The Cats of Dubrovnik

Commanding the steps, the higher and lower ground, the alley and piazza, from positions of imperious distain, the cats of Dubrovnik do not mewl and they do not beg, but rather deign to be occasionally stroked. Clinging to the sides, they live in shadowlands of walls and wars, avoiding the bright reflections made by souvenir shops on smooth stones when storms pass over and over again. Rebuilt, remade, renewed as medieval imagination, photographs of martyrs fade to white, disappearing like rubble and holes and cats.

I like big butts and I cannot lie ...

And while we're on the subject of Japan, it has already been noted in this blog that I have a certain penchant for big blokes, as does Dingo Baby for that matter, and it doesn't get much bigger than sumo.

Which is why, after a quick trip on a bullet train, we found ourselves at Day 4 of the Nagoya Sumo festival (July 2014). Even though bouts had started at 0830, the stadium was still relatively empty by the time we arrived for lunch. The earlier fights involve only the minnows, the newbies, the getting too old with knackered knees. Technically more inept, they are of little interest to the average spectator.

But the lack of crowd in a stadium that would hold several thousand could also be attributed to Sumo's decline in popularity. It is a sport for the aged. On our front row of cushions we were surrounded by pensioner groupies; ladies who clamoured with delight when their favourite wrestler came on. They gathered in the foyer and by the arena entrances to take pictures and clap and clamour some more. They were lovely, but anyone under the age of 50 was rare.

A strong hint of yakuza involvement didn't do much for the sport either, and the fact that a Japanese wrestler hasn't been a yokozuna (champion) since 2003 adds to the general sense of malaise. For the last few years it has been the Mongolians who have dominated (all three yokozuna in Nagoya were  Mongolian but East Europeans also seem to do well).

Despite the declining interest it is a magnificent performance, especially as the fights progress through the afternoon and the men and the crowds get correspondingly bigger: bigger butts, bigger moobs, bigger mawashi (loin clothes), massive thighs. There is gamesmanship and strategy as the better fighters try to psyche each other out with false moves and dummy lunges. But personally I think it is the sound of flesh crashing into flesh, like walruses slapping into each other, that excites the throng, as a surprisingly mobile 150 kilograms of muscle and fat tries to shift another 150 kilograms out of a ring. Immovable object meets irresistible force. No wonder their knees give out.

The bouts also become increasingly ritualised, with stomping and salt throwing, incantation and fan waving, squatting and getting up again, taking more time than the actual fight itself, which lasts on average four seconds (although they have up to four minutes). For a younger generation brought up on the sensory overload of anime and video games it's not surprising that not-much-happening isn't going to get their attention.

The opening ceremonies were completely opaque to us even with the handy guide and the help of our neighbour who valiantly attempted to explain the rules, in Japanese. Lost in translation she persisted throughout the five hours of subsequent bouts. We were mostly puzzled by the hundreds of spectators suddenly throwing their cushions at the ring when one of the yokozuna went down, but apparently that's allowed.

The rules extended to behaviour in the stadium but we found the general Japanese desire to comply dissipating and hints of naughtiness sneaking in. Our neighbours in the boxes behind became drunker and drunker, ignoring the 'no drink, no food allowed' rules which we unfortunately had to obey as we were too close to the sacred space of the dohyo (wrestling platform) to contemplate breaking regulations even if we had been aware of what they were. I did try moving to an empty aisle bench just one away from my designated seat but that seemed to attract the attention of the authorities who politely asked me to move back - possibly. Or what they may have been asking was if I would mind appearing on national television, as a few moments later a cameraman appeared in front of me to film my reaction to the next bout. I'd like to think I gave such an enthusiastic performance of squealing and clapping that it will encourage future generations to support the sport.

Love and Pork

And while we're on the subject of food ... if there was one place on the planet where I thought it would not be difficult to be a vegetarian it was Japan. But it took less than one bowl of soba noodles to dispel the myth of a land of rising tofu and tempeh. Japan seemingly has a love affair with pork.

I ordered a bowl of plain tofu as a last resort and it came served on a bed of minced pork. Everything comes with pork. Or fish. I gave up. A meal in a Mount Fuji refuge consisted of mini frankfurters, a meat rissole, rice and more meat. I was starving. There was nothing else. It was eaten. A veggie colleague who clearly has greater strength of character than I do survived on pot noodles and dal from an Indian restaurant in Yokohama's Chinatown, a place so cosmopolitan that it is possible to find a man of African descent playing Danny Boy on a Caribbean steel drum in a Chinese restaurant.

Apart from the surprising amounts of pork, it must be said that Japan also has some unique ways in which it brings love and food together. There is, for example, the homage to the humble Pot Noodle, with its very own Museum (although I have seen a museum to milk machines in New Zealand which says a lot about that country too). There is also, more pointedly, the French Maid Cafe. Far be it for me to suggest that any country's sexual mores are odd; I live in Britain after all where publicly mentioning the word 'orgy' on a train can generate great ire in fellow passengers (it's another long story). But there is something about the Tokyo French Maid Cafe that is slightly disturbing. Popping in for cup of coffee we work out the order of things. There's a 1000 yen (£6) cover charge for each 30 minutes of your hostess' time before 8pm, and 5000 yen (£30) for each 30 minutes after that. Then a little song that basically means 'cheers' with our hostess using a fake beer glass with pretend beer in it. And then the clock starts. Our hostess spoke no English but valiantly tried to ensure we had a good time. Using the phrase book and the help of the smart phone translation app of Geek No. 1 sitting next to me (this is Nakano Broadway after all, a burgeoning centre of geekdom and trailing sex shops), we introduced ourselves and worked out that she is living with an Australian English language teacher. She keeps smiling. Drinks are free and Geeks No. 1 to 4 on my left are happy to smoke, drink beer and have a lovely young woman laugh at their jokes. The infantalisation of women is everywhere along with neon, wide eyes and girlish laughs. I would mention that knee high socks are involved in this somehow but I like to wear them as well so I'm taking them out of the equation. We left after 15 minutes as Dingo Baby was looking decidedly embarrassed when the yen finally dropped and he realised what probably happens at French Maid cafés. Our hostess held up the timer to show us that we had 15 minutes more but we politely said goodbye. She looked a bit disappointed.

There are other kinds of French cafes in Japan that have perhaps more an element of culinary rather than carnal love to them although hints of the stoic role of women in Japanese society are still present along with the cream puffs and macaroons. Don't tell the French but Tokyo does better patisserie than they do, their bakes being things of beauty, shiny, bright and ranging from the pastel to neon. Even a Strawberry Slushy becomes a thing of beauty when the Japanese do it. Dingo Baby and I retire to the gentile surrounds of one such cafe for our daily 4pm ice coffee (which is also a thing of beauty in Tokyo) and cake time. Just as the French Maid Cafés are men's spaces (me being the only woman in them apart from the hostesses and a carer for a man with a disability), the cafés are for the ladies. We are joined by the matrons who used to cosplay in the streets of Harajuku but are now married and apparently taking up their more respectable position in café society.

While we're in Harajuku, like the patisserie it is a world of pastels and shiny bright things. It may not be the centre of cosplay that it once was but it is still driven by the energy of 1000s of teenagers to the extent that I was suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to buy the most expensive pastel t-shirt I've ever bought and a sparkly broach that apparently says 'Revolution' in glittering pink and blue kanji. Shops such as 6% Doki Doki are dedicated to a youth culture that Japan defines. There is kawaii (cute), lolita, french maid goth, the latest trend to dress up exactly the same (and I mean EXACTLY the same) as your best friend. There are beat girls (complete with woolly beanies in 30 degree heat) and boys in shaggy orange hair and baggy striped shorts. There is a surprising amount of jodhpurs and some 'yet to have a name' trends. Circulating constantly around this cacophony, adding to it with their own neon and pastel, are the advertising trucks that promote J-pop boy and girl bands.

Accidentally stumbling into a performance by a J-pop girl band in Yokohama (think neon hot pants and those knee high socks again), we watch several hundred salarymen (all men) getting very excited, deploying all the appropriate arm waving movements in unison and getting a tad hysterical at the end. Accidentally stumbling across a performance by a boy band singing a-cappella outside a music store in Shibuya, perhaps a hundred women, with a tad more decorum than the men, quietly, in unison, deployed all the appropriate arm movements and got very excited in an understated way, clapping at the end of each song.

In my idea of heaven, the Okadaya department store of haberdashery (yes, six floors of haberdashery, yarns and textiles), I spent 20 minutes with a sales assistant who was trying to save me the expense of buying rayon for a skirt because cleaning it would be too difficult. We did this through her running (and really running) around the shop finding international cleaning labels on other fabric that I could understand. I found my own behaviour modifying after only a few days, becoming uber-polite on the Metro for example. I picked up my litter and let people on the train first. Anyone who has seen me preparing to board the Midlands express will know this is not my normal comportment.

These acts of civility in Japan tend to be conflated with conformity in the general 'how to do Karoake' guide books but for 130 million people to live on a tiny set of islands there can be no eccentric throwing about of hands or pogo-ing noisily in crowds. There is no space physically, and therefore no space culturally.

But dirty, noisy, impolite, sex must have its way and seep through the cracks that give it its own unique deformities. There are the vending machines with young women's knickers for sale, there is a popular culture that has a very distinct take on the proportions of women's breasts, and let's not even go near the kind of inflatables in the sex shop we accidentally stumbled into in Nakano Broadway. I'm sure Soho has something in its basement that wouldn't be too different, but while Soho revels in the vomit in its gutter making no pretense at putting lipgloss on, bespoke Japan presents a dissonant juxtaposition of french maid cafés and exquisite patisserie, misogynistic manga and politeness. The advertising trucks at night become the mobile hoardings for the bars in the red light district of Kabukicho where there is something for everyone on the love menu. To the soundtrack of an 80s video arcade game, the roar of pachinko parlours, the touting for business, the ubiquitous theme tune of the Vanilla hostess bar, the love hotels, the neon of Robot Restaurant, the androgynous, kinetic energy of Kabukicho envelopes everyone, along with its smells of beer and BBQing pork.

Step away from the kulfi!

Long has the Delhi consumer's capacity for craft melas held me in awe, particularly in the lead up to Diwali. There is nothing quite as frenetic as shopping at the famous open air markets like Dastkar and the Blind School's annual extravaganza. So many dupattas, so little time.

But I have finally discovered the secret ... kulfi. And not just any kulfi, but a kesar pista - think frozen condensed milk with saffron and pistachio. And in my case, along with the kulfi, have chai, mango sweets, date paan, more chai and a bottle of plum juice. On an empty stomach. Never have shiny things looked so shiny, silks looked so silky, colours looked so vibrant, and my bargaining been so ruthless as when the blood sugar levels are making for a screaming crescendo. Never have I been able to cover so much ground, leaping small children in a single bound to get to the last pashmina shawl at a bargain price.

Unfortunately the crash that came about 30 minutes later resulted in conversations that included sentences like: 'touch that kurtha again Aunty and lose a hand. It's MINE'.

Worse, after all the jostling, unfurling, trying on and taking off, reducing sales staff to bundles of quivering frustration, in the end I came away with nothing because my neurones were so close to bursting at the amount of choice that in a fit of ADHD they couldn't decide what they wanted.

The other unfortunate side effect was that I couldn't find my way out. As noted in other posts it is a bit embarrassing to be lost as a geographer and orienteer but sugar is clearly not good for the internal navigational systems. It took another hour of wandering with an increasing sense of hallucinogenic panic that the same dupattas were following me before I found the exit.

Luckily, just outside the entrance was now a line up of sweet potato sellers - my favourite Delhi street food and a lovely sign that winter is on the way. Sweet potato after kulfi, with a sprinkling of masala and splash of nimbu, is the equivalent of a spliff after crystal meth (so I'm told). As I sat on a wall with the street urchins, sharing our sweet potatoes in a twilight haze, the world stopped shimmering and calm descended along with the particulate matter of Delhi's traffic pollution.  

The gastronomic moral of this tale is that kulfi, while divine, should only be eaten on its own after a sturdy meal. Leave the chai, mango sweets, paan and plum juice for another day.

Sex and Money

So your man, Brooks Newman (Minister for Civil Society) resigns in shame after sending a picture of (I'm assuming because noone's been explicit) his penis to a fake woman (if you don't know the story it's just tawdry and misogynistic all round mostly on the part of the reporter and newspaper involved).  And yet whoever was responsible for coming up with the idea of PFIs is still walking around apparently not feeling any shame at all: not feeling like he (I'm assuming it's a he) has to say sorry; not feeling like he has to put his hand up and say 'perhaps it wasn't a good idea after all'.

A whiff of sex is so shameful it requires resignation. Beggaring the health service in the name of stupidity, oligarchy and greed is apparently nothing to get too embarrassed about. Whoever you are PFI Man you should hang your head in shame, and Vince Cable can join you for selling off the Royal Mail to yet another cabal.

If you have a strong constitution I'd highly recommend James Meek's book on privatisation in the UK. Read it and weep.

Random encounters

Rather than an example of Augé's non-place, I've always thought of Dubai airport as a place full of the potential for random, magical encounters. In today's hurry through I happened to meet a member of the Islamic Republic of Iran's womens inline skating team. They had been in China competing, coming fourth to China's first. Her petite frame was remarkably lacking in any sign of evil. There were no horns, no tails and no cloven hooves (I would imagine it would be very difficult to inline skate with cloven hooves). There was no 666 that I could see. She was just resplendent in grey tracksuit and ordinariness.

Soggy Welsh cakes and other of life's failures

Britain's moistness has always been a bit of a challenge. Every year I get a complete new set of toe nails as a result of the miles of mud and slurry we slide through. This year's 100 mile event though was extra special and after 46.6 miles of wading through the valleys of South Wales I called it quits.

Failure is an unusual sensation. After a shower and some sleep there's the inevitable regret ... Could I have kept going just that little bit more? ... Probably not. If I hadn't been pulled out of a sink hole by some lovely lads from up north I may still be in Wales. And my stomach had decided that the mini scotch eggs really weren't going to stay down and why should they. I'm a flexible enough vegetarian that I will eat as many carbs and fats as possible during endurance events, and in the damp confusion of a checkpoint the eggs covered in pre-chicken nugget machine processed meat paste were looking pretty good. But in hindsight a bad choice.

My choice of underwear was also dubious as it turned out. Ladies, you will understand (boys, turn away now) ... there is nothing worse than chafing, particularly when it feels like septicaemia is setting in and making your thigh balloon into a red jellied mass. So bad did it become that there was no choice but to 'go commando' as it were, which involved borrowing scissors from a marshall and removing the offending undies as it was impossible by this stage to get sodden gaiters, boots, overpants and leggings off. I'd like to see Paula Radcliffe top that.

Choosing who had the voice of authority when it came to navigation added to the pain. Now I've made some spectacularly bad directional decisions in past events, including insisting to fellow eventers a few years ago that it was a right turn through a village and not the left, with the added authoritative 'I'm a geographer, trust me'. Technically I would have been correct if I had been in the right village. The embarrassment has probably scarred me into being slightly less assertive these days but when my gps, my route description and my gut are all saying the route is up the hill not down, I really need to stop listening to other people.

There is an upside to failure though. It's always possible to rationalise it as the outcome of poor tools. This means that the only solution is new kit and I'm now the proud owner of running underwear from Sweaty Betty; so expensive that if they were to chafe I'd never be able to justify cutting them off. And my pride and joy, the Ultimate Direction PB v2 backpack - water bottles in the front and more pockets than you can poke a walking pole at. Nothing like new toys to dull regret and once my new toe nails are back in place we're set for another season.

Evidence, Mr Pickles, and the decline of democracy

Eric Pickles is our Secretary of State for Community and Local Government and was recently a guest on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions (Friday, 31 January 2014). When the topic of whether the top rate of tax should be raised again to 50p for those earning over £150,000, he cited the example of French immigration to London in order, in his view, to avoid a 75% top rate of tax being introduced by French president Francois Hollande.

As nothing is so destructive of an informed electorate's participation in democratic processes than the manipulation of data here are a few things Mr Pickles might like to think about in case he should ever read this blog:

1. The number of French nationals living in London is estimated to be between 100,000 to 400,000. It is conceivable that some of these people actually immigrated into the UK when Nicolas Sarkozy was the president of France (2007-12) and there was no talk of higher tax. Conceivably some were even escaping Sarkozy's conservative austerity and attacks on social policies. So no correlation there then Eric, between French people now living in the UK and the fleeing of Hollande's 'millionaires' tax (which hasn't come into force yet). Anything you might like to know about French skilled migration to London you can find in Louise Ryan and Jon Mulholland's excellent research.  

2. That the argument for not introducing the 50p rate is that high net worth individuals will just restructure their finances to avoid/evade paying tax does have some support if we look at the figures from the time the Labour party introduced the policy. But rather than curtailing tax evasion/avoidance, we just give up and say 'let's just not do it and cut social spending instead'. Seriously? Is there any particular reason why we can't impress upon high net worth individuals that, in the words of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, 'you pay taxes because you get services'?

3. Invoking Gerard Depardieu as an example of how high net worth individuals will flee the UK if a 50p top rate of tax is brought in is just insulting. That any country should set its economic policies according to the whims of a spoiled, if talented, actor, is ludicrous. If any of our high net worth individuals want to become Russian citizens go ahead, knock yourselves out. Go become a citizen of a country where the prime minister-president-prime minister-president is still in power after 15 years with at least another four to go, where gay people are beaten up and democracy protesters (or anyone with views Putin or the Orthodox Church seems to dislike) thrown in gaol. Don't slam the door behind you on your way out.

It seems the height of irony that a government that started off with a high profile policy of creating a 'Big Society', in some 1950s nostalgia for when we all knew our neighbours, repeatedly says it's okay to prioritise in our Big Society those who are demonstrative of the highest levels of selfishness. And it seems the height of hypocrisy that a prime minister, who once exhorted us all to demonstrate Christian values, values the presence of individuals who refuse to share and who have less chance of getting into heaven than me and the camel passing through the eye of a needle at the same time.

And even, Mr Pickles, if you do think it's okay that we have to live with such rude neighbours in our society because eventually their wealth will trickle down to the rest of us, at least, for the sake of democratic principles, don't manipulate evidence to suit your arguments. If you want a more accurate correlation, find out the relationship between the creation of dodgy dossiers of all kinds and the general distrust of our political elite. Every time you twist, distort, bend, or bury evidence you twist, distort, bend and bury democracy that little bit more.    

Notes to self for the New Year 2014

1. Rage.

2. Rage against the machine, against mediocrity, against bigotry, against everyday sexism, against lazy journalism, against economists who use the word 'rational'. ('Playing rationally in a game with madmen is madness itself', Mark van Vugt). Rage against sclerotic institutions, meaningless dichotomies, political expediency, denied hypocrisy, self-defeating nihilism, cynicism, and acrylic yarn.

3. Stock up on tea and chocolate digestives.