Dec 12 2008 0 comments
Peoplewatching, Technical

Rebirth of the phoenix

Because blogs need pretencious titles, n’est-ce pas?

So, every so often, I rebuild this blog after a technical calamity or personal epiphany stops me from keeping it. And on each ocassion, I write something a little bit like this. Chances are it won’t remain once there is some actual content to take its place, so it’s in essence the last of the dodos. Stroke it while you can.

Wordpress was in fact a joy to install this time. I never knew what killed the database last time. However, one day into using it this time around, they updated to 2.7. I dutifully upgraded to the new version, only to find a terminal error. It turns out that the new version introduced a variable name which was also in use in my theme. It’s at times like that that I am very grateful to be hosting this myself. Rather than asking some anonymous support desk whether help would be available in March 2010 or perhaps never, I was able to simply login, remind myself how PHP worked, and fix the files myself. I am now rather proud that I can still negotiate code. Not that it was anything very complicated, but it has been… a while.

Tonight I am off to the Christmas bash of the Liverpool Flying School. I am rather hoping to see the odd handlebar moustache and to be invited up in some antique “kite”… I’ll report back later. Mince pies and wine later.

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Oct 31 2007 0 comments
Uncategorized

If it makes you happy…

…then why the hell aren’t you doing it?

Italy was fabulous. It’s not as though there’s any secret that I love travelling. I had, however, been looking forward to my trip – with Mossy to visit Jen in her rural idyll near Urbino – with a hint of concern that I was getting diminishing returns from my recent holidays — Cornwall in particular. For much as I adore the now annual sojourn at Trevoyan, the cottage in Cornwall I share with some friends, I was feeling like I didn’t need or really deserve another break. Nor did I have time for it: I’m supposed to be getting on with generating my new challenge and next project.

But how little did I figure on the magic that I remember, whenever I’ve cross the sea… Europe refreshes me every time; to be away somewhere completely unlike home. All the little details reminding me all the time that something different is possible; also the nostalgia of retracing an awful lot of the steps I’d taken in 1999, 2000 and 2001, en route to Kosova; and most of all the big things: clear fresh air and friendly unjaded people. Peglio and Urbino, in particular, I salute you! I really feel that Britain (and not just London) truly is becoming a “sad little island” (thanks CdeB) in so many ways and places. At least the Highlands still seem to be resisting.

So, lots of good conversation with the ever so good listeners – and empathisers, but not sympathisers – that my friends are; lots of photographs taken; a dip in the sea; a visit to the world’s longest-established republic (San Marino, 301 AD; constitution as of 1600) … but most of all a reminder of a me who I like. You just have to look at the photos the others took of me. Bloody hell… I’m relaxed!

A night out to Fano saw us dancing along with the incredible Cuban/Brazilian/Hungarian/Tunisian/you-name-it Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio playing for Africa Chiama. Bongos, maracas a bass, cello, viola, and violin, along with keyboards, a selection of guitars, a sax, a trumpet, and a full drum kit… oh and a Tunisian man able to hold a note for longer than ought to be physically possible. But the best things? Raising money for social solidarity of course, but also the ancient, utter drunk who everybody tolerated — and turned out to be an excellent dancer! He got the kids up with him, without a hint of self-consciousness from anyone, too. I did feel sorry for his dog though, which was, admittedly, mortified.

The twisting, winding roads of the rural Marche were hilarious and fabulous, and the isolation meant I got to see a porcupine, a blue butterfly-winged cricket, a couple of geckos, and accidentally stand on a snake! I don’t think I hurt it. It didn’t bite me, anyway. Plus Donna the dobermann puppy and the many and various cats of San Leo who ate my head (or tried to… kittenishly…) Most magically, Jen and I joined Jane in her search for a shooting star, and lay back feeling like Asterix and Obelix — listening to the groans of countless wild boar out in the forests and hillsides around about.

Yeah, that was good.

Going to start the intensive language classes (not Italian!) next week or a.s.a.p. anyway; a trip to Birmingham beckons first, but that’s allowed frippery (in my trying-not-to-be-a profligate wastrel libertine phase) since it’s going to be a birthday celebration.

Oh, did I mention that Ryanair actually managed to get us there and back in one piece, and Roberto’s wild Lancia-hurling didn’t kill us, but I got back to London to find my train home… cancelled!

Mar 01 2006 0 comments
Film, Music, Travel

Petrol

I noticed today that I really love the smell of petrol stations. They remind me of road trips; of being abroad; specifically of the many dozens of foreign motorway services we’ve stopped at en route to Kosova, Ukraine, Albania, and all those places I love so much. Even a simple German autobahn stop can seem so exotic, with its slightly different architecture, range of products, brands, and attitudes. And when you start to get up into the Alps with the stations so precariously built out onto concrete stilts, or into Italy, where you pay for your food and then order it, the atmosphere just gets more and more special; and memory-jogging. It’s so strong an association that I even get the good feeling at the grotty old Asda pumps in Charlton. Actually, grottiness doesn’t make things any less exotic. Ukraine in particular is good at dusty and run down petrol stations, and I love them all the more. Especially the guys who fill up an entire convoy with diesel without turning off the pumps between vehicles — or putting out their fags, for that matter.

I also noticed some great song lyrics in the background of the last episode of Life on Mars, which I just caught up with. (Whoa! He took too long to rescue Annie. But, since he was really trying to convince himself it wasn’t real, I’ll allow it… but how long did his “heaven” last for at the end… ghost?) Anyway, the lyric was from Tom Waits’s “I hope that I don’t fall in love with you”. Lyrics have been important to me always, and I’ve been loving the words to the latest on-all-the-time-in-the-car phenomenon, Fallout Boy (”The best part of ‘believe’ is the ‘lie’”; “I swear I’d burn this city down to show you the light”). But tonight I like the whole Tom Waits thing.

Apparently though, as I’ve been told by friends this week, I “come across as confident”. Yeah, well, we shall see, shan’t we. I am going to remain hopeful and optimistic though, because I do grudgingly accept the truth in the thought - also passed to me from a friend this week — that (to paraphrase) if you go into a situation expecting it to be rubbish, you’ll probably make it precisely that.

Feb 01 2006 0 comments
Film, Friends

“…sea surplus store, corner of Peebles Drive & 124th Street”

I’ve had crazy sleep patterns since new year. It’s because of life being so unstructured just now, while I house-hunt, and don’t really do much of anything work-wise. So, I’m enjoying reliving Hill Street Blues. I always loved it, though I’m not certain I realised how quirky it was when I was watching it first time around. I was fairly little after all!

Tonia was wandering around Chernigov a couple of nights ago, also unable to sleep, so she was in touch by text. I suggested we had become owls. She tells me that no, I am in fact a special Ukrainian creature called a night-stalker. It has big eyes and looks a bit like a lemur. Apparently…

Nov 01 2005 0 comments
Friends

End of days

One of my best, closest and most loyal friends is lying curled up behind me. She often stops by to visit, but once I move house and leave this town in less than a week, I may never see her again.

I’ve been trying to tell her this for ages; being extra careful to always open the door for her, making sure she gets a good long hug to welcome her when she arrives; always having some of her favourite drink available.

And I think it’s sinking in now. She’s normally off home by the time it’s getting dark, but here she is, visiting for the second time today, and asleep on the couch where she never normally sits - she prefers to sit on the rug on the floor - just, it seems, to be near me as I perch on the edge of the couch using the laptop and gazing out of the window, through the fairy lights I borrowed from a friend, at one of the last pink Brighton sunsets I’m going to see.

I can just feel a little warmth radiating from her as she snoozes, keeping my back from draughts.

She is PC, the neighbour’s cat.

Nov 15 1998 0 comments
Politics

Take your hammer and break the chains…

The weekend found me in Scotland, involved in preparations to disarm a nuclear submarine.

“I’ll take my hammer and break the chains
I’ll not remain in silence.
I will stand and I will defend
My right to fight against violence.”

No, really. Britain’s Trident submarines are an internationally illegal nuclear weapon delivery system. The International Court of Justice has ruled that nuclear weapons could only possibly be legal if the very existence of a state was in question. Even then it is not clear. And there is absolutely no excuse to have four submarines, with one constantly patrolling shipping lanes and the coast of Africa.

The proposed action is legal, non-violent, and accountable. This is in the manner of an action taken last year against a Hawk jet fighter which British Aerospace were preparing to send to Indonesia to assist in the genocide in East Timor. The women accused of criminal damage were set free by a court which agreed they were acting to prevent a greater crime.

Try to imagine how good it feels to really think, “Yes, we’re really going to do this. We’re justified, legal, and have a broad base of support from around the world.” And we are going to do it.

The camp I stayed at had a brilliant atmosphere. There were actually no discernable egos, the bane of most protest camps and actions. I think this was especially because of the spread of ages and backgrounds. Non-violent, accountable actions seem to attract people who are reassured of the motives.

As ever, Faslane’s majestic beauty was scarred by the military razor wire, and it wasn’t easy for some of the people I’d brought, who saw it all for the first time. It’s hard to look at a grey shed and think that what it contains could end the world, but that’s exactly the kind of wicked, surreal sight which motivates all the more.

Somehow, in the midst of it all, I also managed to meet some wonderful new people, and have established once and for all that in the night sky, Sirius is in fact a horse, and Pegasus, well, woof.

Nov 10 1998 0 comments
Music

Small world!

I’ve just been to the National Film Theatre to see Storefront Hitchcock, a film by Jonathan Demme (who also directed Stop Making Sense for the band Talking Heads.) The film is of Robyn Hitchcock playing in an “uncomplicated” location: a vacant shop in New York. They manage to be quite inconspicuous, in a “nobody has noticed us, we’re gettingaway with it” sense. Robyn is of course as powerful as ever. The music set I’d pretty much seen live, but the close ups really make the most of the very personal, emotional facial grimaces he makes when reaching the highest, sweetest notes. And I’ve never seen a concert make such good use of lighting — one bulb hovering during “You and Oblivion” was perfect for the isolation of it.

My experience (as usual given Robyn’s following, which tends towards élite, rather than large) was one of frustrating proximity. This is a man I’d love to get a chance to know, but the closest I’ve come is this conversation:

R (hunting around before small gig): “Have you seen my harp?”
K (at table Robyn recently vacated, and stunned in daft admiration): “Sorry, nope… erm, do you mind if I just say ‘wow’ a lot?”

Not exactly edifying. This time, I was waiting to go in and overheard some people worrying that one of their number was without a ticket. I offered them a spare I had been left with. They were most grateful before being whisked off to some backstage spot by Mr Hitchcock himself. I feel a “degree of separation” went wrong there…

The film though was very comfortable to watch, so no worries about my mental state! Robyn’s socialist, hippy-spawned politics came through better than I’ve heard before, which is great because I so much want people I respect to actually be cool (!) The song, “1974″ includes the line “You could vote Labour then, you can’t do anymore”. And the introduction was brilliant, with Robyn complaining about the loss of the two-party system… but this wasn’t a Billy Bragg-style political band-wagon (sorry!) — we were cautioned by Mr H that when he tells us what a song is about, he is generally lying…

Finally, I’ll get to the point. Small world stuff got me again tonight. I noticed most people in the theatre seemed to know each other. When the man I’d given the ticket too arrived in the seat next to me, he knew the person in front of him — Tim Keegan, who appears in the film! Sheesh. And then, as I got off the train home, the people who’d been sitting in front of me on the journey up to London were getting off the return train right in front of me.

Presumably, I’m just being followed.

Either that, or planet earth is running out of processor power.

Post-script…
I don’t believe it. From a message about Storefront on a Robyn mailing list:

“High points:
A rare sighting of Swiss Family Hitchcock (Robyn, mother and daughter) disappearing up the NFT spiral staircase as a family group.”

Remember those people I gave the ticket to before seeing whisked off?

Nov 05 1998 0 comments
Uncategorized

Local colour

Becky B called today. She’s my honorary little sister — I’ve known her since she was 14. Definitely my friend, but somebody I particularly try to look out for; who’s had her lifetime’s allocation of crap already. Actually, it was her I went to see one morning recently to talk to about the then relationship crisis, and I think Becky was really pleased to be listening to me for probably the first time.

Anyway, tonight she called to calm her nerves because she lives in Lewes. The County Town of East Sussex appears, to the tourist, to be a pretty, castellated example of an ancient South Coast stronghold. But under the surface it is bizarre, and not always entirely salubrious. Home of the NF, a fascist organisation, and endowed with rumours about inverted crucifixes, and such-like, its crowning glory is tonight: the world famous Lewes Bonfire Night celebrations. The town, swelled with most of the population of Sussex, goes completely mad. There are at least four main, massive bonfires. Not fireworks for the kiddies, but mass hysteria. Processions of locals in almost tribal segregation, all in costume, carry large and dangerous fire torches through thick crowds, prevented from escape by incredibly unreasonable closures of roads. The heads of these columns don’t just burn Guy Fawkes, either. Politicians are common, but always present — the Pope, burnt by tradition from our less noble heritage.

Many residents, Becky included, plan to stay at home but fear for their chances of escape! Most parts of the town are filled with insanity and crowds bearing missiles and mortars, torches and exuberance. Some shops open late with a blitz-spirit style of tea-serving; others close early and set up the shutters. Traffic is impassible for several miles, parking unheard of. Trains are full to the point where people fall out — and there are massive queues at the University station en route from Brighton. In fact this year, the people of Brighton were asked not to come!

Local colour.

Sep 20 1997 0 comments
Reflection & philosophy

Why

“The optimist is a better reformer than the pessimist; and the man who believes life to be excellent alters it most. It seems a paradox, yet the reason of it is very plain. The pessimist can be enraged at evil. But only the optimist can be surprised at it. From the reformer is required a simplicity of surprise. He must have the faculty of a violent and virgin astonishment. It is not enough that he should think injustice distressing; he must think injustice absurd, an anomaly in existence, a matter less for tears than for a shattering laughter.”

G. K. Chesterton

The world is a beautiful place.

No, stop, and think about that for a moment or two. When did you last think that thought? What inspired you to it? You know, the moments when you really feel alive, and glad of it. Gradually, I realised that I didn’t just experience those at random. Of course, glorious sunsets and breathtaking mountains provoke them. But I found I felt them very strongly when I needed to. When looking across at the Gareloch from the hill above Faslane — the nuclear submarine base where Britain stores its destructive power but which, the day it is smashed away, will leave behind the green-and-purple of the classic Scottish water-valley view which I saw, somehow intact beneath it all; somehow because it is stronger. And when watching the last great oak finally give way for the Newbury bypass. When watching David Niven shrinking from hero to the man confessing his life as a fraud, at the moment of his expected death, in Paper Tiger. Or even watching re-runs of Top of the Pops and reflecting on the sadness of growing older and letting dreams fade just because of not being “the beautiful people” anymore. Then realising, remembering, it doesn’t have to be that way.

The beauty that shines through corrects the sadness. At its least it can raise despair to mere melancholy. At its best it opens the mind and the eye to infinity; that stunning comprehension of the holistic inter-conectedness of all things, in a way that only great scientists are supposed to be allowed.

But that’s the half of it. With time and the daydreams of the subconscious it comes to you; this isn’t an attitude to use like armour to protect us from the world. It is the world. There’s no better way to enjoy every day (never mind just dealing with them) than to really believe in something like this. It’s a beautiful place. There’s suffering, stress, pain and sadness, but we’re here to fix that. Everything can be “sorted out” — we just have to believe in it, and in ourselves enough. The injustice cruelty and madness in the world can so many times be attributed to fear. Insecurity motivates all kinds of evil systems that lead the rest of the social decay we call civilisation. Capitalism itself feeds not on greed — that’s just the symptom — but on fear of insecurity and instability.

Aug 11 1996 0 comments
Peoplewatching, Reflection & philosophy

Last post of first edition

This was a “ramble”, from back when I first kept an online diary — it’s from Sunday, 11th August 1996. Afterwards, there’s an update from June 1998.

Diary: well, a lot’s happened since the last one of these little narcissistic bits of writing. Like the Big Green Gathering — I finally felt (feel) relaxed again. The Saturday evening, in particular, will stay with me for a very long time. The experience of sitting in a circle of people with music by Theo & Shannon and some people from Fairmile (protest against Britain’s first privately built toll-road in many many years), lit by the fire and the candles had a special magic which took me a long way back to dreams of ancient spirits - understood by Wiltshire’s original humans - rising again. Connection.

As Annwen and I sat and watched entranced, the faces bobbing and swaying around us were a forest, we the only people looking in; the music had an intensity I just can’t explain. When the girl from Fairmile took us off on a ‘procession’ we followed uncaringly. Eventually realising we’d been led around into another circle, we found people we’d not even noticed dropped from the crowd and lit their candles in the ground, firming the circle. Suddenly there was a stage. And then a play going on - a digger man’s dreams of the forest which stopped him wanting to make roads. When it was over, and the Green Dream Players just literally rolled away, reality took a full five minutes to come back into focus. We sat unable to speak for some time. When the tents and vans slowly rematerialised it was time for the giggles, and spotting Jim Morrison in the clouds. And then joined by Tigger we watched the moon rise and set over the stone circle, then the sun rose. It took several hours to do this, not that we cared.

Ahhhhhhhhhh. :-)

I’ve not even mentioned the wobbly-kneed infatuation! Anyway, that all made me feel much better, and I managed to meet some people from Justice? and have now spent a little time getting to know them. This won’t be easy, since I feel such a fraud, with my nasty day job. Anybody want to save me from the next six months of hell by paying off my credit cards and letting me get on with important things again? *sigh*

That sense of displacement and fakeness is a big thing right now. Just how genuinely part of the perceived sub-culture am I? What am I doing even thinking about it? But isn’t everyone? What’s the thing I can feel where crusties and fluffies and all this crap means that motives are questioned and respect and tolerance are lacking, right where they should be based? Human fucking nature? Shurely Shum Mishtake.

Saturday saw the Brighton Festival of Freedom. Some of the ‘Gathering posse made it down from London which was nice. The Festie though was weird. I did manage to get a tape of Theo & Shannon which was great, but I really couldn’t get into the rest of the day. Maybe I need a night in a tent to fit in, or maybe to travel to the thing, not have it in your town is the key. Or maybe I’m just too stressed by work and debt again. Not my best festival, anyway, and I want to spend a lot of effort on sorting out my self-assuredness again. AGAIN! Maybe I should have stayed in good old sorted-out Aberdeen where it’s cool to be a campaigner, and it’s OK to use organisation, and still be anarchist, and… and… damn. I’m as sentimental about Aberdeen now as I used to be about Brighton. But Aberdeen for all it’s qualities and supports to getting things done - whereas Brighton was always about hedonism and freedom. Whoops.

Wow. Well, a lot has happened since then. It’s now June 1998, and I’m about to set off on the festival trail again, to Glastonbury and the Big Green. But also to the Earth First Gathering, soon… Fairmile really kicked off. A whole sub-culture came right to the forefront of public attention, and Swampy was invented. (Sorry for using “the S word“!) We’ve pretty much won the roads argument, and are moving on with our burgeoning movement to tackle corporate power, genetic engineering, and, well, global capitalism. It’s bigger, more focussed, and less “lefty” than ever before… for many people, anyway.

And I’ve grown up lots more. Leaving Brighton once and going to Aberdeen did amazing things for me. Coming back to Brighton seemed like a mistake for a while, but I’ve learnt that you have to leave a place to put into perspective what you learned there. I’m still growing cynical in many ways, not least about how shallow people can be, and what a facade a festival can be if you take it too seriously. But I’m also realising how to be relaxed, as opposed to just performing the act of relaxing.

Back then I’d never have believed I’d still be in a techie job. But I am, even though NetResult has come and gone. And I wouldn’t have believed all the politics that grew up around SchNEWS for a while. But I’d be glad to know I’m closer than ever to friends like the gathering posse and Annwen, and to know how many fun things I’ve shared with some of those Justice? people. I still miss Aberdeen, but it’s nice to see I’ve kept in touch with people from there better than most of the people from Brighton first-time-around.

We’re all really growing up. Hardly anyone is still at Aberdeen SRC from my time, although several sad hacks still work for the National Union of Students (which doesn’t even deserve a hyperlink.) Oh yes, it’s nice to see the Labour Party, after all that shit we went through with Labour Students, are no better than they ought to be.

So. I survived 1996, 1997, and 1998 so far. Phew! Maybe I’ll be back here in 2000, for one of what I suspect will be millions of tedious millennial appraisals of the 20th Century. Maybe I’ll have better things to do.