PATAGONIA NOTES

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PUNTA ARENAS 1

The world changes depending on where you are. This overly-obvious truth never the less feels more true than ever here, in Punta Arenas. Next stop South is the South Pole. The tip of the continent of Antarctica reaches out so that it looks like it’s trying to touch Patagonia. Punta Arenas has been the base for many of the great Polar expeditions. In front of the port there are boards which include Scott, Peary, Admunson and Shackleton. Not to mention a whole host of other names from other countries whose fame hasn’t made it to the Anglo-Saxon world. It’s the middle of Summer and it feels like the edge of Winter, which is the permanent state of this outpost. If Summer is like this, you can’t help thinking, shivering in the biting wind, how can they survive Winter. You look South and realise the icecaps are almost within reach. The official name of the district is Región de Magallanes y Antártica Chilena. Legally speaking, we’re there, in amongst the icebergs, in a land of immense, dazzling whiteness.

Due East, more or less, are the Falkland Islands. Our taxi driver used to be a sailor and spent time there. He says there are two big islands and hundreds of little ones. On every one of these little islands there lives a British couple, who fly the flag and share their island with lots of sheep. He says the pubs open at ten in the morning and shut at eleven at night and the police fine you if they catch you drunk at 11.30. There’s nothing else to do there, so everyone drinks all day, but god help you if you’re caught drinking after closing time.

On the roof of Punta Arenas fire station, there’s a Croatian flag. The fire brigade was founded by Croatians in 1902. There’s also a Croatian club called Sokol. The immigration to this part of the world was diverse. The cemetery contains a Scottish quarter, an English quarter and a host of Eastern European sectors. Croats, Slovenians, Slovaks and more in amongst the more typical Spanish and Italian stock. A sign in town celebrates the Slovak novelist Mateo Bencur, who ended up going back to live in Croatia, where he wrote two nostalgic novels called Patagonian Travels and The Call of the Mother Country. Patagonia is as good a place as any to start over. You can imagine a whole load of Croatians arriving at the end of the world at the start of the last century, thinking, you know what, this town really need a fire brigade. Later we come across another fire station, founded by Germans. There’s probably one for every nationality that ever emigrated here.

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TIERRA DEL FUEGO

We leave Punta Arenas around 8 in the morning, driving North East to take the ferry at Punto Delgado, the mouth of the Magellan Strait.. The wind is getting up and the guide is worried that the crossing will shut, as he later finds out happens around 1pm. The crossing takes no more than a breezy 20 minutes: this is the narrowest point in the Magellan Straits. The approach on the other side is cluttered with Argentine lorries taking petrol from the Argentine part of Tierra del Fuego north. They have to cross Chilean territory in order to return to Argentina. When the ferry shuts down due the to strong winds which are typical of the Summer months, the backlog of lorries trying to cross builds up incrementally.

Tierra del Fuego is an island, separated from the continent by the Magellan Straights, named after the man who found a passage through them in 1520. He never landed on the inhospitable island. He first named it Tierra del Humo, having seen smoke from native indian fires. When he got back to Spain, the king decided the name Tierra del Fuego was more evocative. The Chilean half of the island is far from beautiful. It’s low, flat, scrubby.. Further south, the cordillera continues its march towards Antartica and there are forests, but here it’s a bleak Lear-like heath. The wind sweeps the land like a lawnmower. The few, sparse trees are stunted and the grass sways in a vast, hypnotic emptiness.

After being driven for almost 2 hours, seeing little, we arrive at the Western coast in a Bay called the Useless Bay (Bahia Inutil), as it’s too shallow for boats and therefore good for nothing. [Wikipedia: “The bay was named in 1827 by Captain Phillip Parker King, because it afforded "neither anchorage nor shelter, nor any other advantage for the navigator.””] We’ve come to see a colony of King Penguins. There used to be a lot of King Penguins on Tierra del Fuego, but like the indigenous population, they were exterminated. About a decade ago, an enterprising fellow decided to bring them back. He set up a penguin colony, which is protected and thriving. It’s funded by the £12 every tourist has to pay to visit.

When we step out of the van, the wind is challenging. As we walk down to the coast it becomes even more so. The penguins stand around, an odd mix of noble and gawky, observing us. The wind does not appear to affect them. For us, the wind is a scourge. Never have I known a wind quite like it. It makes standing up a challenge. Not an intermittent challenge; it’s a constant one. Relax for a second and you’re in danger of flying off the earth’s handle. The wind whips its way off the coast, announcing without any doubt that this is not a place meant for human inhabitation. It’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to knowing what it feels like to be at the Pole. Or Mars, come to that.

We all sway about a bit. The penguins, who are on the other side of a stream, continue to observe the humans’ pathetic attempt to incorporate themselves into this ferocious landscape. Finally, having taken about a million photos each, we retreat back to the safety of the van and head towards the Chilean capital of Tierra del Fuego, Porvenir. Porvenir has a population of 5000. It is categorically not a tourist town. We’re taken to a cheap and cheerful place where we’re served sizeable guanaco sandwiches. The return ferry has been delayed an hour, which gives us time to walk around the town. However, this is a town where walking is a feat not to be approached lightly. The wind is a little less fierce than at the coast, but not a lot. We stagger around the low-rise streets, with houses made out of prettily-painted corrugated iron. There is a seaside promenade, but you’d need a constitution much stronger than mine to enjoy it. Places like Bridlington or Scarborough seem tropical in comparison with Porvenir.

The guide takes us to the museum. We learn about the two different native tribes who used to occupy this land. The Yahgan lived off the sea, using their canoes as second homes. The Selk’nam lived off the land, hunting guanaco. There’s a statue depicting them in a  small park. Four figures walk barefoot, wrapped in animal hides. These people occupied the land for over ten thousand years. There is a way of living in the wild nature of Tierra del Fuego, but the secrets have vanished with the tribes. They were hunted in the early twentieth century, when the land was given over to sheep farming. The sheep drove out the natives’ traditional food supply, the guanaco, so they started hunting sheep instead. As a result, the sheep barons paid people to hunt them. Hunters were paid at first upon presenting a pair of ears, but later they had to supply a head. The most famous hunter was s a Scot, Alex McLennan (nicknamed Red Pig), whose fitting fate is described in Chatwin’s In Patagonia. Chatwin also writes about another Brit, Thomas Bridges, a missionary who later become a landowner himself. Only Bridges, far from hunting the Selk’nam and the Yahgan, did all he could to preserve their culture. He complied extensive dictionaries of their languages and sought to offer them a safe haven on his land. It may have been a doomed endeavour, but the contrasting stories of Bridges and McLennan say a lot about what it is to be British. No matter how far you go, travel always seems to take you back to where you came from.

The ferry was due to leave at 7pm but ended up leaving at 8.30. This included a twenty minute wait in the biting cold as not one but two broken down cars were towed off. The towing involved a four wheel drive driving onto the ferry extremely quickly, executing a neat three point turn on deck, a rope being attached and the breakdown towed off. Except that the second time this happened, the  rope broke. Then, as if by magic, the broken down car started working again. We stood around in the wind, once again, watching the pantomime. Finally we boarded and the ferry headed off. The ferry was packed. A British man started telling a Dutchman about how terrible the Piccadilly Line was. As it got out into the current, the ferry began to pitch and yarl more and more impressively. Apparently, when sailors finally discovered the way round Cape Horn, the Southernmost tip of the Americas, they preferred going that way as the Magellan Strait seemed even more dangerous. I’m sure the minor paranoia which more than one person on board was experiencing as the ferry fought against the current would have seemed absurd to a hardened sailor, but the crossing helped to give some idea of what the early navigators faced as they tried to find their passage around the Americas, through to the Pacific, in this cruel but astonishing part of the world.

{Thought: a visit to Tierra del Fuego is a kind of anti-tourism}

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PUNTA ARENAS 2

There’s a woman speaking English in reception. I’m upstairs eating breakfast. I can hear her but I can’t see her. Her accent is weird. It’s fluent English with an accent I’ve never heard before. A kind of rarefied posh (Lady Di) mixed with Kiwi mixed with something coarser or earthier. The woman starts telling the receptionist about how many Chileans there are working in the islands. I realise she’s from the Falklands. The thought crosses my mind that the Falkland Islanders are like the King Penguins. A breed you hear a lot about but never see, unless you travel to the most inhospitable places on earth. She asks the receptionist if he’d like to visit the Falklands. The reply is ambivalent.

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FUERTE BULNES

The first stop, an hour or so South of Punta Arenas, is Puerto Hambre. Port Hunger. In 1584 a group of 300 settlers arrived here. Their objective was to establish a community that would safeguard the territory for the Spanish crown. On a mild Summer’s day, it’s a beautiful, if chilly spot. The settlers arrived in March. Every month the hours of daylight change radically. At high summer dawn arrives at 4am and night around 11pm. In midwinter, dawn arrives at 11am and night falls around 3.30 pm. Within weeks, the hours of daylight would have begun to evaporate. The settlers, trying to build a home in a land where nothing grows, must have felt as though the night was closing in on them. The wind and the cold and the darkness and the emptiness. The odd glimpse of distant mountains through rainclouds. Dolphins and whales passing by like freemen in the Straits whilst they were trapped like lifers. By the time the British adventurer Thomas Cavendish arrived, three years later, all that was left of Puerto Hambre were the fresh ruins of a failed endeavour.

A little further up the coast is Fuerte Bulnes, founded 300 years or so later, in 1843. This is a classic Wild West fort, made out of timber, rebuilt in the 80s to the exact specification of the original plans. The guide points out that whilst the location is spectacular, offering commanding views of the strait, it was a grim place to be stationed, with the nearest fresh water 5 kms away as well as being brutally exposed to the elements. The fort has a history of mutiny and rebellion, eventually falling into disuse, before it was rebuilt a first time, as a historic monument, in the 1940s. Whilst the rest of the world was at war, the Chilean army made a historical reconstruction of a 19th century fort. Recently a state-of-the-art museum has been opened next to the fort; the juxtaposition of the high-tech museum with the bare-necessities fort feels like a fitting metaphor for the way in which the country has developed in the course of 150 years.

There’s a lookout at the far end of the fort. As ever, we were pressed for time. The tours try to squeeze more in than they can and you don’t get the time to savour the place. All the same, I managed to slip down to the waterfront. The Magellan Strait continued towards the Pacific. To the East lay Dawson Island, where the Pinochet regime sent its political prisoners. In the distance was the Darwin mountain range, the last, seismic gasp of the Andes. The water was calm and kind. Great tree trunks, deunuded of all flesh, lay scattered and whitened on the shore. Small birds, far too tame for their own good, flitted about just out of reach. Twenty kilometres further on, off-road, lay Cape Froward, the Southernmost point on the continental land mass of the Americas. It wasn’t the end of the world, quite, but it felt tantalising close, as close as the birds which continued to hop around as though man was as tame an animal as they were.

I reached down and picked up some flints as a momento. The craggy shore is slowly fragmenting , as it has for millions of years. The flints were sharp and felt comfortable in the hand. When I got back to the hotel, I placed them on the table. Hours later, I looked at them again. They looked like tools. Perfect tools. Tools which are as well designed as an iPhone or a Ferrari. And, in their heyday, far more valuable.

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LA VICTORIA & THE BEAGLE

If you go past the vast tax-free Zona Franca, past the garage and the statue to the Selk’nam on the road to Puerto Natales, you come to a small park where there’s a re-creation of Magellan’s ship, La Victoria, as well as Darwin’s Beagle (still in construction). The most striking thing about the Victoria is how small it is. Fifty sailors, at least, various animals, and captured natives crammed into a space not much bigger than a two bedroom flat, adrift on the ocean, heading into the waters which defined the word ‘uncharted’. When they got to the Magellan Straits, one of the Admiral’s other boats in the flotilla turned round and deserted, hot-footing it back to Spain. Bowie died last night, the news was there when I woke up this morning. If I was looking for a connection between his death and our visit to the ship today, it would be found in the lyrics of Major Tom. The only way you can begin to capture the sense of complete alienation the voyagers must have felt would be to imagine floating in a most peculiar way, in a blue planet earth, with the stars looking very different, each and every day.

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PUNTA ARENAS 3

An antiques shop in the middle of town has a sign outside, inviting tourists to come in and browse. The man working there is friendly. He tells us it’s his mother-in-law’s place. He’s a journalist by trade. He shows me his book of photos of Patagonia, illustrating all the things we’re not going to see. The nature shots look astonishing and it’s clear that you need to try and spend more time down here to get to know it better. Everyone asks us if we’re going to Torres del Paine, the vast natural park that’s a five hour drive away, but the truth is we don’t have time to go there for more than a day, which doesn’t seem enough. We mosey round the antiques shop, looking at an old wood burning stove and other curiosities. There’s a sizeable metallic object in a cabinet. The journalist gets it out for us to look at. It’s part of a British helicopter, which made a forced landing at Agua Fresca during the Falklands War. Chile supported the British, in a neutral sort of way, and allowed the helicopter, which was in trouble, to land. The story goes that the helicopter was destroyed, but not before a local got to it and cut off part of what might be a propeller. It’s for sale for a comely £90. I say only a crazy Brit would want to buy it, and the journalist adds - or a crazy Argentine. He’s happy to let me take photos of a little bit of lost history. He tells us he’s been to the Falklands, showing us the pictures in his book. There’s a weekly flight from Punta Arenas, which means you’re compelled to spend a week there before you can come back. He seemed to think that a week was plenty long enough.

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A professional type, North American, sits writing emails on his Macbook Air in the Cafe Chocolate Baeriswyl, the finest purveyor of hot chocolate in Punta Arenas. Taped over the camera on the laptop is a small strip, cut from a post-it note. On this strip is the following slogan, handwritten in biro: “It’s always right now’.

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MORRISSEY IN MONTEVIDEO

The pre-show is an entertainment in itself. It’s Morrissey’s best-of Youtube compilation. Tina Turner, Edith Sitwell, The New York Dolls, Anne Sexton and Ding-dong the Witch is Dead. He’s still fighting Thatcher after all these years. The old enmities never die. The experience is peculiar. The night is warm. The sky clear. The Teatro de Verano fills up gradually, full of familiar faces. But this is pure, unadulterated, multi-cultural, Morrisseyan Britishness on stage, with its nods to glam rock, black culture, eccentricity. Edith Sitwell talking about her fashion choices, as the traffic flows ever so gently along the Rambla with the River Plate in the background.

Reasonably promptly, soon after 9, the singer appears on stage with his youthful band. Dressed in a jacket with no shirt underneath. “Montevideo,” he says, “I come here,” (pause) “to spill my” (pause) “heart”. Without further ado he breaks into a spritely version of Suedehead. 

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It’s a large room. As big a room as I’ll have to myself for years. In one corner is a single bed, in another a desk. There’s a bay window which looks out over the courtyard and the garden, behind which is another red brick, late Victorian building, similar to the one that contains this room, where another 50 or so boys live. This is a boarding school, a bastion of British privilege, a place as corrupt as any other school, perhaps more so. This house has been my home for nearly five years. The end is in sight. We live in the reign of Margaret Thatcher. Her spawn are hatched here, and other buildings such as this. Britain’s future (current) rulers inhabit a similar environment in another school called Eton, which we visit from time to time on sports trips. All of us, whether we like it or not, belong to the great club of the heirs apparent. 

On the windowsill there’s a cassette radio. I am a senior figure within the house, ‘the head of house’, and the greatest benefit this role bestows is space and privacy. Here, in my study, I can escape. I can listen to the music I like, read the books I like, dream the life I would like to lead. At night I fall asleep with the radio on. Or else a cassette playing. Insomnia is already my friend. It’s a half-life, waiting for the day when we’re allowed to leave this closeted world and be permitted to start the process of getting to know that other world, the one that isn’t closeted, the one that isn’t mired in snobbery and elitism. 

The music we listen to is the Stones, the Stooges, the New York Dolls, the Velvet Underground, Burning Spear, Bob Marley, Augustus Pablo, Otis Redding, Steve Hillage, the Kinks, the sixties, the seventies. Contemporary music comes via John Peel, snatches of songs which will later be hunted down. People have started to talk about The Smiths. Someone said that someone else said they were going to be bigger than the Beatles. There’s always a band that’s due to be bigger than the Beatles, but people seem to believe in this one, they seem to think the hype might be justified. 

Someone gives me a tape. The tape is grey. It has ‘The Smiths’ written on it in felt-tip pen. It is their first album. It sings me to sleep. I listen to it repetitively, in the way that once upon a time people listened to music. Every song has its nuances. It’s music from another place, a Northern soul, music sung by young men who never knew the privilege of the world we inhabit. Music sung by men who have crossed the frontier of adolescence, unlike us. But already the relationships the songs depict, the cruelty of these relationships, is something understood, even though we are only on the brink of this world. ‘Reel around the fountain, slap me on the patio, I’ll take it now.’ And the line that speaks of place, the line that says it all, can be appropriated with just the slightest of twists. ‘Manchester, so much to answer for’; becomes - ‘Winchester, so much to answer for’. A sentiment that I know, as I lie in bed waiting for sleep to arrive, is true now and ever more shall be so. 

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Morrissey looks fresh and seems to be enjoying himself. His band is young and some of them are Latinos. At one point, Morrissey leaves the mike to the keyboard player, who sings the lyrics of the song in Spanish. The crowd are with the old diva. He plays very few Smiths tracks. Many of the songs are from more recent albums, which I don’t know. There’s one about the cops beating people up, accompanied by footage from Ferguson and what looks the Rodney King attack. There are songs about war and democracy. But, with the exception of one moment, the gig maintains a vigorous, upbeat tone. Morrissey clearly enjoys saying the word “gracias” in response to the raucous applause. At one point he declares: “How happy I am to be in a heart-shaped country.”

I’ve never seen Morrissey live. Once I went to see Dylan in the Docklands Arena. It was one of the most depressing nights in my life. Dylan churned through the songs as though he was being paid by the hour. His lack of enthusiasm could not have been more obvious. Song after song was, effectively, butchered. To my ears at least. Of course, the other side of the coin is that this is their work: this is what they have to do in order to earn a living. No matter how much you’re getting paid, no-one likes being a servant to the man, and you’re going to have nights when you’re just not in the mood. So I steer clear of those figures who had once mattered so much, who’d been part of a time that was past. But Claudia has bought the tickets and now he’s here. And as Morrissey sings I weep like a child. For all our yesterdays, which have lit the road to here, to the dusty now, with so much left behind. 

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A restaurant in York. I’m 20. Tonight. It’s my birthday. There’s four of us. Sedley, James and Nadine. Nadine used to go and watch The Smiths, with her then boyfriend, called Mike. I met Mike once. He had hair like Robert Smith. He opened the door to the party in deepest Hertfordshire with a cat on his shoulders. He had a chameleon quality. He and Nadine used to travel into London to watch bands, and one of them was The Smiths. She saw The Smiths before they were famous. Before they were going to be the next Beatles. We spent all night holed up at this party, full of people who I didn’t know. On our way there, in the car, Nadine said: ‘Keep an eye on me tonight’. I told her I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. She said: ’You know’. I was living that life now. At a certain point in the evening, Nadine was in a room upstairs with Mike, and a few others. I sat outside on the landing, overhearing their conversation. Mike said: ‘Who is he anyway?’ The nerdy public school boy. Nadine said something dismissive. I heard it all. I don’t know if this is true, but I have a memory of entering the room. Everyone leaving. Tears. Who knows. It’s probably a false memory. 

On my 20th, we go to a mediocre restaurant which is near the banks of the Ouse. It’s big and almost empty. We eat burgers, probably with blue cheese dressing. We get drunk on red wine. The music is anodyne until, out of the darkness of the cavernous restaurant, come the chords of The Smiths. Their most spaced-out, almost Doorsy song. How Soon is Now. Which seems heavily Johnny Marr influenced. Less Morrissey, more Marr. Later we go and sit by the banks of the river, on the wharf, and drink whisky, from the bottle. Nadine liked drinking whisky from the bottle. In my memory, another false memory, the song is still playing as we sit outside, on a cold June night, keeping warm with whisky. ‘I am the son and heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar…When you say it’s going to happen now, well what exactly do you mean? See I’ve already waited too long and all my hope is gone.’

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Morrissey plays How Soon is Now midway through the set. It’s unexpected. It catches me off-guard. His band rip into the song with a verve. It’s still a young person’s song, with its 10 gallon rhythm; with its relentless quest to get to the next point, to reach the future. The words sit in the air. Ubiquitous, understandable in any culture. For once Morrissey’s lyrics reduced to the most basic, plaintive. ‘I am human and I need to be loved, just like anybody else does.’ These words will never age, and neither will the song. 

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A shop in Covent Garden. Full of wood and shoes. Neal Street buzz. On Saturdays or Summer afternoons the shop, which is not large, becomes a claustrophobic sauna. People fall over themselves trying on Birkenstocks or Grensons. The team of half a dozen shop assistants, of whom I am one, run around dementedly, trying to maintain order, trying to keep things in shape. The staff is an evolving snapshot of young London life. Eric, who wants to be a DJ, has lived in London all his life, has a model girlfriend, dreams of getting a flat in Pimlico. Steve, with whom I’ll take E’s, go clubbing at Ministry, share a chaotic house, man a stall in Portobello. Rebecca who’s very straight and comes from the Midlands and is a violinist, who ends up getting me a job at the Royal Albert Hall. Steve, the manager, who’s from Chicago, quietly camp, lost, with dreams, which will never be fulfilled, of becoming an opera singer. Arita, an architecture student, who I’ll live with for three years. Kathy, from Manchester, who told me she had become lesbian as an act of political militancy. The spikey-haired woman, Sam, who ended up studying shoe design at Cordwainers, because every once in a while someone really did care about shoes. Colin, who also came from Manchester, hated London, and played the Inspiral Carpets on a loop, when he could. The cheerful fellow who escaped when someone gave him a job on a boat observing whales. A hundred others, at least, and Robbie, the friendly gay man who had toured with The Smiths to Japan. Working as an assistant. Who told me that Morrissey used to check the staff’s hotel bills, to make sure no-one had been indulging in long-distance calls at the band’s expense. 

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The most volatile moment of the gig comes as we are starting to head towards the end. Morrissey offers an attack on the meat industry, stating that at the Paris Climate Change Summit, nothing was said about the industry which is, he claims, the greatest contributor to global warming, because of vested interests. This is the cue for a bracing version of Meat is Murder, accompanied by images which show animals being slaughtered. The images are horrific. You wouldn’t catch them appearing in a Britney or a One Direction concert. This is full-on, confrontational proselyting. Later people would talk about it. A gleeful moment of political activism, thrown into the middle of a party. 

None of it phases me. It makes me smile. Good for the Mozza. Why shouldn’t he use his stage as a platform to speak about something he feels strongly about? He’s always worn his cares on his sleeve and he carries on doing it. Conviction is something pop isn’t famous for. But the Morrissey is for real. I take my hat off to him. 

Later he offers a few slightly confusing words before singing a song about bullfighting. “In a country called Peru,” he says introducing the song, “the people are great and the life is great and everyone’s really happy… unless you happen to be a bull.” No-one has much of a clue why he’s talking about Peru. Afterwards, there will be Facebook speculation that he’d forgotten where he was. The song is another of his more political tracts, and the last quarter of the gig is given over to the new songs, few of which I recognised. The intensity of the experience tails away; he isn’t singing about my youth anymore. Most of the songs I would have put on the playlist aren’t going to appear, and perhaps that’s a good thing. 

The band is still having fun and Morrissey is still having fun. He gets the maracas out. He poses. He is more than a singer. He’s an icon; and he knows it. 

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A bar in Montevideo, 1994. My friend Ana has brought me to a bar which runs a kind-of snakes and ladders pub game, which is conducted by her partner, Horacio. I can’t really work out how it works and at this point in time my Spanish is non-existent. If you land on the wrong number, you have to do something like recite a poem or sing a song. I tell Ana I’m happy to do anything except sing. Of course, as a result and via divine intervention, my number comes up and I am called on to the rickety stage to sing a song. Horacio, a grizzled survivor, former political agitator, theatre director, ‘personaje’, as they say here, has his two sons on stage with him with their instruments. The idea is that the singer tells them the song and they provide the backing music. I feel self-conscious, terrified. Singing, performing in public, this kind of thing is not my bag. I feel ridiculous, but there’s not much I can do about it. No-one speaks English, so Ana translates. I try to think of a song. The only one that comes to mind is Girlfriend in a Coma. I ask the band if they know it. They nod, as though to say, of course, then strike up a rangy reggae rhythm. It’s The Smiths, but not as we know them. I muddle through a verse or to, ‘I know, I know, it’s really serious’. 

Twenty years later, one of Horacio’s sons who was on stage with me, Martin, will compose the music for the play I’m directing. He remembers nothing of that night. I was just some gringo passing through.

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The concert concludes and the crowd bay for an encore. Morrissey’s already thrown one shirt into the crowd and at the end he’ll throw another. There’s something disarmingly charming about a 50 year old man well past the peak of his physical prime, skipping around with his top off like he’s a 20 year old carrying a bunch of gladioli. It’s not just because the night is balmily warm. He clearly gets a kick out of it. At one point he mutters, “there’s always a barrier” and the crowd bays at him, telling him he’s wrong, there’s no barrier, they’re with him all the way. The thought doesn’t go anywhere, it just leads to another song, but the notion of the artist who wants to strip himself bare, to throw himself like Iggy Pop into the maelstrom, floats, like a bizarre, anti-English mirage. Morrissey’s inner Latino is lurking. 

Morrissey’s Englishness. The title of a novel. The love and the tension are palpable. There’s Edith Sitwell, then there’s an image of William and Kate, projected over the playing of This World is Full of Crashing Bores. It’s easy to dismiss this attitude in today’s neo-conservative Britain. Easy to dismiss him as a petulant, fifty-something child. Still waging the war against Thatcher. Then again - why not? Why do I now live here, on the other side of the world? Why is Britain so trapped in it’s torpid, sub-colonial world vision? We’re a country that has spent the last twenty years bombing other countries as though we have a divine right to do so, with very little questioning of the ethical implications. We are still ruled by a monarchy which looks and talks like something that belongs to the ninetieth century, let alone the twentieth or the twenty first. And no-one questions any of this. To query the validity of the institution is to invite ridicule. No-one does it. 

Except for the wonderful, perverse, narcissistic Morrissey. With his band of youthful gunslingers, hot-footing it around the world, showing all the images that the British Council would not approve of. For his encore, here in the Teatro de Verano, he chooses a stampeding version of The Queen is Dead. “So I broke into the Palace, with a sponge and a rusty spanner. She said Eh, I know you and you cannot sing, I said that’s nothing, you should hear me play piano.” Behind him is an image of Her Maj, giving the world two fingers with both hands. Thirty years on, Morrissey is still dishing it out, still out on a limb, still dreaming of an England which isn’t the one he was born into. “The Queen is dead, boys, And it’s so lonely on a limb. Life is very long, when you’re lonely.” The funny thing about Morrissey is that he’s still lonely but, here in the balmy Summer Uruguayan night, he looks like he’s thriving on it. 

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One of the songs Morrissey plays is Every Day is Like Sunday. It’s one of his first solo hits, coming out in 1988. For almost anyone who grew up in a small British town in the eighties, this song puts the hammer on the nail of the petty desolation. Dull days, where Summer is full of rain, where we dream of living somewhere where the sun shines and the world feels more enticing. “Everyday is like Sunday, everyday is silent and grey.” I remember whole Summers when it felt as though it rained every day, when the architecture itself seemed to sag under the weight of water, when the yearning to flee, to obliterate this life was so strong that the song’s refrain couldn’t have felt more apposite: “In the seaside town, they forgot to bomb, come Armageddon, come”. Now, he’s singing it here, in another seaside town. With the stars and the beach a stone’s throw away. Never has the song felt less appropriate. My world has been flipped around, 180 degrees. Southern hemisphere/ northern hemisphere. Wet sand/ hot sand. Soggy days/ balmy nights. The constant is Morrissey’s yearning. I smile at the contradiction. And at the same time, I am possessed by a sharp-toothed nostalgia. 

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