The Adventures of Mz Kitty, Meandering Catwalker

Finnish Saunas and other of life's necessities

2012-01-27T17:41:00.000Z

After any more than an hour skiing north of the Arctic circle the only way to defrost is to use the sauna. Forget cellulite, sagging flesh and modesty. If you're in Finland, get in, get your gear off and stop worrying. There are of course, basic hygiene principles to follow ... none of which I managed to work out on my first attempt even with helpful instructions in English posted in several prominent positions in the chill out area. (Tip 1: bath towels are out, but the stack of paper towels in the corner are very important).

It's not just the cold that is arrested in the sauna. It's the point at which daily velcro wars, when outer fastenings meet inner fleece, can be forgotten (Tip 2: always put your gloves on last!). It's the point at which the damp sheep smell that comes from merino thermals can be removed for the evening. It's the place where no-one can see me ski, thereby avoiding the look of compassion that comes into the eyes of the Finns when they do.

I am nothing if not the triumph of hope over experience, or cowardice, when it comes to skiing. To me, a bump on a blue run seems to generate stellar speed. And while the idea of having a nice machine make tracks for me to ski in everyday is very comforting, it was not until the last day that I realised I could in fact step (or skate if you're one of those show off ski skater types who deserve no space in the sauna as punishment for the ungodly grace that was given to them) out of them and snow plough, rather than tumble anarchically, down a hill. (Tip 3: the great advantage of skiing in the off season is that it reduces the chances of such descents causing damage to anyone but myself). No matter how graceful or ungainly the skiing, though, everyone on the trails has the possibility at some point in their day to come to stillness in a landscapethat has the quality of silence that only comes when the world iswrapped in snow.

Just as I managed to give up on braking and turning when on skis, hoping that the run ahead would eventually even out and there would be no corners in the meantime, so too with my sled driving abilities, where my dogs adopted the same look of compassion as the Finns. Huskies, apart from having to put up with dodgy drivers, also suffer from a beauty myth. On every postcard in every Arctic gift shop in Lapland are the familiargrey and white, blue eyed standard models. But most in my crew were just a motley bunch of mongrels with a one-dimensional love of running. They really do.As we approached launch time their barking reached the dog equivalentof a jet engine before take off.

The recuperative power of the sauna is complimented by the Finnish buffet. (Tip 4: it is not stealing to make nutella and cheese sandwiches from the breakfast buffet to take with you for lunch). Finland isn't known for it's vegetarian friendliness but luckily I'll eat fish because somehow they don't count. Put it this way ... it's either compromise on the fish or eat reindeer and it will be a warm day in the Arctic winter before I eat Rudolph. This did not stop Chemical Elvis from tucking in however. It is slightly discomforting to be sitting in a restaurant enjoying the bucolic scene outside of reindeer grazing while Chemical Elvis eats one inside. I made up for it with a 'pint of cream with a hint of mushroom' soup, followed by lappish cheese in a sweet cream sauce and berries. If it can be made with berries the Finns have done it, including the lovely sounding cloudberries, bilberries, arctic brambles and sea buckthorns.

If any further solace is needed after the sauna and food, there is that great scientific phenomenon of the Arctic guaranteed to bring comfort during the long winter: the Finnish love of karaoke. Forget seeing the aurora - most tourists spent their evenings sitting out in -20 degrees, under cloudy skies, still thinking they're going to see something, and missing the most fantastic renditions in Finnish of 'Almaaz', 'Walk the Line' and 'Crocodile Rock' in the local bar all of which seem to have karaoke machines and remain at a steady +20 degrees (Tip 5: the bar man will sing the male parts if you need to duet). Unfortunatelyno-one chose to sing Bowie's 'Space Oddity' while we were there. I would like to have heard that version while sipping on the pint of gin and something (yes that's a PINT) that they serve on tap .... Perhaps a sauna might be better.

Fiddler on the Roof

2012-01-02T18:20:00.001Z

As I relaxed into my post-NYE position on the couch to watch one of my all time favourite films, 'Fiddler on the Roof', cup of tea in one hand, remote in the other and Indian take-away in front, I realised that I had probably wasted about 5 years writing a book on managing cultural change. You just need to watch Tevye struggling with what is happening in his family, his village and in Russia at the turn of the 20th century to know everything you need to know:

First, what keeps us balanced on the roof, happily playing our fiddles, knowing our place in the order of things ... TRADITION .... TRADITION (deedle de de de dee deedle de de de dee deedle de de de dee) TRADITION!

Second, what happens when you unpick a thread? Things start to unravel and it can cause great personal anguish resulting in Tevye's wrenching appeal to god and TRADITION ... TRADITION (deedle de de de dee deedle de de de dee deedle de de de dee) TRADITION!

Third, dreams and myths are created to enable small changes to be accommodated - Tzeitel gets to marry the poor tailor Motel instead of the butcher without the help of a matchmaker, and Hodel gets to marry Perchik without asking Tevye for permission.

But fourth, there are limits. Tevye expresses the universal fear that if he bends too much he will break and will not accept his third daughter, Chava's, wish to marry the Russian other.

Fifth, then there must come the inevitable EXPULSION .... EXPULSION (deedle de de de dee deedle de de de dee deedle de de de dee) EXPULSION of both Chava and Tevya's community, both of whom now represent fear and the threat to order that generates a tendency to homogenise space and demarcate difference so as to maintain a sense of control and restore the balance.

All this and great music, dancing, and Topol. Save yourself £50 and watch the movie.

Notes to Self for the New Year 2012

2012-01-01T09:52:00.000Z

1. Remember that the world will not end ... It will just be different.

2. Remember that we have survived numerous governments in the past who have replaced spine with political expediency or which have been held upright by torrents of irrational venom. They too will pass.

3. Remember that said spineless or vengeful governments do cause injury to those vulnerable to their Manichaean world view and, while they will pass, the damage they wreak in the present must be challenged at all times. Occupy, reappropriate, land, words, hearts and minds.

4. Remember that all real dissent takes time ... Patience really is a virtue and real change is not fast food.

5. Take the 66 days holiday owing to me ... Work will not fall apart if I'm not there.

6. See more live music (I know I say that every year but have just discovered the very funky jazz cafe in Camden, and the uber-funky 'tortured soul' from Brooklyn, NY, not to mention Jazzie B as the late night DJ - my feet hurt from the dancing).

7. Make more chutney.

Cameron and the Word of God

2011-12-20T08:29:00.001Z

So the age old 'christian values' versus 'moral decline' debate raises its hoary head again. David Cameron reminds us this is a christian country and that the church must lead a revival of christianity to counter our moral decline. The state must have its order and as brown shirts are out of fashion it comes down to the word of god to keep us in line. Not the radical politics of Jesus Christ of course - for wealth must be allowed to pass through the eye of a needle on its way to heaven and never shall our cheeks be turned in submissive poses of non-violence. It is the omniscient (how god loves a good cctv), omnipotent god of the Old Testament to whom David Cameron refers.
This god of christian values shall smite us, or Pakistanis in the wrong place, from above for our trespasses. He shall ban gay marriages and stone adulters, single mothers or anyone giving birth in mangy estates. Women will remember their place as the bearers of tradition and children with appropriate fathers and white picket fences, staying home and keeping our sweaters loose and our skirts long. The undeserving poor would end their talk of structural inequality and accept their lot, turning into pillars of salt should they look back at the square mile of mammon that is annointed by god's heavenly host, and to which they will never enter.
And above all we will remember that it is our own ungodly ways that got us into this crisis, and only the scarification of recession and the falling to our knees before Argos catalogues and Strictly Come Dancing, beseeching god for forgiveness in the process, will get us out of it. And verily David Cameron would look down upon this world that he had created, and he would cry out 'hallelujah'.

Classifying an Occupation

2011-10-25T11:57:00.001+01:00

Never have I lived in a country that is so determined to classify me. Every government document requests some demarcation of ethnicity, sexuality and/or disability. Then I must position myself as left or right as if there is a boundary somewhere across which I must not pass if I am to be able to express an authentic political opinion.

No wonder that the media and established politicians, and a few academics, are confused by the 'Occupy' movement. They can only use the term 'anti-capitalist' to describe it because they have no classification for 'amorphous bunch of anarchists, bourgeoisie, socialists, christians, communists, buddhists, environmentalists, capitalists with a small 'c', and even some people who work in the city'. The protest doesn't shoe-horn itself into 'left, right, left' and has explicitly stated that they don't know how they are going to achieve their goals which is refreshingly honest. No-one else knows what they're doing either but the government keeps on trying to fit reality into ideology because thinking outside those constraints requires too much imagination.

Spending an afternoon with the Occupy London protest has filled me with hope. Fitting in with my middle-aged sensibilities it's clean and self-organised and there is a working group for everything. There is first aid, a newspaper, legal observers, a university, a kitchen, an ecumenical meditation centre, and solar cells powering much of it. It is reiterated everywhere that 'this is a protest not a party' and the Tranquility Group are on hand to calm anyone down who thinks it's Glastonbury. The General Assembly operates via consensus, which initially filled me with dread reminders of a Gandhian NGO I used to work for (think meetings that went on for hours and decisions held hostage by personalities that could best be described as intransigent). But even in this much larger gathering there seems to be a decision making process and agreements generally adhered to. Okay, the Socialist Workers Party haven't taken down their 'Capitalism is Crisis' banner (it has been agreed that the prominent banner position has to be alternated each week), and no-one wants to be in the 'process' working group' (admin!), but what are we if not human. And this is nothing if not a very human process with frailties and foibles accepted, along with hard work and a long term approach driven by a belief that this could work. There is no spun fig leaf to cover the pretense that one leader, one party, one ideology has all the answers, and no three-line whip to enforce the charade as was seen last night in the British Parliament's debate on a European referendum.

The very presence of the camp on 'hallowed ground', partly, is also raising interesting questions about the commons, both physically in the form of land ownership and the commons that is embedded in institutions. The camp has redefined trespass and now has a working group to map land ownership in London, which will undoubtedly turn out to be a complex web of 'commons now made private' (as in Paternoster Square, the attempted site of the first camp) and 'government but not really commons' (as in some of the site around St Paul's which is 'owned' by the City of London). It's anyone's guess where the boundaries of the commons now lie. Similarly for the commons that are publicly owned and shared institutions. For example, the funding cuts and 'reforms' to institutions such as the NHS and schools are eroding the vestiges of the only bulwark against rampant inequality in this country. Public education and universal health care were at least something to balance out the differences between socio-economic categories.

There is one glaringly obvious gap though in the camp's population ... it is missing representatives from the estates and from the most economically marginalised who are the most vulnerable to the government's contingency plans of funding cuts in order to maintain its largesse to banks and lobbyists. But if the camp can manage to bridge those gaps it will be a force to be reckoned with. The best thing that could come out of the Occupy movement is the possibility of alternative connections and the desecration of classification in the process. With that may come new solutions, new forms of political organisation, a revitalisation of the commons, and a reminder of where power really lies.

Lost in Translation

2011-10-19T10:08:00.000+01:00

The BBC translation guide for the Middle East (with assistance from Mark Regev, BBC spokesperson for Israel and Palestine):

Word for Israeli combatant captured by Hamas = 'hostage'

Word for Palestinian combatant captured by the IDF = 'murderer'

Holding cell for Israeli combatant captured by Hamas = 'dungeon'

Holding cell for Palestinian combatant captured by the IDF = 'prison'

Description of Israeli combatant on his release = 'pale', 'gaunt', 'thin'

Description of Palestinian combatant on his release = none heard

pleasure

2011-10-19T09:50:00.001+01:00

There is a certain species of Londoner that appears at this time of year ... gaunt, pasty, bags under their eyes, starting to develop rickets from lack of sunshine, usually seen wandering around Leicester Square and Curzon cinemas with a moleskin notebook in hand. They are a seasonal reminder that the London Film Festival is on.

Much as I love movies, I am a lightweight in comparison to these seasoned film buffs. First there is the tricky process of selecting which films to see. It used to be that I could throw the programme up in the air and let the fates decide by booking whatever was on the page that was open when it landed. Now I actually have to trawl through webpages which means that any film starting with the letter 'P' onwards is unlikely to get my attention as by that stage my brain hurts trying to decide if the Romanian documentary on water skiing will be more important than the 'dark and gritty' realism of another British film verite. Secondly, I only managed to get tickets to three films. Actually getting any ticket to the festival is in itself a triumph so three isn't bad, but I do wonder how early I have to get up to get a seat that isn't either so far out in the wings or so close to the screen that there is a need for orthopedic support.

But such discomfort is more than made up for by the pleasure to be had in skiving off in the afternoon to see a film, especially when it is Nadine Labaki's 'Where do we go now?'. Sitting in a warm cinema, with a few hundred others (film and cultural studies departments must just close down for two weeks in October), falling in love with a small village in Lebanon, laughing out loud while eating steamed buns from Chinatown, pondering other scenarios where the judicious administration of hash cookies could bring about peace and good will among men (you have to see the film), and then walking out, smiling, into a soft autumn day with that feeling that only comes from knowing that you have shared something special with a small section of humanity who are, at this moment in time, content.

Swim Grid Grrrl, Swim

2011-10-03T18:22:00.000+01:00

So ladies, here's your chance. Airtel are looking for Grid Girls for Delhi's Formula 1 race at the end of the month. You need to be 'confident, fit and glamourous'. There's an aspiration. You also have to take part in a reality programme where you will wear t-backs and hot pants, as well as swim suits and bikinis. But this is not just some beauty pageant, for although you have to share your hobbies and interests, and your height, bust, weight and waist measurements, for the compulsary swim suit round, according to Indian newspaper, First Post, contestants have to not just wear their cozzies but know how to swim.

Now, I confess that I do occassionally watch F1, but only because I want to see justice finally done and the Red Bull management acknowledge that Mark Webber is a better driver than Sebastian Vettel and that they were wrong to rob him of his championship hopes last year. And when I do watch it I have to also confess that I've never seen a pool anywhere near the grid. But I guess knowing how to swim could be handy should it suddenly flood in Delhi on the weekend of the race.

Contestants also need to be able to heft weights, at least the weight of any costumes they may wish to use 'to enhance their look', although usage of said costumes is, fortunately for fashion victims everywhere, subject to approval by the programme producer/channel.

One burden contestants don't have to carry is knowing whether her education qualifications and experience will be considered at the time of screening. The answer, according to the 'frequently asked questions' section of the website, is: 'No, contestants will be judged based on the judging parameters. Past achievements or educational qualifications will not be considered as a criterion for selection'. So if you are a mechanical engineer who could actually design an F1 car, forget about it, as long as you can swim that's all you need to worry your pretty little head about.

Running Amok

2011-08-11T08:47:00.001+01:00

Yes, we're all fine. We haven't been burnt out or had anything stolen, and still have beds to sleep in. What to feel is the big question as the smell of a singed city wafts over my Hackney balcony ...

Basically, I feel tired. I'm now tired of dissecting what happened, especially when it involves hearing comments like 'they have such low IQs'. I wish I had a bar of chocolate for every time, over years of research, I've heard social conflict dismissed by the fundamental attribution error of assigning low IQs or 'uneducated' to an other. Besides, the guerilla tactics, the out-manoeuvring of the police, the coordination, would seem to suggest among some of these young people at least a high degree of strategic ability.

I'm tired of 'law and order' arguments without any acknowledgment of the role of poverty, inequality, boredom, gender, rampant consumerism, unemployment, seeing economic and political elites who have done a fair bit of pillaging in recent years getting away with it unpunished, funding cuts, lack of space, opportunism, catharsis. As a young man in Birmingham said on the news last night ... 'People are tired of struggling'. In Tottenham, unemployment among young black men stands at around 50% (Runnymede Trust). Youth services across the city, particularly in the poorest boroughs, have been slashed and burned. And the youth clubs, as daggy as they may be for some young people, were at least, according to one source, a means to avoid being 'stopped and searched' on the streets. One 'stop and search' too many was the catalyst for Hackney's contribution to 'the riots'. It is reprehensible to burn people out of their homes, but these riots were not necessarily senseless or irrational.

I'm definitely tired of seeing TV news images of young black men looting and neat white women cleaning up afterwards.

I'm tired of people who have never had to face a barrage of missiles and hate saying the police are not doing enough. The water cannon and rubber bullets they demand will not make them any braver or any more in control.

I'm afraid that the veneer of civility that holds it all together has been shown to be painfully thin and suspect many others who have been waiting patiently for something to trickle down to them may be thinking that perhaps they too should just go and take it.

And I'm puzzled by those who say they are disturbed because there was no 'politics' involved, no cause these young people were fighting for, no way of defining these actions into either Left or Right. And yet it was, first and foremost, all about power. And for a few nights at least, the estates had it ... petrifying the rest of London.

How to be good ...

2011-07-27T20:39:00.001+01:00

So ten minutes out of Buddha Bootcamp and what happens ... I'm on the train trying to find my seat ... And there's a pensioner sitting in it. What to do? At the sound of her husband's excuse that they didnt know they had to reserve a seat it crosses my mind that he's lying out of his arse ... It's summer in France and this is a train. You don't get on it love without a reservation. I didn't actually say that. Just thought it. That probably still counts as bad karma. I pride myself however on actually saying 'ce n'est pas grave', and walk up the carriage to find a spare seat. Bugger. No spare seats. It's jamboree season and the train is full of scouts. Hell hath nothing on travelling during scout season. Facing the prospect of standing for an hour (as the scouts have taken all spare capacity and show no sign of getting out of their seats for a middle aged woman) I moan to the conductor who finds me a spare place. The husband and wife show no sign of gratitude and I give them death stares all the way to Limoges. That's probably bad karma as well. I am very attached it seems to displays of gratitude but then Buddha never had to travel on a train full of scouts. And besides, the principle of unreciprocated gifts sucks.

I'm not surprised really at such unBuddhistly thoughts popping into my head when even at bootcamp I had an attack of vipassana vendetta after someone sat in my meditation spot. Okay, it was her first meditation and she probably didn't realise that non-attached buddhists do in fact often get attached to their meditation spots when we've spent hours getting the stack of cushions just the right height and found the perfect shawls that are long enough to keep toes warm as well as head, it's not too near the front to attract the attention of the teacher in case he asks any tricky questions about non-duality, and not too near the back to get the drafts from the door. Attachment seems to grow even more stronger during periods of resource scarcity ... Everyone seemed to need at least three cushions (just in case knees started hurting and more height was required) even though we're only actually using two, and the shawls were all gone in 60 seconds. Good to know that when the apocalypse finally arrives the buddhists will be fighting for the last spot on the life raft as well. I'll just do it with a trained mind, in full awareness as I boot a pensioner out of my seat.

A fine day out

2011-07-04T15:16:00.000+01:00

At the risk of sounding completely bo-ho, it's been a fabulous London weekend. Saturday was spent walking to Southbank with the weather remembering what it's supposed to do in summer. Okay, it's only 22 degrees but leave me with my illusions. It's warm enough to sit outside and sip my Pimms and that's all that matters. We even have our own urban plage now ... two inches of sand on reclaimed sidewalk next to the Thames. It comes with a replica Chowpatty Beach (Mumbai) cafe, where they serve sides of poetry. And along with these visual memorials to hot days in the past comes auditory reminders of joy ... of the squeals of kids running under the hose pipe in the backyard, chasing the dog and getting scratched from razor sharp kikuyu grass ... although at Southbank there is no dog or lawn but never is there so much squealing as when the dancing fountain is turned on.

To these pleasures can be added two seminars at the London Literature festie. The first, a talk on 'London as a Satellite City' with Rana Dasgupta (author of Tokyo Cancelled and Solo) and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera (author of What if Latin America Ruled the World?). The second was Owen Jones (who looks all of 16) discussing his book on Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class. There is an absolute hatred held by some in the UK for those who must sell their labour for a living and have no control over what they do once engaged in that labour. It is an indigenous version of social cleansing based possibly on the fear of retribution for the violence of the industrial revolution.

On my way back home, pondering this hatred, I realised I must now be a Londoner as I could give correct directions to everyone who was lost along the way (although I'm worried the young ladies at Liverpool Street station, heading to Southbank, may not have made it given their lovely high heels had 50 minutes of walking to do).

Home in Hackney, being 90 minutes walk or another world away from Southbank, is having its own festie at the moment: Create (the Hackney Fringe Festival). In an old WWII bunker at the back of a theatre in Dalston, Sukhdev Sandhu created a performance piece of Night Haunts, scenes from the underside of London. I'm not sure I really needed to know that the men who unclog the Victorian sewers of the fat of a 21st century city occassionally eat what they find down there (okay it was an unpeeled orange but really ...!).

The bunker, creating the dark and dank smell of London at night, also provided shelter from the random monstrousness that is a rapidly regenerating Dalston that I pottered through on the way home, just in time to round off my day with the David Hayes vs Wladimir Klitschko heavy weight title fight. It's amazing how watching boxing on a 50 inch high definition plasma screen with slow motion replay can improve one's appreciation of how much it must hurt.

Shiny new technology

2011-06-07T18:17:00.001+01:00

I have now spent hours pondering the Apple Store, building my ultimate iPad. This may not be the most productive use of my time but I'd like to think that Sherry Turkle would be proud of me. Her latest book, 'Alone Together', seems without optimism. We are, apparently, if we don't learn some cyber-manners, doomed to lose the capacity for solitude, and instead we'll just be engaged in lonely conversations with hundreds of strangers. The best line from her recent presentation in London summed it up in this way: we have moved from a state of saying to ourselves 'I have a feeling, I need to make a call', to 'I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text'.

Granted, young Mark Zuckerberg's notions of the death of privacy are ominous, but personally I have cultivated nothing but solitude in the building of my ultimate iPad. It has been hours of uninterrupted, solo, decision making, on colour, memory required, spec, and 'should I wait for iPad3 or go for a cheaper, so-last-year, model'. I know that on Sundays, my iPad, iPhone, laptop and desktop will be turned off (except if I need to read knitting pattern pdfs or am skyping various 'homes', neither of which is particularly detrimental to my spiritual well-being). I know where the 'silent' button is and how to use it. And no technology is ever, EVER, placed on a table during meal times.

The debate over the impact of technology reminds me of doing field work in India in the 1990s when satellite television was rampaging across the cultural landscape, dragging moral panic and fundamentalism behind it. Interviewing three generations of men in one family, the father expressed concern about the impact of channels like MTV on his teenage son, feeling it would 'degrade his morals'. The grandfather told a story of how, at the turn of the 20th century, in a Punjabi village, his parents, respectable village elders, refused to let him go to a travelling theatre's performance of the Ramayana (a classic Hindu mythological story) because they feared it would degrade his morals. Same rhetoric, different medium. The grandfather grew up to be a nice, solid middleclass, gentleman; his son (the father) grew up to be a nice, solid, middleclass gentleman; and I have no doubt his son has grown up to be a nice, solid, middleclass man, with a smart phone. So cheer up Sherry. Give us a bit of time to learn the etiquette and I think we'll be okay.

Marathon Weddings

2011-04-29T12:35:00.002+01:00

Today was the last of the long training runs ... three hours along the canal, down Edgeware Road, through Hyde Park, past Kensington Gardens, a quick hello to the newly weds, and then home again. I am stubbornly refusing to look at any media and am fleeing the country tonight in the vain hope that the French Republic at least will be shunning any talk of THE dress. I understand the need for continuity and tradition, but my wedding gift to Wills and Kate is the freedom to not be royals.

Running the Edinburgh Marathon, May 22nd, 2011

Raising money for vital Breast Cancer Research

Please donate at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/globalroaming

Things Heard in Hawaii

2011-04-05T16:01:00.002+01:00

1. 'Oh I see Elvis everywhere' (US tourist, Kalakaua Avenue, morning)

2. 'So if I want to spend the whole night with you ... how much?'
'$1500'
(Japanese tourist to a very tall young lady, Kalakaua Avenue, Saturday night)

3. 'Was it Jesus or Satan who said that' (US tourist, Diamond Head trail, early morning, while a local guide valiantly attempted to explain Hawaii's diverse flora and fauna in terms of natural selection)

And like magic ...

2011-04-02T08:42:00.003+01:00

After reams of paper, ink, fingernails, cups of tea, mugs of coffee, biscuits, cake ...
After weeks of early mornings, late nights, days in coffee shops, in libraries, on the patio, and on the sofa ...
After buckets of angst, being caught talking to my pen, and wondering did I really eat that half a tube of choc chip cookie dough ... uncooked ....
After weeks of physical deterioration, forgetting to eat altogether, forgetting to shower, drowning in post-it notes, not getting out of the apartment for days ...
After hours of tears when my superb editor returned 1000s of suggested changes when I thought I was almost done ... (and after all this time how can I still be finding mistakes and having new thoughts) ...
Finally ... after all this ... rather suddenly ... just like that ... it's done. I hand over my precious to a publisher and emerge from my chrysalis to find the world is still here and is rather glad to see me again.

But I must say I'd rather run a marathon a week for a year than write another book!

Running the Edinburgh Marathon, May 22nd, 2011

Raising money for vital Breast Cancer Research

Please donate at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/globalroaming

wooliness

2011-01-23T13:22:00.003Z

I darned my socks ... I am a domestic goddess, an icon of DIY feminism, a paragon of anti-consumerism, reduce, reuse, recycle, self-reliance in these days of austerity, and a complete dag. My new darning mushroom and instructions came from the ever so anarchic ladies of Prick Your Finger.

Notes to Self for the New Year

2011-01-01T15:56:00.002Z

1. Convince government of the error of their ways ... scales to fall from eyes of David Cameron, taxes to be raised, public sector cuts reversed, massive investment made in libraries, the arts and education.

2. Win campaign for electoral reform ... remember to vote in the referendum on May 5th ... that's a YES for AV. Then do something about the House of Lords and Lordettes.

3. Remind several Cabinet ministers and prominent businesspeople to pay the taxes they technically, ethically, morally, justly should pay in the UK.

4. Darn those socks that have been sitting in the sewing basket for weeks now.

5. Don't get too excited about the conference in Hawaii in March ... but it's never too early to check I have enough sunscreen and find my swimmers.

6. Knit more, practice cello more, run more, practice French more, drink less coffee.

Day One

2011-01-01T15:42:00.002Z

I'm slothing in my jim-jams with a cup of coffee close to hand to bolster the happy new year's day-after effects. The Hip Hop party on the de Beauvoir Estate on one side of our street finished up about 5am I think. The party in the Gastro Pub on the de Beauvoir Town side of the street finished up about 2am. The in-house DJ played the occasional Hip Hop track so we could wave our hands in the air and bump and grind a bit, but he was mostly a 1980s-1990s pop man (I am comforted that still the youth of today can dance to 'Groove is in the Heart'). I doubt the two sides of our street will ever have a collective street party, and the every-other-day-of-the-year spatial inequality isn't really made any more equal by gut-vibrating sound systems, but at least on the upside our collective 'blase indifference' to each other meant everyone seemed to be having a good time. That has to count for successful urban navigation in some way.

Happy New Year!

Happy pagan festivities

2010-12-23T17:37:00.003Z

It's going to be a very snowy Christmas here in Dublin. At last, it actually looks like all those Christmas cards and carols from my childhood ... Snow flakes on noses and whiskers on kittens! It was always slightly existentially confusing to be surrounded by imaginary snow, eating roast turkey and hot pudding when it was 35 degrees in blazing sun outside. Call me sentimental but there's something lovely about an open fire in the pub, old friends talking shite, cold cheeks, hot whiskies, and 'Driving Home for Christmas' everywhere in the ether. Happy Holidays.

Flying Washing Machines

2010-10-16T08:18:00.006+01:00

His Popeness

2010-09-27T09:28:00.007+01:00

It is with some relief that I can announce that the pope has left Britain. It's not that I'm one of those 'fundamentalist aetheist', aka Richard Dawkins, that came in for much criticism in the previous week. I am well aware of the peace that can be found in any faith. But our propensity to institutionalise faith into a religion has done far more to destroy it than any amount of sex, television, or Jimmy Choo shoes.

I can never erase the years of ritual learnt as the child of a High Church of England mum who was intent on saving our souls. I can still recite the Nicene Creed should ever the need arise. But in seeking solace in a church I have been asked too many times what faith I am to sort the wheat from the chafe at communion time. I cannot lie. I am a sort of protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, humanist type of person. I always wanted to be Catholic as they had a much better youth group in our small town, and much prettier ceremonies, and it's far less confusing just being one thing. But that wasn’t enough to convince the priest that I should share in the body and blood of Christ. I thought flashed through my mind. Had the story of my fall from grace reached these churches that rejected me …? As altar girl in our parish church I got to carry the tall cross before visiting dignitaries but shortly after crashing it into the ‘Everlasting Light’ above the altar the priest ran off with the organist. Really, he did. I was never sure that the two weren’t somehow connected as for punishment I had to spend my Sundays for what seemed like eternity with a succession of locum priests who liked to finish off the wine.

During the pope's visit, the disturbance of such memories was joined by an increasing queasiness at exhortations to combat secularism in Europe by returning religious values to the State. Of course when the pope and all the other British leaders past and present sitting in Westminster cathedral talk about religious values they are not necessarily referring to anything other than Christianity. Otherwise I would imagine they would stop fussing over Iran. My queasiness became worse at the emphasis on a need for more 'morality' in our society. Now fair enough, I never sat through a whole speech, instead relying on Britian's less than moral media to cherry pick what they'd like us to hear/read, but if I was playing Word Bingo and had 'morality' in my list, I'd be winning.

In my book of psalms when any religious leader uses the word morality what they are referring to is the length of a woman's skirt and people's sexual orientation. Now I've read the bible, several times, the old and new bit (note religious childhood mentioned above). I've been to bible study classes, I've waved my arms around, yelled Hallelujah and probably even spoken in tongues. But nowhere in any of this do I recall Christ getting hung up on morality. He socialised with sex workers, tax collectors and lepers. He had a temper tantrum and threw people out of the temple. He was a radical political activist arguing for change in the institutions of religion as it was practiced at the time, with all the inequalities, segregation and patriarchy that has never gone away. And for all of this he was assassinated as befits anyone who suggests that things may need to be a bit more just.

Given that this country, already with growing levels of inequality, is about to enter a time of savage cuts in public services, rising unemployment, crime and anti-immigration politics, I would have thought that a more apt message might have been: 'it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven'. But then an institution as rich as the Vatican (whose bank is currently under investigation for money laundering) may not wish to be reminded of its own mission statement to take a preferential option for the poor.

A Guide to Being Alone

2010-09-01T22:58:00.002+01:00

We have a tendency not to believe in our own existence unless we see it reflected in someone else's attachment to us.

As the lovely Tanya Davis suggests .... it's good to practice being alone ....

A Guide to Pic du Canigou

2010-08-21T11:26:00.009+01:00

Go up into the gods, along a damp, mossy ridge that is covered in mist and rain in the middle of summer. That wasn't in the forecast. Go clockwise, against the general flow of traffic, Catalans wanting to plant their flag on the peak, and trekkers crossing along the spine of the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Reach Chalet des Cortalets in 4.5 hours. Good going, says one of the caretakers as I arrive at 11am. I am solo, can move faster upwards, and there is noone on the trail until the intersection with the main route to the Pic. But speed, as you know, is not the essence of a mountain. Dry off over several hours in front of the fire with a goats cheese salad. Slow down. Do nothing. Read. Watch groups come and go having made their ascent. It is cool and fresh after a week of plains heat suffocating the will to move.

In the evening there are just 20 or so of us staying overnight. I share a table with an English physicist whose French I don't understand, and a Frenchman who soon lets me know that any talk of the World Cup is a sujet tabou. We chat about the weather, identity and the food instead. In France, never let the fact that you are half way up a mountain deter you from a four course meal and du vin.

Be first up with the sun over the mediterranean. You can see Banyuls sur Mer from here. At 6.30 sit with the warden in the kitchen for coffee and bread. He used to be a mountain guide but with a young family he now works as a warden in the summer and a guide in north Africa in the winter. He will see you off on the trail with directions. The Pic (2784m) is clear but still 90 minutes away over vague morain. It is a slow boulder walk and scree slide. The rain and cloud have cleared and remain distant the rest of the day so the view from the top proliferates along the Pyrenees, still patched with snow, across Spain and France, down the Cady Valley. And it's all yours.

There is now the descent. Le Chimenee and 50 metres of fiercely angled scrambling. After 'the fall' (see 2008 blog, Italy), any thought of climbing down anything is no longer a comfortable one. But it's better than going back the way you've come. That's boring. So make like an isard (mountain goat), go slow and in the end you'll get away with only chipping a nail (although your upper arms and shoulders may be a wee bit sore the next day ... perhaps gripping a little tighter than an isard?). And the reward once the chimenee is descended and the morain traversed ... a walk that is a study in perfection. Think gently rolling downhill through a wide valley, into the forest and fields of wildflowers again crossing the Cady river as it begins life torrenting down a narrowing gorge, then walking high above it as it gathers momentum, until eventually coming out at the Refuge de Marialles for a cup of tea and the last of your bread and cheese packed yesterday. Sit on a green hillock looking back up the valley, past crags and high pasture to the tors of the Pyrenees, and begin to yodel.

Now follow the red and white GR10 through lowland forest and come out eventually (9 hours later) next to Les Thermes (a hotspring bath house) where your partner will have conveniently booked you in for a massage and soak followed by a lovely dinner at the only good bistro in Vernet les Bains.

World Cup Take 2

2010-08-21T11:06:00.003+01:00

Apologies for the temporal disjunction but I'm just catching up on my holiday writing ...

03 Juillet 2010
I've spent too many hours in the past fornight watching le foot. I know I risk offending 3 billion people but it is the most singular, frustrating, boring, unjust game ever. In fact, I'd say it's 90% boring and 9% unjust but I'll give it 1% for beauty and that's only in the slow motion replays when you get to see the balance of the player, the streteched muscle in their legs and the bend of the ball around the opponents.

There is so much body contact and hand balling they may as well pick it up and run with it. So much diving, holding shins and ankles with faux grimaces until they get their penalty, so much holding arms and pulling jerseys. So much 'what me? I didn't touch him!' until the replay shows he had him in a half-nelson, stamped on his calf and handed the ball into the back of the net.

I can, however, now understand why soccer induces such rage in people. First of all we have to sit or stand for 90 minutes where nothing happens, and then when something does happen, the team with skill and passion that should win (ie Ghana) is beaten by the team that engages in highly paid strategic cheating (ie Uruguay).

Soccer should just cut out all the running around and go straight to the penalty shootouts.

Keep Your Focus

2010-07-25T09:13:00.009+01:00

Sitting next to Paddington Bear at the Train Station, waiting for a friend also trekking down to Glastonbury this year, I was feeling confidently prepared: new red wellies ... check ... fluorescent fleece skirt, trendy fleece jacket, gloves, beanie with ear muffs, leggings ... check ... bright red wig and false eye lashes ... check ... rain coat and umbrella ... check. I am, after all, an old hand at British festivals now. No more damp, muddy socks, chilblains or mysterious rashes for me.

And then, in a perverse stroke of fate ... the sun comes out, stays out and it's 30 degrees everyday the entire weekend. Damn.

Mustn't grumble. The heat and dust gave Glastonbury a new sheen - extra shiny from all that sweat. Fleece was soon replaced as the dress de jour by as little as possible, including vast quantities of sunflower pasties (the burlesque kind not a Cornish pie) . Occasionally, a flag could be seen crashing in the mosh as its bearer finally succumbed to heat stroke. After trying to coordinate six people at this year's festival I can see their value (apart from often being very witty and elegant). They avoid digital reems of standard festival texts such as ... 'we're by the 18th pylon on the left side as you face the southern stage next to the paramedic with the orange bag directly opposite the Water Aid tower about 50 people from the back'.

Time also buckled under the pressure of the heat. Beginning with calm in the cool of the morning, birds even getting a tweet in edge-ways, but then defying Einstein (or maybe agreeing with him quantum mechanically speaking) it accelerated in all directions. Beer-slowed wandering between performance tents gives way to the final purging late night rush of Shangri-la and Trash City's dystopic Hades of acid house flame throwers.

Exhausted, we were belched into the autobahns that are jammed in a haze of dust and tungsten. 'Keep moving, straight ahead' until finding the turn to Green Fields and the tent powered by bicycle where the haze thickens and slows the spin and the final dissolution of boundaries, and I wonder if the naked druidess in the corner is getting cold yet. Finally, a kind of stillness and calm returns as the disbursed regroup in the right tent (and there's now an app for finding it, bless you Apple!), and time comes to a dead stand still.

This movement is a choreographed miracle. 180 000 people in various states of clarity, and no fighting. Men even appear capable of peeing in the right place. What happens to us when we exit the barricade, I wonder. And what serendipitous magic leads us to wander to the Glade just when Nneka, who noone had heard of before, launches into the blistering 'Focus'. I am now a fan. It's always the unknowns that make a festival, although Fat Boy Slim remixing Eye of the Tiger is up there with special moments. And forget all those indie bands with their dark shirts, dark guitars and dark lyrics (yes, I mean The National). Give me two camp old men with feathers in their top hats singing 'West End Girls' any day (bless you Neil Tennant).

Thanks also to Toots and your Maytals for seemingly infinite minutes of dancing on a Sunday afternoon; thank you Grace, the Agitator, Beans-on-Toast, and Frank Turner for an acoustic set with Billy Bragg that served up some politics with my folk; and thank you Sarah in the Green Fields ... even if we did have to pedal the bike to get the power to the sound system at two in the morning.

Yoga Knots

2010-07-16T13:12:00.003+01:00

There is nothing worse then getting half way through your early morning yoga session (after a dash in the dark to get there because your alarm didn't go off again), and discovering you've put your yoga pants on back to front.

Well okay, maybe the Lib-Con dismantling of the NHS is worse but I'm using the 'Scale of Personal Embarrassment' here, not the 'Scale of Meanness'.

City Space

2010-06-20T09:48:00.003+01:00

My Number 3 New Neighbours have moved in upstairs this weekend, sequentially representing the dilemma of contemporary urban living ... navigating diverse spaces crowded with bodies and noise, not only 'out there' in London streets, but in here, my home, my sanctuary. It's always a period of trepidation ... will they be 'nice', will they be quiet, will they not leave furniture in the front yard, will they recycle, will they not kick footballs into the fresh washing on the line, will they not hold religious ceremonies including singing, chanting, clapping and/or speaking in tongues before 10am on a Sunday morning. Please, we pray silently to whichever goddess we choose to believe in, let me not have to go through the endless rounds of negotiation and outright bribery ('chocolate cake in return for good behaviour') again; please, we pray, let them be just like me.

Utopia: a city created in our own likeness.
Boredom: a city created in our own likeness.

Scandelous Knitting

2010-06-14T10:35:00.005+01:00

Any media reporting bloodshed at this year's annual Knit In Public Day Treasure Hunt/Knit Bingo are grossly exaggerated.

Okay, needles were drawn, 10 paces taken and accusations of cheating were flung across the table laden with flapjacks and brownies, but the Meandering Catwalkers held their ground. OUR SCARF, which took five hours of knitting while simultaneously walking through crowded London streets, avoiding various assorted football supporters, Italian tourists, the royal family (her maj's birthday so they came out to wave at the plebs), Coldstream Guards (and don't ask them if they get hot in those bearskin hats ... they do ... and they're sick of people asking), naked cyclists (it was International Naked Cycle Day as well), route masters, black cabs, tourist rickshaws, buskers and bollards, WAS THE LONGEST!

In honour of triple yarn over lace knitting ... noone specified which stitch we had to use ... that will be one bottle of wine to the outranked, outsider, 'whiff of the colonial about them' team, ta muchly (goes some way to making up for the German mauling in the World Cup last night), along with a saucer of smug satisfaction.

And if you ever wondered where 'stitch and bitch' got it's name ....

Ambient London

2010-06-11T23:12:00.004+01:00

Shunned, the second level cello class at the Mary Ward Adult Education Centre is exiled into the wilderness (along with all the rest of the string ensemble). Banished by the neighbours no longer able to put up with two hours of practice each week and neo-liberal education that would rather have 30 language students than 5 cellists taking up a classroom. I'm blaming the violins ... two years worth of lessons and still they can't hit high C without scaring away cats and potential students.

Noise leaks. My back neighbours sit outside on a warm summer evening and laugh. Across the road reggae pumps into the street from an open loft window. It competes with Alicia Keys and Cheryl Cole downstairs (you can always tell when X Factor is back on TV as the teenagers gather to practice their dreams of stardom ... a practice which feels vaguely familiar). Kids toss coins and kick their ball ... thump ... doof ... Mr Chopin's piano and Mrs Boccherini's violin are practicing somewhere in the street. The Mary Ward String Ensemble, for now, will be silent.

The Politics of Managing Uncivil Change

2010-04-23T13:56:00.005+01:00

The possibility of a backlash against mainstream politics in this coming election has raised the prospect of increased support for the British National Party (BNP), following on from its relative success in the 2009 European elections. This has led to questions about why someone would vote for a party that is so extreme in its rhetoric and policies.

The simple answer that people feel overwhelmed by migration is complicated by the Institute for Public Policy Research findings released this week that nine out of ten local authorities with the highest proportion of votes for the BNP have had lower than average levels of recent migrant settlement. Instead, the party, it seems, assumes greater legitimacy in areas where there are high levels of economic, social and political exclusion. In many ways, this is unsurprising. Whether living next door to a migrant or not, there has long been an association made between deprivation and increased expressions of racism, and the findings do not mean that those excluded do not blame migration for the conditions they find themselves in.

The findings could also be explained by another argument: that, rather than simply anti-immigration motives, a vote for the BNP is a response to ‘change fatigue’, that is, an acting out of frustration in the face of transformations over which we have no control. In so doing, an attempt is made to reclaim some sense of power. Managing change can be a stressful process as anyone who has moved house, changed jobs or ended a relationship knows. And in just forty years, powerful social and economic influences such as de-industrialisation and globalisation have radically changed British society. Exclusion and inequality have been exacerbated, and the gap between policy-makers and those impacted by their decisions increased by the influence of transnational organisations and failing democratic institutions within the UK.

As suburbs, economies and lifestyles visibly change we can reach the limits of things as usual. Collective norms are disrupted, for example, when industries die, when our streets change and we no longer recognise familiar patterns, be it respect or groceries on the shelf. Anomalies and contradictions in former routines and beliefs appear, unable to be classified or ignored, generating a sense of dissonance as a result. A process of grief, of adjustment to loss, can be evoked and an internal struggle in response to that loss follows. There is a search for stability as ‘the way things used to be’ and ‘the way things are now’ grate and jar against each other. As a result, for some, often communities or individuals already marginalised, low in resilience and with limited choice anyway, fatigue sets in and change meets the determination of our inherent desire for continuity of meaning and the predictability of life.

There is no handbook to manage this change, until the BNP, or parties like it, proffer one in the form of a cultural identity: historically questionable on closer inspection, a bit blurry around the edges perhaps, but an offer of fundamental certainty nevertheless with all the privileges that bestows for the ‘indigenous’ Briton. With this cultural identity, and its vociferous, impossible attempts to define Britishness, comes order and place, geographically and temporally. Britons have a past, some 7000 years of it according to the BNP, and will have a future.

Current official policies of social cohesion do little to address that defensive position because of the lack of recognition of its connection to exclusion and the struggle for some degree of control over the direction of change, leaving the way open for the BNP to manipulate fears. Word of caution, then. Attacks against the BNP as simply racist thugs without acknowledging the excluded reality of its supporters could possibly increase its vote. People ticking that box on May 6th may be afraid for the future, or tired of feeling they are always at the wrong end of other people’s decisions. The BNP then becomes a surrogate form of change management if other more civil means are not found.

New Maps

2010-04-22T23:27:00.001+01:00

Just caught part of the Leaders Debate in the UK (we have an election on May 6th for those of you not in the neighbourhood). The theme was meant to be international relations. We had a lot on Europe, a bit on the USA and Afghanistan, nothing on the Middle East (except for references to Iran and its nuclear programme as a justification for the UK government spending £100 billion on nuclear submarines), nothing on Israel's nuclear programme, nothing on Palestine, nothing on China, ASEAN, or India. Asia fell off the map.

Everything I've Ever Needed to Know I've Learnt from Climbing Up Things: Commandment III

2010-04-16T17:59:00.000+01:00

Thou shalt accept that things will go wrong so just deal with it.

There is a time in every traveller’s life when they will have a shocker. Can’t be helped, it’s inevitable, usually brought on by weather (see Commandment Seven) or other people (see Commandment Five). Apart from weather, people and altitude, there are other hazards that require some caution, like village dogs. Cycling through the Tibetan Himalayas, mastifs litter the road side, sleeping, and are best left to lie unless the thought of rabies injections is something that appeals to you. My closest encounter came in a village when, finally giving into irritation at yet another attempt by kids to see what would happen to the funny looking foreigner if they put a stick through my wheels, I had an attack of PUTA. PUTA, better known as a dummy spit when cultural difference gets too much for frail Western temperaments, stands for Psychologically Unfit to Travel in Asia. Surprisingly, this is an actual medical condition noted in World Expedition's handy medical manual. My PUTA led to kids screaming which woke drooling mastifs, who saw my plump legs. My screaming alerted the village elders who yelled at the children to rescue me. Arms, legs, language, rocks and dog fur flew through the air. Here endeth the lesson.

A Good Read

2010-03-29T13:45:00.002+01:00

If you fancy a good read over Easter I'd recommend Jeremy Rivkin's The Empathic Civilisation ... there is hope.

Cultural Inflections

2010-03-05T09:40:00.003Z

So one of my British colleagues has recently returned from attending a workshop in Sydney where he was confronted with the full force of Australian directness. Asking another participant what they had thought of the previous speaker's presentation, the Australian researcher replied: 'Personally, I think it was a load of soft cock'. My colleague is still recovering although now he's used to it at least that's one person I can swear in front of. Oh the agony of having to watch what I say in the office (or on the street ... twice I've been told off now by complete strangers for swearing in public when almost involved in cycling accidents).

And if you thought deciding whether to use Miss, Ms, Mrs, or Mr was bad, try filling out a government form in the UK. Here you get to choose from:

Baron
Baroness
Dame
Dr
Judge
Lady
Lord
Miss
Mr
Mrs
Ms
Professor
Reverend
Sir

Where's Pauline?

2010-02-15T01:08:00.003Z

Pauline Hanson is moving to Britain? Why? Has anyone mentioned to her that the UK is technically one of the most super-diverse countries in the world. But then again, the way the British National Party are gaining ground, and with the Conservatives on the way in, she may feel right at home. And she'll get good fish and chips.

I'm getting a bit annoyed though that I packed my bags and moved over here to get away from John Howard (who's now gone and reincarnated into the shape of David Cameron who's about to run this country with his faithful Ken Clark promising deeper cuts to public services than even Margaret Thatcher could manage ... oh joy that will be to behold) and Pauline Hanson (who's now coming over here). I'm running out of places to run away to.

Liquid Modernity

2010-02-08T20:23:00.003Z

This is where Bauman's fluidity ends ... crashing against the concrete, the painter in Connaught Place hits the pavement as the tired, coir rope, balancing his swing two stories high, snaps. The blood from his head runs out.

Pacts with the Devil

2010-02-08T19:37:00.005Z

So the Reverend Pat Robertson, in case you've not heard, has decided that Haiti is cursed because the Haitian people made a 'pact with the devil' in return for their freedom from French rule. True, those pacts with the Devil can be tricky things to get out of. US foreign policy, for example, is still trying to find a way to buy its soul back after it was offered up to Lucifer in return for the horned one's assistance in various coups and the installing and/or support of/or turning a blind eye to such luminaries as Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier, Pinochet, Noriega, the Contras, Marcos, the Shah of Iran (okay that was with the help of the British government which has also misplaced its soul somewhere), Saddam, Israel's occupation of Palestine and it goes on. It's a long list that continues but then loss of soul possibly became irretrievable anyway after supporting the Pol Pot regime rather than the communist Hun Sen in Cambodia in the 1970s. I'm not quite sure how much you have to sell to Satan to get away with that one. While you're working that out, Mr Robertson, I suggest removing the forest from your eye.

Random Musings on the Opening Gambits of the Great Game 2010

2010-01-18T16:54:00.015Z

Snow has the capacity to silence London. Somehow it absorbs the rumble of tube trains and traffic and shrill class-riddled politics. Unfortunately, it's now thawed and the election campaign has begun. The opening gambit from Gordon Brown ... New Labour is back and the Middle Classes must be wooed.

Just exactly who these Middle Classes are I can't quite tell but I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to fit in there somewhere. In his speech this week to launch this 'new' strategy, Gordon informed us:
"A fair society is one where everyone who works hard and plays by the rules has a chance to fulfil their dreams whether that's owning a bigger house, taking a holiday abroad, buying a new car or starting a small business''.

I'm thinking of the dreams of people who might just want comfortable, secure, affordable housing, no matter how big it is. Extending this a bit further, I'm thinking of the dreams of urban planners to create beautiful, open, slow living spaces, sustainable cities with affordable public transport so we may not even need a new car. I'm dreaming of a country that is a world leader in innovative technology, where educators have the resources to provide free life-long learning to create a population that is curious, critically reflexive, and adaptable to a changing world. I'm thinking of the dreams of every environmentalist in the country that we have an inspiring economic policy that creates thousands of green jobs in renewable energy. As for holidays abroad, I'm thinking of the dreams of young people to be able to move across a postcode boundary without fear, before even contemplating getting to the airport. I'm thinking they are also possibly dreaming that the government doesn't raise University fees too much to give them a fighting chance of paying it back in their working lifetime. I'm thinking of the dreams of anyone who gets up every morning and thinks what an awesome thing life is and wants their kids to share it. I'm thinking of 'dream' speeches ... Mandela, Martin Luther King ... dreams of freedom and equality.

Of all the possible dreams we could have what do we get from 'New Labour Mark II' ... Gordon Brown's dream that we will vote for him because he thinks all we want is bigger homes, a holiday abroad and new cars.

Is that it? Is that all New Labour think we are capable of aspiring to?

Personally I dream of an ethical foreign policy, a proper democracy with accountable politicians who realise they are just representatives of we the people, and an unlimited supply of fair trade wool to knit socks with.

Mr Brown ignored my dangerously flashing, slender pointed 3.25 mm needles and continued ... there will be more Middle Class jobs than ever before apparently and education is the key, setting a target of 75% of people aged under 30 to have access to either university or technical college. Fab. Only didn't you just cut the higher education sector's budget by almost £900 million Gordon? And didn't you just fine the sector £3700 for every extra student we took on above the government's quota to try to prevent young people ending up in unemployment? While many other countries in western Europe seem to be investing in higher education to get themselves out of recession and arguing that even 3 years isn't enough to properly train new graduates, we get larger class sizes, fewer teachers, and the prospect of two year degrees .

Mr Brown's 2IC (or 1IC possibly), the Dark Lord (Mandelson), has announced that the 50p tax rate for high earners will be abandoned as soon as possible as part of this effort to woo the middle classes. This is the top tax rate that affects those earning over £150 000. Given that the average wage in the UK is something around £26 000 (£531 per week for men and £426 if you happen to have female genitalia) I'm not sure which Middle Class Lord Voldemort is aiming for.

There is a great expression that I have learned to love in Britain ... numpty ... translated from the Scottish to mean 'general foolishness'. New Labour is numpty. I'm not being party-ist though. David Cameron's Conservative Party is as numpty. David has announced he will bring in tax breaks for married couples which will cost us 100s of millions of pounds ... because getting a ring on my finger will undoubtedly ensure that any offspring I happen to produce will never do anything naughty like take drugs, spray graffiti on walls, get pregnant as a teenager, or wear a hooded sweater.

In my desperation, and to the strains of a marching tune, Left-Right-Left-Right, I find myself strangely attracted to Nicolas Sarkozy. Okay he's indulging in the usual misguided attempts to define French identity (which can be anything except Islamic basically), but he's also talking about a Carbon Tax (potentially not the fairest in targetting big polluters but at least he tried) and institutionalising new indicators to measure the 'wealth' of a country by bringing in Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz to head a commission to work on it. Apparently their final report concluded that GDP should not be the only measure of progress but that the overall quality of peoples' lives is also important. It's not how much we consume but how we feel. Okay, so many of us have been saying this for quite some time now but at least he's trying ...

In the general gloom of the times I've bought myself some new red shoes. They look lovely in the snow and make me feel good, as does the feeling of snow on my nose and being able to wear wellies to work. I shall wear my new red shoes with the socks that will be created through the hours of interminable double speak that will emerge from the mouths of our democratically elected representatives that we are about to be subjected to in the media over the next five months. I will drop stitches in rage and frustration at the general numptiness of politics in the UK, but I will persevere and dream of how lovely my new socks will look with my new red shoes and I'll feel better.

Surviving Britain's Winter Storms: Tip 2

2010-01-09T14:41:00.002Z

We've exhausted the box set of Blakes 7, Pride and Prejudice, and all of David Cronenberg's work (yes yes I get it ... technological mutation and questioning Cartesian boundaries of body and mind, not to mention sexuality and gender ... Long Live the New Flesh!)

There's nothing left but ... the entire box set of The Wire ... with subtitles.

Back in a couple of weeks. We should start thawing out by then.

Everything I've Ever Needed to Know I've Learnt from Climbing Up Things: Commandment II

2010-01-09T14:23:00.002Z

Commandment Two

Thou shalt all suffer from altitude headaches and anyone who doesn’t shall be beaten about the head until they know what it feels like, for this is no ordinary headache. Imagine a vice getting a good grip around your temples and being squeezed tighter and tighter until the body becomes divorced from the mind and decides it will just do its own thing. Altitude in general does strange things to the body. The third and final hut on Kilimanjaro, at about 5000 metres, can be seen from several kilometres away but it is like wading through treacle to get to it which is very confusing for the brain as there is no visible sign of resistance. The question of food at altitude is also problematic. You may be starving but put so much as a piece of four day old bread in your mouth and your stomach will instantly heave. There is nothing for it but to go to bed, at 4.30pm, and wait it out till it is time to get up to begin the final push to the summit. As you wait it out in your tent or hut it is decreed that one by one people will begin to keel over. Someone will throw up in their balaclava and all over the hut floor, and someone else will collapse in the corridor and have to be carried out for some fresh air. In this instance it was so cold outside he had to stand in the toilets for 20 minutes. The toilets are sensibly situated some distance from the huts: they are pits, they stink and altitude does funny things to your stomach and your aim. So imagine how bad you must feel to choose to stand in a latrine until you feel better. Altitude sickness induces a certain amount of passion; mostly a desire to get off a mountain as quickly as possible.

Everything I've Ever Needed to Know I've Learnt from Climbing up Things: Commandment I

2009-12-30T10:40:00.005Z

In the beginning there was a tendency to climb up on the roof any time dad left the ladder out to escape the confines of four walls full of noise. Then an accidental opportunity to climb Kilimanjaro while bumping across East Africa in the back of a truck with twenty other backpackers. And from there the ten commandments for women with altitude were revealed.

Commandment One
Thou shalt ascend only one way - slowly. There are those who will be found on any trek who will attempt to win the ‘first-into-the-huts’ prize each night. They can generally be spotted by the latest gortex gear and having all the right food - power bars, protein shakes etcetera. But don’t feel inferior because you have three day old bread and vegemite. Speed counts for nothing up high and those that try it shall be struck down – see Commandment Two.

On Walking: Part I

2009-11-22T08:41:00.010Z

Surviving Britain's Winter Storms: Tip 1

2009-11-14T17:04:00.003Z

Settle in for the weekend with all six hours of the original BBC production of 'Pride and Prejudice'.

Oh Mr Darcy!

Negotiating Notting Hill

2009-09-08T11:51:00.003+01:00

Each year after Notting Hill Carnival there is debate in media columns and talk back radio about whether the Carnival has outgrown its current site. ‘The streets of gentrifying Notting Hill can no longer accommodate Europe’s largest street party’, is one argument. ‘The Caribbean community has moved on and so should the carnival’ is another. On reflection, there are perhaps two deep seated fears being presented in these arguments: first, fear of the crowd, its sheer size and unpredictability; second, the fear of the stranger and his/her ambiguity.

The popular belief is that crowds are volatile and equal trouble. Such impressions have ultimately led to crowd control tactics such as ‘kettling’. However, psychologists at St Andrews University, researching how people behave at demonstrations, large sporting or music events have found that there is wisdom embedded in crowds which nearly always act in highly rational ways, and are more likely to cooperate than panic in an emergency. The findings pointed to an ‘identity shift’ which drives people in a crowd to act in the best interests of themselves and those around them. Decades earlier, Elias Canetti wrote of similar sensations when he described the individual’s sense of transcendence when subsumed into a crowd, now free of the burden of distance from others.

Trying to make my way up Ladbroke Grove during Carnival it is hard to feel a sense of transcendence. There is at first a sense only of discomfort. There is a feeling of suffocation as my 5’ 2” frame is squeezed on all sides, pulled back, loses sight of my partner, and becomes surrounded by strangers.

According to Canetti, ‘there is nothing that man (sic) fears more than the touch of the unknown. (…) It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched’. Not just any crowd though. A crowd in which we lose our fear of being touched by the unknown is a crowd that is already dense with familiarity. This is a closed crowd; a crowd that sets its boundaries and desires permanence at the expense of disorderly growth.

The open crowd, a Notting Hill crowd, is another experience altogether. It is potentially limitless and exists so long as it grows, pulling people, barbeque smoke and sequins into its wake as it roils its way through the neighbourhood, disintegrating as quickly as it began when it reaches sunset.

Perhaps then the tensions that infiltrate Notting Hill Carnival are not generated in the diversity of people per se, but in the dynamics of closed and open crowds, order and spontaneity. Their meeting can be fraught as incursion into each other’s territory is unwittingly made. The closed crowd may not even appear on the streets. Its adherents appear silent, invisible in cultural frameworks dominated by established social hierarchies (for example, men, capital, Englishness). Its boundaries are of course always contested (for example, by women, youth, or other cultural frames of reference) and sometimes breached by the open crowd. But the open crowd’s impermanent nature may not provide any lasting infrastructure on which to build equality and can block a thoroughfare as easily as any gated community.

On a daily basis then we must negotiate with either crowd, sometimes going with the flow, sometimes stepping to the side to avoid collision; watching, always watching. These negotiations are inflected by personal dispositions of, as Bauman puts it, mixophilia and mixophobia: the love of the city and all its crowds, and its inverse proposition, the fear of the city with all its strangers.

Adding to our repertoire of skills that as individuals we deploy to navigate the city, we find a means to move. Holding hands, forming a human chain, and like water, sliding between the cracks of space that mysteriously open up once some unseen pressure of presence is applied to the crowd, we make our way up Ladbroke Grove.

Electoral Reform in the UK

2009-08-10T19:23:00.002+01:00

The UK has one of the most anachronistic voting systems I've ever had to use. First-Past-the-Post means that the current government, which had about 30% of the popular vote, has 100% of the power. So if you're interested in creating a system that is fairer, and that has the possibility of creating a democracy that actually incorporates representation and participation, feel free to check out the work of the Electoral Reform Society.

These boots were made for walking ....

2009-08-04T17:52:00.010+01:00

I have included a picture at the end of this blog of what's left of my feet. It's not for the sensitive. It is what happens when you run, walk, shuffle, hobble for 15 hours, 53 minutes and 40 seconds over 50 miles of sodden bog in sodden shoes and sodden socks burning up over 6000 calories in the process. Some of you have already shared the sado-masochistic pleasure of an endurance event with me. And many of you have sworn you will never indulge in such pleasure again. But I ask you, like chocolate ... can you ever really have too much? There is always that little bit of a craving to go further. And so it is that yet again I'm giving up my Saturdays and several nights a week and pints of real ale and cleaning the house and a social life for 3 months to train for the great Lakeland 50, a run that takes in at least four lakes and as many Fells passes in the lake district of northern England. There is a 100 mile event run at the same time but that's just plain crazy.

http://www.lakeland100.com/
http://www.lake-district.gov.uk/

Now 'run' may be a bit of misnomer. Taking the middle ground like a good Buddha I figured walking the ups and running the downs and the flat would be fine enough. The fact that I wouldn't get to see the course before the event, that we had to be able to navigate at night, and my training ground was Richmond Park, London, not known for its Fell like conditions, more manicured trails and wandering stags, did not deter me from making predictions about my finish time. And anyway, the weather forecast was for dry and mild conditions.

Given a list of all the things that could have gone wrong, having deformed feet at the end of it all is not too bad. There was a moment when an early checkpoint ran out of water and bottles had to be filled with coca cola. There was a moment when, finally finding myself on my own on the fourth section, all map reading skills went the way of my cap in howling gusts of wind, and I managed to take the wrong path finding myself in a caravan park on the wrong side of a river. Worse of course is joining another team for a night section and insisting you know the way because you'd been right up to then and would have been right this time technically if we'd been in Chapel Stile instead of Elswater. It was fortunately only a ten minute detour. There was of course the weather. It had lashed on the poor 100 mile runners the night before and while we were spared rain most of the day the damage was done ... the trails disappeared under bog and puddles and raging torrents as the water made its way down the peaks to the lakes below.

But in return for these hardships, I got to see some spectacular scenery (when I remembered to take my eyes off the path to look up at the scenery although this risked serious ankle injuries as the path at times was just a guess that the rivulet running over rocks hidden under shoulder high bracken was heading in the right general direction). I got to eat some amazing malty fruity cake that someone's mum had made by the truck load to feed some 200 competitors at 14 checkpoints staffed by the loveliest volunteers that tired, sweaty, dirty competitors could ask for. I got to be inspired by fellow Fells shufflers in what is clearly a sport for the older generation. I hardly saw anyone under 30 years. I shared a seat on the bus to the start with Janet, a woman in her 50s at least who still runs sub 4 hour marathons 3 to 4 times a year and had just completed the Long Distance Walker's Association's annual 100 mile event. Finishing in 14 hours, 22 minutes, Janet passed me half way through the second section and that was the last I saw of her. There are also the eccentrics that only endurance sports can bring out. I wonder if the man and his dog made it? The mad Italian who registered in the 100 miles just in front of me eventually finished in 42 hours, 40 minutes and 31 seconds! Torelli Giovanni Battista, you are a legend!

But I think the real reason we do it is the that there is nothing more guaranteed to bring out the best in people than sharing adversity. Even a self-inflicted one. My utmost thanks to Shelley, Ellen, Allen and Tracey who adopted me at Chapel Stile, the second last checkpoint with 20 km to go through unmarked sheep paddocks, bogs and bracken. If they hadn't so graciously given me their spare torch and led the way, offering as much support to me as to their own team members, I would still be wandering around the Fells trying to get home without my head torch (which blew a fuse at about 1am), looking for a 'notch in the skyline' that marked the beginning of the descent into Coniston and home (seriously, that was the instructions on the route guide ... hello! it's night time guys!!!). And there is no better feeling than to share the experience in the pub or around the breakfast table in the guest house with fellow survivors, easily spotted the next day by their limping gait and bandaged toes.

For the statisticians among you, the winner of the 100 mile made it back in 22 hours, 46 minutes and 29 seconds. The winner of the 50 mile made it back in 8 hours, 29 minutes and 7 seconds. This would have required not only running up the hills but also making like the Man from Snowy River and bolting down the other side on slippery, rocky steep descents. Only one female 100 miler made it back, in 31 hours, 47 minutes and 3 seconds. In the 50 mile the first woman made it back in 9 hours, 51 minutes and 19 seconds ... 6 hours before I hobbled over. I'd like to think that I'm not that competitive, that it's all about just improving my own times, that it's just between me and the mountains, but bugger it ... I really wouldn't mind decreasing that gap next time. Or perhaps going that little bit further ... perhaps another 50 miles further ... :-)

Bad Karma, Bad

2009-07-23T20:44:00.008+01:00

I know I shouldn't ... this is a meditation and yoga retreat after all ... but you know that tall, blonde woman, the one who always does her chores cheerfully, the one with the beatific smile on her face all the time in the meditation sessions, who moves with grace and composure during yoga, who has two perfect children and who doesn't have a crease or stain on her clothes despite camping in the field for a week, and who has been nothing but polite to me whenever we run into each other ... I really don't like her.

A few more hours of lotus position and a thousand Om Shanti Oms I expect should fix it.

Gone in 60 Seconds

2009-07-22T12:40:00.007+01:00

Ever feel like you’re sixty seconds behind in a conversation?
Ever say ‘yes’ to things you really shouldn’t say ‘yes’ to?
Ever wonder what everyone was laughing at and only getting the joke ten minutes later?
Ever feel like you're regressing to childhood, with that familiar sense of humiliation when you not only get the answer wrong but answer a completely different question because you had no idea what the person was saying?

After almost three years in Europe I'm learning to live with my linguistic ineptitude and the looks of pity from European colleagues that slip gracefully between three languages in one sentence when conversing with each other. But the sense of loss at not being able to understand other people's life stories because I simply cannot understand a series of sounds that convert into a language was too much to bear.

So I have made it a project to learn French. My second year is almost up. I can read Le Monde .... well the giste of it anyway. I can ask for anything in a shop but have no idea what the response is from the shop keeper. I can find my way around French towns but have no idea where the lost French drivers, who always stop and ask me for directions, want to go. The words I painstakingly look up in my dictionary are gone from memory in sixty seconds, but the time delay between thought and speech and back again can make one sentence last an eternity.

When people speak to me in French I wish with all my powers of concentration that it will miraculously, osmotically, make sense. It doesn't. I speak with the best French accent I can muster but it is the illegitimate offspring of Crocodile Dundee. Despite my mum's best efforts and the expense of elocution lessons, we antipodeans are deafened at birth by a strine that could cut glass. And while that might be great at hampering any attempt at European pretension in an effort to enforce our sense of egalitarianism, it is by no means practical any more in a global world. It's time for drastic action and the compulsory learning of another language, preferably two, one Asian, one European. No common borders with any other country is not an excuse!

So off we go to spend some of my summer vacation at language school in Normandy, north-west France. And it's not all bad. It’s France after all and I get to eat dessert twice a day and have a glass of wine with lunch and then fall asleep in the next class. I get to drink my coffee from a bowl. I don’t have to do anything practical in the optional schedule and can therefore ignore subjunctive conjugations and choose modern French Poetry if I want. Guillaume Apollinaire’s ‘Zone’ is akin to Elliot’s ‘Wasteland’ to give you an idea of how much fun it was to translate. And I can eat my cereal with a teaspoon because that’s all they have in the refectory (the French being more into croissants for breakie so why would they bother having a stash of grandes cuillères pour les Anglais). Your man from Ireland threatened rebellion on the first morning unless he got a big spoon. Ah the narcissism of minor difference, Mr Freud.

At language school we can also learn to overcome the feeling of humiliation (except maybe 'big spoon man') because we soon learn, among the conjugations and reflexive pronouns, that there is nowhere else where all linguistic, syntactic and grammatical mistakes are forgiven. There is nowhere else where one can be completely and utterly joyfully lost in translation – because ignorance is bliss and completely free of all responsibility. And if all else fails, sign language and ‘merde’ are generally understood by all.

There are Pixies in the Fields of Glastonbury Missing their Ears

2009-07-08T17:38:00.003+01:00

Glastonbury, as some of you may know, is regarded as a mystical place by many, dominated as it is by an ancient tor and the hint of intersecting ley lines. You may be sceptical of such things but after spending time there I think it’s safe to say that strange things do happen, particularly on the last weekend of June each year.

There are pixies in the fields of Glastonbury missing their ears. I know this because I saw the bowl of ears for myself on the counter of the EarthHeart Café, downtown Worthy Farm, in between Green Fields, Shangri-La and Trash City, at the end of a corridor of duck board and cementing mud that sucked my paisley wellies into its grip. The composition of that mud is itself an earthy mystery.

Now it’s just asking for trouble to put a bowl of pixie ears on a counter next to the chocolate ‘energy’ balls. I spent much of the rest of the day mulling over the mystery of where the pixies went, who had taken their ears and whether this had been okay with the pixies to begin with. It was also a mystery why we all turned up, tens of thousands of us, at 12.30 on a Saturday morning after about 4 hours sleep, to have a sing-a-long with Rolf Harris. There he was, wobble board and deft lines entertaining us with Sunrise, Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport and Two Little Boys. It’s a mystery what the ballerinas in wellies were up to; why the Biker Urban Morris Dancers thought it was a good idea; why people play gazoos and march at the same time; and what the Gujurati Brass Band made of it all. Was that really a bunch of bananas chasing a monkey? There’s the mystery of the ‘Patter man’, who just did the banter between each of his band’s songs, and then jerked around a bit on the stage while the rest of his band played their instruments or their computers.

It’s not really a mystery as to why a café may keep messing up orders if no-one stays sober behind the counter, but there’s still the mystery of all the men in skirts, including my personal favourite … the Utili-Kilt … with appropriate pockets so the ready Scot can keep his leatherman close to hand. Perhaps this is an easy mystery to solve though: the space of Worthy Farm, ring-fenced by a security barricade the Pentagon would be proud of, is a giant metaphorical sandpit (or mud slide depending on the weather) which allows all sorts of creative play within its perimeter (as long as you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else). So playing with gendered identity is perfectly compatible with all the other psychedelic tropes. The mystery of all those empty nitrous oxide canisters scattered about … they must have been used to fill hundreds of balloons.

I have no problem with people’s chemical preferences – I would imagine it’s much more preferable to wake up after half a disco biscuit than after drinking the tetra packs of Tesco’s ‘Red Spanish wine’ carried from stage to stage by some revellers. Hmmm tasty. But it has to be pointed out that it is a mystery to me why people suddenly become capable of mistaking inane conversation for what they obviously think is making them sound incredibly intelligent and interesting. At two in the morning no-one really wants to hear about the digital version of 19th century European battles you made including authentic replications of 180 different uniforms with detailed descriptions of each one!

I adored the mystery of the man wearing a knitted gimp mask. Note to self … idea for new business … ‘GimpKnits’. Speaking of hygiene … did I really not clean my teeth today? And a survival tip for Glastonbury toilets: back in, don’t look down and DO NOT under any circumstances touch anything. If it can be at all arranged, get yourself a man/woman who can get you hospitality area tickets … worth it alone for the toilets and showers. The latrines do have a surreal look about them at night though: picture mist from warm substances rising up in the cold air, caught by the tungsten lighting of temporary security beacons. And wreathed in said mist is the imposing figure of Chemical Elvis aka Beast of Burden aka Dingo Baby taking a piss, standing head and shoulders above the parapets, all 6’6" of him in his Napoleonic headgear trimmed with feathery bits.

But I shouldn’t use language like ‘piss’. I’ve decided to clean up my potty mouth after a session at the poetry tent where every bright young thing had to say ‘fuck’ at some point in their performance. Last time I checked my dictionary ‘fuck’ did not translate into ‘authentic’, ‘street cred’ or ‘cool’. Did Shakespeare use profanities?! No he did not … not explicitly anyway. Okay lots of double entendre and hand actions but nothing to shock the kiddies and the ladies in the upper circle too much. I did feel for the poor Shakespearean performers who’ve probably studied for years at RADA and now had an audience of the von Trapp family and a dozen or so friends of Lucy in the afternoon sunshine with diamonds. Note to performers: don’t be wearing fake sheep’s heads when your audience consists of people also trying to find pixies missing their ears. I can report however that the fluidity of Shakespeare’s language sounds just as good performed by actors in solidifying wellies.

There is the mystery of a banner, ‘My Dear Horse: You’re not a Pony Anymore’, held aloft in the crowded mosh so that all those who understood its meaning could slide toward the bearer, holding hands, forming a human chain, like water sliding between the cracks of space that mysteriously open up once some unseen pressure of presence was applied to the crowd. I also liked the T-shirt declaring: ‘Not all who wander are lost’. This is a mantra for a weekend at Glastonbury. Days can be spent wandering from stage to stage, sitting in the fields, doing the odd workshop on spinning or wood turning, getting a reflexology session, texting friends with ‘Where r u’, playing ‘who’s that band’, and pulling out the schedule to work it out. It is a universal truth that you will hear the greatest music ever (for example, the Carnival Collective one day, the Peatbog Faeries the next) just as they are finishing their set.

The real mystery is that despite the crowds (180 000), the complaints of ‘oh it’s so middle class now’, the toilets, and the sheer noise and scale of the thing, Glasto still remains a magical place. I think the pixies will be okay.

The Paradox of Mobility

2009-06-02T17:43:00.002+01:00

After watching recent news images of Afghani refugees climbing razor-wired fences around a Greek port, I prepared myself for the tabloid headlines screaming ‘invasion’ that would inevitably come the next day and for the government to announce yet more measures to sure up the borders of Great Britain. It seemed impossible to imagine a time when politicians in Europe actually encouraged ‘free’ movement, and discouraged the use of passports. Writers in the 16th century extolled the virtues of travel just for the sake of ‘curiosity’, and the onus was on receiving territories to extend a sense of hospitality to the traveller.

Of course, this is an idealised description: then as today, some travellers were more welcome than others. But reading Adam McKeown’s new book, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalisation of Borders, reminded me that our current web of migration regulations has a history, one embedded in the 19th century exclusion of Asian migrants from white settler colonies in the Pacific. His detailed research raises several paradoxes which perhaps point to why, even with the intense focus given to migration control by successive governments, we still have a situation that the International Organisation of Migration (2003) has called a ‘migration governability crisis’.

The first paradox is that contemporary border controls evolved from regulations developed by settler nations such as the United States and Australia, which were ostensibly founded on the premise of egalitarianism by pioneers of political freedoms despite the obvious racism in ‘white only’ migration policies and the decimation of indigenous populations. As a result, over time, discrimination has become acceptable at borders but not overtly within the state itself.

Second, while neo-liberal globalisation is premised on an idea of free trade between countries, migration control is an obstacle to mobility. As a result, we have seen increasing separation between regulations relating to commerce and those relating to migration. Border control is now designed to facilitate some kinds of mobility, and migrants, and block others. Attempting to guarantee freedom, for some at least, through the imposition of regulations, transformed migration for others into an act of evasion and criminality. The meaning of ‘free’ has become ambiguous and opaque as a result.

The third paradox raised in McKeown’s research is that while migration laws coerce and exclude, interrogate, evaluate and attempt to quantify migrants, they are also considered as vehicles of justice, fairness, the ‘rule of law‘, and ‘efficiency’. They reflect normative ideals of how things should be, including the international order of states. It is impossible not to reflect on these distinctions and the right to be mobile when arriving at Heathrow Airport with an EU passport that only needs to be held up for a cursory glance by an immigration officer. To the left Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe queue up and wait. I am classified as a professional migrant, incorporated into a legal, formal administration, probably disappearing from the category of migrant altogether. In contradistinction are the ‘others’, those that work in 3D (domestic, dirty and dangerous jobs) who face resistance to their formal recognition within national labour regimes. Although even with my 'EU Citizen' status, my attempts to prove who I was when I arrived in Dublin involved weeks of shuttling between different agencies as I tried to gain the all important Personal Identification Number (PIN) which I couldn’t get without a bank account, which I couldn’t get until I had a PIN. I speak English, had a ‘legal’ job, and an EU passport and still it was a contortionist's exercise.

State institutions appear unable to resolve the inherent tensions in these paradoxes so the migrant continues to find their own way through red tape and over razor-wire. The kafka-esque world of immigration bureaucracy and rigid state regulations is met by the resilient human abilities of evasion and obfuscation in the hope of a better life.

Reference:
A. McKeown (2009), Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalisation of Borders, New York: Colombia University Press.

Conversations on a Train: Part I

2009-05-04T12:21:00.000+01:00

The 08:53, Shepherd’s Bush to Milton Keynes, 30 April 2009.

First Carriage.

Seat at a table facing North, the direction of travel.

The man opposite me is speaking on his mobile. We are the only ones in this section of the carriage; the boxy space between the driver’s booth and the main compartment. He announces to his invisible colleague that they have won a counter-terrorism contract for £3.7 million. I resist the temptation to bite and keep scanning my own slightly less exciting agenda for today’s curriculum development meeting. He blinks first and asks what I’m reading. Enough pleasantries are exchanged to melt the ice and we get down to the question of ‘counter-terrorism’ and just what does he need £3.7 million for: training people to interpret satellite images that can tell you the difference between marijuana and cocaine (different colours apparently) or whether the boat, jeep, cart is carrying a load of metal that might be ‘hot’ or might just be a bag of tools. He tells me that if they suspect that the cargo is ‘hot’ they can apprehend the people involved and ‘gently and politely eliminate them’. We giggle as he realises what he’s said. ‘Not literally, of course’. I wonder. There are ‘thousands’ of counter-terrorism interrogations happening everyday he reassures me, weeding out those who have ‘integrated’ in an attempt to appear ‘normal’. We are haunted by spectres of an enemy we can’t see except for their traces in satellite imagery taken from 30 000 feet above us.

Like a Fish needs a ....

2009-05-02T00:25:00.002+01:00

Sighted, 11.30pm, Saturday 18th April 2009: woman in little black dress, 4 inch stilettos, lacy stocking tops, cycling her racing bike down Shaftesbury Avenue, the West End of London. Ladies, there are no excuses left for not getting onto two wheels.

A Tale of Two Cities

2009-03-15T03:33:00.005Z

Travelling through Delhi is a reminder of the transience of power. From a rickshaw or the new Metro, rapidly becoming one of the largest public transport networks in the world, reminders of various rulers that the city has outlasted flash by; from crumbling walls of Turkish sultanates to the white columns of the British Empire. The layering of history over the some 2600 years that this place has been settled has led to the development of contradictions that Delhi’s residents absorb on a daily basis. And none are more obvious than the division between the north and south of the city, between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Delhi.

In Old Delhi I am penned in on all sides by rickshaws and honking, narrow laneways of bangles, wedding haberdashery, stationary and books, the smells of kebabs, parathas, sweets in clay pots, the smoke from barbeques, and tables piled with calendars and plastic monuments. The sweet seller remembers me from my last visit 18 months ago. He has been there almost every night for as long as he can remember. This is Chandni Chowk, with the mighty, flood-lit Jama Masjid at its heart. Chaotic cables and electricity wires are as entangled overhead as its laneways and knotted communities.

Across the round-about at Delhi Gate is New Delhi, with its Barista and Costa Coffee café chains, hip clubs, neon signs, mega-malls with premium high-street brands at European prices, wider roads, greener spaces and construction sites. Next to the broken walls and parapets of history are other buildings being broken, a new one built, another storey added. Metro and Bus Rapid Transit corridors divert traffic, including almost 300 000 new cars added to the roads in recent years. Traffic is now a constant crawl, giving commuters time to read the billboards that line the flyovers, promising ‘world class lifestyles’ in satellite cities that are green oases on the outskirts of this megalopolis of almost fourteen million. Newspaper advertising highlights the ‘global experience’ of living in these enclaves.

Delhi is being gentrified through state, and the ubiquitous 'public/private partnership', intervention that is building new infrastructure and designating others as ‘illegal’, fragmenting the city into ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ localities. Boundaries of inclusion and exclusion are drawn and there is the physical removal of those that don’t fit within Delhi’s 2021 Master Plan for urban development.

Edge cities have been created to cater for the flow of transnational corporations and transnational professionals as well as a burgeoning middle class. If you get a call from an Indian call centre chances are they are in Noida or Gurgaon, on the outskirts of Delhi. These edge cities are marked by new condominiums, villas, proximity to malls and multiplexes, and facilities such as health, education and leisure centres, crèches, lawns and landscaped gardens, yoga centres and spas, with clearly delineated boundaries and internal homogeneity maintained by gated surrounds.

But there are other types of edge cities being created as well. ‘Cleaning up’ Delhi to achieve global city status required the removal of shanty towns, jhuggis, the closure of small traders, and whole neighbourhoods of what were predominantly resettlement areas of rural migrants and socio-economically marginalised populations being demolished and their inhabitants forced to move to outlying areas of the city. At this moment in Delhi, a locality, a slum to use the more familiar word, is being surveyed for demolition. This community has ‘illegally’ and organically established itself since 1969 at the crossroads between Old and New Delhi. I have driven past this place dozens of times and not realised that some 15000 people live behind the crowded, jumbled shop-fronts. Officials will ask each household in the locality to prove, via a ration or voter registration card, that they have lived here prior to 1998. If you can prove this, and you can pay Rs 7000 (approx. £100), you can be given a plot of land approximately 12.5 square metres in a new resettlement area called Ghevra; perhaps a larger plot up to 18 square metres if you can prove you lived here before 1990. Your home will be marked with a cross and it will be demolished. You will then have to move your family to Ghevra, live in temporary shelter, under plastic or metal sheeting or thatch, in blistering summers, pouring monsoons and bitterly cold winters, until you can afford to pay for a new home to be built. If you can’t prove you lived in the locality before 1998 then you have no options; you must simply move into another crevice in the city.

Ghevra is some 50km from the city centre and will reportedly become one of the largest resettlement colonies in Asia once the planned demolitions and forced displacements have occurred. During a visit to Ghevra in March 2007, there was little infrastructure in place: water was trucked in, there was yet to be a school built, and latrines were portable, made of metal, shimmering in forty degrees of early summer heat. Most of the inhabitants were unemployed, removed from informal employment networks when they were moved out of the city and away from trading centres such as Old Delhi. Returning on this trip, two years later, little has changed. There are more pucca, brick houses, but there are still thatch shanties and there are still people living in tents waiting for their legal status, their entitlement to a plot of land here, to be sorted out in the never-ending bureaucracy. Most of the houses have metred electricity now and there are cement latrines and washing areas but there is still no running water. Meanwhile, an apartment built for the Commonwealth Games athlete’s village, built on land from which people were displaced, can be bought for Rs 2 crore (£284 000) to Rs 3.5 crore (£497 000). The viewing apartment contains a flat screen television which can be viewed from the bath. Saskia Sassen’s geographies of margins and centres are clearly played out in Delhi in this spatial relegation of those already at the social and economic periphery of the city.

Power is explicit in this process, in both the hegemonic acceptance of a particular aesthetic in urban planning, and, as we are seeing in other cities throughout Asia and Europe, the removal of increasingly invisible people. There is little consultation with those about to be displaced and little debate in the media about the violation of the right to secure housing. There is hope, however, in the creation of new social spaces, including cyberspace, in which dominant political, economic and cultural systems can be challenged by everyday experience and learning processes that can shape interpretations of the environment. Consequently, protest becomes centred on other fragments of the city being no longer able to ignore the presence of its peripheries. The urban landscape of Delhi, marked by the fragility of power in its historical landmarks, is a daily reminder of the possibilities of such new alliances in the city.

On Dogs and Women

2009-01-30T03:45:00.009Z

Out for a morning jog around the colony of East Nizamuddin in New Delhi, I was suddenly aware that I’d trespassed into the territory of some fairly angry looking stray dogs. ‘Stray dog’ is a bit of misnomer in India. They’re not really stray. They know exactly where home is. And this lot weren’t going to have foreigners in it, especially running foreigners dressed all in black wearing a hot pink cap with a bit of mould on it.

Chased into a corner I held my ground against bared fangs and barked outrage, thinking ‘damn you Pamela Anderson for your sentimental interference in India’s dog curtailment programme, I’d like to see you jog around East Nizamuddin in your cossie facing this lot of rabid mange encrusted flea bags’. I was also reminded of other spaces that create such fang bearing moral outrage. While I’m sure the dogs of East Nizamuddin don’t care what my gender is, it seems members of India’s various Hindu cultural nationalist organisations still find it unacceptable that women should loiter in places they deem as places they shouldn’t be hanging about in.

Last week, for example, a group of women were beaten and thrown out of a pub in Mangalore by members of the Sri Rama Sene (SRS), the militant outfit of the Rashtriya Hindu Sena (National Hindu Army), panting and barking about ‘un-Indian’ behaviour. Why does what women do, say or wear still cause so much anxiety for some men? And why do women still have to bear the burdens of morality and tradition? And that’s not just in India. Europe’s in no position to be casting aspersions on the rest of the world. Please note the infamous arse slapping incident in 21st Century Dublin noted in the first posting on this blog. And English men seem obsessed with staring at the tits of Page Three Girls (oh sorry, that should be ‘glamour models’). Why did Karen Matthews become the pin up girl for male commentators who saw her as representative of the downfall of the UK (let’s not mention the myriad of men who control government and financial institutions and the mistakes they’ve made … instead it’s women who are to blame who have too much sex with too many men who end up fathering children they refuse to take any responsibility for). I’ve always been fascinated as to how George Bush Jnr reconciled his remarks justifying his invasion of Iraq to the Australian Parliament by stating that the United States was saving Iraqi women from the ‘rape rooms’ of Saddam Hussein, with killing tens of thousands of them in his military operations.

And what’s with the name calling? Apparently the SRS were throwing around invectives such as ‘prostitute’ and ‘whore’. I remember once walking down a street of Delhi respectably decked out in my usual salwar qamiz when, after refusing the advances of a group of well educated young men, I was called ‘a strumpet’ and ‘a harlot’. Clearly they were studying Shakespeare in the final year of high school. In a pub with a group of friends in Sydney, when we politely rejected the advances of a young man, his parting shot was ‘lesbians!’

Why all this acid throwing when a man, and by extension his sense of order and place in the world, gets rejected? In fact I think I’ll be so bold as to suggest that if we were to look at much ‘cultural’ conflict in our complex, diverse cities, we might find that it’s not always as much about ethnic difference as about gender, power and keeping sex in the family despite incest being our biggest taboo (‘family’ used loosely here to define a group of people with reasonably similar practices and values that tend to panic when someone transgresses the boundaries of expectations, like hoisting a dress too high, because that extra inch of skin on display challenges their authority over someone else’s body and mind, emasculating them in the process – I’m not referring to the genetic kind of family, I’m not that sort of girl!).

All this snarling and yapping and ogling and slapping. Time to do something about the dogs snapping at our heels, ladies. I say politely, pedicured with decorum, show them the underside of your joggers, your six inch stilletos, your doc martins, your loafers, whatever your footwear of preference!

Five Things I Love about Bollywood

2009-01-10T16:01:00.005Z

1. Amir Khan

2. Amir Khan's torso

3. The fact that in one film i can see shades of Memento, The Hulk, Amelie, and Danny Boyle-like hyper-speed fight scenes a la Twenty Eight Days Later.

Check it out: http://www.rememberghajini.com/

4. It gives me an excuse to go to Southall where I can get fresh deep fried jelabis, a beauty treatment for a fraction of the cost of inner London, and trays of Mangos in season for about £5.

5. It gives me an excuse to go to the Himalayan Palace Cinema, which, for some reason, has decided on a Chinese style of architecture to contain its exclusive offerings of Hindi films (which it only screens if there are at least five people who buy tickets). In winter, dress warmly and keep your coat, hat, mittens and scarf on in the cinema. http://www.himalayapalacecinema.co.uk/

image from: http://www.mewe.org.uk/londondeco/Cinemas.html

Subterranean Blues ...

2008-10-12T19:39:00.008+01:00

Dingo Baby is determined to show me an underground London, in the sense of a rave culture rather than the inner workings of the Tube. There is perhaps a justifiable pride in rave's history in the UK. In its hey-day in the 1980s, illegal gatherings and squat parties were a means to rail against Margaret Thatcher's oppressive ordering of society and privatisation of everything that moved, except dancing. But there is a debatable question as to whether it was a political movement that generated a space of equality as everyone took off their weekday wear, whether a suit or overalls, and put on baggy jeans and t-shirts, or whether it was just another form of pointless hedonism. Personally, much as I love a good dance, I don't think the Conservatives or any other bastion of law and order should be too worried about the impact of raves today. They are for the most part in line with Thatcher's denial of society ... individuated experiences, now legal apart from the substances consumed to get the party started; underground but not subversive. This is not Notting Hill.

To be fair, there are some remnants of an ideology left. A recent event in the cavernous bowels of London Bridge's arches was billed by the organisers as 'a magical indoor festival combining musicians, DJs, VJs, performers and artists from all corners of creativity, joined by various proactive NGOs and charities with the expressed aim to make a difference'. At this event not only could I dance to some brilliant psychedelic trance and world music, I could draw what I love, learn to make a seed bomb, model endangered species in clay, undergo various healing and alternative therapies, or get a cup of chai and just sit and chill while listening to talks on climate change. In the 'inspiration hall' area, some of those involved in the early rave days 20 years ago talked about its impact and the state of 'the scene' today. There was some talk about spreading love with the music and bringing in people from different faiths. I wondered how much love would be in the room of mostly white party-goers if a group of young people arrived to dance who happened to be black, Muslim and wearing hoodies ... how much love and how much tension. Ironically, a young man was shot and killed the next night outside the same venue. There was debate on what to call the event with the standard interruptions from a man of indeterminate age but who probably left his personal growth and social skills in the 1960s. 'It's a gathering'. Okay, it's a gathering, and I wondered how much love was being extended his way or if people were getting irritated (okay, maybe not 'people' per se, but I for one was getting annoyed and was going to have to get my chakras cleaned again in the healing area). I also wondered on the irony of why it was that he who bore the hall marks of a 'new age lifestyle' as an alternative to capitalism's privatised, industrialised, mass-produced society, in fact reproduced characteristics of the very thing he was protesting about, a system that is crippled by a lack of social skills, empathy and tolerance. It came down to Paradox, 'a one-legged existential stand-up beat poet' to put it all into context with his self-referential piss take on 'tribalists' who take it a wee bit too seriously and then take the glow sticks out of their hair when they put their suits back on to go to work in the city on Monday.

Perhaps rather than indulge in gazing at 'the scene's' navel and getting nostalgic for times past that were probably not as bold as a drug induced haze has made them out to be, I suggest we just love it for what it is and go home as the sun rises (or in my case as I'm getting old we could only make it to 5.30) because that is a brilliant time to see the city waking up, and think about important questions such as why do British men dance better than Australian men, why do some of them wear thick wool beanies while dancing inside in a hot room, and why it's so difficult to find a bag small enough to be able to dance with it over the shoulder but big enough to put a can of deodorant in. As for bigger questions on political, economic and social change, perhaps the best we can hope for is to create a moment of collective energy and good-will that impels the converted to keep going.

How to lose friends and alienate people ....

2008-10-12T19:37:00.008+01:00

Try carrying a cello on the London tube in rush hour. May I introduce 'Yo Yo'. We have a few years to go before we start playing Bach's Suite for Unaccompanied Cello together but we're enjoying each other's company for now. I'm not sure the neighbours are, and my finger tips are slightly worried by the idea that they may have to bleed for their art, but I'm sure we'll all adjust in time.

Notting Hill Carnival, 24-25 August 2008

2008-10-12T19:34:00.019+01:00

The Carnival: ... that which can't be held, can't be repressed, can't be organised into neatness. The fear of politicians everywhere: the crowd in the street; the uncontrolled, uncontrollable display; the random, unpredictable event that punctuates the facade of normality, the facade of power (A. Jach,1999, The Layers of the City, Sydney: Hodder Headline, p 91).

I used to think that Sydney’s Mardi Gras was the pinnacle of parties … at least 12 hours of dance-fuelled hedonism culminating in the pleasure of sliding between thousands of smooth torsos at 9 a.m. in the morning, staggering outside to see the sun already up and doing its worst to make you look like a hag now that the eyeliner has washed down the face to mingle with the glitter and the sweaty hair that has fallen out of the ‘do’ it took hours and half a can of spray to create.

But I have to reassess …

Dingo Baby seemed especially keen that I come with him to Notting Hill Carnival and being up for anything remotely resembling the reoccupation of public space by the public I thought it sounded like a good idea. Notting Hill is not far from my place and the impending excitement was palpable in the street the night before. Diversion signs and barricades had been going up for well over a week beforehand. And those barricades were not just the usual crowd control metal gates but, as it turned out, the entire boarding up of shops and houses along the main parade route and all the way up Portobello Road. This was clearly going to be no ordinary party.

Notting Hill Carnival is overwhelmingly massive. It is noisy, messy, dirty, chaotic and sex on two dozen sound systems. It is a street party for two million people over two days. The entire suburb becomes a dance floor. There is a parade that starts around 12pm each day which is basically made up of trucks with sound systems on them with any number of dancers, some in costume, some just following on behind. It takes all day and into the evening for the floats to get around the route. Then dotted around the suburb are sound systems which are basically a DJ dwarfed by stacks of speakers: ranging from the highly professional, commercial outfits such as the darlings of the Ibiza set, Sancho Panza, and Good Times with the legendary Norman Jay, MBE, to the local DJ who seemed to have found the money to get together a few mates to rig speakers up outside his block of council flats. It is surround sound music at full decibels cranking out until 7pm. And once the music is shut down you can wander over to the parade route, find a truck you like and join in there till late in the evening.

There is reggae, there is house and all its derivatives, there is trance, techno and drum and bass. There are steel bands and most importantly, there is soca music and if you’re blessed with a big arse you can wind it for all it’s worth with thousands of other beautiful women similarly blessed with big arses. By the end of the day you will be covered in sweat, glitter, chocolate, someone’s cocktail and/or mug of beer, and a layer of smoke from joints and jerk chicken being BBQ’d on the thousands of improvised stoves in every second front yard that has become a mini-store for the weekend also selling cold drinks and the use of their toilet from £1 to £5 depending on how far you are from an official one. I’m not sure how many chickens, pigs and salted fish gave their lives for the weekend but I’m sure they think it’s worth it.

It does get edgy when the sun starts to set. Everyone is drinking and smoking something, even your grandmother. As we started walking home on the second evening down Portobello Road, a group of young men ran past, one or two with faces covered by keffiyeh. Moments later a group of police also ran past and Dingo Baby and I made it home just before the fighting took off. Buses from south-west London were stopped before they could unload any more young men to do battle with each other.

I’m wondering if we’d be much better off if all young men were given The Dangerous Book for Boys, or better still were made to dance all day behind my favourite float oozing soca and the mantra ‘no knives, just chocolate’. Instead there is the constant buzz of the ‘eye in the sky’ police helicopter, and homes and offices are co-opted for use as CCTV stations manned by police with binoculars and laptops. Being spied on is not a comfortable experience although I’m glad there is a strong police presence on the ground, most importantly for silently and unobtrusively directing people into other routes when one street becomes too crowded. Many seemed to be having a good time of it as well and in a crowd of two million people I don’t think 330 arrests is too bad; up on last year but violence was down.

The ‘criminal’ factor is given as one reason why the Carnival should be shut down or moved to somewhere like Hyde Park where it can be suitably controlled, patrolled and ordered. For our safety, for the safety of residents, and fair enough, I’m sure it’s a pain to board your shop or home up for a few days a year and come back to find people have pee’d against your fence. But I’d probably argue that it is dereliction of cultural norms and borders that is even more threatening and discomforting for the Carnival’s opponents. Given its size and what it represents, a celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture, it is inevitably going to be a battle ground of class, culture and gender; between mixo-phobs and mixo-phils (thank you Zygmunt Bauman); between the newly gentrified set from the movie of the same name, and the estates and tower blocks that somehow never made it into the film; between release and restraint, order and chaos.

The different crowd at each sound system is a demarcation of the city: it is mostly white and middle class arm waving in front of Sancho Panza’s DJs but get closer to the floats, the frenetic heart of the Carnival, and it’s a sea of Afro-Carribean. Kilt wearing Thais dancing to reggae music and selling jerk chicken are going to confuse anyone’s sense of order as may 80 year olds who are still dancing to Drum and Bass, and heaven forbid in this god-fearing Christian civilisation where they still give out the Bible on Desert Island Discs as one of the books you have to take (BBC Radio Four), loads of flesh, cleavage and the strong whiff of sex that lingers in the lyrics of the music and on many bodies. And yet despite all this, on Portobello Road two days later the straighteners had been through and it was business as usual, spic and span. So to those who find it all too much, I beseech you, for the greater good, let there be a few days of discomfort, let there be disorder, let there be noise, let there be release, let there be carnival. It will all return to normal soon enough.

London: In Progress

2008-09-21T19:03:00.010+01:00

I live in a council block which, despite an apparent egalitarian upbringing, took a while to get used to, especially its trademark smell of forty years worth of ciggie smoke and cat pee that now impossibly infiltrates the concrete. But my little council block is a mirror of this city. There is a Somali family upstairs, a single mum and a pensioner downstairs. B. & M. across the landing have been here forty years and J., who I swap morning coffee, haberdashery and cherry tomatos with, lives below them. S. on the bottom floor lives with his wife and three young kids in the same space I do. There’s a quiet man on the top floor who’s name I don’t know.

From the window I see red roof tiles, chimney pots and the Heathrow flight path. The neighbours across the way have a roof terrace with a gentrifying water feature and a Buddha bust among the pot plants. In the street there are three dry cleaners, a chemist, an off-license, two corner stores without corners, a restaurant, a pizza take-away and a greasy spoon. I think they are all owned by one man who parks his Porsche outside the greasy spoon each day.

My neighbourhood is wedged between Holland Park, Hammersmith and Shepherd’s Bush with its rapidly rising mega-mall. Cross one street to the right and I’m in Holland Park; one stop from Kensington and some of the most expensive real estate in the city. Cross another street and I’m in social housing estates, high rises and dross-scapes. My block, street, neighbourhood reeks of the juxtapositions of wealth and cat piss; the contradictions of a global city marked by the ebb and flow of human movement. The heritage of Caribbean to Iranian to Somali to Punjabi to Arabic all embedded in faded, painted over, signage.

London is a dense city, shifting its identity from one street to the next, and you need all your senses to navigate across it. You need to bend with the buffeting of rush hour commuters and high street shoppers. You need to hear how close the buses and taxis are to your cycle lane. You need to smell the sweet apple tobacco in shishas to know when you’re on Edgeware Road. You need to make sense of the flicker of hoardings, departures and arrivals boards. You need to remember to never confuse a Scot for an Englishperson even if they have an English accent (although I'm not sure why someone at a Buddhist retreat would be so worried about identity). At another time, so relieved to get a call centre in ‘England’ I expressed my gratitude to the operator who then pointed out he was in Wales. Identity politics is virulent in this United Kingdom.

Unexpected things happen in this city. Oblivious, on the bridge from Embankment tube station to Southbank, headphones on, two couples tango, silently, deeply, intently and completely engrossed in the movement of a toe, a hand, a neck. A silent disco also involves headphones plus two DJs. Unexpectedly, I realise that dancing is actually a very communal, visual act and if your dancing partner suddenly switches to the other channel with a completely different beat then you experience instant arrhythmia. It’s also very difficult to snog someone when you’re both wearing industrial sized head sets.

Only in London would World Wide Knit in Public Day coincide with International Naked Cycle Day AND the Queen’s Birthday. Only in London could I row across the top of a building into the sunset. This ‘demented playground’, this ‘wanton happening’ created by the Austrian art collective Gelitin (Psycho Buildings, Hayward Gallery, London, July 2008). Only in London would I get a ticket for cycling in Holland Park by the Parks Police. What anti-social behaviour are they expecting in Holland Park that they need two parks police on patrol one superb summer’s morning – someone popping their champagne cork too loudly? Or worse, putting their champagne in the wrong glass? Unexpectedly, far from the madding crowd of Kensington and Chelsea, in the middle of the dross industrial landscapes of north London are a series of canals lined by wild flowers, herons, cyclists, joggers, fish, plastic bags and barges.

And you need all your senses to make sense of things like Piccadilly Circus with faux New York Times Square neon signs now surrounding the statue of Eros, and where Macdonald’s proudly announced ‘Coming soon: a new sign from MacDonalds’ (22 July 08). Is that a piece of post-modern simulacra I see before me?

I spend quite a few days engaging in psycho-geography, or putting it another way, wandering around the city. It’s for research, okay! For example, Saturday mornings I cycle to Borough Market through Hyde Park, past Buckingham Palace, Westminster and the London Eye, then into back streets along Southbank until hitting the cobble stones behind Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. And somehow I know all these places from every nursery rhyme, post card, BBC serial shown on the ABC that I’ve absorbed since the time I could read, or be propped up in front of the television. Borough Market has become the end goal because it has some of the best food in London although the best brownies EVER are to be found at East Dulwich Deli (because a girl cannot live by bread alone, even when it’s hand made by artisans and sold at Borough Market). The best greasy spoon in the world is E. Pellici in Bethnal Green. Not for the faint hearted or light weight. Disengage all sense when you enter and allow your senses to take over.

Return to Little Chef

2008-07-29T19:40:00.018+01:00

20 June 2008

Somewhere on a road between Dorset and London a familiar red and white neon sign flashed into view - Little Chef - and suddenly I am 18 and in a new country for the first time. My Great Aunt and Uncle have picked me up from Heathrow and it's cold and foggy and I feel sick. So we stop at Little Chef for a cup of tea.

Overcome by nostalgia I force Mz Electra to pull over and we pile into the comfort and warmth of neutral taupe interiors, blue carpet and formica tables for a cup of tea (and an egg, cheese and mushroom breakfast roll at 10.30 at night).

Eternal Playgrounds of the Muddy Kind

2008-07-29T18:04:00.016+01:00

Camp Bestival, July 18-20, Ludlow Castle

Having had to put ice packs on my knees after the last couple of nights out dancing I figured my festival days may have been over. But as luck would have it this is Britain and in Britain there are now over 400 festivals each year around the country with something for everyone: the massive scale of 50000 at the rock and dance of Glastonbury to boutique festivals catering for niche musical tastes from psychedelic trance to World music. And so it was that I found myself taking a day off work to embark on a road trip with Mz Polska, who brought chocolate, and Mz Electra, who made muffins, heading south to the Dorset coast and three days of Camp Bestival.

There are many things I wish I knew then, as we innocently slide down the hierarchy of roads, from the Ms to the As to the Bs, leaving the safety and comfort of London behind and entering shadowy narrow lanes with only hedges to protect us from rampaging badgers, mad cows and other Narnia stories. First, never leave home without tights. Camping in England, even in summer, is fecking freezing and the Australian festival uniform of miniskirt and singlet is just not going to keep a girl warm. A puffy vest or several layers of cotton are minimum. At least I had the de rigeur festival wellingtons for the one day it rained. It's an unusual experience, dancing in wellingtons and a fleece jacket at one in the morning. The last time I remember being dressed like this was hosing down the dairy yard in winter, although the boots were work standard black instead of blue paisley, so the weekend was already becoming surreal without any chemical enhancement.

The second fright was the sheer number of kids. Of the ten thousand tickets sold it seems 3500 were bought for children by clearly irresponsible parents. OK it had been billed as a family friendly festival but surely not that friendly! It’s not that I dislike kids. I’m auntie to dozens of them by now. But there are some things that should never be seen or heard at a festival including conversations that go ‘so who needs to poo? George do you need to poo? OK let’s get in the queue so you can poo’. And nappies being changed on the chill out lounges! That is just so wrong! And how many times in one weekend can you hear the words ‘Trixie, you apologise. Apologise now’. The deterioration of parenting over the weekend mapped the decline of civilisation, from the democratic, ‘now Bobby, I know you’re only two but let’s discuss why you don’t want to eat strawberries for breakfast’, to fascist authoritarian, ‘Bobby eat your strawberries and we’re leaving now’, by the end of it. Although having a baby on your shoulders in the mosh with cute little baby ear protectors on I admit brought out whole new ideas on the possibilities of motherhood!

It wasn’t just the hordes of kids that might induce a feeling of otherworldiness. Asking the 18 year olds who the DJ is is never a good sign, or worse in the chorus when you don’t know the lyrics and everyone around is singing them.

Mz Kitty: ‘What are they singing? ‘Just Divine’?

Mz Polska: ‘Justify?’

Mz Electra: ‘Just a boy?’

The great thing about being old though is that we have independent incomes and can afford Blackberrys (well, at least Mz Polska can) and can look up the lyrics in the car on the way home. ‘Just a band’. Thank you Scroobius Pip.

I’ve also realised now why so many of my students have attention spans shorter than my three minute pop song version of retention. Exposure to a frenetic DJ Yoda who apparently has an attention disorder and can’t leave a song on the turn table for more than 30 seconds before he has to mix in something new would probably do it.

Like trying to dance to DJ Yoda it takes a while to get into the rhythm of a festival. Despite all the frenetic activity there were surprisingly quiet moments. The mornings began being woken by Gracie, Maisie, Tamsin or Pagan’s mother’s at 7am asking the same question … ‘do you need to poo?’. I head for the showers to get us tickets so we can get in the queue later, then we head for the Magic Meadow to chill out in the sun with coffee and wait for the Hurly Burly Veg Café to open for breakfast. Then out would come the knitting needles and nothing much would happen for a couple of hours except the jumper would get longer and we’d workshop the problems of the world in the chai tent. Then slowly performances start in the Comedy tent, the Flamingo Bar opens, the jousting begins, the bands and djs start up. And by 4pm the familiar doof of speaker stacks becomes the tempo for the rest of the evening and into the night. By 12pm in reverse order, music from the bands on the mainstage would dissipate until it was just the djs in the dance tent still going and even they would eventually switch off and the food tents close down (except the Hog Roast which I think kept going 24/7 and saw off at least a few hundred pigs over the course of the weekend) and people drifted out to watch lanterns floating up to the full moon and then drifted off to find their bed among the sea of tents. It was always going to be a bit problematic to find a tent at night among 5000 others that pretty much all looked the same.

Unfortunately by the time you get into the swing of things you have to come home, so I've decided that festivals should be compulsory under the NHS. We need these 'demented playgrounds' (the Gelitin Collective). Where else can you dress up for a weekend; stand in front of Billy Bragg in the coffee queue (I love you Billy just in case you're reading); discover Kate Nash is a knitter as well so i'm not such a dag after all; and rethink that idea of a career in Burlesque, especially when it’s served with champagne and cream scones. We’ve separated the spiritual into religious institutions and play into commercialised clubs, chemically enhanced ballrooms and the marketed coolness of MTV. So why not create space for real ‘demented play’ in the ordinary rhythms of life? Why not dress up everyday in what you really want to wear? Why not spend time drinking chai and discussing politics with complete strangers in a tea tent every day? Why not drink champers in the afternoon wearing your knickers and pasties (okay i did spend a bit of time in the burlesque tent)? Why not get dirty playing in mud? Why not dance everyday, just for five minutes?

Speaking of dancing, you would note if a regular reader of this blog that a wee accident in July had damaged one knee so the plan for the festival was, I reassured my imaginary doctor, that I would sit quietly and listen. There would be no pogo’ing or any other form of bodily movement that could in the smallest sense be described as dance, not even if someone was playing Drum and Bass. No, most definitely not. It’s amazing how at the age of 41 I can still live in denial. So the knee has had a little setback in getting better and there should be no dancing now until at least …. Notting Hill Carnival in August.

Fall From Grace

2008-07-05T12:49:00.046+01:00

Campitello, 22nd June 2008

In the picture above there is a sensible descent (in the middle between the two peaks) and there is a plain silly descent (off the left side). Quiz question, for 100 points and your chance to win a set of tofu sausage knives ... which one did Mz Kitty take?

It's okay, you're allowed to laugh. There I was, having a whale of a time, walking through the stunning Dolomites near Campitello, north Italy. Such a good time in fact that I missed one tiny but very important detail, mistake number one, that the route I picked to descend the Gruppo del Sella was in fact part of the legendary Via Ferrata (Iron Way). I didn't actually realise I was on the Via Ferrata until the lovely man who rescued me asked me where my safety harness was.

Mz Kitty: 'ummm I wasn't intending on going climbing so I don't have one with me'.

Lovely Man: 'But this is the Via Ferrata! are you crazy!!!' (that last bit was in Italian but I got the gist)

Mz Kitty: 'No Way! I would never attempt the Via Ferrata on my own without proper equipment!'

Lovely Man: 'You're on your own! are you crazy!!!'

I should have probably realised this was not going to be an easy route when the people walking kids and dogs disappeared and there were just hardy types left on the trail and then just me. I’m blaming the Italians … they have cappuccino machines in their refuge huts for goodness sake! How hard can a trail be if they're serving pasta, red wine and cappuccinos in the refuge huts! Relying solely on the map also turned out to be a bit problematic as it marked the morning section (Piz Boe, pictured right) with the same difficulty rating as the descent, and going up and over Piz Boe had been relatively easy peasy (mistake number two, never rely solely on the map).

I was actually pretty proud of myself for almost getting to the bottom of the first col when I slid on a patch of snow. The fall was thankfully broken by scree, my backpack and knee. Managing to get down to a plateau hoping there would be a nice traverse to the bottom I actually found the beginning of what seemed like a 200m drop off with nothing but fixed cable to climb down and me with not a prussic cord or carabiner to my name, a rapidly ballooning knee and various other cuts and bruises. There was no-one else on the trail within cooee as it was coming up to 5pm. Swallowing gulps of pride it was time to call in the professionals.

Pulling out the trusty mobile phone I paused ... and then silently realised that, firstly, I’d accidentally deleted the number for Fabiana, the owner of the auberge where I was staying, and secondly, I’d forgotten to bring the local emergency rescue number (mistakes number three and four); could the day get any better. I had at least told Fabiana's mum at breakfast which route I'd be on although given the level of my Italian a full understanding of where I was may not actually have taken place.

Trusty back up friends were required who would not panic when receiving a text that went something like:

‘Hi, need mountain rescue, am in Dolomites, near Campitello, route 649, ASAP, it’s getting cold’.

Calling 999 also worked at least as far as getting an Italian operator who then found someone who could speak English. In the meantime the legendary Conal and Basia had also found the Italian mountain rescue number - 118 should you ever need it. Settling down on my ledge with an amazing view of the Dolomites, enough water and muesli bars and a jacket to get me through the night, I wished I'd brought some knitting or a good book. There’s so much to contemplate while waiting to be rescued: the dirt under your nails, the throbbing of your knee, your navel, the paradox of unattainable intimacy, conversations that should have been can be replayed, residual memories can echo off canyon walls, getting louder.

Love. There’s a big question to contemplate when you’re stuck on a mountain. Love ... Love a person, love my bike, love songs, romantic comedies, soap opera love, big love, love up, love in, smile on my face kind of love. Pull me, push me, he loves me, he loves me not. Oops, he fucking hates me. Love. Someone who can give you waht you want, what you need ... house, nice car, a life ... I don't think so. Although a strapping lad to get me off this cliff would be nice right about now.

And on cue, the whooping sound of rotary blades gets louder and louder, and just like in the movies a helicopter appeared from below. I cannot even begin to describe where they landed it long enough to get someone out to check on me. He came trotting down the trail, asked me what happened, and all I could say as I looked into his beautiful weathered face was 'I love you'. I think he was kind of used to it, my nameless hero. He bundled me into a harness and hauled me into the helicopter but not before about 30 seconds of floating in the air above the cliffs which must be what freedom feels like. They flew me to the local hospital to patch me up with a brace from thigh to ankle for suspected ligament damage, and included daily self-injected in the stomach anti-thrombosis drugs just to remind me to not be so stupid in the future.

My heartfelt thanks to the following people:

The lovely Italian mountain rescue team and the Cavalese hospital, including their very own Dr McDreamy – you guys rock! I wasn't even their first rescue of the season that had started only two days earlier. I was the fourth!
The fab friends that didn’t panic – you guys are rocks!
Fabiana and her mum ... highly recommend 'Garni Tyroli' B&B in Campitello.
All the people from Campitello to Budapest (a journey with a leg in a cast over two days made by taxi, bus, three trains and taxi), who opened doors, carried my bag, minded my stuff, gave up their place in the queue for me or who just came up to see if I was okay – complete strangers, often with no language in common, without being asked. In particular, the lovely man in the ticket office at Innsbruck who booked me two seats for the price of one so I could rest my leg; and the lovely French-North African boys on the train to Salzburg – we started off on the wrong foot and they ended up helping me put my shoes on – bonded over a mutual dislike of the politics of Sarkozy and a mutual fascination for how green Austria is.
The taxi driver in Budapest who gave me a discount – something apparently unheard of in Budapest.
Jen Tarr for walking very slowly next to me for two days and carrying my conference notes.
The lovely tour guides on the Hop On Hop Off tourist bus in Budapest – yes, even worse than having to call in the emergency rescue helicopter was having to get on a bright red Hop On Hop Off tourist bus if I was going to see any of the city.
The lovely lad from the Boomerang Hostel who dropped me to the airport, carrying my bags in and delivering me to the lovely Ambos who pushed me around in a wheelchair (great way to get through security in a flash) and gave me a ride to the door of the plane, and then to Pam, the lovely cabin steward on Easyjet who looked after me on the way home. No thanks to Luton airport though – apparently they couldn’t help with a lift, wheels or carrying bags ‘just in case’.
Fortunately a Hungarian student got me to the bus – big thanks to her. The lovely bus driver got me to Marble Arch and into a taxi. And the lovely taxi driver got me home and carried my bags up the stairs for me and refused to take any extra money for it. The world is still a wonderful place.

My minicab driver got me to the NHS the next day and in a classic case of cultural difference, my English doctor wondered what the Italians were thinking putting me in a cast for a week and all I needed was to take a constitutional, eat Nurofen and keep a stiff upper lip for a month.

While this is my first accident in twenty years of bush and hill walking I think I have at last learnt that I am not indestructible and I do hereby solemnly promise that I will NEVER set foot alone on a trail graded higher than medium without first researching it in fine detail start to finish in a language I can fully understand. I am of course now obsessed with the Alps and getting down route 649 under my own steam. We can still tackle our mountains ladies with gusto and cappuccino, but just make sure we have the emergency rescue number as well.

Florence, June 2008

2008-06-15T20:26:00.017+01:00

I made the fatal mistake of losing the scraps of serviettes that I had scribbled my notes on but I can remember this much about Florence:

Don’t offend the locals by saying that the ice-cream is better than the statue of David, especially if you haven’t seen the statue yet because when you do you’ll realise what a stupid thing it is to say. Michelangelo was a genius.

Handbags are a necessity, never a luxury.

It is never too early in the day for gelato, there is no such thing as too much extra virgin olive oil, every conference needs its own barista, good Chianti will never give you a headache and it’s quite possible to drink four glasses of it and still cycle down Tuscan Hills without crashing – just don’t use the front brake.

Being outside high up on the Duoma, watching a summer thunderstorm roll in over the city and crash over you is a religious experience. The evening storms also drew out a shadow people that do not wear Gucci or Prada: North and West African migrants sold umbrellas and plastic ponchos to those of us who had assumed summer in northern Italy would be dry and felt cheated by the fact that it was warmer in England. I knew I was letting the Italians down by wearing a bright pink plastic poncho in a surreal urban-scape that includes yet another Botticelli fresco around any corner but there is room for the prosaic in Florence ... it's just that the Medici version of mundane sees a piece of Brunelleschi architecture becoming part of a fruit and veg shop.

Perhaps there is something to be said for authoritarian rule if we look at what the Medici’s achieved: rising early to get through the general business of the day, which mostly seemed to revolve around plotting, intrigue and murder, followed by luncheon involving live animals including from time to time small children, popping out of pies (the children weren't eaten apparently), and then on to a bit of poetry writing, painting and womanising. Although I guess if you were the poor person being taxed to death to pay for some of the Medici’s bad habits of war, gluttony and enemas you probably would have preferred a little less Renaissance Man and more Chartered Accountant. Medici women seem to have had a bad time of it too, forced to marry dubious cousins, have their children who then went on to marry more cousins in a complicated interconnected genealogical web, and then occasionally getting murdered when hubby preferred his mistress or one of the serving boys. Perhaps the only way to survive such profanities was to surround yourself with as much beauty as possible.

Between the eating and the making of children, of which the popes of the day seemed to have had plenty, the general mass killing of animals and humans, avoiding the plague and various fevers and pox, the jousting and general merriment of medieval Europe, there was the daily grind of keeping up with the shifting alliances between French, Spaniards, Germans, Venicians, Genoans, Napoliteans, the Duchy of Milan, the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire. Thank goodness we’ve solved all that by inventing the nation state whose borders we sanctify every time we swear allegiance to a law, pay taxes, get a visa or vote. I’m thinking the Medicis would be rather proud of the illusion and Lampedusa had it right when he wrote that some things change so that everything can remain the same (Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, ‘The Leopard’).

Farewell Dublin (December 2006- April 2008)

2008-06-15T14:14:00.005+01:00

June 15, 2008

Unusual perhaps to start a blog with a farewell but I left Dublin in April this year. This is a different place to the one I lived in ten years ago. This is 21^st century, high tech, Celtic Tiger, multicultural Dublin where a glistening, self-cleaning, spire with blue neon radiating from its tip takes the place of Anna Livia’s statue (Abhainn na Life, the River Liffey), and bronze statues take the place of the dockers who used to sing the cargo in. It’s part of New Ireland that still has room for the national ploughing championships on the news.

I did a lot of running in Dublin. Till my toenails fell off. I ran across Phoenix Park on one of those crisp autumn mornings with the sun reflecting off a light mist, the deer still lain, in perfect blue silence. I jogged past the fruit markets early enough to see the old fellas that have been up since two loading the day’s pallets into vans and semi-trailers. Some come to the Chinese, Korean and Pakistani supermarkets at my doorstep, a block away from the omniplex where I watch the latest Bollywood. The young Asian woman selling me my cabbage speaks with a broad Dublin accent. I run past the queue at the Irish Immigration and Naturalisation office of people wanting to get in and stay in as opposed to just a half dozen years ago when people couldn’t wait to leave.

I jogged past the Capuchin cathedral on Church Street and stopped to listen to the gospel choir and the monk give his sermon that resonated from the depths of his Converse sneakers. I jogged past the open door in the alley way near my apartment in the 'Quartier Italien'. The Italian quarter is actually about fifty metres of three restaurants, a café, a deli and a gelato shop, with a rendition of the Last Supper on the faux piazza wall that would make you weep every time someone tries to cut into it. A property developer who loves Italy created it and the residents seemed to love it as well – but without music, dancing or any late night discussion about the state of the world over wine and coffee and cigarettes. The open door in the alleyway behind the Quartier Italien led to a hall led to an altar led to a Nigerian community who also had to keep the noise down when their cries to God became too loud for Catholicism.

I jogged down O’Connell Street one Easter Sunday. Gerry Adams led the parade of the faithful, walking just feet from me, a man who had figured in my political imagination for much of my life. The subject of venom in my family unit, along with trade unions, indigenous land rights activists and the Fabians. His pragmatic speech impressed as did the prison tattoos on the hands of the man in the crowd next to me. Pipe and Drum bands in Doc Martin boots and brown/black/dark blue shirts followed. I came over all Trinny and Susannah and felt the need for a makeover. They marched past the teenage Goths and Punks in their heavy metal t-shirts and faces studded with metal who cheered them on while waiting outside the Ambassador for a gig to start or finish. The marchers rallied in front of the post-office that still bears the bullet holes from yet another failed military uprising. It sits opposite the new ‘Smiles’ Dental Spa. Italian tourists in shiny white hipsters and African Irish stopped by to watch.

The run back goes down Abbey Street where there’s a marker in the road that means it’s part of the Ulysses trail and hence forth all punctuation will be abandoned glance to the left to see a young man shooting up glance to my front door as two young men stagger past one trying to clear out his cracked nose and the other walking on the nod glance to the right at the young woman without shoes offering cheap blow jobs in a back street in this shopping café precinct surrounded by the housing estates that haven’t been gentrified and it’s simply a next generation that are wasting themselves including the one who shot himself up till he died in my stair well and I stood barefoot in his piss on the phone to paramedics who asked if I could resuscitate his broken wasted puss ridden body and I said no I could but I couldn’t wouldn’t touch his face but the ambos brought him back to life with the help of a machine strapped to his chest and a shot of narcaine but then he died again but then he was alive but finally he died known to the police his name was Stephen. End of Ulysses trail.

I went running down the street to be hit by a kid and to be told by News Radio listeners that I’m asking for it because I’m attractive, because of what I was wearing, that I should stay in the gym and that I should take it as a compliment ‘because my arse will be hanging down around my ankles after I’ve popped out a couple of kids’. Cue on-air laughter – play to your audience Mrs Presenter. I think it was because I was hit on my arse. A slap in the face would of course be taken more seriously. A woman phones in – a couple of lads set fire to her hair in the pub. A gay man phones in – he was hit in the stomach and told to go back to where he came from. He was of course already home. But slowly, baby steps, there is encroachment, reclamation, the rainbow flag on George Street and then another on Capel Street and sometimes another woman out jogging in public.

Across from my block a group of homeless people live in the doorway of a store called ‘Home’. It is difficult to tell sometimes how many are there. They intertwine around each other. One day there is a fight and a face is slashed open, cheek bone on display. His blood pumps onto the pavement, onto the other sleeping bodies in the doorway, onto the other man he’s now pounding. The ambos and police arrive and when I return in an hour’s time the area is scrubbed clean just as the straighteners come through Temple Bar every morning to hose down the blood and piss and vomit ready for the tourists in the day and the drinking in the night.

I ran to the Buddhist centre for a bit of peace but I had to be on the ‘same page’ before I could join in their Metta (loving kindness). Dancing to the same rhythm, chanting the same song, ritual, tradition, all in sync, like pipe and drum bands, like sex, like when did American Indian headdress become part of St Patrick’s Day parades, not to mention tam-o’-shanters and plane loads of US, and one Japanese, marching bands? Now it’s quite possible that I might have been sitting quietly thinking about something different to the person next to me in a meditation hall but I’m not sure how they’d know. I could possibly be meditating on the question of what hope the rest of Ireland in managing its new cultural diversity if Buddhists are getting exclusive. I slogged up the hill past the mosque in Clonskeagh during Ramadan, full to overflowing with celebrating South Asian, Southeast Asia, East Asian, Middle Eastern and Irish Muslims, boxed up on a conveyor belt and disappearing further inside the Department of Integration.

So I went the other direction, West, and the gentle bus driver took me off route to where he thought my camp ground was, and a family picked me up and took me to where the camp ground actually was, and the pub found me a comfortable seat and made the best soup and sandwiches, and the camp ground owners offered me more food and a quiet spot in the field, and the next day I climbed Croagh Patrick on Reek Sunday with twenty thousand other pilgrims, to circle the church, to worship life as the pagans did, and to see the sun rise red over Clew Bay.