FOR MY ZIA RITA

When I look at one of the last photos I have of her, the deep lines around the mouth, the mild, sallow complexion, I am always aware that this is, was, an ailing soul. And her hoarse breath rattling in her throat, in attempts to catch it, I hear as, for example, she walked me up the hill toward Ampere’s Tower or clambered inside the statue of Borromeo’s monument. Her long, slow stride so recently supporting her semi-paralysed body. All of which should portray a woman ten or fifteen years older than she was.

Some might say it was the war that took her eventually, and they might be correct. Born into a country of immense poverty and depredation, her child’s lungs succumbing so early to disease that in later life would take one of them away. The war’s effects and residue running a singular course up to now, today, sixty three years hence.

But, returning to that photo, it is her eyes that give away the truth of my wonderful Italian aunt. The temperament of faith, knowledge, wisdom. And her forbearance of suffering with humour and dignity. They are dark, almost black eyes, perhaps a certain jewel, but most fervently alive and aware. Watching, absorbing the circumstance of the family gathering around her in the lakeside restaurant. And I’m certain hiding any pain or discomfort for the benefit of those she loved. Her tales filled with characters that may well have been archetypes of her own soul: the thinker, the priest – good people rewarded with dignity.

The sound of bombs; the alacrity of boiling water on a stove, seething ready for pasta.

I hear her deep voice, and her hand upon my face cherishing my existence, believing in me without saying a word. Laughing, even in our lacking tongue – my faltering Italian, her stubbornly pigeon English. Or perhaps we are up at the ‘orrido’, watching the cascades of water coming down from the mount above as she tells me tales, small legends – born of truth - that even she has never got to the bottom of.

Laughter commonly around a table with a healthy serving of food and her patient, lidded eyes watching with contentment. The methodical measure of a stovetop coffee percolator beginning to bubble through.

Then, here, the snow falls. Uncorrupted when I wake before sunrise, there is a gift in the day. The slip-back light gathering. Something about it that maintains her dignity despite the details of the forthcoming tests and examination of her final corporeality. By the time the snow has gone, melted in a few days, I hope she too will have been put to rest.

7/2/07

Marcel Proust got ill and stayed in bed all day writing – if he lived on the Kelvin Estate in Sheffield would he have done the same? If he did he would have missed the sun going down, spitting fury light on it’s idiot façade – the concrete crannies and featureless glazing almost cowering in the glare – the placement so close to town is a miracle of modern fool’s planning: row upon row of sorry details. And yet something about it is glorious, some sorry beauty in the twilight. A Kelvin? Isn’t that a method of measuring temperature? Hell, high waste.

Cumbria - 2

Cumbria - 1

Last full day in Keswick – memories/nostalgias:
Sand martins nesting in Portinscale – whole family cycle: arrival, mating, hatching, growth and furious feeding, fledging, new flight, the air filled then with over twice the amount of birds that came, then their departure one day just gone, empty nest holes, the air calm and quiet –
Pol on stage in After Miss Julie, letting a different aspect shine through – the quiet, calm performance filled with far more mystery and tantalising charm than she is normally required to muster – her high point, bravura performances in Private Lives and Loot, shining, full of feverish comic energy, unstoppable –
Ospreys fishing and first seen among the onlookers at Dodd over Bassenthwaite Lake, the rapid commentary of shared sighting there and then, tears in my eyes at the beauty of the birds and the shared experience of strangers captivated by nature –
Sitting in the incessant heat this summer gone, under the dense maples at Green Gables, watching the Robins move for worms, listening to the tree-tops, aware of the chameleon face of Cat Bells across the lake altering moment to moment with the rush of light or moving clouds, my body and fingers aching from the shearing of a Yew Tree, paring it back to it’s cleared trunk and then up into the foliage, bringing it back to life –
Goosanders and a dipper so near at hand –
Being woken in the middle of the night by the flood warning and having to rise and move the car and discovering that half of Keswick was awake, battening up doorways, laying sandbags, saying hello to each other in the full knowledge of the potential shared difficulty ahead, and listening out for the tell tale rush of water, through the constant wind, expecting to wake up in a puddle –
Discovering Loweswater, walking it’s banks –
Red Squirrels at Whinfell in the cold, clear winter mornings –
Driving up over Uldale heading straight west into the brightest, descending winter sun, almost blind on a straight road through the wilderness, the entire sweep of the Solway Firth over to my right –
Workington – it’s glory almost anathema to itself –
The constant, beating sigh of rain on the roof –
The tree in Penrith, in the town centre, full of Pied Wagtails flitting here and there, chattering away, hundreds of them coming and going, congregating, like nothing I’ve ever seen them do before -

The desire to win – is it so bad? To have the thrill of potential there, the knowledge that you have achieved something great for a while. And why is it that some are dubious of that? Seem shocked if you profess to that desire?

The howling wind and the rain swirling in night-time vortices along the hard road home, beating wings, thrumming from the major key – all sent to test tired eyes and wary hearts. A more quintessential Cumbrian night you couldn’t have asked for. Leaving the warm hearth behind, well the last dying embers at least, a dark marble fire. Crashing through the aquaplanes, stumbling on headlong, the brief flash of a haunted owl above the road.

One flame. One question. The deliberations of a mind. Nothing resolved. But then perhaps that is how it should be?

- - - - - -

Another nightmare – horrific tale of paranoia and violence in similar circumstances to the one described earlier. Some post- or pre- apocalyptic world, peopled with a pseudo-police force/militia called Nex run by a man looking like Gene Hackman (!?). Nex is closer to the Flying Squad of the ‘70s, more gangster than legal charger and they deal in repression of ‘subversives, immigrants’ etc – the usual rote of motive. Nex are chasing me and two friends – a young tourettes inspired lad with bleached hair and a baseball cap (not Pete from Big Brother surely?) and a woman of similar age with a striking pale face and long, dark hair - through some factory/warehouse location. It is night. We have managed to find a refuge in a familiar part of the factory. The Nex henchmen are trying all the doors to get in but finding they are locked from the inside they rattle and beat them with sticks and boot kicks. A young Asian kid comes up to us, he knows the factory, maybe it was him who let us in, and offers to take the woman’s baby to safety – so she has a baby hidden under her clothes, a silent creature tied into a makeshift papoose, warm and safe. The woman agrees, knowing that it would be for the best if Nex actually find us. She hands her treasure over and the Asian kid – let’s call him Rav - promises to look after her. Nex boss (let’s call him Hackman for now) arrives on the scene, stands outside looking at the facia of the factory, sucking in the details, playing his eyes for clues until he spots movement: a tiny shaft of shadow moving over rhythmically, a hand or, even smaller, a finger playing nervously against a knee. It is Pete’s energy unable to halt, something has to move otherwise he’ll bark out a word. The stress, the agony.

Nex swing into action from a nod by Hackman, pincering the door off it’s hinges quietly – no smash and grab, no giveaway. Nex find Rav first, crawling silently over crates with the baby strapped to his back. Rav frozen in torchlight. Rav getting up to run but his legs taken out by a rugby tackle. Rav lifted up from the ground, legs flailing like a lost insect. He’s only a kid. Thrown outside with the garbage. Hackman stands him up then aims a swift flying kick and the baby crashes out of the papoose onto the cold, hard concrete. It doesn’t take much to know death is instant.

The Nex henchmen find the three of us cowering. We are lined up sobbing.

They have a go at Pete first.

Uldale - Cumbria, Jan 07

Pol in Uldale - Cumbria Jan 07

The sun is barely making it’s way over the fells, still dark below and hard to make out the details of the river curve, the marginal sand-bags left over from the flood warning, the hidden crown of Skiddaw – there are some folk about gently making their way into church, passing time on the wet pavement glistening in the streetlamps like the skin of a mollusc when the lonely figure shuffles across the road, clutching a copy of the Sunday Sport, some eggs and a pint of milk. His complete bald head so pale it shines in a similar manner to the wet ground upon which he walks, temper clean, some washed deity springing forth atop his shoulders. His oversized pyjama trousers flap studious in the wind, sticking to his shins, calcified there by age – armour, shell, you name it, they’re never known to come off; and above, his short sheepskin jacket bulbous from chubby waist up. As he walks he ferrets his eyes all over: the church front, me standing waiting for my early lift to work, the gathering congregation. When he spots them he stops, holds back from getting too close, mouthing and mothering under his breath but still audible, like the odd mewling of a young otter. When he knows he is alone again he moves, hugging the blue shadows, walking beneath trees like a latter day Quasimodo or Uncle Fester. Homeward, to close the door before the world has truly woken.

Eyes in Carlisle that may follow you; eyes of the lads keeping check on difference, sussing you out, sniffing your soul for what? Who knows?
Who is more paranoid – them or me?

The brightness of Caldbeck, sweet Caldbeck and Uldale - high up where the sunlight is raw and the entirety of Solway can be mapped out below; the straight road over, still Roman marked, blisters in its exposed seat here. The joke is with the Crows, high-butting the wind full on. No escape. Whistling.

BOX IT UP - ANOTHER U.K. XMAS

Artificial intelligence – I expect she needs me – Roy and his tears in the rain, though these might all have dried up – 5000 queue up to fight outside Next on sale day one – a pair of suede brothel creepers – windows rattle in their jambs for the night of hail and rain – Magnificent 7 t-shirts and tequila slammers – The Quizmaster in his element – tea at The Ritz and the rock and roll dexterity of a black cab through London to see the lights before home – puke on a railway station platform -

23/12/06 - BBC Radio shortlist my script ‘In The Company Of Giants’ for the Alfred Bradley Bursary Award (more on the 15^th January) –

Stopping early evening, the motor warmed, at Warrington Services off M6 south Manchester – frightening: armoury of race hate and forgotten souls designed like a mini-housing estate not motorway services by the name of Poplar 2000 (where did the ‘u’ go?) – a five cowboy sculpture designed in semi-circle looms out of halogen darkness, ten-gallon silhouettes without amenable features, just attempts at eyes and mouths – why they there? – is this frontier territory, recently pioneered land? Do they move? – the bright bright shop is full of yuletide fakery: snow, tinsel, a plastic snowman on the till counter and two heavily overweight assistants in Santa hats watching over the sweets and coloured drinks and the rows and rows of porn mags some in black plastic wraps other plain to see for e.g: Euro Filth, it’s rounded font in cheap vivid green bordered neon yellow (glow in the dark?) – perfect placement for truckers and long-haul businessmen staying in the nearby Travel Lodge night alone, because the pay-for-view porn in there ain’t up to squat – And the public toilets, ones to avoid even with Virgil holding your hand – clean enough in a disinfected way as you enter, but the racist graffiti is almost demonic in it’s hatred and stupidity; the cubicles are covered in it, black marker on doors, paper dispensers, toilets seats, even on a urine-stained tile on the floor and all aimed at Muslims – insults of the worst kind, showing the perpetrator’s base level of intelligence, prime ignorance , even to the point of defacing Hillsborough Disaster Justice Campaign stickers that have been stuck on one cubicle door and have been used as just another surface for hatred, altering history to suit prejudice – when I hear voices in another cubicle, I get out of there; whoever wrote this shit is likely to take offence at my mixed blood -

Black Eye Friday

Darkness before dawn permeated by the trotting feet of birds on the roof and the occasional glimpse of them dropping from the sky – still they chatter less than some and when they do they open their mouths for a reason – maybe it’s xmas, maybe it’s just me, but I am craving silence like milk or water – the opportunity to be still, necessary, to hear something beyond the gabble –

Succumbing to a nightmare – I am looking to buy a house in Australian and then emigrate – I pay a visit (along with a few other prospective buyers) to a new development out in the country: dry scrubland, unidentifiable birds, the odd lizard, red earth – to what is at first a number of dilapidated properties in the process of renovation, detached blocks dotted throughout the landscape and connected by a single dirt track – we are shown the one closest to completion: the location of the swimming pool blah blah etc etc – I am at first enamoured of the place and start to make those little plans for decoration in my head – then we are guided towards other parts of the development, larger building to be converted into flats, municipal looking outhouses and sheds, some in better condition and located in a shallow valley surrounded by dense foliage, a pretty enough place – I ask what the site had been before it was purchased for this project and the lead salesmen, a chubby man in a poor fitting shirt, says ‘oh some Castro types, fascists, had it for what they say was training; they used to do some bad stuff here.’ I wanted to tell him that Castro wasn’t a fascist but he waved me over to a hole in a breeze block wall: ‘Come look at this,’ he said. He pointed a torch in there illuminating a dark and damp square room and on the far wall some neo-political graffiti with slogans about purity and the extermination of various races and religions; there was a green Star of David daubed there and blackened with age, some weird stick-man type Aborigine being poked with a stick of some kind that had sparks coming out of the end, a cattle-prod, and another slogan that said ‘killing Arabs with thanks to Camus.’ The group of five or so potential buyers looked upon the place now with horror and when we turned back the entire development, the whole place had taken on a sad and bleak air; the peeling paint and dark windows were now replete with unseen horrors. People muttered; a woman shed tears and her husband put his arm across her shoulders shaking his head. The chubby man explained that he and his business partners were attempting to make good history, to bring a new meaning to the place. They had hoped of course that none of this would have come out, that the condo could have been completed and a new light could have shone on the location looking forward to the future. But something had a grip on him now and he mentioned that there was a grave pit over at the far edge of the site that they had plans to build either the local school on or else a supermarket and restaurant complex.

Buster Keaton on a sunday afternoon, some crushed velvet curtains and an awkward silence that swift departs to laughter –

My shopping in the supermarket today comes to the value of £6.66 – does this mean anything? Have I just purchased Mammon or a share in Hades? The guy behind the counter eyes me as if I knew this was what I was dealing with and I may have brought damnation down on him.

If you absorb the comic-book – what does that mean in future life?

5.35am - keeping waterproof clothes near, listening to nothing but the wind hollering – spirals of sound fretting and hassling the roof – trees glisten, slimy with the deluge, slick skinned – then the occasional silence and to be grateful for the minutes of respite from the rain – when it comes again it’s noise on the flat roof is like the popping of hundreds of embers; an odd comparison to make, two opposing elements but there it is crackling over and over, the burden of my anticipation outweighing any chance of sleep – the land has turned silver by day, fields awash, sheep and cattle stranded on fragile spurs – and in here it is like existing in an echo chamber, some facet (faucet?) of water torture with our lives placed up on tables or any other available space off the floor – and yet oddly the air is so sweet and cool, maybe some airborne part of the mountains has been washed down with the waters and perfumed the air below?

Sitting in - waiting for the flood to come – imminent here - across Cumbria there are severe weather warnings – heightened senses, the rain hammering on the roof, waves of it coming at times almost silent then streaming across in the gales, rippling feet above my head – the drains are already backing up and swathes of water are forming across the highways – the river level at present is half what it was three nights ago when the first flood warning woke us at 4.30am but it is still early and the water has yet to make it’s way down from the uplands – the river can rise about a foot an hour – sandbags are out in doorways and porches in some forlorn hope that they might stem additional damage – meanwhile the silvery slicks trickle on in nearby gutters, the cacophony of accompanying noises there: the constant enraged sigh of the river; the metallic echoing of rivulets finding drains and forging themselves in there; the barrage of swaying trees and the background roar of storm sound in the atmosphere – it’s all I can do to keep my mind distracted and fill the anticipatory anxiety -

Discoveries -

The pencil marks are wearing thin on the blue paper – ready to light? I cannot mourn the passing of Augusto Pinochet, nor should anyone. Those that died before him as a result of his orders are still howling in limbo at the lack of justice forthcoming in their name (including the missed opportunity Jack Straw had to extradite him to Spain – foolish appeasement – they manage to get away with it every time these Fascists: how come?) and now he has finally escaped trial – that is a sadness we should all be aware of –

the sun attempts to shed it’s light through the tunnels and dank cellars of Chile, hunting out the truth if it can -

let me dream instead: replicate some Jacobean parlour – the semi-grand furniture, the hearth-tinted red wine (seeing the flames through the liquid), the stained tablecloth with the crumbs of three courses still residual, the foppish hair and louche attitudes of writers and libertine ne’er do wells – a testy marriage of art, the past and the witty present - Jeffries and James devouring cakes and pomegranate molasses now; awaiting the impromptu cabaret provided by sons and daughters of the hostel owner – and still warm by cold morning, the London wind in the chimney, poor teeth aching and fit to fall out – and the toast is to liberty and the downfall of the tyrannical forefathers (even as the East sees a new one rise) -

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) -

Weeks of deliberation, weeks of thought, weeks of experiment. Only, perhaps, in the latter days did we (?) succeed. After all the talk, the constant talk, became quite irrelevant in practice. But then I thought that would be the only way with a piece like BLISS. For all the supposition of others, at the end of the day you look after your own work and get on with it; as opposed to watching someone else’s, waiting for them to fall or make an unforced choice. Whilst all the time hiding one’s own insecurity. I come to discover that those who make the most noise in the rehearsal room are the one’s you’ve got to watch on stage. Usually they’ll be looking no further than their own reputation and how they look on the night. Forget the story –

Burnt material on a metal fence –

Trying to control the process too much mean inevitably it will run away from you, evade you as it feels hounded – you can never take the process of playmaking so seriously, otherwise it becomes meaningless. If that seems like a dichotomy, well the whole point surely is play and surprise.

- - - - - -

Crossbarrow; grey waters; tree line bending in the century old onslaught of the wind –

Gentle, rhythmic whistling never falters, the drier sound of the turbine beneath, facing west –

OLDSIDE – muscle shells, cuttlefish pouches in the kelp, a lone curlew’s call, the detritus of fireworks launched – the individual speeds of each turbine tells them apart; some slow, almost giving up; others fast, characterised by pace – and the palpable sense of bleakness, of death even – dark, jagged stones erupting form the Solway, damaged concrete breakwaters like bomb damaged parts, reddish dust and twisted metal – resonance at the core, surrounded by the turbines, an embracing noise – a small group of horses nearby watching the dim orange tethers and the odd grey light late afternoon away toward Galloway -

Alone across the undulating cliffs, a postman toking on a large, fat cigar doing his round, leaving thin, blue clouds behind him –

Workington – October 2006

Workington - October 2006

Oldside, Workington - October 06

- late night skateboard rumble round street corner (E-street choir?); in fact it goes by the name Endless Street (true) – and round they come the three long-haired cruisers come charged low to the ground in tight arc before heading off into the city centre where the squaddies are lining up for a bashing;
- the bright studded patent shoes of an ageing rocker down by the river where the swans gather watching him waiting for either bread or a song, not sure which – his hair dyed blacker than the night and maintaining a similar shine;
- in the graveyard a discarded umbrella, presumably to keep the dead dry?

Glitz by Elmore Leonard (pub. Phoenix)
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (pub. Gollancz)
Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck (pub. Penguin)
Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk (pub.
Running Dog by Don DeLillo (pub. Picador)
Destination Morgue by James Ellroy (pub. Arrow)

STATES AT SEA

The house is peculiar – a cross-breed of faded Edwardian wealth and sorrowful 21st century damnation – artefacts everywhere collecting dust or mildew – counting losses and sorrow in there and some quality of darkness – medicinal remedies from years gone by in glass fronted cabinets in the bathroom, white packaging turned yellow and waxy; products no longer available over the counter for fear of side-effects perhaps – the sense of living in a museum, the whole weight of that –

And in the day, accompanied by two large porcelain dolls arranged in one corner as if alive in mid-conversation, my landlady sits (otherwise alone) in her dressing gown at the dining table – her grey hair is uncombed yet she still has the dry dust of make up on; and there is a half-eaten bowl of cereal in front of her - she says she is so unhappy today, so much so she has had to take an Equanol with her coffee to make her feel steady – she is distraught that her recent application to build a conservatory cum artist studio has been turned down by the local council – but further she claims her sorrow is manic depression – repeating the phrase three or for times so I don’t forget it – though in fact I doubt it is anything near mania and closer to simple sorrow and the blues (she is a widow and I’m guessing of no more than a couple of years) –

Did one of the dolls move? Watching me? Trying to catch me out or see inside my soul, listening to my thoughts? It’s hard to tell in the daytime half-light, with the curtains semi-drawn and the radio babbling away in the kitchen –

I am no longer sure what year I’m in here –

There is something predatory in her eyes, not sexually so, something desiring of youth, another chance – it is a cloying thing, an atmosphere of suffocation and lost time – yet she talks opposing that, of hope and of being ‘a good artist; I’m a damn good artist’ - she repeats this phrase also, as if telling me is evidence enough to the world (perhaps it is) – I don’t disbelieve her (though her work is hidden away so I've not seen it), I dare not for fear those two homunculi or avatars in the corner will throttle me in my bed at night, clambering up the stairs in some slow, tortuous movement, their tiny joints creaking with age and dust, their dry lips parting in an odd attempt to talk yet nothing coming out, the squeak of the hinge there and that's all –

She continues: ‘I’m sway to the fortunes of modern life and it makes me so angry; I keep a good ship after all, don’t I? A good ship. You’re comfortable aren’t you? I scrub the decks, keep the thing afloat.’

I answer in the affirmative and she makes a brief smile; I say ‘makes’ because it is not an easy thing for her to do, more an affectation –

She begins to moan about the neighbours being in cahoots with the council because ‘he was once on the local planning team’ so ‘he’ can use his knowledge against her – she believes it to be a typical pattern, a sign of prejudice against a widow and her lodgers – I’m not quite sure how I’m involved (or the other lodger currently staying) as I only arrived two days ago, but somehow I’ve been appropriated – become part of her imaginary ‘crew’ – she goes on to arraign retired wealthy generals and their wives, how they are everywhere in this town and it makes her sick, sick, sick –

She’s probably right on that count, I don’t know -

I realise the room smells of something bitter, like almonds or a spice of some kind but I can’t tell what the source is so I have to assume it’s coming from her, some essence of rancour oozing from her pores, poor thing -

She waves her hand in the air –

‘Anyway’ she says and lets out a long sigh, turning away to look at her bowl of cereal, ‘you must get on.’ Oddly that sounds like an order – and that’s it – she says no more; presumably the drugs have kicked in and are steadying her –


Salisbury

It goes something like this (though don’t quote me):

- you can pocket glitz but you can’t keep it;
- Brighton rocks but be careful of the switchblade;
- three misty mornings in a row and luckily things have become clearer - go figure;
- a 3 legged cat is as good an omen as any (if not better);
- shame that the boys round here have to draw pudenda’s in chalk on the tarmac by the riverside, slandering mothers and daughters alike before charging off on a handbrake turn;
- I am glad the Hampshire malcontents are well behind me, all those blood pools on a Saturday morning in the High Street, shattered glass and teeth in there, too much for eyes and history;
- the bag lady was a quiet saint, carrying her books in a shopping trolley through cathedral grounds – she asked me to christen her Ruth, so I did.

Salisbury

The marooned moment -

New York dreams -

a performance piece entitled 'You Are Apathetic' went down a storm at parties but got Hugo beaten up on more than one occassion at weddings -

the sad, sorry idea of a trench round a city -

briefly he heard a chanson; some trilling French male crooner lounging beyond the wicker chairs, his head moving inside and making him feel nauseous -

Waking daily around 4.30 these are the things that have entered my thoughts whilst I lie awake listening to the milkman on his round before dawn

Hairdressers and early drinkers share space –
In a thick red raincoat with the hood up a woman talks to Norman her invisible friend –
Some kids beat up a tramp who they nicknamed ‘Train Head’; they watched him, then followed him all the way down streets as he foraged in rubbish bins. Left him for dead.

The runic administration of potatoes –
Businessman in pink-striped suit with only one hand –
‘Best not look back’ another man says to a woman; said with affection but meant as an order, in reality he can’t wait to be rid of her –
The rise and fall of a drunken hand attempting to snatch my book from me; a hawkish cackle and then the man is gone –
Star skin –
Civil war –
My father’s world is an ordered one; so much so it often clashes with reality for he loves clarity and precision, anything else approximating chaos is there to make life difficult in his eyes; there is little room for the inexact, that would be a perceived failing of the world, there are rules that exist and they are ones that life is lived by and anything else just wouldn’t be correct –
Never seen so many young hooded face red eye freaks singing to iPod, iStreet than in this town -

The Book List – recently read:
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (pub. Picador)
I Am Alive And You Are Dead by Emmanuel Carrere (pub. Bloomsbury)
Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast (pub. Allen Lane)
We’re In Trouble by Christopher Coake (pub. Penguin)
If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor (pub.
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit (pub. Cannongate)
The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald (pub. Harvill)
Millennium People by J.G. Ballard (pub. Vintage)
Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi (pub. Faber & Faber)
Nature Cure by Richard Mabey (pub. Pimlico)
A Dead Man In Deptford by Anthony Burgess (pub. Vintage)
GB84 by David Peace (pub. Faber & Faber)
Snow by Orhan Pamuk (pub. Faber & Faber)
The Stand by Stephen King (pub. NEL)
On Literature by Umberto Eco (pub. Vintage)
Infidels by Andrew Wheatcroft (pub. Penguin)

Some visceral/visual mementos of the ex-capital of England (sunny Winchester):

Saturday morning – large splashes of dried vomit, like bomb blasts on the pavement, or some deliberate (?) mirror of the big bang scattering debris throughout;

Piles of freshly fallen apples, windfall, in the garden at Lyndon Road – small vivid green pyramids – others become forming the sweet brown rot that the birds love –

The crescent and bell-shaped red flowers blooming on the foliage outside my bedroom window, catching the early sun coming in from over the recently harvested fields –

The Polish lady with her high, perfect accent sat each morning in the coffee shop reading her paper, chatting amiably with other regulars –

My early vision of the stars, formative learning of them, happening – intrigued, awakenings – terms like planisphere, corona –

Then, perhaps through the long end of a telescope (?) I see the word ‘exile’ once again. What is that about? Am I ‘away’ from home? Yes, perhaps away from two homes even – the Lakes where the woman I love is, and Italy – artists in exile can be interesting: Carravaggio, Brecht – how did their situation reveal itself as an inspiration or influence? Allowing the critical eye to appear. The observer status, the outsider?

The world now is smaller – yet even so one can still feel akin to it rather than placed within.

The bent and buckled reflection of a blind man with his white stick walking down the High Street, along a cobbled alleyway, but shining back in refracted light via the pane of glass I spot him in.

Grounding in reality.

But with exile a certain freedom comes, an absolution from some responsibilities, fewer loyalties – an awareness of dubious patriotism, nationalism, or organization of any kind – on the flip side there is the curse of rootlessness, internal unrest, that persistent sense of motion, the call of the horizon – maybe it could be called something like ‘the pilgrimage complex’ –

Recall – the Martins gathering over Winchester Cathedral night before last; hundreds collecting before their migration, a cloud of activity. Golden backlight of sundown. The birds seem to be attempting to fly through the ancient mortar of the building itself, as if they’d be bale to pass directly through it to their destination -

Acceptance and exile – see, I have this nagging doubt the former is not meant to be my due and the latter is a primary state of being – even despite the phases of the moon being potential allies – I suspect my cross-cultural ancestry places me as an outsider, feels that way at times – an observer, seen as a stereotype –

To be an exile within one’s own life is an odd place to find yourself –

Others say you are getting too used to the comfort of failure. I ask, is there one? Theorists say there is, but that’s because they do not have the same legacy or this vicious stooge walking beside them, the shadow-man on their back always in the process of letting you know how shite he thinks you are – I’ve never been able to identify him but he governs many breaths -

6/9/06

Early morning, I saw Suze Rotolo (reincarnation?) - 4th time around walking some back street here and rolling a cigarette wearing brown smock dress, a butterfly pin in her hair – I wondered where Dylan was? And how come Suze remained as young as she was in the picture on his eponymous first album cover?

The Hong Kong Chinese lodger goes missing last evening – wanders off from the digs and no-one knows where she is – I guess she is feeling homesick and maybe bored already – thing is she did it again tonight - I think she's looking for a small piece of home - a Bodhi tree to sit under perhaps?

a suited man - business type - brown-sheen suit, clean patent shoes, Brylcream or Vittel applied hair, lightly tanned - striding up Winchester High Street with a small leather trunk on wheels, a bit battered, spray painted with gold stars and crescent moons like a magicians gown in kid's books - who is he? why does he have that case? where is he going?

he notes the fact that my acclimatization to recent cooler northern climes means I am wandering around down here in just my shirt sleeves, feeling warmer than others who complain of the cold -

he smiles, winks and crosses at a red light

4/9/06

Throwing thoughts – now I’m a long way from home; loved one a day away – pigeons cry the morning in (for help?) outside my window – the eradication of doubt and the day has begun – our tired landlady is up already, starting her labours: breakfast ready, curtains pulled all round the house – I am trying to find a routine but I am out of place – the harvest is in and we are risible on demand – looking homeward to:

adventures on the road and the sweet caesura of Caerlaverock where time stood still for 24 hours – and Watendlath with it’s heavy storm water churning the becks and filling cascades all the way down to the swelling river hundreds of feet below. Surely a package of bliss for the overwhelmed?

The icon rocks on his wedding day in the desert – his marriage is to a similar being; the sun and moon combined – and it is a wedding of words and shared beliefs, a laying down of history and moments of found philosophy before the punchline – by the end of the ‘service’ he is a changed man, but even that is nothing new –

meanwhile some damn yankee fool wants to build an elevator shaft to the stars -

- - - - - -

The Independent gives us theses figures under the headline ‘The war on terror, five years on’:

2001 Al-Qaida (?) attacks on WTC kill 2819. US unleashes ‘war on terror’.
2006 No deaths from terrorism within US since. Worldwide, up to 72,265 have died. UK ‘fighting homegrown’ terrorism. Bombers kill 52 in London, July 2005. In Iraq 41,639 estimated dead since US backed coalition invades in 2003.

The list goes on.

What was I saying about some damn yankee fool?

3/9/06

Leaving Keswick – double rainbow at road’s edge to Penrith station appearing to chase the bus I’m in – then the sun breaks through the rain torrents and the thing fades –

She wears gold lame ankle boots, tight jeans and a baseball cap – he is in a pale blue shell-suit – they chain smoke Camels –

The first announcement at the station is for the Glasgow train, stopping at Carlisle, Lockerbie and on to Glasgow – in a Sunday supplement there is an essay on a Saudi terrorist, one of the pilots of one of the jets that destroyed the World Trade Centre – the face in a printed in day-glo yellow and black stares back preserved for all time – How come the one is more famous than the many?

Another woman, younger than the first, stretches and rolls her head to relieve stress; she is pretty flagrant with her exercising there on the platform, revealing her midriff. I almost expect her to encourage the rest of us around her to start pumping the air with a sequence of aerobics – but lame boot woman lights up another fag and butts it up with the man, one drag each -

The Loft – a night club in the centre of a Cumbrian frontier small-town, tourist magnet for the Western Lakes – tonight, up on the mezzanine, DJ Frank Clapp is, as always, in his Perspex-shroud music booth – most of which is a mock nod to the ancestry of his job, a turntable that doesn’t work, headphones he never uses – the whole playlist now copied to a laptop snuck away in the corner; with one click he can let the whole evening run without lifting a finger further (unless its Friday or Saturday when he offers up the odd request slot, at which point he will have to trace tracks with the cursor and double click after a brief announcement of name and reason for celebration or didicatee, who will of course whoop it up down below on the dance-floor) –

Tonight however, Frank will see something that will open his weary eyes, something he never thought imaginable here in this backwater – this hill prison – but that’ll come later, for now let’s take a look at Frank’s home -

Opposite his booth, on the far wall, next to the (tonight unopened) lounge bar and above the leather smooth sofa where the VIPs (if ever they come) get first choice, is the huge picture of naked Ophelia (or as bouncer Mickey Mick calls her ‘I’d feel ya’) – it’s a gilded frame photograph blown up to 6x5 of an auburn tressed sylph, lying on her back, breasts exposed and partially garlanded with laurel leaves, one leg bent to just hide her pussy and her face turned slightly to the right where her parted lips almost kiss her own fingertips in a kind of pseudo-orgasmic moan – all this through a soft-porn soft-focus fog – it’s the only picture on any wall (there are two plasma screens, one next to Frank’s booth, the other (bizarrely) over the podium at the dark edge of the dance floor) –

Our Ophelia was once the girlfriend of ex-club owner Max Silloth – both killed themselves in a suicide pact by jumping off Ladies Edge and breaking almost every bone in their beautiful bodies on the way down – the police told local reporters that when they found them they ‘looked like puppets who’d had the strings cut’- Max had made it fundamentally clear in both a letter to all his staff and in his will that he wanted Ophelia to stay on the wall and she had asked the same in her own missive – found, incidentally, with them at the bottom of the Edge – this was meant to be seen as a symbol of her eternal beauty and a triumph of goodness over evil, at least that was how Max had put it -

29/8/06

A lot of it is about timing and luck and the motivation of good coffee – plus I’ve learnt to keep the curtains closed and that way I look only at the screen and think about the story – an old favourite movie often helps – you work it out –

The animals this day are in close-up – a different environment now to that of yesterday – they are kept this time in a small wildlife park; some are tethered, others roam freely in the mud and the pens – did you know a Tapir has been the same for 35 million years, evolution has found the ideal shape and mass for its natural habitat and they are cool with that – still the Peregrine Falcon sticks in my mind the most despite all the Lemurs (bonkers) and the Otters (beautiful) –

If Jesus walked the earth again they’d stick him in one of these and people would pay good money to come watch him circle his pen -

27/8/06 – 28/8/06

In the farmhouse: silence – outside, the rim of the earth across dark stretches of water – far lights echoed in the tide – complete night beyond – we are in here with the full knowledge of the animals without, they present themselves readily by day but now they are just aspects of knowledge waiting to repeat their routines at dawn; occasional silhouettes making their way to the safer ground down by the estuary cross the last pale variants of sky and give the final hints as to their movement –

up in the adjacent tower a set of giant viewing glasses bring many things near (the orange row of lights on the coast road lining the opposite shore; the spinning wind turbines at Workington where the land dissolves; the far stretches of silver mud in the day where the sea-water and land shimmer together) adding to our sense of the remote – by day the tower reveals the close flight of Martins above the farmyard, being exactly at their prime altitude one is filled with a rare sense of proximity as they twitter and urge each other on to greater feats of aerial acumen, they become familiar rather than merely tantalising –

at dusk, Curlews call plaintive on the mud-flats and in the local fields – their pairings camouflaged and delicate except where they stand in long grass and reveal their slow, loping walk and almost ludicrous beak – but theirs is the evocative music of dusk, the one and only sound of place tonight – an aching heart sound, bittersweet, definite and long-lasting – who would want to escape the enchantment of Caerlaverock they ask?

We are witness to young Roe Deer; to gently patient Herons; to the nervous power of a Sparrowhawk; and to the solitary Osprey at the water’s edge, motionless for hours on a vantage post before twilight’s signal gives him grace to move and he flies, matching the waterline East -

24/8/06

It begins with harmonious laughter and a need to belong somewhere, perhaps not geographically but socially. The recent months of relative solitude are peeling back to reveal someone far more raw and undermined than I had thought existed. Someone prepared to act.

St Bartholomew’s Day is alive with wide open skies and fortune. Auspices of the wild.

Mind you, they flayed him alive.

22/8/06

If you’re about to tell anyone let them know it has to be about patience. Can you learn that now at your age? If not, chances are it will not be a pleasant ending. Stations of the cross and all that.

The artificial is sometimes beautiful. I’ve spent twenty four hours in an environment built by modern day kings (whom usually I despise) and realised that they had created something rather special. A realm of peace and tranquillity hidden in the landscape, where red squirrel and pheasants and countless other species are provided for.

At heart however I am realising something with a far greater impact. A core emptiness that needs to be filled/fuelled/eradicated/nurtured. This in me. And I cannot name it or identify it’s source. Perhaps it is the necessary place of faith? Or solace? Or constant agony? I am not sure yet. But it remains wholly dissatisfied with life. I suspect if I delve into it, allow it to become complete, it will take me places, make me curious to find it’s ‘cure’.

21/8/06

Silence is the policy of hope – before judgement, down on one metaphorical knee; a paintbrush (of all things) in one hand and a list of wrongdoings in the other – it’s a moment of chastisement followed by humility followed by contrition of the most naked sort – chances are it won’t ever happen again which would be the worst and best thing in the world combined – still a fool is always a fool (in tarot, card zero) and this one walks with the oddest gait that leads him to gaze perpetually upward, not looking where he is going while his steps lead inevitably to his fall –

A mattress on the floor; a scattering of possessions

20/8/06

Delicacy gone – the rattlebag of bones at the roadside and the organic anger of a couple, two friends lets say, laid waste by bad communication – sleep deprived I wander – each droplet of rain is an ally today, walking with me in a way none have ever done before – these are the thoughts, the exegeses of what will be – these are the thoughts of a rambling idiot who walks and talks alone in the borders, his neck craned to the mud and his galoshes soaked through – he knows only that the lapwings are present, the shimmering estuary pools at dusk, the cloud lace on the fells above and below, the leaden feet and the memory of screaming scaly fuckers leaving their ring-pull and plastic -

19/8/06

Raincheck in the pouring, driving precipitation – an odd thing to do? Not sure. Necessary this morning; the cold, grey light of awareness is picking on me once more and showing me the way to go, if that is possible.

Open the window a fraction, want to hear the water and wipe away the sleep.

Is it possible to be in a perpetual state of war drunkenness? A kind of hangover from the effects of daily bad news? For months – years - now, as I’m sure you are equally aware, the news has been the same. There is no progress in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the supposed W.O.T. (or ‘what?’ as it should be renamed). UK army troop recruitment is up to over 11,000 new young men and women who will be inevitably sent to one of these war zones. Meanwhile, a general in Afghanistan finally uses the term ‘war’ to describe the current clashes with Taliban insurgents and guerrilla groups. This is not even to mention the utter futility of the past month’s war between Israel and Hezbollah.

It’s depressing. It proves only that the conflict nature of humanity is as strong today as it always was. That it is inevitable. Violence and destruction is our cultural identity and it is the example we give to the impressionable and the rising countries and states of the world. Who will, in turn, perpetuate.

Living here, one is subjected to the onslaught of humanity in the most all-consuming ways. Thousands upon thousands of people flooding in on a daily basis, more people than the town can actually cope with. Bringing with them the unbelievable ignorance of the holiday Brit – drinking, shouting, hanging out down the chip shop. Nothing different in their behaviour to being home wherever that may be – and they revel in it. Meanwhile, others claiming to love the country block up the roads with their cars, pumping tons of pollutants into the local atmosphere, then driving out into the hills because they are too scared to actually feel the wind against them. They want their wilderness tame.

All the while, the RAF fly overhead – Jaguars and Tomcats – howling at the fells the constant song of death –

It should all be a bad dream, a fiction, something from which one wakes and looks out of the window and says to oneself ‘no everything’s fine, I can relax’ – no such luck -

17/8/06

What is this nonsense? This consumer bullshit? Apparently Gillette have produced a six-blade razor – we’ve had two, then three, then vibrating ones and now six!! This is madness; trade madness and greed. Not only that these are gimmicks – they don’t work or make your chin any smoother than a single blade razor used properly. Surely any man worth his salt can learn how to shave properly. The question has to be asked who is this razor for? A gorilla about to take up a job in Canary Wharf? An ergonomically obsessive Sweeney Todd?

Maybe we’d all be better of living on the planet Xena? Shameful thing is we’d fuck that one up too.

Signed up to A Year Of Living Generously website in response to this consumer nonsense.

Keyword: RESPONSIBILITY

- - - - - -

The smokers line up under the yew tree in the car park for a quick, lonely fag. Middle-aged men and women with consternation on their brows.

The 'scally' boys and men in their summer shorts and shades and the ubiquitous dog on a leash – usually a Staff or Pit Bull straining and panting – off down the bookies, even here on their holidays.

14/8/06

The conspiracy continues – The Guardian reports today that ‘terror cells’ are mounting training exercises in various national parks in the UK, including here in the Lake District. Apparently groups of up to 20 men are gathering for outdoor training, and are currently being watched by undercover detectives.

How believable is this? I mean to say that I’ve lived here now for three months and if a group of Middle Eastern or Muslim men arrived they would stand out and not go unnoticed. The Asian families that work and run the Chinese restaurants and the take-aways here are already proof enough of that. This is ‘white’ (Christian?) England, believe me. Yes there are some remote areas where you might be able to hide out for a few days but even so, eventually somebody is going to notice 20 inevitably darker-skinned and probably bearded men running around the hills and presumably driving through towns and villages, even stopping for supplies.

Are we to believe the government and the security services? Can we trust their motives? Are they trying to cover their tracks for invading Iraq in the first place and finding nothing more than a sanction-stricken population and soldiers that couldn’t fight and a stupid old man stuck in the ground? And in turn bringing the war to our doorsteps?

13/8/06

Sunday – a final wash of righteousness left over from the Convention appears at the cusp of the river where it charges under the stone bridge, but other than that this one is very different –

It starts with a meteor shower around 2a.m. and a vivid half moon still screaming amid clouds which have the appearance of silver-rimmed animations; there are some folk out watching through bins and teles on the crests of hills overlooking the lake – a few are short on patience and wait maybe ten minutes or so before heading off home again having seen no more than satellites in orbit and the odd shooting star. The real sky freaks wait all night and their patience is well rewarded – heavenly blues and greens where the things enter the atmosphere, streaking through and leaving a stain on the sky and the same on the nervous systems of the onlookers and other inhabitants –

In town there’s blood in the alley behind the chip-shop where a fight took place – they haven’t seen the like for years – and the paramedics had to give aid to the concussed. Arnold blamed it on a loud mouth but witnesses said something queer seemed to come over him, like he was possessed, and he just began peppering the lad with his fists; then he took off in the direction of the river -

At dawn time is held in check, you can see it happen if you’re lucky and the market square revels in silence, lingering in its nostalgia for the quiet months before the onset of the daily invasion – the bin men sing lines from Dire Straits songs: Hey girl your boyfriend’s back - And then the growling begins, like the earth has decided to open up and throw what it doesn’t want to keep back out onto this plane; and on they come, all the hundreds in their cars and their campers and their coach loads and they swell and bloom, eager to consume, eat and destroy; to feast on as much of this place as they can in a day, to do everything in haste and blind folly –

Omens? - a golden retriever stained with green ink in its fur; closely followed by total power cut across town -

And then the Hell’s Angels come – their bikes pressed into the narrow street at the top end of the square and lined up on display outside The Dog and Gun – leather clad peacocks enjoying the attention they garner; the looks of shock and fear from some passers-by and enthralled amazement from others – Angels are always a throwback to a time gone by, approximately 1972, I never see today in them even though their bikes have changed – one Harley here has a built in stereo system that chucks out thunder rock just to keep the image whole – but it’s as if they are theme park additions themselves now; a kind of social joke, they look impressive but there’s not much to them any more, nothing radical (to quote the zeitgeist) –

I think on it this morning, the urgent zeitgeist; walking through this safe haven for the moderate lifers of northern England and the comely Yanks and the Dutch shoppers seeming to be drawn by some magnet that is Keswick; and I have to wonder why these people and the authorities act so amazed when they ask why these young ‘Muslims’ are angry enough to kill innocent civilians etc etc. There’s an odd tone to the reporting of this latest ‘terror plot’, a tone that suggests we are deep down still stuck with a 1950’s reality of what Britain should be; a nostalgia that surfaces in times of crisis which leads us to be so dumbfounded that such actions are being planned or that the terrorists had the gall to procure such resources necessary. A kind of collective Margot Leadbetter voice saying: ‘Oh, how dare they! I mean what have we done to offend them?’ I want to say that the authorities must be dumb if they think they are facing an enemy that won’t try outwitting them at every turn. That is the point of war is it not? And the authorities, at the instigation of President Blair, should be aware of that. We are at war after all, even if we weren’t before the invasion of Iraq. Perhaps his government simply doesn’t want us to panic, that if we keep the traditional stiff-upper lip all will eventually be well. But I believe that they are even kidding themselves. They, the government, have failed to make us more secure; they have failed utterly to do so and have brought the war home to us -

Everyone is asking: what radicalises these young people? That’s the wrong question. I can dig into my own past and in all probability many people’s pasts, including some members of the current ‘leadership’. The history of radicalised youth is not unique to one era or one section of society; and ironically it is a powerful product of ‘freedom’. However, freedom has (always was?) become a state of being for a very limited few. Freedom brings great powerlessness to the underprivileged and the ostracised. This realisation is often fuelled by the accompanying disorientation of early adolescence or adulthood, when one is thrashing around, seeking to belong, to find some foundation for one’s being in a world where things shift all the time and you can’t seem to get a key on it to begin your life. Often one settles on what is most appealing to one’s anti-establishment energy – in my case it was nuclear disarmament, animal rights, road protests and the poll tax; those were issues of the times when I hit my late teens, they affected me so I protested. More importantly they gave me a voice, a reason to be me. Which in some ways is one step removed from the motivations of a martyr. One learns to challenge what one finds offensive and in so doing begins to form opinions which inform the burgeoning adult self and make us what we are -

Words, and their true meaning, are becoming increasingly important. Bush has already changed the dictionary definition of the word ‘freedom’ – it should now read: ‘that state of being declared free by the elected governments of the west provided it conforms to their notion of political, religious and social responsibility’. If we make people afraid of the word ‘radical’ which we are doing by bandying it around in conjunction with the word ‘terror’ we are in danger of losing our right to speak out and to protest - placating the western governments attacks on liberty and freedom of speech, bowing to their ever-increasing paranoia. Orwell must be turning in his grave -

The real question that we should be ask (and government, though they are ineffective when it comes to social problems) and in the media is ‘what makes these men succumb to violence?’ It is not simply religious faith. That is too easy and too dangerous a reason – if we believe that then only persecution can come. No; violence is fashionable. You only have to turn on the news. Violence is perpetrated on young and old alike. It is an acquired belief supported by government hypocrisy and it makes the powerless angry. If someone threatens or harm someone you love then what will be the natural response? You will inevitably be angry and wish to attack them in return. It is the simple cycle of violence. Like I’ve said before, this is not rocket science. And yet the government stands incredulous when it ‘discovers’ so called potential terror threats among us. It is nothing to do with being British and everything to do with cause and effect. Violence gives the veneer of power to the violent; and it is addictive. But of course short-lived; like any addiction it’s need must be placated -

I’m a lucky man. For me the day ends in a beautiful meadow surrounded by swallows weaving through the air in low-flight patterns, switching back on themselves, darting over the nearby river which burbles like all good rivers should. Playing, eating, drinking and socialising with a group of mild-mannered people whose only concern is how to sort out a Frisbee throwing contest. I don’t have to deal with blood on my doorstep. Yet.

10/8/06

So maybe the theorists were wrong after all? Two of them are crying in the street today. Another terror ‘plot’ foiled; risk and security now high in the airports of the country – the country full stop -

We are paralysed by one common factor: foreign policy –

It’s not rocket science. Everyone talks about the shock that the suspects are ‘home-grown’ British Muslims and that there must be something wrong with our society to produce such radical young men. That is a deliberate red herring. Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and now Lebanon. Simple when you see it in black and white -

8/8/06

Conspiracy theorists – and there are many up here, perhaps because it is easy to hide out in the hills, obscured by clouds – some believe Princess Diana was killed because of her relationship with a Muslim; others that 9/11 was a plot by the Bush administration to give fuel to his W.O.T. and thereby give him reason to finish the job his Dad left incomplete a decade ago. The theorists will rapidly tell you these things in bars and cafes; as if they share something that no-one else has ever heard of. But then that is the way of things up here in the rarefied atmosphere of Cumbria – maybe it is too much exposure to the sun, maybe it is simply geography? Bearing in mind the recent evangelist convention here and I begin to see a pattern – a version of the 21^st century US frontier emerging in the wilder parts of this country: rednecks, bible freaks, conspiracy theorists etc. – perhaps this is the millenarian town of the UK, the locus mundi of Armageddon?

However there is one thing that many agree on and can be proven: the recent increase in RAF practice runs over the town. Yesterday they flew at least 7 missions – mostly Jaguars from what I can see, perhaps the odd F-111 – coming in low over Walla Crag and turning sharply north along the river plateau toward Bassenthwaite. It’s a nasty and frightening experience when they do – all peace is broken, you’re left with a dry taste of fear in your mouth at the shock of noise. Sweet Barbara tells me how two collided above the lake 19 years ago – killing one of the pilots ands leaving debris of one plane on the Crag itself and the other at Grasmere some 5 miles south.

Rumours; high energy thespians playing cat and mouse with each other’s emotions. In some ways it was inevitable, in others it’s just simply sad. I keep my mouth shut.

6/8/06

At the end of the day friendship is easily abused when it comes to money, no matter how nice you may have been to someone they always have the potential to fuck you over when their wallet is empty, even when they’ve promised to pay. The trouble is, what suffers in the end is not dignity or humour but history, what you shared – besides something suggested that all his conversations were performances

Some think of Anne of Green Gables as an erotic classic apparently – discuss

Should you always trust your lover to tell you everything? How do you feel if they have been in touch with an ex but not told you? And have not told the ex about you, the new lover; even after let’s say at least 6 months? And what, then, if you are told the ex is due to visit? How should you react? Should you be cautious/jealous/questioning? Or should you just let it go?

The god gatherers are there beneath the bandstand in Penrith in the rain. Mostly shaven-headed men in their thirties and a lone and slightly scared hippie woman with her acoustic guitar; I guess these are not of the Convention – but locals who prefer their praise in this way, singing songs to a dead Cumbrian town of a Sunday afternoon

Each morning this week I’m going to stare at my face in the mirror and try to come to some understanding, to see what other people see, and then clock if it has any effect on me – it could be seen as a form of meditation! The ultimate navel gazing

5/8/06

CLOUD COVER

A face from the past - she's a millionairess apparently

And in the streets too many middle-aged men wearing not enough clothes, pretending they are on holiday in the Caribbean or somewhere like it –

There is always competition; even here – why is that?

Each arc of cloud this morning most definitely has a silver lining – therefore I must assume that we are still at war –

The first moments of wakefulness are like multiple agonies at the moment – the onrush of thoughts is immediate –

There is nothing like being a little drunk and sitting at the edge of the lake gone 10pm and watching the clouds roll in over the hills, covering them gently in threads and scars of white – meanwhile wondering just what is my destiny to be

The Convention 'One World' field is clearing camp – there are hollers and prayers, many American voices saying goodbye – the confederacy makes for home - the skeletal remains of their marquee now something coarse and unprepared against the beauty of the lowest cloud I have seen here, the lake hidden and all the surrounding fells gone -

2/8/06

Three days of isolation; three days staring out of the same window at the driving, all-consuming rain. Enough to drive a man insane

The river swells; the battles still rage

Huge flocks of jackdaws criss-cross the sky above the town, calling as they go – a metallic barking sound

Bored kids play knock-down-ginger on the flats opposite and pretend to chat up girls. One even screams like a girl just for effect

Elsewhere, the lager is in full flow and the racist chants have begun. The Whitehaven Firm are up to no good again. Tonight is their night and they won’t tolerate anything that doesn’t match or equate to home. There is no cause or effect in their world, in their law, things just are

Meanwhile

I am learning to love small things, things that can’t be bought – opening eyes up to details that always made me happy but have gone unnoticed for too long

1/8/06

Castro is unwell. He has handed power over to his brother Raoul - meanwhile Bush sits in front of a huge plastic vista of Miami beaches and gloats. He wants the Cuban exiles to have a home he says. Some of these exiles are right-wing assassins with mafia connections that go back to the 40’s – these are the people that Bush claims he ‘cares for’ – no change there then -