non-Mega image outlets ? A cry from many hearts

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BlueGloves B
BlueGloves Apr 23, 2004 08:09:32
Replying to TomBo

Hmm - watch out. Mars is coming to an opposition with Pluto tomorrow - Gemini to Sagittarius. There'll be a lot of 'dust kicked up'. Lets hope it's creative dust.

If I had been learning the citara for fifteen years and playing for five, you would expect that I could hold a tune. Building in stone is more or less the same. Except I've been doing it for thirty. There are two persons, in the UK, active in building curricks. I'm one of them and Andy Goldsworthy is the other. I'd rather you criticised his work than mine as I am the one that is continuing the tradition of the original builders, while he's making drystone ice cream cones, or something.

We've had extensive discussions about curricks off-forum that I don't want to repeat. I'd far rather you were trying to find the lost curricks belonging to the Holymire circle which I expect to be on the fell tops between Alston and Nenthead. If you did that you would learn a vast amount about their purpose and age and about the makers of the stone monuments.

T TomBo
TomBo Apr 23, 2004 08:26:30
Replying to BlueGloves

"There are two persons, in the UK, active in building curricks."

Funny that, I know of at least one more (and its not me!).

Its all very well citing your long experience with stone, and I do not doubt that you've been working with stone all those years. I've been playing the guitar for a good fifteen years now, though, and there's still plenty more that I could learn. Saying "I've got vast experience" without demonstrating any of your knowledge to us doesn't really fill me with confidence in your vast experience. Ignorance is often covered with a claim of vast knowledge. I'm not saying that this is the case with you, but rather asking you to share your knowledge. If you're really that experienced then demonstrate it, let us know how you decide which curricks deserve destruction. You're quite right, we've discussed this at length off the forum, and I've no wish to fall out with you again! I <i>like</i> you too much for that! But I'm far too passionate about curricks to just sit back and let them be destroyed without at least saying <i>something</i>. Put my mind at rest and I'll never mention it again! Tell us how you can be 100% sure that the curricks you destroy are modern.

Of course the other side of this is that a lot of the modern curricks are built in such a way as to be entirely obvious that they are modern. Therefore they're misleading nobody and not complicating the situation at all, as far as the discovery of the really old ones goes. I'm uncomfortable about people's hard work being ruined, whether those people are long dead or alive today. Surely you must feel the same way, as someone who works so hard to build curricks.

You really don't like Andy Goldsworthy, do you? I think that a lot of his work is overrated but also that a lot of it is simply stunning.

Anyway BlueGloves, I've said my bit (without even raising the issue of "Holymire") so I'll leave it at that. As I say, I've no desire to fall out with you. I'm just doing all I can to protect the monuments I love.

And I keep telling you - I'd spend more time on Alston's curricks if I didn't still have at least forty of them to get around in Weardale. Weardale's curricks are just as important as Alston's, you know.

And a little bit of information as a present, before I leave it: Alston used to be called Aldenstan, which means "old stone".