein we can both go “to the woods to live deliberately, and suck the very marrow out of life” and still pick a rich harvest from global culture and stay in touch with all of you.