Dubai

A friend from work has made the move to Dubai.She left a couple of weeks ago and has been offered a well paid sinecure. Fortune favours the brave. She has left behind wretched office politics , the cold and Canterbury.

I went to Dubai in 2008 just as the financial ordure hit . The Emirate has great weather and offers a surreal playground for the expat. A desert port on the Persian Gulf has turned itself into a global city. As its oil reserves dwindle the emirate took the decision to diversify its economy. Its business is now tourism, real estate and financial services.

You either love or loathe Dubai. I liked it but the timing was wrong for a move. As the credit crunched I heard tales of abandoned Jaguars and BMWs at the airport. When job losses loomed the expats fled the possibility of loan default and its consequences. Dubai does not take kindly to those who dishonour debt.

These concerns were minor in comparison with the wretched treatment of Indian and Pakistani construction workers. Brought to work on the boom that gave the world it's tallest building, Palm Island and other pointless exotica many faced ruin when the boom became bust.

I could tut further but Dubai has a relatively good human rights record - according to Wikipedia it is superior to the United States. I found the city fascinating. As a European you have to reorientate - the world as seen through the prism of the Middle East. As the Dubai economy improves a move is tempting but unlikely.

At Dubai International Airport I had time to spare waiting for the return flight. I went to the perennial favourite of the plastic Patrick - the Irish pub. Nursing a Guinness I struck up a conversation with a fellow Patrick and traveller. He introduced himself as Brian. Brian was an Irish American on his way home to Boston from Iraq were he worked as a contractor. He told me he was looking forward to a planned stopover in Dublin were he would meet his wife and kids . They had a long planned holiday in the old country.

Brian was a former marine who now used his skills as a soldier in the security business. He said he had no illusions about his country's interest in Iraq - it was based on the dollar. He was an interesting man and did not strike me as a Walter Mitty character .He was laconic with views based on experience.

I spent my last hours in Dubai in the convivial company of a man employed as a professional killer.

 

Rough Sleeper

We went for a meal on Pimlico Road in West London. It was a get together for my wife's family.

After the meal we walked past a young woman sleeping rough on our way to the tube station. She was preparing her bed for a cold night in a shop entrance . The shop was a boutique affair selling overpriced tat to the foolish.

Mrs Emigre wanted to give the young woman some money. It was cold and she was vulnerable on a West London street. We approached and offered money which she declined. She was at most 20 and spoke good English with a Scandinavian accent. She wanted to know if we lived in the area. If we did a blanket would help. We didn't and we were no help.

My wife and I stood for a moment feeling useless with the realisation we were intruding. The woman was preparing for a harsh night in the cold and we were invading her privacy. She had not asked for our help and her story was none of our business. She sounded well educated .Was she a student ?. We will never know.

We walked away confused and chastened. We had enjoyed a nice meal in a warm fancy restaurant . With good intentions we had stumbled heedlessly into someone's life. Our intervention was unintentionally patronising.

If someone asks for help give without expectation of thanks or the warm glow of altruism. Every rough sleeper has a private narrative that should remain private unless offered in friendship.Someone can be made homeless by a storm in the Philippines or grotesque inequality in Neo-Dickensian London. Whatever the cause everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

I hope one of the wealthy denizens of West London has a spare blanket for an extraordinary woman.

 

Sermon

Another Sunday has passed without an act of observance.

Since moving to England I have rarely troubled the inside of a church . I did frequent a high Church of England place of worship called St Botulph's on Bishopgate for a while . It was near Liverpool street station and proved a sanctum of peace amid the rush of the city. I liked the candles and aesthetics. My forebears and countrymen would be aghast at my lighting of candles. My native Church of Ireland is austere . The various Presbyterians sects and schisms are more austere still.

My mother finds solace in her church. She attends service every Sunday . Her observance is a spiritual matter which has nothing to do with politics or allegiance .

My attitude to organised religion is one of ambivalence . I lost my faith but have slowly moved from atheism to agnosticism. I don't agree with Mr Dawkins and his dismissal of faith as a mental aberration.If it is private and presents no harm to others then people should be free to worship as they wish. The problems arise when religion mixes with politics.

This Sunday I find myself missing the childish boredom of the hymns, the hard seats and the sermon.

 

 

Stand up comedian

We went to the stand up comedian Stewart Lee in London.We had been to see him before and his performance did not disappoint.

For those not familiar with his work Mr Lee is a clever, self conscious performer. He has been doing stand up for 25 years and his work has slowly evolved into a treatise on comedy itself. He attracted some infamy a few years ago as co-writer and director of Jerry Springer the opera. He is also a man of letters and has written a novel and a fine book on comedy. Check out his work . I have made him sound po-faced and worthy but he is funny. The recent political discourse over Russell Brand's interview with Jeremy Paxman is described as a monkey throwing its own excrement at a foghorn.

He is a fan and promoter of fellow countryman Kevin McAleer. The Flann O'Brien of Omagh is an acquired taste. I went to see him perform in Soho a few years ago and watched as his performance sailed at cruising altitude over the heads of a London audience. His routine can cross the line into unfunny Beckettian farce but it is fascinating and performance art in itself . Again. Check him out.

Both men have avoided the dire boom in stand up comedy as the new rock n roll. Various folk regularly fill stadiums with their comic observations on football, self abuse and the fluff in their navel.We were walking from a train station in Greenwich a while ago when I saw flyers for courses in stand up comedy . There may even be a BA.

I am not laughing.

 

The Llamas of Bigberry Farm.

I read with appreciation the story of drunk French kids and their night out in Bordeaux. On passing a circus they liberated a Llama called Serge and took him out on the raz. They also liberated a stuffed lion toy and a trombone.

The festivities included drunken snaps with Serge and a tram ride . A humourless tram inspector curtailed festivities and Serge was ejected . He was left tied to a lamppost to await the arrival of the gendarme . I hope the revellers are not prosecuted - their snaps are posted on Facebook.

I had a llama acquaintance or three when living in Faversham. I christened the trio after the three stooges . The picture is of the imperious Larry. They were kept at the Bigberry farm outside Canterbury along with a deer herd. I am a fan of llamas - they are more user friendly than their spitting cousins the camel. I was tempted to get into their enclosure on occasion and commune.

I did a bit of research in between my trips to see the lads at Bigberry. Farmers use llamas and alpacas as guard dogs for sheep herds. A single male llama will adopt a sheep herd and provide fearsome protection against the predations of wolves.

Viva Llamas.

 

Balthazar

A friend reminded me of a shared admiration for donkeys. Equus africanus asinus is an ancestor of the African wild ass and has served as a companion and worker for man (and woman) through the ages.

My father was a keeper and fan of grander members of the equidae family. His hunter horses and show jumpers were temperamental skittish beasts. I admired their beauty but deemed them potentially lethal. It didn't help that I was allergic to horse hair . A nascent career as a show jumper on the gymkhana circuit was short lived .

Where a horse is nervy a donkey is calm and stoical. Donkeys have served Homo sapiens well and bore Jesus into Jerusalem. In Bresson's film Au Hazard Balthazar the titular donkey is treated abominably by various owners and bears a fate not unlike that of Christ.I was going to refer to the Spanish practice of throwing donkeys from a church steeple but the story is apocryphal . Before researching the tale I had taken it for fact and in keeping with religious celebration. Organised religion does not set a high bar on cruelty to animals.

I will end with a hymn of praise to one Edward Murphy (or Eddie Murphy to his friends and viewers). His comic turn as donkey in the Shrek films ennobled the perception of Equus africanus asinus . The donkey is cast as the noble steed and loyal underdog when compared with the flimsy patrician charm of the King's stallion.

Viva donkey.

 

Pale Green Ghosts

As it is Sunday we went to worship at a shopping cathedral called Bluewater. Mrs. Emigre had to buy a birthday present for a friend and after some consideration settled upon an English China gift set.Though designed in L'Angleterre the gift set was made in Taiwan.

I spent my time watching fellow worshippers pass by with bags festooned with brands. Bluewater is suited to people watching as it is designed in the round. You follow the concourse with Marks to the left and Zara to the right. Keep going and you will end up were you started.

I succumbed to idolatry and got a camera connection kit to transfer photos from camera to computer. The expansively presented bit of plastic was designed in California and ....anyone ..made in China. It cost maybe £1 to manufacture and cost the writer £25. A fool and his money .

Modern retail is like the movie the Wizard of Oz .The Wizard is advertisers with expensively cultivated brands. Working away behind the curtain are low paid employees in factories with dormitories and canteens. These vast factories have suicide nets in case the employees get despondent.

Before I left the gleaming spires I got a CD called Pale Green Ghosts. It is a critically acclaimed tale of heartbreak and loss. Though affecting and heartfelt it suffers from the same solipsism that affects a lot of art.

I haven't listened to it enough to figure out the Pale Green Ghosts that haunt the singer . I do know that Bluewater and shopping centres like it have ghosts. And we are not frightened by them.

 

The Tower of David

I watched a recent episode of Homeland. The first series of the TV show was an impressive study of post 9/11 paranoia . The second and third series were greeted with less favour having jumped the shark ( the reference is to an episode of Happy Days were Fonzie while water skiing jumps a shark - it meant le fin du Happy Days).

Brodie is the former jihadi (?), former Vice President and former marine on the lam in Caracas . His paramour is the bi polar CIA operative Carrie Mathison currently ensconced in the funny farm. The critics have a point - credibility is not a strong suit. This is not an entry about Homeland - it's about the extraordinary sight of Brodie's hide out in Caracas .

I had never heard of the Tower of David. It is is an unfinished skyscraper in Caracas named after the tower's investor David Brillembourg. The construction of the tower began in 1990 but was halted in 1994 due to the Venezuelean banking crisis. The government took over the building and a housing shortage led to occupation of the building by squatters .

I read about the building in an article in the New Yorker. It is an extraordinary sight. A gleaming monument to capital turned into a high rise shanty town for the poor and dispossessed . The article was largely hostile to the now deceased President Chavez. I am not qualified to comment on his time in office though America usually disapproves of Latin American socialists who distribute wealth to the poor. The distribution of wealth to the rich is much more acceptable.

If you get the chance check out the Tower of David. It is a monument of our time.

 

Doire

I read an interview with artist David Shrigley by the writer Will Self. I knew a bit about Mr Shrigley's work from an exhibition . His photo of a stuffed Jack Russell standing on its hind legs holding a placard with "I'm dead" written on it is a difficult image to shift. He spoke of his plans for the vacant fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square. He has cast a bronze thumbs up ( the thumb is elongated) titled "Really Good". It made me smile anyway. He is up for this years Turner Prize with the ceremony in Derry/Londonderry.

In the alternative I like the name Doire which is Irish for oak grove.Derry is the Anglicised name. Such is the history of the place a local broadcaster avoids the issue and calls it Stroke City.I worked in Doire for almost three years and have good memories and friendships from my time there. I much prefer it to Belfast where I also lived and worked . I found Belfast prickly and it tried too hard. We all have our preferences and I am sure others will disagree.

I am happy to see Doire is European City of Culture and is staging events like the Turner Prize. Stroke City seemed to be in the shadow of the gaudy charms of Belfast . The City of Culture events have given it publicity and the chance to step into its own.

I hope Mr Shrigley is triumphant . Not because I know much about his art ( I don't). It's because his stuffed Jack Russell made me smile.

 

What's outside the window?

The quote is from a wonderful book called the Savage Detectives. It is a roman a clef in the tradition of Ulysses and is worthy of the comparison. The author was Roberto Bolano. He was a Chilean exile who led a peripatetic existence in Mexico and Spain. He wrote many great books but the Detectives is my favourite.

It tells the story of the search for a 1920s female Mexican poet by two 1970s poets, the Chilean Arturo Belano ( Bolano's alter ego) and the Mexican Ulises Lima. This doesn't sound promising but reading it opens a door to a room where everything is alive. I read it in a (very good) translation - my Spanish is not up to scratch. I envy the reader who has not yet encountered the odyssey of Belano and Lima across the Mexican desert.

Today there is little of interest outside the window . It's wet autumn day in South East London. Apropos nothing I attach a photo of a window at the Hilton at Gatwick. The round window reminded me of a TV programme from childhood called Rainbow. For those unaware of George, Zippy and Bungle you have been spared . It was a traumatic experience . Most children's TV from the 70's seems to have been made by space cadets with a familiarity with hallucinogenics.

Instead of the wind and the rain on a South London garden I will dream of two poets driving through the Sonora Desert in Mexico on a search without end. It doesn't end until Bolano's posthumous follow up called 2666 . His alter ego declares "And that's it, friends. I've done it all, I've lived it all. If I had the strength, I'd cry. I bid you all goodbye, Arturo Belano".

 

Le fin du cinema

I (re)watched a movie yesterday which is technically beyond reproach. Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive is formally perfect - sound design, cinematography , editing are faultless. The actors emote with a bare bones screenplay and play out Godard's dictum that all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun (or a skull crushing boot). Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising is an influence . The actors play archetypes and the action is fetishised. The unnamed driver wears an iconic jacket with a scorpion on the back.

The quote from Godard is that cinema is dead. Ever the absolutist he claimed that in a capitalism without alternatives you end up with heartless cruelty like Drive.There are many fine humanist filmmakers working that deal with real lives and human drama. The soon to retire Ken Loach, Terence Davies and Clio Bernard all produce films reflecting lives lived. But they seldom trouble the multiplex and are deemed art house . Ken Loach's last opus Angel's Share is an uplifting tale of ex convicts and whiskey. It is not difficult but hasn't the cool veneer of Drive or Mr Tarantino's latest.

The visceral thrill of depersonalised violence sells tickets . If is what we want. Cheap thrills and a metallic taste in the mouth. Or it is what we are told we want.

Drive baby. Drive.

 

Speed

While my wife was out with friends I went to the movie Rush. It's the tale of the rivalry between James Hunt and Nicki Lauda in 1970's Formula One. It's a well written character piece dominated by the performance of Daniel Bruhl as Lauda.

I am not a fan of Formula One but I know it is now safer . Fatalities were frequent in the 70s and safety provision inadequate. Lauda almost lost his life in a terrible crash and still bears the scars. The driving sequences in the film are technically brilliant and seemingly free of CGI sleight of hand . They do not however capture the adrenaline rush and fear of driving fast.

My wife bought me a track day a few years ago as a birthday present . I am not a petrol head and find Top Gear unwatchable ( save for the nervy latent homosexuality of the banter ). The track day was not the bespoke experience described on the bumph but they did give you an expensive sports car to drive for four laps. I embraced bling and choose an Italian stead in highlighter green . The instructor chap in the passenger seat guided you round the circuit with tips on when to turn, apply power and brake. He was also the custodian of the machine in the event of your ineptitude.

After the first lap or two familiarising yourself you have a Top Gun moment and a boyish need for speed. As you hurtle round corners with a car that defies physics you have a strange experience. You sense the car is driving you as computers correct errors and control traction and gear shift. You are travelling at speeds of twice the legal limit and the experience is remote and anaesthetised. You don't feel any danger.I have been a passenger in a Renault 4 with a rust habit at 40mph and felt more peril.

Though I have limited interest in motor sport I was fascinated by the character of Ayrton Senna da Silva. The son of a wealthy Brazilian businessman he was an exceptional racing driver. He was also the last fatality in Formula One. I watched the race that claimed his life. He had pushed his car and himself beyond the possible as a young Michael Schumacher threatened his preeminence.

If you want to understand the terrible fascination with driving a fast car you should watch the great documentary on Senna. There is footage from Senna driving in a rain lashed Monaco Grand Prix that has to be seen to be (dis)believed. He is driving a car that seems barely connected to this earth at take off speed. Sienna's voiceover describes the union between himself, his car and what is beyond. It is a description of rapture.

On the way back from work on Friday we saw a man in a white Ford weaving in and out if traffic at speed . It was reprehensible and dangerous for other road users. But I found myself admiring the execution.

 

Water on Mars

NASA and their remote controlled car have discovered water on Mars. The aptly named Curiosity has conducted an experiment and boiled off water from Martian rocks. A bravo moment for human ingenuity .

As the Wall E like rover trundles around the Martian surface it's discoveries make science fiction fact. Americans should feel proud of their NASA in what is a prelude to human boots on Martian soil. I was an aficionado of science fiction at school. Now each day brings new understanding about our place in the firmament.If I was to contemplate a university prospectus again I would pass over legal matters and contemplate astrophysics . The array of telescopes in the Atacama desert in Chile would make a great office.

I recommend a documentary called Nostalgia for the Light by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán. An exile from Pinochet and his repellant regime Guzmán focuses on the similarities "between astronomers researching humanity’s past, in an astronomical sense, and the struggle of many Chilean women who still search, after decades, for the remnants of their relatives executed during the dictatorship" - Wikipedia".

What could have been grim subject matter instead moves and reveals . The fortitude of the women as they piece together their history and that of their loved ones is awe inspiring. As they comb the soil of the Atacama desert their bravery outstrips any astronaut.

 

 

 

Othello

We went to see an acclaimed production of Othello at the National Theatre. Adrian Lester played the Moor and Rory Kinnear Iago. Mr Lester was excellent and Mr Kinnear astonishing. The latter's body language was a masterclass in itself. The inexplicable malevolence of Iago mirrored in the nervy contortions of his frame.

I worked with actors before on a short film and was unsure how to direct them. The textbooks say directions must be specific and avoid abstraction. I wrote the script and found myself unable to explain why they would say what I had scribbled. You live and learn. From speaking to thespians a good performance is instinctual - you give them instructions and they assemble the character . Whoever you cast determines the performance .

 

The director of Othello in the (overpriced) programme wrote a good piece on the Bard and acting. He noted that Shakespeare was an actor and he wrote plays not novels. The novel contains multitudes while a play implies them. Each performance of a play is different with endless possible interpretations by different actors.

 

He also said something that was a relief. He admitted he couldn't follow some of Shakespeare's plays for the first five minutes or so because of the language. I have trooped for the cultural porridge of an unfamiliar play and panic as I cannot figure out the hey nonny nonny. I am not alone with the dunces hat.

 

I have tendered notice on my gainful employ and been offered part time work in lieu to retrain . I have to make a decision.

 

The attached photo is of a statute from Anne Hathaway's cottage at Stratford upon Avon. Given Othello's wracked jealousy it seemed appropriate.

 

 

 

 

 

Risk

When studying law and medicine at university there was a module on cause of death. A coroner presented slides of high velocity exit wounds, death by blunt trauma and asphyxiation . He was a cheery man which seemed a prerequisite for the line of work.He digressed from tales of personal catastrophe to dispense a bon mot - there is no such thing as a risk free life.

That stuck with me . If you trawl the information landfill of the web you are presented by one study/analysis after another of risk. If you go out of your door you are likely to be mugged. If you drive you are likely to be hit by a drunk driver. If you go to sample the simple (and free) pleasure of association in a public place you are likely to be atomised by a jihadi. Fear as control.

Instead you retreat to the security of your private space. You cannot make sense of the risk. You plug into the web and Tweet and Facebook your impotence and rage. Many smarter folk than the writer have theorised on control by media. Google (the irony ) Noam Chomsky or Adam Curtis.Why control ? Money I suppose. Until the banking apocalypse we had irrational exuberance spurred by greed and stupidity. Now we have irrational caution spurred by greed and stupidity.

 

I had a discussion at work with a mortgage company.They wanted me to quantify the risk of underground mining on a property. There is government legislation to compensate for subsidence but they wanted more. They wanted me to tell them all would be ok. Given this irrational caution I would assume there are no mortgaged properties in San Francisco. Modern life seems to consist of not relying on our senses . The world seems senseless or we lack common sense because we having nothing in common.

 

We went to a wildlife park last year. There was an enclosure with silverback gorillas . We christened the male Sid. We were told he had seen his parents slaughtered by poachers and had a healthy scepticism about Homo sapiens .On the glass surrounding his enclosure a note asked not to stand near the glass or use flash photo. So all spectators stood near the glass and used flash photo. This enraged the gorilla with the damaged psyche and a group to protect. After a few warnings he punched the steel and glass enclosure with such force it shook. I nervously scrutinised the glass for cracks. I wondered what his fist could do to a human frame.

 

Real risk would be getting in the enclosure with Sid the silverback. As you lie down in front of him and play dead you pray he shows the mercy our species has not shown him.

 

Remember me

When I was back in Ireland I helped my mother gather material for a book she was writing. It is a memoir and a life story.

 

We went to a graveyard in search of the spot where her grandparents had been buried. After uncertain steps through overgrown grass we drew a blank. No headstone had been put up to mark the burial spot.

 

The photo shows a military cemetery outside San Francisco from a succession of wars. My wife and I noticed some headstones had different inscriptions on either side . The wives of the soldiers had been buried on the other side of the plot.

 

Poets have long mused on remembrance and loss. The German poet Rilke asked if the space we dissolve into tastes of us . Keats asked that no name or date be placed on his headstone - only the oft quoted (and wonderful ) " Here lies one / whose name was writ in water". The rest of the inscription including the date was added by others railing against Keats treatment by critics.

 

Headstones are for the living. They have nothing to do with the dead.

 

Wolves in Scotland

We went to Scotland for New Years during the harsh winter of 2010. Friends had booked us into a log cabin near Oban. We made our way from Stranraer in our trusty Volkswagen through blizzards and temperatures of -15. We almost made it - Godfrey (our pet name for our Golf) could not negotiate the last few miles.

 

We abandoned our car at the nearest village and relied on the kindness of strangers. A couple made us tea and called a friend with a four wheel drive to take us to the log cabin.

 

The friend was called Phil. As his truck wound through the snow capped hills he told us about his work. He was a farm manager for a large estate. He had studied for a degree in wolf husbandry in Poland and there were plans to reintroduce the grey wolf to the Highlands.

 

When safely deposited at the cabin we enjoyed the rest of our stay. At some point we had to retrieve the car. There was an alternate route the car could negotiate to the cabin. I simply had to hike back to the village, retrieve the car and take the alternate route. I did some research - it was a three hour hike of approx. 10 miles. Our friends needlessly alarmed my wife with stories of her husband having to camp out for the night and kill game.I am not Bear Grylls and I thought this hyperbole .

 

I set off and made good time . I collected the car and returned with it before sun down. Our trip passed off without further incident .

 

When tramping through the hills I did think of Phil and his plans to reintroduce wolves. With nothing for company but my own footfalls I thought of night approaching . I thought of the Swiss Army knife in my rucksack and my meagre tent and flint . I imagined I heard the howls of animals that had not been heard in the hills for centuries.

 

Fear concentrates the mind. I felt vital and alive.

 

 

 

Heathrow

We have returned from our trip back in Ireland. It was too brief but we managed to relax . A lot of time was spent sleeping.

I am not a relaxed flyer. I am unsure why - I used to enjoy the experience. But I still enjoy the experience of coming into land at Heathrow. There is something magical about flying over East London and following the course of the Thames . The Dome, St Paul's and Hyde Park seen from the vantage point of an astronaut.

I went to see a video installation a few years ago at the Whitechapel gallery. It was called Threshold to the Kingdom by a British artist called Mark Wallinger. It was a video of people arriving at an international airport. As the arrival doors part their expression is remote and unreadable but then turns to joy when they see a familiar face. These passengers could be at the threshold of the United Kingdom or, alternatively, the kingdom of heaven. One of the security guards seems to be a St Peter figure accompanied by the celestial music of Miserere by Gregorio Allegri. On reflection it is not a reassuring artistic conceit for the timid flyer.

Heathrow is cast as a portal ushering people through time and space to arrive reborn at their destination.
 

Seamus is Famous

We arrived back in Ireland a day late due to work commitments. I have referred to the satanic mill  in jest but I wasn't laughing on Saturday. 16 hours in Canterbury chewing legal sawdust is not a laughing matter.

Enough. I am home. The air is clear and there is an autumn chill. We are lying low and being treated like children by my mother.

I was introduced to the term inner emigre by Seamus Heaney.  In an interview he said  "from the beginning to the end of the Irish tradition, there is this example of exiling yourself from the familiar in order to compose your soul — which is a parallel activity, I suppose, to composing poetry".

I glimpsed the funeral of Mr Heaney on the TV. I was aware of his passing through the Guardian  online who asked Sir Bono of Vox to ruminate . It would  have been more appropriate  if they asked regular folk but instead they asked the messianic one .

At school I had difficulty with poetry . I couldn't connect with Wordsworth , Larkin's sourness or Hopkin's prosody. That changed when I read Mr. Heaney . His poems were concrete, spare and the rural imagery familiar. When he described his pen as a gun he took a hold and his struggle to find images  for  adversity were an inspiration. His work led to others like Czelaw Milosz and back again to Hopkins . As a writer he engaged with his time and made beauty out of madness.

A great poet and, from all accounts, a great humble man.

Silence

We are returning to Ireland next Saturday for a week. We are looking forward to quiet and fewer citizens. We will visit Donegal for a day or two which promises both.

 

When I return to London I will pay the BFI a visit to see a film called Silence. It is by an Irish documentary filmmaker called Pat Collins and is his first foray into (semi) fiction. He eschews professional actors. His main character is played by a Donegal novelist called Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde. It is story of a Irish sound recordist who returns home to record landscapes free from man made sounds. He meets local people on his journey and reflects on the title. I havent seen Mr Collin's work but the the themes and the location make it (potentially) fascinating.

 

The irish landscape has not been treated well in film. The Quiet Man (which has its charms) and other representations in Hollywood tends to chocolate box with staple images. The landscape in Donegal and the West coast of Ireland is beautiful but it can be harsh and unadorned. The latter qualities are the attraction for the writer.

 

 

Leviathan

When driving through east Kent we passed Manston airport and the  Spitfire and Hurricane museum.

We stopped at the museum and had a coffee . I noted a lack of Spitfires and Hurricanes but  read on a memorial plaque of the 116,000 RAF deaths during WW2. It was  a world war with battlefields and uniforms.

Modern warfare is different .  Drones are sent to far away places with pilots seated behind video game consoles. In future pilots may be dispensed with altogether and robots will conduct future battles. I doubt they will  build museums  for drone pilots and  robots.

Beside the museum was the strange sight of abandoned and partially cannabilised jumbo jets. I am told they are used for hijack training. Whenever an airline has an incident or a near miss they train on these metal cathedrals.

Modern war is termed asymmetrical. Drones and guided missiles destroy combatants (and non combatants). Planes are hijacked and turned into missiles.

The circle of life and of death goes on.

Walpole Bay

A pretty horrible week at the mill and unsustainable . I will be making decisions on my gainful employ shortly.

Mrs Emigre and the writer spent the weekend with a couple in Minster in east Kent. We  dog sat their sterling pouch Lottie a while ago and they wanted to treat us to a meal by way of thanks . We had a great time and they were kind and generous hosts .We got to see Lottie again which was a bonus. She is a labradoodle . I did not know of such a thing until recently . It is a cross between a Labrador and a poodle. It doesn't sound promising but Lottie is top mutt.

We went to Walpole Bay beach near Margate for breakfast. I have been to Margate a couple of times and previous trips had reminded me of a line from Morrissey of the Smiths. The Philip Larkin of pop sang of the "seaside town they forgot to close down".

On reflection I have been unduly harsh on Margate. It has many problems and  the oft quoted statistic of the most boarded up high street in England. There is unemployment and issues with drugs and crime .But it does have a warped charm. The Tate gallery and plans for a new cultural future are grounds for optimism. A neophyte writer  should frequent  a Margate cafe for inspiration. It has vitality.

Mr Morrissey could do worse than leave Los Angeles (or wherever he is now ensconced ) for the charms of Margate. It might inspire the troubadour to better songs.

W G Sebald

A tough week at the satanic mill. The weekend is a blessing.

I had an anniversary during the week . Not  a birthday or wedding. It was the anniversary of something that cannot be committed to memory . It is both past and the present. This led to the writer W G Sebald . I  read Austerlitz, the Rings of Saturn and the Emigrants years ago. In fact I bought two copies of the Emigrants -  I left one half read  on the Stansted Express.

Sebald is held in high regard amongst literary folk. Before his death in a car accident in 2001 Susan Sontag considered him one of the few examples of literary greatness in English. Look up " Why you should read W G Sebald" in the esteemed cultural rag The New Yorker. I cannot improve on it.

Though I read them 10 years ago this books are ever present. His prose is  both elliptical and opaque.  There is no plot, few characters and no action. The subject matter is  part fact, part fiction . The prose is accompanied by black and white photos which do not illustrate  but  enrich and comment on the text . He created his own literary form. I urge you to investigate.

In Austerlitz his protoganist states  "I feel more and more as if time did not exist at all only various spaces interlocking according to the rules of a higher form of stereometry, between which the living and the dead can move back and forth as they like, and the longer I think about it the more it seems to me that we who are still alive are unreal in the eyes of the dead.”

The anniversary I mentioned above is the loss of someone. I don't agree with Austerlitz but his assertion   haunts me.

Digital love

I have been listening to tracks from the Daft Punk opus Random Access Memories. In fact it is lodged in the car CD and accompanies our commute to work.

There is a quality in the music that sets it apart from streamed bits and bytes of the digital age.  There is  melancholy and a sense of loss . The hook of Get Lucky swirls drunk Uncles (and Aunts) to the dance floor at  weddings. The rest of the CD  is the surface  beauty of Touch and Contact . It is like listening to a cyborg cry.

The digital age has brought untold benefits in music, art  and mass communication. But we should  mourn the  end of the analogue age. Film, tape and vinyl. A benediction . You have been replaced by 1 and 0's which do not fade.

Sterile?. Maybe. But we love that which makes us empty.

Table Mountain

I am waiting for the final episodes of Southcliffe on Channel 4.

It is extraordinary bleak viewing. An ex soldier commits a mass killing in a fictional English town. I wouldn't have watched it until I read it had been shot in Faversham Kent. We lived in the aforesaid for one year to shorten our commute . I am sure Faversham is a lovely town for those happy in its warm communal embrace. We found the place  awful and fearful . Our rented house was damp, the managing agents rude and petty. We were DFL ( down from London) and unwelcome. Watching the loner in Southcliffe slowly tip over the edge  I recognised the mist, rain and despair. Sorry Faversham . I do not miss you but I will watch your fearful streets on TV.

Fear is alien to the young . In South Africa I visited  Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town.At the top I watched kids standing near the edge of the abyss . The photo is a trick of the eye - the edge is not as close as it seems. But there was no fear. And they didn't blink when the abyss stared back.

Bravo young man. Bravo. And never visit Faversham.

South Africa

I have been inspired to write online by a friend . His blog is arcane, well written and by turns informative and whimsical. I recommend the Northern Scrivener .

All beginnings are arbitrary so  I start with a recent disastrous trip to South Africa.  A long friendship from university led to a shared dream to see Namibia. The dream had  crystallised with a plane ticket to Cape Town and a hired truck to drive to Swakopmund.The friend was a former lawyer turned world traveller and photographer ( a fine one). The writer was an Irish lawyer living in London and working at a satanic mill.

The reunion in South Africa did not go well. The shared interests and affinity from the past could not disguise we had taken different paths . The trip was impossible and I was left with two weeks to fill in a strange city . I missed my wife back in London and knew little of Cape Town. I spent  a week holed up in a B & B with a novel and  a  hospitable owner called Dirke. Dirke had been recently bereaved and memories of the loss of his wife left him tearful .  I think he liked the company and insisted on shared evening meals . I doubt I was good company but he didn't notice.

 When  a friendship ends it marks time but something takes its place . I spent two weeks as a tourist and visited  usual suspects like the  Cape of Good Hope, Robben Island and Table Mountain . South Africa has its own problems but South African people are wonderful .

I end the post with a correction. The trip was not a disaster. I had money, time on my hands  and a car to drive around in. I visited a fishing village called Hout Bay a few times. On the pier local people trained seals for  tourists. The woman in the photo is called Tsoutas . She told me she has five children and she trains seals for a living. I don't know if she brings  her children up on her own. I do know I gave her the ten rand note she holds in the photo.That is modern tourism.