Cloud clipped yews

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I've posted photographs in the past showing yew trees, often grown as hedges, that are clipped into massive, irregular mounds. It is a style popular in the gardens of English country houses. Audley End has a remarkable example, and I've photographed a fine one at Melbourne, Derbyshire. I've also posted an earlier photograph of those at Ayscoughfee Hall, Spalding, that are shown above, though it wasn't as well lit as when I took this shot. What I didn't have when I took those photographs was a name to attach to this particular type of topiary. But now I do.

Looking up some details about what is surely the biggest such hedge in Britain, the example at Montacute House, Somerset, I found a few references describing it as "cloud clipped" and some others that said it was an example of "cloud pruning". Those are both terms with which I am familiar. However, I assumed they applied to yews (and other conifers) where the branches were clipped so that each had a ball or disc of foliage and the whole tree had several irregular balls - like this or this. But apparently it has a wider application. However, I'm not sure it is the best term to describe this "lumpy" kind of topiary. Though many such hedges could be said to resemble banks of cumulonimbus, they don't resemble clouds as well as the cumulus-like examples that I used to think of as cloud-clipped. But, you live and learn!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (43mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:125
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Image Stabilisation: On

Remember the Millen(n)ium?

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Millennium is the sort of word that crops up only once in a thousand years, but when it does appear it leaves its mark. Do you remember the Millennium? Like many people I was reminded of it with the recent news concerning the Playstation 3 bug whereby the software saw 2010 as a leap year and gave February twenty nine days, causing owners a few small difficulties.

There are three things people tend to remember from the time the twentieth century tipped over into the twenty first. The first is the change in dates and the celebrations and memorials that accompanied it. Secondly, there was the brouhaha surrounding the "millennium bug": the dire consequences that would befall mankind unless the clocks of all the world's computers were made to read the date correctly. It wasn't just a trivial matter of people losing their highest scores in a computer game (one of the consequences, apparently, of the Playstation 3 bug). No, airliners would fall from the sky, stock markets would crash, military equipment would malfunction, and people woudn't be able to play SimCity. In the event, nothing much happened except computer consultants clawed in lots more money than usual.

The third thing many remember from the year 2000 was the spelling problem. Was it "milennium", "millenium", "milenium" or "millennium". People scattered the letters "l" and "n" gamely, and after a while most people got the hang of the correct formulation. Unfortunately, by then the moment had passed, and the ability to spell the word was as useful as being fluent in Dalmatian, Eyak or Slovincian.

For a number of years I've been aware of the Lincolnshire hedge shown in today's photograph. The owner was clearly impressed by the millennium, and sufficiently public spirited to celebrate the event with topiary. Perhaps it's a consequence of a working life mainly spent in education, but when I first saw it the missing "n" jumped out at me, and it continues to do so every time I pass the hedge. However, after some reflection I did consider that it may not be a spelling error. Perhaps the owner got the letter size wrong, then as he got half-way through the word realised it wasn't going to fit in the available space, and therefore deliberately dropped the second "n" to make it do so. What I do know is that if I'd cut that word the mis-spelling would really bug me. I wouldn't leave it there for 10 minutes, never mind 10 years, and I'd clip the lot off. A thought has just occured to me (and you might wish it hadn't) - would that qualify as having the Millen(n)ium bug?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.8mm (60mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
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Spherical objects and propaganda

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The UK press is currently full of reports of the lies that U.S. right-wing politicians, fanatics and apologists for the American health-care industry are propagating about our National Health Service (NHS), as they seek to derail President Obama's very modest proposals for reform.

Many Britons, looking at the T.V. adverts and written comments that have spewed out of the propaganda machines have laughed out loud at the lurid fabrications, falsehoods and misrepresentations that are being peddled as fact. Others have become angry that a cherished institution that most people feel does an excellent job should be traduced in this way. However, the ire of British supporters of the NHS has been raised most by the utterances of one of our own MEPs, Daniel Hannan, a man the "Guardian" newspaper describes as a "darling of the U.S. right", who has been happy to appear on TV talking down the NHS and agreeing with those who oppose Obama's proposals. The leader of Conservatives, the party that Hannan represents, has described this man as "eccentric" and unrepresentative of their views about Britain's health care system, but that hasn't stooped him from seeking the cameras or prevented his American bed-fellows from using him as evidence that "socialised" medicine is awful.

My experience of the NHS has been good. It's not a perfect system, none is, but by most indicators it provides efficient and effective health care that is (in the main) free to all, and entirely free to those on low incomes. The concern in Britain is that U.S.-style private health care is seeking a greater foothold here, because, and this hasn't be mentioned much by the American critics, for those who want something different, private medical care can be bought in the UK too. That it provides only a small part of the total provision says much about the quality of the free offering that is paid for through taxation.

However, I will concede that sometimes when you live with a system all your life you don't see it in quite the way that an outsider does. Today's newspaper carries an article by an American professor who has worked in Britain for a number of years and has experience of the NHS for himself and his family. He identifies a benefit of "socialised medicine" that had never occurred to me because I take it for granted. In a supportive statement about his dealings with the NHS he says, "Perhaps it is the absence of fear of becoming ill that is the most important aspect of the system."

What has today's photograph of a door at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, to do with the self-serving anti-NHS propaganda of the American right? Well, both depend for their effect on spherical objects!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 86mm (172mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.8
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 200
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Classicism and topiary

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The poet and atheist, Andrew Motion, has called for pupils in English schools to be taught more about the Bible. He is concerned that many students arrive at university ignorant of the text that underpins much of English literature. I have sympathy with his arguments, but I'm not sure how it can be done. In the past, and in my education, pupils learned about the Bible through the Christian worship and religious education that were features of almost all English schools. These are still, nominally, compulsory in schools, but the amount of time devoted to them has declined, and the almost exclusive focus on Christianity has been replaced by shallower study of more religions, for reasons that are certainly defensible.

Similar arguments could be advanced in support of teaching pupils about classical civilization, including Greek and Roman mythology. In fact, in a largely secular society, it is arguable that the legacy of the ancients remains almost as pervasive as that of Christianity, yet general knowledge of it is fast disappearing. But here too I struggle to think how one would achieve a wider understanding of the classical foundations of western society. Yet such knowledge was, for centuries, a cornerstone of education: the trivium and quadrivium grew out of it, and through the Great Books programme a number of American universities have more recently sought to use the seminal classical texts (along with the major works of later centuries) as the basis for their academic curriculum.

From the allusions to classical mythology that pepper poetry and prose, the Orders of Architecture and their associated ornament that grace our cities, and the etymology of a large portion of the words of the English language, the influence of Greece and Rome remains strong, and a knowledge of classical culture enriches one's day to day experience of the world. On a recent walk through the gardens of Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, I came across a number of classical statues set among the gardens and glades. They were largely of a general nature rather than specific, recognisable characters from the past. However, most displayed the contraposto stance derived from the ideal of beauty that descended from the ancient world, through the Renaissance and down to the nineteenth century from when these statues date. One held the mask of Janus, and another looked the model of sobriety in a toga, the badge of Roman citizenship. Such figures became traditional in English gardens from the 1700s onwards, and apart from providing focal points among the planting, served to display, on the part of of the Victorian owners, an image of learning. My photograph shows one such statue apparently passing purposefully through the topiary.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/120
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On