non-Mega image outlets ? A cry from many hearts

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TomBo T
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".

B BlueGloves
BlueGloves Apr 23, 2004 09:45:53
Replying to TomBo

Yes, the old stones at Alston can be seen on the Hexham road leading out on the right, before the turn off for Kirkhaugh. I just see them off the bus. There's also a massive earthwork - pictured on this site - which is credited as Iron Age defensive but, as the bank is just an L-shape, is not very defensible. I've lived in Alston and it's a good place to be - it's where my kids grew up.

The only work with curricks I have planned for the summer is to rebuild two fallen ones that belong to the Holymire site - and then only if I'm grant aided. A week ago I would have said 50/50 possibility, now it's looking more like 70/30 against.

How long would it take to describe the difference between haymakers and liberty caps ? About seventeen years ? Do you suppose that a person that spends half of his waking life preserving things would destroy something that was created four thousand years ago ? There is a currick named Money Currick in Knarsdale. It's close by a Bronze Age hut and should be capped by a white river-worn quartz pebble. As often as I put this moon rock back it's taken off again, by the keepers. It is their heaps of stone - a couple of feet high - that are there to mark a foxhole or cache of grit - that I pull down.