His Popeness

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

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

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

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

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

A Guide to Being Alone

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

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

A Guide to Pic du Canigou

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

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

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

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

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

World Cup Take 2

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

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

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

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

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

Keep Your Focus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yoga Knots

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

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

City Space

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

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