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November 06 The End of The Song Funeral today. Brisk, cold day with some sunshine. No appetite. Returning to places I knew as a child when visiting you. Your house just down the road still full of your things. You left it so suddenly and unexpectedly your pots were still in the sink, your slippers shucked by the bed, your little fire still on. Odd to think of it there, full of your things still. Such a beautiful church -  Victorian and full of wonderful stained glass, a painted organ, bas relief. Good to see the family again. Cousins I've not seen for years. I don't know why we do that. Your sons and grandchildren spoke about you and they all said the same things I thought - about your great kindness, your wisdom, your strength which was of the kind that some see as weakness but was 'like grass' - small and slight, but able to break through concrete. Your eternally child-like wonder at the world and what is in it, your wise council, which - knowing so well the follies and weaknesses of our human natures, gave comment without judgement, and was always given with such love because you had a care for tender things, like plants, creatures both bovine and savage, and especially people, with their foolish, foolish hearts. I
was ok until they played the opening music - Ar Lan y Mor, sung by Bryn
Terfel. Can't find a track of him singing it, but here's it is by some Welsh woman: not the same at all, but you can always google Bryn.
Ar Lan y Môr Down by the Seaside Ar lan y môr mae rhosys chochion Beside the sea, there are red roses Ar lan y môr mae lilis gwynion Beside the sea, there’s lovely lilies Ar lan y môr mae ‘nghariad inne Beside the sea, my sweetheart lives Yn cysgu’r nos a choddi’r bore. Asleep at night, awake at morning. Ar lan y môr mae carreg wastad Cold is the frost, and cold the snowfall Lle bum yn siarad gair âm cariad Cold the house without fire in winter Oddeutu hon fe dyf y lili Cold is the church without a vicar Ac ambell sbrigyn o rosmari. Cold am I also, without my lover. The church was warm, colourful and full of art and history. Your friends were there, including your Quaker friends, and I could almost see you smiling - your head tilted to one side, gently as you always did, and you may have laughed at what everyone was saying, because you knew yourself I think, and would have been amazed. But that was your gift. You did know yourself, and in your own life, full of richness, tragedy and colour, you could see us all as in a mirror. That's why you smiled. Then you exited to the Ashoken farewell. And then we went home October 23 Ffarwel fodryb P Half past six tonight, while I was fighting the roundabouts, you finally went. Here's some of the things you gave me: A Book each year on my birthday, each of which were huge in my life, and made me want to be a writer, too. A view of religion that transcended church buildings and vestements and narrow thinking. Your Jesus wore boots and was always ready to take you back. Masses of wonderful knowledge because you were so very clever, with a lively, unconventional mind. The fact that though you didn't suffer fools gladly, you had a kindness in you, that understood humanity and it's weakness. Your laughter. Long political discussions and arguments. You and Dad, who liked to wind you up. Your company on trips to the theater, museums and galleries. Your beautiful eyes and indomitable spirit through everything life threw at you. I remember: When you buried the cat, in a nightie and wellingtons (you, not the cat) in a thunderstorm at midnight - sliding it down into darkness like a ship into deep water, because you were independent and crazy. You giving all the trees around your home names, and visiting them on your walks, leaving them little gifts at their roots. You feeding the vixen and her cubs every day at your back door. You, falling in love with a Welshman, and learning Welsh. You - on the cliffpath out of Mousehole to Lamorna Cove - where you can walk free now whenever you like, along with all the other spirits that dwell there, waiting for me: "Diwedd y gan yw'r geiniog." - At the end of the song comes payment. "Bum gall unwraith - hynny oedd, llefain pan ym ganed." - I was wise once: when I was born, I cried." Bye, Aunt P. February 01 Snow flyingSnow flying Did you ever do that thing, when you were a kid, when it snowed at night? You find somewhere where the light is shining up into the sky, making the falling flakes shine, but you can’t see any trees or buildings, and just stare up into the whiteness unblinking. After a while, an optical illusion makes the direction appear to reverse, and instead of the snow falling, you begin to rise. Just for a while, before your brain kicks in and puts things right, it feels like you are shooting upwards in a spray of white. Up into the empty places of the sky like a rocket or a bird, like a soul flying free, the way you hope it will, one day when the traces of life are cut. Tonight we had snow, which may be commonplace where you are, but is not common in my part of the world. At best a smattering of white over the ground like icing sugar over a mince pie. Maybe up in the hills of Scotland or Wales or Cumbria the sheep are huddled behind rocks cursing the elements, but down here in the seamy cities, the hot breath of the underground blows up and melts the snowflakes as neatly as you like. Tonight we had snow – nice, fat and jolly, and I went outside in the darkness wearing my father’s cap. I went onto the lawn away from the house and looked upwards into the ‘singularity’ from where all snow comes. I waited and I waited, and in that silence what thoughts come. And then in the silence, what thoughts go. Maybe one day. Perhaps the soul is what we are underneath and inside, deep down. No flesh, no bone, no genetic inheritance. Nothing in the way, like your weight or your height or your ethnicity. Just the essential you that can go wherever it wishes. Standing there letting go, being a kid again - some things remained stubbornly the same: The night was still cold, I was still worried, the wine was still warm in my veins, the cat was still grumbling for her dinner, it was still sunday night into monday morning, and I still loved you. In the end I rose.
( and to think I was treading on these.)
October 31 WaterIf you take the train along the coast into Dublin, you can see
the sea pretty close up. Picture a track with just enough room for two trains to pass, with a high wall on one side, and a short wall on the other, and then picture the sea.
It's a thick, shiny metal grey sea, the same height as the window of the train, and no more than twelve feet away just over an ordinary little wall. Today its an angry sea, because it's cold, with sleet on the Wicklow hills, and the surface is no mirror flat blue, but this boiling metal that leaps up and around in sharp peaks and troughs, billows and breakers, sucking and blowing and throwing up spume at the top of which little marbles of water are pitched upwards to tickle the feet of gulls who seem to make a game of ducking and then leaping away from them like kids on a tideline. Now and then, an especially enthusiastic wave breaks over the wall and sprays the side of the train with brine, and the wall is breached here and there with runnels of sea water. What happens in the true heart of winter when the storms are flying is a mystery - how could the train possibly run? The track would be flooded and overwhelmed, shells and fish flapping and cracking along the rails - and Lord only knows about the electrics!
Later, I manage to get some time to myself in Dublin, well relatively anyway. I'm in the Writer's museum, looking at typewriters that wrote the original 'This' or the first draft of 'that'. With the writer's things - a suit, a beer mug, a pair of glasses, a typewriter allegedly thrown through a pub window by Brendan Behan' - behind glass for our perusal, as if they were somehow clues to what made them able to write as they did. I like it for the silence and the beautiful old building, the temporary respite from noise and clamour, the chance to let my mind hum along its own lines, taking your hand through the rooms and the glass cases, smiling at you, grimacing, letting the scent of the scant sunshine through the glass, the colours on the odd illuminated page, the ink, the black and white photos curl between us like fog.
My mind hums like a machine on standby, the engine ticking over but the microchip still, one light blinking. This is peace of a temporary sort, within which the bare bones of peace can begin to clothe themselves again.
The Brandy Glass
Only let it form within his hands once more -
The moment cradled like a brandy glass.
Sitting alone in the empty dining hall . . .
From the chandeliers the snow begins to fall
Piling around carafes and table legs
And chokes the passage of the revolving door.
The last diner, like a ventriloquist's doll
Left by his master, gazes before him, begs:
'Only let it form within my hands once more.'
Louis Macneice.
I even managed to walk along Grafton Street:
'In Grafton Street in November, we tripped lightly along the ledge. . .'
sadly, Grafton Street is a shopping centre full of brightly lit shops, but never mind.......
' . . . when the angel woos, the clay, he'll lose, his wings at the dawn of day...'
Bydda i'n aros amdana ti am byth os oes angen Cariad. Be well.
September 21 Two Gifts The World Gives UsIt was sunny here today, which made people stop in the streets and gasp in wonder - what was this thing?
For the whole of August it was away from us, except for a day during my visit to Scotland when it filled the valley with light like butter in a bowl, illuminating the sheep, energising the thistles and bringing Nessie to the surface of the loch to sport and gamble. I would have had a photograph of him to show you except that I found when I got there that I had only one shot left on my camera, and I'd already spent that on a particularly attractive ewe. Two things came to me while I was away, that I've thought about since. Two Gifts the World Gives us.
When people knew I would be travelling alone, they split into two camps. Those who sympathised as if some terrible calamity had come to pass, and those who just said, 'Oh.' Now I like to travel alone. I like to be alone (not lonely, that's when you have no choice). I liked rambling about pleasing myself, syphoning up sushi without having to ask if someone else liked it, watching the Olympics while dropping gravy down my front, and when I got there, strolling up the lane talking to myself and chatting up the locals (those short horns have very nice wool too.) I wondered what it must be like for people who don't feel at home with themselves, until I remembered exactly how that feels - rather like a liferaft with a slow puncture.
As wanderers, it's nice to find a home in someone you love. Long ago when we pattered across the planet perhaps we developed the habit of carrying a little bit of those we love, and who love us, in our hearts, rather like a backpack, or a handwarmer, so that wherever we are, we are not entirely alone ever. Gift one is the gift of home that we carry with us.
And then there is Sleep. While I was in Scotland, there was, in the evenings, an abundance of whisky and beer and after partaking I would go outside, halfway down the lane in the darkness to stand on one leg and 'phone home' after which I would walk back, warm with this, and fall into my bed where I sunk into a swift and deep slumber like a warm pool. Normally it takes me hours to get to sleep, but not then. Like an otter I dived and the waters took me down and rolled me gently in a tide swell until morning. Gift two is the gift of sleep that heals and soothes.
Here's Bryn to sing you a Welsh lullaby:
And here's verse one so you can sing along:
Huna blentyn ar fy mynwes Clyd a chynnes ydyw hon; Breichiau mam sy'n dynn amdanat, Cariad mam sy dan fy mron. Ni cha' dim amharu'th gyntun, Ni wna undyn a+ thi gam, Huna'n dawel annwyl blentyn, Huna'n fwyn ar fron dy fam. September 02 No EndIt was not a nice night. Mid winter; cold and I had school in the morning. The place was the fifteenth floor of a block of partially abandoned flats, the scene was one I have mentioned before - a room without heating, lit by a few candles, with three men sitting on broken chair cushions on the floor. One heating heroin in a spoon, one shooting up into a vein on his ankle, one already having done it, floating in a wide blue yonder all of his own.
I wondered, not for the first time, what I was doing there, and why. I was about 14 or 15 - why didn't I just go home? I suppose, in these days of personal responsibility, it was my fault. I didn't have to be there did I? No one had strapped me to the back of a camel train and sold me to the city of ruination. Didn't I go there myself?
Didn't I just get bored with being a bright, articulate, happy kid who wanted to be an archaelogist and had a rock collection and a telescope, and thought saying 'bloody' was a terrible thing worthy of being publicly denounced on TV.and decide it would be more fun to throw rocks rather than classify them and wrap them up in tissue paper?
That's what they told me anyway. What other possible reason could there be? Well. The fact is that someone introduced me to all these lovely folk when they should have been looking out for me, just for starters.
Hell's teeth, did I just say that? Did I just suggest...... no. Can't be.
Isn't it absolutely fine to have your world turned upside down and shaken like a toy farm - all the pigs and ducks falling into the combine harvester, the dogs and chickens into the spiky end of a plough, the secret disease research centre cracking open and releasing all the toxic waste into the silvery stream and burning up the fishy-wishies; absolutely fine to become a cross between a piece of tin on an anvil and a unwilling twink being hugged just a little too tightly by the piano teacher; fine to become the one person with the key to Bluebeards secret - keeping the happy wife from opening the door while getting the blame for never leaving the keyhole for fear she might look through and know what you know.
Oh wrap it up for Pete's sake (who is Pete by the way?) or let's just sell tickets for a flaming matinee.
Ok. Let me explain:
I really don't like to be a whiner. It's just been twice in a month now that I've found some things just won't leave you alone. The first time was just sad and I blogged about it then wiped it. This time, not sad - disturbing in the extreme.
I was out yesterday when I heard that someone was trying to get in contact with my bro. Maybe wanting something I don't know how to answer. Someone who also knows what's behind Bluebeard's door, who might need me to help clean up the axe blade. Well, I don't want to.
For the first time, I felt fed up. I mean, when you think you've nailed the door shut, that should be it right, as much as it ever can be, but it isn't. Ever. It's not only made me in some ways, someone I don't want to be, but I'm tired of playing George from 'Of Mice and Men.'
I realised in the few seconds it took to realise that - this time, I didnt' want to be put off my pitta bread and humous - that none of this was actually my fault, that really, I'd been up to my neck in some other farmer's manure heap and was still smelling it. That really, I'm owed, not in debt; need an apology not a clip round the ear; need a thank you for keeping my finger in a dyke way bigger than I was, not a hundred lines for having a dirty pinky finger.
Do I sound whiny? Boring? Pathetic? Well, maybe I do, but tonight I don't care. Tonight, I'm wondering what to do about this voice from the past who won't get his answer either. Realising I might have to deal with some fall out, hoping I won't have to, and wondering whether I should have another drink, because ever since yesterday, I've been replaying a conversation I once had, that no one would want to have, certainly not at an age when you just don't know what to do, and - 'Promise you won't say....Promise...tell me what to do..' - that, under those circumstances then, you could only go away and wonder about; about what might result from the things you had to keep silent about. Had to. And now, maybe I know.
But I guess, I made some sort of progress because It suddenly came to me what a stonking kid I was. It's just a shame it's taken me this long to run screaming into the night with my rock-hammer and my telescope, because I lost both of those things a long time ago. And that was a damn shame. It was.
Thanks for listening, if you made it this far. August 20 SheepToday I want to talk about sheep. The calming affects of sheep. As a person of welsh blood, I am used to the wise cracks about us and sheep, but sheep have depths unknown to most men. In times of deep trouble, you can cuddle a cat, but they require feeding and have claws. In times of despair you can walk a dog, but they slobber and desire to have their stomachs tickled. When times are dark, you can sit with friends, but people always let you down. They get tired of listening, they see something they desire, they need food, they need to pee, and they talk about you behind your back. Not sheep. Sheep, while shy, do have redeeming qualities. If you feel bad and need to express it out loud, go to a hillside full of sheep. People talk about wolves, but have you heard how lonely and tormented a sheep sounds across the air in a valley? Have you ever answered one back? It’s a sound you make from the back of your throat, and it comes from deep down. If you try to communicate with sheep, they look at you funny. You may think this is because they are dumb, or think you are going to shear them or make them into a pie, but its not. It’s because they know that you know their secret. If you get close to a sheep, you can sit down near it and tell it all your troubles, and they will chew and listen, and listen and chew, and then they will Baaaaaa…… in sympathy. You have to listen very hard to know what that is saying, but then the days are long up on the hills. Sheep have knowing eyes, and rather beautiful heads. They stick together for a good reason, but they are open to a relationship of sorts. They don’t want much. And when you are not good at giving with trust, a sheep is a good, solid companion. In the dark, in the quiet, sheep tell stories and make up heroic verse, and they share it with the crows and badgers, and they take it with them to the grave.
July 28 MisrepresentationToday, while I was showering, I had a shock, Having soap in my eyes, I reached up for the shower gel, plastered it under my armpits without looking, then rinsed my face off under the water. When I glanced down, I had the shock of my life - there was blood pouring down my chest in streams!
Just as I was about to run screaming into the street, I spotted the shower gel, which was new. It was a deep red colour, and it was this, slapped on too generously, that looked so exactly like blood. I wondered who had thought it a good idea to come up with a product that makes its users feel that they're starring in a horror movie? You know - crazed serial killer replaces loufah with carefully concealed buzz saw so that victims slash themselves to pieces in the shower (also allowing him and the cinema audience to ogle copious amounts of naked flesh).
Further examination showed a definite case of misrepsesentation on the back of the bottle: This product, it annouced -
'Excites your body! Arouses your senses! Gets you going.....'
'Oh yeah? Well, it had aroused my senses for the brief time I thought I must be bleeding to death, sure, but as for the other, not a sign of any of the promised benefits. I'm seriously considering sueing them!
It did make me think though - what if we were bottles? What would you write on the back of yourself? What would other people?
This came to mind especially since the ending of my course last week. I'd had problems with one of the other people on it for the last two years. This guy was convinced that he knew everything; was right about everything; and that it was his duty to demonstrate this to everyone else. The interesting thing was, despite the fact that he'd had open conflict with several people, and this year, an official complaint about his manner, he was unfazed. He was still convinced of his rightness and his role as 'educator of the unenlightened.'
His bottle would probably say: 'Perfect, full of wisdom, so right! Fills your mind with a deep sense of inadequacy!'
whereas, what others wrote would probably not be allowed. In truth, I had come to rather like the old bugger, and we parted with a hug, which not many people get from me. I had accepted him for who he was, all was well.
My own bottle? Hmmm.. It would say something like .... 'Leaves you with a deep sense of disappointment...'
How about yours?
June 29 A Day of big stuffToday I had to take a trip down the M25 to attend a course I've been on, and the road was busy so I daren't let my mind wander. This was good, except for the danger of my falling asleep at the wheel which I never thought was possible before now, but it is. Scary stuff. To combat this, I let my mind wander. Just a bit.
Facing the arse end of cars and lorries for an hour or so affords a different perspective on things - the odd stuff people keep on their parcel shelves for instance, or the variety of businesses winging their way up and down the country.
I was stuck behind one for miles - a white van with:
"A Distributor of HUGE Cheeses" painted on the back. It didn't seem a very big van for such cargo, but for a while I wondered what would happen in the event of an accident ( motorist survives crash only to be crushed by HUGE rolling cheese), and then for another mile or two, I considered the mechanics of making HUGE cheeses, then what it must be like to spend years making it:
'What did you do with your life?'
'I was a distributor of Huge Cheeses.'
'Is that what you always wanted to be?'
'Yes. I planned it from a young age. From the first time I saw cheese. That was it for me.'
It's odd the paths people take into different careers. How you end up dedicating your life to producing cheese for eg, or advertising gherkins. What was it we wanted to be at first? Where did we hope to be? Why are we not? Why do I keep asking all these pointless questions?
I mean, how many kids do you know who, the first time they were asked the question 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' answered, 'I want to work in a big room with no windows, pulling the handle of a machine that makes plastic bags.' or, 'I want to spend my days sitting behind a table putting calls through to some bloke who makes HUGE cheeses.' I began to wonder why I was on this course, why I do the job I do. Where my goats went to.
When I reached my destination it was a beautiful day, but lagging somewhere in the back of my heart. The sun was hauling itself up over the yard arms of the tallest trees and there was nothing wrong, just no peace. I couldn't concentrate on the day's events - not least because of the view of the golfers straight out of the windows ahead - just what is that little wiggle of the arse needed for, before you take a shot? No. I was wondering where it all went, and what to do now.
I had it all worked out once. I was going to spend my life dressed as a wizard, farming goats on an island, bringing out one book a year. I know because I found this written in an old First School notebook. I was a bright, sparky, if slightly solitary kid before I let it go tits-up. Then I made the mistake of taking my goats and retreating - to an internal island which I seem to be damned if I can escape from.
Boats come, now and then - some of them the most beautiful boats you ever saw, with sails like sheets of white paper slapping in the wind, fittings of gold glinting in the sun, the sound of life affirming and gorgeous belly laughs coming from the galley - and they sail right up close to the rocks and throw me ropes - but the damned goats keep crowding me away. Damn me, no one told me they could get so stinky.
June 19 SuckerI went back to work the other day. Money needs to be made, food to be eaten. It was like surfacing after a long sleep to find the world the same, yet different. The lawn is a bog, the plants I put in two or three weeks ago with such optimism had drowned or died from lack of water - a contradiction like so much else.
The first thing I had to do was monitor a maths exam. A roomful of 'special' kids who qualify for help of various kinds and need a separate room and a separate invigilator. All I had to do was sit for two hours watching a woman respond to their requests for help, and the faces of those with learning problems creasing with concentration as they wrote out ten lots of £2.00 down the page to add them up, not knowing you can just move the point; watching the pierced, bleary faces of those who have brains but don't use them because they just don't care, or are 'hard nuts', sighing and settling down to a boring hour and a half and a paper with most of the answers written thus:
"I dunno cos I dont get it do I."
I was doing ok, until about half way through. Then, when the stillness of the room was broken only by the odd sniff or scratch, and its really hard to stay awake, I looked up and saw her. A girl. Well known as a big drinker and smoker, a girl with a mouth like a sewer, about as lovable as herpes, began to nod off at her desk. Her mascara streaked lids drooped, her head dropped, and then....
... almost asleep, her thumb sneaked into her mouth, her head went back on her shoulder and the room filled with a gentle sucking sound. Heads went up, eyes swivelled round, and I got ready to quell the storms of laughter. One boy, known for his Mickey taking and mean spirit saw her, and just for a moment all the sass and bullshit faded from his eyes, he just looked at her and then with a sigh turned back to his chewed paper while she slept on, like the little baby she still is, deep inside.
That was the hardest moment of my first day back. I wanted to tell you. I wanted to pick her up and run her away somewhere where we don't have to hide behind these walls that start off fencing us in, and end up fencing us out. Here in the cold where you really don't want to be.
May 10 StrayThe other thing I noticed in Athens was the dogs. Everywhere you go, there they are. Up at the acropolis there were so many they had to be a gang. I called them 'The Acropolis boys' and I believe its hard to gain membership. The site is a good one after all. It offers shade and wide, sunny pavements to sleep on, and lots of people for diversion.
All the dogs are strays, don't be fooled by the collars. They are looked after by an animal charity that makes sure they don't starve, and are neutered. (Apparently the reason there are so many is because Greek men are so precious about their manhood that they can't bear to sterilise their pets!) So the numbers of stray dogs is amazing. They all looked the same type to me too - large dogs, a cross between an alsatian and a retriever - mostly golden in colour. They lie around flaked out on the stonework, oblivious to everyone, and when you see one, there will be another, and more. There were seven I counted in the Acropolis gang.
The thing that amazed me is how sweet natured the dogs are. Their life can't have been easy, yet they were not frightening or aggressive in any way and most seemed well looked after. Only once did that change. I took a coach to the coast one day, and in the middle of a small town the traffic ground to a halt and I looked down out of the window and there, making its way through the cars and coaches was the memory of a dog - a dead dog walking, just a skeleton. Its head hung down, it staggered and seemed not to care about the danger it was in. Maybe it hoped something would put an end to it, I don't know. I wanted to get off the coach and do something. I wondered why the people allowed it to go on. It spoilt my day. It was a far cry from the Acropolis boys.
Here's a bit of a You tube vid. showing some of the dogs, taken by some Americans (yes, that's a disclaimer. I'm kidding ok?)
I didn't see a single act of aggression, or even much barking, and they were everywhere you looked. Really cute beasts, though ithey do have a forlorn look about them. It seems they should be hunting the steppes, tossing snow up into the wind, chasing down prey across the mountains, but here they are, snoozing in the streets of Athens, dreaming of the past. Aristotole with a big juicy bone perhaps. Archimedes with a plate of ham.
I had to post this because I mentioned I would say something about cats and dogs and I wasn't in the mood, but here you are, best get it over with and never commit myself to a definite again!
May 04 No paperI took a short break in Athens a little while ago. I was just in the mood for wandering, as I often have been, over the years. People grow up and they develop their ways. Not all noble, not all the stuff of legend, but all of it part of what life has made us.
Walking the streets of Athens with my i-pod was an interesting experience. It's a modern city of course, yet at the same time its a city surrounded, illuminated and limited by its past - rather like all of us I guess. To walk about in it is to be struck by the burden that the past is. It's something you can't get away from. Even if you build new things there are limits. Boundaries you can't cross, areas you can't get to, and even in the middle of modernity you only have to turn round and there is the past again, looking right over your shoulder. It's hard to know what to do with it.
In Greece, the past is so close you can almost have a consultation with the people who went before, and instead of being remote and strange, there is something about the ruins that is almost contemporary. You can tell these people were really just like us, that nothing has changed, that there were dopes like me wandering around contemplating their own folly in just the same way as now - except I have to wonder if the toilets weren't better back then. I really do.
In Greece you cannot flush paper. You can't. You really cannot flush paper. There's a sign over every toilet asking you not to, and a little bin - not the sort of ladybox-industrial waste-used syringe type of box you might expect either - but a little flip top steel thing like the ones you put your tissues in, with an open top plastic bag for the poor maids to take out every morning. No way! In contrast, if you walk in the gardens below the acropolis you can see the drains the guys there had going all that time ago, and beautiful they are too - branching away east and west beneath the city under great slabs of stone - I bet there was no problem with the Andrex then.
Personally I couldn't bear the thought of my nice room maids who brought a chocolate and a clean towel to my room each evening having to sift through my 'personal-tissue-unwanteds' bearing anything more than a gentle evening pee, so I took to visiting the loos just about anywhere else I could find, which was fine until I hit somewhere where the water was turned off for two days to 'mend the cisterns'.
This experience, including having to wash my hands in bottled lemonade provided by the management was enough to put my system on strike until I reached home again, but what would travel be without such pleasures?
Wherever you go in Athens, you will rub your back on a piece of antiquity. You can have dinner next to a fallen temple with the tower of the four winds looking down on you. You can stroll out - as I did - onto your hotel balcony and look across the road with its insane drivers swerving and honking - to the ruined temple of Zeus just across the other side, and have breakfast looking out of the window and up the hill to the Acropolis while the sun glances off the cats and satellite dishes of the terracotta roofs below.
You can follow the sound of flutes over a long distance, certain that they will lead you back in time to find priestesses dancing behind an olive grove - only to find it is the wind playing beautiful music in the metal piping of a barrier fence. It's that sort of place - like the front and back of a shadow, the past as close as the turning of a page in the wind.
Here's a Youtube tour of some of the main places, to give you an idea if you've not been there:
next time, a word about dogs and cats.
April 27 CensoredCan you imagine Moby without his Dick? Or a rose without its thorns? Would you want Dickens without his Sykes, Shakespeare without his Moor, or Hunter S. Thomson without his drugs? The Fear and loathing would be gone from Las Vegas; Oliver would be given a home with that nice Mr. Whats-his-face and the world could go on turning without the fear of any undue upset. Now wouldn't that be nice?
I heard a tale of censorship today, and the tale depressed me. Here's how it goes:
Just over a year ago my friend wrote a beautiful and moving account of a visit to Ypres. He spoke of how visitors receive a card on entry to the exhibition with a name written on it, which you use to activate screens and information throughout. He said:
'...The German names are included on these cards for a reason. The exhibition does not seek to glorify the dead of Belgium, nor of France, nor of Britain or her Empire. Indeed it does not seek glory at all.'
This was the whole point of the article, and it was moving and beautifully written. It affected me at the time and I remembered it well when he told me it had been posted on the front of a Newsletter where he worked. The problem came when a single voice complained about a later paragraph: 'Walking through the exhibition, I was minded of another, more present war, but one equally mismanaged, overseen with spectacular incompetence, with no reason or goal...'
That was the sticking point. This voice of dissent did not like this lack of full support for a current political situation. Though she had failed to notice any of what the article articulated so well - which is the endless futility of all war, and the absolute necessity of examining our role within them - based on this one voice alone, the piece was pulled, the magazine was halted. The voice was stilled.
The powers that be moved to censor and silence the voice of a writer who had done nothing but express a view he had every right to hold. We have a right to exist in our own land without having a brand stamped on our heads that says we must hold one opinion, one line, and all others must be stamped upon. If we are confident in what we do, then we do not need to fear the questioning voice. And if we are not confident - then that's the time we need to hear it most of all.
I can be on your side and not agree with you. I can be on your side and not agree because you need me, and I need you, to watch each other's backs. We need each other there in case we've taken our eye off the ball, or haven't noticed that the kettle is boiling over. I want to know that if I cease to care that they're drowning baby girls in the river, that you care, and you want to wake me up, you want to shake me. A country that has lost the ability to question itself is a country with no moral freedom. A person who cannot hear the voices of others is a person afraid to look out. A ruling body which bows to the insecurity of one person is on a slippery slope to a place you really don't want to be.
Of course, Freedom of Speech is somewhat an illusion. There are things we don't want you to say. Society as a whole has its sticking point, its no-go areas, its own limits, but when I decide that my singular view is the one that should prevail, I lose the right to be challenged, to be made to think. After all, without Goliath, David is just another uppity kid with a bag of rocks.
When I'm not afraid of my own views, I'm not afraid to hear that others don't agree with me or think I'm wrong - that they dare to disagree! Here for instance, people are even permitted to parade through the streets calling for our deaths, because that is their right of reply, it is free speech. They live here. Let's hear them. I want to know. And if they lose the right to their opinion - why should I have mine?
Censorship is the first sign that things have gone wrong. It is the hallmark of everywhere that is ruled by despots. It's the way of the unthinking mass which marches to whatever drum is beaten. We do not like it when we see it in others - we may even go to war over it - confident in the holy ordinance of our moral supremacy - yet be completely blind to its own stirring within ourselves.
When I no longer have the right to walk through London with others who hold the same views and question the Government is the day I pack my bags and look for my island. Once you silence the voices, you have lost the right to call yourself free. You have become 1984:
or worse, you run the risk of this:
This is what happens when you are no longer allowed to question. This is what happens when you silence the voices that don't agree, who question what you thought you knew - who make you feel something you don't want to even consider. Silencing them is the first step on the road.
Judge for yourself:
April 23 Happy flaming St. George's Day.Today is St. George's Day, though by the time you read this, it probaby won't be any more.
The thing that amazed me is the debate that's been going on here today, about whether we should celebrate at all! Everyone else gets to, so what's the deal here? Why should we just crawl away into a corner and pour mud on our heads in shame?
It seems that Irishmen the world over (even those whose only contact with Ireland since their distant ancestors left is a pot of Irish butter in the English Supermarket) are not only allowed, but actively encouraged to celebrate their day. You can't move for flaming leprechauns and shamrocks, and perfect strangers come up to you in the street and say stupid things like 'Aaaarrrrrrrr, to be sure, to be sure, faith and beggorah!' while decked from head to foot in green.
The Welsh are allowed to fly the flag on St. David's day and daffodils are shown after the weather news by strange people with leeks stuffed into their trousers. Even the Scots have Hogmanay and Burns night, and on their patron saint's day old men sit around saying what disgusting beasts the bloody English are, and have always been.
The English though - now that's another matter altogether. It appears that celebrating England and being English, and waving the flag, are now signs of 'Racism.' 'Jingoism.' 'skinheads.' and the BNP. - oh please - those daft buggers?
Well nuts!
Having a day when you can celebrate being English should be as fine as celebrating being Irish or Scottish or Welsh - which all together make up the British Isles - or they damn well should. I guess, as the oppressors and aggressors of every other segment of our land, the blasted English are expected to keep quiet and fly their flag at half mast while crawling along the Fleet Ditch in hair shirts and very little else. (Had to add that bit - the mental pictures just kept coming.)
Well, to hell with it I say! I want all the Brits who are proud of their particular part of this small and oddly shaped island to come out and reclaim their saint's day. All our glorious races and nationalities and heritages should grab a flag this minute and get out on the streets and declare - 'Cry England - for Harry and Saint George!'
Heck - as a half Welsh, kilt owning half-breed, I insist on being allowed to be proud - and play jingoistic You Tube videos. I insist on ignoring for just one day, everything that is wrong with my country - everything I disagree with mourn the loss of and hate the sight of - and just be glad about the good things for a change. After all - every other bugger does - And now it's our turn!
Hehe.
April 21 ultrasoundI typed this on the fifth of April and never posted it. It's old news, but if I don't post something now, I doubt I ever will again.
Today I found myself in outpatients, with a PSP that was running out of power and an old copy of Wildlife Magazine. It could have been worse - I might have had to wear one of those gowns. You know the ones - the ones where your arse hangs out the back and there is always a broken tape right where you don't want it. I think in every hospital there is a nurse who goes round cutting them. It's his or her way of revenge for the poor wages and long hours. Anyway, no gown for me. I just had to take my shirt off and sit there in my designer vest.
I was in the hospital because of my neck which has been giving me bother for a couple of months or so now. Everytime I lowered my head, there was something there on the right side, that wasn't there before. After ignoring it to see if it would go away, and walking around like a puppet trying not to bend my neck and feel that it was still with me, I decided to go to the doctor. He worried me even more by referring me to an ENT doc at the next surgery.
Here I had my throat numbed and a little fibre optic camera bunged up my shnozz and down my throat, which felt rather odd - like tiny little fingers tapping my throat as if searching for a way to retrieve my breakfast. The doctor hummed and haaaad, but said everything looked ok. However, after proceeding to manually probe my anatomy, she came to a stop and said
''Well, I'm sure this is fine, nothing seems wrong - but I'm going to send you to the hospital for an ultrasound just to be sure, ok?'
As the child of a doctor I've been something of a 'reader-into' of words. I didn't hear the first part of what she said at all. What I heard was:
'Oh, God, what's this!!? I'm going to let the hospital deal with this one. Oh the poor sod.'
Thereafter I walked around convinced I was on the way out, and when the appointment came only a week or so later that decided it. I began to consider who to give my CD collection to, and what I wanted on my tomb stone. 'Talk about a pain in the neck.' perhaps? True, but with a nicely twisted double meaning, or perhaps just 'Sorry!' in large letters. That ought to cover it.
I went on my trip to Athens trying not to think about it, which along with the other things I didn't want to think about meant I was doing a lot of thinking about nothing. Heaven knows what they made of me as I walked around with a rigid head, trying not to bend it below the horizontal, and this vacant expression on my face as I tried to practice being in 'The Now' and nowhere else.
The day of my appointment came and I skipped off work saying I had to have my head examined, which surprised no one, and there I was in the waiting room, diddling on my PSP and thinking about nothing.
The ultrasound room was dark and cosy, and I was told to make myself comfortable while the doctor was busy elsewhere (probably discovering something vile in someone else's throat). By the time she came in I was half asleep - and the ultrasound itself was rather nice - like a slow massage which I had to try not to enjoy too much - I was, after all, here to be given the worst of news wasn't I?
The massage progressed until something seemed to stop her and she took a little photo. The more she took, the worse I thought it must be and the less I enjoyed the massage. At last I sat up, covered in warm sticky stuff from chin to chest, and prepared for the worst.
'OK.' she said, 'I can't find anything there to worry about, so you can go home.' and off she went, leaving me to re-shirt and leave.
I walked out of the hospital x-ray department not sure what to think. Should I skip a bit? Should I go into the shop and buy a stale french loaf and beat myself with it? Everywhere I walked was where my dad had walked - this was the place he used to work such long hours in. I could almost hear him tut-tutting at me as I went. 'For God's sake - don't be so bloody silly.'
Well Dad, I am so bloody silly.
I exited into some late afternoon sunshine, happy to have been wrong. Really happy to have been bloody silly.
Shame there isn't a cure for that.
If I could play the fiddle, this woulda been me:
March 01 St. David's DayWhatever else, today is still St. David's Day.
Saint David, or Dewi Sant, as he is known in the Welsh language, is the patron saint of Wales. He was a Celtic monk, abbot and bishop, who lived in the sixth century. During his life, he was the archbishop of Wales,
Dewi is said to have been of royal lineage. His father, Sant, was the son of Ceredig, who was prince of Ceredigion, a region in South-West Wales. His mother, Non, was the daughter of a local chieftain. Legend has it that Non was also a niece of King Arthur.
St. David spoke an old form of Welsh fourteen centuries ago, and the Saint has become synonymous with keeping the language alive, and all that is good in the Welsh way of life. Welsh is one of the oldest living European languages, and although it has been oppressed for centuries, it has refused to die and is alive and growing today.
'Do the little things' ('Gwnewch y pethau bychain') - Dewi Sant
February 24 Cake... A kid comes into the hospital with a swollen elbow. Suddenly, he collapses to the floor, thrashing uncontrollably, and in a few seconds is unconscious. There seems to be no reason for it. He's fit, he's healthy, and now its all going wrong...
It's ok though - there's a doctor available. An offbeat, irascible, bloody-minded maverick who has just been dumped by his wife (who ran off with her eyebrow shaper.) He takes one look at the boy and, pushing aside all the medical equipment and staff, looks into his ear and nods.
'It's quite clear.' he says. 'He is suffering from a rare form of poisoning caused by these earrings - made in some unnamed foreign state and coated with mercury! I knew because of the swollen elbow. Dizziness caused by the poisoning caused him to fall in a particular way, causing a y-shaped bruise and swelling.'
What a guy.
Well. So goes the world of t.v. medicine which I've been watching on continuous dvd loop today, seemingly unfit for anything else. In the real world however, things never go so smoothly or so well. There is no doctor for certain things. There is no cure. There is only the sticking plaster of booze, cigarettes or perhaps a little sniff of 'something-to-make-you-happy.' But what to do when none of it is any good? Or it makes no difference, or you promised not to?
'You're quiet today'
'Yeah. Sorry'
'Why is that? Are you ok?'
'Yeah. Yes. I'm fine. Thank you.'
'Want a cream cake?'
'Sure. Why not. I've only had three after all. I figure they'll kick in soon and then everything will be ok.'
'You make me laugh.'
'Really? Wow'
It's Saturday and I'm here, missing the rugby, in this nice wooden hall taking bread and wine from someone who doesn't know that God and I are not actually speaking.
I've quite enjoyed the bit before this - the verbal sparring, the questing and debating that's gone on. Dry intellectual argy-bargy I can do. Walking the plank of whats and maybes because it doesn't really matter anymore. There's something strangely freeing about walking the plank naked, over a sea of noise with the sting of salt battering your tender and dangling bits, while the flying fish of buggeroff make snapping leaps at the same.
However, when everyone moves into the hall for contemplation, and meditative silence and you're outside in the lobby having volunteered to wait out there for a late comer -
'That's so good of you.'
'What a noble person.'
'Thank you for giving up your place in here to wait for Ethelread and her battalion of Yorkshire terriers.' and so on...
... you're thinking, 'noble??? don't be daft.' Just a severe case of avoidance. Just feeling like a pirate at a princess party, a foreskin at a Bar mitzvah, a glass of brandy at a temperance meeting. Besides, I don't like silence much right now.
So I sat and I listened to the traffic going by, and counted my heartbeats, and the gentle throbbing in my temple.
When I got home and watched the rugby on tape - Wales had won by a landslide, and that made me smile.
February 09 Olympic SportWales won its rugby match today. I'm still turning on a sixpence, upside down, back to front, inside out. But this:
Really needs to become an Olympic sport. February 02 Strange ShiftThis last week or so has seen me in a strange mood. Up and down on a sixpence. I can't tell what I'm likely to do from one moment to the next. It's like someone leaned on the control switch, or some crazed monkey has got hold of the joy stick. Twice, at work, I've grabbed my coat, completely decided - by some incident that I'd normally brush aside - that I'm jacking in my job. The first time, as I headed to the office to do the deed, some kid spoke to me, grinned, and I turned round and went home instead. If the kid hadn't turned up, I'd have been gone.
I make myself go to bed and read a book at about 3 am because I'm not tired, then I can't get up at 6.30, or I call in at Tescos for some bread, and wake up half an hour later having fallen sleep in the car with the hot air blower humming, the rain spattering the window, and a programme about delinquent chimps playing on the radio.
Tonight was a real doozy. While I was on a late shift, I heard a dreadful noise outside the building. I could tell it was a drunk shouting - but it was the awful sound of a cat shrieking that took me outside. There was this guy, holding a dog and a cat by their necks, kicking them and punching them while he bellowed 'LET GO YOU BASTARD. LET GO!' It became apparent that the dog had the cat by the throat and the drunk was trying to seperate them. The cat was in agony, and I shouted at the guy to quit, but he took them into this little carpark and the noise got worse - agonised yowls and shrieks, and punches and shouts. I went back inside to get a torch, and when I came out, he was walking away, still shouting and kicking his dog, and the cat was silent.
I went down to the carpark to look, in case it was injured, going in at the narrow gateway. Then I heard a noise and turned. Behind me, and between me and the gate was a big bloke - holding an enormous metal pole which he was bouncing from hand to hand. Did he think it was me attacking the cat? Was he just some stray nutcase? Either way, he was between me and escape, and he was not looking friendly.
I looked at him, he looked at me, and I imagined in one or two of those stretched out seconds, that I might possibly be in big trouble. I wondered, 'what the bloody hell am I doing here? at almost midnight, looking for a cat, about to get my head smashed.' then I decided to just be cool.
'Hi,' I said, 'Nice pole... I'm just going to go back inside now...' and walked confidently past him, hoping he wasn't going to be a git and bomp me one. The ground was muddy. I didn't fancy lying face down in that - cheek to cheek with the wriggly things.
He stood there as I slipped past him, then I legged it back into the building like my arse was on fire. I'm not proud - his was much bigger than mine. Half an hour later I went back out and he was gone - two fox cubs there instead, totally unafraid. I stood and admired them for a bit. The sky was clear like a wide, deep pool, ringing with stars. Just looking down and watching.
The rugby starts tomorrow. I'll wrap my brain round that, while I still have it.
January 22 Goodbye to Heath LedgerIt all seems so glamorous and exciting - acting, Hollywood, all that. Underneath though, this happens all too often.
Goodbye to a fine actor. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/actor-heath-ledger-is-found-dead/ |
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