Politics - or should I say social media's take on politics - simultaneously engages and annoys me. I have flurries where I find myself arguing about transgender issues and anti-Semitism. In terms of transgender, I have been surprised by what seems like a reactionary return to biological basics amongst feminists and some on the left. On the anti-Semitic issue, I hate what the Israeli Government are doing: shooting at unarmed Palestinian civilians, putting people in cages at borders FGS. Yet, still I see the starved faces of people looking through the mesh fences in concentration camps that haunted me as a child back in the 1960s, when I sat and watched All our Yesterdays with my grandma. How can a persecuted people not desire and cling to a homeland? The notion that Jews are at the heart of wicked conspiracies in banking, peddled by some less than subtle souls on the left is anti-Semitic. It's becoming clearer that some on the left would like to see an end to Israel and I really can't support that. Sadly, there seems to be little will for a two state solution internationally at a time when it is most needed. Trump is uber supportive of Israel, which doesn't help.
And as for Brexit...I can't even go there.
About Me
Sunday 16 September 2018
Tuesday 27 March 2018
Initiation into the magical art of train travel
T for Tuesday is asking for posts with some link to a drink. On the journey below, my Great Aunt Eliza and I drank coffee from a flask. If I close my eyes, I can still smell the coffee and see her pour it from the silver neck of the flask into beige cups. It all felt rather grown up. I learned the art of travelling by train from this aunt. It's been over forty four years since she passed away but her influence on me has been indelible.
Manchester Piccadilly was the biggest and most magnificent railway station I had seen. Its fabulous Victorian iron-girdered ceiling - still blackened from the smoke of steam locomotives - and its long platforms transported me to the same place as the opening pages of a new book: it promised good things to come. Stepping on the long train, holding on to my small suitcase with one hand and my aunt with the other, I knew this was a special journey.
Taking small sips of strong coffee, I gazed through the windows as the train moved through the endless green countryside dotted with churches, cottages and farms, through the suburbs of little boxes and small factories and onwards into the city. As we entered the suburbs of London, hanging from every balcony of every tenement, were rows and rows of washing. When I repeated the journey a year later, a significant change had occured. There was far less washing. As the 60's gave way to the 70's it seemed to me that the population's washing habits underwent a revolution. (I guess more families were buying electric dyers.) On the many journeys from the North to London I have made since then, never again did I seen so much washing decorating the line. Washing lines didn't disappear entirely but the sheer volume of wet shirts, skirts and knickers decorating the edges of the West Coast Line was never again so abudant.
We reached Euston and, in order to reach our destination in Surrey, Aunt Eliza marched us down the short escalator into the tube station. We purchased our ticket at the wooden window and took a much longer ride down to the platforms.
I stood on the platform full of wonder and half afraid. When the train clattered into the station, I was scared the force of it might drag me on to the live rail, which Aunt Eliza had sternly explained would kill me should I fall upon it.
Inside the train, I was transfixed by the map of the Northern Line on the opposite wall above the heads of the passengers. We passed beneath Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square and Charing Cross and then moved out to Elephant and Castle, Kennington, Oval, Stockwell and North Clapham. At some point we came up from the tunnels and into daylight as I checked each station off against the thick brownish-black line opposite: Balham, Tooting Bec, Tooting Broadway, Colliers Wood, South Wimbledon and finally Morden.
After such a wonderful ride through unknown places, Morden was a dreadful anti-climax; to a child who had grown up in the heartland of the industrial North, South London surburbia seemed incredibly dull. All it had to recommend it was the eerie white light of the street lamps, which illuminated the long avenue where another Aunt, Aunt Rachel, who we had travelled all these miles to visit, lived.
The journey stands out in my mind perhaps because this was where I first discovered the incantational power of place names and first experienced the strange and almost obsessional pull the capital city had on my imagination. It also made me aware of the magical art of train travel and its superiority to any other form of transport.
Manchester Piccadilly was the biggest and most magnificent railway station I had seen. Its fabulous Victorian iron-girdered ceiling - still blackened from the smoke of steam locomotives - and its long platforms transported me to the same place as the opening pages of a new book: it promised good things to come. Stepping on the long train, holding on to my small suitcase with one hand and my aunt with the other, I knew this was a special journey.
Taking small sips of strong coffee, I gazed through the windows as the train moved through the endless green countryside dotted with churches, cottages and farms, through the suburbs of little boxes and small factories and onwards into the city. As we entered the suburbs of London, hanging from every balcony of every tenement, were rows and rows of washing. When I repeated the journey a year later, a significant change had occured. There was far less washing. As the 60's gave way to the 70's it seemed to me that the population's washing habits underwent a revolution. (I guess more families were buying electric dyers.) On the many journeys from the North to London I have made since then, never again did I seen so much washing decorating the line. Washing lines didn't disappear entirely but the sheer volume of wet shirts, skirts and knickers decorating the edges of the West Coast Line was never again so abudant.
We reached Euston and, in order to reach our destination in Surrey, Aunt Eliza marched us down the short escalator into the tube station. We purchased our ticket at the wooden window and took a much longer ride down to the platforms.
I stood on the platform full of wonder and half afraid. When the train clattered into the station, I was scared the force of it might drag me on to the live rail, which Aunt Eliza had sternly explained would kill me should I fall upon it.
Inside the train, I was transfixed by the map of the Northern Line on the opposite wall above the heads of the passengers. We passed beneath Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square and Charing Cross and then moved out to Elephant and Castle, Kennington, Oval, Stockwell and North Clapham. At some point we came up from the tunnels and into daylight as I checked each station off against the thick brownish-black line opposite: Balham, Tooting Bec, Tooting Broadway, Colliers Wood, South Wimbledon and finally Morden.
After such a wonderful ride through unknown places, Morden was a dreadful anti-climax; to a child who had grown up in the heartland of the industrial North, South London surburbia seemed incredibly dull. All it had to recommend it was the eerie white light of the street lamps, which illuminated the long avenue where another Aunt, Aunt Rachel, who we had travelled all these miles to visit, lived.
The journey stands out in my mind perhaps because this was where I first discovered the incantational power of place names and first experienced the strange and almost obsessional pull the capital city had on my imagination. It also made me aware of the magical art of train travel and its superiority to any other form of transport.
Sunday 28 January 2018
Farewell icons of my youthful days
In the world of the arts, some artists matter to us more than others, we recognise their talents, we love and appreciate their work. They enlighten us; they disturb us. Three significant artists passed away last week.
First, Hugh Masekela. His jazz was a sound track for the struggle against apartide. That vile system finally toppled in the early 90s when Mandela walked to freedom. His work can challenge but it's rhythmic and sinuous. I listened to some of his music on YouTube and was astonished by its power and complexity but soon found his more commercial 80s hit that I boogied to back then: Don't go Lose it Baby. Obituaries gave the impression of a restless, driven man but one who had reconciled himself to death. Three score years and ten plus a bit more. What more can we ask for?
Next, Ursula Le Guinn, whose marvellous, generously wise stories made me look at the world through different eyes and changed how I thought about it. A long life, well lived: her work a wonderful distillation of ideas and humanity.
Lastly, Mark E Smith. The kind of alcohol fuelled and drugged out geezer and genius you only find in the North of England. Worn out at 60. Leaving a legacy of strange twisted brilliance on vinyl and MP3. A formidable post punk force who spoke to many of my contemporaries. A little too much for me, if I'm honest, though at 21 I danced away to his spitting, snarling, hypnotic vocals and his band's insistent, swirling, grinding din. One of about six people; everyone else had run off to the bar. Over the years he built a loyal following. One of my colleagues had followed him since he was 15 and had bought every Fall album - and there were many. On Twitter, writer Susan Hill expressed her confusion at not knowing who he was. Was he pop star? I replied, explaining he was as far from ABBA as South Dakota is from the sea.
Time for bed. I think I will hunt out my collection of Ursula Le Guin's short stories and allow myself to reflect on how the best fantasy is a mirror to reality. I think she was an anthropologist. Her imagined societies are rich and unusual but always believable and never clichéd. I wonder what she would have made of Mark E Smith?
First, Hugh Masekela. His jazz was a sound track for the struggle against apartide. That vile system finally toppled in the early 90s when Mandela walked to freedom. His work can challenge but it's rhythmic and sinuous. I listened to some of his music on YouTube and was astonished by its power and complexity but soon found his more commercial 80s hit that I boogied to back then: Don't go Lose it Baby. Obituaries gave the impression of a restless, driven man but one who had reconciled himself to death. Three score years and ten plus a bit more. What more can we ask for?
Next, Ursula Le Guinn, whose marvellous, generously wise stories made me look at the world through different eyes and changed how I thought about it. A long life, well lived: her work a wonderful distillation of ideas and humanity.
Lastly, Mark E Smith. The kind of alcohol fuelled and drugged out geezer and genius you only find in the North of England. Worn out at 60. Leaving a legacy of strange twisted brilliance on vinyl and MP3. A formidable post punk force who spoke to many of my contemporaries. A little too much for me, if I'm honest, though at 21 I danced away to his spitting, snarling, hypnotic vocals and his band's insistent, swirling, grinding din. One of about six people; everyone else had run off to the bar. Over the years he built a loyal following. One of my colleagues had followed him since he was 15 and had bought every Fall album - and there were many. On Twitter, writer Susan Hill expressed her confusion at not knowing who he was. Was he pop star? I replied, explaining he was as far from ABBA as South Dakota is from the sea.
Time for bed. I think I will hunt out my collection of Ursula Le Guin's short stories and allow myself to reflect on how the best fantasy is a mirror to reality. I think she was an anthropologist. Her imagined societies are rich and unusual but always believable and never clichéd. I wonder what she would have made of Mark E Smith?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)