Summa: dairy (September 7-12, 2025)

September 7, 2025 (Sunday). 6.00 am: Awake. 11.30 am: Harvey the Younger returned to his home. (He left behind the lingering smell of strong deodorant.) 3.00 pm: The UK government issued a trial ‘severe warning’ sound alert, using the mobile phone networks. (It’s a pocket air-raid siren.) 8.45 pm: The ‘blood moon’ arrived and departed too far below my sight-horizon to be visible where I live. (Maybe I’ll have better luck with the concomitant phenomena.)

And I beheld when He had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.
Revelation 6.12.

‘Opening the seals, earthquakes &c.’, *Mortier’s Bible* (1700) Phillip Medhurst Collection (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

September 8 (Monday). 6.00 am: Awake. 6.30 am: Writing. 7.00 am: A communion. 7.15 am: I heard the train on which I departed one week ago, approach. 8.00 am: Studiology. I relistened to the field recordings that I’d made at the cemetery and memorial gardens, Aberfan, last Wednesday. The sounds of traffic on the A470 below the cemetery reverberated off the hillside and, thus, appeared to emanate far above it, simultaneously. Overlaid, was the noise of the rain that spatted on my weatherproof coat and the recording device’s windshield.

I rewatched British Movietone’s unedited and silent film footage of the funeral, and followed the path, taken by the cortège of so many hearses on screen, that I’d trod last week. Coffin after coffin after coffin of lives unspent. Grieving, murmuring, prayers, hymn singing, walking, and vehicles, now muted on the soundtrackless film. And in the background, those damnable coal tips — conical and symmetrical, like the mountains young children first draw — looked on, imperiously and unfeelingly.

9.00 am: I reviewed the compositions begun a fortnight ago. The first draft of ‘144: a biblical number’ completed, I began ‘Bethania: where Lazarus was resurrected’. This piece is focused on Bethania Chapel, Aberfan — which became the principal, temporary morgue, where the dead were cleaned and identified. The name Bethania (Βηθανία) is the Greek form for Bethany, near Jerusalem — the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, and the place where Lazarus returned to life (John 11: 1-11). For both the victims of Aberfan and Lazarus, the chapel and the tomb were temporary accommodation only.

Duccio, *The Raising of Lazarus* (1310-11) tempera and gold on panel, Kimbell Art Museum, Texas (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

12.30 pm: Thunder, lightening, and rain, where there had been blue skies, cirrus clouds, and sunshine. And afterwards, blue skies, cirrus clouds, and sunshine once again. (Just like life.) 4.00 pm: An ambulation in the rain. It’d been a good morning’s and afternoon’s work.

9.oo pm: Eventide and reading.

September 9 (Tuesday). 7.00 am: Awoke, feeling under par. 7.45 am: Admin and writing. My webmaster has been ironing out wrinkles — which arose following various updates over the past year — effecting the John Harvey website, along with the two diary sites (Diary (July 16, 2014–September 4, 2018) and Dairy September 15, 2018-June 30, 2021)). The latter pair paved the way for this Intersections blog (which had its inception prior to the diaries, in 2013). Twelve years of publication, overall. (I know a few who’ve read every post.) (See: My Blog (A 10th-Anniversary Overview (2014 – 2024).) ‘When are you going to stop, John?’, some readers ask. A more pragmatic question might be ‘Why would you stop?’ I’ve no one answer: either death or severe illness may intervene; or the need to communicate no longer presses upon me; or I tire of the format’s limitations; or a more appropriate mode of discourse suggests itself; or the posts become repetitive and tedious. I’ve never maintained a diary consistently. (See: My Diaries.) They’ve arisen only when the context, experience, the vicissitudes of the heart, and imponderable questions have necessitated a forum for internal discussion.

9.00 am: Studiology. A review of yesterday’s endeavours. ‘Bethania’ is the bridge between the Darkness Covered the Land to the 144 Variations albums. Both comprise compositions based on a piano rendering of ‘Jesus, Lover of My Soul’.

Bethania Chapel, Aberfan (September 3, 2025).

From my open Velux window in the studio, I could hear (and record) the sound of primary school children in their playground, close by. I’d missed them over the Summer holidays. Their voices will be included in the current composition, as an anticipatory evocation of the victims’ joyous resurrection in that Great Day. In the grounds, there’s a large horse chestnut tree laden with ‘conkers’ waiting to fall. My sons and I used to collect them on our walks home from Plascrug Avenue, this time of year. These days playing the game is probably regarded a health and safety risk in schools. (Like throwing paper airplanes. Seriously.) The family collection includes one example taken from the Linnaean Garden in Uppsala, Sweden, in October 2004. Together, they’re the seeds of the past that were unsown in other places.

1.45 pm: An afternoon of website re-development, and remedying defects in the slide shows accompanying several historical projects. These include the Miner-Artists: The Art of Welsh Coalworkers (2000) exhibition. While undertaken 25 years ago, people are still coming across it for the first time on my website every week. The past is ever present. Which is every reason for curating and maintaining a token presence of earlier projects.

Most of the artists who’d contributed to the exhibition are now dead, including Illtyd David (1906-92) (below). I went to his home in Aberbargoed, on November 5, 1987, to interview him about his work as an artist and a former coalminer. At the time, I was pursuing research towards my PhD in art history. He painted sometimes very large-scale and ambitious works within the confines of a small, wooden shed (no larger than my Dad’s), in appalling light, at the bottom of his garden.

When he died, his family (so I’m told) threw the contents of the shed, along with his paintings (the vast majority of which were undocumented), into a skip. David’s work should’ve been bequeathed to a national collection in Wales, photographed, and spread abroad. Such erasures aren’t rare.

Illtyd David, *Groesfaen Saga* (1969) oil on canvas, 147.4 × 99.7 cm.

September 10 (Wednesday). 6.45 am: Awake. 7.30 am: Breakfast. 8.00 am: Studyology. I completed the new images and captions for the Miner-Artist project, and posted them to my web-tecky. 9.15 am: Studiology. Yesterday’s efforts were reviewed and tweaked. I returned, first, to the Great Darkness Covered the Land album’s structure to confirm and finalise the composition titles and, afterward, to the 144 Variations album. ‘Royston Davies’ and ‘Terrence Davies’. 12.00 pm: An initial review of the updates and amendments required by my main website. Ordinarily, this would’ve been completed in July, had not glitches intervened.

3.15 pm: A visit from the artist Susan Forster. A discourse with biscuits, about baking, making, holiday taking, and noxious modes of Christianity. (Something for everyone!)

On World Suicide Prevention Day: To the memory of my friends, the artists Stephen Chilton (1975-2014) and Phoebe Williams (1995-2019). Each received, in different ways, a dedicated album: Seven Prayers for Stephen Chilton: Requiem (2021) and Spirit Communication (2023), respectively.

September 11 (Thursday). A generation has grown-up since 9/11. (I wish the year had been included in the title; rarely do I remember it.) Some children, I’ve read, are entirely oblivious to the event. While in Abertillery, I was told that there are children in Aberfan who are, likewise, unaware of the historic disaster on their doorsteps (quite literally). For all the information now readily available on the Internet, the tide of ignorance and indifference swells. I was inducted into my own community’s past through stories told me by grandparents and parents. When I was a child, my maternal grandfather would walk me across the grassed-over tips of Blaina, pointing at the rusting metal skeletons of things that were no longer, and explaining what function they’d once had. Through his eyes, I was able to ‘see’ a history of industry that preceded my arrival in this world. By virtue of these narratives, I understood my position on the timeline and the debt that I owed to by forebears.

I spent the morning conducting work admin, dealing with medical matters, getting a distance from the sound aspect of the Aberfan project, and reading. There was little talk of 9/11 today. News about the killing of Charlie Kirk and the sacking of Peter Mandelson, over his links with Jeffrey Epstein, had dominated.

September 12 (Friday). 6.30 am: Awake. 9.30 am: Off to town for a mop-mow at my local hairdressers. 10.00 am: Upwards to the campus, via the GP surgery. 11.00 am: A consultation with a friend over coffee. At the hairdresser, I told someone (who was Welsh) about my visit to Aberfan, last week. ‘Oh what happened there, then?, they replied’. This alone vindicated my project. ‘Lest more forget’.

1.45 pm: The printed material that I’d ordered at the Glamorgan Archives arrived. It’s typed. Possibly, the original is the earliest complete account of the deaths. It provides not only the names, ages, and dates of birth of those who were killed, but also their addresses. For the first time, I was able to plot their walk from home to school on that fateful day.