London – Crouch End – the house is split between personalities/families – though indubitably the same family fills the place without question – but rifts appear, tension, examinations and, perhaps most awkwardly for the middle class, compromises – two sisters share the house with their respective husbands, two young boys and the eldest sister’s youngest daughter, now eighteen, working in the city – on a daily basis there are tiffs and accusations, occasionally these spill over into acrimonious nights – what happens though if into this an invited stranger enters: let’s say a young man in his early thirties, who has been injured whilst working with the younger sister, blinded temporarily in one eye? What might that reveal? Or more interestingly, what might the family try to hide? –

In an attempt to track reality, things may go like this –

Someone steals a car; a tiny, blue thing made of plastic that was stashed on a low shelf – nobody knows who or when or even why, after all the thing is next to useless – there are suspects of course, but they are long gone –

The latent curve of a wing tip –

A daughter brings her mother, closer to tragedy, to a resort for one last holiday – they sit and paint eternities together, both concentrating hard on their brushes throughout until they can sit back and view the combined results – one sneezes, the other cries –

The scouser from Birkenhead on the blag to get away without paying eight quid if he can help it for his kids to paint in the leisure resort – he turns away to his wily Mum (pretty, old face) and tells her that he’s not going to get ‘rumbled’ –

Italy in the late 70s intrigues me – ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’ a la Scritti Politti, the resulting radical mess of Gramsci touting revolutionaries and cultural misfits stealing goods from market shelves, others running guns between the peaceful Umbrian countryside and the city, setting up free radio station Radio Alice, only to be quashed by the left wing mayor of the city –

Some comparison –

There is sweat on the skin of the animals, as there is on the humans hundreds/thousands of miles away – perhaps there is tears in the horses eyes as there are in the humans?

Unlikely, but perhaps –

And if one could surround and protect the other, would they?

A drum beat –

Two locations/polar opposites – the first aspect, Holland, is one submerged with sudden floodwaters; one hundred horses stranded in fields hidden now beneath grey waters and beneath that other dangers e.g. lost topography, fake footholds, barbed wire fences – (not so dissimilar to the other place then) –

And the second?

Gaza. The polar opposite, as mentioned – hot sand, concrete and rock, parched beneath the daily sun and beneath the weight of world observers watching and waiting for – well, what exactly, no one knows anymore despite their profession to do so, their ‘roadmaps’ which have ironically led to a deeper loss of direction – blindness –

Guns peal – sheltered boys with automatic rifles at the checkpoint, nothing but puffs of smoke emanating from barrels, illusions with real consequence – the women are lining the streets, dressed in black and white (mirroring the horse pelts) - and their collective presence is so similar to the stranded, streaming beasts in Holland, pressed onto a narrow spit of land aware of the danger around them getting closer and closer –

The unarmed women scream in off-beat time with the pop-pop gunfire behind them – two fall on the pavement there in the glut of movement, the welter of fear -

The horses wait, silent for a day, their spirits will be offered up if necessary - what else can they do?

Finally, unexpected, they are shown the way across the peril and the multitude of them peal away from their isolation, rolling out into the water side by side, flank brushing flank, where it is shallow and their collective step and colour merge until they break free/apart on safe ground and their collaboration is at an end – some buck and canter at that moment, shaking off the silver – gathering sense once more – ageless for a moment -

Hair, breeze, quarter; blood, penetration, shame –

Both Sundays –

Some comparison.

Been a while – the grass has turned and the leaves further, their changes covering the fellsides and watchig over the marbled heather - it’s beautiful most mornings, damn cold but beautiful, when I rise close on dawn and climb in the car for the journey to work 20 miles away, heading east out of the Lakes toward Penrith –

Yet in recent days I've noticed there’s a sinister turn to my place of work -

Oasis Whinfell they call it – a loco-paradise resort for the estranged British holidaymaker and other sub-species; open all year round bar xmas day - a spectacular forest hideaway, populated by prefab log cabins (throwbacks to some Thoreau-esque identity? If only!), dense pine and spruce trees; Fly Agaric mushrooms in the damp shade, the smell of healthy leaf mould in the air - guests ride bicycles everywhere (the multitude of people carriers and 4x4’s left back at the giant car-park for the duration of their stay); and inside the ‘village’ zone, with it's air of profligate safety and service, there are bars and cafes and activity centres all housed in the giant glass and steel bubble

– a Westworld of the north –

Gently at first:

waterfalls piped in through the exterior walls cascade over mock rock beside the Italian restaurant; lush palms and foliage greet you there; even birds get in and flit from cable to girder in the glass heaven, twittering as they go -

But, it gets nasty -

behind the façade, excuses are made for non-deliveries; there’s puke in the staff toilets that looks like alien frog-spawn; the lifeguards all have STDs; and the staff toilet doors and walls are covered in racist graffiti, with daily updates - there's a linguistic tribal battle going on between the Poles, the Japanese and the redolent English thugs who populate the lazier side of the workforce, gauging thmesleves by thier boredom and the amount of fags they can get through in one sitting -

somebody's been pilfering or vandalising the faces of the staff photo's - it's alkmost comic the seriousness with which that is taken but the evident racism is ignored and (in some cases) encouraged - it's the theme of a thousand jokes backstage here, where anything not deemed 'British' is frowned upon and deliberately misunderstood -

1979 all over again - creepy -

and the holiday makers come and go oblivious, their plastic weekends are kept well away from all this; even nature to a certain degree is disinfected for them - the bunnies are encouraged, but the hawks are on timetable (you can pay to see them if you like) -