Goodbye 1999

The future that never was. The imagery was haunting because there was so much darkness and silence 'out there' (maybe a reflection of the 'desert places' within). The centre barely held, an oasis of warmth and reassurance, like childhood; despite the slight vacancy in the eyes, the knowledge that one didn't truly belong, horizons were at a safe enough distance for us to know that innocence would never really fade, that we'd be okay no matter what.

Within these phantasmal boundaries each lord's hall is a place of refuge. Within: warmth and light; human solidarity and culture;rank and ceremony. a solidification of time. Outside: unredeemed time.

I remember saying to the dougal back in the..err...anyway, let's not talk about dates..just imagine, we'll be grown up in 1999. Well, we've crossed the line but I don't know about you, I still feel I haven't quite grown up (wheel in St. Paul here: "be ye not conformed...."). It's as if the future has come and gone! Or passed me by. Wheel in Homer Simpson here: damn you, time!

Another decade gone without any achievements (hey, what did you expect, this is the black sun, not California!). But no, without any desire to achieve anything! Long live the Kashmiri Revolution!


'Ten years on, you could be forgiven for believing this place has now come to pass in the TV schedules – those endless nostalgia evenings in which some stand-up comedian recalls his first Chopper bicycle and packet of Spangles, or the latest Andrew Davies attempt to sex up Victoriana – and in the bestseller lists.

English Heritage was the invention of the Thatcher government, high on bunting and patriotism and announced in the "Falklands election" of 1983. It replaced the old Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission with something a bit more puffed up and PR-friendly to the tourist industry. It sought to remind us of all we had achieved – the stately homes built with the wealth of the empire and the slave trade and so on – in the hope that the British might be inspired to revisit those imperial glories...

English Heritage was meant to represent a break with the 50s and 60s, when the drive had been to dismantle symbols of the establishment, put faith in the young; to demolish some of the old and to make the world new. After 1983, the here and now was to be viewed with suspicion'
---Tim Adams, from The Observer.

Here's Prince, in his Omar Khayyam mood.



Happy New Year, dear reader(s)!