the invisible hand

If no-one sees any artistry, how do you know it's there?

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pitfalls of the consumer society (#274)

Thinking oneself - one's problems, peccadilloes and perfections - unique, is the first step on the road to ordinariness.

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west london tales 10

On a good day it takes 15 minutes on the 18 bus from my nearest stop to Warren Street. The buses are regular and this day was no exception. However, at the Paddington Green police station stop, which is the junction with Edgware Road, the bus hit heavy traffic. The driver opened the doors early, to let people out. The rear door wouldn't shut. The bus sat in traffic for five minutes. I offered to go out and give the doors a push for him, but he said they had to shut on their own or not at all.

I got out, as there was another bus behind, but almost as soon as I did, the driver got the doors to work, and the same bus pulled up, and I got back on. I wasn't in a hurry, merely heading to Tottenham Court Road for what turned out to be a doomed mission to buy Christmas presents.

The bus filled up. Just past Marylebone, I heard a thud. I looked up. There was someone on the floor. She was writhing around, her head under the seat, her legs stretched out. A stocky man, who looked Turkish, with a short, neat ponytail, looked at me, and we both called an ambulance. He got through first. The woman was still writhing on the floor. Several people had gathered round her. Finally someone told the bus driver to stop, and he did so, at the Harley Street stop. 

No-one was quite sure what was going on with the woman. She had her clothes - primarily her hijab - bundled over her face. Someone tried to pull them back. They spent what felt like an age trying to get the black cloth away from her face. For a moment I wondered if there was actually a head there at all. Perhaps this was a symptom of a new horror, the headless fit. Finally the clothes came away. The woman was a young African woman, bundled up against the cold.

Most of the passengers stood around for a bit, looking at the spectacle, and then got off. The woman still lay on the floor. Suddenly she began to fit and then appeared to pass out. This was the only occasion I found myself able to do anything useful, as I reached to undo the buttons of her coat which were constrictively tight, the top button throttling her.  A European man appeared and pressed on her chest. Suddenly the woman sat up. 

Besides myself there was the Turkish looking man, the European, a white English woman who seemed to have some idea of what she was doing, a frenetic Italian woman and a smiley black man with two protruding front teeth. The man with the teeth spoke the woman's language, Somali. The woman was concerned about her hijab. The Italian tutted at her for being so silly, telling her that god wouldn't mind how she was dressed. We waited for the ambulance to come. The African man explained he'd been born in the UK, and his Somali was rusty, but she was thanking us. The ambulance still didn't come. The driver was full of calm and good sense. 

Nothing much happened for five or maybe ten minutes. There was no value in most of us being there. But the longer we all stayed the clearer it became that the value was just in the choosing to be there. To ensure that whatever could be done - those things that society can provide - would be. This woman wouldn't be left to fend for herself. She would be looked after. Even though, by now, she seemed to be alright again, the crisis passed, sitting up and wrapping her hijab around her. She'd only arrived recently, the man explained. He'd go with her to the hospital. The ambulance arrived, and I left. The man with the protruding teeth waved goodbye. 

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its easier to take an engine to pieces than it is to put it back together again!

Once you have negated someone, it's a tricky technical operation to un-negate them.

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west london tales 9

In the Bayswater Coffee Republic a business meeting is taking place. A group of five men sit around a table, all of them wearing suits. An older Asian man tells a younger Asian man that he has already asked him two questions, which have only helped him to ascertain that whereas he, the older man, has ten million pounds to invest, he cannot see anything that the younger men has to bring to the table. The older man talks at length about sugar cane and Malaysia. The younger man is trying to get the older man, who says he's from Pakistan, to invest in palm oil, in Ghana. He enumerates the advantages of palm oil as an investment. This is the kind of conversation which helps to explain why, unlike some, I find it hard to write in cafes.

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west london tales 8

The woman whose flat downstairs I sometimes flood is a Coptic Egyptian. She doesn't hold the flood against me, and we make small talk in the lift. Today I came back with vegetables from the market, and she said to me: 'The market is getting so expensive now'. She's right, it is. The price of vegetables has gone through the roof in the past few weeks, for all kinds of reasons. For a moment it seemed like we could indeed be living in a world where the ebbs and flows of fortune are revealed by the price of broccoli or spuds. A world we ususally associate with markets in distant countries; markets where shopping has a meaning which is both exactly the same and completely different to our own.

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on economics, love, war, etc

Crises are subject to the rules of drama, rather than the rules of logic.

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Which is another way of saying: Drama contains its own logic. Whose connection to the logic of physics or mathematics is tenuous, at best. And, in the world of humans, infinitely more powerful.

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stating the obvious

If you don't fight you're not a fighter.

+

If you don't write you're not a writer.

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destiny

The older you get the easier it becomes to believe in it.

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solitude

The degree to which we enjoying being on our own depends to an extent on the degree to which we have come to accept ourselves for who we think we are.

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say it ain't so

The average truth tells as many lies as the average lie.

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Dollar Thrifty

Every journey, as any student of narrative can vouchsafe, contains its own beginning, middle and end. However, within this straightforward structure, there exist sub-journeys, with their own beginnings, middles and ends. This is an account of the very first day of a road trip undertaken by Mr Collins and myself, through a venerable part of Russia, known as The Golden Ring, a trip which began and ended in Moscow. The trip lasted from Wednesday 13th August to Sunday 17th, but the events described below all took place on the first day.

+++

We awoke around 11am, hung over, after a night of beer, Ukrainian pancakes and honey vodka. Our first mission was to check out of Godzillas, our hostel, and get to the airport by 2pm to collect the hire car, with the subsequent task of driving East out of Moscow to the ancient Russian capital of Vladimir, where we had a hotel room booked for that evening.

Godzillas, like much of Russia, is in the process of being redeveloped. It appeared to be owned by a posh looking Englishman and run by a coterie of fierce, attractive Russian females. The one bathroom on our floor provided for 300 euro-travellers, and looked like something that had been recently shelled in South Ossetia. After waiting in line for 255 euro-travellers, we clambered through the rubble, had a shower, and dragged ourselves and our cases out into the searing heat.

There is a recently opened rail link to Sheremetyevo airport at Savelonsky, just two stops away on the tube. We plunged into middle-earth, where the Moscow tube is located, and arrived at the rail-link for midday. Only to be informed by a stroppy woman in the ticket office that the next train wasn’t until 2pm.

Undaunted, Mr Collins lead us back into the Stygian depths of the Metro. He’d taken the long way round to come and meet me off the plane the day before, and was sure we could get to the airport within two hours. After changing twice, travelling for forty minutes, we arrived at Planernaya, the end of the purple line. Outside, it looked, as Mr Collins observed, a bit like Cairo. There were no signs for the airport bus, but he knew what he was doing and after 15 minutes it arrived and we were on our way.

Moscow traffic is unfriendly at the best of times, but despite the stop-start progress, in part caused by having to briefly join the notorious MKAD, (the Moscow equivalent of the M25), it looked like we’d make it for 2pm. Mr Collins pointed out the 2nd World War Tank Trap memorial, and we stuttered past many a challenging housing development. Mr C observed that it might be the long way round, but the trip cost less than a pound, whereas a taxi ride to the airport could be as much as £40.

We got off the bus as 13.45. Mr Collins had hired the car via Easy Drive, whose supplier had the evocative Russian name of Dollar Thrifty. We went to find the Dollar Thrifty booth. Avis, Hertz, and all the other usual suspects had booths on the ground floor, but there was no sign of Dollar Thrifty. We went upstairs to departures, and there was still no sign of Dollar Thrifty. We came downstairs again and explored the furthest recesses of Sheremetyevo Terminal 2, but no matter how hard we searched, Dollar Thrifty remained elusive. Finally we went over to someone at Hertz, who told us that Dollar Thrifty used to have a presence at the airport, but not any more. Not for a month or so at least.

We sat down to weigh up the situation. Various taxi drivers approached us, hoping for a fare, asking where we were going. When we said Vladimir, they laughed, asking if we realised it was over 250 km away. To which Mr Collins replied that that was why we’d hired a car…

Finally, a woman at one of the other car hire booths studied our scrappy computer print-out. She decreed that Dollar Thrifty did, in fact, exist. Only its offices, as written in the small print, were not at the airport, but at 22 Leningrad Street, one of the main avenues headed back into Moscow.

It was now mid-afternoon. Detailed negotiations revealed that 22 Leningrad St was nowhere near any convenient metro. If we were to have any chance of getting to Vladimir that evening, we would have to get to our car by taxi. The woman at the car-hire booth called a taxi driver over. The man was happy to take us to our destination. At a cost of around £40.

+++

Moscow traffic is unfriendly at the best of times. Mr Collins and I sat in the back seat of the cab, as it inched its way along the six lane highway also known as Leningrad Street. The cab driver occasionally peered to his right to see if he could spot the number of the latest industrial estate, as we headed into town. The traffic slowed to a crawl. We passed 81 Leningrad Street. Then passed no more buildings for another fifteen minutes. The crawl, which I had speculated was down to weight of traffic, turned out to be caused by a Lada that had broken down in the middle lane. If you’re ever stuck in Moscow traffic, the chances are that somewhere up ahead, another decrepit Lada has bitten the dust. Once we got past this obstacle, the traffic loosened up. After nearly an hour, the cab driver turned off the six lane highway and came to a stop in front of 22 Leningradsky Prospekt.

The address was a Jeep showroom. It contained dozens of pristine Jeeps. But not a single hire car. And no-one who worked there had ever heard of Dollar Thrifty.

We handed over 2000 roubles to the driver, ready to concede defeat. There was no way we were going to get to Vladimir that evening. It seemed probable that Dollar Thrifty did not exist, and Mr Collins had lost a considerable amount of money hiring a car from a fictional company. Then the taxi driver had an idea. He consulted the computer print-out again. Scratched his head. And informed us that we could well be at the wrong 22 Leningrad Street.

It turns out that major roads leading out of Moscow are split into sections. The inner section is called the ‘Prospekt’, and the outer section is called the ‘Schosse’. The taxi driver had brought us to 22 Leningradsky Prospekt, when we needed to be at 22 Leningradsky Schosse. As it was on his way back to the airport, he said he’d take us there. We plunged back onto the maelstrom of the six lane super-highway, heading back in the direction we’d just come from.

It was at this point that Mr Collins realised there was a contact number for Dollar Thrifty, concealed in the small print. He called it and miraculously got through, explaining that we were running late, but were now on our way. There was only one problem. As far as he could make out, the man on the phone at Dollar Thrifty had no record of any booking in the name of Collins, and no available car. Mr Collins’ Russian is good, but conducting high level negotiations about his non-existence after four hours of seemingly pointless motion was a bit much. He handed the phone to the taxi driver, who was pleased to confirm the existence of Dollar Thrifty at 22 Leningradsky Prospekt. The cab driver handed the phone back to Mr Collins who was told he would be called back in 5 minutes regarding the possibility of hiring a car.

By now completely confused, we pulled over to the side of the highway, and waited. Traffic thundered past. Mr Collins and I began to take in the fact it was now getting on for 4pm and we were attempting to recover from our hangovers without the assistance of fluids or food. The phone didn’t ring. The traffic continued to thunder past. The day grew hotter.

Mr Collins called back. He was connected to someone who spoke English. The man who spoke English confirmed the non-existence of any booking in the name of Collins, but said he had a car available, at an additional cost of £60. For a while we vacillated, unsure what to do. Finally we decided to bite the bullet. We set off again, in pursuit of Dollar Thrifty.

+++

The taxi dropped us on the side of the road beside a small industrial estate containing a selection of car showrooms. The man on the other side of the phone had mentioned Audi. We dragged our cases into the estate, going past a Hyundai showroom, before turning a corner. The Leningradsky superhighway continued its thundering to our right. Once again there was no shortage of vehicles. Hyundais, Fords, Daewoos, and more, but not an Audi in sight. When we asked someone for the Audi showroom, they suggested we go to the reception desk in the Ford showroom.

Dwindling oil reserves do not appear to be of great concern to the newly affluent Russians. At half past four of a Wednesday afternoon, the Ford showroom was full of young couples gazing lovingly at sleek new models. Mr Collins went to the woman on reception. She had never heard of Dollar Thrifty. The car-hunters took no notice of the oddballs carting their luggage around with them. Mr C continued to enquire. Eventually a bespectacled young man who spoke English appeared and said he’d see what he could do, before disappearing, telling us to stay put.

Thrusting young car salesmen and women eyed us with curiosity. The helpful man showed no sign of coming back. Dollar Thrifty, Vladimir, even a bed for the night – all of these things seemed further away than ever. We contemplated changing tack and asking if we could take a Ford for a test drive, one way of getting a car, but the chances of the salespeople letting us get behind the wheel of one of their Fords did not seem high.

Suddenly the bespectacled man re-appeared, telling us to follow him to the lower level of the showroom. There, tucked away in an inauspicious corner, was a small, freestanding booth, the kind of thing which is set up at train stations to market credit cards. Behind the booth stood a young man in a white shirt, with a pony tail. Printed on the front of the booth, in bright green letters, were the English words: Dollar Thrifty.

The sense of exhilaration which engulfed Mr Collins and myself at the sight of these two words was only marginally punctured by the fact that the man with the pony tail had no idea who we were, and possessed neither any spare cars for hire, nor any knowledge of a reservation in the name of Collins. By now, obstacles like these seemed like nothing more than glitches, small Russian tests of our endurance. Sure enough, the man with the pony tail got on the phone to the head office of Dollar Thrifty, and spoke to the man who spoke English, discovering that there was a car for us, if we could only find our way to this other office.

The man with a pony tail put the phone down. He gathered up some papers and carefully placed them in a leather briefcase, which he zipped up. Then he lead the way out of the car showroom. He walked towards the six lane highway, across a muddied verge. We trailed behind him, dragging our bags behind us. The man with the pony tail stood by the side of the super-highway, and thrust out his thumb.

If the man with the ponytail had decided to hitchhike with us to the Siberian Dollar Thrifty offices, we would have accepted this as a necessary detour. In fact, he was hoping to flag down a taxi. The sun beat down. Lorries, buses, four by fours and Ladas streamed past. The man with the pony tail did not seem like a natural communicator. However, he had untapped reserves of patience, something we were coming to learn came in handy when dealing with Russian hire-car operations, and after a while a cab pulled over. The man with the pony-tail did a bit of negotiation, Mr Collins and I got in, and twenty-five minutes and £3 later, we arrived at the Audi showroom, beside which was located the promised land of the main Dollar Thrifty offices.

+++

Mr Dollar Thrifty turned out to be an avuncular, white-haired man, who spoke good English. He had been the one who Mr Collins had spoken to on the phone. He offered us fresh water and tea, and explained that although there was no reservation, there was a car, and he would be happy to redeem the internet voucher, which Mr Collins downloaded. After the best part of an hour of bureaucratic activity, our Mitsubishi Chevrolet was ready. It was now gone 6pm, with the Moscow rush hour in full swing. Mr Dollar Thrifty strongly advised against trying to get to Vladimir that evening, and recommended a hotel near to the motorway we’d have to take in the morning. He was even kind enough to print out a map, which he carefully marked, showing the hotel’s location.

Moscow traffic is, as is well known, unfriendly at the best of times. Rush hour is not the best of times. During rush hour, Moscow traffic verges on the psychopathic. We had to get to the MKAD, and drive about twenty miles round it in a clockwise direction. Russians have an engagingly anarchic approach to the art of driving. The MKAD is never less than ten lanes wide. There is, presumably, a theoretical speed limit, but in practise everyone just goes as fast as they can. Overtaking can take place on the outside, the inside, or, if you possess the technology, over the top. Lorries see it as their duty to pull out without warning, and indicators are for wimps. Ladas break down randomly, and every now and again, just to make it more fun, all lane markings are removed, encouraging a kind of free-jazz driving experience.

Mr Dollar Thrifty had explained procedure if we had an accident. He said that of course this was unlikely, but his eyes told a different story, implying it was just a question of time, and if we were lucky it wouldn’t be fatal, as though he’d already accepted the car was a write-off. Nevertheless, we somehow made if off the MKAD, and headed for the spot which he’d marked on his map. We arrived there sometime after seven. There was no sign of a hotel at the marked spot. A medium sized shopping centre, but not a hint of a hotel.

The last forty minutes of the first day of our road trip remains something of a blur. Mr Collins nobly leaped from the car at least a dozen times to ask directions, as Muscovites dispatched us from suburban back streets to super-highways; down dead ends, wrong turnings, black holes.

Finally the high rise towers of the Beta Gamma hotel loomed out of the dusk. The hotel is part of the largest hotel complex in Europe, which has been converted from the athletes village of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Its rooms are neat and serviceable, with a reassuringly dated feel. The beer we drank at one of the various hotel bars was vastly over-priced, but so hard-earned we couldn’t have cared less. When Wednesday 13th April finally came to a close, and I settled down to sleep in a room that might have once have been Thompson, Coe or Ovett’s, it felt as though I had acquired, over the course of that long day, an understanding of the satisfying sense of complete exhaustion which comes from securing a great victory against improbable odds.

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Travelling is a strange business. It’s easy to visit places, feel as though you have in some way got to know them, and yet come away with no idea what it’s like to live there. The curious events of that opening day of the road trip seemed, perhaps, to give more of an insight into Moscow, its chaotic scale and complexity, than I should ever have got if things had gone according to plan.

The following morning Mr Collins and I headed East on our voyage to the heart of old mother Russia (or at least one variation of it). Something we perhaps encountered in Suzdal’s marketplace, where we bought redcurrants and cucumbers from one of the little old ladies who lay out their wares on a cloth on the low market wall.

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Vladimir

Russia’s previous capital, the town’s three hours drive from Moscow,
Down a straight road which leads to Siberia, renamed ‘The Road of
Enthusiasm’ by the Soviets. It’s cathedral contains
The grave of Alexander Nevsky. At Lake Pepius he lead
The Russians to victory against the heavily armoured Teu-
Tonic Knights, who crashed through the ice. The cathedral’s being restored.
Yellow plastic sacks adorn golden chandeliers. Masons lay floors
Between baroque angels and frescoes so old they can barely whisper.

14.08.08






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Dawn over Suzdal

Clustered crows reel overhead, cawing for the night being lost
To day, when their dominion’s supplanted by god and man,
Those tolerated foes. One day they’ll attack, tearing the
Lead from brute spires which invaded the sky so long ago;
Pecking flesh like the bloodthirsty mosquitoes, (already
Taking breakfast). The sky inverts. Flamingo pinks pale to
Pallid blue. The streets of Suzdal are empty, its churches,
Monasteries and convents dedicate to the glory of
Christ. The stand-off between meadow, reed, flower and white-washed walls
As fierce, yet tranquil, as it has ever been, or shall be.

16.08.08

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In The Monastery (Suzdal)

The monastery is the size of a village. Its
Fortified walls enclose a hotchpotch of towers,
Churches and tourists. It hums with the sound of a
Thousand twangling instruments. The campanologist
Peeling his eleven o’clock solo, competes
With a team of rubber booted lawn strimmers, who
Compete with the drills of building workers, enjoined
In more restoration of the Russian soul. In
The monastery’s museum of decorative
Art, all notes are written in Cyrillic, far from
My comprehension. I stare in ignorance at
A thousand years worth of rings, pendants, winding sheets,
Bishop’s robes, goblets, crucifi, icons and the
Rest, fragments from another, parallel, culture.

16.08.08








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The End of The Road

We drove cross-country, North East from Suzdal,
Towards a pretty town whose name I can’t
Recall, crossing meadows saturated
In wildflower, dusted by morning rain.
Reaching a small town with seven exits,
We took one leading to a road marked
Brown, not yellow, on the map. A Russian
Driving ahead turned round. The brown road was
Indeed brown, a gloopy quagmire. After
A hundred squelchy yards we reversed,
Discretion being the better part of valour.
Returning to the seven tongued town we
Opted for a safer, yellow route. This
Too proved to be a blighted track, the top
Layer of tarmac a memory of
Long-spent tyres. But it took us in the right
Direction, leading to a hamlet six
Kilometres from our destination.
Before deteriorating. After
The rain, it was no more than a sequence
Of gravel lakes. We cajoled the unwilling
Hire car through the treacherous pits, inching
Forward, awaiting the rending of an
Axle or the demise of the suspension.
Finally, we reached a raised, concrete track,
Of sorts. The car bumbled through a
Terrifying landscape of reed and giant
Yellow weeds. Midges bombed the windscreen.
After a meagre kilometre the
Concrete came to a sudden stop. Ahead
Lay more gravel pits, muddied, rain-soaked,
Stretching into the visible distance.
A four by four or a dirt bike might have
Done the job. But in a tin-can hire-car
In the fly-blown heart of Russia, we had
Reached our point of no return. Like so
Many other invaders before us, we
Conceded defeat, turned on our tails, and fled.

16.08.08





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Notes on the Ceremony

In one of several cathedrals contained within
The Kremlin of Segiev Posad, one of various
Never-ending services is taking place. The
Cathedral is a baroque, high-ceilinged hall,
Brightly frescoed, with hundreds of people
Gathered, negotiating their personal
Prayer space. The choir sings a constant refrain.
Light gate-crashes the prayers’ line of sight.
Head-scarved women cross themselves as they
Enter, and when the service dictates. Some
Have brought foot-stools for later in the day,
Others bag the benches on the sides, the
Only seating space. Devotees kiss relics.
A mobile phone goes off and is absorbed by
The energy of worship. I think of church
Services I attended as a child, dull in
Comparison to this palpable passion,
Bottled up for seventy years by the

Communists. Awaiting its release,
In spite of Soviet attempts to refract
It unto the fading glory of their cause.

17.08.08

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The Mayakovsky Museum, Moscow

A deconstructed shell of a building
Ripped to pieces and re-assembled
With all the clutter of his life and
Myth scattered like grapeshot, at the heart
Of which lies a small, untouched study,
Containing a desk, a divan, a
Fireplace and a picture of Lenin.
With a blunt gesture, the guide explains this
Is where the poet shot himself in the head.

18.08.08

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The All Russia Exhibition, Moscow

Set in a large park, the exhibition was created by
Stalin and called, initially, The Exhibition of
Economic Achievements. It features extravagant
Pavilions dedicated to every corner of the USSR:
The Georgia Pavilion, the Karelian, and so on.
At the centre, in front of a vast Lenin statue, is
The House of the Peoples of Russia, behind which
Is The Fountain of the Friendship of Peoples.
The site is capped by two Aeroflot jets and a
Duplicate of the rocket that took Gagarin into space.
(Disconcertingly cramped, man in space in a
Baked bean can.) Where once denizens of the
Soviet Republic marvelled at its glories, now the
Site is overrun by teenagers on roller blades;
Pumping Eurotrash which booms from strategic
Speakers; fast food joints; whilst the pavilions
Are devoted to tacky trade fairs selling computer
Parts or furry toys. Lenin looks on as a bright blue
Tellytubby prances below.

It’s as if the place
Has been remodelled to mock the regime which
Aimed so high only to fall so low. But this notion of
Design is misleading. All that’s happened is the old
Has been displaced by the new. The old may frown
At the brashness of its successor, but its forefathers
Felt the same way. No doubt the sparrows look at
Each stage of human development in bafflement,
Remembering the glory of a world before creatures
Walked on two legs and began chirruping
Their incessant, meaningless twitter.

19.08.08

+++

Kasimir: What Happened?

The New Tretyakov gallery, near Gorky Park
Shows 20th Century Russian art. At the turn
Of the last century, Cezanne’s influence is
Evident. Later, The Jack of Diamonds movement,
Founded in Moscow, emerges, blessed with its
Vivid, rough-hewn brushwork and a Fauvist palette.
Malevich belonged to it, but only briefly.
By 1915 he’d created his Black Square,
Which does exactly what it says on the tin: a
Work of savage purity which blew up art and
Made it start again. Two years later politics
Caught up. The ambition of Constructivism
Dovetailed with the ambition of Revolution.
For five years, Malevich, Tatlin and co explored
The edges of form, pushing it past inconceived
Boundaries. Then, the energy waned. Russian art
Began the long drift towards Social Realism.
Malevich’s work ceases to feature. Save for one
Piece from around 1930, called Sisters. A
Figurative picture showing two sisters, daubed in
Dull pastels . The avatar of modernity
Turned into a chocolate box craftsman. At which point
The Revolution could be called that no more.
Kasimir Malevich died in nineteen thirty
Five. He was accorded a state funeral and
Revered as a hero of the USSR.

19.08.08

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2 barcelona poems

3 People I Have Spoken to in Barcelona

The first evening, I spoke to the un-
Speakably beautiful waitress, just
Briefly, because she was too beautiful
And I didn’t want it to seem like I
Was chatting her up, even though she smiled
At me and spoke English better than
Spanish, a result, perhaps, of her
Being Polish. She said she was coming
To London soon and I wanted to say,
Well if you come you should look me up,
But I didn’t, because she was un-
Speakably beautiful, and I am
Human and then I would have been
Chatting her up. On the second day
I spoke to the cleaner of the flat
I’m staying in. I couldn’t place her
Accent and asked where she was from and
She told me Paysandu, in Uruguay,
Where once we drove across the border
So slowly it seemed we’d never get there.
(Or was that Salto?) The woman said
She had no desire to go back. She’s
Lived here with her eighteen year old son
And sister since splitting up with her dull
Machista husband eight years ago.
Since coming to Europe she’s learnt,
She said, that you have to enjoy life.
She gave me a cigarette and we
Sat and smoked and drank water out of
Wine glasses, muy fino, she joked. Although
She said she didn’t miss Uruguay, the
More she talked the more she softened in her
Attitude towards the mother country,
And by the time our cigarettes were
Smoked and the water drunk I felt as though
We’d known each other half our adult lives.
Though we hadn’t. We’d only just met. The
Third person I spoke to was a doorman
At a bar called Marmelada, who came
From Brasilia where I’ve never been and
I can’t remember much about that
Conversation, though I remember
Enjoying it, despite being,
At the time, extremely drunk.

27.07.08

+++


In Club Divine

The thing that was scary about
The transvestite diva was not
The powder blue outfit or the
Hyper-tensile hair. It was not the
Way she lurked in the corridor
Outside the loos whilst preparing
To perform her next number. It
Wasn’t the way she tried to tweak
My nipple as I walked past, and
Then, seeing I was unfazed, clapped
Her hands, violently, an inch
From my nose. The thing that was scary
About the Catalan transvestite
Diva was the fact that, beneath the
Powder blue outfit, beneath the nail
Varnish and the eyeliner, she remained
Irretrievably, resolutely and
Forever, masculine to the bone.


28.07.08


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barcelona pensamiento 2

Two years is long time but three years is longer.

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The first year you're still grappling with the consequences of what happened/ has happened/ is happening. The past and the present and the future seem inseperable.

+++

The second you're quantifying, making space, organising a perspective.

+++

It's not until the third that you can truly begin to believe it was, or is, now, in the past.

+++

Praca de Santa Marta, following a converstation with Mr Blue.

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barcelona pensamiento 1

The state of poeticism, (so to speak), is a state determined by the expectation of death, which is also to say, a heightened awareness of the transitory nature of life. There are many different ways of allowing this state to influence behaviour, all of them poetic, (so to speak), and none of them particularly useful in the business of perpetrating the human race, or business, or plain day-to-day living (something conditioned by the ability to wipe this state from the daily slate). However, poeticism, like death, is unavoidable: we all have a poet within us; our consequent choice is how much attention we choose to pay her, or him.

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sartre's waiter (variation)

Some people are so in love with the concept of what they are trying to achieve that they forget what it is they are actually trying to achieve.

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dealing with the inevitable

If you try too hard to achieve something, you are liable to fail at it.

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(And success is nothing more than another trick of the mind.)

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cautionary notice

Sentences, phrases and words: all of these things combine to over-simplify the world.

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Behind every sentence lurks a galaxy of meaning which can only be revealed through the use of further sentences.

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Never believe a word anyone says. Not because they lie, but because the truth is unspeakable.

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hemingway

If you've lived life to the full, the older you get the harder it becomes to find reasons to keep going.

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south west london tales 2

It's gone midnight and we're sitting outside the theatre in the car park after the last show drinking rum and beer. The pretty girl who I've barely spoken to in three months is sitting next to me. She apologises for not really being present during the run. She says it's because her personal life has been getting in the way. She can't help it. It's in her blood. I ask about her parents. She tells me her mother lives in Eritrea and her father's in Paris. He's an actor and a writer and a spoilt child who stamps his feet down the phone. The mother works for the Red Cross. She's a different kettle of fish, but she's in Eritrea. I ask her how old they are. Just making conversation. She doesn't know. She thinks about it. She says her father was born in. She thinks about it. The same year as her mother. Sixty six. On the bus home this information will sink in as some kind of a crossroads, an unforseen detour into the desert just off Marble Arch.

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west london tales 7

It's half past two in the morning. I'm walking across the iron bridge to the Harrow Road. I'm drunk. Someone's walking behind me. There are people on the streets. Then the someone is walking beside me. I'm listening to music. The someone crosses my path under the flyover. I try to move away from her, increasing my speed. I look round. She's still there. She's talking to me. I take one headphone out. She asks me if she can come and stay at my place. I'm befuddled and bemused. I keep walking. She sticks to me. I tell her I have a wife and three children. She doesn't budge. We've reached the library and she's still there. She says she knows she can't stay at mine because of my wife but she still wants to stay at mine. I ask her where she's from. She says she's from Birmingham. She says they sent her away. I take her to the hostel. Ring the buzzer and a man lets us in. He comes down the stairwell. He says there aren't any beds. He says she should go to the police station. We have to leave. I give the woman the money left in my pocket and tell her to go to Euston. It's just down the road. Wait and get on a train to Birmingham. She says she doesn't have enough money for the train. She says she's going to go back into town. See what's happening there. She says goodbye and walks away.

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self consciousness

The most interesting aspect of an Achilles heel is not that it exists and that it has the capability to bring its owner down.

It is that the owner of the Achilles heel is unaware of its existence, and its ability to bring him or her down.

The Achilles redemption lies in our capacity to discover our unavoidable flaw, and prepare for the day when an unleashed arrow will strike.

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dos anos

No son tanto,
Pero son bastante.

(Assuming my understanding of the last word is better than the italian director who irked his Uruguayan actors according to la Panella)

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near-identical formulas

Time recedes in volume with age.

or

Time's volume recedes with age.

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still

I wake up early, Saturday, peaceful in the absence of scaffolders. In a dream you visited, treating me with your now habitual brand of self-centred disinterest. Which nevertheless I welcomed; for it had been good to see you; after so long. By day I walked the canal, reflecting, in dirty water, that my real mistake was not the one you would like me to think it should be.

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the foundations of shifting sands

Unless one is secure in one's own attractiveness, whatsoever that might be based on, it becomes hard to accept the attractiveness of your partner; preferable to see them as loveable but resistable to the opposite sex.

At which point the other is liable to assume the role delegated to them, in order to play the part the partner desires, in order to please them.

They might play that part so well they come to forget what anyone ever saw in them, (including their partner).

Until someone else comes along and reminds them.

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nature, nurture, and chinese meat-eating habits

A localised sense of decline can affect every corner of it's people's psyche. Likewise a sense of optimism.

This has been one of the reasons the USA has been, and has been seen to be, so successful in my lifetime. And might turn out to be the most significant ramification of the events of September 2001.

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around the city's edges

Relationships demarcate a hinterland of our psyches, souls, or sensibilities that we forget exists when we are not in them.

Those long conversations about marginalia that don’t need to occur for any other reason than they help us to understand who we might be; have been; or might become.

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blurred vision

Last night I got home after two glasses of wine, one game of football, one late-night trip to Euston station, a shakespeare workshop and about twelve thousand scripts, and switched on the laptop.

Everything was fuzzy. The words has furry edges. My head spun trying to read them.

I tried to find a way to correct the problem. I turned the computer on and off. I searched the control panel for screen adjusters. I searched the yellow pages. I thought of which friends I could call for advice after midnight. I gave up. I went to bed.

In the morning I woke and read a script and contemplated the calamity of the fuzzy screen.

I switched the machine on.

Its world was no longer fuzzy.

But then again, neither was my brain.

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montevideo notes 1 - ciudad pequeña

The smaller the city the greater the possibility of co-incidence.

Montevideo may not be the smallest of cities, but it’s small enough. Ana’s neighbour, on the landing across the way from her flat, is a man called Leo Masliah. A couple of years ago, in London, John Rattagan put on a playful CD of his favourite Uruguayan musician. Whose name was Leo Masliah. From behind whose front door I occasionally now hear a piano playing, and who hurries past me on the stairs.

The part of the city I’m staying in is not somewhere I used to know all that well. It’s a street called Jackson, on the edge of Pocitos, the barrio where Helena lived. Her first home was in Luis Franzini, where I spent a year sending hundreds of blue aerogrammes. That’s a fifteen minute walk away, and I inadvertently ended up there on my first morning, whilst looking for the feria at Villa Biaritz. (I bought a Uruguayan hat.) Her parents then moved to Cardona, (next to the Jewish school where I will later go to give a class on The Boat People), about twenty minutes away. That’s where I used to stay when I visited. Now I’m informed they’ve moved again, and are nearby. It was only last night, when Anibal pointed out their house, that I realised how near. They’re two blocks up from here, on the same street, a minute’s walk away. I recognised their cars and now the street is rendered by this co-incidence into a different street altogether.

Today I called my friend Jorge and he asked me where I’m staying. It turns out that he’s working on the same street. About a minute and a half away.

Living in London, reading books from another time or place, you feel as though more than one co-incidence in a day or a text is excessive. When the truth is that in most places, people are haunted by the insistence of co-incidence. Our big-city lives are the exception, not the rule.

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montevideo notes 2 - the bookseller

Jorge’s friend, W, returned from living in Europe around the time I first lived here, 15 years ago. I met him a couple of times, but never really got to know him. W opened a bookshop on Tristan Narvaja. It’s a rambling kind of place, but has survived for over a decade, so is presumably successful enough. Uruguayans love books. This morning I visited the local market, dozens of which are peppered around the city on a daily basis. Beyond the fruit and veg stalls, people laid out odds and sods for sale on blankets on the street. About half of these contained second hand books of one form or another.

Jorge told me that lately, things haven’t been going well for W. He’s a cocaine addict, perhaps a crack addict as well, and he’s got AIDS. He’s in constant need of petty cash to finance his habits and he’s losing contact with many of his friends.

I expressed surprise that the bookshop has survived in spite of all this. Jorge pointed out that if W sold the enterprise, as he could, he’d get an influx of cash, but thereafter he’d be left with no ongoing means of support. He then described the remarkable ecology of the bookshop, explaining its ongoing solvency.

The bookshop has two employees. In theory they work for W, but in practice they make the bookshop work for all three. The two employees run the place. They keep the accounts, do all the ordering, sell books, keep the place clean. Everything. W appears on the shop floor now and again, mostly just to get in the way. His primary connection with the place is the small living it affords him to sustain his habit. However, it is never enough, and when in need of urgent intoxication, and short on cash, W will think nothing of taking from the till. It is, after all, ‘his’ money. Fortunately the two employees have learnt over the time how to manage W’s stealing from himself. Every night they remove most of the cash from the till, but leave just enough for W to be able to afford a small purchase. Jorge believes that this has saved W. It has allowed him to maintain his habit, but in moderation. More spare cash would lead to a greater intake of drugs, which would kill him, sooner rather than later. As it is he never feels entirely deprived, but is never in a position to partake in excess. The ecology has saved him, and it also keeps the business running, ensuring the employees continue to have jobs which they obviously enjoy.

Nevertheless, there are some times when W isn’t satisfied with what’s been left in the till. For some reason or another he decides that on this occasion he has to have more – cash and drugs. When this happens, there’s a solution to hand. The bookseller steals his own books. He takes them to a neighbouring bookseller and sells them on at a reduced rate, second-hand.

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montevideo notes 3 - foreigners

Montevideo isn’t on the way to anywhere. To get here you have to make a detour from Buenos Aires or Punta or Southern Brazil. The financial incentive to get here is minimal. And few would come here out of ambition. Anyone who did would soon enough realise that, no matter how cultured the society, it seems destined to always remain a backwater, a footnote in the works of Borges, Pauls or Cortazar.

As a result of this the foreigners who end up here tend to be a strange bunch. When I lived here I knew a couple of people in the language year of their university courses, a Norwegian whose Uruguayan wife was in Norway, a British school contingent who inhabited an affluent, xenophobic ghetto, some US evangelists and a pair of English roses who’d come to the city to create horse sculptures out of bamboo.

The other night Anibal invited me for supper. The other guest was Marcelo, who Anibal said was a Uruguayan who’d lived in New York but turned out to be a New Yorker who’d somehow found himself in Montevideo, via Miami. His mother owns a house some way out of the centre. He lives there alone, practising his martial arts. He’s enrolled in Montevideo university, studying philosophy, the ancient greeks being his sphere of specialisation. The conversation flitted from Plato to Derrida to the inhumane conditions under which students study at the university, four hour sessions in high ceilinged rooms lit by distant florescent tubing.

Marcelo doesn’t appear to have any profound reason to be here. Despite that, and the fact that he claims not to like the place or the people and their conservative ways, he’s stayed here three years already. Every Thursday he goes to tango classes, because it’s the best way, he claims, to get to know people. His ex-girlfriend, a Uruguayan, told him that should they ever have a child together, she would permit Marcelo to live next door. He is cultured, intelligent, touched by a hint of sadness and the sense of being lost within a world which promised something it stubbornly refuses to deliver. He also drinks copiously, socialises as much as possible, and knows when the very last buses run to Carrasco. He clearly loves the climate, the food, and the vida.

With all his contradictions, Marcelo struck me as, in many ways, a quintessential Montevidean.

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montevideo notes 4 - day trip

A relatively recent development in Montevideo is the regular arrival of cruise ships. (To my mind any development since I lived here will always I suspect seem recent.) They dock in the port in the morning and thousands of moneyed tourists stream out, flooding the Ciudad Vieja, before returning to the ship in the afternoon and heading on to their next port of call.

Not so long ago an English friend of Jorge told him that an American friend was going to be arriving on one of these ships, and asked him if he’d mind showing the tourist and his partner around for the day. Jorge, who lives in Ciudad Vieja, said he’d be happy to.

The two tourists caught a cab the short distance to Jorge’s flat in Bartolome Mitre. The friend’s partner turned out to be male, which delighted Jorge. He showed the Americans around the old town. Passing through Plaza Matriz, Jorge pointed out the cathedral, noting that it had little architectural interest, but the Americans expressed a desire to look in anyway. On their way out, Jorge noticed one of the men crossing himself, and asked if he was Catholic, which the man said he was. From Plaza Matriz they ambled down to Mercado del Puerto, Jorge taking great pleasure in pointing out phallic symbols concealed within the cityscape. At the Mercado the three did what any self respecting non vegetarian does, and consumed considerable quantities of red meat. Jorge learnt that the two men came from Wisconsin and Seattle respectively. They exchanged stories of how they came out to their families, and by all accounts everyone was having a suitably high spirited time of it.

After they meal they continued to wander. Only now did Jorge begin to observe that, in spite of all the common ground, there was a great deal that neither man had talked about. Such as what jobs they did, how they sustained their relationship in spite of the distance, even how they actually met.

With the afternoon getting on, Jorge suggested the three get in a cab and go for a drive along the Rambla, as far as Punta Gorda and back. This is the best way to get a handle on the city as it stretches away from the old town, up the coast, rolling around the vast lip of the River Plate. Jorge continued to act as guide, but the reluctance of the Americans to open up began to seem strange, even rude.

On the return journey back to the port, Jorge finally decided he had to ask. Montevideo cabs are a tight squeeze, and from his description the two men were muscular. Jorge was crunched in between them. Summoning up courage he turned to the older of the two Americans, his friend’s friend, and said, in his most impeccably polite Anglo Saxon English : ‘So, if you don’t mind me asking – what is it that you actually do?’

The man sighed and looked away, out over the perhaps sparkling River Plate, named for a promise of silver, and replied: ‘I’m a priest.’ Jorge let this sink in. The man didn’t offer anymore information. Seeing it was all he was going to get, Jorge turned to the younger man, and asked: ‘And you?’ The second man half-smiled, like a kid, then he followed suit, looking out of the window. He said, without looking at Jorge: ‘I’m a priest too’.

A few minutes later, the three men were at the port. Jorge bid them adieu and the two priests re-embarked on their covert cruise ship voyage. A couple of weeks later Jorge received a card from the older of the two priests, thanking him for his hospitality during their brief stay in Montevideo.

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montevideo notes 5 - state within a state

In 1997 Anibal took Helena and I to the piece of land he owns at Caracol, which is just across the lagoon from José Ignacio. On our way we took a short detour, into a pine forest by a lake. Driving off the main road onto a sandy track, Anibal’s white Volkswagen got bogged down. The more the engine revved and the wheel span, the more intractable it became. We ended up camping in a clearing, even though we were no more than a few kilometres from Caracol. We got there the next morning after some locals lent us some planks which gave the car sufficient traction to escape.

On this trip, I returned to Caracol for the first time in eleven years. The last time there was just a plot of land. We found a space in between the trees to pitch tents, and attempted not to walk into the fearsome cacti after dark. Both Anibal and Helena were bitten by horseflies, which lay their eggs under human skin. Weeks later tiny beasts were still emerging. Now, much of the land is cleared. Anibal has built a skeleton house with a beautiful thatched roof and a chimney. Running water is on its way, as well as poles for electricity. The house is still some way from completion – Anibal pitched camp inside it, I slept on the concrete floor – but nevertheless the transformation is remarkable.

However, this is nothing compared to the development of the land on the other side of the lagoon. Not so long ago, José Ignacio was still a fishing village. Now it’s a chic resort. It’s where Martin Amis lived during his Uruguayan sojourn. The road from the lagoon to José Ignacio is no more than a few miles, fronting the ocean. In the decade since I was last there, palatial houses have sprung up across the road from the beach, each on their own generously sized plot of land. These houses are, without exception, built with inordinate good taste. Most seem to owe a debt to Frank Lloyd Wright, with their flat roofs, organic, asymmetric design, and use of (presumably) local stone. They are light, spacious and attractive.

After José Ignacio the highway leads to Punta Del Este. For several decades Punta has enjoyed a reputation as the most sophisticated resort in Latin America. It was a rich person’s playpen as long ago as 1961, when Ernesto Guevara addressed a meeting of regional leaders at a summit there. Wealthy Argentines, Brazilians and North Americans have built vast houses here. It’s a far cry from the development in Spain or Mexico. Only on the periphery of the city do the tower blocks start to spring up, but even these holiday apartments are well designed, without a hint of the tackiness of European hotspots.

The scale of the building and the development over the last decade, in spite of the economic crisis which heralded a new century, is surprising. However, even more remarkable is the fact that, on this beautiful stretch of the Atlantic in the third world, we didn’t pass a single house which looked affordable to anyone who wasn’t at least a dollar millionaire. The transformation of the small villages on the road into Punta reflected this prosperity. Rather than almacens and fly ridden boliches, they contained sushi bars and designer furniture stores.

What has been created around Punta and Jose Ignacio is, in effect, a country within a country. A state with little financial or cultural connection to the capital, even though it’s barely a hundred miles up the coast. This state feels like an aesthetically cultivated paradise, inhabited by a class of people who have nothing in common with the vast majority of Latin Americans.

As we drove back, Anibal pointed out the area we had camped in ten years ago when the car got bogged down. Back then it had been pine forest with a few shacks where some locals lived. Now the land has been cleared. It’s occupied by half a dozen vast houses, their glass frontages flooded with coastal light; their outdoor wooden decking adorned with pot plants and barbeques. The pine trees have vanished, annexed by the state within a state.

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montevideo notes 6 - departure

Sometimes when I visit Montevideo, the last few days before departure are obscured by an almost pestilential sadness. The disease corners me as I shuffle through sun-dappled streets in a daze.

This sadness is, of course, a testament to the happiness my time here, always too brief, bestows on me. I could be Adam pacing his garden just before the helicopters arrive and the evacuation takes place.

Having said which, I realise that Montevideo is no paradise. The harshness of life is more evident here than it is back in London. Last night I took a walk by the riverside at sunset. In a nook between Playa Ramirez and Pocitos I came across a small beach, scattered with a litter of weather-worn concrete blocks. Two white waders plucked at the water’s edge. Deciding to explore I took a couple of steps across a piece of concrete and then stopped, and immediately turned back. A dead dog, small, brown, it’s spine curved round on itself, teeth grinning, stomach bloated, lay foetal in amongst the rubble, abandoned.

My Montevideo could never be a paradise. Rather, it belongs to a parallel universe, evolving alongside my own. In this universe I rediscover the unpredictable, the beautiful and the tragic. When I arrive here it is with the elation of a homecoming. When the final days of my trip are upon me, the reality of reality, the separation of reality, hits; everything begins to seize up, a mechanism grinding to a slow, barely noticeable halt.

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The fact that my marriage to Helena is now over heightens these feelings. This is the first time I have been back since. Our marriage was the product of a delirious year, working and playing here. I discovered her city; she rediscovered it through my eyes, as well as opening her eyes to the possibility of escape from its confines. (For in this regard a city is like family as opposed to friends: the latter you chose yourself, the former chosen for you.)

We never lived here again. Never put the delirium of that year to the test of something more measured, along the lines of the lives ordinary Montevideans live. All of that living, the prosaic, was done within the jurisdiction of London, my antithesis to Montevideo, a place of work and stress and deberes.

In my fortnight here now, with my former in-laws up the road, the pale ghost of my marriage and its abrupt conclusion has haunted me. Any reader worth their salt might conclude that the love I feel for the city has a connection with the love I felt for Helena; just as the love she felt for the idea of escaping the city had a connection with the love she once felt for me. When our marriage ended, I often felt I would never return here, that this city would also be lost to me.

As one day, indeed, it might be. (As I write Ana interrupts to say that the theatre she had in mind for the play next year now seems to be booked for the time we wanted, throwing everything up in the air again.)

However, a marriage has nothing to do with place or time - the things which alter in the course of a marriage’s natural lifespan. It has to do with how the two people themselves connect, above and beyond circumstances, crises, failures, changes. Whether those two people still retain any kind of imperative to continue in the face of alteration.

We, evidently, did not. It’s only upon returning to Montevideo, after the event, that it’s possible to see how little our respective cities had to do with anything. Montevideo and London, it transpires, have as much significance as a favourite flavour of ice-cream.

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montevideo notes 7 - light

Almost every evening this week I’ve walked down the road to Playa Ramirez to take in the sunset.

At this time of year the sun disappears somewhere over the Cerro, sliding out of the sky over the sea before hibernating under the continental lip. The beauty of a setting sun is a ubiquitous, democratic pleasure, so to eulogise the near phosphorent armageddon that occurs on a regular basis on Playa Ramirez is perhaps unnecessary.

However, the one thing I have observed and savoured anew on this trip has been the nature of the late evening light that arrives with the departing sun.

This light has a textural quality, a density. Aquatic and enveloping, it cocoons the passenger. It possesses similar qualities to a warm bath, or a soft hand stroking skin. The light’s shades heighten and obscure the city’s colours, but above and beyond its visible traits, it acts in the role of shadower or guide, holding the citizens’ hands as they venture into a new night, a darkness containing the eternal uncertainty of what the dawn might bring.

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montevideo notes 8 - history

The dictatorship did not end in Uruguay until 1985. The first time I came here, less than a decade later, there was still a discernible reluctance to talk about it. At the time I was giving Shakespeare workshops. I remember, working through one of the history plays, making a crude but feasible comparison between the reign of one of the kings and the dictatorship. No one took me up on it, no one seemed to keen to seek out comparisons.

Why should they? The older people in my class had lived through years of grim repression, and no matter how keen I was, there was no way that a curious young foreigner could really appreciate what it had meant to them. When I asked Jorge, my flatmate, landlord and friend, he just answered that it had been a ‘terrible, terrible’ time. It was still so recent that most, it seemed to me, were still going through the act of forgetting, something they needed to do before they could begin a process of remembering, and evaluation.

Fifteen years later the situation has changed. Several of the dictatorship’s architects are in prison. A spate of films dealing with the dictatorship is appearing, one of which Matar A Todos, I saw at the weekend. The fear – that they will return – as articulated to me on a few occasions in 1994, has gone. The election of 2004, which saw the socialist coalition elected to power without the drastic consequences that many on both the right and left had anticipated, has helped to establish a more relaxed, contemplative attitude towards the recent past.

Last night I asked Ana, who lived through the latter stages of the dictatorship as a student, about her experiences. She had two stories to tell me.

The first concerned an experience which happened when she was about seventeen, at drama school. She told me how the group she hung out with became accustomed to classmates being absent from one day to the next, either in hiding or under arrest. She talked about how they tried to live as normal a life as possible, remembering one time someone who had just been abused in police cells came out dancing with them, his legs so swollen that all he could do was sit in a corner and get as drunk as possible.

Ana decided she wanted to become more involved. A friend of hers set up a meeting with a radical in an obscure barrio. She arrived at the bar and the man she met there looked so like her friend that she realised straight away they had to be brothers, though this was never mentioned. The man was jumpy and watchful. They talked in vague terms about what she could do. At the end of the meeting he paid for the beer, saying she owed him the next one. She didn’t see the man for several years. The next time they met was on the day the dictatorship ended, as people celebrated in the streets. She ran into him amidst the flags and festivities and he remembered her instantly, telling her she still owed him a beer.

A year or two later, Ana was living in Ciudad Vieja with Horacio, a theatre director, radio host and activist. She became involved with a small group which met once a week in another, distant barrio, an hour’s bus ride from the city centre. Upon arrival at the house where they met they had to check a tree to see whether there was a piece of paper attached. If it was there, it meant they were safe to go in; if it wasn’t they knew they should head back immediately. Once inside they spent all night creating leaflets, going out to paint slogans on walls, drinking mate and discussing politics.

One day she got a message from one of the group, simply saying that the ‘upstairs neighbour’ had been arrested. This seemed like catastrophic news. The whole group might have been given away, and they were all in jeopardy. Ana and her fellow activist decided they had to go to the house where they met and see if they could destroy the evidence. She packed a bag, fearing she’d have to go into hiding or else be arrested, then went to find Horacio and told him the bad news, leaving him without knowing when they would see one another again.

The piece of paper was not attached to the tree when she and her fellow activist arrived at the house. They waited outside, anxiously. When it seemed clear that there was no sign of activity inside, they decided to enter anyway, and set about destroying leaflets and papers that had been stored there. All of a sudden someone walked in. They froze.

It was the upstairs neighbour. Who was not under arrest. Who furthermore was furious when he saw that Ana and her companion had destroyed so much hard work. The upstairs neighbour, who was a part of their group, insisted that the police hadn’t been anywhere near. Amidst all the confusion, Ana realised that she needed to go and tell Horacio she was alright. She took the bus back into town and found him at the theatre. They hid away in a corner as she explained everything was fine, both weeping with relief.

Ana later learnt that her fellow activist had got it all wrong. The upstairs neighbour who’d been arrested existed, but was a completely different upstairs neighbour to the one who lived in the house they used. The words ‘vecino de arriba’ had entered his brain and he’d leapt to the worst possible conclusion. When she finally got back to the home she shared with Horacio, she discovered that he’d stuck up stickers leading from the front door to the bedroom of their tiny apartment. The stickers all had one word written on them, a word which doesn’t really need translation: BOBA!

Ana’s political activism continued through the early years of democracy. She had allegiances with the Communists, without ever feeling as though she belonged to their cause – it was more a case of siding with the opposition. (An example of how the Communist ‘threat’ came to be exaggerated in the cold war.) Nowadays she says she’s less ‘militista’. The blacks and whites of the old days have gone, to be replaced by the more confused shades of democracy; and now the socialists are finally in office, it’s they who are contending with the complexities and disappointments of power.

Nevertheless, the difference between Ana’s political engagement in her lifetime and that of almost anyone I know from a similar generation in the UK is evident. For Ana, and everyone who lived through that time, politics was something real, its implications tangible. To take a political standpoint was non-negotiable, even if that standpoint manifested itself as a refusal to get involved. The shadow of the struggle she lived through, despite its lengthening, is still there, shaping her attitude towards the society she inhabits in a way that our political convictions barely seem to.

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montevideo notes 9 - education

Everyone I know is Montevideo is involved in teaching, in one way or another. In part this reflects the fact that most of my closest friends speak English, and if your English is good you can either make or supplement your living by teaching it. However, it also reflects another aspect of Uruguayan culture, which is a near pathological appetite for studying.

This studying never seems to stop. It is driven by the conviction that in order to improve one’s chances of success in a world where the gradations between rich and poor are extreme, the acquisition knowledge (of something, anything) is the most valuable tool available.

There is a downside to this attitude. It doesn’t lend itself to a particularly entrepreneurial culture. Being a student is a status of reduced responsibility: a process of preparation rather than action. I had an long discussion with Fernando, one of the actors in my play, about the seductiveness of thinking of oneself as an eternal student, when he talked about how much he still felt he had to learn.

However, Fernando’s story is instructive. He was raised in Libertad, a two-horse kind of town with a high street, a town square and little more. His parents run the oldest store in town, Los Buenos Amigos, and for a while he followed in the family footsteps, running his own shop, as do his brothers. Meanwhile, he participated in the local drama society, which has been running in Libertad for over thirty years. When I asked him what kind of thing they did, he said a bit of everything. This year the group, of which he is no longer a part, is working their way through the cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays.

One day, Fernando decided he’d had enough of Libertad. He shut up his shop for good and left for Montevideo. He enrolled in a drama school there. Now he earns at least part of his living from acting. In his eyes, the desire to progress as an actor is ineluctably connected to a desire to train, and to learn.

Besides her acting and working on the radio, Ana also teaches literature in high school. I asked her about her 5th form syllabus, which is she preparing now. Over the course of a year she will give classes based around five key texts. Apart from reading and working on the texts themselves, they will also explore the historical context within which the texts were formed. The five texts she’s doing this year are – a Greek tragedy, looking at the origins of theatre in the process; the Bible; The Divine Comedy; Don Quixote; and a Shakespeare. In the course of the year Ana will cover everything from the Romance of the Rose to Marlowe to the Popol Vuh, the Mayan bible. Next year, they move onto the moderns.

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mortgaged to the hilt

You can work for years to pay a debt you´re not even aware of. It´s only when the debt is paid you realise what´s been happening. Then you stand back and discover how much you once owed.

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permutations

Some people spend so much of their time trying to please other people they forget to please themselves.

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Some people spend so much of their time trying to be other people they forget to be themselves.

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Some people spend so much of their time trying to please other people they forget to be themselves.

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Some people spend so much of their time trying to be someone else they forget who they are.

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drunken jotting

My foolishness is a part of me I would never repudiate.

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It makes me human.

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betrayal

Betrayal is both an absolute and a relative art form.

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It can take many forms. Some less obvious than others. Sometimes the most obvious betrayals are the most minimal. And the worst betrayals are never even noticed.

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For betrayal does not take place in the outside world. In the boardrooms, bedrooms or corridors of power.

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Betrayal always takes place in the heart.

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cruel to be kind

People carry round a fictional notion of their selves which becomes more real than their 'real' self.

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They seek to protect their fictional self with more vigour than their 'real' self.

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The cruellest thing anyone can do to these people is shatter this notion of a fictional self.

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For a 'real' self can never be shattered.

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a line discovered written in pencil on the inside flysheet of alan pauls' the past

Love is like a lens
Which filters out all
Those things the lover
Does not wish to see.

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bucket and spade

Almost inevitably those who feel themselves to have the least control over their lives are liable to be the biggest control freaks.

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on reading

Reading is a process of curiosity. One turns the pages in order to have something revealed that wasn't known before opening them. Whether that be the end of the plot or the shape of the universe.

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Every time we open a book we do so in the hope that we shall meet someone with something to say, something we have never heard before.

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west london tales 6

Wild parrots at play in Hyde Park. Screeching and diving like they've lived there for generations. Except that, on an admittedly grey day, in contrast to the parrots of the tropics, singeing the sky with a vivid dart, these creatures have no colour at all. They've flown straight out of a black and white movie.

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the lover's discourse

There is nothing as attractive as someone else finding you attractive.

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People think seduction is about dazzling. Fortunately for some and less so for others it ususally has more to do with listening.

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Tickle someone's vanity and you can steal their soul.

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'the past is another country'

The man was right.

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But... the past is still somewhere whose streets are walked in the mind, whose hills are climbed, whose water is drunk. In the mind.

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The past may be another country; but it can never become a foreign land.

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the un-randomness of it all

Barring acts of god; (unless one is of a religious disposition):

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Events have a way of happening to us as a result of our susceptibility to those events.

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Even though they might seem like the most unlikely of occurrences.

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by and large:

The desire to talk about oneself is in proportion to the importance someone has been lead (or lead themselves) to believe they possess.

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spot the difference

Some feel themselves to be significant and feel no need not to inform the world of this fact.

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Some feel themselves to be significant and feel no need to inform the world of this fact.

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human touch

The capacity for extraordinariness is unavoidably linked with the capacity to be ordinary.

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opposite extremes

Extravagant shyness is the flip side of a powerful desire to be the centre of attention.

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in black and white

In the same way that a writer's will to write is connected to his or her ego...

The weaknesses in our writing reflect the weaknesses in our souls.

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from the cradle to the grave

The older you get, the more life becomes about the acceptance of loss;
Learning to live with the accumulation of loss, which cannot but increase with every gain you make;
Learning to live with loss without resentment;
Or undue regret.

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the halcyon days of flight

Everyone knows how much fun flying is these days. The sense of adventure, the exhilaration of the open skies…The queues, the endless waiting around, the stress, the cattle market vibe. Once upon a time, so we are told, flying was glamorous. Now it’s about as glamorous as catching the tube.

Unless you fly to Caen or Deauville from Brighton Airport, with Sky South, a tiny airline whose website does not hint at the joys that are in store.

Brighton airport is a one hour train journey from Victoria station, followed by a five minute taxi ride through the backroads of Shoreham-by-Sea. When the cab driver in this sleepy town undercharges you, something suggests this will be no normal flight and that feeling escalates at the airport, a cream coloured art deco masterpiece, complete with swinging mahogany doors. Beyond which is the information desk staffed by two women with neither uniforms nor any sense of urgency. Tentatively I asked about check-in. You’re a bit early, one of them said. Why don’t you go and get a cup of tea and come back in an hour?

The website had claimed you only needed to check-in half an hour before the flight . A seasoned traveller in a world of security and terrorist scares, I knew this couldn’t possibly be right. I’d arrived with a conservative hour and three quarters to spare.

Plenty of time to savour a Panini and a pot of tea from the art deco restaurant, whose windows are embossed with frosted bi-planes. A pilot and his co-pilot were sitting on the table next to me. One of them said, with a chortle: ‘Even with the lever pulled back?’. I wasn’t sure if this was reassuring or terrifying. They were about to fly to Chester. Surely only trains go to Chester?

Confirming that this really was an airport, dozens of tiny two-seater airplanes were tootlling along the runway in the shadow of green fields and Lancing College. Occasionally a brightly coloured helicopter had a go at taking off. It looked like the insect room of London zoo.

After an hour of observing the wildlife, I went to discover if my flight really existed. I was allowed to check in, at the grandly named Terminal 3 (I have no idea where the other Terminals are hidden), all of a minute’s walk away. My bag was taken and I was told to go and have another cup of tea, and someone would come and get me just before the flight.

As good as their word I was summoned five minutes before departure and ushered through security along with the four other passengers. The plane looked small on the outside and even smaller on the inside. The other four got on first and I took seat number 5 out of 8.

In normal flying terms, there are the big planes that skip oceans and the smaller, low-budget variety which are cramped and uncomfortable. The plane to Deauville was of another order altogether. It had one seat to an aisle and four aisles. Though to call them aisles is an exaggeration. More a gap to allow the pilot to get to his seat. The machine was a tin can with wings attached, its flimsiness compounded by the safety talk when the pilot explained how, as the last man at the rear of the plane, I’d have to push a black button and then pull a lever in event of emergency, but my best bet would be to push the window in and climb onto the wing. Having said which he ducked down and clambered into his seat.

Minor celebrities sometimes boast of how they’re invited into the cockpit to spend the flight with the pilot. On the Brighton-Deauville run, everyone’s a minor celebrity. As the plane gathered speed on the runway, progress was visibly un-straightforward. It veered in a wobbly line, before hopping into the air, and, somewhat surprisingly, climbing in a vertical direction. Hair raising, natch, but also, as opposed to the mundanity of regular flying, exhilarating.

The plane banked over Brighton and its piers, before heading over the Channel. Half way across we were enveloped by clouds, moving from panoramic vista to pea souper in seconds. The instruments in the cockpit gleamed reassuringly, though I had no idea what any of them meant. The mighty sky beyond roared all around us.

The clouds cleared and we flew down the French coast for ten minutes, over Le Havre and the mouth of the Seine, landing in the desolate solitude of Deauville airport. It doesn’t seem right to call an airport picturesque, but Deauville, hewn from brooding forest, is. Save for a metallic Lear jet that vamooshed the moment we arrived, there were no other planes in sight. Clearing customs took all of two minutes. I was out of the airport within five minutes of landing.

On the return journey I arrived with forty five minutes to spare. Five members of staff catered for two passengers. The airport’s framed autograph book showed compliments from Harrison Ford, Mick Jagger, George Bush snr and Henry Kissinger. The return journey was in a more luxurious plane, with plush leather seats. My fellow passenger knew all about flying (claiming to possess an old German bomber that used twelve tons of fuel per minute parked at Bournemouth) and said we were ok as long as the de-icers worked. As the plane descended towards Brighton, the whole of the South Coast from the Isle of White to the Cliffs of Dover rose out of the earth to greet us, resplendent in morning sunshine.

If you own a private jet you can get this kind of experience whenever you fly. But for those of us who’ve heard tales of the glamour of aviation but never witnessed it, a trip to Deauville summons up an era when the skies were still a wonder to be explored, not a mere means to an end.

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out of interest...

How can we know what we do want to happen if we don't know what we don't want to happen?

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cultural conditioning

Growing up in Thatcher's Britain, as it was known, it seemed like the only alternatives were to become an entrepreneur or go on the dole. Or, as in my case, do both.

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the three classes of wo/man

One person wouldn't offer the hungry soul a crumb even if they were starving.

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Another person in their generosity will think nothing of offering half the lunch on their plate to a hungry soul.

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Another will think nothing of giving it all away. Not even knowing if the soul is all that hungry.

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Which is more likely to be wealthy and which more likely to be poor? Which successful, and which one a loser?

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one coin with many sides

Just because someone comes across as a saint under given circumstances, it does not mean to say that under other circumstances they might not find themselves playing the devil.

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thin ice

It is when we are at our most generous that we are at our most vulnerable.

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The more generous you are, the more vulnerable you become.

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Unless you can claim to be a saint.

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west london tales 5

Conversation in the lift, between ground and tenth floors

- We've been here 41 years. We were one of the first six families to move in. Things were different then.
- What was it like then.
- Oh it was very different.
- What was it like?
- Oh it was like... paradise in the sky.
- Paradise in the sky?
- That's right.
- And it's not like that now -
- Oh no. Not like that at all.

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progress

In the old days you couldn't spend money unless you left the house.

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These days you can blow your fortune from the comfort of your living room.

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message found on the inside cover of mario vargas llosa's the war at the end of the world

To A -
may all your wars be little ones
Love
N
oct' 87

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after it ends

You feel like crying every day.

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You do cry every day.

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Then one day you stop crying.

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You don't feel like crying anymore.

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You feel something else.

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the mistake

One day it was announced that the war was now imminent.

The announcement was made on television. Thereafter only two television stations were available, both rolling 24 hour news channels which looked at the way the state was responding to the news and what people should do to prepare.

After 48 hours both of these channels went dead.

At the same time mobile phones ceased working, as did the internet, and twelve hours later land lines stopped working. All petrol stations were closed.

There was nothing for people to do except go back to their homes and wait for the war to happen.

During the whole of this time no-one had informed anyone exactly what the war was. Who the enemy was. People thought it might be the climate war, or a nuclear war, or a biological war, or a chemical war, or an ideological war, or a state-sponsored war, or perhaps a vestige of the class war, or even the gender war.

However, whilst there had been much discussion on this point on the television before it closed down, and whilst people had initially debated it amongst themselves, in the end they realised it didn't matter. They had all been expecting the war, in some way, sub-consciously or semi-consciously or just innately. There had been so much peace for so long that people realised in their guts it just couldn't last, and when the war came they were not surprised. In fact many, although they didn't express it, in spite of their fear, were quietly relieved that the war they'd been anticipating and warned about all their lives was finally arriving. 'Good', they thought to themselves. 'Let's get it over with.'

Tanks made sweeps down wide roads. Soldiers could be heard talking outside on radios. People sat in their silent homes, waiting. Some went through phases of hysteria and then depression, and then realised there was no point in even these emotions. Others left their homes, against their family wishes, and walked the street. Some of these were shot at, and then tried to return home.

After two weeks, the electricity was cut off.

An hour later it came back on again.

When it came back on, all the televisions and radios and computers came back to life.

The television was running as normal.

So was the radio.

The internet was back.

People charged their mobile phones and found they were working.

Buses started appearing on the streets.

Over the following week, people returned to their former lives. They stocked up at the supermarkets and went back to work. They cleaned their houses and started jogging.

For a week or two there was much discussion over what had really happened, and the government offered its apologies and one or two people resigned, but at the same time the population was praised for the way it had handled the crisis and the armed forces were praised for the way they had handled the crisis, and everyone had to acknowledge the state had done better than anticipated and people felt good about this in a quiet and understated way.

In two months the season had changed and life was normal. People went about their day to day existence as if nothing had happened.

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