Oliver Wood Photography

Gill at Hare Hill © Oliver Wood

Yes it’s one of my favourite local ‘attractions’, the ornamental gardens at Hare Hill between Prestbury and Mottram St Andrew and its only a 15 minute bike ride from the village. I’m not sure of the history or significance of Hare Hill but it is an enchanted place and very secluded. The centre piece is a large walled area enclosing a huge and immaculately manicured lawn. The gardens are home to a significant variety of acid loving shrubs that create a riot of vivid colour at this time of year; even without the Nikon D80’s mode ‘IIIa’ colour enhancement (what ever that is) the floral colour is still almost ‘unreal’. I have loaded my other photos from Hare Hill on to my Prestbury Gallery page and also my Flickr site.

Gill and I spent most of Saturday out on bikes and it was something of an opportunity for me to indulge in a vicarious exploration of my own locality and what a joy it is to be down here after the general ugliness and stressful ethos of the metropolis. A lot of property development appears to be under way in and around the Prestbury lanes and outskirts. This is not ‘property development’ as in new building on ‘green field’ sites (thank goodness) but rather a local phenomenon of indulgent revamping. Revamping seems to be something of a trend in the so called Cheshire ‘golden triangle’ where relatively new million pound homes are bought up, promptly knocked down, and then new even more expensive properties build on the site and within the allotted boundaries. One of the property ‘developers’ has recently used some of my village photos to illustrate the brochure for a bespoke home that is not yet even completed, needless to say this property will be in the multi million pound price bracket. The concept of such huge sums is rather mind boggling for me to say the least, but Prestbury and surrounding areas are rapidly becoming incomprehensibly exclusive, there are now whole roads where nothing is less than a million. I suspect that the BBC’s grand decamping northwards in a few years time may eventually result in a rather more inspiring breed of millionaire buying property in Prestbury and other parts of Cheshire though! I now promise to almost desist from using the term ‘millionaire’ as it feels so vulgar and greedy to me.

Out of curiosity I have just read the biography of the once iconic and engagingly enigmatic Mike Oldfield. I think you have to be of a certain age (i.e. culturally conscious in the 70s) to appreciate where Oldfield once ‘came from’. The now rather dated and exhaustively familiar Tubular Bells and the other two (still quite obscure) later albums Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn were, in their time, considered to be exceptionally cool and even ‘edgy’ albums. These LP’s once graced my erstwhile vinyl collection and were initially purchased as part of a reconditioning process after the musically incompetent punk fad had faded. Even though for most Mr O’s cool and credibility was at this time on something of a downward slope with easily accessible pop tunes that your parents would find acceptable, or at least understandable. It was hard to believe that this was the same musician who had produced the only album ever to get a full end-to-end play out by John Peel. The early albums however, are still remarkable, haunting, and sometimes eerie, and they do convey that ethos of the early 70s hippy hangover with their allusions to folky mysticism and something of a logical conclusion for the ‘prog rock’ concept. As a burgeoning Sound Engineer I also admired Oldfield for his status as a musician that had embraced the whole process of studio production in such a way that the means of production became part of his thing, like a proto electro artist of today.

The biography is a fascinating insight into those early years when the ego phobic Oldfield became the youngest millionaire in rock music at the time. It is inspiring to read a music (musicians) biography which is just so honest and devoid of the cringe making perma-adolescent crap that is such a feature of today’s personality cult media. Oldfield’s early existential angst is manifest in the total singularity of his early albums that make no recourse to any of the prescribed styles in force at the time and yet bearing that in mind it is remarkable that they were so successful.

I’m suddenly feeling quite nostalgic about this hitherto forgotten music if only for the fact that it stands for an era when there seemed to be something of a more widespread belief in the edification of popular culture. Can you imagine a totally instrumental concept album by a reclusive musician (or similar) even getting off the ground in today’s cultural climate?

Thankfully the pre-Christmas stress is over for another year but it has been a rather enjoyable festive season — my first with Gill and family Though we are spending most of the Christmas-New Year interim at mine. Today we cycled up to near by Hare Hill with the intention of having a sneak (out of season) preview of the magnificent gardens but the ornamental lawn with sculptures and surrounding arboretum were closed to the public as is customary with NT properties at this time of year.

Gill however, was suitably impressed with the general Mottram St Andrew setting which seemed to be at its most atmospheric in the misty winter half-light. At this time of year much of rural Northern England has a certain quality of verdant dankness, a becalmed quiescence or a tangible lull in the proceedings before the fertility storm of spring. Our local high rainfall and atmospheric moisture levels promote the most vivid growths of bright green moss and algae on virtually anything that remains still for long enough and these bright greens combined with the rich browns of earth, mud, and leaf mould are the predominant colours of the landscape. I got to try out my new Sony W70 camera in alfresco mode for the first time. The results are quite adequate thus far and at last I now have a digital camera with a satisfying degree of manual control—but it is still just a step on the ladder to a decent digital SLR. I keep pondering the prospect of a return to film and the resurrection of some pretty good kit from previous years but unfortunately the convenience of digital continues to override virtually all other concerns.

Mr P seemed to be airing a number of concerns about London life last time we met but we appeared to reach something of a consensus on the self evident superiority of life in the North. At least one can entertain the prospect of actually being able to own the roof over ones head in many places around Manchester and Cheshire, and more than just a ‘flat’ in an over populated area. Friendlier people, a much less competitive but highly creative cultural industry sector, low density housing, open space and a generally less frenetic pace of life are just some of the things I would recommend about life up here. As would many of the those decamping to the Mancunian suburbs or Cheshire towns and villages from the South. Even by comparison with near by Manchester my local town of Macclesfield seems to be pleasantly ‘relaxed’. Gill is still marvelling at the shear quantity of good quality privately owned shops in the town along with the extraordinary concentration of pubs and inns.