Hail, the mighty sporkife ...

Making last minute preparations for the start of my GR10 trek I realised I was missing the all important spork.

What joy then to find in my favourite outdoor shop not only sporks in assorted colours BUT some clever bugger has now come up with a spork case to keep them clean and tidy in the backpack.

AND, these particular sporks also have a serrated edge, so in fact they are more of a knoroon or a sporkife.

I fecking love kit.

East London Life

Cheerfully pedalling to work this morning, enjoying a modest summer's day along the canals, I was slowed by a 'Divers at Work' sign in the middle of the towpath. As I passed I cheerfully waved at the divers and cheerfully asked:

'Hello lads, lovely day for it. What are you looking for?'.

They responded, somewhat lacking in cheer:

'Murder weapon'.

Not such a lovely day then for some poor bugger. And I cycled on.

Things about Switzerland ...

  Things that mystify us about Switzerland ...

1. Swiss German. It is the bastard child of romance elisions and Germanic umlauts.
2. Their love of cows and jokes like 'have a nice hay'.
3. Curried corn. It is just so wrong. Unless your chef has spent at least three years at the foot of a South Asian master, stay away from the spice rack. And it doesn't matter how precisely the rice is shaped, if it's not cooked it's still not going to taste nice.Stick to things you're good at Switzerland, like fondue, and hiding large sums of money for dubious people.

  
Things that we love about Switzerland ...

1. Raclette.
2. Rosti.
3. Raclette on rosti.
4. Bread. Fondue. Potatoes. Fat and carbs basically. 
5. Engineering. No messing about. Just put the train line right through the Alps. 
6. 4pm wake up calls, otherwise known as Jagertee, leading to at least another two hours of skiing. Black run anyone? Absolutely.
7. Night skiing with a full moon over an amphitheatre of big mountains.

On lacking imagination and other political faults ....

Yesterday was a very depressing news day. Not only the ongoing stories of war and suffering but now we have George Osborne announcing that his vision for the UK is that we become the richest country in the world. Not the fairest, the most green, the most creative, the most skilled, the most critically thinking country in the world. No, we must become the richest. I don't mind a bit of wealth but if that is all we're aiming for with our collective talent and imagination then I imagine we're going to be one of the poorest countries in the world on many counts.

To top it off we then had London Mayor Boris Johnson on the BBC London news (10 July 2015) announcing his support for a 'loosening' of local planning laws that gives the government more compulsory purchase powers and the mayor more power to override local government planning decisions. According to Boris, the lack of home building in the capital is 'essentially because of democracy, because of restrictions that planning committees place, that councils place'.

Ah yes, that pesky thing called democracy hampering developers in their desire to run a steam roller over every council estate in the city, and constraining the entrepreneurial spirit of the good home owner who wants to add a floor without planning permission that they can then rent out for at least the £1200 per month you would pay for one bedroom in West Ealing. Let's not even look at renting in Zones 1-2, and forget about buying. Boris has yet to explain how this helps the lack of social and affordable housing in the city.

I don't get angry with developers. It is their nature to obfuscate and manipulate in order to make the most profit. It's the Scorpion and the Frog scenario (go watch The Crying Game if you don't know the reference but basically if you're a frog never give a scorpion a free ride across a pond because eventually it will sting you and you'll both drown - it cannot overcome its nature).  I do, however, get angry with government because it is the role of government to mediate, on our behalf, the excesses of developers, not get into bed with them.

So no, Boris, democracy is not the problem. A lack of it is the problem.

Gird your loins, the gloves are off - and other mixed metaphors

Being a firm believer that democracy does not begin and end with elections that happen every few years I'm not so despondent about the new /old government we have here in the UK, or perhaps I'm just getting old and have lived through so many of them now that they all just merge into mediocre blancmange.

I remember a few years ago seeing statistics from the global pew survey on attitudes to democracy. While more and more countries become 'democratic', measured by the fact that they have elections, more and more people are increasingly dissatisfied with it. And this makes sense. Over the years, we seem to have collectively forgotten that power is transferred from we the people to our representatives and that we can withdraw our legitimacy at any time should enough of us say 'sorry to bother you but would you mind terribly not doing that' (as we would say in Britain). Even in the face of a necrotic political-economic elite propped up by scared men inflated into the status of media barons, we have power. We don't actually have to politely wait for another election.

So, pick your battle! Electoral reform seems like a good place to start - from UKIP to the Greens, the periphery needs to march up on the big boys, while they're squabbling in the centre sandpit over whose blancmange is best, and nick all their toys. I am fascinated however whenever I tub thump about electoral reform how many people say 'but that will mean UKIP will get more seats'. Yes, it might or even worse, the BNP. And that's democracy. Those voices need to be heard. It would also mean that Greens, and other socialist oriented parties, even independents, could get more seats and balance would be restored to the universe. It would mean that parties would be forced to put forward actual policies and debate them with dissenting voices - rather than the increasingly stage managed manifesto launches and meet-the-party-faithful gatherings we saw in this election. It would mean that the executive government would have to present policies to a reinvigorated parliament, not the whipped puppy we see before us today, and convince that parliament with sound argument and evidence that what they are proposing is at least necessary. It will mean that politicians could not assume that being our representatives was a job for life.

It will not be perfect. It never will be. But it will be better than the soul destroying option of being told that the only decision we have to make in this country is putting an X next to blue or red every five years. We deserve a bit more choice than that.

Electoral Reform Society
Unlock Democracy

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.