Went to see this Woody Allen (directing, not acting) and Scarlett Johansson (acting, not directing) movie yesterday at Spinningfields. They’ve put up a large screen in the open plaza and are showing free movies every Thursday from 8:30pm. Petra was up for the experience, and I expected to bump into some of the badminton group as well.

The BBC had predicted an onset of rain at around 10-ish, so we were prepared to abandon at first signs of precipitation. It turned out we both had seen the movie anyway, and the ‘British-Upper-Class’ acting was annoying to say the least (except you, dear Scarlett. As ever, you were fab!).

I had brought a sleeping bag as well as a picnic blanket to keep snug, so all was going well, lying against a grass knoll with dusk slowly descending. There was something very charming about being there that time of the evening, with good company, the smell of kebabs in the air, and the happy chatter of people around. And then the rain came down. Petra had a brolly, and there were Spinningfield staff handing out plastic macintoshes. To the credit of all the Mancunians, almost everybody braved it through to the end. It was quite a unique experience to sit huddled under a brolly under seige from the winds and rain, sitting through a movie we both knew the conclusion of.

So it begins, this story, like everything else – with a woman, and a city, and a little bit of luck.

-”Everything is allow no problem here. Except the fighting. Fighting is not good manners at India Guest House”.
-”You see? No problem”.
-”And dying”, Prabaker added, with a thoughtful wag of his round head. “Mr. Anand is not liking it, if the people are dying here”.

The past reflects eternally between two mirrors – the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.

I was tough, which is probably the saddest thing to say about a man.

“… You‘re a good listener. That‘s dangerous, because it’s so hard to resist. Being listened to – really listened to – is the second-best thing in the world”.

Leopold’s was a place to see, a place to be seen, and a place to see themselves in the act of being seen.

“Ah. This is a Bombay gold dealer‘s no. It is a no that means maybe, and the more passionate the no, the more definite the maybe”.

“I make ends meet, as they say, and when they meet I get a payment from both of the ends”.

“When you judge the power that is in a person, you must judge their capacities as both friend and as enemy”.

The truth is a bully we all pretend to like.

What we call cowardice is just another name for being taken by surprise, and courage is seldom any better than simply being well prepared.

Gradually, I realised that the wiggle of the head was a signal to others that carried an amiable and disarming message: I’m a peaceful man. I don’t mean any harm.

“And make sure he doesn‘t learn any bad words. Don‘t teach him any swearing. There are plenty of arseholes and bastards around who will teach him the wrong sisterfucking words. Keep him away from motherfuckers like that”.

It was a wild speech that called them cowards and invoked Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha, the god Krishna, Mother Teresa, and the Bollywood film star Amitabh Bachchan in the same sentence.

Life on the run puts a lie in the echo of every laugh, and at least a little larceny in every act of love.

Raju’s task was to determine whether I could live with them. Johnny’s task was to make sure they could live with me.

Didier once told me, in a rambling, midnight dissertation, that a dream is the place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, he said, we call the dream a nightmare.

It’s a fact of life on the run that you often love more people than you trust. For people in the safe world, of course, exactly the opposite is true.

If fate doesn’t make you laugh, Karla said, in one of my first conversations with her, then you just don’t get the joke.

A novel by Gregory David Roberts, an Australian armed robber, heroin addict and prison escapee. The story is about his life on the run, beginning when he lands in Bombay as a stranger and working through extraordinary adventures living in the slums, joining the mafia, acting in Bollywood and standing with the Mujahideen, living, loving, fighting, healing.

It is an exceptionally powerful story of life in Bombay’s underbelly, with a richness and truthfulness about it that is lyrical. The portrayal of characters is nothing but genius with a true love for India shining through.

Very few books come close to this.

I’ve started a new List of Things I’d Like to Do before I Meet the Great Tortoise in the Sky. It is a work in progress and I thought it would be nice to throw it open to suggestions from my wonderfully wise and well-wandered readers. And you.

Just leave a comment to this post and I will update the list if your dumb idea makes the cut.

No suggestion is too vague or precise. It could be something you have done or something you can comfortably lie about having done. It could be something you heard someone else doing or something you aspire to do in the future. We might even do it together!

I entertain the vague hope that this list will galvanise me into action and it might possibly even convince you to do something about your lazy-ass life!

I believe such a list is called a ‘Kick-The-Bucket List’.

Facts and figures.

Sights seen: British Museum, Kew Gardens. St. Paul’s Cathedral (in time for Sunday Mass). Hyde Park. Royal Albert Hall. Tate Modern. Hammersmith Apollo. Southbank. Regents Park. Covent Garden. Holland Park. Tower of London. Trafalgar Square. Big Ben. Marble Arch. The Burroughs. Piccadilly Circus. Leicester Square. Spitalfields. The Golden Hinde. Stag Beetles.

Distance covered: approx 60 miles.

Bridges crossed: Hammersmith, Putney, Westminster, Millennium, London, Tower.

Food and Drink: The Coach and Horses, Kew. Fuel, Covent Gardens. The Crispy Duck, Chinatown. The Slug and Lettuce, Soho. Nando’s, Southwark. The Pastry Shop, Euston Station. Various hot dogs, delicious and otherwise.

Celebrities spotted: Graham Norton, Johnny Vegas.

Highlights.

Has to be the Stag Beetle display at Kew Gardens. A bunch of tree trunks. Nothing else.

The Fuel balcony in Covent Garden is one heck of a cool place to be. Especially with pitchers of Long Islands.

And the Best-Burger-Ever Award goes to the Coach and Horses Hotel for a succcccculent burger and secret recipe mayo that was very memorable.

The celebs were like bookends to our visit; Graham Norton with two dogs at a Hyde Park hot dog stand by The Serpentine as we set out on a fine Saturday morning, and Johnny Vegas coming the opposite way in Euston Station as we were dashing with our bikes to get the train home to Manc.

p.s. we may have been in the presence of more celebs over the course of the weekend, but it’s fitting that I only recognised comedians.

For the first time in the UK an incumbent Prime Minister joined in live televised debate with the leaders of opposing parties.

Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg was always going to fare better than the other two as he was going in with nothing to lose and all to gain. With Labour’s Brown and Conservative Cameron pandering to him on the night (I suppose they were instructed not to publicly pick on the new kid) he grew a set of cojones and came out trumps. With the publicity he’s gained the Lib Dems have gone from long-standing laughing stock and also-rans to serious contenders. Betcha my Grannie to your old shoes they’ll try to shred him in the next two debates.

The performance of the other two? Brown looked stolid but tired and Cameron was patronisingly slimy as ever.

I guess what annoys me most about these so-called debates is that I, conceivably prematurely, foresee an inevitable decline of British politics towards the kind of show-boating and back-stabbing one-upmanship that will denigrate the almost faultless lives that our leading politicians lead.

Hah!

What really bothers me actually is the fact that we’ve now agreed, nay, demanded! as ‘The Public’, to be impressed by the person who’s most well-turned-out. Because that’s (pretty much) all that the televised debates will be able to highlight.

With record viewing figures (average 9.4 million, peak 9.9, which “beat even Coronation Street”) being quoted in the papers, it almost seemed as if they were competing against the other “talent” shows that abound nowadays.

Fair enough to say, the media is having its predictable field day with the ‘who-looked-at-whom, who-wore-what’ inane chatter.

I despair.

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansions
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins.

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do.

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead.

-Dylan

Tragedy in Moscow. I remember when a bomb went off in the underground floor of the Okhotniyy Ryad shopping mall next to the Kremlin. This is going to have serious repercussions, with Medvedev speaking in emotive terms.

Blair joins the Fray. Blair praises Brown. Desperate times with desperate measures indeed.

Rooney Injured. Munich pay back for 1999 with 2 late goals to finish 2-1 up in the first leg against Man U. But England fans will be more concerned about Rooney limping off at the end.

Ricky Martin is Gay. Whod’ve known?

I got this film through the post (via LoveFilm) and was disappointed at seeing the title. I didn’t remember choosing it and worse, it was rated 15 (I swore to myself as a child that as soon as I could legally watch 18 Certificate films I wouldn’t bother with any other type. I mean, what’s the point?) so I expected I had added it to my list while having a fit of “Culture Guilt”. This obviously meant the film would be “arty”, which in the world of DVDs mostly equates to ‘boring’.

But I was wrong. This was indeed a rather slow-paced movie, with the one lead actor on screen 95% of the time. But this wasn’t art, it was sci-fi at its simple, emotive best. Sam Rockwell is Sam Bell, an employee of a large organisation working alone on a 3-year contract on a far-side lunar base helping extract helium for use on Earth. He has an accident and then discovers a chilling truth about his existence on the moon. The film is a great example of what can be done with a good storyline. It stays firmly in classic sci-fi territory, but manages not to feel dated at all. I was quite moved by the film and delighted I saw it.

Apparently it’s won Best British Independent Film 2009 (2 wins, 7 nominations), and was nominated for 2 BAFTAs in 2010. Well done Duncan Jones for his directorial debut. All on a budget of $5 mill.

Sam Rockwell is really convincing in his role. And casting Kevin Spacey for the voice of the robotic-servant module GERTY 3000 was sheer brilliance.

Spotted: Best newspaper story headline of the current year (so far) in the free Metro.

Regarding the England Cricket team to line up against Bangladesh -

“Cook copes without Onions”

Captain Alastair Cook was left without bowler Graham Onions after an injury.

“Mesdames et Messieurs, j’ai l’honneur de vais vous presenter le soir de African Soul Rebel.”

Only the greatest night! Like, what, forever!

It was Sunday night at the Bridgewater Hall. As ever, the moment of walking into Manchester’s Crown Jewel of Musical Experiences was one to be savoured. I had Ioan and Jessy for company, and as we sat at our Circle seats I wondered whether the artists I’d suggested we see would be met with approval.

It opened with a bang. The Orchestre de Cotonou, strongly reminiscent of Buena Vista SC and Orchestra Baobab yet memorable in their own right, were groovy and more suited to a open air beach bar where gorgeously honeyed people sip cocktails into the night, swaying along with the palm trees. The horns, the bass, the drums, the big band sound, yeah man. They’ve been going for almost 50 years, and listening to them really felt like a bit of a time-warp. The guys from Benin were over much too soon for my liking.

I’d like to stay positive about the second act, the Kalahari Surfers. I’m assured they played and continue to play a not insignificant role in the political arena of South Africa with regards to the anti-Apartheid movement. However, while listening to them the thought kept occuring to me that three people were jerking off on the stage and expecting me to clap. Perhaps all music doesn’t sound good in the Bridgewater, as I previously thought. I can tell you that their electro-funk / kindergarten-poetry-recital effort certainly didn’t. And talk about stage presence! I was bored so numb I actually closed my eyes and recalled with no small delight a memorable rainy day spent indoors watching paint dry. But the organisers are surely to blame for buying a bull and asking it to give milk.

But perhaps it was a well-engineered pause, before the total immersion ahead.

As we sat down for the third time, we saw musicians enter with the tamalane, flute, djembe and guitar. As they took their places, two lithe girls entered stage left with calabash in hand and walked to the right, the strings started plucking and they opened with the choral ‘Kayi ne Wura’ (Good evening to all).

How would I describe her music? The rythms are mesmerising and primal. And when she, not too often, just opens the throttle and lets rip there’s almost an audible rustle of everyone’s goosebumps across the hall. And the subject is very homely; women and their lot, love and respect. She has always been critical of the treatment given to women in her home-town Bamako, Mali. There is castigation, but there’s also hope. And not understanding a word only made it better.

The time just flew by.

I first heard Oumou from a CD I picked up at Manchester’s Central library. It was a BBC World Music compilation with the soulful ‘Ne Bi Fe’ (I love you), which I shamelessly ripped. It led me to finding the 2-disc compilation album ‘Oumou’, which I treasure. I’ve now bought her new ‘Seya’ album.

Merci beaucoup pour tout.

Heavy hung the canopy of blue
Shade my eyes and I can see you
White is the light that shines through the dress that you wore.
She lay in the shadow of the wave
Hazy were the visions of her playing
Sunlight on her eyes but moonshine beat her blind everytime.
Green is the colour of her kind
Quickness of the eye deceives the mind
Envy is the bond between the hopeful and the damned.

An old Pink Floyd song, just sprung to mind like bumping in to a old friend on the street.

Dear Valentine,

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Valentine’s Day is just consumerist bullshit,
Now haven’t you got some ironing to do?

Tony “The Lapdog” Blair will be facing questions all day today regarding decisions made to send troops in to invade Iraq. So far the questions haven’t been very probing; he’s been allowed to ramble on about his opinions by a rather deferential Chilcot & Co. and seems to be in control of the proceedings even. Let’s see if he can (ever) be held accountable for his actions and if this time he can call in some favours from his pals in high places (there must be quite a few Lords owing him one) and find a weasely way out.

After all, it might set a bad precedent if our leaders had to explain their decisions..

On another front, can’t wait for Snowboarding Sunday! We shall be visiting the beautiful, staggering slopes of Val d’Trafford and make the run down the bone-crunching Le Chill Factore. Shoop shoop baby!

been out-of-sight-out-of-mind for a while. here are a few snippets, in the order i recall them:

1) avatar. one heck of a film an experience. my first 3D film, IMAXed it and sat with goggles over my customary goggles, and didn’t fidget for the entire two-and-a-half hours or so. more to my surprise, i was told i didn’t even make any sarky comments (obviously apart from identifying, for everybody’s benefit, the analogies being drawn from humanity’s chequered history).

2) dawkins. bought ‘the god delusion’ and the second reading has me thinking that perhaps i’m not agnostic (because i thought a true scientist would not assert an absence of a thing without definitive proof) but athesist (because gods are more hassle to explain than any other hypothesis). jury’s out on that one.

3) m2. got increased memory for my phone/walkman (yes that w word dates me) and am rollicking in choice, choice. no dj in the world would go from toto to chapman, ozzy to police, wishbone ash to e.s.t. also bought again the superlative enigma trilogy album after “somebody” kept my first which i loaned them. “somebody else” should also remember who the annie lennox ‘diva’ cd belongs to, as should “somebody else else” bring themself around to return carl sagan’s ‘cosmos’. you know who you are. the view i take on it (after the initial cussing because of the loss) is “damn, i’ve got good taste for people wanting to keep my books and music”. then i auto-fellate.

4) bulls. will be running with them, or being chased by them to be more accurate. pamplona, ready or not, here we come. anything to avoid being hit, chased, accosted or otherwise molested by tomatoes.

5) ligament. recurring ailment of (what appears to be) the lateral collateral ligament of my left knee due to ice-related slippage.

6) birthday. missed my darling sas’s. what kind of a cad would do that? i mean totally dolally forgot. i was expecting a dressing down, which would be severe. but ‘understanding’? oooh, i’m in for a decade of winters.

7) risk. it’s a strategy game. wine helps the playing. mebbe not the winning therefore it of.

scots. more of that should be coming up, watch this url. suffice to say i love them.

and missing the frankie boyle.

I’ve just started reading the first of Sergei Lukyanenko’s trilogy The Night Watch and it is a rip-roaring ride. Brilliant imagination has been melded into the gritty Moscow night-time like it was written at Kurskiy Vokzal at 3 a.m. Readers fond of foreign movies might remember the film ‘Nochnoy Dozor’ (literal translation) based on this book bursting out of Russian cinema in 2004. This is a great bit of mythology worked around a core of realism that is very gripping.

I will definitely buy this in the original Russian (still looking for where to buy it from), as there’s clearly been some loss in translation. And seeing shoddy English such as “…the train was already breaking as it pulled into a station” when I’m only 14 pages in doesn’t build confidence in the rest of the work. I’ve heard said, and agree with the fact that the language a translator is translating into should be their strongest. And with a name like Andrew Bromfield you’d expect the translator to know better. But maybe I should give him a brake (pun intended).

As an aside, I will point out that I rented this book from the library a while ago, and was in no way influenced by the recent spate of teen-vampire mush spewing out of all of Hollywood’s orifices.

Note: in today’s news, Dubai World’s failure to repay its debt has resulted in further loss of confidence in the whole Dubai rollercoaster. To quote: “Dubai could not undermine itself any further as a place not to do business in at the moment,” said Manus Cranny at MF Global. From BBC News, link

Fact really is stranger than fiction. The BBC reports today that house prices in Afghanistan’s capital are soaring. Most obviously, one ex-pat has this to say:-

According to Richard Scarth, day-to-day life in Kabul remains relatively unaffected despite the global downturn.

“That is because the economy is UN-driven,” he says. “Money just keeps coming in regardless of what is happening in the wider world.”

I was spraying my pits with Gilette “Cool-surf-tiger-action-savannah-man” something or other this morning when I noticed that it claimed to provide “over 24 hour protection”.

Now, it hasn’t escaped my notice that just 24-hour protection came before that, and I could cast my mind back to times when 12 hour protection was deemed sufficient for the modern male homo sapien.

We are all aware of the famous 1 blade, no-you-need 2 blades, no-you-need 3 blades, no-you-need 4 blades, no-you-need 5 blades, etc. indecision of the famous blade manufacturers.

In both cases we’ve seen a natural, predictable one-upmanship for a cerain time before a stagnation point is reached and there is simply no more room for blades without moving into cheese-grater territory.

The case with pit-sprays is this. Although I don’t mind the adverts calling me a dynamic 24-hour man, juggling work, wife, mistress, blood donations and my volunteering role as a mentor for under-priviledged kids who only smile when they see me coming down the road on my super-cool urban scooter, being called a 48-hour man would only imply I hadn’t had a shower in two days. And although not showering in two days doesn’t really bother old “Oh-do-I-have-to-dress-for-success?” Naz (you should see smell my record!), I still don’t like it to be pointed out to me.

Reckon they’ve already realised this? Welcome to Stagnation Point.

My my, there’s been a lot of hyphens today.

I was browsing through Fopp’s last weekend, and I saw Tim Harford’s ‘Dear Undercover Economist’ book, which is a compilation of the very best and interesting letters sent to him and his replies to them in line of his duty as a Financial Times columnist. Tim Harford has also written ‘The Undercover Economist’ and ‘The Logic of Life’, which I really enjoyed.

Since it was only £2 (RRP £12 I think) I snapped it up. Reading it at home I came across MY letter to him revolving around the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”.

My letter was published!!

Go to page 64 and you’ll see it.

I’m reading Richard Dawkins’ ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ at the moment, also purchased from Fopp but at a much dearer £9. It is really gripping, and I marvel at how to DNA we are just “methods of propagation”.

David Nutt is a professor at Imperial College London and until last week was also chairman of the UK government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He was dismissed last week by Home secretary Alan Johnson, presumably for disagreeing with the government policy on upgrading certain Class C drugs to a Class B.

Professor Nutt has written a critical article appearing in The New Scientist today about how governments can get it wrong by not heeding their advisors when cementing policy.

Some telling excerpts are:

“Policies that ignore the realities of the world we live in are doomed to fail. This is true for just about all the biggest issues that we confront, from energy and climate to criminal justice, health and immigration. I’m not arguing that science dictate policy; considerations such as cost, practicality and morality also have a role. But scientific evidence should never be brushed aside from the political debate.”

“On ecstasy, for example, it made policy first, sought advice second – and cynically rejected the advice it was given. The result is shambolic policy-making which gives great cause for concern if that is how governments operate more generally.”

“The results of a government inventing its own reality and acting on it can be seen in the appalling consequences the George W. Bush presidency had for world peace, the environment and human rights.”

You can find the article here. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18099-david-nutt-governments-should-get-real-on-drugs.html

Here Chief Scientific Advisor Professor John Beddington backs him up saying research showing the drug to be less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes was “absolutely clear cut”, 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6902240.ece

I thought I had blogged about a science fiction story I had read called “Blood’s a Rover”. It was by Chad Oliver positing a future where a holy language is found encoded in a person’s blood.

But it was the title (as well as its appropriateness to the story) which caught me.

It’s part of a line from an A.E.Housman poem called “The Shropshire Lad”

Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;

Breath’s a ware that will not keep.

Up, lad; when the journey’s over

There’ll be time enough for sleep.” 

I thought this was by Bob Dylan because of the voice and lyrics, but the style was quite different. It’s by Hockey and is being played on radio now.

Song Away :

Make me a deal and make it good for me
I wont get full of myself, coz I cant afford to be
This is small town music, this is big town music
He’s ahead of his time you know but, he cant use it
If only he could prove it

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

Hey

See what your man has done to the world
see what the world has done to your man
You know im leaving you, you dont need me
Lovin you wasnt always so easy

This is believe me music, this is forget me music
This is who can love me you know, this aint no roxy music
This is new form music, this is old form music
This is i paid attention not some makes his prediction music
Oh he could let me use it

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

Not wanting to write a truthful song over an eighties groove
I like to let you know I’ll always be straight with you
I stole my personality from an anonymous source
And I’m gonna pay for it too, I dont feel bad about that
Give me my chance back

This is on the rise music, this i novelty music
This is who can blame music, I dont get fooled by it
This is where dyu go music, this is come home music
This is down to the wire I’m such a perfect angel music.
Who really tries

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

This is success music and what’s it to ya?
My lawyer always says these are the facts about the future well

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

Instead of the usual lies that are said at a person’s funeral, I shall speak only the truth here.

Paul Jazwinski died on the morning of the 10th of August.

He was my mother’s husband; they were married for more than 20 years.

He will be sorely missed.

Heard the beautiful song by The Cardigans on Kerrang today; threw me right back to a certain Moscow cafe for a brief flash.

I had a vision I could turn you right
a stupid mission and a lethal fight
I should have seen it when my hope was new
my heart is black and my body is blue

Lyrics here http://www.nazmania.co.uk/?page_id=64#game

Let me explain. She is our current Poet Laureate, and she writes the kind of poems that don’t always rhyme. I mean they don’t rhyme rigorously, as I always expected poems to when I was younger. When I composed, my slavish devotion to metre often forced me to include/exclude words that didn’t belong in that poem (much like lyrics with “Oooh baby” filling the gaps). But it never occurred to me then that poetry can be different, and that conveying the thought might be more important. Not obeying the mathematics of poetry suddenly sets the poet free.

I admit to having, until recently, sneered at ‘prose poetry’ but now am embarrassed by my intransigence.

So as part of my repentance I’ll give you dear reader some of Carol Ann Duffy’s beautiful poems. I would advise any budding poet to make note of how easy the language is, and yet how mellifluous and evocative. Without the superfluous.

And then what

Then with their hands they would break bread
wave choke phone thump thread

Then with their tired hands slump
at a table holding their head

Then with glad hands hold other hands
or stroke brief flesh in a kind bed

Then with their hands on the shovel
they would bury their dead

Away and see

Away and see an ocean suck at a boiled sun
and say to someone things I’d blush even to dream.
Slip off your dress in a high room over the harbour.
Write to me soon.

New fruits sing on the flipside of night in a market
of language, light, a tune from the chapel nearby
stopping you dead, the peach in your palm respiring.
Taste it for me.

Away and see the things that words give a name to, the
flight
of syllables, wingspan stretching a noun. Test words
wherever they live; listen and touch, smell, believe.
Spell them with love.

Skedaddle. Somebody chaps at the door at a year’s end,
hopeful.
Away and see who it is. Let in the new, the vivid,
Horror and pity, passion, the stranger holding the
future.
Ask him his name.

Nothing’s the same as anything else. Away and see
for yourself. Walk. Fly. Take a boat till land reappears,
altered forever, ringing its bells, alive. Go on. G’on.
Gon.
Away and see.

Valentine

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

p.s. This book must be returned to the library soon. You can buy it here.

Damn, I do miss playing the old game. I heard this poem on telly, it was read most beautifully and in the spirit of the Ashes I shall post it here. Try reading it out loud…

ON HAVING GIVEN UP CRICKET

I shall play cricket in heaven
in return for the afternoons
gladly given to the other
pleasure of others’ leisure.

I shall walk, without haste, to the wicket
and nod to the angels kitted
in their whites waiting to discern
the kind of batspirit I am.

And one stroke in heaven, one dream
of a cover drive will redeem
every meeting of bat
and ball I’ve done without.

And I’ll bowl too, come on to bowl
leg-breaks with such control
of flight and slight changes of pace
that one over will efface

the faint regret I now feel.
But best of all I shall field:
alert in the heavenly deep,
beyond the boundary of sleep.

- Michael Laskey, from ‘Thinking of Happiness’ (Peterloo, 1991).

Finished another J.M. Coetzee book this weekend; ‘Youth’ is about a young white South African who moves to London. He aspires to become a poet, but feels he lacks the fire of his heroes. As he struggles life goes on, and destiny has other plans for him.

My favourite comedy shows on telly all force me to stay up late to watch them. I’m loving the Inbetweeners at the moment, a comedy about four sixth-formers trying to get laid but getting nowhere. Their language is so delightfully crude and irreverant, with gems like “vag”,”clunge” and “the lion, the witch and the speccy kid that shat himself”. Renting the DVD soon.

The BBC (as I never tire of repeating; my favourite broadcaster) showed the film ‘The Girl with a Pearl Earring’ yesterday. I caught it midway but could tell straightaway it was about Vermeer. And that was because of the amazing lighting and cinematography. It was as if every shot was reminding you of Vermeer’s work, and I was kept guessing whether I had seen that particular shot in a painting, or whether it was just a continuation of the atmosphere and colour theme. Breathtaking, and I see the film has won a good few awards for the efforts.

Meanwhile, I also have an idea for the one telly show where celebrities have not yet been shoe-horned in:- Celebrity Zoo Farm! Celebrities are kept in a zoo, and every episode there’s heart-breaking news, like one of them has to be castrated ot put down. But there’s also good news, like they have established a breeding pair of So-and-So from This-or-That with So-and-So from That-or-Other and expect a litter anytime soon.

I started reading J.M. Coetzee’s (Wikipedia tells me it’s a common Afrikaans name pronounced “kut’se”) book ‘Disgrace’. Coetzee is the recipient of the Nobel prize for Literature in 2003 and the Booker Prize in 1999.

The book ‘Disgrace’ is about a 52-year old professor at a Cape Town university who has an affair with a student that goes sour. It’s a beautifully written book with a humanistic approach, a multilayered masterpiece, so I’ll give you an excerpt that really hit me last evening.

Intro: The Professor used to teach Classics and Modern Languages at the university, but that faculty has been closed down and so he stays on as a redundant Communications professor; a job for which he has no love, and so fails to inspire any in his students. Soraya is a prostitute, a moralistic prostitute, he visits every Thursday afternoon:-

He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing. It is a feature of his profession on which he does not remark to Soraya. He doubts there is an irony to match it in hers.

“He touched a lot of people”

Famous, Rich and Homeless

Format: Five Celebrities (whatever that means) attempt to live the lives of homeless people in three-day trials that get tougher.

Prize: None

Great show on the Beeb brought to light the perils and hardships that homeless people in Britain face. Must watch for everyone. Some of the stories brought tears to my eyes.

I watched a programme yesterday about wildlife refuges in London, and they showed a beautiful rooftop garden, the largest in Europe, on top of an ex-department store. They are open to the public unless booked, and accessible through a doorway marked ’99 Kensington High Street’. The garden had oak trees in 18 inches of topsoil and four swans, a couple of which where called Splosh and Pecks!

Heard this beautiful song on the radio today. By British Singer/Songwriter John Martyn.

May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold
May you never make your bed out in the cold

You’re just like a great strong brother of mine and you know that I love you true
You never talk dirty behind my back and I know there are those that do
Won’t you please, won’t you please, won’t you bear in mind
Love is a lesson to learn in our time
Won’t you please won’t please won’t you bear in mind for me

May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold
May you never make your bed out in the cold

And you’re just like a good close sister me and you know that I love you true
You hold no blade to stab me in the back and I know that some do
Won’t you please won’t you please won’t you bear in mind
Love is a lesson to learn time
Won’t you please won’t you please won’t you bear it mind for me

May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold
May you never make your bed out in the cold

May you never lose your temper if you get hit in a bar room fight
May you never lose your woman over night

May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold
May you never make your bed out in the cold

May you never lose your temper if you get hit in a bar room fight
May you never lose your woman over night

I just read about the humble pond skater. More precisely, about how male pond skaters are forced to dance for sex.

Apparently, the females of one species have evolved a genital shield (now there’s a scary thought; sort of like a portcullis/guillotine (both of these French words, I note) clamping shut when she’s not happy) and only mate with the male if they like the song he taps out on the water surface.

Reminds me of Sting’s eight-hour sexathon claim, which he says included “four hours of begging then dinner and a movie”.

Yes, according to New Scientist it takes “an elaborate mating ritual lasting about 15 minutes” before the poor male will get a nod and a leg over. Which makes you wonder how much energy he’ll have left…

You can’t make these things up, and here’s the proof. The next time I see a male red-backed water strider, usually found in stationary pools beside mountain streams in Korea, Japan and China I’m reliably told, I will send a genuine wave of empathic feeling his way.

I watched a documentary on BBC2 yesterday presented by reporter Kate Adie who was on the scene in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square massacre of June ’89. Returning 20 years later for the first time, her views, memories and impressions were very interesting.

I did not realise that the People’s Liberation Army actually did most of the slaughtering in the side alleys leading off the square, where the narrow streets were turned into shooting galleries, and people were injured and killed by bullets flying through thin walls.

I was also unaware of the fact that this episode in the history of China has largely gone missing from public record, and a new generation has grown up unaware of the atrocities committed. Banyan of The Economist has also reported in his article this week “The Party goes on” on the effective white-washing of the incident by the Chinese Government, and noted the fact that modern youth will look to this year’s military parade with a sense of pride in a symbol of Chinese resurgence and power.

I wondered why I hadn’t had a discussion on this topic with my numerous Chinese friends here in the UK.

I applaud the courage of the students and workers, and mourn the unnecessary loss of life. I note that 20 years on the Politburo hasn’t changed its modus operandi much.

Celebrating four years of running this blog, and the BBC Poetry Season on at the moment, I’ll link to an old post from this blog from May 2005:- State of Mind.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams
your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

I’ve spoken about the Great last.fm internet radio station before. Yesterday I heard Joe Bonamassa playing ‘Blues Deluxe’ live, and went straight on to play.com. He absolutely shreds the guitar in wailing howls.

I first heard Bonamassa, and ‘Blues deluxe’ but not the live version, on Planet Rock. Where he is a DJ. Speaking of Planet Rock, I don’t know if I mentioned Alice Cooper, but he DJs there as well, in the mornings. The guy has the driest sense of humour ever, and is always cracking me up.

I’m also really loving the song by La Roux constantly played on the radio- “Going in for the kill”

The new bike (yes, I went in to Cycle Logic in Chorlton last Saturday morning to get my old bike’s crank fixed, and ended up with a shiny new blue Falcon Colorado) is handling well, it’s a large beast and harder work than my old Tornado because it’s heavier and grippier.

Going hiking again early Sat; Hannah’s friend Nick, back from Aus-trah-lia, will be joining.

Very enjoyable hike with the Manchester Uni Hiking Club on Sat; gorgeous views around Edale from Kinder Plateau. Bit of rain towards the end but otherwise smashing weather. Nice little pub at the end.

Finished reading Iain M. Banks’ State of the Art. I can see where his big ideas have emerged from in this short story collection.

Finally got my Doppelganger CD; my first purchase off play.com.

Bicycle needs fixing. Football tonight and the pedals are coming off!

Great shows by BBC recently; I really enjoyed Horizon’s How Violent Are You? with Michael Portillo’s take on violence residing in us all yesterday. Also have to mentioned; South Pacific, Coast and The Weather.

Driving up to Scotland Tuesday.

Been reading a lot of poetry on the train recently. I’ll leave you with one by Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-61) that describes the forlorn but valiant hope during the Great World War. I love “If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars”.

SAY not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal’d,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!

Looking forward to the 16 km in the Peaks tomorrow!!