Subterranean Blues ...

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 ....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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.