Many things we take for granted as true, are in fact, not the product of an exact science. History is an example.
Historians often have an agenda. They will claim independent thought and analysis but we all know how we react when the evidence doesn’t concur with our beliefs and likes. We hate it.
I chose three examples of where history has failed us and wrote short prose pieces to demonstrate the point.
Example 1. The denazification of German society after WW2. It was actually a very half-hearted attempt. Germany has dealt with its history but excused its criminals.
Example 2. The British in India, 1780 to 1950 makes the Nazi criminals look like genocide novices. Britain deals with it by not talking about it.
Example 3. The bombing of civilian targets in WW2. The assumption is, the enemy doesn’t feel pain the way we do.
I have written my 4000 words in English and German and await corrections to my German text.
If you would like to take a look, please drop me a line via contact, and I will send the PDF free of charge.
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
How to stop small-boat migration.
No one wants to leave their home.
By home, I mean, roots. Migration occurs because the land can’t support you and/or some bastard in charge wants to see your bollocks go through the mangle. That person might be a politician or a factory owner etc. You choose.
So you leave your family and head off to earn enough money to support your village, despite failing harvests. You undertake a gruelling journey to the coast, spend the rest of your money to climb into a boat that isn’t fit for purpose.
You have never been so scared in your life and assuming you survive this trip you still have the prejudice to overcome.
But if you received enough to make your village viable, from a concerned donor who had so much money, he can’t count it? Just a million from the billions.
How wonderful.
But we are not done there yet
When global warming brings the Gulf Stream to its knees, there will be another scenario. Here’s the picture, lifted from my collection, I heard the river laugh.
Jolly Parties
Water warms,
Density drops.
Ice melts.
Density drops.
Water too light to sink
Means no replacement, so
The Gulf Stream heat conveyor
That has warmed
Us since the last ice age,
Throws its switch to ‘off’.
50 million displaced by cold and hunger
Move south and meet
The sub-Saharan 100 million
Displaced by heat and hunger,
Moving north.
That will be a jolly party.
Who will pay for the Champagne?
Send me a mail, under contact and I’ll send you the free to copy PDF of I heard the river laugh.
When I was 60 years younger than today, I thought old people had little relevance in the world, but I was so wrong.
Me, 60 years ago. No age to start a scrap with the boss.
You see, the weaker we get (old age) the stronger we become (don’t have to give a damn). Here are some examples.
The boss is pissed because I refuse to work a 60 hour week. He is scared younger, more vulnerable staff will get ideas. Any action he takes against me, will leave him in a delicate position. If he gives me grief, I can resign and sue for bullying. I have kept a careful log of his actions and am a member of a trades union, so I’ll see him in court – unfair dismissal will cover my lost wages until retirement.
So, he does nothing and I can continue the good fight, started by people like my grandfather, who gave us the 37 hour working week. Younger colleagues can be bullied, because they have a mortgage to pay, kids in school etc. I can fight their fight.
I walked across a bridge in York and there were two police officers giving a young Asian kid grief – I know not what for.
I walk across and ask for directions. White, male, old – polite information given and received. I say, ‘That’s most helpful. Thank you. Now I’m going to cross the road and turn around and watch. If you have a reason to arrest this lad, do so. Otherwise let him go on his way.’
White, male, old – receives speechless gawps.
I cross the road, turn round in time to see the youth going on his way. I wave politely and go on my way.
A bus conductor refuses to sell a black man a ticket. He is making up nonsense excuses, such as he doesn’t know the cost, is he sure this is the right bus etc. etc.
I take out a notebook and ostentatiously record his employee number, and say quietly, ‘You are breaking the law. I will make a report to the police as soon as I reach my destination.’
White, male, old – what can he say or do?
The ticket was forthcoming.
If the fascist arsehole had punched my lights out, he would have been in the wrong and where is the street cred in hitting an old man.
If the police had arrested me for say, obstruction, they would have had to release me without charge, unless they had a reason to arrest the Asian youth, and as for my boss? Bullies respect adversaries who challenge their methods.
So get off your backsides oldens. We are so weak, we are fireproof.
Today was 27 degrees at 17.00. That’s about 14 degrees warmer than average for October.
It’s great except you know deep inside this is the beginning of the end of life as we know it.
And still people tear round the city in 2 ton gas-guzzlers, flooring away from every traffic light, queues at rush hour, but comfortable with the stereo and air con on full whack.
So it’s official. Humans wanna die. Lemmings first please.
But I can’t change motorist behaviour so I’m not spoiling my last days on this earth worrying about idiots in the motor trade, determined to press the destruct button.
So tomorrow I will drink tea and not consider our future.
In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?
Work involves moving a force through a distance. Hard work means moving a large force a long way. So why does concentration exhaust us? The brain is a big user of energy and so depletes or reserves. We feel tired, not fulfilled. We feel fulfilled when something goes right. The effort involved or the energy converted is irrelevant.
So work and fulfilment are not connected.
Only politicians and bosses think work is fulfilment.
For the rest of us, listening to your kids playing the piano, or kicking a ball around, is fulfilment. You go to work, to pay the bills to enable the good, fulfilling things in life to happen.
Don’t get confused by capitalist rhetoric. They want the last drop of blood from you so your kids think that’s how it should be.
What is the most embarrassing thing that you have ever done?
But have no regrets about having done it?
‘What Have I done now,’ a hero asks?
You are probably thinking of your youth and failed attempts to awaken the interest of a hoped-for lover.
Relax. It gets worse. Imagine that happening to you in your seventies, or eighties, even.
And then, in the other scenario, your attempts at attracting the object of your desire are successful. How do you tell people? What do you tell people?
Do you say, ‘I have fallen in love at the age of x years,’ where x is a number greater than 75? It sounds too absurd.
‘There is someone in my life who I’d like you to get to know.’
How mealy-mouthed is that!
Well, I have a friend challenged with this problem – how to come out in one’s twilight years and explain that overpowering emotion, called love. If you have any ideas I could pass on, please let me know.
Do crossed wires in old age make you unfit for purpose – a danger to everyone?
New day – new project. Weasel Words by politicians of all nations.
The house on the Wannsee where the ideas for Nazi genocide were distilled into reality. This picture was taken by me at least 10 years ago. Sometimes things germinate slowly.
I have been working on the idea for years without knowing where it was going. Then an editing job took me to the history of Königsberg and its senseless destruction at the end of World War 2.
‘Senseless destruction,’ is a moot point. It depends where you were at the time. Russian soldiers flogging their way westwards, losing thousands of brothers a day, saw the bombing as necessary. The innocent citizens caught in the firestorm as the old town burned had a different point of view.
And then, there are the excuses – Weasel Words I call them, or Ausflüchte in German and I thought of the instances when senseless actions became senseless excuses. Three occasions seemed worth studying.
The postwar excuses for not bringing all the war criminals to justice – very few were tried.
The famines, tolerated by the British, in Madras over a period of 200 years, the last disaster being contemporaneous with the freeing of Belsen Bergen by British troops. The world was stunned by the starvation pictures in the KZ, but managed not to see the horror in India.
The strategic bombing of Germans towns, especially medieval wood-built such as Dresden. But Dresden is the one we know about. The rest have been forgotten.
I also chose to do them in English and German. Here are the first of Weasel Words – Ausflüchte. Mass Murder in two languages.
Part 1. Topography of Terror
The Museum in Berlin, built on the site of the old GESTAPO Headquarters
1. Winter at the Museum
It’s winter in Berlin. Snow and iced paths lead past Arched remains of the Gestapo Head Quarters. The Topography of Terror rises In glass and steel - a museum About state-sanctioned murder With free entrance in two languages. Why? Why now?
2. Das Museum in Winter
Es ist Winter in Berlin. Mit Schnee und Eis bedeckte Wege führen An den übrig gebliebenen Gewölben Des ehemaligen Gestapo Hauptquartiers vorbei. Die Topographie des Terrors Ragt aus Stahl und Glas empor. Ein Museum des staatlich sanktionierten Mordes, Für kostenlosem Eintritt, zweisprachig. Warum? Warum jetzt?
Where to, now? I’m trying to find a publisher in Berlin. Watch this space.
It is finished. 16 short prose pieces – or are they poems? I don’t know, but I have received great praise at open mic readings.
Numbers 1 to 5 have been posted here. Now the entire collection is available through Amazon, as a beautiful chapbook or full colour eBook. But if you would like an unlocked pdf for your classroom or reading circle, please drop me a line under contacts and I will be onto it.
An amazing tree that has fought off human activity to survive.
It illustrates my poem in tribute to Rachel Carlson – author of Silent Spring
Ever narrower now, energy building,
Sluicing water upwards, roaring over mudflats,
Through to Goole, swamping the Ouse and Trent,
Removing ten thousand years
Of post-glacial civilisation.
York and Venice cannot be saved,
By Tidal Barriers.
Profits rise with the water
Until drilling down means holding on
Against the soaring tides
And strengthening winds.
And as the storms merge,
We ask, ‘What now?’
‘Using Bridgewater’s public disclosures, Breakout Point calculated that the Connecticut-based fund has bet against 21 European companies so far this week, in sectors ranging from finance to energy.’
‘In the last decade, corporate-funded right-wing think tanks who do not declare their donors have been steadily increasing their connections to the heart of government, securing more than 100 meetings with ministers. More than a dozen of their former staff have joined Boris Johnson’s government as special advisers.
‘Our investigation revealed that just five influential UK think tanks had received $9m in US ‘dark money’ in the last decade. Funders included US donors who have contributed to climate change denial groups.’
She identifies the donors as climate deniers.
It would appear, that communist philosophers such as Marx and Lenin, although rejected by modern political thinkers, are actually well respected in right-wing circles. Right wing think tanks embrace the need to increase exploitation to maintain profit return.
As capitalism finds it more difficult to turn the profit it expects, it increases the exploitation of the system. For Marx, the system was the working classes, but today the system is more widespread. Climate deniers and oil companies not playing their part in reducing global warming, car manufacturers selling products such as heavy SUVs, giving advances in technology back to the driver in increased performance, instead of reduced pollution during construction and usage etc. are part of the increased exploitation to maintain profit. Of course, working people are least protected from their excesses. The latest scandal, underreported, is the underfunding of the Environment Agency, so they don’t have the capacity to prosecute water companies poisoning our waterways.
And of course, capitalism has invented hedge funds, whose managers are little more than race-course spivs, taking bets on our livelihoods.
Marx and Keynes pointed out the need to pay workers enough to consume. Marx said capitalism would never match supply and demand well enough to create security, and would need wars to smooth booms and slumps.
Paying proper wages is old hat, now. Instead we have a credit race, where banks lend to risky clients so that they can keep spending and thereby maintain the growth percentage. When the system readjusts, the savers pay the price by facing decades of low interest rates and zero or negative standard of living shifts.
We are somewhere in the middle of such a crisis, right now.
And there is the next crisis which is an absolute taboo in right-wing circles.
2% growth now, is a much bigger number than 2% fifty years ago. Capitalism has created an unstable expanding economy which is unsustainable, so they dump climate aims. Marx’s crystal ball didn’t flag that one up, but who knew?.
Capitalism sacrifices green objectives Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Pexels.com
Nor did Marx predict that capitalism would create dark money to influence voters in a democracy, so that they vote for their own poverty, but he didn’t live in a social democracy, so how could he know? In the 19th century, such activity wasn’t hidden.
We will see if reckless capitalists are successful in destroying the planet while creating ever harsher working conditions, but their newest tool, Boris Johnson, doesn’t have the subtlety needed to keep fooling all the people, all the time.
I occasionally get the urge to write about the environment, but get kinda tired, because of the lack of resonance, even from people on the same page as me.
My average breakfast table. Forget it if pesticides have their way.
The Soon extinct worker – Worried about Ukraine, covid 19? Without the bee we are really fucked.
Wrecker’s Nectar
Bee beauty will
Dance his ass off
So his mates fly until
They reach the blossoms' source.
Then comes nectar's drill
To burrow deep,
Copulation soon fulfilled
As pollen travels with apiforce.
We use the procreation for our will
But the inevitable dialectic
Means human greed must still
Destroy nature’s hidden resource.
Our Bee works with evolution’s skill
But Darwin didn’t foresee the hand
Dealt, by chemistry’s nanogram kill.
Yet, here there is no lover's remorse.
I have no idea what the CEO of chemical-agricultural companies and their board think and dream when they go to bed at night. They have done their job – made a pesticide to destroy all life at the bottom of the food chain and a selective herbicide to remove all the unwanted plants, commonly called weeds. But weeds are someone’s habitat, and a habitat is crucial to some food chain. Without them the birds disappear, through hunger, followed by pollinating insects and other minibeasts. One milligram of modern pesticide can render a hectare without life. Without pollinating animals, we go hungry, too.
And let the pace of global warming, be a warning. Tomorrow is today in a few hours.
Chemical-industry shareholders will then discover that you can’t eat banknotes – well, not for long.
And, I cheated in this shot. Mayo uses vast amounts of sunflower or rapeseed oil. Forget such accouterments when we have no bees to do the pollinating work.
I did this poem as a challenge, so why not post it here. Perhaps it will remind some of you, how fragile the supply chain is that we take so for granted.
She held the mirror up to check her unruly hair and then adjust it until perfectly scrambled.
‘How come I see what’s behind me, in front of the mirror?’
This had to be a defining moment in their budding relationship. He would impress her with an answer she couldn’t expect.
‘That’s why they’re called virtual rays and image. The rays forming the image, don’t exist, so neither does the image.’
‘Rays, make an image we can see, but nothing is real although we have a name for everything? I can’t get my head around that one. Are you an aberration, too?’
There it was – the smile to melt his ice cream! He, a simple teacher of physics, had been presented with the opportunity to profile his knowledge, in front of this goddess, who had admitted to only having a degree in psychology. OK! He was using knowledge from the 18th century, but he could dress it up.
‘No. An aberration is when light misbehaves such as being reflected when one expects refraction, or a lens isn’t spherical.’
‘What’s refraction?’
‘If the medium changes density, it slows long wavelengths more, causing light to bend and split into its components, which we call a spectrum.’
‘Yer having a giraffe.’
No laughing matter
A nice strategy there, he thought, swopping subjects, but he felt up to it.
‘That’s Darwin, biology. If food is on high trees, natural selection favours tall animals so over generations animals get taller or have more neck.’
She rounded on him, but with a big smile, said, ‘And what about psycholinguistics?’
He stuttered, then came to a flummoxed halt.
‘It is the study of what language really tells us,’ she continued, ‘and I just gained quite an insight into you, my love. Exaggerated language leads to overclaiming and spin, making it harder to evaluate. But I’ve evaluated, and God hates know-alls. Would you like to wear this mirror?’ and she stroked his lips.
Devinia, would describe herself as a country girl – horses, dogs, hunting, polo and cold showers in summer. That was her sort of thing. She was larger than life in other ways, too. No male could claim not to notice her hour-glass shape when pressured by jodhpurs and riding britches.
Horseback heroine
I made a beeline for her at the New Year’s Eve party and she turned round and talked to me. After momentary stutters I let the booze take over and was in fine wit and repartee for the rest of the evening.
Water polo being my sport, I imagined, through an alcohol haze, my heroic disportment, so said yes to her invitation to the swim the following morning, forgetting the annual event was in the sea.
There was I on Bridlington beach at 10.30, trying not to shiver in a wind straight from Norway, just in my swimmies, when she appeared in a wet suit which did more for her curves than jodhpurs.
That goddess in rubber, grabbed my blue hand and we ran into the ocean. The first splash was OK, the second shrivelled my manhood and then I lost consciousness – apparently the result of cold-water bathing while way above the legal limit.
I awoke in heaven, wrapped in a silver blanket with Devinia still holding my hand and whispering sweet nothings in my ear.
Turns out, she prefers wimps she can care for, to heroes and enjoyed rescuing me.
Of course, I missed that bit. Never mind. She has promised a rerun, without the wet suit.
I haven’t written about Cheam, my boyhood location, for some time. And then on Guy Fawkes night I remembered the following story, told me by my father. Once again, I forgot to ask about details during his life, so have filled in the missing bits with my story-telling technique.
The main protagonists are my father, centre and his uncle Ray on the right. My aunty Joan looks as though she would rather be elsewhere. Ray and my father would be about the right age for the prank. The two boys were the same age despite being uncle and nephew.
The story centres around Cheam House, owned by a the Bethel family. The park in which it once stood is still referred to as Bethel’s Park, by some people. The only available picture of the house is copyrighted so here is the picture of the gate house – still standing, and Clowance House, a dead ringer for Cheam House.
The exterior of Clowance House. Clowance House suffered two serious fires, in 1837 and 1843, and was largely rebuilt and remodelled following the second fire. The photograph was taken before 10th February 1908. It was formerly the home of the St Aubyn family, from around 1380 to 1923. Photographer: Arthur William Jordan.
Cheam House and Clowance House must have been built by the same architect, or there was a generic design for country houses. Even the sweep of the drive is the same.
Here is my dad’s telling.
More than he wished for.
Distant owls hooted to each other. A goods train shunted, steam chuffing, then silence, but again an owl and the crack of dead wood beneath the boots of boys in short trousers, woolly socks and with muddy knees. They paused, to wait for the moon again. They were cold and tried not to shiver. A cloud retreated and the house on the slight rise, was bathed in pale blue light. The moment was theirs. The Brickfield Gang were to be first. It was a matter of honour. November 5th was just two days away and this was the first clear night. They were certain that the rival Ewell mob, the Bluegates Boys would be out, too, with their penny squibs.
Who would manage get close enough to Cheam House and shove a lighted banger through the letterbox? It was the same dare every year and as usual had started the Sunday prior to Guy Fawkes night.
The Sunday prior to Guy Fawkes night was the day in 1929 when some of the Brickfield lads were scrubbed to within an inch of their lives, and marched off to Gran’s for Sunday tea. Gran lived in Ewell, so a bus journey was involved and there was always a chance of finding a Ewell larker from the Bluegates Boys, among the tea guests.
The children remained silent over tea, but once the sandwiches were cleared, they were allowed to talk in the other room but only in hushed tones.
‘We’re doing Bethel’s House,’ a Bluegate announced in the hallway, his whisper drowned out by the droning of adults arguing about the cost of teeth.
‘You’re not! That’s our patch,’ Little Louis replied, aware that his Brickfield gang membership would be under scrutiny if he didn’t get the banger through the letterbox first. He never did work out why Cheam House and the Bethel family had become his task and his alone.
The rival gangs had this discussion every year on the weekend before the 5th, and so far, no one had got close enough to make the run up the wide pathway to the portico, held by four plain columns supporting its immense lunge over the entrance. And therein lay the rub. How to get close enough, without alarming the dogs and being seen. 3rd November 1928, both gangs had failed. There had been perfect conditions, bright moon, but the crunch of boots on the gravel had bust the plan before they were within 50 yards of the steps up to the door. The previous year they had been undone by the crackle of leaves and dead twigs when they had approached from the woods.
Little Louis had to get Bethel’s letterbox, once and for all, off the Firework night agenda and he had a plan for 1929. He knew he had to get on with it before the Bluegate Boys stole the thunder and thus allow Ray, to further sabotage his standing within the Brickfield gang. Ray was the same age as Louis but the late-arrival son of the house. Louis was the bastard interloper, with a French father and enjoyed no sympathy from his grandma.
‘We haven’t been seeing this right.’ Louis told the meeting being held in a hollow on the old brickfield.
Everyone was despondent. The last two nights had been foggy with not a breath of air, and there wouldn’t be a moon should the mist lift. Under the circumstances, with no other ideas, they had to let Louis have the floor.
‘So, what’s your plan, Lou?’ Ray, the unelected gang leader sneered. He hated Little Louis and bullied him mercilessly at home, in the tiny terrace occupied by six adults and three children. It was feral.
‘The fog is perfect,’ Louis started, trying to prevent a voice, threatening to quiver, destroy his moment. ‘And there has been no wind recently so few leaves have fallen. We can approach from the woods and we won’t need to use the pathway until we are at the door. By then the dog will be barking of course, but if no one can see us, who cares if they know we are there?’
‘They could let the dog out!’
Lou didn’t bother to dignify that objection with a reply. The gang members groaned in disbelief, but Nobby answered for him.
‘If they let the dog out, he is too old to catch us, let alone bite. He can still bark, and that he will do, but it doesn’t’ matter with Little Louis’s plan.’
‘When are you going to do it?’ Ray asked, more contrite as he sensed the support for Louis.
‘Tonight!’ was Lou’s confident response. ‘Tonight.’
Distant owls hooted to each other. A goods train shunted, steam chuffing, then silence, but again an owl, then the crack of dead wood beneath the boots of boys in short trousers, woolly socks and with muddy knees. They could just make out the shape of the illuminated Victorian bay window. The portico was invisible, but known to be to the right.
Lou moved cautiously and as expected, the dog began to bark. He didn’t wait for the others. He grabbed the banger and matches from Ray and ran at where he thought the door under the portico should be. Once at the door he had to calm his nerves and ignore the stirrings in the house. The first match worked and soon had the taper glowing. Only then did he realise that he had not one firework, but a bundle held with a piece of string. The boys cowering on the lawn could no longer see how Lou was getting on. They didn’t know how close he was to aborting as he couldn’t be sure all the bangers would go through the letterbox slit, but seconds before the first banger exploded he managed to get the bundle past the heavy brass flap protecting the hallway from the elements.
Gang members, servants nor the Bethel family and their dog expected the amplification provided by the huge brass box with a wire back, placed behind the door to catch the post. The first explosion was magnificent and there followed an even louder one. The Bluegates Boys, skulking in the woods, wondered at its magnitude. The dog fell silent, too.
Lou arrived back to where the Brickfield Gang waited and heard rousing cheers from out the foggy darkness. They had done it. 1929 would be a year to remember as long as boys threw bangers. Even adults who should have known better, silently grinned their admiration the next day.
November 3rd, 1944. A Vergeltungswaffe II whooshed off a sloped runway, somewhere in northern France. It reached an altitude of 88km within 120 seconds and then, somewhere over Epsom Downs the motor cut out. The rocket buried itself in Mrs. Bethel’s house at 3000 km/h and then exploded. Everyone was vapourised, the bricks spread over the park and only a memory remained.
The Bluegates Boys and the Brickfield Lads were men by then, men, at the front, or techies in the RAF or RN – while some like Louis, and Ray worked at J. L. Jameson in Ewell as engineers in so called ‘reserved occupations’. Letters to the front, discussions in the pub or at work, or in the air raid shelter at night made no mention of the destruction of Cheam House. There was a connection they didn’t want to recognise.
60 years later, Louis, no longer little, and comfortably retired, complained to his son about the local boys kicking the fence of his 30s semi to annoy the dog and make it bark.
‘It’s what kids do, dad’, I reminded him, ‘And less destructive than throwing a banger through a letterbox. You didn’t know there was a letter-catcher behind the door. For all you knew the house could have caught fire.’
The old man paused and reflected.
‘You are right. I still regret that night. And to think of all the places that V2 could have fallen, it landed on Cheam House, the only building for miles. After all was said and done, we got more than we wished for. And you know, Bethels would never have set the dog on a bunch of kids. They were good people.’
A beer mug picked up at a flea market, celebrating laws over 500 yrs old.
Time to let go!
Remove the ball and chain from your leg, brewers!
German beer purity laws date from the 16th century, and were needed to stop the worst abuses by brewers, who added everything in the garden and beyond, in order to get the drinkers happy, but it came with a price to drinkers’ health and eventually laws were passed in Bavaria, allowing only malted barley, hops, water and yeast to go into beer. The result is that only such pure beer can be marketed as Bier.
This was most laudable once upon a time, but centuries later we have pure tasting ‘Bier’, but pale Bier such as Pilsner, or Dortmunder taste pretty much the same throughout Germany and are boring compared to British, American, Belgian, French etc. beers. And German dark beers don’t excel in any department, either.
Of course, the German brewers are protective of their product and market aggressively in order to keep ‘beer,’ out and pretend the Reinheitsgebot (1516) is a good thing but they will lose the battle. English pubs usually have at least 6 beers on their bar, all splendid and all different, but that is poor compared to a Belgian pub, which is likely to have 60 distinctive samples. Drinkers have begun to cotton on and Craft Beer Pubs are now all the rage in Berlin.
Home and Craft Brewers are free to do as they wish – and they do. They can go for total purity, which I do with my 19th century pale ales, or go whacky with herbs, spices and other malted grains such as wheat and oats or use some unmalted grain.
Most of these would pass the purity laws in Germany, so it’s hard-hat time for the stick-in-the-mud Braumeister and his boring brews.
Try the Historical Companion to House-Brewing for a complete rundown of styles available, or Brewing Porter and Stout to get into brown beers. My favourite remains Pale Ales and India Pale Ales for the best beer flavour ever invented. All my books work on iPads, Android and Windows devices as well as Amazon Fire tablets.
Ferropolis, the steel town left to rust and remind us of our energy nemesis. Even with these monsters, the DDR couldn’t rip enough coal out the ground to meet its energy needs.
A great place for a rock concert or just to stare and wonder. Now we know that they were not just monsters in size, but also landscape vandals. However, the holes they left have filled with water and are wildlife habitats. The water-sport fans have to wait until the pits have been cleared of debris and the earth recovered.
Coal carrierControl turretViolent machinesView from below
It doesn’t matter how much evidence is presented, no one in power accepts that the world is on fire.
Check the interactive version out by clicking the link.
I was stunned by the interactive version.
The picture shows a Gulf Stream as no one wants to see it. The heat should be transported from the south to north Atlantic and warm Europe. Without this process, the UK will have a Canadian climate. We are disturbing the natural convection currents, by melting cold fresh arctic ice, which dilutes the salt water. Therefore, it no longer sinks and cannot return as cold water to the Gulf. The south Atlantic water can only lose its heat to the atmosphere, exacerbating the the effect of hot air rising off the south Atlantic. The storms get fiercer and Europe cools.
More staggering is the complacency. The New York Times and Washington Post rightly gave acres of space to Hurricane Ida and its causes. Not one mention (that I could find) of the Gulf Stream breaking down. After New York flooded, the State Governor Kathy Hochul, made all the right noises about protecting life and property, but thinks the key is to change infrastructure, not address the root of the problem.
Not even a Hurricane with winds of over 200 km/h can knock heads together.
We have all heard the song, A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square. I had heard that nightingales have now colonised Berlin, although in our square behind the splendid turn of the century front, I have rarely heard a nightingale. However, woodpeckers, flocks of sparrows and starlings, various tits and finches, crows, (including jackdaws) and at least one owl have made themselves at home in our 50m x 100m oblong.
They are helped by the fact that no predator has easy access – not even cats and foxes – and vital is the casual garden architecture adopted by the various condominiums which make up the oblong.
What do the birds live from? The owl has no problem finding rats – this is a big city and only after years of defence building can we keep them out our cellars. The sparrows and starlings manage to find enough seed material from the grass etc. and the woodpecker enjoys devastating the fat-balls put out for the tits and finches. Woody woodpecker usually gets through one in around half a minute. It’s quite spectacular.
The crows remain a mystery, but I assume they are casual visitors and find their food elsewhere – only dropping in for visits. There is plenty of pickings from the fast-food joints on the T-Damm. They also have the run of the green strips between the dual carriageway outside our house.
It’s probably not such a big contribution that we are making, but it shows that these animals are adapting and will use whatever is around, to survive. In my 1966 edition of the Observers Book of Birds, jackdaws were only to be found on cliffs in Scotland. I doubt that was ever true but –
knock yourselves out, homo sapiens. There are plenty out there waiting to take over from your folly.
Writing expressionist novels leads me inevitably to write mindful literature. The technique of exaggerating the observed in order to explore its forces, forces me to create situations in which every human emotion is examined. This includes the fears and loves of the reader.
The chapter in The Last Stop where Jack and Maria dispose of the body, has caused many to lay the novel to one side. It was simply too exciting, too erotic and too demanding. Others found it the funniest thing they have ever read. That’s mindful writing. I explore everything there is to explore, even when it hurts beyond what one can stand.
The ten pages about Felicity’s adultery is a study of human weakness, but still leaves her a heroine because we understand and love her for her fallibility. I’ve been told it is a tour de force and probably the best thing I have written.
This is Mindfulness in Modern Literature.
Give the free pages a try. Put Clive La Pensee into your Amazon search and stop at The Last Stop. See if you can stand the Sturm und Drang of a Berlin novel about Mindful Crime.
The portrait below is of Mary Elwell and was executed by her husband, Fred. It reveals a wistful wife, thinking thoughts Fred must have wished he hadn’t captured. This time it’s not me being mindful, but Mary!
Is she thinking, ‘I wouldn’t mind so much, but I am better than him, so why aren’t I doing a self-portrait, and as a rich widow I brought the money into the marriage, which allows him to daub and me to organise the household. ‘Mustn’t complain. Good wives smile, for a quiet life.’ Portrait of Mary by her husband, Fred Elwell RA. Beverley Art Gallery.
Mary and Fred, in Beverley Art Gallery Fred’s bust says, ‘Am I not a splendid fellow.’ Mary’s body-language, replies, ‘Really Fred. Get a life!’
Mindfulness not only comes in useful to determine what we thought at the moment, but eighty words might reveal what the model was thinking. Who knows?
Damned artists! I sit here, in the altogether, pretending to be a wronged goddess. Thank goodness he agreed to put in the animal parts, later. The smell was something awful. And apparently, some prat will sit at my left foot, playing the lyre, all in the name of socialist art. How does that work?
He pays by the hour, and it covers my bills for the week. That just about sums it up.
Exhibition of DDR art. Gallery Barbarini -Potsdam.
Get mindful. Appreciate things around you more by writing 100 words about your first impression.
That hat, tilted jauntily forward, to say, ‘I’m something special.’ But only because of the silver spoon you were born with, tucked safely now between those carefully rouged, but too severe for comfort, lips. And those hands, pushing the book’s wisdom away with their dismissive stance, but eyes still searching for some meaning to the day. Your children will pay for your ambition. You will suffer from self-pity and too much cake, because that is the destiny of your tribe.
They scratch their head. They do it when they write a plot and when they are finished and revising the plot, and when the revisions are finished and it is to be published and then, finally when it is to be sold. That’s when the scratching really begins!
Marketing is the most intractable.
You know you have written a good book, because, respected literati with no axe to grind or reason to flatter, have told you so. Besides, when you know, you know, which was basically what Romeo said to Juliet.
Look where that got them!
So how do you market this good book? How do you bring it to the public.
Give it away! It’s what people expect. No one wants to pay an artist, author, musician, games programmer, etc.
Here you are! Have it for nothing!
I’m giving it away on Amazon, next weekend, 3rd and 4th July. Enjoy!
Here is the summary.
A short history of anxiety
The Sixties is within living memory, but there was no internet, or mobile phone, but we had the Beatles, which was a bigger leap forward than digital connectivity. Finally, our own music! Prior to the 60s the youth were clones of their parents. They wore their type of clothes and listened to their music, watched their TV. The reason was simple. There was nothing else available to young people. Just one telephone, radio or TV available in a household and the old man decided who got to watch what or how much time could be spent on a phone system, metered by the minute. If you forgot something, you lived with it and if it were too dire, dealt with the consequences. My memory of the 60s was having a bad conscience about things I hadn’t done well enough. Teachers were abusive, you often got only one chance to ask a girl out, before contact was lost – maybe forever! She didn’t have a texting device to pick up where one had left off. Advice was scant in a world parents didn’t or wouldn’t comprehend. I can summarise the 60s with one word – angst. But it was OK. We survived, had fun, got into a pickle and got ourselves out again as this set of humorous stories illustrates.
We all do it! It takes a momentary judgement lapse and your life is in the balance.
A cautionary tale.. My angling friend hurt himself when his line snagged, he pulled, it stretched, snapped and propelled his weight thingy back at him. Lots of blood. Carp 1: David 0. He revealed his story to lessen my embarrassment, so I don’t gloat.
Why I hate angling! Imagine being pulled out with one of those in the roof of your mouth!
Forget angling. There is more than one way to be a fool.
While riding recklessly on a coastal path, County Durham way, I was snagged by a gorse, precipitated from my velo, and had my life saved by a 15 quid helmet – not a scratch on me.
At least the gorse bush prevented that leap!
Just a sunburnt nose, but that was my second idiocy.
Don’t forget, if you are cycling by the sea, it’s not your head that catches the reflected light, but your nose. Ouch! I’m home and safe now.🐧
So, if I haven’t a scratch, how do I know I would be dead, without the helmet?
I don’t remember coming off. It happened too quickly. I remember the sound of ringing in my ears as my head in a helmet made contact with a hard-baked mud ridge that had prevented my shoulder breaking the fall. That was when I knew.
I saw a bloke, cycling on his MTB, shorts, no shirt despite the wind off the sea, no gloves, helmet, sport spectacles – just shorts. He looked at me with derision and probably ate raw turnip for breakfast.
That’s life. I’m able to live with derision (because I’m alive).
The community of Clowes Memorial Methodist Church, Greenwood Ave, Hull, and Hull Civic Society, put together a calendar of events to celebrate the life and work of a charismatic missionary and preacher, who was based in Hull and from there walked many miles to deliver passionate sermons across the country.
William Clowes is one of 47 influential Primitive Methodists, who are buried in Prims Corner at the now disused, Hull General Cemetery.
William and Eleanor Clowes headstone in HGC
Historical points.
For a century, until the Methodist Union (1932), Hull had a higher proportion of residents following Primitive Methodism than elsewhere in the country.
Women preachers always worked alongside men. In fact, William Clowes was invited by women to come to Hull. One of the strengths of the Prims was their acceptance of women as equals at a time when the mainstream churches resisted this.
Primitive Methodists set up Sunday schools and generally promoted education among the poorer population, looked after the sick and were instrumental in encouraging workers’ representation.
Prims’ Corner has fine monuments to wealthy businessmen such as Henry Hodge, who were determined to create a better life for the poorest and needy.
Their generosity and their achievements in all areas of city life left their legacy in countless and remarkable ways.
Henry Hodge memorial (HGC)
The time line below tries to give an impression of what daily life was like for the inhabitants of rapidly changing urban areas in the North of England, during the 19th century.
Progress of Primitive Methodism in Hull –William Clowes Bi-centenary (Prims Corner at Hull General Cemetery)
Important Dates and Facts in Hull’s History
1780 – William Clowes born 12th March in Burslam, Staffordshire son of a local potter from the Wedgewood family.
1720 – Daniel Defoe commented that Hull was ‘exceedingly close built’.
1800 – William Clowes marries Eleanor (Hannah?) Rogers.
End of 18th cent. population 22,000 1778 – The docks were growing and the safe haven dock-extension to the river Hull, was the largest in England.
1804 – Clowes begins work in a new Hull pottery .
1799 – poor relief committee was set up. It was estimated that 1 in 20 were receiving poor relief.
1804 to 07 – The American evangelist, Lorenzo Dow (1777 – 1834) preached in Cheshire. Hugh Bourne and Clowes attended meetings.
Non-conformism grew – Methodism became firmly established.
1805 – 20th January. Clowes was converted. He and his wife decided to put their lives in order.
Severe overcrowding in Hull – in many residences up to 12 people from 3 families said to occupy one single room.
1807 – First Camp meeting in England on Mow Cop. Clowes assisted Bourne at the event. Some view this as the beginning of the movement.
1809 – Humber Dock opened for business. ‘The Hull Dock Company’ was established to create an entrance to the Humber.
1808 – Clowes appointed as local preacher by the Wesleyan Methodists.
1829 – Princes Dock connected the rivers Hull and Humber. Built with five million bricks from town wall.
1810 – Clowes’ name was omitted from the Methodist preachers’ plan because of his association with the Bournes.
1832 – Cholera outbreak in Hull, 270 deaths recorded largely in the North West of the City. See Cholera Monument at HGC.
1819 – 1839 For 2 decades preachers from the Hull Circuit covered more ground and secured more converts than anywhere else. (‘Fruitful Mother’)
1835 – Introduction of the New Poor Law. Policy to transfer unemployed rural workers to urban areas where there was work.
1829 – Decision made for a mission to America.
1832 – 1849 ‘heightened awareness of fragility of life’.
1830 – Total number of Prims in England estimated at 35,535, of which a third were in the Hull circuit.
1850 – Victoria Dock opened. The first on the east side at the site of the citadel.
1851 – Hull’s population 85,000. About 30 Wesleyan and 20 Primitive chapels were built.
1850 – 1881 The number of people attending Anglican services in Hull increased only by 12%, whereas Wesleyan Methodist numbers rose by 54% and Primitive Methodists by 75%.
1856 – The Mission to Seamen was founded as a denominated society with Anglican outlook. Ministers went on board and cared for spiritual as well as physical wellbeing of crew members.
1852 – Hugh Bourne dies.
1854 – ‘North and South’ by E. Gaskell is published. 1851 – Nearly 30 Wesleyan and about 20 Primitive chapels were either built or taken over.
1881 – The fourteen Prim chapels in Hull can accommodate 12,650.
1871 – Hull’s population 130,426.
George Lamb (1809 – 1886, buried at Prims Corner HGC) sets up Hull School Board.
1885 – Alexandra Dock built in 24/7 shifts; (5000 navvies live as lodgers in Hull). An early Siemens lighting system enabled an unprecedented 24-hour working approach.
1889 Henry Hodge dies (b 1813). – Seed crusher and oil miller. – Builder of chapels. – Buried in Prims Corner. The ‘Friends of HGC’ are in regular contact with his descendent.
1892 Parkinson Milson (b. 1825) dies and is buried in HGC. He was a renowned Prim minister.
1891 – Hull’s population 199,135. – Over 1700 men listed as either shipbuilders or shipwrights. – The newly formed Hull Brewery Company owned 160 licensed premises.
1900 – James Charlesworth (b.1847) died and buried in HGC.
What this time line does not show, is the industrial pollution and smoke, the squalor and the cramped conditions breeding disease.
Many agricultural workers arrived in towns and cities to find work and brought their farm animals with them.
Hull was also overcrowded with –
Irish building workers, who lived as lodgers among the local community.
Sailors from across the world, who had to wait 3 weeks while their ship unloaded, due to lack of mooring space.
Large numbers of migrants come from the European continent. Famines and political turmoil drove 2.5 million German speakers alone, to find a better life elsewhere. Most travelled via Hull to America, but a significant number stayed (e.g. Hohenreins).
In 1809, waits of 17 days for a berth were possible. Dock capacity increased during the 19th century, but this meant many months of huge building sites in the centre of the city.
2019 was the bicentenary of William Clowes and his compatriots beginning two decades of preaching across the country. The records of the men and women buried in Prims Corner should remind us that in Hull and in other Primitive Methodist communities around the world there is a history, which cannot be found in textbooks, but would bring us closer to the real past.
Charlesworth headstones (HGC)
As Hilary Mantel says: ‘History is not the past, it is the method we have evolved of organising the past’ (1st Reith lecture 2018).
This sounds a very parochial title, but Renaissance Beverley was anything but parochial. Beverley merchants traded (and thus were influencers) across Europe – as far East as present-day Russia and south to Italy and beyond. Of course, it was two-way traffic and ideas on trade, religion and art found their way back to the north of England. We are unaware of this dialogue, because then as now, London was the hub. If you arrived by boat in London in the 16th century, you were aware of an extensive building complex with a tower, a large crane and steps down to the Thames waterfront – a complex covering 0.6 ha (1.3 acres).
Contemporary drawing of the Steelyard
Called the ‘Steelyard’, it provided living quarters, common rooms, a garden, and spacious warehouses and was inhabited by around 80 young, unmarried German merchants, who had to abide by almost monastic rules while residing there. So, this wasn’t about kings and queens or nobility, but about adventurous savvy traders and merchants. Facing the street was the ‘Rhenish Wine House,’ which was largely a courtyard and open to visitors. Nowadays this is the site of Cannon Street Tube Station in Cheapside and next door was the quarter occupied by German traders and artisans with their families. It included a ropewalk, the usual workshops and of course breweries. Cheapside comes from Old English – ceapan, to buy, itself related to the Dutch, German and Scandanavian – kopen, kaufen, köpa.
The popular ‘Rhenish Wine House’ was frequented by the important and influential residents of Tudor London including Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More. The wine was very good and the latest news from the continent were hotly debated. The Hanse merchants residing in the Steelyard were part of an influential, international and very wealthy elite, who maintained their contacts across Europe through extensive correspondence.
These letters were a vital part of the business and contained information important to Tudor politicians. They had every reason to keep up-to-date with events across the water.
Another notable visitor to the Wine House was the painter Hans Holbein the Younger. He had returned to London in 1526 from his home in Basle, because there was no work for him in Switzerland. The strict Swiss protestants rather destroyed religious images, so he set up house next door to the Steelyard in Dowgate and began to paint portraits of merchants. He also completed a mural for the main hall of the Steelyard.
Derek Born
This portrait of Derek Born hangs in the King’s Closet in Windsor Castle. A Cologne citizen and only 24 years of age, he supplied the King with weaponry and other military equipment from the Rhineland and exported lead from England in return. Such trade became even more important after the Northern revolt, ‘The Pilgrimage of Grace’. Henry VIII realised that he had to build an armed force, which would be under his royal command. He also feared the threat of a foreign invasion, after his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the Holy Roman Emperor’s niece.
Derek Born and Hans Holbein were also frequent guests at Thomas Cromwell’s house in Austin Friars. Holbein’s portrait of his host depicts a profoundly serious, hard-working man, an image that is undoubtedly correct. However, Cromwell was also a generous host and a lover of the arts, who provided sumptuous feasts for his friends and contacts. There were imported spices and marzipan from Lübeck. If you go to Lakeland in Toll Gavel during Christmas time, you can still enjoy fine Lübeck marzipan from Niederegger.
Thomas Cromwell
The Lübeckers also presented him with a live elk and the merchants from Danzig (Gdansk), not to be outdone, gave him four bears, which were kept in his garden. Thomas Cromwell and aristocratic ladies enjoyed hawking. Birds for hunting were raised in Norway and imported, sitting on purpose-built poles in Hanse ships.
Hans Holbein the Younger produced many portraits of merchants at the Steelyard. He lived for a while in the More household on the recommendation of Erasmus, so he was well connected.
Portraits were fashionable in English art and Cromwell saw the painter’s potential. He suggested to the king he should employ him as one of his court painters. Holbein remained a sought after artist in London until his sudden death in 1543.
The wealthy gentlemen of the Steelyard were instrumental in negotiating the trade privileges with the monarchy, but they were by no means the only Hansards trading in England. In fact, the League’s influence extended across Northern Europe and was a major player in the economic and political development of the 13th to the 17th centuries.
Their ships, called ‘Kogges,’ sailed to most ports on the English East coast and when challenged, claimed the same advantageous conditions as their partners in London. They owned warehouses and living quarters in Hull and York and certainly were guests at Beverley Guild Hall.
By the time of Henry VIII, England produced and exported more woollen cloth than raw wool and this trade spread from Lübeck eastwards. It was conducted by Hanse merchants, known as the ‘Easterlings,’ among their English contemporaries.
Hanse trade was organised in small networks, based on family and personal relationships. Over time, this enabled their English business partners to infiltrate the Hanseatic network. Increasingly, English merchants claimed their share of this lucrative and expanding business. The Northern ports had cornered the Baltic market and since the middle of 14th century Beverley merchants travelled extensively and lived in the state of the Teutonic Order. They were initially very welcome, because many English knights fought alongside the Order during the Northern Crusades.
These burgesses were away from home for many months during the summer and some decided to live permanently abroad with their families. Like their Hanse partners, they had to stay in touch through correspondence. Their letters contained business and private news. In a medieval household, there was no separation between work and family life. A merchant’s wife was very much involved in the business, especially when the master of the house was abroad and might never come back!
Beverlonians were familiar with life in the Baltic and stayed in thriving and wealthy cities like Stralsund, Elbing (Elblag) and Danzig (Gdansk). They knew about the beautiful large houses built of stone and the splendid guild and town halls. They also must have stopped over in the large and forbidding fortresses of the Teutonic Order.
Castillo de Malbork
These Beverley traders received news from home and so knew that in 1520 the tower of St. Mary’s collapsed. Doubtless, the letters they sent back contained news of Martin Luther’s pamphlet titled ‘The Freedom of a Christian Man’. It was short, easy to print and to smuggle. The distribution became a lucrative business for the Hansards, many of whom had converted to Lutheranism.
Tyndale’s bible translation had already arrived from Antwerp in the same way and nobody could stop this tide of new readable material rolling off the printing presses. Inspired by their German drinking companions in the Steelyard, Luther’s words convinced several young London lawyers to convert. Amongst them was a man named William Roper, who was also a member of parliament.
William Roper
He married Margaret More, Thomas More’s favourite daughter. She was one of the most learned women of her age and assisted her eminent father in his work. She was the only family member to visit him in prison after his arrest by Henry VIII.
Holbein depicts her reading a book, and in that moment, looking up at her father. If you study the painting of the Mores, it is as if she says: “I haven’t got time to sit here for hours. I have work to do!”
After their wedding, the couple lived in the More household, which meant William had to convert back to the Catholicism.
More news of upheaval came in 1525 from the Baltic. The Teutonic Order’s 37th Grand Master, Albert of Prussia, had left the Order and converted to Protestantism. It was on Luther’s advice that he secularised the former Monastic State, which emerged as the Duchy of Prussia. So, when the reconstruction of St. Mary’s began, the wealthy burgesses of Beverley had to cope with more news of tumultuous events overseas.
One place of worship for merchants was St Nicolai church in Stralsund. Nicolai is the patron saint of sailors and merchants. This building served as a church, town council chamber, as well as a reception hall for trade delegations. In its heyday, Stralsund was second only to Lübeck in the Baltic, in terms of wealth and importance. The columns in St. Nicolai still have the original paintings beneath the heads of merchants and knights. Merchant marks on the side identified the individual portrayed.
St Nicolai columns in Stralsund
We know that during a dispute, the English merchant colony moved for a time from Gdansk to Stralsund. It is tempting to wonder if the heads of the merchants, who helped to finance the restoration after the collapse of the central tower in St. Mary’s, were inspired by what they had seen on pillars in Stralsund. Despite some original remnants of polychromy, we don’t know how the columns in St Mary’s were painted. What is clear, is that Tudor merchants proudly had their full names chiselled in stone underneath the head, not just merchant marks such as the much earlier medieval examples in Stralsund. The 600 unique wooden ceiling bosses in the church are another sign of a new age. It seems as if the carvers’ images have come out of hiding from under the medieval misericord seats and are now visible for us all to enjoy. Tudor Renaissance! A Tudor bust of Mr and Mrs Crossley (a Beverley merchant family) look down at the Holbein portraits. We might wonder if we, too, are not living through times of great change. This year the town of Beverley has joined the modern Hanseatic League!
This article was published in the Christmas edition of the parish newsletter ‘White Rabbit’. Inspired by the exhibition(1st Oct. to 31st Dec. 2020) of Tudor paintings from the National Portrait Gallery, London, it marked the 500th anniversary of the collapse of the central tower. (Reform, Rebellion, Restoration – St. Mary’s, Beverley & the Tudors).
Eva La Pensée.
Beverley and District Civic Society Beverley, January 2021
A revered childhood mentor, Mr Eveleigh, with the football team – a man who tried to get us to a guilt-free adolescence.
In my last blog I asked why authors continue to write, despite gaining so few readers. Am I sure that we have few readers? An internet search reveals that average US sales for a book, during its lifetime are around 200.
So why do we write?
Is it an ego trip, a wish to get rich, put over a point of view?
I suggested writing, along with some other art forms, is a way of working through some uncomfortable facts about oneself and shifting them to a more comfortable place in our subconscious.
So, here I go with some examples. My first choice is a woman who made millions from her writing. Enid Blyton, is the most successful children’s writer of all time, but she might have disliked children.
Children behaving as we don’t wish them to, brings out the worst in adults. I suggest that, to assuage her bad conscience, Blyton created super-hero children who were beyond reproach. Had she had the mythical offspring she created, she would have had time for them. As it was, she treated her own children with indifference, which is the most hurtful of all parental responses.
And she added a dog. Dogs are the perfect children. When you don’t want them, they can be put in a corner, or in the garden or garden shed, and when needed, will provide a cuddle on demand.
By writing about super kids, pets, trolls and characters too politically incorrect for modern-day audiences, she moved her bad conscience to her bank account. She was able to provide the very best materially for her daughters and that made up, she hoped, for her overall rejection of the child-like state she couldn’t tolerate. She employed nannies, I am sure.
I checked my assumption about Enid after I had written the above.
Gyles Brandreth had the good fortune to interview Blyton’s daughters. The younger, Imogen, describes her mother as ‘arrogant, insecure, pretentious and very skilled in putting the unpleasant out of her mind, and without a trace of maternal instinct.’ (I have paraphrased).
So Imogen substantiates my theory. Not so her older sister, who has a more benign memory of her mother.
Being an awful person isn’t all bad! Has anyone not had a Blyton moment in their childhood? Her sales of books and translations are eye-watering.
I remember my Blyton moment, and remember my primary school teacher, for whom, 50 years after his early death I still have undiluted admiration. He told us, ‘If you have to read that awful woman, don’t bring the books to school.’
Anyway, we can’t see his face, as it is well covered in a shirt and he presumably (like me) has only limited vision. That isn’t stopping him. He climbs into the fountain basin and wades trough the water, but trying to avoid the fountain. It must be an attempt at keeping dry. Can’t be done.
After two rounds of the fountain, he is soaked. At the end of his fountain odyssey he stops, and punches the water vertically – piston fashion – two or three times with his left arm which has a strange dark blue colour. I can’t identify why or what he is wearing on his arm. He then climbs from the basin and walks off, head still covered, jeans still rolled up to over his knees, as though his actions must be comprehensible to his audience. I realise the dark blue arm colour is a plaster-cast or something similar to hold a fracture firm. Perhaps the tour round the fountain gives him a few minutes relief from itching under the plaster.
‘Does he do that every evening?’ I venture to ask – she who is next to me and is no longer reading.
‘No idea. I’m not usually here,’ she answers.
‘Looks almost like a ritual,’ I risk saying.
She returns to her book. I now dare try a disruption. Her face has me so enchanted that I have to chance something.
‘What are you reading? Looks like poetry or very short stories.’
I’ve done it. Now she knows I can see nothing but shapes at one meter fifty.
She says something I don’t understand. Now she knows I don’t hear too well either. I ask for a repeat.
‘They are essays,’ she says slightly louder.
Essays. That’s not giving a lot away.
She falls back into silent reading.
I consider many times asking her to go to a nearby café and share a wine with me. I don’t do it. But I so need to sit opposite that face. It’s like an illness. I want nothing from her but to look at her face. Why don’t I just tell her that?
An old man walks round the circular perimeter path looking at all the seat dwellers. Is he a voyeur enjoying the youth making out and hoping to see a grope or two? More likely he is trying to pick someone up for the evening. He stares long at me every time he passes. If I so much as twitch, I’m sure he will approach me. It would be a disaster. Petrified sums me up.
I realise for the nth time that I have no interest in some aging gay. How dare he look at me lasciviously when I’m in the presence of a stunning woman?
It must be clear to him that I don’t, in any way, belong to the stunning woman. She is by no means beautiful but she has ‘it’, that je ne sais quoi of good years spiced with experience. She has the joy of the good times and the character building of the bad ones, lined in her face. She is so special!
He disappears behind the water cascade. A couple enter the square; I keep calling it a square but it is clearly a round. A couple enter the circus ring from stage right for that is what it has now become. He is tall and elegant but so clearly proud of his acquisition that it is tasteless. His acquisition is stunning. No. His acquisition is startling; has bodybuilder physique with such monumental pectorals that they can double as a bosom and she flaunts them as such and wears very tight trousers with slightly high-heeled sneakers at their base. The combination causes a walk like a man not used to heels and skin-tight slacks, which I deduce as they approach, is exactly what he is. I’m sure I can detect a hint of lipstick. They are so proud, one can’t be cross with their vanity. I am mesmerized by so much bad style and I fail to notice what is going on next to me.
The wind blows and the trees rustle. All other sounds are momentarily blocked out and I have looked away from her for just a minute while I consider my options and admire the audacity of the gay couple. I think of Julian Clarey. I admire him, not for his gay send-up comedy, but for his outrageousness. What courage? And while I’m thinking that, under the cover of the rustle, she has got up and walked away, with a cute and provocative ‘bye’.
I just manage to return her farewell before she is out of earshot and the face has gone forever. Run after her!
For Christ sake. At my age? What do I have to offer her? It would be an insult to try to get closer to my goddess. Get old gracefully with the proven woman, whom you love to bits and give up on pipe dreams. You wanted nothing from her. If she had gone along with an adventure, it would have been out of economic necessity. The world is full of women who have given their life for a cause – man or family or both – and end middle-aged paupers. It would be disingenuous to pretend I can be anything to her. I once had a colleague who screwed his way round the Balkan states, promising to take young women from their destitution and then moving on before they had time to get their side of the deal. He was very tall so he got his comeuppance. All the bed-work played havoc with his back and he died well short of sixty. I know not from what; shame I hope! Or perhaps a cousin or brother of one of the cuckolded women caught up with him. I warned him that they settle scores in Slovenia differently to us.
The fountain suddenly stops. The quiet is awesome. I leave.
On the way home I find myself cycling behind a girl, maybe eighteen. She has chosen very tight slacks for the evening and knows her backside is a treat for an old man in a dry month. She can’t carry it off. Her body language reveals serious embarrassment. Why wear them if you feel awkward? I accelerate even though I am tired, just to put her out of her misery. She drops a long way behind.
Although we are on the four-lane Sachsen Damm, it is lonely and troubling in the twilight. The cycle path is far from the road and the cars move quickly. To the right is a deep cutting, hiding part of a motorway junction and to the left, businesses, long shut up for the night. No one would have seen or heard a predatory attack. Perhaps she is more scared than embarrassed. I’m suddenly glad I made the effort to overtake her. She’s scared? – I’m scared! Thinking of predatory attacks has made me realise that I’ve been foolish, and unlike the girl with the nice arse, my danger could have easily been avoided by taking keys to the main entrance of my apartment block. On my way out the house, I noticed the bicycle exit from the building had been used by junkies to prepare their fix. The tell-tale squares of charred aluminium foil were around the door. I only have a key to the bicycle cellar entrance. What do I do if a half dozen crazed crack buddies are shooting up in the lonely bicycle cellar when I arrive? I certainly won’t try to get by them, because once on the wrong side there is no quick exit from the other end. I could be overpowered and robbed in seconds and no one would hear. And why wouldn’t they attack and rob me? To them, I have everything.
Just like the young woman with the cute butt, I worry about nothing. There is no one waiting to rob me.
Fear of crime can be worse than the crime. Fear of sexual orientation is always worse than reality.
Viktoria-Luise-Platz is one of the many focuses around Schöneberg, for the Gay Scene.
Leave your email address and the word <goddesses>for a free pdf copy of book 1 of my raunchy thriller – Goddesses.
What character attributes should a heroine have?
I believe a hero/heroine should have the same set. That’s what liberation is about!
Do male writers have a harder time creating a super heroine? Is it more difficult than a woman creating a super male?
This conflict for male writers has been simmering for decades, but popped recently when the long-overdue #metoo campaign took off.
The problem is much older and broader than #metoo. And because of #metoo, genuine women’s lib blokes get in an internal turmoil about tacking the topic. What right do I have to right about women in the first person?
Despite these fears, I ignored the reasons why I shouldn’t write a super heroine, and as I constructed my three superwomen, I gave them common attributes.
Courage
Intelligence
Sex drive
Sense of the ridiculous
Of course, there was more to their characters. They need to
Display emotion,
Empathise with those not so strong
Be fallible
In fact, all the attributes one would want in any man or woman, who one wants to love.
Fallibility, is often the most interesting to write, because that is the thing with which we can most easily identify. Jane Austen knew that truth and used it perfectly.
For my Berlin novel, The Last Stop, I let Maria be Polish and then I can take the liberty of letting her heart rule her head. It is a weakness, but is a paradox – a weakness that gives her strength. Here is the jacket summary.
Maria, an innocent from Poland, is caught in the Berlin underworld. To survive, she must learn to fight back. Maria recruits Jack, the artless retired tax inspector, to help her in this mission. Which is great, until he’s arrested for murder.
Jack’s wife, Felicity, is otherwise busy while Jack is on ‘holiday in Berlin. Realising all is not well, she journeys to be with him. And that’s where it all goes wrong.
Her life is now in danger – and it’s all Jack’s fault. He needs to rescue his wife, save his marriage, get Maria back safely to Poland and make certain he isn’t killed by the people out to kill her.
Someone Tell Me What Is Going On, Millie has desperately poor sight. She doesn’t know what she looks like, because if she removes her specs, she can’t see herself. She thinks of herself as a bit of a vamp, and assumes others see her the same way.
The jacket summary gives some clues.
Every novel needs a turning point. This one will stun you!
Mystery, comedy, suspense. Mendacity, murder and lots of love. When 19-year-old waitress Millie takes a summer job as companion to wealthy Lady Vera Ashington at her Suffolk stately home, she has no idea that a mystery will unfold which puts her own life and her family’s business at risk. Unexplained deaths will test her morality. Can the end ever justify the means? Lady Ashington (Vera) fears a breakdown due to personal regrets. She has one last go at seeking long-term happiness. Having taken Millie as a companion, the two women become friends and enjoy arguing about Vera’s wealth and her inability to use it wisely. ‘Too much cake’ is the problem. Millie employs strategies to empower Vera. She keeps a first person diary, and includes Vera’s viewpoint. This diary is the novel. It tells how the talents of two very different women, when harnessed, seem to move mountains.
Vera’s huge local influence means she can always fix things, but finds that fixes mean there is always a loser. Millie had not appreciated this and as she empowers Vera, she finds conflicts mounting. Eventually, conflicts lead to disasters, but Millie keeps faith with Lady Ashington. She believes in her good intentions, but her doubts grow.
Millie’s diary reveals her viewpoint, how things appear to her sister (12) and her father. She provides an interpretation of Vera actions and excuses. Above all, the life of an Oxbidge working-class girl, who unexpectedly finds herself sitting at the big table, is analysed. ‘Someone tell me what is going on!’ She shouts in exasperation.
And games. Vera loves games. Millie loves inventing them for her friend. Love and fun result.
The diary runs for three weeks, skips a month and then skips nearly a year, to provide a resolution to events.
My heroine in Goddesses becomes addicted to risky sex and gets in a pickle.
Goddesses or 49½ shades of charcoal, is a fitting riposte to the misogyny and cliché of much BDSM literature and is delivered through the chaos of one Connie Grimshaw, a successful business woman in an international consultancy agency. She has worked hard and ignored her emotional needs. One day, on a business trip, she realises the cost of her repressed attitude to sex. Her PA (Dee) recommends she models herself on the pagan goddesses, lives by their rules and develops the vamp in herself. The Goddesses help to rationalise her lascivious behaviour, but don’t stop her getting into hilarious, embarrassing and sometimes, dangerous situations. But there are forces at work, which see the opportunity to make money through mismanagement of Connie’s feelings. Can she defeat the bad boys?
Connie uses the myth of ancient female goddesses to guide her through her emergence as a sexual being, but they make her reckless and the risks mount.
Faced with identity ruin, loss of prestige and employment issues, she enlists the help of Abe, the bored insurance assessor. A trip to Baltimore flushes out the enemy – a man obsessed with charcoal décor, to hide the blood.
He reveals her betrayal by friends and lovers past. He says she is powerless, and is in his hands, but she has other ideas. The fightback begins.
All these women have a steady Eddie around to keep them out of trouble, or, as a last resort, get them out of the stew they are already in. We know that these power women would have managed without the bloke, but a love interest always helps a story go round.
The only heroine to have met resistance from women readers is Connie Grimshaw, in Goddesses. Do women hate her because she has thoughts, no woman would entertain, or because women find her behaviour unacceptable but just a little bit attractive.
They are not telling me. But you can! I will publish the complete chapter on Connie and her lover, trying to work through Beardsley’s Venus and Tannhäuser. Watch this space.
Top reviews from United Kingdom
Richard W Baker4.0 out of 5 stars A stage play methinks. Reviewed in the United Kingdom Verified PurchaseGet on board with a feast of real life characters as they courageously slalom through Berlin leaving a trail of blood. This is a modern day glimpse of corrupt, drug inspired prostitution set against the backdrop of people trafficking. Read it if only to experience the sights, sounds and odour of Berlin street life. Terrific appeal from a virgin novelist.
The Assembled
The usual suspects from the English Department
Assemble, Levitically, as romantic as Monday morning.
Late, crusty defensive years and ears hear
Sunny but arid words.
Brynmor evenings thwart noon’s thirst for torpor,
But siestas can be a moveable feasts.
Midday slumbers threaten the evening air.
The Readings
Gangs of knowing smiles
Show pinched appreciation
And uncertain comprehension
But precise applause -
Just in case.
The Token Foreigner
Kim stood with her notes
And translator.
Her voice sang remote sounds
About a blade which came and went,
Its long profile accumulating perspectives.
And then she praised a disabled artist
Pushing air onto paper,
Thus seeking a colour to define
The hands he had been painting?
For some reason it didn’t matter
If one accidentally cut off the toad’s leg.
Closing Speeches
2017, year of culture, had been honoured
And then put to bed.
What a relief!
And a special mention for Matthew,
The Hull poet we had understood.
He was urged not to apologise.
Performance poetry has its place – apparently.
I first heard the term ‘Women’s lib,’ sometime in the late 60s or early 70s. At the time we dreamt of men becoming more like women and to a certain extent, some men have softened their approach. It was never going to be enough to make a difference and so the outcome is understandable, but I don’t think anyone expected women to become more like men. E.g. Play rugby, football or cricket, box or wrestle.
OK! I can see it is right to enjoy team sports but I would have preferred men to abstain from boxing, rather than women participate, but that is just an opinion and very few women wreck their health by boxing.
So, I’m gong to make two contributions to World Women’s Day. Here is the first. Is misogyny OK if women indulge themselves?
Damp Patches, Highsmith and Misogyny.
Two female authors revelled in hating their own sex. I’ve just finished Little Tales of Misogyny, by Patricia Highsmith, and Girl Friday, by Charlotte Roche. The original German title is Ein Mädchen für Alles. There is the first fascinating conundrum. Charlotte Roche has a British passport, because her parents were both British citizens. Charlotte lived in Germany from her infancy. Hence her first language is German, her three novels are written in German, but the German press and reviewers always refer to her as an English authoress. Is the reason for this odd definition that she is the author to hate and one doesn’t want to own up to her?
Her first two novels received disgusting reviews from scandalised literati, became best sellers and have been made into films. They have also been translated. Feuchtgebiete appeared in English as Wetlands, which is a cop-out. OK. It is a correct translation, but Damp Patches would be better. Anyone and everyone who has read the book understands that Wetlands, refer to a woman’s damp areas. Her second novel appeared in German as Schoβgebete – translated as Wrecked. That’s kinda OK as a part of the novel is autobiographical and refers to the death of her brothers in a car accident, on their way to Charlotte’s wedding, but it isn’t a translation. The other sentiment in the story is about coming to terms with sexual relationships post accident. Schoβgebete – Prayers from the lap? Does it for me! It’s a correct translation and conveys the message.
Why are her novels so hated and so widely read? She tells it how it is to be woman, who has had a screwed up childhood and is now trying to deal with a decent portion of self-hate. She leaves nothing out in her study of the female anatomy and psyche. I now know what it means, as a woman, to have wet areas.
The critiques for her third novel, were so awful, I refused to part up with €16 in a bookshop. Within six months of publication, I found a second hand copy on ebay.de for €3.50 including postage to the UK. It had never been read. The critics have won. It won’t be translated into English and won’t become a film. It is powerfully misogynistic, and blokes don’t do too well either. I’m glad I read it, because I can’t imagine she has another novel in her after that final chapter! I would so like to meet this woman.
Alongside Charlotte Roche, I read Patricia Highsmith’s Little Misogynistic Tales. They are gems of short fiction, but take every stereotype of female nastiness, amplify it and serve it up cold and indigestible. Edna is about a mother/mother-in-law, living with her son and his wife. This so reminded me of my own fraught relationship with my mother in the months before she died. Men get fat and lazy in old age. That can be annoying, but is better than wanting to run people’s lives under the pretence of being useful. While minding her own business, Edna takes over the house and the lives of her son and daughter-in-law.
In these stories, Highsmith takes every facet of the female psyche and gives it back with a hateful twist. She chose the title and the stories are misogynistic. Do such women, as she describes, exist? How would I know? All I can say is, I’ve never met them – or have I?
In order to understand where Highsmith and Roche were coming from, I looked up their biographies. Like Roche, Highsmith was brought up by dysfunctional parents, who failed to put the needs of their child, before their own. Most people involved in pedagogy agree, it doesn’t matter how you bring up your children, so long as you have thought about your system and it has the interests of the child as a priority. I suppose the corollary is – anti-authoritarian or the odd thrashing – it doesn’t matter, so long as the parents care enough to make the effort. One says that the difference between a successful school career and dropping out with no qualifications, is a five-minute chat with a parent every day, about what happened at school. Take those headphones off mums and dads and turn off the phone when walking your little ones to and from school. Otherwise your children might become novelists!
Highsmith never stopped hating. She became a brilliant writer, but couldn’t conquer her demons. Roche still has time to let go, unless her writing is therapy. She describes a bowel movement as a metaphor for getting rid of her anger. Her metaphors are the reason the critics hate her. Chapter 17 of Ein Mädchen für Alles by Roche (Girl Friday), is a red flag to nice middle-class critics with a degree in creative writing, who never got beyond page 3 of their own novel, but now have a cushy number trashing the novels of others. They would say, ‘Nice people don’t write like that!’
Highsmith is cleverer, or more skilful. Her stories are gems. She has the drop on the critics. She has them running scared.
This blog was first published for the last International Women’s Day in 2016 by New London Writers.
Ask ten brewers how to brew beer and geteleven opinions.
Ask ten brewers – get eleven opinions. As a brewer and a writer and a one-time writer on brewing, I have always been fascinated by the truth of this brewers’ paradigm. More interesting is applying the idea to other creative areas, such as writing and publishing.
I think most writers do as I do. We get an idea onto paper anywhichway and worry about the content, style, grammar, syntax and spelling, during the editing stage. Ask ten writers then, you should get one answer. Not so! Apparently there is another way. Thomas Mann, so the story goes, sat every day with a fresh sheet of writing paper, and hand wrote a page, and didn’t cease toiling until he thought his labours had produced the perfect 200 words. His wife then typed and looked after his six children. She ended in a sanatorium in Davos, suffering from exhaustion. He visited her and had the idea for his greatest work, Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain). It is among the greatest works of world literature (according to a Channel 4 documentary). Proust, Kafka, Conrad and Dostoevsky were the other runners and riders.
Unreadable Genius
My copy of the Magic Mountain is 1002 pages long and each page is around two sides of hand written text. That means it took him 5 years 5 months to write, which isn’t that bad. Many of us have been hacking around on novels, much shorter in words and for longer in time.
Mann started the novel in 1912, finished in 1924, but added nothing to it during WW1. After the war he revisited, rethought and rewrote the whole project. In that time (6 years) it grew from a novella, much in the style of Death in Venice, to the monster it now is. His wife typed and provided the cash for his lifestyle.
My copy has been out of reach on the top shelf since 2000. I can be sure, because I used a post card as a bookmark and can still read the date on it. The post card was last inserted on page 380 – where I gave up. Mann said that any prospective reader should be prepared to read it twice so I have 1624 pages still to do. I read on a little, from where I stopped. My translation – Then death was just the logical negation of life; between life and barren nature was a gaping abyss, which research tried unsuccessfully to bridge. I’m amazed I got that far before throwing in the towel. I’m equally amazed men and women faced the task of translating his beautiful German it into every major language.
A Magic Mountain, perhaps.
The truth is, I started reading it because of the Channel 4 documentary and everything else of Mann’s I’ve read is a breeze and pure genius. The Buddenbrooks – read twice and the film once and the same for Death in Venice – pure delight. What went wrong with Der Zauberberg for me? Simple. It’s too clever for mere mortals. In one volume he redefined sickness and health, time and place, and everything and anything else we can think of. A sanatorium up a mountain is the setting, and is the perfect place to do this. It is full of sick, educated people, hanging on, loads of money, unlikely to recover, trying to make sense of their mortality, but each with their own little bit of worldly wisdom and philosophy, which they have time to impart to their companions.
In the story, Castorp goes to the mountain to spend a few weeks. The doctors find an ill-defined murmur and convince him to stay – years. He loses touch with time, space and reality, except once, when caught in a snowstorm. The book is about the ideas with which Castorp – the main protagonist – is bombarded. Maybe he was a metaphor for the millions bombarded on the battlefields of Flanders, a bombardment which changed our world view forever and is discussed by the patients on the Magic Mountain. Germans discuss things to death.
Back to brewing – Castorp’s first concern when arriving at the sanatorium was whether Porter was available on the Zauberberg.
Woolf to the Rescue
Is Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway an English equivalent? The British don’t bombard with ideas. They slap make-up on uncomfortable truths and hope they stay out of sight. No such luck with Woolf! Reading Mrs. Dalloway is like hiking with a pesky stone in the shoe. You keep shoving it out the way, into some remote shoe corner, certain it will return to remind us of its presence in the most inconvenient way.
Was Woolf driven by her illness?
How did Woolf write? Not like Mann! I believe she used her illness to propel her writing, because writing can be so cathartic when the blues set in. When she knew a final bout of depression could not be avoided, she took her own life, to protect her family. I imagine she poured her emotions into her writing, whenever she was strong enough and in so doing, kept her demons at bay.
She has one similarity with Mann. Her husband Leonard, devoted himself to her literary success, as convinced of her genius as Katia Mann was of Thomas’s.
Too many words.
In our digital age we are producing words faster than ever, and no one uses pen and paper nor sits every morning until they have a perfect page. And the influence of conflict? Which post war? I am asking which proxy war in the 21st century shall we put as our datum point? Who will produce the piece of literature to define these decades, and if someone does, who will publish it?
Would anyone try to read it? We shall never know.
If ten brewers are worth eleven opinions then a hundred publishers will provide just one.
‘No!’
Risk has become a four letter word.
And I doubt Mrs. Dalloway drank beer. She was definitely a Champagne or Mosel wine person.
Thomas Mann lived for a while in Nidden, then East Prussia, now Lithuania. That is further east than Pomerania, once Prussia, now Poland and the birthplace of the super-heroine of my new novel, The Last Stop – A novel about the Berlin Sex Industry and one woman’s fight back. Available on Amazon.
I visited a museum in Weimar. There was a quote from Goethe. ‘Ich bin zu alt um nur zu spielen, und zu jung um ohne Wunsch zu sein.’
Goethe bust in Weimar
The greatest lines can be an inspiration to writers and get the block out the way.
‘I am too old to only play and too young to be without desire.’
It works better in English (for me), because I can pep it up a bit in translation, to make it stronger. I’ve replaced Wunsch. which means <wish> with <desire>. Goethe couldn’t use desire in German. Lust sounds too coarse. Is this allowed? As Heinrich Böll said, ‘You put it out there, you lose control of what people do with it’. I call it, artistic licence. Goethe would be furious.
That one sentence by Goethe is the perfect description of the contradiction of getting old, made more poignant by the fact that Goethe made a complete fool of himself by proposing to a woman 50 years younger than he. She and her mother, fled town without sending a response, just to make sure that he understood the answer was ‘NO!’
I worked his line up to describe how I feel about old age.
What Goethe MeantGoethe wrote, ‘Ich bin zu alt um nur zu spielen,und zu jung um ohne Wunsch zu sein‘.
I am too old to only play,
Too young to be without desire.
Too old to tumble in the hay
Too young to quench my residual fire.
Too old to miss my midday nap,
Too young to never think of straying,
Too old for hormones to cause a flap,
Too young to stop my eye surveying.
Too old to pass an empty trap,
Too young to stop believing,
Too old to play with ball or bat,
Too young to trickle when relieving.
Too old to worry what comes next,
Too young to admit my leaving,
Too old to bother to get vexed,
Too young to start my grieving.
Too old to think we can live forever,
Too young to concede this cannot last,
Too old to want some new endeavour,
Too young to wallow in the past.
Old enough to know those amazing years
Are in life’s bank, secure and undeniable,
Young enough to sup life’s remaining beers,
And pretend the last few years, aren't so friable.
One of Goethe’s many study objects
I always feel I have to apologise for rhyming, but the rhythm in Goethe’s line, (Ich bin zu alt um nur zu spielen, und zu jung um ohne Wunsch zu sein.) seduces one to keep it, and Goethe always rhymed. It’s not good to compare oneself with one of the great masters, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
“What about masculinity? Do you know how much femininity man lacks for completeness? Do you know how much masculinity woman lacks for completeness? You seek the feminine in women and the masculine in men. And thus there are always only men and women. But where are people? You, man, should not seek the feminine in women, but seek and recognize it in yourself, as you possess it from the beginning.”
— C.G. Jung, “The Red Book”
And a woman I worked with told me, ‘Of all men I know, you are most in harmony with your feminine side.’
That’s the greatest praise I have ever received.
Out of interest, how many of us role-play in our imagination, being the other gender?
But I’ve never been tempted to cross dress. Maybe there is still a way to go.
If I go to bed early, it will influence when I get up tomorrow, which will influence my day – my destiny.
On this basis, history must be predetermined. A kidnap in Israel has sealed the fate of 30000 dead and millions displaced in Gaza. This will determine the lives, or the fate of millions more.
It’s not a question of believing in fate. Fate, is destiny, is real.
I was a teenager in the 60s. I’ve written extensively about it. Angst and the Beatles Generation is a set of short stories about being a teenager, just before we were released from the slavery of being clones of our mums and dads.
Be a person, take advice from others but above all, be prepared to take risks to get the results you want. Teenagers – you can walk on water.
But the accident rate among teenagers is high. Do not drink too much or substance abuse because impaired judgement causes bad risk-taking.
Wear white at night and remember – speed kills. Ask any traffic cop. They know about scraping teenagers off the tarmac.
Wear clothes – kinda makes sense, but then sensible clothing, which puts high heels and slit jeans in the dustbin.
Drive a car – if you have to, then a car commensurate to your needs. A farmer might need an SUV but not normal folks to do the shopping or visit mum on Sunday. It’s crass and boring and is killing our children.
But the problem is, where to stop. If we eliminate all fun but unnecessary things, is life worth living?
It might have to be. Grey February, 10 degrees and raining when 30 yrs ago we were making a snowman.
Life is about to get boring when we are forced to give up the things wrecking our planet, because those things are really boring.
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
I try not to be patriotic. It is difficult. We are wired from birth to love the things we know, the things around us that make us the person we are, make us feel good, that define our comfort zone.
But that comfort zone makes us lack discretion. We work on what we feel, not on reality.
I have learned, that which we believe to be the truth is only a fraction of the story. I took just three historical events and reanalysed them in a methodical but imaginative way. The three moments in history I considered are Nazi Genocide, Bengal famines and strategic bombing by the RAF in WW2. I did the analysis with short prose pieces around aspects of the topics. These pieces reflect that moment in time that something awful happened, rather than a historical truth. There are 76 pieces in all, including German reworkings of the pieces. This will stagger and depress you, but it needed to be done so that we understand how governments history-wash us and use our patriotism to deceive us. We need to grasp the nettle, for it is still going on. Finally, I provided an example of how history still treats a hero, whose profile no longer fits.
Ernst Thälmann – Hero of the opposition to the National Socialists, arrested 1933, spent 11 years in solitary confinement, beaten, tortured, betrayed by Joseph Stalin and Walter Ulbricht and shot on Hitler’s direct order in Buchenwald 1944. One thinks that despite torture and beatings, he never betrayed anyone. There is a statue of this remarkable man, in Berlin, dating from DDR times.
That is the problem The CDU want the statue removed. Why? Because he wasn’t one of them of course.
The Berlin Senate no longer pays to have the graffiti removed. It costs too much. Why would people want to graffiti it? The man was an absolute hero of anti-facism. History-washing is alive and well. The hero has become the villain, simply because communists adopted him as a patriot and communism is a dirty word.
It has to be the mountains in summer and the beach in winter.
Here’s why.
The thrill of over-exposure to wind, the grind of sand in every crack and sandwich, pales quickly, but that’s life on the beach in the UK. Go to the Med, swap wind for sun – done.
So do it in winter, when there is no allure, nothing to seduce you to take your clothes off and enjoy a swim, no desire to sit on a beach and picnic. There is just a bracing walk, sea crashing, birds screaming and a tea and scone with cream jam and butter in a warm cafe, overlooking the action at the end of your afternoon, as the sun dips to the water, lighting everything in purple and golden red.
Magic!
The reverse is true in the mountains. The threat of bad weather and the attendant dangers, cramp your style, make you want to dally in bed, instead of hitting the slopes. And sunset can disappear in the descending cloud and snow storms.
But in summer, one can wander, admire the peaks and sky, clouds, the swooping birds of prey, wild-flower meadows and cascading waterfalls to rest by.
And the beer garden will be open at the end of your wandering!
If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?
He was a genius, gave us laws protecting the working man from feudal nastiness, sensible system of measurement based on the mass of a cubic centimetre of water, city planning – where to end the list of achievements. One could go on.
So why did he have to be a war monger, resulting in the deaths of millions? Hubris? Stupidity?
He wasn’t a stupid man, so I’d like to ask him what it was all about.
Why would you ruin an amazing reputation with stupidity? Why would you take a huge army into a Russian winter?
Of course it is a mistake to equate intelligence with common sense.
Clive La Pensée 