Eye - 27 July 2012
From ringing in the Olympics to Braille at Bridgend
All the bells
Ring in the Olympics! A unique bell-ringing event will soon be taking place nationwide.
Martin Creed, the Turner-prize-winning artist and musician, was commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad to create a piece to welcome the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
‘Work No. 1197: All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes’ by Martin, a former attender at Glasgow Meeting, will be performed throughout the UK on Friday 27 July, between 8:12am and 8:15am.
Thousands of people are expected to take part. John Creed wrote to Eye to say: ‘BBC Radio 2 and BBC TV is including it in their programmes. Groups and institutions have organised special bell ringing events throughout the UK, which you can join or just ring your own bell, whether travelling to work on a bike, a door bell…’
For further information see: www.allthebells.com
Braille at Bridgend
Friends in Bridgend have been presented with a braille copy of Advices & queries in both English and Welsh by a prisoner at HMP Parc.
David Harries said: ‘He has access to a Braille workshop in the prison. Bridgend Friends hold a Meeting for Worship with him regularly.’
David asks: ‘Is this the first Braille edition of Advices & queries?’
Alternatives
This week Sally Mason, from Forest of Dean Meeting, considers:
- ‘Clearness committee’: Friends Meeting House window-cleaning group
Moving words
A recent ceremony moved Stan Lee, Sutton Meeting, to write:
‘I was at a Portsmouth University graduation ceremony last week and was reconciled to the important ceremony being, as is often the case, rather dull, at least so far as the speeches are concerned. However, the chancellor’s address was riveting and sincere, springing from an obvious deep life experience.
‘It reflected that many of the graduands would likely experience unemployment, arising from the current difficult economic circumstances. She remarked that probably fifty per cent of her own life had been spent without work. How to survive it? Don’t sit on the couch watching daytime television replays of her husband’s [John Thaw’s] TV shows. Give yourself to something: if you want to be happy, first make others happy.
‘She reflected that we had all been let down, by politicians, by the police (not all of them, it’s true – this to an audience of criminal justice graduands), by bankers, by the people on red carpets. “I am a Quaker, and we have a saying: speak truth unto power.” She called on her audience of young and old to have the courage and integrity to stand firm and say when something is wrong.
‘There was much more, supportive of young people ending full-time education and entering the world of work.
‘She was heard in unbroken silence, and I thought it had all fallen flat: but when she finished, there was loud and prolonged applause of a kind I cannot recollect hearing at such a ceremony. My wife and I were deeply moved.
‘Who she? Sheila Hancock, in her last graduation ceremony as chancellor of Portsmouth University. I hope she will not be lost to public life.’
Amazing mail
Your eyes are not deceiving you! To save Carboholic from languishing ‘Round-To-it’-less any longer, S Jocelyn Burnell kindly supplied him with one.
Following receipt of the much longed for artefact, which he is most grateful for, Carboholic went straight out and acquired a large amount of loft insulation, which he has stored in his front room pending the clearing of his loft.
