31/7/06

THE CONVENTION

They’ve come from all over the world. From Biloxi, Bruges, Barrow. It might be considered The Wicker Man in reverse. Thousands of Christians come to witness and evangelise and invade. And the lines of teenagers queuing at night for their fix of moral supply. What sickens me is that it seems all so American, all so bible belt – the presentation , the howling ministers, the late night pseudo-concert of Christian rock and the baying for the blood of ‘unbelievers’. Even faith has been appropriated by the US in presentation and style.

An actress tells me that she was sunbathing in her front garden, nothing too louche but she was - yes - in a bikini and she ain’t unattractive if you know what I mean – reading a book, midriff catching the rays and a young man (maybe twelve, thirteen) walking with his parents is told to keep his eyes down Billy keep your eyes down and he does like an obedient dog. I wonder if he wanted to look, to feed those young intrigued hormones? Or was it auto for him to see woman’s flesh as sin?

I would consider stripping naked, covering myself in woad symbols of some pagan origin and run through them shouting: I TOO HAVE BEEN TOUCHED BY THE HAND OF GOD. But somehow I don’t think they’d get the joke.

25/7/06

Too many pained expressions; too many crying faces; too many pleading mothers.

Why does humanity love this agony; almost revel in it?

And they talk of how they will prevail. Churning out the vision of 'freedom' - for whom? The word is meaningless. The dictionary has been rewritten by the neo-cons and the fundamentalists; our language is debased.

They come and they stay. They appropriate and they consume. They are immoveable and believe always that they are right.

Exxon or maybe BP or maybe one of the others, named an oil tanker after Condaleeza Rice. It's true - look it up. Lloyds of London will have her listed. And as it sails out into the arms of 'peace' the hooded mothers will still be waiting in the dark beneath what little shelter they can muster. Staring at the dark wall; praying that they will survive another night.

In the 1980's Ronald Reagan (Raygun to some) traded weapons with Hizbollah in return for hostages and then denied it to the American people. Actually denied it on camera to the American people - he said, to quote, 'my heart tells me we didn't do it, but the facts tell me otherwise' as if it had happened by proxy or else in some dream-vision pre-cursor of his later brain disease, a personal tragedy sure - but after how many others?

Can't we find somewhere in the world - maybe an abyssal plain beneath the sea somewhere - where we can dump all these fundamentalist cowards from both sides of the 'war on terror' - which is turning out to be a war on civilians - and leave them there? Just to please us all however, let Bush go first, closely followed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, James Baker III, and Paul Wolfowitz. Blair will follow anyway and willingly; we won't even need to give him a push. After that send down the now redundant and mythological bin Laden to sing goodnight lullabies to them all. And leave them there while the rest of us try to reconstruct some respect in the human race.

Start by listening to what those mothers want and need most.

- - - - - -

A vision of charging hordes across the fells - Beowulf resurrected? - some Dark Age clash of warriors; noise, the sound of wheeling hawks - the time coming with howls, pre-battle, lusty, berserked - then their blades clash and the hills are filled with the skirmishing, echoing across the lake -

Smoke n' Fire

23/7/06 - Keswick

Concerning

The tightening of the belt; the searching, albeit uneasily, for less - shedding needs, wants and desires -

I keep thinking there is nothing to write about up here - that it is an uninspiring place - but maybe I've been living with my eyes closed -

Let's begin with this observation: this town ain't big enough for all of us - so many people descending on it; the roads are gridlocked with traffic, the streets are crammed with meandering tourists, and Convention evangelists; the air is tainted with car fumes and heat - and this is the country! This is what we have come to think of it - what is the impact of all these people suddenly descending - invading - on this environment?
Under siege - aspects of Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers?

22/7/06

The lights across the lake at night, inviting things, mysterious, far-fetched almost. I wonder why it is that I know I will miss them but not other things here?

Maybe there is something wrong with me; increasingly I find myself drawn to being alone. The only other person I can spend time with is Pol; but even then I still find myself on occasion quiet, enjoying those moments together when the least is necessary - perhaps this is blissful?

Perhaps it is age? Or the environment? Or my surroundings?

I find it easier to relinquish social contact here. To be drawn into stillness and solitude - gaining far more pleasure and sustenance from writing and books than any offer of meeting in a bar or café.

I find myself crying when I turn on the news - the destruction of Lebanon appears to be a crime; the pointless waste of civilian life in the name of the empty war on terror, the new universal excuse for sanctioned harm. I am angry with the state of Israel for becoming a goliath, and for being another US pawn. I am angry too with the radicals who propel the friction. But in all the media, in all the press the blame is laid exclusively at the feet of Hizbollah as being the instigators of this conflict with their kidnapping of Israeli soldiers - but hold on. There was an inexcusable incident on a pleasure beach only weeks ago whereby a Palestinian family where shelled to death by Israeli artillery. Surely this is not an isolated incident in the picture?

It weighs heavily and in the meantime all other aspects of life here seem petty -

17/7/06

Hardest days these; when everything I write appears to be nonsense and life reflects that - a running theme? - the day begins ludicrously early with the usual false start and sleep deprivation - mind bellowing at me and nagging anxieties on full tilt - but still I rise full of purpose, fresh ideas and face the computer; gaze at the words written, re-read and suddenly it all appears to be pap, pointless, useless characters that have nowhere to go yet need to get somewhere, anywhere besides the limbo I'm leaving them in - maybe I am not reaching inside myself enough, maybe I lack courage? - but when this one thing of import betrays me it seems to drag whole foundations with it - all this, they say, is common enough for a creative person, but when you're a nobody this kind of despondency only reinforces the nobody and one's hopes of becoming somebody evaporate leaving you reeling in agony - the only recourse is to believe, have faith, that one day, maybe, there will have been a point to all of it - meanwhile others are saving, pensions are getting larger, people are succeeding -

Then it hits me - some hours later in fact - whilst I'm doing my 'day job' bent to it and tending to the huge garden at the south end of town - and some hope does return - I think of the Arabian Nights; stories within stories, unrelated stories linking with other unrelated stories some deliberately others not so - and this inspires enough for me to laugh off the mood and try again -

15/7/06

Some facts as I understand them:

The Middle East governments and lead-players will never be at peace; they do not desire it and the people will not be given the opportunity elsewhere to get close to it - for over 60 years it was and it still is front page news - Bush, Blair and bin Laden know far more about each other than they lead us to believe, they always did, even before September 11; however, now bin Laden is a spent force as is the mythical 'al-Qaeda', Bush and Blair perpetuate that myth because it pleases them to do so - There are terrorists, there always have been terrorists but there is not a single 'network' working under one umbrella (apart from the umbrella of what they would like to believe is 'faith'), that is the success of our Christian storytellers - It is all about controlling oil (on all sides), controlling the price of oil and ensuring the destabilization of countries that produce it - never forget Bush is a failed oil magnate - sadness is felt worldwide but nothing is ever going to change the way Israel sees itself - perpetually paranoid - because the US will perpetuate that because it knows that condition only too well and it allows for the other myth of the right to defend ones country by whatever means necessary - even as far as the abuse of Human Rights -

There are hundreds if not thousands of inhabitants of this region (Cumbria) of the UK who cannot read, or will not and whose education remains among the poorest in Britain - mostly men - I met one tonight - his name was Al (not sure if that was his real name but that was the one he gave me) and he was about 22 - he wore a dark blue football shirt under a paler one that he kept open, and jeans and sneakers - he was good-looking and kept his thick black hair in good condition - he was tanned too - but when he came up to me, smoking a cigarette, he talked and indeed had the look in his eyes of someone on the offensive, as if the world was always about to take something from him and therefore it always owed him something in return - he stood beside me as I waited at the bus stop, he went over to the timetable but span round too quickly to have read it - without saying 'hello' or 'excuse me' or any kind of disarming introduction he asked me what time the busses were - I told him but I said you'd better check just in case and I pointed at the timetable - he gave me a look that said 'are you fucking with me' and he walked off without saying anything else - social interaction skills at a minimum - later, when the teenage girls had gathered with their McDonald's and were chatting up older boys, when the boy-racers in the car park sat with their engines turned on and were revving them up to a high scream without actually intending to go anywhere, Al came back - he lingered at the edges watching the girls and hawking, contemplating chances - and I nodded and he just looked and so I asked if he'd sorted out which bus he was getting and it turned out it would be the same one I was expecting - he simply said 'Cockermouth one' in a real deep Cumbrian brogue - silence and so I offered him my paper to read to pass the time and he gave me that look again as if I was the craziest person in the world, that or he was the most offended and then I knew he couldn't read, or else had at one time had the skill but hadn't used it for so long he had forgotten how to - when the bus arrived, a small, rattling thing he waited in the midst of the queue and when a middle-aged lady and the man she was with (young, Dutch, carrying a large rucksack) got on he shoved in behind them and got on the bus without paying, went toward the rear and hunkered, low down in the seat so he couldn't be seen -

That bus was like a version of hell - riding into the wide empty night, the bleak hills dark above us - and within, the drunken girls and boys of Penrith stinking of fags and booze and fast-food meat, shouting conversations to each other about getting drunk and how drunk they were, over and over an endless replay of the night's inebriation as if they were stuck in a loop - the stench was overwhelming and the decibel level increased as the little bus struggled its way up and down - meanwhile Al slept like a baby -

When I get back I understand the Convention is in town - a gathering of Christian evangelicals from all over the world here for two long hot weeks of reinforced faith - no doubt they'll be saying their prayers for the 'good' of Israel, ignoring the fact that David has now become Goliath -

Oh, and Vodaphone have appropriated one of the best 'punk' songs of all time for it's new advertising campaign - Another Girl, Another Planet by The Only Ones - it makes me laugh (despite the fact I hate them for using every decent song under the sun for the sake of global sell-out) because I suspect they don't realize the song is a paean to heroin abuse?

14/7/06

One week in Winchester - I recall: sitting fantastically alone in a small cocktail bar on the high street last Sunday eve, two huge screens playing back the World Cup final thinking all the time about how great it would be if Italy won the cup for my Papa - I drank the finest gin in honour and text messages kept coming in from friends across the country all on their seat edges - and then that explosion of joy when they won - from me, from down this street to my surprise as the pub nearest exploded in deep shouts and a few fans ran out into the night leaping and raising their arms in the air, from across the continent -

The odd dry stench of a dying dog in the digs - steering clear of the kitchen where the poor thing flops around unable to hold itself up, a tumour the size of a football sticking out of its side like some damnable insult to the rest of its body - and the beast groans through the night. Why does the landlady keep it alive, why not put it down? Assume it must be painful for her too, something to do with loss and the fear of loss - her daughter is away in Italy for a month, her boyfriend is unable to visit so often because of his three daughters - all this reads in her face, a gentle greyness blooming across the skin around her eyes and onto her cheeks -

The stomach churning beauty of the guitar solo in The Stones' 'Sympathy For The Devil' - hard-edged, bitter-sweet -

Poor great Syd Barrett - the eulogies come in from all over: musicians, friends, journalists, modern pretenders - but the most moving are the blogs of ordinary people reporting how they were constantly awakened by his music, listening to it in gardens in the 60s or else in the clubs in London where the band first played - and his face staring back up from the pages of newspapers; those dark, haunted eyes - and how I recall the strange songs I used to make up with friends and band-members as kind of nods to Barrett: songs with names like The Singing Goldfish, Life's Too Important, PC Juniper the list goes on - saddest of all however is the fact that the local HMV doesn't stock any of his recordings -

And how the features of a place change dependent on one's mood and recent events - last time I was here the whole seemed marred and bleak, tainted with a sense of loss - now despite the quiet of Blackbirds and the density of tourists leading in the low light evenings, I bring with me more of a sense of anticipation and hope and true enough certain things begin to reflect that -

Well for a while at least - two thirtysomething men push each other around outside The Green Man pub as the sun goes down and the cloud of swifts reels low to the cathedral - nearby a natural audio mix of the cathedral bells at evening and a string quartet hired to play for an open air corporate do in the quadrant create a present discord -

Finally on the last evening, the landlady has the dog put down and immediately a sense of balance returns to the house, laughter and the two Italian students also staying are less frenetic in their pre-sleep energy and disruption -

The nearby fields are being harvested already, wide shock of vivid gold and the moon still evident, fading gently but there like a ghostly blemish in the early morning sky -

9/7/06

Travelling again; back to Winchester - length and breadth - on the coach to Penrith, the rain hammering down once more, a group of four twenty-something American boys in so'westers and huge rucksacks and looking like AWOLs from the US Army jabber constantly mid-bus - They look like clean cut Harvard types beneath the rainwater and layer of dirt, roughing it for their gap year - at the rear of the coach an old man coughs overly loud as if making a point; he's riding the bus back and forth, a proper Crow Charlie type in his rural lunacy and bedraggled jumper and hair (I love 'em) - he pushes his cough, forcing it out, like a parrot in tone, grating just behind the heads of these four boys, signaling the fact he doesn't like them; and best of all he plays on a hand-held video games machine that spouts out directions to the player in an accent not dissimilar to the four Americans: 'GO LEFT! GO LEFT! YEAH! YEAH! AAH! - it then repeats an eerie tune, a haunting synthesized piece like a soundtrack to the journey - the Yanks are talking about church - they attended a service this morning as they have in every stop they've made through Cumbria so far, but today they say they were let down; they wanted the 'full church experience' (I hear one say), the intimacy of sermons, the high mountain need - I assume they are evangelists of some kind from the bright revelations they are looking for, nothing humble about their desire for faith - and I gather they are from Los Angeles so linguistically speaking they are ev-Angel-ists!

Is writing fiction, storytelling or is it simply staring back at life through a window at whatever happens to be passing by? Shaven-headed pranksters caught between the reflections of whatever they see without? Perhaps it is just the transfer of language from one to another in order that disparate people can communicate, generate growth, ideas, charm?

Penrith on a Sunday is a time-trip back to what I remember of Sundays in the '70s and '80s - nothing moves except the bartered few making their way to, or arriving at, some bleak eatery or dark steakhouse - the only addition between then and now is the omnipresent McDonalds which despite warnings is still apparently the most popular place to eat on the day of rest - I am aware of charity shop windows like the eyes of the dead, plastic items and mothballs, dusty toys -

I think some more about writing - god knows why this is happening today but there you go - and wonder what purpose I have, and whether a purpose is necessary? Maybe this is a bigger question reflecting my life as it stands at present? Art imitating, and all that. But the joys of the page and the creation therein are with me more often than not these days - I've conquered some discipline in terms of regularity of writing, though my daily word count could still be much bigger - yet a regular pattern occurs which maintains a lack of sustenance: basically, I chop and change from one story to the next with no idea where each is going and just as soon as I've developed one another calls, waylaying me and the previous one is left for a while - this means that a first draft takes a hell of a time to complete -

I end up on the station platform (see what I mean?) - a long, sweeping area of space and possibility; so many people crossing paths, breaking out of old lives, rushing into new ones, bored, excited, tired, alive - filled, in this case, with bright red furniture and pillars marking the perspective, and a deep set flower bed spilling over with wild and tended plants -

The alternative is to surf around in a metaphorical T-shirt under a hot sun humming bars of 'Louie Louie', a glass of something cold at your fingertips - all of it in your tiny, tired mind - the one that just got a year older - keeping boredom and providence at bay - or waiting on the hilltops for the right moment of light, that perfect illumination that will record for eternity the correct nature of place - where old men have to explain their actions for fear of being misunderstood - all the gambling and the drinking, maybe the odd affair under cover of blitz or rocket attack - all the cigarettes, all the boxing, all the unutterable ignorance of a life they chose that did not lead them into learning, to gaining knowledge - their huge regrets carried on a long train through the uplands, weaving its way face on into the driving rain, the low cloud moaning in there, tired and wondering at the weight - a first class ticket on the Regret Express - but one man believes there should still be an opportunity to change minds, unambiguously; to provide mothers with a reason for all the bloodshed and agony; to let harrowed siblings have their grieving time there in the palms of their hands (which in reality should be filled with melted chocolate or the sticky residue of sweets or apples) - meanwhile Walden calls; Conrad suffers in London; Pike has sold all his possessions in an auction, all his effects gone on credit card repayments; and Crow Charlie is left gazing out at the fells and wishing he could get back to 1968 and watch The Who once again - He dreamt of being Keith Moon, with a wide open face and sense of dangerous fun - if he could have had that much opportunity - instead of which he settled for rugged warmth and security in a chair upholstered by his aunt and the hammer that shod horses and fixed fences and which he still carries in his belt loop -

The monochrome view from the farmhouse window, sometimes so simple, so beautiful he wants to weep; at other times so bleak that suicidal thoughts creep in - too much space and life disappearing, passing by -

His mother asks him: 'where is Kabul?'

He tells her and she asks: 'where is Afghanistan?'

He feels cheeky, something in him wants to shock her, scare her; so he replies: 'Not too far away, Mother. Close to Norway.'

He doesn't know why. It is in fact the howling effect of the train passing close by at the top end of the valley - the fallout of grief having this result on him - something sweet in his mouth might placate this feeling -

'D'you suppose a toffee?' his Mother suggests and he nods suddenly feeling like he is ten years old again.

A little later his mother asks why they are fighting out there in Afghanistan.

'Haven't they all had enough?' She is becoming semi-conscious, her monochrome tiredness overtaking her sat there by the unlit fire. Charlie doesn't answer, letting her drift off.

He is thinking of the time he waited for Mary Wakefield at Lancaster station. That night they went to a dance on the hill near the castle in an old Nissen hut decorated with lights and playing The Kinks and The Beachboys. She told Charlie that only a few months before she had boo-ed Bob Dylan while he was on stage in Manchester. Charlie had been impressed. At the end of the night they had promised each other that the following week they would go to the sea in Morecombe Bay or somewhere like that. But once he had got home he realized he would never call her again, he was too scared to see her again for fear of what he wanted to do with her. She telephoned the Post Office at Greystoke two weeks later and left a telegram message for him, it said:

'Hope you are okay stop Are we going to visit the sea question stop Meet you at same Sunday afternoon the twelfth stop Under the clock again stop Mary Message ends'

Brave woman, he had thought then. Still did.

Dad was alive then and he had been impressed with Charlie's luck, but he never let on and sent out warnings via Mum -

It was then that Charlie had foreseen the future and knew he did not have the courage to change it, to move against the inevitable - he looked into the crystal ball of his parent's eyes and stayed - he never mentioned Mary again - Dad 'celebrated' three weeks later by going on the drunk that led him to a shattered arm and fourteen stitches in his head - the beginning of the legacy and Charlie's inheritance - Mary had probably gone to university or to the sea, he never knew and never tried to find out.

Even so, he thought of her many times in the quiet moments like this with Mum asleep and nothing doing for a few hours. His courage had boarded the train and now form time to time aimed for fourteen stitches of a Saturday night falling asleep on the sofa with his mouth wide open and his arms crossed over his chest replaying the generations -

Trying to remain upright in the wind.

'Silly situation isn't it?' His Mum was waking.

And Charlie wished he did not feel so keenly; that he were more stupid, a regular buffoon - that would have been easier on them all probably -

For the killing of sheep, the guts and blood in the mud, the squealing of lambs and pigs were sights and sounds he wished he knew nothing of; how had he become immune to this pain? Mary wouldn't have let him.

It had been the end of that week that Dad was laid up in bed, groaning in sufferance that Charlie had learnt he could talk to crows -

And what of it? Now, what of it?

8/7/06

THIS DAY LAST YEAR

Jodrell Bank distant, watching over climbers here on the peak edge - clambering the soap-bar shaped rock formations patterned red/yellow/green with moss; the edge reflecting itself in every part -

'You are always seeking knowledge,' she says as we ascend - as she does I spot metallic coated beetles gathering on a slab of rock, milling in spirals -

Communication across immense distances both on and off the planet; these white discs dominate the landscape - giant soup tureens, blood cells, plate techtonics, saucers, slabs of bone (scapulae maybe?), robots, vitreous tears standing on opposing stout legs, blisters - all clean, clear, unnaturally so in comparison to the hefty, dark exposed blocks of basalt and granite here, eroded by the action of water and air, by trees and roots - polar opposites sharing space -

They might prove factions, some antagonistic pull, capable of constant battle?

I was going to see her, if I could, straining to get away; the satellites moored between two peaks named Lesser and Greater, both tough to climb. I thought she might be on top of one.

7/7/06

And it seemed that the light changed, grew more insistent; something mixed and dramatic and with great purpose rose up from the summit of Cat Bells toward the sky rather than the other way around - pale it was in the middle but bleeding out to a blue-grey and it parted in some manner so that a beam appeared to illuminate the summit. This as the transistor radio I had perched between two thick branches on an evergreen chimed mid-day. Big Ben, once an everyday vision, now so very far away. As I stood in the garden here, looking out over the lake toward that fell, I remembered the way we had all stood in silence last year, a week to the day after those bombings; how the whole city had stopped and became as quiet as it was here today (despite even the RAF practice run reminding us we are at war). Nothing and no-one moved then as now; Cat Bells and that odd formation of light, changing, outpouring, taken up then down across the hillside with a bitter wind ensuing later - sometimes I like nothing better than to break the mould and remove myself from what everyone else is doing, I'll often seek out solitude over company, but not today - to day it felt keener because of the unified commemorations elsewhere, and most importantly in the city I once thought of, until recently, as my home. I wanted above all to see the faces of my friends there, to look upon them living strong, courageous - with all that might keep them safe -

5/7/06

The actors were locked out of themselves. Doors slammed into their paths - backstage and elsewhere. They missed their cues. Perhaps it was the fault of the oncoming storm caught over the mountains and fells nearby? Forked lightning and thunder knocked out the early evening and ranged on into the night. The actors carried on as they so often do whilst about them the lights flickered and the power went down more than once. But in the bar afterwards they found they could no longer speak to each other in the same amiable way that they had only hours before. They eyed each other suspiciously, drank each others drinks without asking, and ignored the anecdotes and tales of past roles. It was a mess. Egos bled out of ear holes and onto the floor, some in floods of tears that dampened the foyer irreparably, others so simply wounded eventually had nothing left to give and became thespian miasma there on the carpet or chose to run out of the theatre and into the tempestuous night never to be seen again!

3/7/06

What I learnt today:

The afternoon is pale for an old man, a limbo;
Brambles are rampant and primeval; they cut you up, make the skin of your arm a palette for their signature;
Times don't change where the military are concerned, only their equipment does;
Experience counts;
A mother's love might just work wonders;
'Great' Britain is a mythological concept;
Sonic attack exists: Palestinian children suffer stress from the sonic booms of Israeli jets flying over Gaza and deliberately breaking the sound barrier - but, also, you can become politicized too young these days;
I am a lucky man - there is no bloodshed on my doorstep;
Thunder is very beautiful;
Jesus is not always your friend;
The Taliban are not a 'spent force' - if you find a 'night letter' pinned to your door in Kandahar you may not see the following dawn;
Why did no-one design those England World Cup flags you see everywhere on cars to fly at half mast? Will no one ever learn?;
Continuum is a great word to describe the rainfall I've witnessed here for over two hours;
Responsibility is a fact of life - why do so many deny it's existence?

28/6/06

Ever tried killing time in High Wycombe? You can't, because the place is already dead!

The ultra-suburb - desperation and depression being deliberately ignored or hidden beneath the spin of Blair's 'cool Brittania' - but what lies at the core of that message is a poverty of the soul -

What then resides at the heart of England? I ask myself this question as I sit in the bus station at High Wycombe, having traveled so much from town to town over the past few months, exposed to it.

Discontent.

Our history is pock-marked with it: Orgreave. Edgehill. Twyford Down. The General Strike. The Tolpuddle Martyrs. Brixton. Handsworth.

It is the foundation of our culture.

Its current form is suppressed by the ever-growing 'ley-line' network of shopping malls spreading across the country and rising incessantly: flavourless, characterless additions to the landscape. These places try to placate the increasing alcoholism, the hooliganism, the homelessness, and the racism by feeding us a myth of multicultural consumerism without class. In so doing they support the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses territorialism of the suburban nuclear unit, of the great English home as castle to be defended from outsiders and change by the acquisition of the Plasma screen or new car etc etc.

But these places continually fail. Why? Because nothing can cure the discontent at the heart of the English psyche. The need and desire to consume and add and crave for it to be repeated again tomorrow.

I should know.

And like some grand ironic joke the middle-classes (don't kid yourself that they went a long time ago) try to make themselves feel more open-minded, more 'continental' by patronizing the endless stream of cafes and coffee shops promoting a pseudo-European lifestyle of espresso bars and dolce vita in the high street - at the same time bemoaning vocally and in print the fact that Europeans are 'stealing our jobs' - the English wear their suspicions brazenly, they have centuries of experience -

And there we pass out of time as we know it - slowing down into a new timeframe, suburban time which tick-tocks backward and forward between the past and the present with tremendous ease; inch by inch we make our way through scenes in the marketplace that have existed for eons: people looking for a place of easy refuge ending up at some god-forsaken flea pit at the end of town trying to keep warm, aching to be moving on -

In this year, this day Newlands Bus Station

Down among the discarded: fag butts, Lotto scratch cards, shoes, and people - the sickening inverse vertigo of 1970s urban planning hemming you in amid the dark concrete pillars and nicotine clouded Perspex kiosks, all narrated by countless chapters of graffiti - and along thin line of shopping bags at the edges accompanied by tired ankles and faded arses - where young Polish women congregate together to share a laugh and a fag after work, together for fear of the constant snide remarks they get and the crass sexual insults from the bored boys of town (is this the way it's always been, does danger get removed through historical hindsight or do we genuinely care less about others?) - and the huddled hat-finks and rat-finks arrive, the loners and the losers, the edgy-eyed and the genuinely afraid community cared for?

A bombshell - the resonance of plate metal deafeningly echoing every time a bus or coach rolls over it on the way to the exit ramp; the noise is painful, everyone winces in suspension, nervy now the end of day tiredness whiteout has come - waiting, doing overtime as the bus they want breaks down somewhere on the M40 and they are left to second guess its whereabouts: a loner in his late thirties with two small rucksacks plastered to his sweaty T-shirt and only £30 in his pocket for the week and two young girls, Nubians descendents, talking about boys at college and smiling warmly at each other and singing from time to time; young lives still full of hope, capable of vistas of life, leaps and dreams -

Looking down at the dust and I count beneath my seat alone 38 cigarette butts, some chewed clear of filters, others fresher and marked with lipstick - a photographer comes along snapping a few pictures of the decay, some portraits - a woman walks up to him after a while:

You're not welcome here, she says.
What do you mean?
Your sort.
My sort?
Perverts, she says now louder than before.
Wait a minute, he replies, I just take photos - they're -

The woman cracks him in the ribs. She's a mother of three on her way home after her late shift at Tescos. Her action gives allowance to others and so it is that they take it. The photographer, who may or may not be innocent, I don't know, escapes with a bloody nose and bruised ribs -

Ten minutes later a police patrol crawls in, parking up in a side bay; the two officers within the car stare out, scanning the collected passengers, the bread-line if you will and then drives away. They do not get out to examine the six little pools of blood on the concrete, trailing away toward a mock cowboy display in the shopping mall window at the rear of the bus station -

All is quiet now -

There's a prayer on my lips but it won't form into words; it escapes me -

U.S. INTERVENTION IN WONDERLAND

Take 1973 beyond apparition

I touch memory
Funny its
Still sticky to the tips
Like napalm

The door creaks open
Feels like it
May even crumble

The game within was hide 'n seek
Years ago -

Children scurry across a waxed floor
Someone speaks into a microphone
Announces a birthday boy
Joy by the July window
Banquet tables rigged with ice cream
Melting; suddenly

The TV in the corner relays images of My Lai

The Mad Hatter and
White Rabbit lead us
To wonderland

Where traces of ivy and cotoneaster grow
In the road
Ready to be burnt

Then harvested?


County Durham - May 2004

25/6/06 - Cumbria

'Moving, always moving - I am lucky in this', I said. 'Once I thought it might be difficult, frightening, but then you take a step and find it's easier than you thought. But places like this - I indicated the town through the car window - I don't know, they haven't moved in themselves and I find this incredibly sad. They appear to an outsider to be static, forgotten. Or lost. How can anywhere or anyone be so lost in this day and age? So out of touch? Unless, of course it is a desire?'

We pass north to the coast. To Workington. Sunday evening. The town full of red-shirts spilling out of the pubs onto the dry streets, surrounded by flags of St. George. The girls in next to nothing in the hope of post-match sex and the boys stumble and bemoan the poor show of the nation's team, one syllable between them at this stage of the proceedings. There is, always is in Workington, the threat of the volatile - the drunken punch, the bit of bloody fun to pass the time; even better if you can find an outsider to take it out on - and so the hunt too. Groups of ten or so gather on street corners, watching the road like gangs of frontier townsmen bored and looking for trouble, waiting for it to just stumble into town by mistake; the air charged with implicit stares, familial and neighborhood tensions even in the midst of collective celebration - and the Bobbies try to go un-noticed tonight, shirking in doorways in their day-glo yellow vests, wishing they were somewhere else -

Science is how capitalism knows the world; violence is how the ignorant find theirs - On the rim, the coastal edge, shadowing both ends of the town, the surreal rhythmic stretch of two wind-farms - a constant hypnotic turning of the gargantuan blades, like a physical chant trying to calm the atmosphere, disperse the charge at the same time as creating one -

The smell of tar and the millennial mud of the exposed estuary, high full of proteins and salient nourishment that was the source of all living things; the gradual emergence of the sentient, the arthropod and the eventual biped here - waiting for the flood - immobile now, perhaps stuck in the mud? The nuclear age is played out day by day, in the restraint of poverty and under-investment, in the hard edged role of male and female as possession; the turning cars souped up for engine throb and shagging in the back seat; the window gazing and the pram-pushing and the despondent dog-owners necking to watch a young girls arse pass by - and then it strikes you: everyone looks the same here - this is tribal England, and it has not changed since Doomsday, the bloodlines are without alteration, or genetic influx - Man, woman, child - no distinction bar size: the middle aged women all fat, close on obese; the young men sport the same colour hair and the same close crop - and the older men, thirties upward, all carry a faded, tired look in their eyes -

'Do you know these people?' I asked my passenger.

'Nothing to do with me' came the reply - 'oh, wait, hang on . . . .'

Crummock, Cumbria - June 2006

Water Meadow, Winchester - June 2006

Dog Fight, Winchester - June 2006 

16/6/06 - 17/6/06 - Winchester & London

MY RESTLESS ANATOMY

Sitting in the cathedral grounds in Winchester, alone, just a bag of food and about £15 left to my name - a dead ringer for General Pinochet walks past me through the trees, maybe, just maybe…… I ought to shout, to denounce him before these people, mob him, and make him pay -

My head is peeling all over, slivers of dry skin coming away, irritating my scalp - yet I look healthier than ever, they say, in this singular freedom - the evening summer breeze playing about the trees and the tombs - how far have I come? To be sat here like a part-time tramp? Wondering where the next paycheck will come from. In some ways I relish the challenge, surviving on next to nothing, reducing all that I need and carry and eat down to a minimum, alive on the wits edge - in other ways I am beholden to a deep fear of age and insecurity -

- Yet -

I understand and accept I should have no knowledge, leading to learning and thereby (question) to good writing? The necessity of discovery, a cleansing of mind that could be intrinsically altered in the quest for expression; for ideas and knowledge found or learnt on the way not beforehand, in process - a story, ways of being perhaps, symbols? - this I begin to comprehend should be my approach instead of the belief that all good artists (writers particularly) know much before they set out on a creative endeavour; it ought to be the opposite - the chance to widen ones understanding of a subject, human nature, meditating on existence, on images, themes and actions; or further, on the need for love, company, gratification, temptation, desire, passion; on the good and the bad actions taken in search for these things or as a result of these things; of time and solitude; of the sun and the traveler; of the souls' wide open endeavour to maintain light -

An example: the multitude of books old and new laid out in the dim cloister at the rear of the cathedral - a quiet, timeless poetry of place and objects together; a stillness beyond the obvious, working away on a physical and metaphysical plane of course - an evening to learn of space as the best medium to carry one's faith; and between the leaves of a book -

The close blackbirds ignore me where I sit beneath a huge, aged fir tree beside another Hepworth sculpture (echoing that one at Snape); they hunt for worms, gently cantering close and are joined by an officious looking Jackdaw who walks among them disapprovingly - I am become nothing more than part of their daily environment and this pleases me no end - I can be invisible -

Two young women, late teens/early twenties are filming each other on hand-held DV cameras; one climbs the low bole of a cherry tree across the quadrant from where I sit - they are laughing gently, intimately and their laughs echo off the four medieval walls -

What is a vision and, by extension, a visionary? Is it a reactive state or a proactive one? Is its fuel exclusively without or within? I'd like to think it was always the latter, in the natural world (whether by another extension that includes the man-made or not I am not sure) - Oliver's Battery - Leonardo's Sycamore Helicopter - Oppenheimer's Basic Destroyer - all found without, external observation consistent with dreams -

- Like

am I living a lie? People have come to think of me recently as a modern day Dick Whittington (they told me so in Suffolk and here now in this deadly county) - a bag on wheels and a laptop, carried hither and thither across country - maybe I am if you put it that way, though it seems too romantic to be the case because my movements are out of economic necessity (I reply) - but didn't Whittington go to London looking for gold (they answer swiftly)? -

The camera girls come near, standing in the shadow of a dense, succulent tree over by the north wall - they are taking more intimate pictures of each other now, the lens close up to their faces, their eyes - maybe they are falling in love? First lovers each? And these images are records of this new emotional place they find themselves in? Recorded for posterity; either to be erased in time when it all goes sour, or else kept as testament to those initial days of lust and excitement when they look back years hence - still giggling, still testing the branches, still laughing in the religious shadows of a cathedral - like it was only yesterday -

The calm navigation of their souls - the meditative steps inside -

And in continuation, I wake at dawn the next day, collecting myself and my belongings in a room I've slept in for only three nights, with its small wooden puppet theatre in the corner dusty but well loved once; and trundling the bag out of the door in silence so as not to wake anyone in the house I see as I go the quiet shadow of the Japanese girl I'd been told rents a room but whom I have not met at all, now crossing the threshold at this early hour with a small china bowl before her, and a red tear of tiredness in her eye - and the bright morning, a glimpse of a fresh view through a sloping, green corn field toward hedgerows and copses with the early mist hanging low in the fold, collecting heavy - nobody else witnessing it but me on that road, this clarity of the new day with its wide open possibilities, its ready anticipation (even though mine is fairly well planned) -

Carrying on up the hill I recall the things I learnt about old friends last night - new proposals of marriage in Northern Ireland; an old flame now living with a German composer in London; recent friends returning to Aldeburgh already to watch performances given by people they know; A.F. has returned from a restorative trip to Greece where he read Proust; PC is in France for the christening of a friends baby; and my family (nieces, brothers, sisters-in-law, aunts, parents) are all well met in northern Italy - that is good - important - I have deep affection for them all -

Bruce Chatwin (a nod to him in this entry's title) reflects on the importance of the nomad in the culture of past societies (particularly those on the steppes of Russia and Mongolia) - oftentimes they were the herders of vast numbers of horses or cattle, and were connected to (or were themselves) the settlements shaman - the conjurers of space and time, of visions beyond the known, the witnesses to what was over the horizon - yet also the healers and advisors, totally practical, the watchers of the villagers flanks, and bearers of change or alarm - without the nomads the 'settlers' would not have survived - As I fell asleep last night my journey today played itself out in my mind - it ends (or begins?) with a kind of void waiting to be 'filled' - I think it was connected to this urge for discovery and learning I mentioned earlier and seems to be a result of my recent restless existence - the void is not empty however, it is full of questions, anticipation - it is not taxing or confusing, it is surprisingly quiet and restful, a musing place! Maybe, to paraphrase Marguerite Duras, it is 'the writer's unknown'? Finally, I am out on the pilgrims trail, outside my tribe (my family) trying to report back as often as possible, having to be patient, imagining myself with them - and so I slept -

And after all can we help the genetic programme? Or even dare to attempt to change it? What would be the point? If one has a genetic disposal toward restlessness can nit be fought, reconditioned? Or must it be allowed to take one where it will? Unbound. Or is that just a vision of romanticism that is totally impractical in this age? Perhaps it is now decreed that wanderlust must be kept in check in all aspects of our lives - free only to be expressed in so far as which channel we switch to or which websites we allow ourselves to visit - Yet there is so much benefit to be had; a searching quality to life that is important; a kind of open-eye form of living that moves out into the day, constantly hunting for information and inspiration, and that brings contentment, a rare commodity these days -

I have come to believe in omens on this journey; in objects found that have a great deal of power even if they are only conjurers of memory - you must still be careful with them, they are both delicate and strong - wood especially - the power of natural forces upon it (the tide, wind, movement, abrasion) allows it the opportunity to become different in character given time, it will retain traces of its past but is irrefutably altered for the better - so it is with the allowance of wanderlust -

I am reminded of my Italian grandfather's long walk home in 1944/1945 from a prison camp in Germany all the way back to Piedmont in northern Italy, over the Alps!! I never met him, he died penniless 35 or so years ago, but his story of endurance and subsequent suffering has taken on a huge importance and significance to me since I first learnt of it - outside of the evident tragedy inherent in it, I believe it set up a form of 'learnt' nomadism in my family (and in many people in the subsequent post-war generations e.g. Kerouac et al) that has been passed on - my father moving across Europe, then on into the UK and when I was growing up we move again and again, leaving my 'rootless' and therefore perpetually restless (a good thing) - perhaps tragedy, mutated and relearned, has become joy? Balancing the past in its own small, yet significant, way?

One skill I have never learnt is the ability to sleep upright, say sat in a chair in a railway station - a useful art for the traveler - You do have to love a city café for its egalitarian invitation to all (including the tramp who is sleeping upright in that chair over there at the edge of the patio) - regulars, irregulars, passengers, stay-at-homes, visitors, thinkers, lovers, and poseurs - they come and they partake in good surroundings - some never want to leave, after all, if the café is good life becomes so much easier -

14/6/06 - Winchester

Despondency in this dry, depressed town, this half-life of community care rejects and drug pushers - I carry a sense of loss with me through the evening, a new struggle solely connected with the change of location, this sudden move from Suffolk - and a pall of bad fortune comes with it, people chasing me for payments, friends subsuming and ignoring me in conversation, wiping out my words on the telephone - do they consider me dumb? To be bullied? I am aware of fear and silence; out of place, seeking solace in stray walks without direction or awareness (unlike my usual self) - a sense of reckoning - desperately seeking the magical, the transportive, in the riverside meadows here -

I stutter from stem to shallow brook, the reflections there are uneventful - they leave me confused even in their stray beauty; something growls beneath, a new sense of overcrowding - maybe I need to penetrate a deeper realm of solitude again? The drastic measure of breath, something closer to a meditation, an asceticism perhaps - but devoted to what? These things overwhelm me on my evening walk; I am guarded, reserving strength - I feel myself to be a shadow of the moon, yet I know I could experience a curvature of light without regret if only I could see it; my feet hold the only sound of hope tonight, crunching on the stony path or through the waterside grass - yet I am looking for the tide and the beach where I was in true hock to freedom without disparagement or judgment -

I reconnoiter the aged flint walls and medieval gateways; the hard, bleak crosses and metallic halos encroached by insects - in a cloister I read the spines of books laid out in cruciform and realize the only word that strikes me as having any importance is 'chymical' - an old spelling and means of discovery - I imagine the process of cameras then, that 'chymical' endeavour of eye and science, the quiet dark of the developing chamber, the smell of nitrates and bleach and emulsion - my grandfather long dead watching over my shoulder, smiling his approval, wishing he could have a go - looking, recording; a contemplation and reward - maybe that is my new credo and rhythm, the walk, the observer, the shutter clicking in time with history?

13/6/06

Aldeburgh to Winchester

In Winchester the insane Peter Baumann accosts me in a bar - his stream of consciousness ramblings jump all over the place as his mind cannot keep control - sometimes it comes close to genius, other times it is frightening - image piled up on image, some volatile disturbance deep in his psyche - he starts with reports of pianos on Brighton beach, his solid head moving sideways for fear he will be ejected form the premises - then his speech runs something like this: yeah, yeah fucking Brighton, the pianos, do you know who I am? It's hard for you - but you see I was fucked up the arse, sorry ladies forgive me - yeah, yeah - shake here, here, remember me - and so it goes and he offers a tattooed hand for me to shake, and reclines in the armchair in his shorts and T-shirt then leaps up and says something inaudible before leaving -

A puppet theatre placed in my bedroom - dusty and aged, it leaps to life whilst I am asleep - King Alfred has burnt the cakes and is running from his terrifying cook who wields her rolling pin and brings down the retribution of a blazing inferno starting in the kitchen - when the devil comes to take them both just before they are burnt to a crisp, it is the King who sells his soul and his (supposedly) scary cook relinquishes her body to the flames and to the afterlife - there is a thunderous round of applause - when I awake the show is long over but there is a dry taint of cinders on the air and of course the faint singing of a chorus of 28 amazing voices -

I have one question on my mind when I am fully awake, which I won't answer here: can you become attached to a landscape? And if so, why?

12/6/06

An impenetrable sea mist arriving over the mill-pond water coated like mercury with the night - fudging the distinction between water and night sky - yet the moon above remains bright, full, untouched by this fog - the engine of a boat never seen, no lights, no clue to its whereabouts, the sound carried greater distances at night, with nothing to reflect the sound away - even inland the sound of the waves breaking on the shore are audible at night - this constancy is a beautiful thing - peace-making with place, history, another journey of self - beneath the revealed craters of the moon and the wayward avenue it creates on the gentle waves - but words can't really suffice here, only music can do justice to the sea like this, it’s the only medium that can come close to the potential and the reality and make art of it - set the right tone; my words can't hope to come close -

I'll take the old red bike along the coast road - watch a last Harrier cruise low over the salt marsh, his blue-grey wings idling in the morning breeze, head tucked down low for hunting -

The clowns Flip, Flap and Flop are separated and not happy - the youthful vigour of their time on the coast will not pass easily, it has imprinted itself on their souls and they remain pleasantly marked -

10/6/06

ORFORD NESS: STATION OF THE SUN

The barren testament of men who believed they were greater than gods, than nature, 'the destroyers' - pioneers of 'new' warfare, the ultimate 'shock and awe' of the techno-nuclear arsenal: invisible weapons; H-Bombs; offensive microwaves and radar - and the tests and counter-tests to observe and control impact and splashdown; or the results of lethality and vulnerability, of fragmentation and inordinate vibration - and all this at the edge of the world where the land still moves, silting up and changing, aggregating itself, eating itself and spewing itself further; where the sound of the universe comes, settling and attempting to heal history, to redress the balance -

In today's sudden heat, quicksilver appears to rise from the baking horizon and skin burns quickly in the pellucid morning -

I cross to the Ness on the small ferry, the first of the day, from Orford quay - a thin young man, the skin on his face pre-aged from exposure, guides the boat across the Ore, ear bent to his portable radio - in the prow sit twelve passengers, visitors, some wearing hats to ward the sun - one man carries a small grey plastic microphone which he uses to speak, holding it up to his throat and emitting a robot-like sound, clipped and void of tonal variation - His name is Coe Powell and this is his pilgrimage back to the place that robbed him of his voice - He worked on the Ness as an engineer for the AWRE (Atomic Weapons Research Establishment) in the 60s and he believes some exposure to radioactive materials caused the throat cancer that beset him a decade and a half later - Now, he says, gazing into the middle distance as we approach the jetty, the current moving faster on this side of the river, he comes here two or three times a year as part of his 'exorcism'; trying to piece together the past (both personal and historical), the place has become an obsession since it was opened to the public in 1993 - as indeed it seems to have engendered in all users since it was acquired by the MOD (or War Department as it was called then) in 1913 - obsession, destruction -

Redshank call in the reclaimed marshes close to the jetty area, up-ending flights, scared and scattered - on the horizon the aerial masts of the BBC World Service are shrouded in a syrupy heat haze in the old 'Cobra Mist' area, facing out to sea like waiting sentinels or servants - sucking in and spewing forth invisible words and reports, mirrors for a changing and violent world whose seeds were sewn here in the not-too-distant past -

Cobra Mist: the top secret 'backscatter radar' project run by the US military through the 60's and into the early 70's when it ceased operation, thwarted by 'severe noise problems of undetermined origin' - myths have since grown surrounding the activities here, even to the point that some say UFOs have landed or were the source of the unidentified sonic 'attacks' - who knows? For now it is still out of bounds to visitors even though, supposedly, it has long since been given over to civilian purposes - yet the squat, grey control building is remains covered in sound-absorbent plates - a patchwork of baffles and sonic disruptors, the sci-fi jargon adopted and relished by the military for their gargantuan, lethal toys -

And how the names spilled from their pens and their pursed stiff upper lips: Blue Danube (Britain's first atomic bomb, built in the 1950s) and Yellow Sun Mark 2 - the sun as icon and symbol - appropriated because the weapons would burn with the power of a million suns and because man believed that overnight he had become the creator, the one universal rule; standing outside time, unanswerable to any natural force - the power to leave behind desert and dust -

I stand before two large 'tumuli' at the southern end of the spit - the Labs - metal constructs and piping 'growing' out of their inland facing edges, wide concrete mouths at the other, screaming out to sea - these lead on to the 'pagoda' buildings, the test chambers (Labs 4 and 5) that look like square mushrooms and are the trademark silhouettes of the Ness - the earth and shingle pitted and undulating as if given way deep beneath during test explosions - stray metal objects, some a livid red in their rusting, are scattered and so twisted, spelling out words in new languages: cuneiforms, ciphers (to the gods of war looking down, waiting for the correct plea to come through?) - the whole spit is so unearthly and desolate, dramatic, surrounded by the sudden horizon line to nothingness - the dry, burning sky above, the harsh scrub and blistered sand and shingle make me lose track of my location, the eye has little to corroborate distance so all distances become one and the same, the pervading sense of being in a desert broken only by the sinister and apocalyptic traces of man -

Then a singing note comes on the wind, rising and falling in odd harmony, a thrumming deep inside the air itself and I am baffled as to its source - sitting in the Bomb Ballistics Building, looking out through the observers window across the striated shingle that runs to the sea - and that song just rises from nowhere, pitch perfect - I suspect it is the force of the wind running through some material in the building itself, the metal struts maybe, vibrating at a magical frequency and becoming a constant hum - or maybe, just maybe, it is the undetermined noise that stopped Cobra Mist? That the earth itself began to sing as defence, protection? Or maybe it is simply the background hum the universe makes which even the US military could not reckon with. I'd like to think so. Here where the view out to bomb impact sites is bleached by the overwhelming daylight, where kine-theodolites recorded the descent of freshly dropped bombs into the ocean - I'd like to think it took nothing more than simple music to stop the arrogant Argonauts of progress -

Up on the roof there is a large, heavy set of viewing glasses mounted on a steel podium - their lenses are tinted and aged now so that when one looks through them they add a kind of puce yellow tint to the view; and gazing at the two 'pagodas' this lends them an added hint of post-apocalyptic nightmare; that the light of the sun has become semi-obscured by risen dust-clouds of atomic explosions and fallout, and all beneath is subsumed by heat and dry dust, of the earth trying to come to terms with its own radical demise and struggling, sick, yellow -

Down on the beach, detritus collects at the high tide mark, a line of blackened seaweed marking the furthest point inland that the water gets and among it a multitude of artifacts brought here by the deep currents out in the North Sea and thrown up onto the land:

faded pink plastic sunscreen and baby oil bottles;
yellow plastic spades;
red 'Prince' cigarette packets with health warnings in Russian or Polish;
yellow hard hats;
shoes, sandals, trainers - always in singles, never in pairs, and totally forlorn, hinting at some watery demise;
wire mesh and netting in all shades of azure blue and stinking of the sea;
and a brown leather glove giving the shoreline the finger -

Lost histories - fresh journeys passing.

8/6/06

The days bake - elemental - swarms of the upper middle classes arrive alongside the biting June bugs - at Snape the festival is beginning and the hats are out in the heat haze, the river turned to a mercury glut at Iken - the rest of us pass the time with chips and ice cream and long walks out into the marshes or along the beach - I venture up to Thorpeness, plastic tables spread out in front of the 'Italian bistro', the greasy end of the tourist trap - inside the owner keeps an eye on his three immigrant workers, he smokes constantly behind his net-curtained flat at the top while they kick dust in the car-park, smoking too, waiting for custom; very good boys -

A piece of bone marked like part of an Ordnance Survey map - dry white, with measurements and a latitude inscribed - the paler blue square of the sea and a low tide mark, then the contours of a beach and the immediate inland features, faded on the marrow - I attempt to pick it up, but it is rooted into the dry earth there and how far into the ground it goes I do not know -

MP3 player unexpectedly plays Slim Gaillard's 'Slim's Jam' whilst in random mode (the best way to use it really) - that happy track, with your man Slim scatting away and chatting to Diz and Bird who it appears have just walked in on the recording session and decided to join in with a couple of choruses in A Flat; much to the delight of Slim (and us) who scats on vout - I realize a connection - the first person to play this track to me, maybe fifteen or so years ago, was a writer and poet called Neil; I used to work for him in a small but excellent bookshop he owned in Hertfordshire. He was writing a novel at the time, amongst other things - a crime novel - and it was a pretty intense and volatile period in which he would spend hours tapping away at his typewriter in the flat above the shop and then from time to time explode into tantrums, shouting at the work or himself before storming off to the local pub for a pint or two at lunchtime. A couple of times he smashed the shop up right in front of me. Anyway, I don't want to paint a bad picture of the man because he was excellent company and kind hearted. After all the effort, and despairing of the mediocrity of Hertfordshire and its poorly read locals, he chose to sell off the shop and relocate to - this is where the connection comes in - Aldeburgh, where I believe he was living when his novel was published and where he also completed a life of the poet George Crabbe - in fact, I believe I can locate his house on Crabbe Street -

Bongo Sue arrives at DP's Bar with her collection of drums, large masses of dark wood with animal skins stretched taut - Bongo Sue, a Yorkshire woman clad in tight black with slashes along the arms exposing skin, tribal fetters and long hair, who unleashes deep rhythms there in the middle of the bar, her head swaying and the tempo quickening - the evening crowd thins and then thickens again with the newly attracted: all the young and old hippie dreamers of the East Coast gather in that tiny place, the Polish barman smiling magnanimously and doling out San Miguel for the hottest night of the year so far - the chorus go wild and start to dance and pulsate in the middle whilst others look on bemused but smiling - Bongo Sue, joined by anyone who can get close to one of the many drums she's brought, is in her element and with her confidence growing plays on for a good hour, palms reddened with blood, hair cascading and shoulders swinging and rocking like crazy -

2/6/06 - 4/6/06

Laid low with a ravenous vomiting bug - hallucinating deaths and fate in the early hours, mid fever - shaking sweats - drifting in and out of sleep, stomach spasms and waves of nausea - watching the dawn break - all day body heavy and wasted, barely able to walk - the sun cascades without, tempting all things to wander, but I cannot - I pass the day on the sofa and periodically rise weakly to drink water - dreams of bugs and other biting insects, some microscopic crawling across my skin; of swamps and infectious airborne disease - itches on the skin, the sense of tiny feelers there and mandibles penetrating skin, sucking blood -

The nub of a boat moves along the edges of the Alde; the muddy, silver fringe - gulls rise and Shelduck disturbed - the dumb greyness above settles in for the rest of the day - the boat is cross cruising, showing passengers the habitats; birds like Cormorant atop exposed ancient wood-posts - the moving, hypnotic reeds - what am I looking for when I gaze from this window? Always, something hidden in the landscape and thereby in me; that constant mystery that I have never found or been able to name in all these years - that question, the unidentifiable reason for gazing, is always with me and it means I cannot sit still for long and, say, converse about stuff; I am drawn out there - interrupted, distracted, attracted constantly, without effort - for the secret in the hidden curve where the river turns briefly north - what is there?

31/5/06

In DP's Bar, Dylan plays loud on the stereo - two local men in their 70s sit at the bar drinking bottled ale and making recommendations - on the wall photos of local celebrities (mostly from the old TV series Crossroads) and a huge pencil sketch of a semi-naked Marilyn Monroe; in the corner a pile of board games for drinkers to sit and play - the windows are full of maritime detritus: odd concoctions of nettings and dried fish, a stuffed crocodile, buoys etc - Tim is in the bar tonight, sculptor and boat maker, he has just finished building a 46 footer called Ganymede - he grew up in Hertfordshire, studied Building in St Albans then moved here to Aldeburgh by way of Barcelona - he tells us of the raves and outdoor parties that still go on out here, huge affairs still organized via phone and text messages etc. as they used to be way back when - he talks in detail of his dub reggae collection and in particular his love of a remixed 'Dark Side of the Moon' - the bar closes but nobody is asked to leave, indeed a few young locals turn up and tap on the locked front door and get let in with familiar 'hellos' - Dave, the barman, comes over and sits with us - bespectacled and bearded, maybe in his late 20's - Tim asks him to play his Hoover at which we are momentarily baffled until he brings over the metal length of suction tubing from a vacuum cleaner, with the cleaning head still on, and starts to blow into it - it makes the sound of a didgeridoo, and he blows with the same circular breathing technique - we laugh in amazement, he continues, changing the tonality and playing on - who would have thought something like this existed in quaint old Aldeburgh?

25/5/06

A SNAPE 'MYTH'

Solid line of reed beds broken below by verdant river bank - stray scent of evergreens - an old couple move serenely through this toward the wooden sluice posts; the pair appear isolated in the vast landscape - whitening, bleached - behind me a Marsh Warbler calls - and the mysterious 'boof' boom of a Bittern is a mellow, subliminal horn seemingly emanating from the earth itself - a cornflower spider on my thigh - I sit where one stone meets another; gentle blue mouths and heliotropic distensions - the native merchant recovers his boat and winnows the hemp ropes - 25 people move in a landscape toward him and his controlled crossing point; when tomorrow comes the banks will once again be receiving the rains and no passage could be made so it is today they must move or not at all - the temperature brings solace, no action diluted - the heat plays at last on skin, the awesome eye of bronze is with us and the far rhythm of muddy poets and singers can be heard playing a work song - thoughts come fast, some grim, some happy, molten, bright - patches of daisies criss-cross the meadow grasses, smattered like pockets of light - then some shadow, some impish turn through the reed screen, as if seeing into another world - the breeze parts this, turns and burrs the flight path of Swifts and melancholy Shelduck - the merchant moves across the water and the passage begins -

23/5/06

Huge degraded curtain, over twenty foot high. Once a luscious, velveteen red now blackened with age and the gilt edging corrupted, unraveling. Beneath the curtain, which still hangs a good eight feet from the ground, is a screen with the Japanese style silhouettes of young men and women in an 18th century bawdy house. The characters flap wads of money and raise cut-glass decanters.

A rake's progress has begun. He enjoys and fears it.

Aldeburgh -
May 2006

22/5/06

In the cathedral space of the Maltings - torrents of rain sound on the high roof; a constant, lullaby hush, an aural backdrop and compliment to the music here within -
now it floods the marshes, the reed beds and river stretch become spectres in the downfall; reach out and they'll be gone -
the chorus move across the stage as one, 28 people singing together in this cavernous place, warm red brick, ochre beams - the scars of it's past reflected in paler marks or odd lineaments of filled space where the bricks change pattern and position -
echoes of laughter, the steps of pilgrims; the dry smell of malt still in the being of place, in the wooden slats, the proofing, the vents -

21/5/06

No wonder Crabbe and Britten wrote of the citizens of Aldeburgh shunning Peter Grimes and turning him into an outcast; they are a sour people. Cold, snooty folk who evidently feel they are something special or select. Rude too. Even the alcoholic newsagent whom I buy my newspaper from this morning can't bring himself to smile or say 'thanks.' Say anything at all - he gruffly takes my money and his lips do not move from their sour line. Then there's the seventeen/eighteen year old waitress in the Cabin café who shows me utter disdain when I ask for a cup of coffee - 'is that all?' comes the shrinking reply in the plumy accent and she thrusts the tea down on the table and gives me a look, supposedly withering. Like I care what she thinks of me. You would think that living in such a beautiful part of the world such as this might bring joy into their souls; seemingly not. What is odd for me is that both Keswick and Aldeburgh are almost exact copies of each other (they are both of similar size, they both possess an old Moot Hall, a similar variety of shops, are located in differing but equally stunning landscapes) and yet they are mirrored in such a different vein. I want to call them Cane and Abel. Heaven and hell. Keswick's people are warm and welcoming; Aldeburgh's are stultifying and suspicious and so very English. Pity them; they have after all had to run away to a corner of the land and there they will remain. Prisoners in their own mirror.

20/5/06 - Aldeburgh, Suffolk

Confronting silence and solitude - the evening here is without dreams; how can there be dreams in the shadow of a reactor?

Instead there are rocks beneath my feet and the hollow ringing of the wind in the chimney - restless because of this, I go searching for mysteries where the village ends and the coast takes over, where the last vestiges of people are felt in the tapping ropes and masts of moored boats and a vacant, shadowy Martello Tower - after this there is nothing: Oystercatchers call lonely in the reeds and at the mudflat edge; the silver inland tributary holds only silhouettes, memories and ghosts - it is a desolate, pining place; it aches for a different history - instead it has the mark of secret Cold War experiments, air that once invisibly exploded and that crackles still with residue and sonic artifacts; a place of no return - where the remains of bombers shot down in the war just tip the surface of the water at low tide - out at sea the forlorn lights of merchants in the shipping lanes and a pale, red beacon - all else is close to emptiness - is that the mystery I find? An odd nirvana; a living sea worn void?

In the upper reaches of the beach, close to the high tide wall, I find a message still in its bottle; it says:

'We were clever lighthouse keepers; we watched over words before the war began. Sour in the rain we still upheld the traditions of discovery out here alone; protecting grace from what is rotten within. May you do the same.'

There was no signature.

17/5/06

South bound journey - ten hours by bus - these things:

- the gossip magazines with 'shocking' headlines of naughty affairs behind lace curtains between policemen and middle-aged housewives, faces 'blurred' out to save identities - they could be anyone really, and in all likelihood are just models posing; still, the grannies find it shocking as they flick from page to page;
- a young man boards the bus at Preston, gnarled face and lank hair, he takes a seat across the aisle from me, his leg shakes constantly for the entire journey, his knee bouncing up and down - only briefly relieved when he gets the opportunity to smoke a quick fag during the occasional stops en route;
- after a few hours I am missing the hills around Derwentwater, they had begun to feel like friends already, each ridge becoming familiar and with its own defined identity - the landscape a deep reflection of self, elements of a psyche;
- 'Sunset Walk' is the name of the card I bought yesterday to say 'goodbye' to Pol, it has a lush image of a duck in silhouette walking an orange beach, glistening in a low tide - because our sunset walks had become such special events in recent days, moments of shared space and silence, intimacy and enjoyment usually ending with us at the river's edge where the Sand Martins have begun to nest, waiting in the lee of overhanging trees on the opposite side of the river, hunkered down there on our haunches waiting, watching, gazing skyward when the birds gathered overhead; then playing on the rope swing, pushing each other and laughing;
- lone faces gazing from windows in Walsall flats surrounded by the many England For The World Cup flags and the satellite dishes - these men are perpetually waiting in there, counting the days to summer - and after its gone, what then?;
- 'Hell Fire' logo T-shirted fat boys gang on the retail park road in the middle of the afternoon, on the outskirts of town, chins covered with post-pubescent bum-fluff, chomping on chips and signaling at cars;
- bricked up lower lever windows on three tower blocks - and each balcony has been smashed off and bricked up with breeze-blocks and bone-like filler to deter squatters - odd, surreal;
- in Digbeth I realize how much of the country I know and have connections to as we pass little Allison Street - cobbled, Victorian, tumbledown - where myself and Pol shared a breakfast exactly a year ago - I have traveled so much in a year - what nomad is this?
- tall 'rasta' climbs aboard bringing with him the sweet smell of skunk weed in the aisle -
In London I notice on the tube that everyone is reading 'religious' matter - is this a snapshot of London's recent preoccupations? Books on monasticism, Ayn Rand, photocopies of the gospels - is this in some response to 7/7? Portable faith on the underground, a collective defence against the inevitable? By the doors a young Muslim watches a trailer for a Quentin Tarantino movie on a portable digital viewing device in his hands, no bigger than a paperback book - there is some blood and guts there on the tiny vid-screen - I wonder if he is aware of the irony - then he scrolls through other images and playbacks of an award ceremony in Hollywood fascinated -

11/5/06 - 14/5/06 - Cumbria

SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS?

Running a bar in a 1920's cinema - The Alhambra - one of the main venues for the Keswick Jazz Festival - all that's Trad (in this venue at least) -

It starts slowly, the audience gathering dust as they queue at the doorway, entering with meager smiles and a sense of broody suffering - none are younger than 50 (with the rare exception) - a large American woman in an XXL T-shirt with sweat stains and a white-river logo across it extolling American pioneers complains about certain doors not being open exactly as they were last year; she huffs and puffs through each word carrying too much weight, then moans about 'the Brits' loving a queue -

Grouchy male pensioners - Scousers, Yorkers and Geordies mostly - with bleak faces now sun burnt red and flat mouthed, grunt in single syllables as they file up to the bar looking vaguely embarrassed and wondering why they are here at all; asking for an orange juice for the wife, no ice - if any decision has to be made otherwise they wander off to check that they are doing the right thing before they return; its kind of endearing in some, cute and respectful of their 'other halves', but in others it's like a total loss of self-will, an inner deflation through time and marriage - the happiest, chattier folk are the Scots who've traveled over the border for their short break here; they crack jokes and actually get round to saying 'thank you' to me when I've served them -

All enter the auditorium, this collective of age (what is the collective noun for OAPs on a day out - a 'complaint' of OAPs?). For the next few hours they sit and clap their way through a number of 'All Star' or 'Hot Five' bands playing identical Dixieland and Ragtime - the clarinets shuffle and the banjoes smart - it all blends into one happy-go-lucky rhythm, nothing to separate band from band - The band-leaders talk in the same hushed, self-important tone; crack sly jokes at the same moment in each set, dishing out little anecdotes and winks - it is like a form of aural sedative, a familiar place where the audience can go to relive memories, conjure up the past, if only even the same moment with the same band doing the same number at last year's festival (and the year before that, and the year before. . . . etc etc).

The pianist of the next band, due to play out the late afternoon session arrives in his tux. His wife, an attractive middle-aged woman with long dark hair, wearing fashionable 'combat' trousers and a low-cut top, waits outside as he discusses the get-in with the venue manager and sound engineer. She wants to get away, to travel. She looks bored, tired of the endless circuit of small-time gigs and treks across country to play in backwaters. She is no longer sure if she wants to be with this man, with the predictability of this routine. She loves him certainly, but what more can he offer than this? She craves a freedom that this life will not allow for, to be able to set out on her own; if not for ever at least for the next four days, for god's sake. Escape. Novelty. Experience. After all, one backwater is pretty much like the next, no matter how beautiful they may be - There's a tame kiss goodbye delivered with averted lips and she leaves to wander round yet more shops, and simply to wonder. It's all there in her eyes. He wants to say something. Do something about it - but he can't. What alternative does he have? This is his life. This circuit, this sub-culture, these people, these bands - everyone knows everyone; everyone loves the music. And the musicians love each other most of all - a wee band of Trad brothers - though not without their own competition - some have played with names such as Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, others are shadows who have only recently touched the jazz circuit and yet maintain a serious, moody musician's air where its not necessary - yet more are just ageing men with hair dye coloured a kind of pale ginger, slick full of Brylcream and the smell of the cigarettes from a list of pubs and Labour Clubs -

And the audience: the numb, quiet eccentricity, the straw boaters beneath which rest bottle thick glasses and huge beards; ruddy faces and vacant, sleepy eyes. Portly rustics and downsmen who cannot deal with screwtop bottles but love their warm sandwiches. All here. The Brits in full summer eclecticism. An elite of the moss and the vale and the dry-stone. They mock each other and love each other too. It's an orgy for the Middle English behemoth and his wives. This hybrid mass of liberals and old fashioned pseudo-fascists all basking in this brief resurrected glory of a past long gone. Beneath which the tattered, stained remnants remain - the Masonic badges and crosses of St. George worn on greasy lapels, the RAF tie and blazer. This could be a front for a huge right-wing rally rolled out to the sound of Trad Jazz - the descendents of Oswald Moseley sat on the back row in tweed suits and Lord Haw Haw as your MC.

One pissed 'blazer Johnny' staggers in, handle-bar moustache and eyes rolling, a Cheshire grin and money still to burn. He orders two bottles of Cumberland then starts to chat up one of the stewards, a thin old bird who says she's 'up for anything but not for that' - no. She dreams of the Chippendales as usherettes, waltzing through the Alhambra bare-arsed serving ice-cream from trays; and dishy bus drivers in short sleeved shirts winking at her and 'gorgeous'. 'Blazer Johnny' keeps trying, elbowing her gently and bragging in over-loud tones about how much he can drink yet still 'keep a good woman, know what I mean?' Nudge nudge, wink wink. His athlete's foot is burning him slightly, and his dinner will repeat on him soon; the game old steward turns her back on him and winks at me as she wanders off, sort of flattered but not taken enough. Johnny gives up with a bomber's shrug and stumbles into a wall, laughs, straightens his tie and enters the gloom of the auditorium where the swing is swung.

The following evening and an Anglo-Italian trumpeter with some reputation and one of the headliners, is swaggering at the bar, red wine and sidelong glances at his fingers which now appear double - he's already pissed before the set begins, a jam session afternoon has led him here to perform a try-out set with a new singer who stands next to him in her low cut dress and crushed voice and distracted mind - they talk about Benny Carter for solace, between nervousness and the DTs - the set isn't going down well - her voice isn't up to it (she blames it on the piano but I reckon it's the fact she just can't cut it), but then neither are the audience, the swing, be-bop and late night tunes played here are not to the taste of these grey spectres watching, it shakes them from their slumbers after all and they start to leave in droves - the rows are virtually empty, whistle down the wind between aisles and you have to feel sorry for them up there trying their hardest to entertain the remaining dead - the musicians drink more, drowning the embarrassment of a bad move, the trumpeter shaking his head and brushing the woman's arm, half concerned caress, half come on -

"What's in a Flake 99?" I am asked by a young Scot pointing at the ice-cream board, picture and all (which kind of answers his question)

Those blighted bodies (and minds) -

Speaking of which, in walks a strange figure - a Swedish musician, his hands bound in white felt gloves, slightly loose fitting; he carries a white cane and wears thick glasses, presumably he is partially blind. He has no hair, the skin of his face is red and flaky, burnt in the same accident that scarred his hands I suspect. He wears a peaked cap and his eyes look sideways even when he is walking forwards, another product of his injuries. He orders two beers and drinks them both quickly then heads into the auditorium to perform; he repeats this on each break between sessions and does not seem to be any more inebriate than before - he is huge despite being physically crooked, his voice and presence reflect the hills here and the temper of his Nordic homeland - The Saga Man I want to call him - something tremendously bleak and everlasting -

On the final day the cinema's projectionist returns - a more sour-faced human being you would not wish to meet - ex-army, maybe TA, served in Oman or NI and never wholly returned, left something behind - everything about him nowadays is dragged down by gravity: the bags beneath his eyes sag, the grey moustache and hair, the dour mouth and his tight limbs all have the inevitability of the downward - He looks at me as if I am a suspect in some eternal plan to make his life more difficult and asks me looking down his nose:

"Where's my round table?"

"I have no idea."

"Well they don't walk by themselves, do they?"

He turns away and mounts the steps up to the projection room. His retreat beneath the Art-Deco skylights and the old gas pipes; where the noises of war inside him can be baffled by the music of escapism and the faces of idols (the same ones he has cut out of magazines and stuck to the sloping ceiling in there: Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Janet Leigh and more now become flaking paper and collaged together into other film stars - the eyes of one and the hairline of another, the Greta Marx Temple Cruise line) - he nervously picks at the foam in the seat by the projector, exposing it beneath the upholstered material like a wound, pale and flaking - and that huge projection machine is his weapon of defence, his cannon of light - up there nightly, the hot sweaty room whirring, spliced together in the dark and for a few hours (like the rest of us) he forgets - I guess that's why he's been so arsy, after all the festival has ousted him from his sanctuary for the past few days - tomorrow he can return, safe, warm - the congealed memory of service turned fluid and loose once more -

The final night is cold and wet - the bottles are thinning out on the shelf and the town is emptying - the last phrases of music can be heard rising in the small hours, a clarinet of course - As I'm clearing up a woman in her early 60s comes to the bar, browses a moment or two at what's on offer and says to me "I'm looking for something to suck."

Interesting to note that my watch stopped at 1.44pm on Thursday afternoon and then started up again of its own accord this evening - I suspect some Trad Jazz influenced 'Bermuda' Triangle had descended on the town and removed us from the rest of the world for four days -

Honest -