I Am From

Robyn has excelled herself (yet again).

Get thee over here now and read her post, then follow her instructions …

Here's mine:

I am from Dansette and Bush Wireless, Parlophone and Sun, from the stack of 78s my Dad brought home from playing nuclear dare with the Soviets, now nestling in their lovingly tended case.
I am from the little "Beatles" guitar Uncle Bernie bought me in '64; from the BBC Home Service and pirate Radio Caroline, beaming sweet rock'n'roll to a small boy hiding under the covers from the ice inside my tiny bedroom window; from the dank back alley; the leaden skies and the dark terror of the outside privy.

I am from Denmark Road; from Providence Place; from grim rows of cold brick terraced housing; from scavenged newspaper sheets rolled into tight sticks for the fire under the copper, to give us hot water.
I am from the tin bath brought down from its nail on the wall once a week and placed on the floor in front of the big black iron range; from the smell of washday permeating the whole world; from the taste of licorice fountains and sherbert lemons, sticky and coated in pocket fluff.
I am from the railway shunting yard at the bottom of the road; from hunting small animals in the long grass and dodging trains; from the detritus scattered in front of the foxes' den.
I am from from the darkness of a cold attic bedroom over an Uncle's shop in Whitstable where I found fabulous books by Victorian explorers and escaped to the Himalayas and the Mato Grosso.

I am from fields of kale and wheat towering over my head as we chased across my grandparents' farm; from acres of flowering clover carpeting the common; from the gnarled trees and hidey-holes of Boney's Island.

I am from my parents' ragtime and boogie-woogie around the piano; from Sunday School in the Mission House at the top of the road with Mum on the organ; from walking miles and miles out to the farm at weekends, Mum pushing her bike with baby brother strapped to the top, Dad carrying the cardboard suitcase; from family trips to the seaside on the last steam trains.

I am from St.Michael's parish church; from the Mission House; from the family bible; from the Word of God beaten into innocent children by angry old men.

I am from Zerafa Street in Malta where a family of printers and a family of farmers came together; from a bookish girl brushing scorpions off her baby and a farmboy playing with nuclear bombers. I am from a young couple coming home to a cold country and a harsh life. From a woman who gave up her career to raise a couple of kids the best she could and a man who worked his family onto the right side of the tracks.

I am from boxes of old photographs of people who have lost their names and will never find them again. I am from the strange corners of my Mother's attic and the tiny pieces of Dad still left at the back of her garage.

I am from the lovingly tended case of 78s my parents danced to in the Mediterranean sunshine.


And here's the farm,
Dad's 78s, the Med and the privy,
Providence Place
and the memory of music.

More Old Tat

Robyn has asked "Would you change anything about your childhood if you could?"

Inevitably, the first thing that sprang to mind was my old nemesis, that haunt of spiders and darkness, the old outside privy that traumatised my early years.

But then I thought that changing the past doesn't have to mean getting rid of all the bad bits; it can also include lots more of the good bits.

So here we are at my favourite place in the whole of my childhood world; my grandparents' farm in Aldeby, Norfolk.

Where dad's standing with the camera was a big old kale field where the plants were taller than us kids and that was such a magical place to play.
The old bull that nearly gored grandad to death lived over on the right, just out of shot.
And my bedroom was right at the far end, in the attic, overlooking the churchyard where those lovely big yew trees are (unfortunately blown down in the hurricane).
The floors were all bendy and gnarly and there were beams everywhere for the grown-ups to hit their heads on. A wonderful place.

It's a private house now, but if I ever came into a shedload of money I'd buy it back like a shot.

So, Robyn; if I could change anything in my childhood, I'd like to have spent lots more time over at Aldeby.
Oh, and can I get rid of the outside privy too, please?

Fear

Frightening thing, that … fear …

Robyn has once more assigned us a task.
This time, it is to "name at least one fear that torments you, and then agree to face the damn thing head on."

So … heights, and how to tell them to fuck off.

I was always petrified of heights, vertigo took me by the balls a good ten feet from any clifftop and had me crawling on my belly and whimpering like a girl (at least a girl who whimpers).
And yet now I can be regularly found walking nonchalantly around the tops of parapet walls on high buildings as easily as if I were walking across a flat field.
Eric, our Health and Safety Officer hates me. He cowers in his hard hat and safety harness while I lean out and peer down at the tiny people waaaaay below. He also swears at me a lot.

I know the moment I conquered my fear. I also know that I'm never, EVER going through THAT again!
As some of my older - or at least some of my more attentive - readers may know, way back in the mists of time the firm of Architects I once worked for was responsible for the upkeep of several hundred of Norfolk's Saxon, Norman and Mediæval churches. This involved quinquennial inspections. Which involved clambering up the insides of the bell towers on old, woodworm-eaten Victorian ladders. This also involved no safety equipment whatsoever (other than a plastic hard hat). Before the days of sweary Health and Safety Officers and harnesses, we were required to "get up there however you can".

Getting up the towers was scary enough, but it was what we had to do when we were up there which really filled our pants.
Around two hundred feet up in the old bell towers were the old bell frames. Most had the bells still in situ but most were too rotten and fragile to ring without the whole damned lot collapsing in a clangy mess. Most of the intervening floors had rotted away centuries ago and the view from the bell frame was straight down onto the stone flags of the church floor. My job was to lean off the top of the topmost ladder, grab hold of and swing up into the bellframe and give it a good poke around to see if it would stay up there for another five years.
These bellframes are made from massive, foot-thick oak beams. But they were put there nine-hundred years ago and are now a bit the worse for wear. The ends are all rotten and the whole rickety woodpile creaks and sways when you try to move. It is also shin-deep in pigeon shit … Nice …

Needless to say I hated this job. But I did it. Until Langley Church Tower. When the ladder slipped round out of reach and I was stuck up there.
I was by myself as we were short staffed, and the vicar who had let me in wasn't due back for several hours.
So, after an hour or so, involving lots of shouting and banging (unfortunately no bells left up here and this was years before mobile phones), I made the monumentally stupid decision to try to reach the ladder …

To say I will never try anything so FUCKING STUPID again as long as I live would be quite an understatement.
Let us just say all I achieved was to kick the damned thing further out of reach and then to hang there under the bellframe for a bit, knowing I was about to fall to my death.
How I managed to climb back up into the frame I will never know.
The vicar came back to lock up after dark, assuming I had gone. He managed to shift the ladder round and I got down safely, if shaking like a leaf.

The next day I found myself up the scaffolding on a building site and amazingly unafraid. And since that day, I have had no problem with clambering over cliffs, leaning off the tops of church towers, or any of the other things that used to scare the willies out of me.
I think my fear of heights must have been scared to death.

True story.

The "Tasks Of Robyn" Return

Many hoorahs for the return of Robyn's tasks.
Today, it is the classic Book Meme:

1. grab the nearest book. no cheating! the nearest book.
2. open the book to page 123.
3. find the fifth sentence
4. post the text of the next four sentences on your blog, along with these instructions.
5. don't you dare dig for a cool or intellectual book on your shelf. pick out whatever is closest!

Righto!

Sorry, Robyn, but the nearest book, perched on top of the usual pile next to my computers (consisting of Roget's Thesaurus; A Dictionary of Classical & Foreign Words & Phrases; The Oxford Dictionary For Writers And Editors; The Oxford English Grammar and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations - pedant that I am) happens to be Richard Gott's "Cuba. A New History", which I just used for checking the Spanish spellings in my last post and haven't yet put back in its anally retentive slot in my library.

So … p.123; sentences 6,7,8 & 9:

The so-called 'Morúa Law' was put forward by the reformist black senator, who claimed that since Estenoz's party represented only the interests of black Cubans, it would inevitably discriminate against whites - which would violate the constitution. The Independent Party of Colour was banned.
Estenoz had two possible courses of action. He could make common cause with José Miguel Gómez and try to persuade him, given the size of the potential vote his black supporters would normally supply to the Liberals, to lift the ban and provide them with secure jobs.

… Aha!
That's your requisite four sentences over and done with.
Left you hanging a bit, didn't they?
Wouldn't you just like to know what Estenoz's second course of action might be?
Eh?
No?
Well bugger you; I'm going to tell you anyway:

Your bonus fifth sentence is:

Alternatively, he could play the Platt Amendment card and make fresh overtures to the United States, the self-appointed guarantor of Cuban liberties.

So there you go. If you want to read further (and it's a great book), you can order a copy from Cuba Connect's bookshop, along with many of Fidel's greatest (and longest) speeches. And yes, I have copies of them; you should know me that well by now …

So many thanks to Robyn for returning her tasks to us. Now let's see what the rest of you have as a "nearest book to hand" … and NO CHEATING!

Cold, Wet And Stupid

Another of Robyn's Labours of Hercules. This one on choices.

If you could take a different road, just for one day, where would you go? What would you explore? Robyn would go to Chicago, for reasons which make it sound as genuinely tempting as the Emerald City in Oz.

This "take a different route just this once" thing; it's a feeling I get really intensely at airports. Just to get on a random plane and see where I end up. There are so many wonderful places to explore, if only I just got on that plane …
But as I cannot choose a favourite, I'll choose something simple instead … something I've done once before and, if I could find that fork in the road again, would be off down there like a shot.

In winter, I love walking our desolate local beaches in really huge storms. Like that one in Ryan's Daughter.
Any chance I get, if the weather forecast sends us a big one, I'm off to see Mother Nature throw a wobbly. To stand there and let her get all shouty at me. I love it …

One of the best I ever found was at Walberswick, some years back.
It was February. There was a thunderstorm … and I mean a fucking huge storm! All howling and swirling black sky and searing lightning. It tore over the marshes and up the valley like the wrath of God.

There's a wrecked concrete breakwater at the harbour mouth (it's the one under Peahen's bottom on that picture I posted of her). I clambered over the barrier and walked right out to the end. It's all twisted, rotting concrete with rusted reinforcing bars sticking out, and this HUGE sea towered over it.
Every massive wave pounded and smashed into it with an enormous BOOM. The whole structure shuddered and shook. It was brilliant! (and very, very cold and wet) …
It was a totally stupid thing to do but I just clamped my legs round a concrete beam and sat there for ages watching the storm, letting the waves try and knock me off while the sky tore itself to bits all around me. And it was one of the most fantastic feelings I've ever had …

Eventually I came to my senses and struggled, soaked and battered, back up the beach into the dunes, where nestles one of the very best pubs in the universe. Stone flags and high Victorian pews. Big inglenook with a massive log blaze. Wonderful local ale and fresh caught fish. The Bell at Walberswick. It's swamped by tourists in the summer, but go there in winter when there's a big old storm …
I keep going back, but there's not been a storm to touch that one …

So, young Robyn. If I could choose, then let me take that road again. The cold, wet and stupid one …

Please …

Local Wonders For Local People

Oh, Robyn! You do set us some tasks. But I enjoy them all, so I'm not complaining.
Today, we have Robyn's Seven Wonders challenge. Seven small, local wonders from where you live.

I'd probably put the interweb as one of the big modern wonders, especially for saddoes like myself, but as for small local wonders for small local people. Here goes:

(1) The Norfolk Broads:
For reasons given in many a previous discussion.

(2) The Norfolk Coast:
Endless bird sanctuaries, nature reserves, lovely seals, mile after mile of golden sand and marram that's completely undeveloped, and we intend to keep it that way … Just stay away from it. All of you! It's ours!

(3) The noise in my garden:
Other than birdsong and rustling leaves, it is totally silent. When I get back home from the screaming howl of ear-battering decibels that is London, I can sit with a glass of wine and just let the stress fall away. Bliss.
I'm off flightpaths and well away from roads, and my wonderfully quiet neighbours are a respectable distance away. In such a crowded and noisy little island, it's priceless.

(4) Norwich Cathedral:
Started by Bishop Hubert de Losinga in 1068 as penance for having been a very naughty boy indeed, one of our oldest and most beautiful cathedrals; filled to the brim with Saxon/Norman splendour and thankfully overlooked by the massed tourist armies as we are such a determinedly grumpy and isolationist county.

(5) Ethelbert Gate:
The north-west gate to the cathedral close, not built by Ethel and Bert, but by the good peasants of Norwich as penance (once again - we're good at that) for having a lovely socialist revolt and burning the monastery down and kicking Norman butt.
Beautiful stone carvings, including a splendid dragon.

(6) Norfolk's churches:
For a time, around a thousand years ago, we were about the wealthiest little place on the planet. And what did we do with all that dosh? We gave it some mediæval bling.
We built churches; supposedly to the glory of God, but usually to the glory of the local landowner. Nearly one thousand of the things were put up. Most survive and over six hundred are still in use as places of worship. We have more Saxon, Norman and early mediæval churches than anyone else, so there!
While I was training, part of my job was to carry out quinquennial inspections on this lot. Probably the one thing I miss the least of all the pains in my life is hanging off the undersides of eight-hundred year old oak bellframes, rotted to powder, clinging to crumbling stonework, two hundred feet above a nice stone floor … Brrrr … I still shudder to think about it.

(7) A small, blue plaque set in the walls of the cathedral precinct opposite St. Martin's Church:
In 1549, bolshie lot that we are, Norfolk's peasants had yet another stab at socialist revolt.
This one was led by Robert Kett, and just outside Wymondham (that's 'Windum' to you foreigners) is the old oak under which he started to get a bit shirty.
Around fifteen thousand peasants stormed Norwich and set up camp on what is now Kett's Hill.

That's the view from it. Lovely.
Lord Sheffield, a particularly nasty and arrogant grasping landowner, came and besieged them with what then constituted the British army. They spent their time carousing in Norwich while Kett and his men simply walked around behind them and stole all their artillery …
… with which they proceeded to pound Sheffield's motley crew from the hill. Hee hee.
The best bit was when Sheffield got all shouty at them outside St.Martin's Church, fell off his horse onto his head and snuffed it. Treble hee hee's all round.
That's what the blue plaque commemorates.
Eventually, Kett was betrayed for money (as always) and hanged, but it was still a good try, and I still smile every time I pass the plaque …

So, the seven wonders of my part of Norfolk. Now it's your turn …

Pretentious Twat

So, we blunder innocently into the self-analytical quagmire that is Robyn's soundtrack challenge.
Musical tastes decade by decade.
Are you all sitting comfortably? This could take a while; I've lived through an awful lot of decades …

Having been concieved and born to the sound of rock and roll (1958), my earliest musical experience must have been of dad's big box of 78s; early Elvis (I remember loving "That's All Right, Mama"), Little Richard, et al; blagged off US airmen while he was tooling around the Med on nuclear bombers in the fifties.

As for actual clear, childhood memories: I remember sitting on the floor of our dank little terraced house (the one with the outside privy, full of spiders and darkness, that haunted my early years), gazing up at the small patch of grey sky, just visible above the rain-washed houses over the road; lost in the sounds of Wout Steenhuis - a Dutch slide guitar player - and mum's LP of Hawaiian singers. The dream of escape; of sunshine; of something better.

We had a battered old upright piano in the front room. Mum and dad would belt out boogie woogie on it. Or mum would sneak up behind Tchaikovsky, then leap on him and the two of them would go head to head like a couple of sumo wrestlers. She was pretty good. She got the odd smackdown. Her mum used to sing and play piano for the silent movies and taught her well. Mum also played at the Sunday School in the old mission hall at the top of the road while we bothered God.
She tried to teach me piano when I was three, but then Uncle Bernie went and fucked up my life big time by giving me a little guitar …

First single bought with pocket money: "Message to Martha"; a Burt Bacharach song covered by Adam Faith. I also remember loving "Three Little Fishes" …
Then came The Beatles …
I was a fanatic. I had the little Beatles suit, all the records and nonsense that they released.
Then one day, I sat in front of the old Dansette, worked out the riff to "I Feel Fine", bought a pick-up for the guitar and an old valve amp and embarked on a life of reprobate behaviour.
The soundtrack to my sixties was The Beatles and Radio Caroline. They were a pirate station, operating off a trawler in international waters just down the coast from us, playing only album tracks. Until they sunk in the seventies, they were my food and drink. We even had our own pirate station for a while, with their help and advice. Radio Maidstone. Operating from above a friend's dad's chip shop in Lowestoft, playing mostly our own stuff. Heady days …

Then along came hormones and girls and kinda put a stop to all that.

In the early seventies, I was in prog heaven. Our band covered Yes and Genesis and Mahavishnu stuff (I played lead guitar; I was a precocious little bastard); while mum and dad filled the house with west coast rock and things were, well … groovy.
I also sung tenor in the school and the church choirs for a while (a cheap way to pick up girls); I can still remember most of Verdi's Requiem. But then came the almost physical shock of hearing Stravinski's Rite of Spring, and choir went straight out the window.

Back at school I was chummy with the deputy headmistress; we had a shared greed for avant-garde music and Japanese opera. Which was great, because while everyone else had to wear uniform, she let me wear my ratty old afghan coat and grow my hair long. She also let my band play gigs at the school, which was pretty unheard of back then.

Then along came punk.
I turned eighteen in '76 and it was a blast. Pistols, Clash, Patti Smith. I didn't really care that everybody suddenly hated virtuouso guitar playing; I managed my mate's punk band and headed off to college, where I discovered Bob Marley, dropped out, and then endless years of gigs and sessions followed in something of a blur …

There seems to be a big hole in my memory. I'll have to check through my vinyl when I get home and find out what happened in the eighties. Sitting here, I really don't have a clue. I do remember some really horrible things/bands/people/events, but that's probably best left in the box marked "Used Decades" and tucked out of sight.

The next thing I can remember is Pixies and Nirvanva and discovering Steve Albini and then Bongwater.

Robyn's right. The older I get, the more stuff I like. I still love anything extreme, but I'll listen to everything from country to opera to metal to rap … whatever … as long as it's the real thing: music from musicians who care about what they do.
The only thing I won't listen to is "product" … oh, and power ballads … and light operetta … but anything else goes …

I just read that back. Ye gods, I sound like a pretentious twat! Oh, well. Thanks, Robyn, for a self-revealing - and somewhat prolonged - afternoon coffee break.

Lost In Translation

Warning: Very long and extraordinarily boring post about translators (it's a bugbear of mine).

Coming as it does after the news that foreign language teaching in British schools is declining at a suicidal rate, Robyn's delightfully silly post on wordplay gets me all 'thinky'.

First off, it reminds me how appallingly bad my Portuguese has got after ten years of neglect. So after yesterday evening's somewhat Pythonesque Japanese class, I go to bed with Luis Camõens (so to speak).

Jorge introduces me to Camõens when I'm struggling to learn Portuguese back in the eighties. He tells me I can never truly understand the "soul of Lusitania" until I know Portuguese history and culture, but especially Os Lusíadas. I immediately rush out and buy the Penguin Classic translation, "The Lusiads".
er … Jorge? … What's all the fuss about? This is as dull as ditchwater.
Jorge clips me round the ear and sends me off to buy a copy in the original mediæval Portuguese (we are in Portugal at the time; every bookshop has one). He has me stand and read aloud, helping me with any archaic phrases.
It blows me away. This is glorious, inspiring, truly epic. I feel as if I'm Prospero, raging at the Tempest.
Why had I not heard of the "Portuguese Shakespeare" before? Jorge points me at the translation; the primary source for Camõens in the English language.

As armas e os barões assinalados
Que, da Ocidental praia Lusitania …

… which the Penguin translation has down as:

This is the story of heroes who,
leaving their native Portugal behind them,
opened a path to Ceylon …

WHAT?
This is not so much a translation as a bad, sixth form commentary. Where is the poetry? Where is the stirring imagery? The rolling cadences? No wonder Camõens is so neglected here. The translation we have is an utterly uninspiring bunch of arse!
I acknowledge that there has to be a trade off between literal translation and poetic license, but this is so dire …

Luckily, some people still care about language. The great modern Portuguese novelist and Nobel laureate Jose Saramago has been blessed with probably the finest translator on the planet; the late and sorely missed Giovanni Pontiero.
O ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis is one of my all time favourite books, and Pontiero's translation is a work of genius. Go buy it (The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis - warning: it's a bit 'modern' and bleak) and marvel.
Saramago can be a difficult bugger, even in Portuguese, but Pontiero's translation leaves me awestruck. Passages of such beauty that I have to stop and let them wash over me before I can read on. His translation of Saramago's The Gospel According To Jesus Christ is equally dazzling.

Vikram Seth is another one. Most people know him for "A Suitable Boy", his wonderful Indian epic. But for me, his masterpiece is "Three Chinese Poets" ISBN 0-06-095024-2; translations from the T'ang dynasty poets Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu.
In his introduction, he gives an explanation of how he has translated the poems, using as an example, Wang Wei's "Living In The Hills: Impromptu Verses."
Seth gives us the original Chinese characters, with both a phonetic and a literal translation of each character underneath.
He then explains how he has rendered this into English, while retaining the original meaning together with the rhyme and structure. It is inspiring to read and a revealing insight into how much work goes into translating a piece into something which is valid both literally and artistically.
Here's one of his translated poems; Li Bai's "Listening To A Monk From Shu Playing The Lute".
Write it down, then go find a quiet space to read it a few times and let each word and phrase sink in.

The monk from Shu with his green lute-case walked
Westward down Emei Shan, and at the sound
Of the first notes he strummed for me I heard
A thousand valleys' rustling pines resound.
My heart was cleansed, as if in flowing water.
In bells of frost I heard the resonance die.
Dusk came unnoticed over the emerald hills
And autumn clouds layered the darkening sky.

If that doesn't lift your heart, then your soul must have been eaten by spiders while you slept.

Good teaching of foreign languages is essential, and our woefully underfunded Department of Education is likely to suffer more cutbacks after the next election, to fund tax cuts for the rich. If languages are neglected, how can people truly understand what is being said by others?
Tracking down and reading the original source material is the only way to find the truth behind any news story. If that source material is in another language, then, as we have seen, you cannot necessarily count on a translator of the standard of Pontiero or Seth.
This is especially pertinent when it comes to our relations with Islam. All most of us in the west know is based on hearsay or third-hand spin from so-called "authorities" and commentators.

I have a rule:
If I am to criticize something, be it Islam or US foreign policy or something as trivial as Shona's latest hair colour, then I must first know what I'm talking about; find the source material behind the stories.
For America (and Shona), this is fairly easy, but for Islam?
If you want to criticise Islam and have anyone respect your opinion, try this simple exercise:
First read up on the history. For anyone starting out on this path, Prof. Albert Hourani's "A Short History Of The Arab Peoples" is an easily accessible and balanced place to start.
Next, hit the bibliography and get online. Source material.
Read the Koran (again a Penguin Classic translation, but a better one than their Camõens) and the Life of Mohammad, visit your local mosque and talk to people.
If you want to, learn some Arabic:
Bismillahi ar-Rahman ar-Raheem …
(In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate) …
It's a beautiful thing to roll around your tongue.
And here's the important part:

With comprehension comes understanding.
With understanding, fear of the unknown disappears.
Ignorance breeds fear.
Here in the west, our governments keep themselves in power using the Orwellian theory of "Fear = Control".
Since 9/11, the US government (followed slavishly by our own, led by Bush's personal buttplug) has kept it's population permanently and ignorantly wetting their pants, while all hopes for peace, truth and understanding get flushed straight down the shitter.

Do something good. Learn another language. Help keep us talking to one another, rather than bombing the shit out of the innocent (that goes for both sides) …

End of rant.

Hmm … That kind of changed tack halfway through. Mister Shoutytrousers is never far away when I'm writing, but I fear he has a point in this case …

The Pit Of Sadness

This is for Robyn (Scout).
Thanks for humbling me with the pictures of your lovely tidy Cave. As threatened, this is the Pit of Sadness, where I post when I'm at home.


When the studio's up and running, this becomes the control / mixing room. It's all tucked away fairly "neatly" at the moment, but when there's a drum kit in the third bedroom and a load of mikes and wires trailing all over the top floor of the house it gets a whole lot messier (that's not counting a bunch of reprobate musicians and beer) …

That's Uncle Gabby, the sock monkey, sitting in the seat of power. He thinks he's the Jedi Master of the mixing desk, but I find his mixes tend to be a bit wooly (sorry) …

Whenever todos as familias are next in Blighty, you're more than welcome to come and add some hot horn to the mix. I promise not to roast squash in your presence …