ECHO 30/11/05

CIA has been using UK airfield as stop-off points on their way to covert interrogation centers further east – transporting ‘prisoners’ (terrorist suspects, Iraq detainees etc) to countries where International law does not cover the use of torture i.e. where it is legally permissible. They call them ‘rendition flights’ and it would appear they have been breaking Human Right’s laws. A thought strikes me when I learn of this: could this be one of the reasons Throckmorton airfield remains manned? Virgil should investigate.
The Roses Theatre is where Eric Morecombe died (see entry 14/11/05). Since then there have been sightings of butterflies in panto tech weeks; some say a butterfly appears and flies across the stage, others say that they see one outdoors somewhere – the oddity of course being that butterflies wouldn’t normally be seen anywhere in winter. So the belief has grown that it is a little blessing from Eric Morecombe to the theatre and to the panto etc. Something fitting and beautiful.

ECHO 29/11/05

Solitude – aspects of recognition, sweet aspects of the self – listening to the quiet voice within, away from the hubbub of others – waking and walking out into the countryside just after sunrise – Rousseau’s ‘consolation and refuge from disappointment’ – providing ‘the diversion of chance’ as Kierkegaard wrote in 1837 – a daily pilgrimage somewhere – perhaps closer to a devotion than I ever thought – when I am out there, for example close to Whitsunn Brook, I am not aware of any strict ritual or repetition, instead the process is closer to an unknown journey, a new story if you will, for even the same path is never an exact repetition of what it was the previous day - it can never be perceived in totality (I have never seen its beginning or its end) – a quest then? – providing en route an inner sanctity with each step – muscle, motion, thought, awareness –

ECHO 28/11/05

Control Tower – we are led to believe he sits up there alone – his name: Stan – face illuminated by a single strip light and the quiet green glow of the control panel – he gazes out onto the empty airfield waiting - for what? – he drinks sweet tea all night long and reads the newspaper three times over – he tests the landing lights once a night, this takes ten minutes in all from powering up to powering down again – it is at this stage in his routine that he usually spies a Barn Owl flitting out from one of the abandoned Nissen huts at the north edge of the airfield toward the security compound where the mercenaries are trained.

She wakes nervous, on unfamiliar territory once again. The man beside her is no longer her lover, for today he has become an irritant – his presence is inconvenient, seemingly a physical and mental obstacle. She craves space in order to gather her thoughts, possess herself and no longer be an object either of desire or conversation. Neither would bring her solace or relief. When she disrobes to bathe, she discovers the man’s grateful hands upon her but shirks them. She can’t get into that. Not today. Today is too important, it is diverting. It worries her but at the same time she fortifies herself, repeating that it is a necessary aspect of her job. She does not notice the impact of her rejection on her lover or the shrug he gives as he makes for the kitchen to brew his usual coffee (thick, black, brewed on a stove-top). She doesn’t believe it is a permanent thing as she watches his bare back retreat. She ignores the little temptation in her belly. There is too much at stake beyond the four walls, for later in the day.

TRACK OF THE WEEK

The Lark Ascending – by Vaughan Williams, from the album Classical FM Hall of Fame 2000 – the soundtrack to my morning and to this place in the country.

ECHO 27/11/05

Down where the dogs pull on the leash
Salivating into thistles
Where the slime still reckons on the stile
And you have to watch your step
Is where I spy.

Turning on the xmas lights in Tewkesbury – much pomp and thousands of people filling the high street, children and adults wrapped up against the cold, Mayors and Lady Mayors, local MPs and me in my crazy costume of day-glo green and pink with pursed lips standing alongside Santa and raised up in a cherry-picker above the crowd to switch the lights on and sing and basically josh about for ten minutes – from up on the machine you could see people were crowding right back toward the edge of town – once down again you mill with the crowd saying hello to the kids who are a little bit scared of this crazy man/woman with a mad Scots accent – then amid the crowd, old friends turn up alongside my beautiful lover and I notice a sense of place (community?) in me that I haven’t felt at this time of year for a long time, or perhaps anywhere for a long time, certainly not in London – small and secure, I am surprised -

ORNITHOLOGICAL CHECKLIST

Green Woodpecker – 2 Corn Bunting – 5+
Wren – 2 Goldfinch – 3
Chiffchaff – 2 Chaffinch – 5+
Blackbird – 15+ Blue Tit – 4
Great Tit – 3 Mallard – 2
Kestrel – 1 Fieldfare(?) – 2
Black Headed Gull(?) – 20+ Mistle Thrush – 1
House Sparrow – 10+ Collared Dove – 1
Wood Pigeon - 3

ECHO 25/11/05

Only my tracks from where I walked before breaking the thin snow and frost on the horse field and where I disturbed it on the stiles between – when something elusive crosses my field of view -

The dame - elusive today, without spark or life – comedy disappeared and overshadowed by lack of invention and a tired, listless feeling – lost and afraid in rehearsal, embarrassed and small (something the dame can never be) – the fresh, light touch I have been playing with until now left – fear stymied every move and attempt at a gag, threw all my timing out, all sense of self-possession.

ECHO 24/11/05

- the Alum House, tiny, two rooms, quaint; where they used to treat the water with alum presumably to remove hardness or softness, now the music director is in there and happy with her keyboard and sequencer set up listening to her Cuban music and learning Spanish;
- Barn Owl waiting, hunting out by the disused airfield; she does not move at our approach but stays in her position, those huge black eyes stare back through the fog;
- Throckmorton disused airfield is something of a lie, there are men in puffa jackets working there all day, opening holes in the ground; a company called ‘Armorcall – security training’ own part of it. I wonder if this isn’t some mercenary outfit, or else a cover for some other clandestine activity? The property id divided at one end of the field and there is a sign on the fence which says ‘MOD Keep Out’ but it is the only one and I suspect it is a leftover from previous use; if not then the mystery deepens because if this is MOD property then it is being used for something secretive – no planes ever land there, the runway is split now by the road to Pinvin and Pershore in any case; but there does remain the two radar meshes, what are they used for? Virgil needs to investigate;
- party games and fresh country cooking in Corner Cottage, the cast assemble and get to know each other in the warmth of an open fire and the friendliest, most welcoming family around; what can I say of those gathered? Most are young, fresh and fragile in their own way;
- lesson of the day: I am not keeping my eyes and ears as open as they should be.

ORNITHOLOGICAL CHECKLIST

Jay - 1 Green Woodpecker - 1
Barn Owl - 1 Buzzard - 2
Kestrel - 1 Greenfinch - 1
Robin - 2 Fieldfare - 5+

‘Spaghetti Western’

We are whispering in the loft
It is lunchtime outside
Figs and apricots
Hang sleepy with sugar
Scorpions and dead dogs
Parasite each other in the shade

We dare not move
For fear we will erase ourselves
In the hot high noon
As Umberto, still wearing his church clothes
Throws back the polished door
Patent shoes on the threshold creak

He scratches away at history
A short sniff away from us
Starts back like a little boy
Straight for his gun collection
Over by the slatted wall
Where the light comes through

There’s the skull of Jericho
The man whose will he broke
In a spring vendetta
Left the body there to cook
Precise, laid out for mourning
In the summer of ‘58

The delicacy of his hands now
Belies that trigger finger
A marker to a love
Of tears and betrayal
When he took revenge
He took it swift, sure

Now we boys are up close
And all afraid we shake
The dust loose from shelves
Hope he does not notice
Write our names in blood across
The ledger at night

draft - Italy – October 2005

TRACK OF THE WEEK

Mother Rose – by Patti Smith from the album ‘Trampin’ – synchronicity of place and time from the goddess of punk and poetry.

ECHO 21/11/05

6.58am – standing alone on Bishampton Fields, the dawn delineating the crest of Badger’s Hill on the other side of the vale – frost again – the cold truly does bite at this time of day – but the purest silence I have experienced for years, broken only by the calls of Crows and
Long-tailed Tits in the hedgerows.

Cheltenham

Bishampton

THE WHEELBARROW

Longshanks, frost kept

For a month

Edgy against the wall,

The moss step and the stone urn.

You are my ghostly surprise

On a short walk;

A peculiar collector with

One rusty wheel;

That arch there bent

Way to the west

Toward Whitsunn Brook.

A single old lady

Carries you now

Mithering at grey hairs

And hoarfrost in the morning

ECHO 19/11/05

Fog bound – doesn’t lift all day – and with it comes the freeze - we are locked in, isolated from the rest of the world. All day the garden remains tipped with hoar, suspended. A rose bloom still vibrant red and somehow surviving the cold is preserved in its entirety like a natural exhibit turned porcelain. It is easy to become lost or disorientated when you venture outside. Waypoints and landmarks are hidden until you are almost upon them, looming grey out of the gloom, confounding distance and space. Gems of ice and cobwebs seem as if they have been placed on plant heads like silver or lace sleeves. The only birds that appear are blackbirds and crows; the first darting low across your field of view, the latter loping through the air just above the tree line, observing, prophetic. Half hidden by the overhanging trees a wheelbarrow is literally frozen in time, full of weeds and long grasses, twigs and leaves that were in the process of being cleared by the old man who used to live here before he passed away.

ORNITHOLOGICAL CHECKLIST

Green Woodpecker – 3 Kestrel – 1
Yellowhammer – 5+ Corn Bunting – 3
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker – 3 Redwing – 2
Goldfinch – 1 Chaffinch – 6
Great Tit – 2 Long Tailed Tit – 1
Mistle Thrush – 1 Blackbird – 10+
Starling – 3 Turtle Dove - 1

ECHO 18/11/05

Dormice nesting in the attic above the bed, immediately overhead. Scrabbling and scratching. Knawing at the rafters. Amplified through the ceiling and by the total 4am silence everywhere else. Turn over, try to ignore them in the hope they will go away. No chance. Hibernation is soon to come for these creatures and they are busy busy busy building their desired home for the forthcoming Winter months. So the noise is not only loud but erratic, unpredictable, and of such variety that it is impossible to ignore. Like a rodent variation of Chinese water torture. So you wait. Listening in the dark. As dawn comes slowly and very coldly the creatures begin to slow down and quieten to nothing. Then that is it. They are up there now sleeping, hearts slowed until Spring.

Whitsunn Brook,
Worcestershire

ECHO 16/11/05

White phosphorous – on the radio and in the papers – US Army killed civilians in Iraq city of Faluja (Nov 2004) with this stuff in some of their mortar rounds – given the nickname ‘bake and shake’ missions - these types of rounds were apparently being used to flush out insurgents through ‘indirect fire’ from upon locations where insurgents were thought to be directing attacks from. Journalists embedded with the military at the time found dead civilians with distended and ulcerated mouths, the phosphorous reacting to the presence of water – Change geographical location: An Israeli soldier is cleared of murdering a 13 year old Palestinian girl by shooting his entire automatic magazine into her because she got too close to his observation position while she was crossing the road and he deemed her a threat – an entire magazine! Overwhelming force. Situations. Bullies in their destructive playgrounds. ‘Moral arbiters’ giving the go ahead for the use of hardware. Yesterday I wrote the phrase ‘purposely messing things up’, I should repeat it here for its other meaning.

Meanwhile, Chaplin’s cane goes up for auction.

TRACK OF THE WEEK

Golden Touch – by Razorlight from the album ‘Up All Night’ – if I changed sexes it could be a song about me or a dame; or else simply a great song to wake up to.

ECHO 15/11/05

Playing the anarchic trickster, purposely messing things up – relishing the potential in the slapstick.

ECHO 14/11/05

In the dawn mist; cold, frost heavy spaces out here – each being is outlined, and the big oaks are a vague presence – discovering waypoints of the soul alone in the clarity of the morning, some connectivity to my past and my present resides here in solitude. Listening and watching, nothing more.

Radio discussion – blog as weapon of protest, voice and expression of dissent. For some around the world, it is there only means of freedom of expression. And governments want to censor them. Filter them because they are indeed immediate. Winston, watch out!

On the other side of the village I catch sight of the cattle burial mounds, where the foot and mouth cadavers were placed after burning; weird spine-like mounds undulate at the crest of the man made hill watched over by a pair of yellow mechanical diggers, articulated arms up and bent at their piston elbow halfway, sentinels waiting to unearth the bodies again, churning them over and removing the poisoned sludge, to be sucked up by huge tubes into tankers and dumped elsewhere. Possible project in spare time: photograph the disused airfield used for the cattle burial – at night it is eerie place enough without this added dimension – twisted and lonely metal artifacts out there in the open, a light on in the solitary control tower, a huge mesh radar system at the far end of the field, box like outhouses and hangars – it is marked as disused on the map but it appears to be very much alive at night. Does it only get used after dusk?

Eric Morecombe died on stage in The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury. I'm moved, touched by this and the fact I will be performing on the same stage for 6 weeks.

ECHO 13/11/05

Name change, title change – bored with the old one.

Introduced to two new characters – perhaps they are from the village we don’t know – they ramble and call – Mike Pubin (naturalist) & Pam Pas (ex-choreographer). Very friendly, but we know there is a secret they are hiding – wonder if they are the organizers of the local swingers club? No doubt we will meet them again, the village being so small.

Photographs and newspaper cuttings, pressed in old leather bound albums and folders, collated, turning yellow with age, of people I never knew yet now feel close to by dint of geography and space; ancestral faces, whole lives and histories at my fingertips.

Late afternoon walk up to Whitsunn Brook – birds I have not seen since I was an adolescent: Redwing, Green Woodpecker, Corn Bunting – colours of late autumn in the pre-dusk sun – full corn reeds in the lower marshland pale against the purple-brown rosehips; stubble tips crunching in the grass underfoot – a long dead cadaver of a fox strung up in a wire fence at the edge of a now empty sheep field, its hind leg caught in the twisted wire and withered, though its claw is undamaged, still clean, like some macabre bloom of furry dark flowers, upright toward the sun. What remains of the rest of its body is now little more than desiccated pelt, gross and pitiful. There is something sinister too. How did it get there? By its positioning it looks as if human hands placed it there on purpose, rather than the beast having been caught in a trap. Maybe it was purposely poisoned or a warning to ward off other foxes? But the blatancy of death is disturbing; its clear details, its imagery revealed, the inescapable harsh reality amid the beauty surrounding it – the moon fresh risen and becoming perfect silver; fawn leaves and windfall crab apples golden in the grass verges and hegderows.

ECHO 12/11/05

Throckmorton, the next village – a sinister place once beautiful. An RAF base in WW2, now hundreds of cattle corpses are buried there at the edge of the disused airfield. A tumulus, burial mound of poisoned flesh, from the outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease a few years back when hundreds and hundreds of cows were burnt on huge pyres. A poisonous sludge is still being removed from the land there, drained off and transported out of the village by huge tankers regularly. Virgil might visit; another circle of hell. But who is being punished for this? Only the innocent in this case, the people that live in the village. The ministers and scientists who made the decision remain purposely unaware.

ECHO 11/11/05

London, visited briefly – merely a blur - a different reaction to it, less stressed, detached, no longer wrapped up in its routine, its depletion. To a birthday party in a church hall in Dalston – Catholic - thirteen people sat around in the space looking like all is well whilst the DJ plays music that is trying to be so cool by being so kitsch but in the end results in a distinct lack of party fever. At one point it gets mildly evangelical, with a crucifix up on the wall looking down at us he starts to play tracks like ‘Oh Happy Day.’ For a moment I wonder if we are all about to be converted or recruited into one of those weird marketed religions like the Alpha Course, spiritualism for the busy beginner, the careerists excuse me, whatever you want to call it. But this is simply just bad taste, London ‘cool’ taken to some absurd length where post-modern irony says anything goes without recourse to taste or entertainment needs. Well, with the party finitely doused with good swing, and people putting on polite faces, I wander round ear wigging and observing, taking note of the general tone. First off we are reverting to puberty, dividing ourselves along safe ground and sitting down so we are not on display; absorbed in the low light and most definitely not approaching that arena that is the wooden dance floor, which remains resolutely empty and void of any rhythmic show of expression (not easy I guess unless you feel born again at any moment). Beyond this space the rest of the hall is empty, we are bordered by a kind of exclusion zone, a no-mansland cleared of chairs and tables where the hostess has told us not to go so that the party looks fuller and bigger and brighter than it is. No guards patrolling, but it is funny how people steer clear of it. The crucifix I mentioned earlier is positioned high on the wall above this space – an ivory Christ staring down in nomine Patre – I’m not sure whether his look of pity is saying he died for us (as he most often does) or ‘you poor fuckers, why don’t you dump that DJ, play some decent music and get this party going?’. Either way, what a guest to have at your birthday! I am just perusing this and wondering if the big JC himself would have made a good DJ, when the introductions begin – ‘hello, hello, nice to meet you, heard so much blah blah blah…………’ It is a funny thing how living in a city - full of life, experience, sensory stimuli – seems to contribute to the inability to communicate – small talk fantastic, anything more forget it. Trite but polite. I put it down to the everyday need of these people to guard themselves against their physical environment and their career environments. To be shut up. A few neurotic, self-obsessed actors and directors are paraded out looking and behaving like ferrets, darting here and there, flitting between morsels, unable to settle - some are immensely rude in their nervousness and walk away mid-conversation seeking wine or else they keep looking to their mobile phones whilst talking; these appear glued to their hands so they can’t go anywhere without them. Anything to avoid conversation that might not revolve solely around them? I could name names but I won’t – I didn’t get to know them well enough to give them a name even though I was told them. These ‘creative’ brains and all they could muster was generic. Shame.

RANDOM 10/11/05

Bishampton - Finding epitaphs of a man I never met. The little glories of a life. Staying in memory: the wood saws hung in a row at the top of the workshop; about eight of them, from small tenons to large almost rhomboid hand saws. Flat planes of metal so aged they have the texture and look of stone. Monoliths. Activity and use, the knowledge that something was done with these things, created. It’s pleasant to consider. And the rows of drawers and boxes full of lightly greased equipment and tools. It’s a Pandora of masculine curiosity. A pile of 7d magazines – yellowed and faded; thin, crisp paper – of countries of the world. Up against the cobweb covered window, a copy of a large painting: an orange sunset over water with some small boats moored in mudflats, like a bright hallucination.

Discovering a garden so secluded and full it is like a fantasy – huge, dense evergreens border it and exclude the world beyond; hidden terraces to be found only when you walk further, a wilderness at the far end among which some stone has been placed and the thrushes move and check my presence.

So ‘flag’ is not a bizarre coincidence or a result of translation.

TRACK OF THE WEEK

A Song for the Life – by The Waterboys – a rustic beauty; this track fits those I love perfectly - cry some autumnal reds and golds for the hell of it!

RANDOM 9/11/05

- 2 cats view next steps wisely;
- silver icon again, this time packaged in Stratford; all part of the continuing epic;
- bad news late at night into the early morning, staying the course in an argument that need never have happened;
- a buzzard woken in my path, crosses the lazy sun at the far end of the day, proves her beak to me in an arch and watches for my next move beneath a low, gibbous moon;
- a childish yelp on a downhill stretch on a bike

RANDOM 8/11/05

They looked everywhere but couldn’t find a copy of the book. They said they had four of them on the shelves. They scratched their heads. On reflection they knew the censor had been in that day and removed them. That was the way it was going all over. Shrinking info. Prohibiting access.

Winter setting in bleak. The floorboards pop and creak. Children cry on their way to school – some are scared. Others stamp and challenge each other to mock duels on the pavement, dull spikes, fake arrows.

RANDOM 7/11/05

Collective nouns, find myself absorbed by them (inc.):
A siege of herons
A murder of crows
A skulk of foxes
A parliament of owls

Houellebeq leads me to this thought/memory/snapshot: a strange thing to want to hide, unsuccessfully in fact, behind a book whilst evidently out in the open. In this case, age fourteen or thereabouts, beside the swimming pool of a three star hotel on the Amalfi coast in about 1981. Seeking some form of release and separation from parental tensions; the regular rows, those bouts of insults and harpy-like bickering, barbed and nasty, volatile and often violent. It frightened me, and in public embarrassed me as much as them I’m sure. I myself was put in my place regularly for being what I was: afraid, painfully shy, awkward. I was loved I’m sure, but I was thrashed on so many occasions I lived in fear. The confused, dysfunctional messages of the aspirant middle-class combined with the Catholic induced discipline and retribution of an Italian workaholic father. So I chose to hide whenever I could. At home it would be either in my room or else out in the country roaming alone and untouched on foot or on bike. But on the family holiday when one’s shelters were regularly withdrawn through collective activity, a book was the only resource left. A book was literally a physical barrier (or perhaps I tongue tie that by saying literally a literary barrier?). I chose the biggest book I could find for that holiday: a huge, thick edition of The Collected Novels of H.G. Wells. It must have been over two thousand pages, hardback with a bright turquoise and gold lettered flyleaf cover; when opened it hid my face entirely. It was an ideal portable escape with the added advantage of allowing my mind to go elsewhere too – adventure, sci-fi gizmos, far away islands, planets, monsters, and invasions. It was truly substantial in all respects: ideas, imagination, plus it weighed a ton. I soon learned to dream. I also learned that I could be a spy. After all I could appear to be reading, diving in behind those large pages with their fine print at the first sign of an argument, and therefore seemingly not present yet able to eavesdrop at will without giving any indication of attention. But it was a controversial decision; often my father couldn’t cope with the amount of time I spent reading and I was chastised as being strange and odd for doing so, for not participating. “In what?” I wanted to ask. All I could see was eggshells and insecurity and potential hazards on the road of marital disharmony. Over time the foil of course was that I developed a singular fixation on personal escapism, enjoyed and suffered at the same time, an unwanted necessity. After all I hoped to be found and told that everything was alright, there was nothing to be afraid of when the voices were raised and e.g. plates were smashed. The captivation became extraordinary to my mind; and it went beyond that first holiday, I brought it back undeclared to anyone but myself and it became a permanent feature of who I was and presumably am. It offered a different outcome to the inevitable one I had so far grown up with. What I hadn’t bargained on was that, given time, I was drawing attention to myself by this withdrawal. I became a focus through my denial of parental concern, and as I grew up that background wish to be found morphed into an equal fear of being discovered, assimilated into aspects of adult life. Fear of being found out, caught, and thereby judged. As if what one is doing is in some way incorrect, subversive, and damaging to the status quo of personal relationships. Even in the act of writing. But who now, now that I am supposedly a free-willed adult, would be doing the hunting?

To work: today, a room with a line of washed clothes drying out, stretched across it from two wooden beams; a single old armchair that has been in the same place for decades. Plus a convex mirror and slightly opened window beyond which winter is setting in bleak. That is all.

I am a thief, no two ways about that. A bastard and a magpie; with an eye to any bright phrase or notion that might come my way. Be careful. If it proves suitable to line the next entry my subtle ear will work overtime and grasp it for myself. Maybe it’s no bad thing if it does no damage, but where do you draw the line between ownership and theft; not of ideas but of their catalysts, their inceptors?

RANDOM 5/11/05

Henley-in-Arden Horse Market – where the smaller lots stand waiting auction, the Romany men are doing spit and shake deals; three or four of them in dark coats talking fast to each other, heavy accents, an Irishmen in there among them. They circle each other as they barter, negotiating fast, aware that what they are doing needs to be done quickly, frowned upon. They are feverish – one holds out his hand to shake, whilst the other (Brylcream, long coat, curly dark hair, ruddy face and jowls) turns this way and that against closing the deal. The two onlookers shake their heads and purse their lips but quietly let the thing take its course. A latent sense of anger here, mistrust maybe. As if the man offering a price is paying back for some previous misdemeanour, or his price insults the seller again. Honour is at stake. The beast they are bargaining over is a small, natty ‘ride and drive’ pony harnessed to a two-seat carriage. She stands idly, one of the onlookers holding her reins, dips her head occasionally. Behind them is another that they are seemingly less interested in, not dissimilar to the first, this one bucks a little and chides at his tether. Eventually, amid sideways glances and some coarse shouts the deal is done and the men disperse into the crowds leading the horses quickly away.
The auction ring, for official sales, is a corrugated iron hut – inside the air is damp and heavy, a thick smell of hay and manure – bidders faces carved out by the wind and rain, soiled hair, leather cheeked, some old and bent out of shape like moorland ash, with walking sticks and thick green coats – they stand close to the pen where each lot is brought in and paraded for view, the bidding begins – the auctioneer is a portly man with a splash of wiry ginger hair and a head-piece microphone into which he chatters and plays out the bids, a constant reel of numbers and sale gab: “fine horse fine horse, one hundred, look at her move there one hundred gents, twenty twenty, one twenty, fifty fifty, one fifty; look at that, at that look at that, quiet as the driven snow; over here two hundred, with you with you at two hundred, fine horse easy rider, over here at two twenty two twenty I’m selling, two twenty two twenty” and bash with the mallet, all done in two minutes. This repeats throughout the morning and into the early afternoon; a mixture of different horses of all ages and breeds and sizes. The bidders themselves are almost invisible, a hidden code of nods and winks and tics that only the auctioneer is party to and familiar with keeps the day moving. I try to work out who might actually be buying, but it is almost impossible – I am supposing regular faces on the other side of the ring, dark eyed men looking thoughtful, their brows buried under wide brimmed hats, with the smallest of gestures possibly the only giveaway of their interest and will to part with cash.
After a number of small and fairly average sales, a proud and beautiful 9 year old bay mare is brought in. Massive; she towers above the ring at sixteen two. Highly intelligent; her ears and eyes pricking constantly, the long head with a solid spot of white between her brows always on the move. There is a serious change of atmosphere in there, backs prickle, the men in peaked caps who have spent most of the time at the rear of the hut come close, even if they don’t want to bid they want a better look at the awesome creature now present, to appreciate her. The bidding here starts at five hundred but rapidly flies to over a grand, selling at £1480 to a rather non-descript middle aged couple with RP accents.
Outside, at the mouth of the auction ring, where the horses are trotted in for sale, there is a constant hubbub – sellers, owners, observers, cheaters, workers, kids all gazing in or chatting, keeping an eye. Here the faces tell more than the place alone – capped men in long coats linger right at the entrance, turning and talking in rapid whispers to each other, furtive and on the make somehow - wild-boy country gangsters who hawk wads of cash between their palms as if they are making separate deals on those made in the ring, double bidding? Then there are the gypsies and the Romanies stood in family groups with their curly haired elders and tradesmen, their skinhead adolescents and wiry pony tailed brothers, their kids and wives stood by or playing with or running off through the pens with plastic toys and beef slabs to chew. And the real old Worcestershire men, generation after generation of farmers living and working the same land for fifty years or more as their dads before them etc. They stand in the mass of folk like solid old oak trees, not moving or moved by the sway of bidding, they observe and take note, nodding to each other occasionally as if transmitting some psychic message of knowledge or proving prophecies correct. Bent and twisted, propped on walking sticks with a drop of snot hanging and bright red weather-beaten cheeks. They appear to come from elsewhere, another time, never changed.
The ‘tat’ auction in another hut, an old pig or sheep pen – all kinds of items on sale: leather harnesses, old saddles, boots, brass, wax. The auctioneer here stands on a bench and bangs a metal pole with a tiny mallet when the sales are made – this is brief and low key compared to the main sales in the horse ring. The auctioneer here is thin and lanky, looking somewhat bored and uninspired. I wonder where these men come from, how they learn their trade and quick gab, where they live. I presume there must be some familial handover from each generation, trained to talk fast yet clear from a babe in arms? This one gibbers and his voice echoes in his awkward body, he twitches and taps on his feet lightly, long pale blue smock and trousers tucked into his socks, an air of the Steptoe (or in his case step toe shuffle form foot to foot).

RANDOM 4/11/05

Redditch Police Station to report the theft of the £300 from my bank account – a man in his early twenties sits in the counter room waiting, a huge deep cut freshly scabbed over his right eye and bruises on his ears and side of his head; he can’t speak properly, stuttering and swallowing his words, but I don’t think that was a result of his injuries, more a simple lack of will or else a good smoke screen in the presence of authority. He is late for a hearing/meeting of some kind and is reporting in late because he was robbed the other day. He is told his solicitor was there this morning but has now gone. A community officer, or some kind of liaison, comes in from her lunch break and seeing her he makes a bee-line over to her and explains his situation. But she can do nothing about it and backs off, reminding him of the appointment they already have in a week’s time. He is then told by the duty officer to take a seat and wait while they try to reorganize the hearing, but he leaves anyway.

Unemployed males, hawkish and hooded; and the steady stream of prams and pushchairs with Mums on their own, rolling through paved town centers in the afternoon rain. The fight and fuck mentality is here.

Ugly statue in the center of Redditch, outside the church in the center of the paved pedestrian shopping area - a slab of white stone that looks like a polystyrene block, has been carved out with the image of a soldier giving a flower to a child; scary thing is the soldier looks like a US one and there is a reminiscence of Vietnam period battledress which is faintly disturbing. I can’t work out who commissioned it or why? Or what it maintains or commemorates? Is it perhaps some kind of symbol of support for current US imperialist intervention? If so, it fails on all fronts both symbolically and aesthetically.

Worcester in the late afternoon. Skies glowering over the Malvern Hills, which not surprisingly look somewhat akin to those on the horizon back in Italy. Passing through wild country: an army surplus store out in the middle of nowhere with (guess what) another US GI statue outside it. This time a larger than life photo-realist one (a giant Action Man) of a grunt in present day camo battledress and state of the art rifle and communications system plugged into his Kevlar helmet. He is crouching and aiming straight at the oncoming traffic. I wonder about right wing militias, rednecks and conspiracy theorists out here in the Worcestershire countryside. Might they exist?

Worcester Cathedral - handprints worn in to the old bricks at the entrance to the quadrant. Clear fingers and palms, and scratch marks. I fit my hand into them, fingers splayed, and as I do a woman walking a dog stops and explains that they appeared one night about a year ago. No one knows where they came from. CCTV recordings of the entrance have been sifted through and no one has been seen working them into the brick like corn circle hoaxers or similar. She leaves saying that they are a mystery, but isn’t it good to have a few mysteries in life? I turn back to the prints and look further; some appear to have been marked in the throes of a fit by a fevered person or else large animals scraped thick paws in consecutive slashes, whilst at two other points there are clear defined hands one smaller than the other: a medieval couple’s tryst?

Final militarist clues of the day: stained glass windows commemorating Gallipoli and other WW1 battles and losses – a huge angel embraces a Boer War soldier also crouching with rifle pointed at an invisible enemy (that term ‘invisible enemy’ sticks, pronounced – invasions procure the invisible?) – and a park named after a Boer War battle. I am wondering if Worcestershire shouldn’t be renamed Warcestershire?

Sepia photo in Eagle’s Nest pub: two Indian elephants bathing in a nearby lock beside a stone bridge near Worcester town.

Rome Tiburtina

RANDOM ECHOES – ITALY 3/11/05

Sadness on waking - the last time for a while to open these shutters and gaze into the morning nebbia; making out the yellow trees through it and wondering whether the sun will burn the mist off before or after lunch; of eons of time here in seasonal living; of making that fire fresh every morning watching it and nurturing it; of long evening conversations and little mysteries; of peace in the night; of all the new faces and old ones refreshed; of full bellied production.

Coming close to something – as the final chores of tidying and cleaning the cottage are done and we are trying to put off our inevitable departure, a Robin flies through the open front door, circles the kitchen and living area and comes to rest on one of the wooden struts across the window opposite where it sits unperturbed for a few moments watching, twitches and dips its beautiful head keeping an eye on me as I come closer to open the window for it; but before I do it flies up, across the room and straight out the open door, under the pergola and is gone.

Goodbyes in car parks – the first in the hospital in Citta della Pieve, the mist cold and the last image of my father, who seems sad and a little reduced, walking through the umbrella pines to the front door to have stitches removed; then goodbye to Mum in the station car park and she is all smiles and strength.

Rome – night flight out, the city spread like a lit computer board or something similar; I leave a small piece of heart behind (sacred heart, bleeding heart?) each time I leave, this one possibly the biggest of all.

On the plane I can’t help thinking of Caravaggio’s clashes with the authorities of his time, almost a plot to misrepresent and humiliate him by the church (and by jealous contemporaries) because of his originality, his raw naturalism, his representation of the real. These deemed too controversial for a church that could and would only deal in the sanctified, mannered images of religion; it’s ‘best’ advertising.

I miss the artichokes. Ciao.

RANDOM ECHOES – ITALY 2/11/05

- scarecrows made of polythene bags and rags and stuck up on long poles high above the now dry and dark remains of sunflowers, black against the misty shore;
- an eagle sat on the electric wires along the railway line
- a 708 year old embalmed corpse of a saint in a church above Cortona, shrouded in fine green cloth, her hands crossed over her chest, mouth gently parted whilst beyond a loud and animated conversation emanates from a confessional between a young woman and a large and irritated priest; we light candles for the living and in particular my ailing aunt in northern Italy (back where we started, full circle);
- Talleggio and walnut sauce
- Moliere playing in the teatro
- a turquoise model Fiat all squat and cute
- the cloud level beneath us as we are on a mountain road up to Santa Margherita, the altitude playing havoc with ears and guts but awesome view through which can be seen another cemetery on its own promontory above the Tuscan plain, where clouds come in patches offering glimpses of the olive terraces and purple shadows, the pink church beyond
- my father ducking in and out of restaurants looking for a table for lunch but coming out shaking his head until he finds an almost empty one which serves the finest food and we enjoy; but our walk after is disrupted by so many Americans reliving their best-selling novel and movie dreams and consuming Cortona.

Poggi, Umbria

RANDOM ECHOES – ITALY 1/11/05

The Festival of the Dead.

National holiday. Bells ringing early morning, after night rains, tolling insistently out there beyond the railway line, beyond the drainage dykes with their shy herons
– to Passignagno: lakeside town, eerily quiet today, a few families in almost empty cafes; children waiting, kicking heels, aimlessly gazing out of windows; like something is about to happen or should be happening but nobody knows what; a small crowd gathers on the embarkation pier waiting for the single ferry across to the island Isole Maggiore (a vague shadow out in the middle), each of them wearing coloured puffa coats and parkas bright against the uniform lake water and the mist; jetties again (something has come full circle – see entry dated 15/10) out into grey waters, hazy air obscuring any landmarks beyond, the opposite shore gone, a walk into effective nothingness - metal frames and structures, poles and lights that simply cease there at the edge and taking you where? In the municipal park running along the waters edge a sculpture of a dignitary looks down with eyes that appear drunk, painted whites there and dodgy gaze almost cross-eyed, but what else was there for him to do here today except get wasted?
– on toward the other side of the lake, a car drive over silent railway tracks; contemplating the Italian alphabet which has no ‘j’ in it; memorizing the singular faces out on the streets; and wondering where my friends are and what they are doing back in the hubbub of the metropolis while here we are in the hiatus of this mid-week holiday that has the rhythm of a dream about it
– up to the older town with it’s rising castle and church on a promontory over the lake, its streets older, more inviting - lonely shopkeepers stood on their doorsteps offering small tidbits to try to attract the last tourist of the year, that almost mythical creature – in the square, with its center fountain turned off for the day, the village idiot sits on a doorstep next to the police station on one of the rare days he is allowed out alone, though he is of no threat people don’t like to be reminded too often that he exists; he wears a badly fitting pair of tracksuit trousers (is he related to the nighttime scavenger of 10/10) that sag away from his arse and a thinning beige jumper with a black and white chevron pattern at the hem; his grey hair is slicked back from his face with grease, but he has a tan that many would pay to get, a result of sitting in the sanitarium garden for days on end through the summer; he smokes, his toothless mouth sucking on the fag with his bottom jaw stuck out from under to give him some purchase on it and to allow him to bellow the used smoke out – occasionally he strokes his face in an agitated manner as if some hugely urgent and important thought has crossed his mind and he has no way of letting anyone know, that he must not forget it and at a loss with what to do he reclines on the step almost supine, fag finished, and watches the families and visitors moving through the square (some interested in the fountain without water); but he cannot rest for long, his body twitches and tics constantly and eventually he rises and wanders over to the café diagonally opposite where he lingers at the doorway until the girl serving waves at him and gives him a brief greeting; he enters timidly, walks round the interior not knowing where to put himself, turns a single handle on the table football then leaves and walks off down a side street to reappear in the same spot beside the police station five minutes later but from a different direction, with another cigarette he has either cadged or found in his brief journey
– at the other end of the street closer to the medieval wall with its arched entrance, a prostitute stands waiting for late afternoon business; she tries not to be too obvious and so lingers inside the junk and antique shop there, talking and looking at some of the items, then methodically steps outside for a cigarette; she wears a black leather jacket with silver studs on, not a bikers jacket, something a little more classy than that, Euro trash style; tight black denim jeans and her dyed black hair back-combed and lacquered in place; her face, now showing signs of age (she must be in her mid to late 40s) is a little sour and uncomfortable, particularly at the edges of her mouth; she steps away from the shop and tips her head back to exhale a long stream of blue smoke, a sigh given shape, surrounded there by brass objects, bowls and basins, stokers for wood fires, and paintings of tree-lined avenues; she watches a middle aged couple bicker in a parked car and smiles to herself that at least she does not have to contend with that; eventually, seeing that no trade is evident, and with the clouds rapidly darkening prior to a storm, she makes her way up to the square where she spies the idiot in his usual place who rubs his crotch a little when he sees her but never says a word; and she walks over to her pimp who is sat under an umbrella on the little terrace outside the Hotel Miralago drinking a coffee and laughing with his young girlfriend who chain smokes a strong brand billowing thick plumes across the windows and the potted plants and the tourist family sat at the next table; the pimp nods at the hooker and that means she can clock off for the day, go and pay her respects to the dead – past the town hall and its view across the lake where today men hold cameras and digital recorders and photograph their kids covered in chocolate; where American tourists roam looking for the place they parked their car
– out to the cemetery, close on 3.30 in the afternoon; where the well-dressed residents and citizens have gathered on and off all day, their best clothes prepared and paraded, proud and unafraid, and are now unfurling their umbrellas as the rain starts to spit; moving here and there either singly or in small groups, finding the plot they have come to look for, the name and dedication on the wall there, where each has been interned not under the ground but in the cremated fashion with a place alongside others in two long walls on either side of the cypress-lined pathway leading to a mausoleum at the far end; each memorial filled with flowers and glowing red candles shimmering in the gloom of the oncoming storm, its own city of the dead; there is no dour taboo of death here, this is the most alive place seen all day, and oddly the most comfortable - beyond the cemetery walls, the constant chattering and song of birds in the nearby aviary fills the early evening; the cafe just beyond that, at the entrance of the access lane, is full of laughter and warm faces, the big bearded owner making a mint today where almost every other day he is quiet (except Sundays of course); as the rain begins to thicken and harden people start to scatter to the shelter of the bright orange awning there, or else under the huge cypress trees within the cemetery itself and wait for the downpour to pass; one young woman runs for her car but before she passes through the entrance gate she stops, turns and crosses herself with one hand whilst the other holds a small bloom to her chest
- then the storm arrives (to wash the living souls out perhaps, give them a good cleansing); the darkest clouds and a tumult of rain and phosphor lightning (forked and sheet combined) clearing the cemetery of people, leaving the dead to themselves; driving home is slow progress through torrential rain, and a yellow darkness; the storm then circles for hours, bouncing back over the hills, fettered to each, flickering and booming close then receding toward Citta della Pieve and Mount Amiata before returning overhead again twenty minutes later; out in the garden the vines become spectral, revealed momentarily in the strobe-like flashes; the rain hammering onto the thick foliage covering the pergola outside the front door, an awesome sound of watery clicks, taps, whispers and sighs; the scent of autumn rises: rotting leaves akin to ammonia, musty where the grapes are washed through and their juice sluiced into the earth; streams of clay-filled water run down through gullies to the irrigation ditches below; the loudest cracks of thunder come over Le Coste where we spent our days painting. I sit overwhelmed and watch it all from just inside our cottage door.