"ENJOY YOURSELF. IT'S LATER THAN YOU THINK"


Even though I'm not a polar bear, at the end of 2007, everything has come to seem increasingly temporary to me and I'm not sure quite how to lay plans. I'm trying to prepare myself psychologically. Above all, I'm trying to lighten up and just to get on with things. That explains the title, from a great old Specials song.

It's been a really bad year for polar bears.

"On Sunday 16 September 2007, the sea ice covering the Arctic ocean melted back to a record low point. It has always melted back in the summer, but in recent years it has retreated further and further, to new lows, strongly suggesting the influence of climate change. The 2007 retreat, however, shattered the previous record, set only two years earlier, by a quite colossal amount, an amount so enormous as to be scarcely credible. It exceeded the September 2005 low point by another 22 per cent – an area of 1.2 million square kilometres, or more than 385,000 square miles. This represents an extra area of ice five times the size of the United Kingdom. Gone in a single summer. If you consider that and you don't think the world is rapidly warming up, what do you need to convince you?" Michael McCarthy, The Independent, 28.12.07

The main event of the year was this, and the weak (but not wholly disappointing) response of the UN Climate conference in Bali. With a potential rise of 6.4 degrees in global temperatures by the end of the century, which would make life on the planet unviable, (source: IPCC Report) what should my response be?

And then there's the - potentially - even more urgent question. What happens if the oil runs out? Despite the awful problems with biofuels, I still want to know (very selfishly) whether they can lubricate mechanical parts, power planes, and be used in the manufacture of plastics. Politicians have largely avoided talking about the potential scarcity of oil from about 2015 onwards, probably because, compared with global warming, we aren't even close to consensus on this. But you have to think. (Don't you? Don't you?) Will we be catapulted within a couple of decades back to an almost pre-modern (static, localised) society? Will the internet and other media work in a society where oil is unavailable or twice as expensive? Will technology and transport be the exclusive preserve of the very rich? At the very least, a huge hike in oil prices must lead to an unprecedented economic recession. As for the other consequences, they're hard to see. I'm not an economist. But jobs, house prices, the whole social order are going to change. My sector, teaching EFL, will shrink drastically with any recession in international trade.

I may be crazy. I think this because almost no one else is talking about it! This is what it must feel like to be mad. But I can't pretend that prospects like these don't overshadow most of my hopes as I look to 2008 and beyond. Ultimately it feels like planning a last gasp holiday, or a final fling, just before the shit hits the fan. There will be last gasps and final flings in 2008.

To lighten up for a moment, here's my other review of 2007:

BEST MOMENT
I loved everything about Zurich, especially looking down my street to the mountains beyond. Also seeing the turquoise waters at Plitvice for the first time, on a photograph and then for real.

FILMS
Atonement (not seen until 20th Jan 2008)
The Lives Of Others
This is England
Notes On A Scandal
The Last King Of Scotland

BEST THING I SAW
rewatched Our Friends In The North

ALBUMS
King Creosote - Bombshell (for great songwriting)
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand (for the voices)
The Shins - Wincing The Night Away (the melodic hooks)
and the Radiohead album turned out to be great, after about the 5th hearing

GIGS
Madness at the Sziget!
Roger Waters in Budapest (for those timeless songs, and how he stitched them together into a whole)
Gogol Bordello at A38, Budapest (for the sheer energy)

BEST THINGS I HEARD ALL YEAR
Shearwater - Palo Santo
The Good The Bad & The Queen - Herculean
Simian Mobile Disco - Sleep Deprivation
And the best album, not from 2007 I don't think, was The Rough Guide To The Music of Hawaii.

MISCELLANEOUS EVENTS
DELTA
Led Zeppelin reunion (I wasn't there, I want them to tour)
Facebook (I am there, and wondering if the novelty will fade in 2008)

BOOKS
Mervyn Peake - Titus Groan
Martin Amis - London Fields (both of these for the imaginative scope, the characters and the prose)
Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers & John Sloboda - Beyond Terror (for the facts. If there are such things, and it's a moot point, then here they are, and in a little over 100 pages.)

2007 CHRISTMAS CAROL: A TALE OF EVERYDAY BETRAYAL

dedicated to the negotiating teams from USA, Canada and Japan who served us so memorably at Bali:

In ten days' time, they'll be knocking back the wine, having watched their children sing about the baby Jesus and how the new-born king came to save the world. They might get a little dewy-eyed then, and while they watch again the tale of Tiny Tim they'll probably "reconsecrate" their hard hearts to him. But we who watched it all on TV will never forget their moment now, how those gutless gentlemen couldn't muster their sentiments in the Earth's defence, even in the face of all that evidence. They probably thought they were pretty smart, obviously mindful of their great careers, even as the world was coming apart around their ears.

IT'S DRIVING ME URBANE


When I was a student, we used to talk about what was going on in our souls. Now we make polite conversation. We used to "set the world to rights". Now anything of epic proportions is ventured tentatively, and to close friends only. To see if they're in the mood. We used to revel in exploring the mysteries of life and death and consciousness. We'd speculate wildly about radical schemes, and shout about love to the sky. Nothing was taboo. I know it was a bit strident sometimes, a bit direct and unhewn, but it was in some ways randomly philosophical. And I liked that. Now we're features journalists. Like Sunday magazine articles, each carefully hedged opinion is as unlikely to give offence as it is to raise a flicker of real excitement. I often find. I wonder what happened in the years in between. Did something change our minds?

END OF THE WORLD - BUT NOT IN HUNGARY

Saturday December 8th is the International Day of Climate Change Protests. It is, arguably, the most important protest in human history in that the issues concerned urgently affect us all, although doubtless it will come and go, and be forgotten. The latest IPCC Report warns starkly of "abrupt and irreversible changes" if nothing is done to reduce carbon emissions, and global leaders are meeting in Bali to cobble together whatever bland compromise they imagine their electorates can stomach.

We, the people, are gathering on the streets to urge them to go further, to let them know that we care about policy in this area, that we acknowledge the apocalyptic nature not only of the report, but of events occurring weekly in the News.

Although protests will take place in at least 83 countries, including Albania and Belarus, there is no action planned for Hungary. Presumably it will be isolated from the economic and social upheavals in the next decades by virtue of being well inland? I understand that people are dealing with seemingly more urgent and relevant problems here, but it is frustrating and bewildering that so few pay any interest at all in this era-defining issue that is ineluctably coming home to roost.

Global Climate Campaign

MALAISE


I'm thrown from pillar to post
Don't know what I fear the most
My escape plans are littering the ground
Broken window where the world came in
Stomach-churning dose of vitamins
Will help me make the right constructive sounds

I feel I've lost control
Got a riot for a soul
And they're looking for somebody to kill
All their faces are mocking masks
As my decisions are disasters
And the procession is winding down the hill

There's nothing I've ever done
Made a difference to anyone
Of my deeds, there's little to record
Now the river has burst its banks
And all its filth has filled my tank
And its noise will drown my final words

IN PRAISE OF KING CREOSOTE


As a songwriter, especially one going through a fallow period, you can tell immediately when someone else has just *got it*. The muse, the knack, the moment - whatever you want to call it. You don't get jealous or anything - you just listen and marvel. This year it's King Creosote. He's been producing material from his base in Fife for years now, but I don't know his back catalogue at all. The songs on his new album Bombshell are irresistably good, all of them. The lyrics are often from the heart and always to the point. They are original, often yearningly romantic, occasionally witty and with (refreshingly, in the days of Radiohead) no pretentiousness at all. The melodicism is effortless, so there's no need to surround it with sound effects. His voice, while often sailing off into falsetto, doesn't grate and is surprisingly rich. I like his musical principles too: "King Creosote maintains that the song is more important than the style, and that the performance outweighs recording quality. If a part can’t be recorded in one take, scrap it for something simpler." I reckon it might be the best album of 2007.

Some lyrics I liked from the last track:

"And your words chased round and round in my head last night
they chased their own tails
and your words jigged round my mind all night
to look at me now I'm quiet as sand
and the tide shrinks back into its womb
and I hope the empty shells and bones of your stories
will litter and clutter the shore
and I hope that when I find them
I'll remember how they danced
and the racket they made
when they were alive"

(c) King Creosote, 2007

King Creosote site
KC on Guardian Weekly podcast

POSTSCRIPT: A QUESTION FOR SCHEDULERS

Since News editors feel they must feed viewers the daily gruel of "the" Business and "the" Sport - mostly any old thing they've dredged up, stories which are mind-altering in their elevation of the banal and irrelevant to headline material, perhaps they could find a slot for the Planet?

After all, if you think you can turn stock market movements into edge-of-the-seat stuff, why not try your hand at raising interest in the end of the world?

Here is today's News.

George Monbiot: the apocalypse, with sources

Climate Change Coming Home: The Guardian

To The End Of The Earth

WAKE UP CALL


I can't compose today. I feel too upset and actually disturbed about the unfolding events in Ghana and the rest of Africa, which was the main item on the BBC World Service news on Saturday. It's heightened by the fact I used to live there. Global warming is coming home, to stay. My friends and I *all* knew this was going to happen as long ago as 1987. Some dolphin crisis (as I remember) brought the Environment to the attention of the wider public and the Greens got 15% in the next UK European election.

Books were published. Artists caught on: "India under water, Africa - walking, What a scene of confusion, and the seas rising" - Julian Cope, Give Me Back My Flag, 1992. Climate change was in the new National Curriculum in 1992. And the kids sent their paper leaves with their thoughts on to the Rio Earth Summit. Hopes were high.

I kept saying over and over that the impending crisis ought to be on all the front pages and in all TV News bulletins every day. Of course, the media let us down, and they are still doing so. What's on CNN today? Interest rates and, just like in 1995, O.J. fucking Simpson! They haven't even run the Africa story yet; probably because the journalists can't or won't get into the disaster zones to take pictures.

Most Ghanaians are deeply religious, open-hearted, resilient people. It's another "land of smiles". Against all the odds, they persevere in their steady faith and optimism. And they have an engaging sense of humour and of the absurd: they know the odds are stacked against them. And now the fields lie flooded, and hundreds of thousands are displaced, their rickety mud and straw huts washed away. The outlook is bleaker - food shortages because of the drowned crops; increased occurrence of malaria; cholera; even locusts, to make it truly Biblical. (To echo John Humphrys, where was God?)

BBC NEWS: Africans' responses

We all let them down. But most of all, the politicians, who should have known much better, let them down. For twenty years they have soldiered on in the vain pursuit of economic growth at all costs - full steam ahead. And if that were not enough, they planned wars to guarantee that precious oil supply, which unsettled the whole Middle East. Ignoring the Environment and huge disparities of wealth, they are directly to blame for the "Terror" we hear so much about now. How different things might have been if they had thought to invest heavily in renewable energy in the 90s, or bring in "carbon credits", which I first heard about around the same time. Apart from Prince Charles, Al Gore's was the only prominent voice I heard promoting green issues, but even he did little at Kyoto and was strangely silent about the Big E during his Presidential bid in 2000, splitting the Green vote, and consequently losing California. And we all know what happened next. Cheers for the great movie, Al - I've almost forgiven you.

In December, these politicians are assembling for yet another expenses-paid international talking shop. This time they had better act and bring in some of those mythical "tough targets". Because if we fail to keep the temperature increase below 2 degrees, all Hell will break loose. Not just for the poor Africans, either - the security implications will threaten everyone's comfortable lifestyle.

We have a global village, and the internet is amazing. People in huge numbers support Green issues. And - shock! - would vote for them. I have that much faith left in people. And there's no dearth of ideas. People in the public eye only need to speak up. Imagine if we had a Green alternative to vote for, for example. How hard would it be for Brown, Cameron or any of those Presidential hopefuls to cobble that together? And CNN - How hard would it be to follow the BBC World Service's lead and "front" (or just run) the story, the one which is the underlying and compelling narrative of our times?

SOME TIME IN TIMISOARA

I arrived in Timisoara thinking it would be more or less a den of thieves, and worried about being conspicuously Western (even though my three years in Budapest ought to mean I've become "Central") and the rickety railway station, with a few down-on-their-luck-looking characters hanging about, confirmed my prejudice that I was now in the Wild East.

Admittedly, the train journey wasn't fun, as I had to fight a particularly grumpy Hungarian woman for the privilege to open the window, which she immediately closed, then, seeing I wasn't about to give way, proceeded to scowl and sigh about, casting exasperated glances to win support from our fellow compartmentees. They all looked sullen and ugly - probably I did too - and I'd been warned not too fall asleep in case I lost all my belongings. But doze off I - inevitably - did. Luckily, all my stuff was present and correct on waking. The countyside as you cross the border is particularly grim-looking; a chemical pipeling, miles long with the lagging peeling away goes right through people's gardens below head height. You notice that all the buildings are either depressing blocks with the paint peeling, or else industrial plants.

So much for (what I saw of) the countryside. Timosoara is different altogether. In the centre are impressive squares, the prettiest of which is cobbled and surrounded by the usual kind of Imperial buildings in the style of Christmas cards, with geometric arched facades painted in pastel colours, and high-angled rooftops. Many are in a state of advanced decrepitude, some still cratered by war, but the elegance stubbornly remains. Much of the square itself is now shaded by the parasols of terrace cafes. Here, the waitresses carefully squirt dilute blue detergent on to the paper tissue placed in each ash tray.

What surprised me the most was the amount of wealth here. Of course, leaving the centre, there are the usual Communist blocks which a few of the owners have beautified with flowers on the balconies. (Flowers are really popular here - a large section of the central market is given over to dozens of flower stalls.) Just beyond, it was easy to locate the enormous Julius Mall, which dwarfs the buildings around it. With four floors, it's the biggest I've seen, a mall-as-city on an American scale. And it's busy. People are drinking beer and coffee (at inflated prices) in the perimeter cafes, and the car park is full of cars. While I drank my beer, four wedding parties went in - is there a registry office in there, perhaps, or are they just topping up on flowers? The cutomers are mostly loaded with the expected plastic bags, and everyone is sporting sunglasses and clothes in the latest styles (long shorts, short tops, etc) - including the children. It doesn't look like a poor country from where I'm sitting.

A final mystery is the rich Roma families. No one quite knows how they get their money. I was told "don't ask", but I did, and the stories you get are uniformly nasty - it's begging, at best, or selling their children in the West. Well, I once saw a Roma woman in Budapest doing the hard-sell with pairs of socks in Budapest - this wouldn't be enough to fund the kind of palaces these families are building near my school. These are ostentatious, in the very grandest of styles - conical pinnacles of towers, balconies with pillars, often roughly finished. They're similar to the Western mock-gothic, except with a definite Oriental twist that makes me think of the Arabian Nights and the Golden Horde. (My architectural vocabulary isn't wide enough to do them justice; I'd call them "Sultanic".) Everyone says they're tasteless, but the cones and pinnacles aren't so different to my eyes from those of the magnificent Orthodox cathedral in the town centre.


Some of these buildings could fuel urban vampre fantasies. I bought a bottle of Transylvanian "V" wine. With a drop of blood dripping from the logo, it boasted the fact that it was made from the "grapes of immortality". In small print underneath, it turned out that V drinks are a company from that well-known haunt of the undead, Cardiff!

TOUR DE FRANCE

What a bloody fuss about nothing! I heard someone say that doping should be made a criminal offence. Why? Let them all take as many drugs as they want if it makes them go faster, which is the whole point of the thing - or did I miss something? Far from being the end of the TdF, it could usher in a new era of performance-enhanced sport which might be slightly less tedious to watch on TV. Next item, please...

FEEL THE HEAT

As I type, the fan is hissing away in the corner, making some currents in the air. Because they carry a little of the cool of morning, these are welcome relief from the heatwave. My shutters are closed to preserve what’s left. Outside, at 9am, it’s already 27 degrees and in the day temperatures have soared to 42 degrees in the shade. This means that most fans feel like hair-driers, and you start to go a little crazy. You’d give your entire salary for the week for a big, cool slice of watermelon; luckily, these are so plentiful that they’re almost giving them away. The other day, I went for an ice coffee but the outdoor café was deserted; it was too hot, even under the parasols. Nearby, people were standing fully clothed under some kind of sprinkler system.

All round the city, various stinks have been let loose: foul-sweet decay, a mild smell of sewage and something fungal. The sources of these are obscure, buried somewhere. If I arrive home without having done all the dishes and wiped all the surfaces spotless, there will be an army of ants massing on every wooden spoon and missed drop of fruit juice. It's the kind of weather to listen to Crosby, Stills & Nash. Or have a cold shower and then dry off in front of a fan.

CIVILISATION & DEVELOPMENT

"Sometimes we wonder... when you look at the developed world, whether there is in fact an advancement in terms of civilisation or whether there has been a de-civilisation. Because civilisation has to do with the development of the human individual, the mind, the finer aspects of humanity, and I think those are lost."

Jigmi Thinley, Home & Cultural Affairs Minister, Bhutan on The Happiness Formula, BBC World

FRANK HISTORY

Not so much lost in translation, as added to. Found in a historical brochure about Tihany, beautiful hilltop town overlooking Lake Balaton. "The name (Pale Hill)...goes back to the time when the soldiers of the fortress impaled the Turks who abducted Hungarian women and screwed the peasantry."

40
Happy Birthday Sgt Pepper. I remember buying it at 12 years old, and listening to it in some altered states a few years later. Possibly it doesn't deserve all the admiration heaped on it originally, I don't know. (It's so familiar now, it's hard to be objective.) Who cares? I say forget the "cultural turning point" stuff. Get a good (CD) version. Put it on - headphones. Turn the volume up. Listen to the actual band, especially the bass lines (Getting Better, Lucy in The Sky...) It's good. Oh, and it was made on a 4-track tape recorder too...

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article1873290.ece

VICIOUS

It is inevitable that anyone in the political arena meets their nemesis, falters and ultimately fails - in my lifetime, I remember the fall of Gorbachev and Thatcher in particular. I'm not going to add to the commentary on Blair's legacy now; I still think broadly what I said on this blog in June 2006, that his career is tragic in some ways. (Though, of course, he's made a lot of money etc. Not the point!)

What has shocked me is the comments of members of the public on sites like BBC News and The Times Online. They are not just uncharitable, but full of a visceral hatred for Blair. "May he rot in Hell" etc. Of course he has made mistakes, perhaps based on serious character flaws - but would it be possible to hold power for a decade and get everything right? I really don't understand why he evinces such unrestrained vituperation from people who once (surely) cheered him on. It's an eerie, actually frightening, manifestation of the fickle mob in Julius Caesar.

I have less of a problem with people who have disliked Blair all along!

On a lighter note: evinces violent, vicious, venomous, vituperative, vengeful, visceral hatred. And V for Vendetta.

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

World expenditure on military research and development in 2005: $1,118 BILLION

Source: Beyond Terror (Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers & John Sloboda, 2007) I recommend this book for anyone interested in the roots of current world crises. It describes very elegantly (100 pages) how competition for resources and the terrorist threat are inextricably linked, as well as providing an alternative blueprint for future development. The money is clearly available for alternative technologies (see above!) All that is lacking is the political will. Where are the politicians who are prepared to stick their necks out, and face up to the real threats?

EXULTESCENCE?

Tomorrow's my birthday, and I will be at the very extreme of being "thirty something". Life's good, but it's been missing certain things. In some cases, I have no idea whether these are good things or bad things to lack.

Broken River by Ruary Allan, Art Alchemist

1. I've never been engaged, married, or owned property.
2. I've never owned a car, or driven to work. In fact, I've never commuted to work in a commuter train either, in the sense of packing myself in, reading Metro and wishing it would all go away. I once did a reverse commute for a couple of years. When the weather's warm, I cycle to work now.
3. I've never been to Ikea, or bought furniture from Habitat. I once had a friend help me put up some shelves in the early 90s. It was good to see all my books (which are now lost to me - in eternal storage) but it didn't make me into a DIY enthusiast.
4. As an adult, I've never believed fully in any "ism"s. Buddhism has a strong appeal, but I'm not very good at it, and I stop short at myths of reincarnation, gods and demons.
5. I have never really had anyone to vote for in the sense that a radical green alternative has never been available. I remember shaking Blair's hand on that sunny morning in Downing Street (May 2 1997) but his record means that I will never again believe promises of change from young, gifted politicians.
6. Finally, although I appreciate clever art (most recently in some of the witty prose in Gormenghast) I'm still more into directness than sophistication, especially in real life.

Mandala by Olyfka Brabcova

I was sent this quotation today. It's Kenneth Graeme talking about children: "their simple acceptance of the mood of wonderment, their readiness to welcome a perfect miracle at any hour of the day or night, is a thing more precious than any of the laboured acquisition of adult mankind." Is this something you inevitably lose? It seems like a good way to live. Every time I leave my flat and the outside air hits my face, I exult in the sensation.

Weltschmerzen? Manchmal, aber:
"...it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday." Lester Burnham in American Beauty.

SECOND-HAND BOOK SHOPPING

Every Saturday morning, almost without fail, I go to the market to buy food for the week. Yesterday when a friend texted me about meeting up instead, it felt great to break with routine and swap the usual vegetable run for a bit of book browsing and a pub lunch. It was the first time I'd been to Red Bus Books, Budapest's biggest second-hand shop for books in English. The place has the unmistakable smell you always get in second-hand bookshops, and a tangible sense of unhurriedness. As well as Gormenghast, the second of the Mervyn Peake trilogy, I picked up Bobby Kennedy's memoirs of the Cuban Missile Crisis and a 1969 edition of The Souls of Black Folk by WEB Du Bois, a seminal text of what was to become the civil rights movement, about the experience of Afro-Americans at the turn of the 20th Century. In a new bookshop I'd never have looked for these. It's this prospect of stumbling across something unexpectedly that is the point of second-hand shops, and also of routine-breaking.

PRUNESQUALLOR

In Titus Groan, Dr Prunesquallor is a perceptive character, one with which the reader eventually identifies as he is the only one with a true sense of perspective on his world, something he is careful to mask with florid but empty pronouncements. In this scene, he encounters the scheming and Machiavellian Steerpike, a former kitchen servent who has recently absconded.

"Am I mistaken, dear boy, or is that a kitchen jacket you're wearing?"

"Not only is this a kitchen jacket, but these are kitchen trousers and kitchen socks and kitchen shoes and everything is kitchen about me, sir, except myself, if you don't mind me saying so, Doctor."

"And what," said Prunesquallor, placing the tips of his fingers together, "are you? Beneath your foetid jacket, which I must say looks amazingly unhygienic even for Swelter's kitchen. What are you? Are you a problem case, my dear boy, or are you a clear-cut young gentleman with no ideas at all, ha, ha, ha?"

"With your permission, Doctor, I am neither. I have plenty of ideas, though at the moment plenty of problems, too."

"Is that so?" said the Doctor. "Is that so? How very unique! Have your brandy first and perhaps some of them will fade gently away upon the fumes of that very excellent narcotic. Ha, ha, ha! Fade gently and imperceptibly away..." And he fluttered his long fingers in the air.

...

"Steerpike," said the youth. "My name is Steerpike, sir."

"Steerpike of the Many Problems," said the Doctor. "What did you say they were? My memory is so very untrustworthy. It's as fickle as a fox. Ask me to name the third lateral blood vessel from the extremity of my index finger that runs east to west when I lie on my face at sundown, or the percentage of chalk to be found in the knuckes of an average spinster in her fifty-seventh year, ha, ha, ha! - Or even ask me, my dear boy, to give details of the pulse rate of frogs two minutes before they die of scabies - these things are no tax upon my memory, ha, ha, ha! but ask me to remember exactly what you said your problems were a minute ago, and you will find that my memory has forsaken me utterly. Now, why is that, my dear Master Steerpike, why is that?"

"Because I never mentioned them," said Steerpike.

"That accounts for it," said Prunesquallor. "That, no doubt, accounts for it."

DICKENS IN A CASTLE


I have just finished reading Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. It’s been a great read, and I wonder why it took me so many years to get round to it. I saw an excellent stage adaptation in the mid-90s and that was enough gothic fantasy at the time, but of course I reckoned without Peake’s beautiful, elaborate – occasionally overwrought – prose style, in which words like “adumbrate” and “umbrageous” sit comfortably, and which is perfectly suited to describing the world of Gormenghast.

Pre-dating the first of the Lord Of The Rings books by two years, Titus Groan introduces the reader to a world as perfectly realised as Tolkien’s, full of colour and populated by unforgettably spiky characters, but thankfully free of elves and magic. The castle itself looms over its world, its occupants with their internal monologues and power struggles being the focus of the action. It is a place bound by calcified ritual and forms the backdrop to all the important scenes. Peake himself seems to be held in its spell; when his narrative occasionally wanders away from Gormenghast, it becomes far less compelling and much more the stuff of a more ordinary fantasy.

The best part of the book is the animation of the characters. A vein of dark humour permeates the pages as the author hones their idiosyncracies, like one of his own “Bright Carvers” - every twitch, stride and thought process is catalogued in detail. Their names are equally evocative: Sepulchrave, Dr Prunesquallor, Fuchsia, Swelter, Flay. Imagine Dickens set in a castle.

Like Dickens, Peake experiments with a variety of prose and narrative style. For example, when he portrays the same event from the point of view of all the characters present, or the half page devoted to the description of a raindrop trickling down a leaf. There are so many passages I could quote. The teenager Fuchsia’s love for her attic space (with echoes of Yeats’s Long-Legged Fly, perhaps) is beautifully captured here.

“As Fuchsia climbed into the winding darkness her body was impregnated and made faint by a qualm as of green April. Her heart beat painfully.

There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inward as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their centre where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame.

The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast… The love of a painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great coloured surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry upon his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes’ handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in love.”

Gormenghast home page

IS IT A TARDIS?


People sometimes point out that phone boxes are obsolete. So I thought I'd preserve this futuristic Swiss phone box here. Along with sleek shower-heads, windows that open two ways, self-cleaning garlic crushers, symmetrical door keys (so you can't insert them upside-down) and the omnipresent multi-blade penknives, it's a design classic. Oh, of course it's graffiti- and urine-free, and hasn't been smashed up. What do Swiss teenagers find to do in the evenings?

HELLO SPRING

This was taken on 4 February. But now it's March and I'm more in the mood.

THE BALLOON MAN

I was going to go to an art gallery today, but again the sun was far too bright, so I took a walk by the lake again. Of course, half the city had had the same idea. I get the sense that it's a weekly ritual. Anyway, it wasn't bad to be in the crowd. I heard a busker who was a bit different from normal. Dylan-ish, and peddling some light lyrics drawn from from the Perennial Philosophy that were perfect for this hazy cusp-of-Spring day: the simple things in life are what's going to get you through and they don't cost money; look forward to tomorrow and don't pore over a yesterday that's gone; happiness may be very close by. And as he went into the choruses, his two puppets (Jean-Paul & Mohammed) started clopping their wooden feet on a box-top in time. The light shone off the lake and I felt that, yes, everything was all right with life.

Between songs, Greg (his name was on his CDs) was exhorting people to smile: "never underestimate the power of a smile", "Every smile is beautiful. Some of the best smiles I've seen had no teeth at all." "Even if you've had trouble in your life, you can still smile." He was twisting up balloons for kids and he'd say "that's a great smile. That's worth a balloon. I know you're gonna get married with a smile like that!"

The marriage thing was just a joke, but of course set me off reflecting. It struck me how heavy my ponderous thoughts have become, and how melanchlolic my songwriting style is! (Five out of the two hundred-plus I've written are what you'd call happy. Hm, wonder why everyone always preferred the cover versions when I used to do gigs?) I'm good with friends and I seem to make friends for life - but still pretty hopeless at parties. I've always seen a new face as a potential challenge, and if someone (perhaps a girl) smiles at me, I think it's for the person behind me and miss the moment. I don't smile at women on the street or in bars in case they think I'm leering. (Why on earth should I feel guilty about just smiling?) Once, seeing me walking along the pavement to meet him, my best friend told me I looked as if I was about to murder someone. The funny thing is, despite feeling slightly lost (first and only time in Stoke Newington) I was feeling just fine. Maybe it was the Stoke Newington effect.

I don't know how it came to be this way! Hitting adulthood as the no-future ecological crisis exploded over me didn't help. But other students didn't seem to bother so much that their world was ending. This has a longer history; one primary teacher wrote in my report "Neil takes life far too seriously." I don't feel down. I'm pretty upbeat. But I'd give a lot to (re)discover levity, an easy smile and to write more happy songs! Greg remarked (lightly, with a smile) to the audience that sometimes to be able to do that is a lifetime's achievement.

FASNACHT IN LUZERN

I took the train to Lucerne yesterday - it's only 50 minutes away. Yes, that's 50 minutes exactly - both ways. It really is true about everything here running like clockwork. Normally, I just treat bus timetables as some kind of approximation - but the other night, after an Irish folk session, we turned up for the last bus at midnight, and there it was. It even waited till 12.02, the exact scheduled departure time.

Anyway, Lucerne - surrounded by mountains, and on a beautiful wide lake. I can't get bored of this. I've seen lots of mountains in Scotland, but they're not jagged and snow-capped. So first off, I got myself a Glühwein and just gazed for a bit. It's another very charming picture postcard town with a Middle Ages feel: all twisty lanes and embellished facades. Just to top it off, yesterday was part of the Fasnacht festival, the local Mardi Gras, so the streets were full of marching bands, each composed of around twenty people wearing themed heads with a slightly different expression. There were horned devils, green men, and other assorted bogeys, even a procession of white-caped nightmare Elvises. All of these creatures were beating drums or playing the kind of horns where the tube curls round your body and culminates in a huge funnel (?) above your rubbery head. Next to the band trundled a small truck, from which they dispensed goodies like overly-sweet Punsch. The effect of this, and the strange organ music from the trucks - not in time with the drums, but didn't need to be - was disorientating, like being in a kind of dream - half-in half-out of the jollity and mocking masks rearing up at every turn.

IMPRESSIONS FROM A HALF DAY OFF

On Friday, I had no input to do on the course so I found myself with a few hours free. I took the tram to town, thinking I'd go looking for some boots, but the sun was too bright in the sky and I ended up walking past the spires and clocks to the shore of the Zurich See...

It's the first real spring day and it feels as if the world has paused just here. People are basking on the benches and the wall at the water's edge.There are a lot of couples, but I'm not going to feel jealous - today, anyway. One teenage girl is bouncing a plastic bottle off her boyfriend's knees - she looks enraptured. There's an old couple, in their 70s, still arm in arm.


The water is very clean. A cormorant goes under, and I can watch its whole dive until it re-emerges half a minute later. It never seems to catch anything, though. There are hooting coots, a line of four swans, and lots of ducks, one with a big copper-coloured head and bright red beak. On the far shore, I can hear the engine of some kind of paddle-steamer hammering, slightly muffled. In the distance, behind a net curtain of mist, there are the mountains.

The sky is clear, with only a few wispy clouds and vapour trails. When I close my eyes, I feel the sun like an expert masseur relaxing all the muscles on my face. I must have been so tensed up before, and never knew. I have to take off my pullover because of the heat. I realise I've actually managed to turn off my thoughts for a few minutes, and just watch ducks.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

This is not a fake. I am typing this verbatim from the side of a Chinese box of battery-operated vibrating condoms. You might wonder how I came into possession of these. Well, they're not mine and I reckon the best thing about them is the box. Here goes.

In sex life deficient fervor? Is because had not discovered! The reproduction healthy expert intimate bird newly promotes the appeal toy vibration life jacket, crisply crisply itches, direct excited G. The comprehensive promotion sex life quality, lets you feel the unprecedented pleasant sensation with to satisfy!

Operating instructions:
1. Takes out the product in the packing box.
2. The wrap enters the life jacket wrap to enter the vibrator first (also to be possible again to wrap directly enters vibrator use)
3. Will vibrate the link wrap to enter to the male genitals root (vibration salient point forward)
4. Presses down the switch, vibrates 15-30 minute (to be possible sustainably to open, to close)
5. This product may the men and women use in common or voluntarily the DIY use.

(Not sure I'd trust it somehow, even for DIY use.)

ALLES IN ORDNUNG (Laundry room fun)

There's a washing machine in our small block, and you have to book time on it. That's the system in Switzerland, apparently. I signed up for a specfic time and, when I arrived, was mildly irritated to find that my name had been neatly crossed off - our neighbours wanted to reserve the thing for the entire weekend!

I'd seen their name there, but it hadn't seemed possible they wanted all days both days. Were they running an orphanage? Turns out they are both international tax and social security consultants for big business (I wonder what they actually *do*?) so work a 7-day week. Anyway, I negotiated my slot, and the guy was careful to point out that I also needed to reserve space to hang the clothes up to dry - and that I should inform my co-tutor not to hang his (black) socks on the same line as my neighbour's (white) laundry. Not because they'd be hard to distinguish from each other, obviously. Some control-freakery lurking?

POST-SCRIPT
Today, a week later, this same annoying neighbour has instructed me how to clean the powder drawer and dry the inside of the window to the machine. Oh, and the lint thing needs to be done, of course. I told him that, after nearly 40 years on the planet, it is the first time I have ever been told there's a need to clean the powder drawer, which gets a regular good soaking anyway! I told him - restraining myself - that it was "a little crazy".

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ZURICH

I'd only been to Switzerland once before - memorable because of driving through the mountains from France in an intense lightning storm. This time, I'm here for work, so I haven't had a lot of time to admire the scenery. It helps that, on a sunny day like today, there's a great view down the street that the school is on. Framed by buildings, the road descends towards the spires at the bottom. Behind these, dwarfing them, not sky but a backdrop of slightly hazy deep blue mountains, still snow-capped even though we haven't had anything like a winter. It's all very postcard-photogenic, but I have forgotten my camera lead so I won't be posting any till later.

The buildings are unformly pretty - neat houses (Play School design) with bright coloured shutters. No high-rise buildings in our part of town, but a forest of spires, some thin like rapiers. Everything is extremely clean, and ordered. I haven't seen any homeless people on the streets - are there any? Cars actually stop for you as soon as you approach a zebra crossing. Of course, the trams run like clockwork. On my first day, taking a funicular (?) up into the hills, I travelled ticketless and inevitably ran into a whole team of inspectors. (I argued, as much for the opportunity to use my German as anything, and wrung a compromise from them.)

I can't get the idea of this perfectly ordered state like Castalia (The Glass Bead Game) out of my head.

MORNING THOUGHT

I'm awake but only just
Thinking of the things I must
Accomplish in the day ahead
I'm so much better off in bed

THE EMERGING DYSTOPIA

Yesterday after work I went out for a drink with Peter, an "old" socialist (as opposed to a New Labourite.) You wouldn't think there were any of these beasts still around - yet there he was, and with his utterly convincing Tony Benn impersonation, and references to class struggle and "Maggie" Thatcher, it was like going back in time. He joined Labour in 1981 and watched as Neil Kinnock betrayed the Left. Of course, he had absolutely no mercy for Tony Blair and the New Labour project. Here are some of the facts - I wish I had time to source them all properly.

1% of the UK population own... could you guess?... 89% of the wealth.

"Between 1996/97 and 2001/02, income inequality rose on a variety of measures, to reach its highest ever level (at least since comparable records began in 1961) ... Since then, income inequality has fallen, and it is now at a similar level to that in 1996/97: the net effect of eight years of Labour government has been to leave inequality effectively unchanged."
Institute of Fiscal Studies

Even though there is greater wealth among the middle strata of society, the bottom decile (10%) of the UK population are worse off in relative terms than they were under Mrs Thatcher. This is the "underclass", whose benefits have been cut under Labour and from whose ranks the bulk of the prison population (which is double what it was in the 1970s) is composed.

And then here's one statistic that has stuck in my memory: Labour, during its term in office, is estimated to have thrown away £70 billion of public money (who else's?) on consultancy fees.

In response to the idea that Labour have kept Blair because he was media-friendly after Labour's years in the wilderness, Peter pointed out that, far from being a populist, Blair has been engaged in forcing through several changes which have been unpopular in many cases - not just support of Bush in Iraq (and whole neo-con agenda) but privatisation of the London Underground, health service reforms, tuition fees, ID cards, and so on. As for people's expectations of Gordon Brown, he compared them with the, now laughable, expectations of Labour's second term - remember those?

He had three questions to which he wanted a deeper answer than the usual one (that Labour were just desperate to keep the media on-side):

How did a man like this, a conservative, get to lead the party in the first place?
Why was he permitted to remain?
Why is there no realistic left-wing alternative?

Perhaps those "deeper" answers have to do with Thatcherism: the deliberate fragmentation of the working class, particularly their group identity; increased prosperity coupled with political apathy; the interests of capital "manufacturing consent" through control of the media. There wasn't time to discuss these further.

As with the last time I heard a real Marxist speak (in Hyde Park) I left the conversation feeling badly informed (not having these kind of facts and figures at my fingertips) and also wishing that more people were interested in what was really happening in the world, rather than the many distractions of gadgets, sport, home redecoration and Big Brother. I am convinced that continued lack of engagement with politics - with no grassroots left-wing political party in the UK - can only lead to a future similar to the one portrayed in the film Children of Men last year i.e. a deeply divided, and more violent society, where an authoritarian regime protects the "haves" against the "have-nots". Or maybe we're already there.

A HAPPY NEW YEAR

Some thoughts on happiness garnered from the last few minutes of a radio show on Christmas Day:

One speaker pointed out the fact that that happiness is a different thing from pleasure and that, realising this, we should be both more other-directed and focused on the achievement of our long-term goals; inactivity in the face of unhappiness was worst of all. "DO something, Mutley!"


Research apparently shows that happiness is largely a matter of temperament, and is generally affected only for a short time by events such as winning the lottery, or even being interned in a concentration camp, after which it eventually resumes its previous level! One speaker suggested that, if unhappy, we remember how earlier unhappiness faded over time, and things worked out - and have a drink!

I have been thinking this week how realists stand a better chance of being happy than idealists do. This is because, in the practical sphere at least, realists have adjusted their expectations in the light of experience to reflect an imperfect world, whereas idealists continue to strive for the unattainable, refusing to acknowledge, for example, the animalistic and tribal behaviours bred into us by millions of years of genetic selection. Realists are less often disappointed.

THE PARTYGOERS

As Hunter dropped his last few Christmas cards into the station post box and reflected on the fact that all the loose ends of the year had been tied up, he savoured the prospect of the journey north. The feeling first stirred when he bought his ticket, usually around Hallowe’en – for he was a creature of habit. Now, waiting below the timetable at Kings Cross station, he read over the times and destinations with a feeling of immense pleasure. What freedom! He would spend seven hours on a train. Out of reach of mobile signals, owing nothing whatsoever to anyone, completely unavailable, with a weightless mind, he would abandon himself to the beguiling decades-old acid folk music he loved, and get intoxicated as fields and silhouetted rooftops raced by.

The rolling fog on the fields was as high as a person, or a house, and the patches of ice looked blue in the golden twilight. Hunter let his mind wander to Christmases past: the sweet smell of the gum and glitter he and his friends used to make pictures with as a child; the snow dripping from the red lettering of The Dandy; first kiss to Last Christmas; the costumed Holly King and Oak King battling it out on a snow-covered hilltop; choirs by candlelight… There was still a lot of magic around, even if it was all ultimately empty. He often felt as if he were the only one who felt it, marooned in the kind of innocent excitement and imagery that had been long ago dismissed by everyone else he knew as irrelevant to their responsible plods through adulthood.


“Hi, Hunter! Wow, haven’t seen you for ages. You’re looking well, mate. Help yourself to drinks – they’re in the kitchen.” Giles, tonight’s host, gesturing to the phalanx of bottles and cans in the kitchen, and moving off to join his colleagues in the front room.

Hunter looked around for somewhere to put down the plastic bag that contained his present. Now didn’t seem as if it was the right moment. He filled a glassful of wine, took a deep breath and walked towards the door, from which he could hear a riot of laughter. How to enter, how to begin, how to smile at people he hardly knew – basic stuff he felt he’d never properly mastered.

Entering the room, he was assailed by a little gale of laughter. He’d just missed the joke. He greeted everyone hastily, raising his glass with an awkward movement and a forced smile.

“How’s life?” this from Catherine Wood, a former classmate whom he’d hardly talked to at school, her pinched face apparently overjoyed.

Here we go, he thought. The casual humiliation of questions.

“Great, thanks. Yeah, things are going really well in London.”
“What is it you do now?”
“Well, actually…” Hunter coughed, “I’m not doing anything much! I’m trying to work on a bit of painting, so I work part-time for a lecturing agency.”
“Oh, yeah, well that’s the right idea, isn’t it? Everyone works far too hard these days anyway, don’t you think? Where are you living – have you got your own place, or?”
“It’s just too pricey down south, you know how it is. I’m sharing.”
“Oh, I see.” Catherine tried to think of a positive spin to put on it.
“It’s a bit like Men Behaving Badly, if you remember that.”
“Oh, yeah. I loved it as a student, y’know, communal living! Look, I’m just going to get another drink and I’ll be right back.”

Deserted. Hunter let his eyes pan round the room. Look nonchalant, look bored. How the Hell should he look now?

Several unmemorable conversations later, he found himself sitting with Cameron Harris, a film enthusiast and the elder brother of a friend who no longer cared to return to this part of the world.

“I really enjoyed that remake of Death In Venice,” said Hunter. “Atmospheric.”
“Well,” Cameron made a groaning sound, “It’s not my taste. I wouldn’t go to a film like that.”
“Did you think it would be a bit slow?” asked Hunter.
“I read the reviews, but I’ve never liked that director anyway. I can’t stand the way he uses those clichéd camera angles. And the acting’s not going to be worth watching with Jose whatsisname, is it? What I always want in a film is three things: a bit of challenge, like a really good twist or something; actors with presence; and something with real passion!”
“I think you’d find it was passionate, at least. No one could say…”
“What you mean by it and what I mean by it are different things. Films are my thing and I know what I’m talking about. You can say whatever you like about it, but a solitary writer on some kind of self-destructive whatever it is will never hold my attention.” Cameron said emphatically. “And the director’s a dumb twat, like I said.” He laughed.
“What did you like, this year?” Hunter ventured, wondering where along the line he had lost his sense of humour.
“Well, now, there were only three films worth the ticket price this year – in my opinion…”
“Look, I can’t do this any more. It’s too boring.”
“Pardon?” Cameron thought he’d misheard.
“You are an opinionated old bore, so I’m off.” Hunter said flatly.
“Fine.” Cameron walked away, seemingly unruffled.

Suddenly Hunter noticed how noisy it was. He ran the gauntlet of random fragments of conversation which emerged bleating and whinnying from the cigarette smoke. Someone laughed; it caught. He would have loved to be in that little crowd at that moment, but he felt himself impelled towards the door. He apologised as he made his way through the now crowded living room, and stumbled on someone’s coat.

“Sorry, sorry!”
“Hunter, you OK?” It was Giles, interrupting his stream of jovial remarks.
“Yeah, I, er, I have to go soon. There’s a present…”
“Thanks. You shouldn’t have! Look, why don’t you wait and get a taxi?”
“No, I’m just a bit sleepy, that’s all. Anyway, I put it by the coathangers.”
“OK. Look, we’ll have to go out for a drink while you’re still here – next week?”
“That’d be good. Let me know. Actually, no, sorry, I can’t be bothered. I just want to hibernate this year.”
Hunter smiled briefly, but was sorry to see his old schoolmate at a loss for words. He made a “can’t help it” gesture with his hands, looked at the floor and moved off quickly.

In the hallway, he brushed past Catherine.
“Are you off, then?’ she asked, smiling.
“Yeah, I’m feeling…”
“Sorry we didn’t get to talk more. Parties! You know how it is.”
Hunter shrugged and looked for his coat.
Catherine’s eyes followed his movements, and then looked sadly back at the living room. She fingered her glass nervously. “I would have liked to know more about your painting.”
He rounded on her. “Don’t. Patronise. Me.”
She gave a half-smile of disbelief. “Wha-at?”
“Catherine: You don’t care if I live or die.”

Outside in the street, Hunter made a quick recovery as he made contact with the cold air. He gazed at the Christmas lights – so imaginatively done this year, the Twelve Days of Christmas sparkling in blue and gold. He reflected that tonight was Yule, and the return of the light – now there was something worth celebrating. He would light a candle to that before he went to bed, just as he used to as a child. To keep the magic alive in his soul.

Beneath the coats in Giles’s flat, bathed in a puddle of Tennent’s Export at the bottom of a plastic bag, lay a forgotten painting of a brightly coloured landscape. Giles’s wife discovered it the next day, cleaned the sticky beer off the front, and put it in a drawer in case anyone came back for it.