These boots were made for walking ....

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

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.

The Paradox of Mobility

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

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 ....

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.