#south devon college

[spilladabalia]

Jamie Hewlett

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

So, why do people care so much about Cornish identity? Cornwall’s just a part of England right? Another county with some distinct foods and a funny accent, and they moan about the tourists- when they should be grateful for the money.

Except it’s not.

Whilst the rest of England was forming with a character influenced by Germanic and Norse cultures, Cornwall was holding itself separate as an independent Celtic kingdom, with strong links with Wales, Ireland and Brittany- as well as trading with the wider Mediterranean. For a long time, this kingdom included parts of Devon, but eventually the Celtic people were forced back past the Tamar, and at some point started referring to the land as Kernow, rather than Dumnonia (probably).

Even after the Norman conquest, in part because Cornwall came under the control of the Duke of Brittany, Cornwall retained elements of its unique culture, and certainly its language. There are existing works of literature written in the Cornish language (also called Kernewek) during the medieval period. Due to the active tin mining industry and the Stannary courts, they even had a separate legal system.

All of this continued until the start of the Tudor period, when Henry VII, desperate for money for his wars with Scotland, suspended the operation of the Cornish Stannaries, and imposed greater taxes. This ultimately led to the Cornish Rebellion of 1497. An army of as many as 15000 rebels marched towards Somerset, and ultimately to London, where the rebels met with Henry VII’s armies. Unfortunately, the Cornish lost the ensuing battle, and the rebel leaders were captured, killed and quartered, with their quarters being displayed in Cornwall and Devon. From 1497 to 1508, Cornwall was punished with monetary penalties, impoverishing the people, and land was given to the king’s (English) allies.

However, this wasn’t the death of Cornish culture or dreams of independence from England. Until 1548, Glasney college was still producing literature in Cornish- when it was destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries, during the English reformation. The following year, 1549, the Cornish rose again- this time to demand a prayer book in their own language, which was still the first (and often only) language of most people in the region. The rebellion was also about the ordinary people vs the landowners, as shown by their slogan “kill all the gentlemen”.

Unfortunately, this rebellion failed too, and this time, it wasn’t just the leaders who were killed, but up to 5,500 Cornishmen- which would have been a significant proportion of the adult male population at the time. These factors combined are widely thought to have contributed to the decline of the Cornish language- although it was still widely in use centuries later.

Despite the failings of these rebellions, the Cornish retained a distinct language and their own culture, folklore and festivals. Mining, farming and fishing meant that the region itself wasn’t economically impoverished, as it was today. Even towards the end of the 1700s, there were still people who spoke Cornish fluently as a first language (including Dolly Pentreath, who definitely wasn’t the last Cornish speaker).

However, over time, the tin mines became less profitable, and Cornwall’s economy started to suffer. Especially in the latter part of the 19th century, many Cornish began to emigrate, especially to places like Australia, New Zealand (or Aotearoa), Canada and South America. Cornish miners were skilled, and were able to send pay back home, and along with the Welsh, influenced culture and sport in many of these places. Many mining terms also have their roots in Cornish language and dialect.

Throughout the 20th Century, Cornwall went through an economic decline- to the point where, when the UK was an EU member, Cornwall was receiving funding intended for only the most deprived regions in Europe. It was one of very few places in the UK to receive this funding- due to the levels of poverty and lack of infrastructure.

Part of the decline was also linked to the decline of historic fish stocks, such as mackerel. In the 70s and 80s, there was a mackerel boom- and large fishing trawlers came from as far away as Scandinavia (as well as Scotland and the north of England) to fish in Cornish waters. The traditional way of fishing in Cornwall used small boats and line fishing. The local fishermen couldn’t compete, and ultimately stocks were decimated by the trawlers. Many more families had to give up their traditional way of life. One could draw parallels here with worldwide indigenous struggles over fishing rights.

Despite this, Cornish communities retained their traditional folklore and festivals, many of which are still celebrated to this day. And throughout the 20th Century, efforts were made to preserve the Cornish language. Although there may not be any first language Cornish speakers left, it is now believed that community knowledge of the language was never truly lost.

Cornwall has since become a popular tourist destination. This brings its own problems- many people want to stay in self-catering accommodation and, more recently, air bnbs. This, alongside second homes, has gutted many Cornish communities. The gap between house prices and average wages is one of the largest in the country. Land has become extremely expensive, which hurts already struggling farmers. Roads can’t cope with the level of traffic. The one (1) major hospital can’t cope with the population in the summer. All of last winter, most Cornish households faced a “hosepipe ban” due to lack of water- yet in the summer, campsites and hotels can fill their swimming pools and hot tubs for the benefit of tourists.

Does this benefit Cornwall? Only about 13% of Cornwall’s GDP comes from tourism. The jobs associated with tourism are often poorly paid and may only offer employment for part of the year. People who stay in Air BnBs may not spend that much money in the community, and the money they pay for accommodation often goes to landlords who live upcountry and aren’t Cornish. Many major hotels and caravan sites are also owned by companies that aren’t Cornish, taking money out of the local economy.

Match this with a housing crisis where it’s increasingly difficult to rent properties long term, and buying a flat or house in Cornwall is out of reach of someone on the average salary and it’s easy to see why people are having to leave communities where their family lived for generations. This damages the local culture, and means centuries-old traditions can come under threat.

All of this feeds into the current situation; it feels like middle class families from London see Cornwall as their playground, and moan about tractors on the road, or the lack of services when they visit. People talk about theme park Cornwall- a place that’s built for entertainment of outsiders, not functionality for those who live here. More widely, a lot of people around the UK have never heard of the Cornish language, or view it as something that’s “extinct” or not worth preserving.

The Cornish are one of Britain’s indigenous cultures, alongside Welsh, Gaelic, Scots, Manx and others. And it’s a culture that’s increasingly under threat economically and culturally. We’ve been clinging on to our homes for a long time, and even now it still feels like we might be forced from them (indeed some of us are). So yes, Cornish people can seem excessively defensive about our identity and our culture- but there’s good reason for it!

[justforbooks]

How Deborah Levy can change your life

From her shimmering novels to her ‘living autobiographies’, Deborah Levy’s work inspires a devotion few literary authors ever achieve

Last August, the author Deborah Levy began to sit for her portrait. The starting point was a selfie – eyes penetrating, lips sensuous, head topped by a tower of chestnut hair. The artist, her friend Paul Heber-Percy, used Photoshop, then a pencil and tracing paper, to reverse and multiply the image of her face, until he had a drawing, neatly laid out on a grid, that satisfied him.

Then it was time to paint. He liked to work in the mornings, in hour-long bursts, in his tiny attic studio. When Levy came for sittings, he’d bring the painting down to the dining room, and the two of them would drink tea or wine, and talk. Not that these were sittings in the traditional sense, but “times I could observe her without feeling self-conscious”, he said.

Sometimes they’d discuss Levy’s new novel, August Blue, which she was finishing; but mostly it was “everyday things – friends, the news, exchanging recipes, how to unblock a sink”, said Levy. But, Heber-Percy said, nothing about these conversations was really everyday. She is the sort of person who makes the mundane remarkable. Even “going down to the bakery with her to get a baguette becomes a slightly magical thing”, says her friend the novelist Tash Aw. When her friends talk about her, they say things like this: “she is an event”, “she is a personage”, “she is a whole world”. People often remember the first time they met her. For Kate Bland, an audio producer, it was at a party at a Shoreditch warehouse. Levy was sitting on a high windowsill; Bland was leaning on it. The author’s rich, slightly breathy voice was coming over Bland’s shoulder. Talk unwound in a sequence of dazzling vignettes. “It seemed that there was a necessary theatricality: we had to hoist ourselves out of the ordinariness of chat and have a conversation that was going to be memorable,” she recalled. “I was quite thrilled by it.”

At the time of that party, in 2008, Levy was 49. Her life had contained one immense dislocation: when she was nine, her family emigrated from South Africa to the UK, after her father had spent three years as a political prisoner. After school at a London comprehensive, Levy took a theatre degree at the pioneering, avant-garde Dartington College of the Arts in Devon, and first forged a path as a playwright. Her first novel, Beautiful Mutants, was published in 1989, the year she turned 30. Twenty years on, at the time of the Shoreditch party, she wasn’t famous, and hadn’t sold more than a modest number of books, though she carried herself as if she had. She was teaching, adapting Colette and Carol Shields for the radio, raising two daughters, and living with her husband, playwright David Gale, in a semi-detached house off Holloway Road in north London. She was working on a novel, her first since 1996. Her previous books were out of print.

Four years later, Levy’s life was transformed. Her novel, Swimming Home – a sun-drenched story about a family holiday on the French Riviera, beneath whose glinting surface runs a Freudian riptide of wartime trauma – was shortlisted for the 2012 Booker prize. That sent sales flying. At the same time, her marriage fell apart. “By the time I went to the Booker dinner in December I knew I would be moving house and I was packing up,” she recalled. “It was very turbulent and very painful.”

The following year, she published Things I Don’t Want to Know, the first in a trilogy of what she calls “living autobiographies”, to convey their selective, fictive nature. Over the next few years, she alternated two more novels, Hot Milk and The Man Who Saw Everything, with two more volumes of living autobiography, which spoke of how, after her marriage ended, she recomposed a life for herself and her daughters in her 50s, outside the old patriarchal structures. All of these books, flew out of her “like a cork coming out of a bottle”.

Levy’s novels are popular and critically acclaimed. But it is with the living autobiographies that her reputation has transcended the literary. At events, readers tell Levy that her books make them feel less lonely, or ask her what to do about a life crisis. (One can’t quite imagine readers doing this with, say, Rachel Cusk, who also anatomises female experience, but in a somewhat chillier style.) At one of Levy’s online readings during the Covid pandemic, an audience member posted in the chat: “I’m 41 with two kids and sometimes I don’t feel I’m at home at all … Did it work for you, coming out of an unhappy marriage?” Levy answered: “It did work for me. You have to make another sort of life and gather your friends and supporters to your table” – which is pretty much the story of the second and third of her living autobiographies, The Cost of Living and Real Estate.

Levy’s writing has a very particular quality: it seems to infiltrate the mind. You absorb her way of seeing and start to perceive the world in Levy-ish ways. In her stories, seemingly trivial moments take on political force: an encounter with a hairdresser in The Cost of Living becomes a story about the camaraderie of women and what they reveal to each other; a scene about sharing a table on the Eurostar becomes about how men, literally and figuratively, fail to make space for younger women. In the new novel, August Blue, the narrator, having been insulted by a young man in a cafe, tells us, “I think he was expecting me to respond, to reply in some way, but I didn’t care about him or his problems.” I’ve used that in my own life more than once, since first reading it. The books become “almost a guide to life”, said Gaby Wood, director of the Booker Foundation. “She trains you to become your best self.”

Part of the appeal of Levy’s writing is that it is shot through with unpatronising sympathy towards younger women – both the hesitant, tough young female characters who populate her novels, and those who appear in her living autobiographies, often negotiating sticky situations with older, entitled men. In Real Estate, there is a passage in which she describes her joy in cooking for her daughters’ friends: “I liked their appetite – yes, for the dish prepared, but for life itself. I wanted them to find strength for all they had to do in the world and for all the world would throw at them.” She is not just talking about her daughters’ friends. Levy is also in the business of feeding and strengthening her readers. And they feel it.

The plays and the novels Levy wrote in her 20s and 30s are collage-like, gravelly, spiky, and dense, marinated in the eastern European avant-garde influences she absorbed at college. She had a talent for epigrammatic, slightly surreal sentences. “I once heard a man howl just like a wolf except he was standing in a phone box in Streatham,” says a character in her first novel. But the work had not yet acquired the razored-away, spare quality that has given the later work such airiness, such ripple and flow, nor was there the emotional force with which readers identify so strongly.

It was in the late 2000s that she forged the style that transformed her reputation. She was working at the Royal College of Art at the time. Two days a week, she’d take the tube from the fumes of Holloway Road to green South Kensington. She was a tutor in the animation department, helping students learn to write and construct narrative. “It was a potent time,” she said. Her colleagues at the Royal College of Art were inspiring; so were her students. At nights, while her young daughters slept, she was writing Swimming Home. “I was somehow living closer to my own emotions and understood that I might be able to put them to work in my book.” She had always felt that emotion was frowned upon by her avant-garde art “family”, but “from Swimming Home onwards, I decided to totally up-end that”. Charging the story with feeling changed her writing – and her relationship with readers. “I knew I was on to something, and it rocked me,” she recalled. “There were times when I’d stop writing and I’d come down to cook my daughters spaghetti in the evening. There was a sort of cool place under the steps, and I was so on fire, I would just stand there and cool down.”

What Levy found in her writing was a way of giving her story a shimmering, attractive surface, while allowing her preoccupations with literary theory, myth and psychoanalysis to occupy its murkier depths. The novel can be taken as “a kind of holiday novel gone wrong”, she said – and it has been slipped into many a suitcase as a beach or poolside read. “I’m happy if the surface is read. Because everything else is there to be found. And I’m working hard for my readers to find it. But I don’t look down on readers who don’t. I think, ‘Something will come through.’” The “something” might include the Freudian desire and death-wish that suffuses the novel; its peculiar linked imagery of sugar mice and rats; above all the immense treacherous undertow of history – of the Holocaust, of 20th-century suffering and wars – that Levy sketches into the story with almost imperceptible strokes.

But Swimming Home was rejected by every major publisher it was sent to. Levy, in all her certainty that it was good, was devastated. The years following the financial crisis of 2008 were inhospitable to a midlist novelist who hadn’t been in print for a while. The publishing industry was in trouble; the powerful new wave of feminism of the 2010s was a whisper rather than a roar; and the kind of spare, experimental books by women that would come to define recent literary trends, such as Cusk’s auto-fictional Outline trilogy, or Annie Ernaux’s intimate unfurling of memory, or Elena Ferrante’s revelatory novels on female friendship, had yet to appear in Britain. At the time, she said, “your book was either going to sell or it wasn’t going to sell, and when they said it was ‘too literary’, they meant it wasn’t going to sell”.

Then, in summer 2009, something changed. A friend of Levy’s, the late Jules Wright, who ran an arts centre in east London, read the manuscript. She was organising a show on photographer Dean Rogers, who documented the sites of car crashes that had killed cultural heroes – the spot, for example, where Marc Bolan died. Swimming Home begins with a scene in which Kitty Finch, a young woman with a death wish, perilously drives an older poet, with whom she believes she has a telepathic connection, along a winding mountain road. Wright decided to have the first two pages of the book printed large and installed at the beginning of the exhibition. Not long after the opening, though, she called Levy and bluntly announced she was removing them. It was a disaster, she said – people were clogging the entrance as they stopped to read the text. “It was,” Levy said, “the first spark: that those two pages of this much-declined book were gathering a crowd around them.”

Eventually the novel did find its publisher, a tiny new press called And Other Stories. The literary translator Sophie Lewis was editor there. Levy’s pitch, remarkably given all the rejections, was supremely confident. “Deborah said: ‘This is the tightest book I’ve ever written, and it’s going to be a bestseller,’” Lewis remembered.

In autumn 2011, Levy’s friend Charlotte Schepke, who runs Large Glass gallery in London, hosted the launch party. They decided to project The Swimmer, the 1968 Burt Lancaster film, on to the wall. On the night, to Schepke’s immense surprise, “you couldn’t stand – the place was absolutely packed. It was rammed.” Her interesting new friend, who had written witty labels for the opening show at her small gallery earlier that year, was suddenly making waves. It was almost, said Schepke, “as if she’d done this grand thing of claiming to be an author – and then, suddenly, she really was an author”.

In her living autobiographies, Levy frequently refers to her rented shed, a writing space in a friend’s garden, on whose roof the apples used to fall in autumn with a dull thunk. These days, as she moves deeper into her 60s, the shed has been replaced by an attic in Paris, a few blocks behind the bookshop Shakespeare & Company, near the Seine. On a limpid blue February day, she had pinned a branch of yellow mimosa to her front door. Its flowering marked, she said, the “end of gloomy, rat-grey January”.

The studio was as near to the platonic ideal of a Paris garret as you could imagine: reached by a winding stair through a courtyard, and with low ceilings and wooden beams. Kilim rugs were scattered on the floor, and her bed was covered in a fluffy sheepskin throw. There was a stash of red wine in the fireplace. Everything about the studio radiated her delight in objects and food and pleasure. If you met the author and saw the studio before you read the work, you might expect something more excessive and elaborate than the stripped-down, translucent prose she produces.

She poured coffee from a moka pot and passed me a dish heaped with croissants from her local boulangerie, La Maison D’Isabelle; pastries from the same shop turn up in the new novel. Objects from her real world often slip into her fiction. There was a biography of Isadora Duncan face-out on a shelf, perhaps the same book about the dancer she has her character Elsa read in August Blue. On a table stood a bowl of pearl necklaces, and at her throat were pearls – like the pearl necklace she has her beautiful, careless character Saul wear in her novel, The Man Who Saw Everything.

Things in her stories often hold the kind of powerful significance that Freud attaches to artefacts in dreams – such as the pool in Swimming Home, which, at its most basic, Levy pointed out, is a rectangular hole in the ground, and thus also metaphorically a grave. She loves the surrealists. The turning point of Hot Milk is the moment when her narrator, Sofia, discovers boldness through making bloody handprints on the kitchen wall of a man who has been tormenting his dog – a scene borrowed from a story told about the artist Leonora Carrington who, letting herself into the apartment of her prospective lover Luis Buñuel, smeared menstrual blood over his pristine white walls.

Motifs slip between books, too; in this she has something in common with a visual artist building a subtly interconnected body of work. The title August Blue, for example, is taken from the colour of the thread that, in Hot Milk, one character Ingrid uses to embroider Sofia’s name into a shirt. Horses, in particular, gallop through Levy’s work – from the tiny horse-shaped buttons that, in Real Estate, she kept from her late stepmother’s button box, to the moment Ingrid appears in the desert landscape on horseback, like a bellicose goddess, in the myth-infused Hot Milk. The whole of August Blue hangs on striking images of horses: it begins with her character, the pianist Elsa, watching jealously as a woman she thinks might be her doppelganger buys a pair of mechanical dancing horses in an Athens flea market.

Levy laughed when I asked her about her equine enthusiasms. “That’s a case for Dr Freud!” she said. She ponders, in Real Estate, what it is to be a woman “on your high horse”. Sometimes, she writes, you might find yourself incapable of controlling your high horse; at other times, people are all too eager to to pull you off it. She imagines a friend riding her high horse “down the North Circular to repair her smashed screen at Mr Cellfone”. When I think of Levy’s horses, I also think of her adoration of her small fleet of e-bikes, now famous from her living autobiographies, which she stables by her London flat and lends to friends when they visit; she bought her first when she moved out of her marriage and into her new life. When they start up with a little equine surge of power, she told me, “it’s hard not to whoop every time”.

When Levy was a small child in South Africa, and her father, Norman Levy, was imprisoned for his anti-apartheid activism, she started to speak so quietly that her voice became barely audible. What saved her from this state of virtual silence was her imagination: the dawning understanding that she could write other realities. “It was a question,” Levy told me, “of finding avatars.” The avatar she created for her nine-year-old self was a cat with wondrous powers of flight – perhaps unconsciously imagining freedom for her father, as well as liberation for herself. (In Real Estate, The Flying Cat is the name she gives to the ferry that brings her daughters to her for a holiday on a Greek island.) The characters in her fiction are still her avatars. “I’m in every one of them,” she said, “including the cats and including the horses.”

For a long time, in adulthood, she resisted writing or even talking about South Africa. The difficulties of her family felt irrelevant, when set against the struggles of black South Africans. But since she had decided to base the structure of Things I Don’t Want to Know on George Orwell’s headings in his essay Why I Write – one of which is “historical impulse” – she found herself obliged to tackle those repressed memories. Using a child’s eye view, she said, “I tried to convey, without using the old language of ‘the bloodstained regime of apartheid’, what it’s like to be told that you’re supposed to respect adults, while there are white adults who are clearly doing very cruel things to children of colour my age.”

Her mother, Philippa, through her husband’s imprisonment, coped alone, earning a living through a succession of secretarial jobs. Levy remembers her as capable and glamorous. “I loved the way she cooked, with her cigarette holder, and the way that she’d dance a bit to the record she’d put on when she came back from work.”

When Levy’s father was released in 1968, he was banned from working, and the family – Levy has an elder half-brother from her mother’s first marriage, as well as a younger brother and sister – had little option but to emigrate. Her father found work lecturing at Middlesex University, among other places. Money was tight. Her parents’ marriage ended in 1974.

After the “blue sky, and the bone-white grass of the garden” in Johannesburg, arriving in London felt “as if someone had pulled the plug out”. But despite England’s greyness, she loved it. She made, for the first time, proper friends. “I don’t have that narrative of exile, of wanting to return to the place that you left”. She adored the way people spoke, and she still delights in English turns of phrase: “Hello pet, hello lamb, hello duck.” As for her accent, “I had to lose it very quickly in the playground not to be beaten up.”

She often plucks her characters out of their familiar environments, partly in order to see their psychological foibles magnified on foreign shores. (She herself likes very much to be in a hot country, in southern Spain or a Greek island, swimming in the sea.) Sometimes these characters, like her, have been swept on the tides of 20th-century history – like the English poet Joe in Swimming Home, who is really Jozef, smuggled out of Łódź in 1943; or Lapinski in Beautiful Mutants, whose mother was “the ice-skating champion of Moscow”. Levy recalled of an interview in the news that moved her recently: it was with a Ukrainian woman from Kherson who had been lying in bed, thinking, when she was blown into her kitchen by a Russian shell. “Those were her words: ‘I was lying in bed, thinking,’” said Levy. “I do not take a place of calm, a place that is agreeable to think in, for granted.” Levy’s senses are finely tuned to the fragility of things.

After her A-levels, in the summer of 1978, she would walk past the Gate cinema in Notting Hill, timidly noting the thrilling, eccentrically dressed people who hung out there. One day, she saw an ad in the Evening Standard for front-of-house staff. For the interview, she put on a pair of big, gold platform wedges; as she left the house, her mother yelled, “‘You’ll never get a job dressed like that.’” Those gold wedges are the ancestors of the shoes that have carried her female characters on to victory, or else to triumphant defeat: the silver gladiator sandals that Ingrid, like the goddess Athena, straps high up her calves in Hot Milk; the sage-green Parisian tap shoes that get her into a scrape in Real Estate; the brothel creepers that, to her younger self, “marked me out for a meaningful life”; and the “scuffed brown leather shoes with high snakeskin heels” that we meet on page three of August Blue.

She got the job at the Gate. Her new colleagues were “either at drama school or off to university, and all way cooler than me. I was a nerdy writer” – of poetry, at the time – “with a great love of Bowie.” The cinema was screening Derek Jarman’s film Jubilee, “and he would come in, and he was curious and charismatic and friendly and cultured and he didn’t feel above talking to this 18-year-old making the popcorn, tearing the tickets and scooping the ice cream”. It was Jarman who told her she should apply not to university but to Dartington, where she’d learn about improvisation and dance and avant-garde theatre and art.

It was at this time, not having the kind of parents who dragged her round galleries at weekends, that she encountered contemporary art for the first time. It was an exhibition of the work of Joseph Beuys. She remembers, a grand piano muffled and covered with cloth marked with a cross; other objects made of gold leaf; dried plants tacked to the wall; things scribbled in pencil. “I remember almost not being able to breathe. And there was this voice inside my head, saying, ‘This is it. This is it.’ And I had no idea what it was.”

The Cost of Living opens with the narrator witnessing an encounter between a young woman and an older man in a bar in Colombia. The man, whom Levy calls “the Big Silver”, invites the young woman to his table. After she tells him a strange story about a perilous diving expedition, he remarks that she talks a lot, and carelessly knocks her book off the table. Levy writes: “It had not occurred to him that she might not consider herself to be the minor character and him the major character.” It is a very Levy-ish story, in its wry observation of dynamics between men and women, and with its implicit call to arms to women who have, as the critic Dwight Garner has put it, “come to sense they’re not locked into their lives and stories”.

Levy herself is without doubt a major character – and is intent on expanding the role. She has an immense appetite “for experiencing the strange dimensions of living and the absolutely practical dimensions”, she said. We were sitting, at the time, outside a cafe near the Panthéon in Paris after a good lunch, and Levy was smoking a roll-up. “I’m not endlessly open to experience. I am easily bored and impatient. I want to keep things moving, keep thought moving. I want to make something new of the old story. How do you make the novel as complicated as life, as interesting as life? That’s what I want to do.”

She has many plans. She wants to adapt her two most recent novels for the screen. (Swimming Home and Hot Milk are in other scriptwriters’ hands.) She knows exactly, how the opening scene of August Blue will go, and she has the perfect idea of how to tackle the temporal complexities of The Man Who Saw Everything, which slips, through its main character’s fractured consciousness, between the Berlin of 1988 and the London of 2016. In The Cost of Living, Levy fantasises about living in California and writing scripts by her pool. When I teased her lightly about the unlikelihood of this, she said, “You never know. I just might be there in my swimming costume at 80, writing films. I’d have a river now – with a little rowing boat tied to the jetty, and I’d smoke, drink coffee and write my scripts, I think probably in France.”

In the meantime, now that her daughters are in their 20s, she comes from her London flat to work in her Paris studio for weeks at a time. She is taking French lessons, though presently her literary enthusiasms outstrip her linguistic ability. “I say, ‘Shall we translate this poem of Apollinaire together?’ and my teacher says, ‘I think today, Deborah, we will try to master être and avoir.’” Her most natural creative affinities are in fact French – Godard, Duras – rather than British. To her evident delight, Levy has won one of France’s most important literary awards, the Prix Femina Étranger. She has not yet won a major prize in Britain, despite multiple short listings, perhaps because British prizes tend to favour large, self-sufficient, discrete slabs of fiction.

She begins her days early, with a walk by the Seine. After work there might be an exhibition, or dinner – which she might depart, more than one friend told me, with sudden decision, announcing that she is back off to work. She looked abashed when I mentioned this habit, worried she might appear rude to her friends. “I’m immensely sociable and then I really need to be on my own. I do like to write after a dinner party,” she said. (She herself loves to cook – “delicious mountains of cream and garlic, and the kitchen is like a bomb site,” Charlotte Schepke said, “but it’s like being in the finest restaurant. Her presence makes it an occasion”.)

At the moment, in a sharp change of gear, she is researching a biography of the young Gertrude Stein, to be titled Mama of Dada. She is concentrating on the writer’s early training under psychologist William James, brother of the novelist Henry. Levy wants to think about how this academically brilliant American – who’d be late for her medical lectures because her bustled skirts were weighted down by horsehair-stuffed hems – moved to Paris, ditched the corset and became the pioneering modernist who dressed in monk-like robes and filled her house with Picassos.

It’s a characteristic way for Levy to build character. But while the books are rooted in the physical, they also make room for the uncanny and the unexplained, for the sudden intrusion into a person’s consciousness of unwelcome memories or dark imaginings. “It would be very sad to have all the possibilities of the novel, this hot-air balloon, but to say, ‘I only write social realism and the hot-air balloon must never leave the ground,’” she said. “That’s not how people’s minds work: people have very strange dreams, and thoughts, and daydreams, and associations.” She is, she said, very careful not to let her hot-air balloon float away into the clouds of fantasmagoria. It is all in the balance and control.

What also earths Levy’s work is her wit. “She is so amused, diverted and delighted by life,” said the actor Tilda Swinton, who is a fan. Her jokes, often wryly commenting on her own failings, make for a kind of intimacy, even complicity – “the kind of complicity that many of us can only relate to the dry land of childhood companionship”, said Swinton. Levy’s women, especially the “I” of the living autobiographies, fail as well as succeed; they have good days and bad. They are neither “feisty” and “gutsy” – those tiresome cliches – nor are they self-saboteurs, who put themselves down to ingratiate themselves with the reader. They are both real and offer an example of how to live well. When Levy was finding a way to write her living autobiographies, she searched for a voice that “was immensely powerful, immensely vulnerable; immensely eloquent and totally inarticulate. Because that’s all of us.”

In March, I went back to Paul Heber-Percy’s house to see her portrait finished. It renders Levy’s face in triplicate, as if seen through a kaleidoscope, and her hair, piled on her head, soars upwards like Medusa’s snaky locks, dissolving into abstract, Rorschach-like patterns and repetitions. It gave the impression of a presence with many selves, in constant movement of thought. In the portrait, Levy has five large, wide-open, scrutinising eyes; but one of her tripled faces disappears into the world outside the frame, and the sixth eye is unseen.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[stephensmithuk]

The Hound of the Baskervilles: Baskerville Hall

CW injury discussion, discussion of violent crime including torture, whaling and capital punishment:

There were three classes of travel on British railways at this point, althought second-class travel was on its way out:

Paddington station, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and today and a Grade I listed building, still has a big platform where it is possible to see someone directly onto a train without going through a ticket barrier. This is Platform 1 with access to the taxi rank and Elizabeth line station. It is also home to the GWR warm memorial and Paddington Bear statue, with a shop dedicated to the ursine Peruvian immigrant in the retail area at the south-eastern side.

The Museum of the College of Surgeons is now called the Hunterian Museum and is located near Holborn tube station. Admission is free, but they recommend advanced booking. It is closed on Sundays and Mondays.

It would be rather harder on a modern train to conduct a conversation as the vehicle was pulling out due to the elimination of most rolling stock with "droplights" i.e. manually lowerable windows, usually so you could open the door. The High Speed Trains which had at their end doors, them were withdrawn in 2019, the surviving "Castle Class" examples had their doors replaced with sliding ones and the Mark 3 carriages used on the Night Rivieria sleeper service now have them set to automatic locking during train movement. This was due to an enthusiast who stuck his head out of a window on a train with similar provision, resulting in a fatal encounter with a signal gantry.

The route taken is today electrified as far as Bristol (to Cardiff in fact) and is operated by the Class 802 Intercity Express train, although these mostly divert off that route at Reading. These are bi-mode units, capable of running both off 25kV overhead wire and on their underfloor diesel engines, both at 125mph like their High Speed Train predecessors, although much of SW England does not allow them to go near that speed. The main difference between the similar Class 800 is that they have larger diesel tanks for extended operations away from the wires; Devon does not have electrified railways.

The IETs come in five-car (802/0) and nine-car (802/1) on GWR. Not sure of these are 800s or 802s, but you can see why they are dubbed "Cucumbers" by enthusiasts when they are not complaining about the seats, which are a bit hard.

Spaniels were originally bred to be "gun dogs" to flush out animals and retrieve the corpses for the hunter. There are a wide variety of breeds, including the smaller ones like the King Charles Spaniel, which mainly serve as companion or lap dogs.

Dartmoor is home to the Dartmoor Intrusion, a large section of granite bedrock formed around 300 million years ago. London is on a clay bedrock, which is much younger:

Granite quarrying was widely done on Dartmoor, including by prisoners doing hard labour sentences. Today, it is no longer done as the area is now a national park, but you can get reclaimed granite from the area.

Nearly every station bar the smallest one would have a resident stationmaster and porters; these days, staffing is a lot less common in many areas and the station building may see other uses.

A wagonette is a four-wheeled carriage with longitudinal seats i.e the passengers sit on the sides facing each other. They are common on the Channel Island of Sark, where cars are banned.

Cobs are large ponies used mainly for driving carts or recreational riding:

The UK does not have an equivalent of the Posse Comitatus Act that the United States does to restrict the use of the military for law enforcement. While the use of them to deal with riots largely ended with the creation of civilian police forces, they can be still called on for "Military Aid to the Civil Authorities".

Not counting their use in Northern Ireland as part of Operation Banner from 1969 to 2007. This typically involves things like:

Civil engineering after disasters, like repairing flood defences;

Search and rescue;

Bomb disposal, such as when someone finds a German bomb during construction work;

Counter-terrorism, which mainly consists of standing around possible targets with their rifles or in 2012, sticking short-range SAMs on tower block roofs to protect the Olympics and Paralympics from aerial attack. The SAS would famously be used to end a siege at the Iranian Embassy in 1980, but this sort of thing would now be done by armed police officers today.

Selden's commutation of his death sentence due to questions over his sanity wouldn't have been uncommon, 534 of the 988 death sentences handed down were commuted between 1868 and 1899. 1889 saw 15 executions, all for murder:

****

HMP Dartmoor, on land leased from the Duchy from Cornwall, is located in a pretty remote location. It is six miles over open countryside before you reach the next town at Tavistock (which had two railway stations, both closed in the 1960s) and around ten before you'd reach Plymouth, with a further 4 1/2 before you could get to the coast. Also, you'd be doing this in a distinctive uniform with black arrows on, not exactly suited for the conditions.

This is not to say that people didn't try to escape and indeed succeed - 24 American POWs would do so during the prison's first incarnation.

It would be easier to do so when outside the prison on a work party rather than it, like Frank Mitchell, a gangster who in 1966 asked a guard if he could feed some ponies. He in fact walked to a nearby road, got into a waiting car driven by associates of the Kray twins and was driven to London. The escape (which involved soldiers in the manhunt) was a major political embarrassment, especially when Mitchell managed to get letters published in two newspapers asking for a parole date:

However, Mitchell becaming an increasing liability for the Krays; he then disappeared, generally believed to have killed and dumped at sea. They and an associate called Freddie Foreman, known as "Brown Bread [dead] Fred" for his ability to dispose of bodies, were tried for this murder and others at the Old Bailey; they were acquitted of this particular charge. Foreman admitted to the crime in 1996 and again in 2000; the CPS decided "double jeopardy" meant they could not bring new charges.

Because of its remoteness, Dartmoor ended up becoming a place for the worst of the worst in the British prison system. Mitchell, known as the "Mad Axeman". had a string of violent offences to his name, including an escape from Broadmoor that had seen him hold a married couple hostage with an an axe. He would not be the only London gangster of the period to spend time there:

It also held more "political prisoners", like Éamon de Valera. During the First World War, with other prisoners moved elsewhere, it became a Home Office Work Centre for conscientious objectors who agreed to do non-combatant work; the locks were removed, they could wear their own clothes and could even move around freely locally, although they were not very popular there.

The place was bleak too; no flushing toilets (so you had to spend each morning "slopping out", being cold and damp. Tampered-with porridge led to a riot in 1932:

A further riot in 1990 was part of a string of copycat riots in prisons following one at Strangeways in Manchester; D Wing was wrecked by fire and a prisoner was found dead in a burnt-out cell; this may have been an accident or murder.

In the aftermath, an inquiry was held by Lord Justic Woolf. A summary of the findings of the 600-page report can be found here:

Notably he recommended major improvements to Dartmoor if it was to continue operating.

In 2001, Dartmoor became a Category C prison for non-violent offenders, although concerns remained about its condition. Discussions about closure began in the 2010s with consideration being given to ending the lease and closing it down in 2023.

This did not happen, but other events are now looking like closing it anyway. Concerns over radon gas levels have now seen all the prisoners relocated as of time of writing; it may not reopen.

****

Electric lighting was of course becoming more common. Candlepower was a measurement for the intensity of a light, 1 candlepower being defined as the light from a spermaceti candle. Spermaceti is a wax found in the heads of sperm whales; it was mistakenly thought that spermaceti was whale semen because it looked like that when fresh. This was a major reason they were hunted, like in Moby Dick - today they remain at "Vulnerable" status.

The SI (metric, basically) unit is called the candela - one candlepower is 0.981 candela. The lumen is another measure, used for lightbulbs.

A billiard-room is where one plays billiards. It was also acceptable to smoke there. Women played billiards too; Queen Victoria was a fan, but I am not sure of the etiquette on mixed games. Especially if evening dress was involved, it would be seen as saucy by today's standards and positively scandalous in 1889!

[darkx-the-dragon-kn1ght]

Pokémon Reborn Screenshot Let's Play: Chapter 9

Hello again, everyone! Chaos and other hyperfixations haven’t fully consumed me quite yet, meaning we’ve got ourselves another chapter of this Let’s Play! I don’t have a lot to preface this with as of now- like, I’ll be back in college soon, but it’s not like my update “schedule” became that much faster during break, so I don’t think anything much will change. 

So instead, let’s recap what happened in the last installment!

Following Victoria’s advice, Xera made her way to the east of Opal Ward. There, she finds Victoria barred from entering Obsidia Ward by a police officer due to the dangerous situation occurring there.

Florinia arrives, approving of Xera being allowed into Obsidia Ward based on her actions during the Mosswater Industrial raid. However, she’s more dubious of Victoria’s capabilities.

Victoria gives a speech about wanting to help for the sake of the innocent civilians living in the ward, which is enough to convince Florinia of her convictions and also permit her into Obsidia Ward.

Obsidia Ward is marred with cracks and massive fissures in the streets as well as vines and trees popping up in places they shouldn’t. The epicenter of this catastrophe appears to be Obsidia Park, which is further east.

We also learn a bit more about the company known as Yureyu. It was the Reborn region’s local corporation, on par with Silph Co. and Devon Corp, but a combination of mysterious earthquakes and economic competition caused it to go out of business two years ago.

Xera and Victoria arrive at the entrance to Obsidia Park, which has become a massive and dangerous tangle of overgrown trees and vines. Florinia explains that witnesses saw some shady figures bringing some kind of machine into the park prior to the disaster, which likely caused the overgrowth.

The plan is for a group (likely consisting of at least Xera, Victoria, and Florinia) to head into the park and locate/destroy the machine, but they’ll need the Cut TMX to do so. This TMX is in the possession of a colleague of Florinia’s- a woman named Amaria, another Gym Leader.

Apparently, Amaria went to the south to investigate reports of more suspicious people in that area and has yet to return. Thus, Xera and Victoria head out to go look for her.

Xera and Victoria go south and find themselves in the Obsidia Slums, exploring them in order to find Amaria and the TMX. During the search, Xera catches a Mankey, who she names Brawler.

So that’s the mission right now- find Gym Leader Amaria to get the TMX so everyone can get into Obsidia Park and deal with the overgrowth. Simple enough, right? I can’t imagine there’s much more to the slums, and Amaria’s gotta be…somewhere, so let’s keep searching!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

[nobertsales]

It’s National Chocolate Mint Day!

#ChocolateMint has a cool peppermint fragrance and flavor with subtle, sweet notes of chocolate and vanilla.

As soon as sugar was added to dark chocolate, the combination of chocolate and mint became a trend.

By the mid 1800’s, when mass production of chocolate was common, candy stores started advertising #MintChocolates to the public.

In the 1900’s, dark chocolate was served with mint springs in tea houses and dining rooms to encourage good breath and aid digestion.

In 1973, a culinary student, Marilyn Ricketts invents mint chocolate chip ice cream at South Devon College in the UK.

Mint chocolate chip is one of the most popular flavors of ice cream.

🍫 🍨 #NationalChocolateMintDay #FoodOfTheDay @NobertSales #NobertSales #FoodConsultant #FoodService #FoodServiceSolutions #FoodSales #Food #FoodDude #WeKnowFood 

[mitchell-smith-art]

ABOUT

BIO

I am an artist from Torbay, Devon and I'm currently based in Brighton, UK. My work spans across all mediums, from painting, to sculpture, performance & tattooing. I studied a BA in Fine Arts in Bristol & an MFA at Wimbledon College of Arts, graduating in 2019. I've worked in several art galleries such as Bernard Jacobson, Newport Street (Damien Hirst) and am a founder of Uncovered Collective, which is a group of creatives who hold exhibitions for emerging artists. Currently I mostly create handpoke (stick and poke) tattoos, from a private studio space in South London. I also work in SEO. I also have a food blog: Brighton Bites Back and am part of Uncovered Collective.

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ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice is an investigation through various media. Generally, my motivation to create comes from an attempt to define my moral and political identity against the social landscape.

I am currently focusing on developing my SEO career further.

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EDUCATION

MFA  2017 - 2019 - Wimbledon College of Art, UAL, London

​BA (Hons)  2014 - 2017 - University of the West of England, Bristol

​Foundation Diploma in Fine Art  2013 - 2014 - South Devon College, South West

​Tattoo Apprentice  2012 - 2013 - Revolver Tattoo Rooms, Torquay

​BTEC in Fine Art (lvl 3).  2010 - 2012 - South Devon College, South West 

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AWARDS

​UAL Vice-Chancellor Scholarship  2017-2019

​The Empringham Prize for Engagement  2017

​The Degree Show Prize  2017

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MEDIA

the Horizon Magazine - issue3 Subject LDN

Vicious Circle (Art number 23)

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COVER ART

Idles - Mother - 7" - (artwork: SHE, 2017)

Splurge - Dopey - Album cover - (artwork: Sunflowers in mince, 2018)

PODCAST​S

What Is Your Working Class? - (hosted by Aidan Teplitzky)

Bitesize B2B Marketing - (Co-host)

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MERCH

Monk Audio T-shirt design

Spaced Digital T-shirt design

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STREET ART

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-25228679/ /splash-colour-walls-hill-shelter-thoughts/

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MUSIC

Foxhol - Worm/Wyrm (lyric video)

Foxhol - Statecide (music video)

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EXHIBITIONS

11. 2021 - Vertical Merger - Uncovered Collective - Woolwich, London

10.2020 - Emergent Vision - Uncovered Collective - Peckham, London

8.2020 - Gods, Devils & Software Engineers - Deptford Does Art, London 

12.2019 - Vicious Circle - The Old Biscuit Factory, London 06.2019 - MFA Fine Art Show - Wimbledon College of Arts, London  2.2019 - Postopia - Uncovered Collective - Ugly Duck, London

10.2018 - Who Will Provide? - The Crypt Gallery, St Pancras, London

9.2018 - The Great Divide - Ovada Warehouse Gallery, Oxford

8.2018 - FEMzine presents FEMfestival - Stour Space, London

2.2018 - CONFLICT - Chelsea College of Arts, London

5.2017 - ‘Eleventh’ Degree Show - UWE studios, Spike Island, Bristol

8.2016 - Parallels - The Island, Bristol

10.2015 - Seriously Dad it’s Art - Spike Island, Bristol

8.2013 - The Great Big Rhino Project - (Charity auction) - Paignton Zoo, Torre Abbey

7.2013 - Young Artists Exhibition - Spanish Barn, Torre Abbey, Devon

[12digitalmarketing]

Ollie Watkins, the Aston Villa attacker, has played in the vast majority of the club's Premier League matches in 2023/2024, making 37 appearances overall and playing 3,227 minutes. He has started in all 37 of these appearances across their 38 fixtures. Early Life and Education: Ollie Watkins was born on December 30, 1995, in Torquay, Devon, and grew up in Newton Abbot. He attended South Dartmoor Community College and was an Arsenal supporter from a young age. Exeter City: Watkins joined Exeter City's Academy at age 11. He progressed through the ranks, signing a professional contract in 2014. After a successful loan at Weston-super-Mare, he became a key player for Exeter, earning the EFL Young Player of the Year award. Brentford: Watkins moved to Brentford in 2017 for a reported fee of £1.8 million. He excelled there, scoring a hat-trick against Barnsley and ending the 2019-20 season with 26 goals. He was named the EFL Championship Player of the Year.

Aston Villa: Watkins signed with Aston Villa in 2020 for a club-record fee potentially rising to £33 million. He made an immediate impact, including scoring a hat-trick against Liverpool. He continued to shine, becoming Villa's top scorer and setting club records. International Career: Watkins debuted for England in 2021, scoring on his first appearance. Despite not making the final squad for Euro 2020, he continued to contribute to the national team, scoring in friendlies against Ivory Coast and Australia, and earning a call-up in 2023 after an 18-month absence.

[thxnews]

King Approves New Bishop of Exeter

The King of England has given his approval for the nomination of The Right Reverend Mike Harrison as the new Bishop of Exeter. Currently serving as the Suffragan Bishop of Dunwich in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, Bishop Harrison is set to succeed The Right Reverend Robert Atwell, who recently retired from the post. The momentous announcement coincided with the celebration of Devon Day on June 4, 2024.  

Introduction

The appointment of Bishop Harrison marks a new chapter in the rich history of the Diocese of Exeter. With a strong background in mission, evangelism, and engaging with youth, he brings a fresh perspective and a wealth of experience to the role. As the spiritual leader for the Anglican community in Devon, Bishop Harrison will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the Church in the region.  

A Spiritual Journey

Mike Harrison's path to becoming the Bishop of Exeter has been marked by a diverse range of experiences and a deep commitment to his faith. After completing his undergraduate studies in Mathematics & Statistics at Selwyn College, Cambridge, he worked as both a Management Consultant and a Social Worker in London. This unique blend of analytical thinking and compassionate service laid the foundation for his future ministry. Answering the call to serve, Mike trained for ministry at Oxford and began his clerical journey as Assistant Curate at St Anne and All Saints, South Lambeth in the Southwark Diocese. During this time, he also pursued a PhD in Doctrine at King's College, London University, further deepening his theological understanding.  

A Heart for Mission and Ministry

Throughout his career, Bishop Harrison has demonstrated a keen focus on mission, evangelism, discipleship, and cultivating vocations. As Chaplain at Bradford University and Bradford and Ilkley Community College, he also served as Diocesan World Development Advisor and completed an MA in International Development Studies at Bradford University. This global perspective has undoubtedly shaped his approach to ministry and his understanding of the Church's role in the world. As Vicar of Holy Trinity, Eltham in the Diocese of Southwark, Bishop Harrison also served as Rural Dean of Eltham and Mottingham. In 2006, he moved to Leicester Diocese as Director of Mission and Ministry, further honing his skills in leadership and pastoral care.  

A New Chapter for Exeter

Bishop Harrison's nomination as the Bishop of Exeter comes at a significant time for the Diocese and the county as a whole. As Devon Day celebrations on June 4th highlight the rich cultural heritage and traditions of the region, the Church of England also recognizes the importance of spiritual leadership in fostering community and promoting the common good. With his wife Rachel, an Occupational Therapist, and their four adult children by his side, Bishop Harrison embarks on this new journey with a sense of purpose and a commitment to serving the people of Devon. As a passionate supporter of Bolton Wanderers, a beekeeper, and a baker of cakes, he brings a well-rounded perspective and a genuine love for life to his new role. As the 10 Downing Street announcement on Devon Day underscores, the appointment of Bishop Harrison represents a new era for the Diocese of Exeter. Building upon the legacy of his predecessors, including the recently retired Bishop Robert Atwell, he will undoubtedly leave his own mark on the spiritual landscape of Devon.  

A Legacy of Faith

The Diocese of Exeter has been blessed with a long line of distinguished spiritual leaders, each contributing to the rich tapestry of faith in the region. The last 10 Bishops of Exeter, spanning over a century of service, include: Bishop Years of Service Robert Atwell 2014-2023 Michael Langrish 1999-2013 Hewlett Thompson 1985-1999 Eric Mercer 1973-1985 Robert Mortimer 1949-1973 Charles Curzon 1936-1948 Lord William Cecil 1916-1936 Archibald Robertson 1903-1916 Herbert Edward Ryle 1901-1903 Edward Bickersteth 1885-1900   Final Thoughts As Bishop Harrison takes up the mantle, he stands on the shoulders of giants, ready to lead the Diocese of Exeter into a new era of faith, hope, and love. With his unique blend of experience, compassion, and vision, he is poised to make a lasting impact on the spiritual life of Devon and beyond. The King's approval of Bishop Harrison's nomination is a testament to his character, his dedication, and his potential to lead the Church of England in Exeter with grace and wisdom. As the diocese embarks on this new chapter, the people of Devon can look forward to a future filled with spiritual growth, community engagement, and the enduring message of the Gospel.   Sources: THX News, Wikipedia, Catholic Hierarchy, Visit Mid Devon, Devon City Council & Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street. Read the full article

[taruntravell]

Best Romantic Destinations to Visit in the UK

The United Kingdom offers a plethora of romantic destinations perfect for couples looking for a getaway. Here are some of the best romantic destinations to visit in the UK:

Edinburgh, Scotland: The historic and charming city of Edinburgh offers a mix of stunning architecture, beautiful parks, and a rich cultural scene. Don't miss a visit to the Edinburgh Castle, take a stroll along the Royal Mile, and enjoy the city's cozy pubs.

The Lake District, England: Known for its breathtaking landscapes, the Lake District is a haven for nature lovers. You can explore the lakes, go hiking in the fells, and stay in charming cottages for a truly romantic escape.

Bath, England: Bath is famous for its Roman-built baths and Georgian architecture. Visit the Roman Baths, relax in the Thermae Bath Spa, and take a romantic walk along the River Avon.

The Cotswolds, England: This picturesque region is filled with charming villages, rolling hills, and stone cottages. It's a great place for a peaceful and romantic countryside retreat.

The Isle of Skye, Scotland: This remote and rugged island is known for its dramatic landscapes, including mountains, cliffs, and fairy pools. It's a fantastic destination for adventurous couples who enjoy hiking and exploring the outdoors.

The Scottish Highlands, Scotland: The Highlands offer some of the most breathtaking scenery in the UK. Drive the North Coast 500 route, visit castles, and enjoy the tranquility of the rugged landscapes.

The Jurassic Coast, England: This UNESCO World Heritage site along the Dorset and East Devon coast is known for its dramatic cliffs, fossils, and beautiful beaches. It's a great destination for couples who love coastal walks.

The Peak District, England: The Peak District National Park is perfect for couples who enjoy hiking, cycling, and exploring the great outdoors. The landscapes are diverse, and there are many charming villages to visit.

Cambridge, England: With its historic colleges, picturesque riverside setting, and punting on the River Cam, Cambridge offers a romantic and intellectual atmosphere.

Wales - Snowdonia National Park: For a romantic adventure, explore Snowdonia's mountains, lakes, and forests. You can even hike to the summit of Mount Snowdon for a stunning view.

Jersey, Channel Islands: This idyllic island offers beautiful beaches, charming countryside, and a laid-back atmosphere, perfect for a relaxing romantic getaway.

London, England: While London is a bustling city, it still offers plenty of romantic experiences. Take a romantic walk along the South Bank of the Thames, visit world-class museums and galleries, and enjoy fine dining at some of the city's top restaurants.

Remember that the best romantic destination can vary depending on your interests and preferences, but the UK has something to offer every couple, from city lovers to nature enthusiasts.

[voicesofcultre]

Empowering Change Through Education and Community, One Wheel At A Time

With a vision to make a meaningful impact on education and community development, the Devon J. Pendergrass Foundation has been working to create positive change in the lives of individuals and communities.

The foundation's 8th annual bike ride celebrates the life of Devon J. Pendergrass, who was struck by a vehicle on August 8, 2016, while attending the University of Maryland. This bike ride begins and ends at South Delsea Park in Glassboro, New Jersey, totaling 30 miles. After the bike ride, Families enjoy food, music and games under the Pavilion

This event celebrates the achievements of scholarship recipients, and those who have contributed to the foundation's mission. This event also serves as a platform to inspire and foster connections, as well as supporting injured cyclists

At the heart of the Foundation lies a commitment to fostering educational opportunities and creating a stronger sense of community. The foundation has dedicated itself to supporting initiatives that promote learning and empowerment.

One of the foundation's primary goals is to enhance access to quality education for individuals who may face educational barriers. By offering scholarships, grants, and resources, the foundation aims to enable deserving students to pursue their educational aspirations, regardless of their financial circumstances.

The Devon J. Pendergrass Foundation strives to empower individuals through skill-building workshops, mentoring programs, and resources that equip them with tools necessary for personal and professional growth.

The foundation offers scholarships to promising students majoring in criminal justice who exhibit a commitment to making a difference in their communities. These scholarships provide not only financial support but also recognition for their dedication

“I think this right here represents a lot of what his legacy would be. What was important to him, family, friends. When we come out and do this, in memory of him. Also, as a result of it, we offer scholarships to college students who are majoring in criminal justice. Our qualification is not to have all A's and B's. We offer the scholarship to assist students as an opportunity. And every year we give out scholarships and that will be forever, so that's part of his legacy.” 

As the Devon J. Pendergrass Foundation continues to make strides in education and community empowerment, Dev’s impact reverberates through the lives he touched. With each year, more individuals that have known Dev directly or indirectly through his actions attend the Bike ride with his father, Jerry, leading the ride

In closing, Devon’s father states: “The opportunity to know that Dev cared and know that folks should care for each other. That's why we bring this team together. Everybody here cares for each other. We get out there and we do this ride, and we laugh and joke in this fellowship ride, but even without us being there racing we still care for each other. If one of those racers goes down or catches a flat, everyone stops and fixes that issue. It is what Dev would do. The same support that Dev provides and that is what we all provide. He touched our hearts."

[hitchell-mope]

Hypothetical titles for season seventeen of 88

Golem. Season premiere. Part one. Drummond is bequeathed a Golem in his biological grandparents will. He doesn’t want it. So he hatches a plan to offload it.

Yosemite. Season premiere. Part two. Lysander’s continued effort to befriend Drummond puts his life in danger when he offers to help deliver the golem to an old contact of Drummond’s. First appearance of Tom Holland as Roxas “Yosemite” Winchester.

Dull. The team works a cold case from ten years ago when a victim turns up having been killed in the exact same way. Guest starring Nolan Gould as Dahl Kramer.

The long and short of it. Devon has to intervene when Jonah accidentally resurrects William Shakespeare after Andy teaches him how to safely use a ouija board. Guest starring Mat Baynton as William Shakespeare.

The man makers. Part one. The team investigates a cult in a Long Island suburb comprised of mothers who endorse a long disproven Roman belief about masculinity.

Rampage. Part two. A college senior freely admits to killing all the women in his family six years after they’d subjected him to the machinations of the suburban cult.

New Rochelle. Findlay and Sidney go undercover to protect a sitcom star from an assassination attempt. Guest starring John Mulaney as Eugene Mayberry III and Elizabeth Olsen as Charlotte Linter.

What do you need? Findlay takes it upon herself to help an engineering prodigy that took control of his family’s business building after repeated mistreatment from the staff. Guest starring Graham Phillips as Clyde O’Bannon.

Watch the queen conquer. Findlay heads to the Cabal Academy in Russia to deliver a speech on gender equality as a favour to one of Barnaby’s old dorm mates. Guest starring Dara Renee as Naomi Morris and Cobie Smulders as Diocese.

Alakazam. While Findlay’s in Russia, Drummond, Odessa, Coleman and Solaris get trapped in an old board game Gideon was combing for hexes.

Exhumed. Findlay finds herself at odd with Donovan’s ghost and and Celestine when she blocks a protest group who want to dig up Donovan’s body to enact alleged reparations.

Christmas at the White House. Midseason finale. Part one. The DuPont family invite the Five Families to the White House to celebrate Bethany’s final Christmas as president.

The Vice President. Midseason premiere. Part two. Bethany DuPont is offered a new role at the White House by the incoming president. First appearance of Adam Beach as Marcus Murray.

The presidential oath. The Five Families are invited to Marcus Murray’s inauguration as the first male president of the United States of America.

Bad to the bone. Findlay’s fiftieth birthday is coming up. So Sidney conspires with Tatum Mercer to get her a starring role in a music video that Emerson Davenport is making for charity. Guest starring Aubrey Plaza as Tatum Mercer and Chris Pratt as Emerson Davenport

Butterball. Findlay finally relents on her “no pets” rule and allows Jonah to buy a puppy. Especially when she finds out that Zoey’s terrified of corgi’s.

Those who get left behind. Birch bars Findlay from talking to the parent of a teenage boy who killed himself because of her downright atrocious bedside manner.

Brimstone and treacle. Findlay is called as a witness in a competency trial focused on her family’s old nanny. Guest starring Neve Mcintosh as Fiona Abernathy.

Complications. The team is tasked with protecting a senators pregnant daughter after word gets out that her mother had sold her daughter’s first born child to bag the election. Guest starring Alan Cumming as Rumplestiltskin

Extended family. The 400th episode. In this two hander, Lisette Christensen and Drummond have a long talk about jewellery, family and birthrights. NOTE: this episode is a synchronous episode, taking place at the same time as Complications

Suited and booted. Season finale. Part one. Drummond, Andy and Caine set off for the south of France. Features the return of Tom Holland as Roxas Winchester.

Stowaway. Season finale. Part two. Drummond is incensed when he discovers that Jonah’s snuck aboard the plane and refuses to go back home.

Watch the master at work. Season finale. Part three. Drummond’s team lands in the south of France and immediately runs afoul of the smugglers they intend to steal from. Guest starring Matthew Broderick as Ulysses Haven, Alan Ruck as Ulysses’s husband Wallace and Nathan Lane as their enforcer Torvald Macher.

Blood emeralds. Seasons finale. Part four. Drummond enacts a final, last ditch attempt to nab the emeralds right from under Macher and the Haven’s noses.

[sportyconnect]

The Miami Dolphins, a franchise with a rich history in the National Football League (NFL), have consistently shown their commitment to building a competitive team. The 2023 Draft was a testament to this commitment, with the team making several key picks that could shape their future. A Glimpse into the Miami Dolphins' History in NFL Drafts The Dolphins, one of the oldest teams in the NFL, have a history dating back to 1966. Throughout the years, they've experienced a rollercoaster of highs and lows, but their dedication to constructing a competitive team has remained unwavering. The draft plays a pivotal role in this process, providing an opportunity to acquire new talent and build for the future. The Dolphins have had some notable draft picks in the past, such as Dan Marino in 1983, who went on to become one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. The 2023 Draft Picks: An Overview The 2023 Draft was a significant event for the Dolphins. They had several picks in the early rounds, which they utilized to strengthen their roster. The players they drafted come from a variety of positions and colleges, reflecting the team's strategy of building a balanced and versatile squad. "The Dolphins have always been strategic in their draft picks, and the 2023 Draft was no exception. They've managed to acquire a mix of players who could potentially bring a lot to the table." - NFL Analyst Miami Dolphins' Strategy in the 2023 Draft The Dolphins' strategy in the 2023 Draft was clear - to build a balanced team that can compete at the highest level. They focused on acquiring players who could fill key positions and add depth to their roster. This strategy reflects the Dolphins' commitment to improving their performance and making a strong comeback in the upcoming season. "The Dolphins have shown a clear strategy in the 2023 Draft. They've focused on building a balanced team, which could be a game-changer in the upcoming season." - NFL Analyst Detailed Analysis of Key Draft Picks In the 2023 Draft, the Dolphins made several key picks that could potentially shape their future. These players were chosen for their unique skills and potential to contribute significantly to the team. "The Dolphins' 2023 Draft picks show a clear strategy - to build a balanced team with players who can contribute significantly in their respective positions." - NFL Analyst Cam Smith Cam Smith, a cornerback from South Carolina, was the Dolphins' first pick in the 2023 Draft. Known for his agility and game-changing plays, Smith is expected to start right away, providing a significant boost to the Dolphins' defensive lineup. "Cam Smith's agility and ability to make game-changing plays make him a valuable addition to the Dolphins' defensive lineup." - NFL Analyst Devon Achane Devon Achane, a running back from Texas A&M, was another key pick for the Dolphins. Known for his speed and explosiveness, Achane could be a game-changer in the Dolphins' offensive strategy. "Devon Achane's speed and explosiveness make him a key player in the Dolphins' offensive strategy." - NFL Analyst Potential Impact on the Team's Performance The new draft picks could potentially have a significant impact on the Dolphins' performance in the upcoming season. The addition of key offensive and defensive players could strengthen the Dolphins' lineup and provide more options for their game strategy. "The Dolphins' 2023 Draft picks could potentially have a significant impact on the team's performance in the upcoming season. The addition of key offensive and defensive players could strengthen the Dolphins' lineup and provide more options for their game strategy." - NFL Analyst Expert Opinions on the Draft The 2023 Draft has been viewed positively by experts. NFL analysts have praised the Dolphins' strategic picks and their focus on building a balanced team. "The Dolphins have made some strategic picks in the 2023 Draft.

Their focus on building a balanced team could potentially pay off in the upcoming season." - NFL Analyst Detailed Analysis of Other Picks Elijah Higgins Elijah Higgins, a versatile receiver from Stanford, is another exciting prospect for the Dolphins. Known for his ability to play in multiple positions, Higgins adds depth to the Dolphins' offensive lineup and provides more options for their passing game. "Elijah Higgins' versatility and ability to play in multiple positions make him a valuable addition to the Dolphins' offensive lineup." - NFL Analyst Ryan Hayes Ryan Hayes, an offensive tackle from Michigan, was the Dolphins' final pick in the 2023 Draft. Known for his athleticism and potential, Hayes could be a key player in strengthening the Dolphins' offensive line. "Ryan Hayes' athleticism and potential make him a key player in the Dolphins' offensive strategy." - NFL Analyst FAQs Who were the top picks for the Dolphins in the 2023 NFL Draft? The top picks for the Dolphins in the 2023 NFL Draft were Cam Smith, a cornerback from South Carolina, and Devon Achane, a running back from Texas A&M. How do the new players fit into the existing team? The new players add depth to both the offensive and defensive lineups of the Dolphins. They provide more options for the passing game, strengthen the offensive and defensive lines, and enhance the team's defensive strategy. What are the expectations for the upcoming season? Expectations for the upcoming season are high. The Dolphins have a balanced team with depth in both offensive and defensive lineups. The new players have the potential to make a significant impact. #SportyConnect