Bad Karma, Bad

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

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

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.