Video Killed the Radio Star – Buggles
Radio Gaga – Queen
Radio, Radio – Elvis Costello
Who Listens to the Radio – Sports
Radio On – Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
On my Radio - Selecter
And there are no doubt a lot more – a lot more – that mention
‘radio’ in the lyrics.
Some obscure ones?
Take it Away – Paul McCartney and Wings
Chacun Fait c’ qui
lui plait – Chagrin d’Amour
Faut que le demon
sorte – J-P Capdevielle (sp ?)
In 1980 British writer Anthony Burgess (1917-93) published Earthly Powers, a long and (for him) fairly conventional novel following the exploits of a gay British writer and his Italian extended family which includes the Pope (as you do). One of the events is the dissolution of a cult called the Children of God - a mass suicide provoked by an armed attack on their compound. More recently I made claims for this section believing it was closer to the events of the Waco siege (1993) than to its more obvious influence, the Jonestown massacre of 1978. However, as far as I can tell there was no mass suicide at Waco - it was heavy-handed armed policing all the way. Nor was there any actual armed assault from outside at Jonestown; Burgess added it to his account to provide a flashpoint for the action.In some time around 1990-1992 (i.e. still before Waco), I wrote a piece called "Rainlight" which among its various elements followed the adventures of a very early internet troll - very early as this was before even the WWW. This trolling culminated in a FBI raid on a compound in Nebraska, armed invasion and mass suicide. So, similar to the Branch Davidian siege, but closer to Burgess' take on Jonestown.
So it isn't Burgess who riffed on Waco before it happened; it was me.
I was certainly ahead of the curve re the FBI mounting a siege, but there you go.
Ah, those memories of summer holidays ... or in this case, mid-autumn, the very last gasp of the tourist season aboard a boat full of French holidaymakers as we chug around the Bay of Kotor in picturesque Montenegro.
This is part one of a two-parter, the second is scheduled for Friday 16th December.
You know what a definite article is, right? In English it’s ‘the’.
etc. because it refers to a definite thing. It can also refer to a concept or uncountable noun. ‘Love’ vs. ‘the love’ if you like.
And an indefinite article, meaning ‘one’ - and in many languages it’s the same word. In English it started out as ‘an’, related to ‘one’ and the ‘n’ was dropped before a consonant (yes it is that way round. Bite me).
For a plural indefinite article, i.e. more than one cat or bus or orange but not any specific ones, we need to either use the noun bare (‘cats’, ‘buses’ etc) or ‘some’ - some cats are white vis-a-vis the clearly not-true cats are white.
In some languages there is a proper indefinite plural. Spanish and Catalan for example.
But not “a women.”
But, you say, I have seen this. This precise case - “a women.” Also “a grandchildren,” which phrase I saw this morning - something along the lines of “I’m waiting for my son to give me a grandchildren that I can take to children’s shows.” You could just say ‘grandchildren’ or ‘some grandchildren,’ but while non-existent for now the offspring in question are somehow more precise than ‘grandchildren’ - they’re specific.
The indefinite plural is a strange beast, somewhere between singular and plural. “Would you talk like that to a women?” suggests that more than one woman may be involved, as is likely. And it isn’t really the same as ‘some.’ (or ‘not all’); it’s specific in its lack of specificity.
I suspect that instead of being upset when someone apparently spells ‘a woman’ as ‘a women’ (and it isn’t just men who do this, I’ve seen women do it) we should hail it as the possible upsurgence of a plural indefinite article.
Now I’m going to fire up Spotify (other streaming services are available) and listen to a podcasts.
(originally published 1/12/22)
But in this year 2022 can we still not have an alternative to YouTube? I for one am tired of its incessant adverts - those for one company in particular that I seem to get all the time - and of the comments, which if they’re not literally made by 14-year-old boys, are made with the mindset of a 14-year-old boy.
But there is no real rival. Viewer stats for Online Video Platforms from the start of this year show that YT hosts over 8.5 billion (yes 8,500 million) videos. The next largest is Dailymotion, which hosts 65 million. Vimeo (often publicised as an alternative, and pitched more at the creator than the consumer) has 18.2 million with Odysee, frequently touted as a promising newcomer, at a mere 10 million.
There’s also Nebula, but it’s more a streaming service than a free-to-access video host, hosting several hobbyist YouTube channels in paid ad-free mode (and described as "OnlyFans for geeks"!).
I used to mirror my videos to Dailymotion, but haven’t done so recently. It is a good site, even if its ‘next up’ algorithm is a bit strange (or is it that with so many fewer videos to choose from than YT, the links may be more tenuous).
My strategy recently has been to go over to podcasts, listening to Spotify (other platforms are available. Yes, they are. Go figure) instead of watching YouTube videos; but this still leaves the issue of where do you get your video content? And where do you host it?
When will we see a decentralised video-sharing community platform that can bypass the YT? We need one. We need one a lot.
The other one ... now this is more complex. In the 1990s I wrote a story called "Loving the Alien," set in a wartorn and mountainous country and specifically in the city of Serimban. My friend and fellow-writer Gus Smith pointed out that it was clearly referring to the Yugoslav Wars.
But if you put it in the Balkans, i.e. the former Yugoslavia, and you look for a small country full of mountains, a new state opening itself to the world -
well, you have Montenegro.
The Kazlari flag is white over black over green, the black and green symbolising mountains and forests. The name 'Montenegro' refers to the forested mountains being so dark green they look black. (the white in the flag either references snow or completes a rebus: "Peace over mountain and forest."). Closer and closer.
(And "Serimban", albeit the name of a city not a country, is an anagram of either "Serbia MN" or "Srbia MNE" where MNE is the usual abbreviation for Montenegro. QED?)
There's a third which is ill-defined, a sort of attempt to move Koura eastwards so it's a kind of enlarged and more urban Kazlar, but it doesn't really work. It was also supposed to be Catalan-speaking. If you had a Catalan takeover c. 14th century of an area of Northern Serbia or Southern Romania - possibly the Banat Republic around Timisoara - then that would be it. Definitely post-Austro-Hungarian Empire, everybody's favourite entity who likes olde worlde Europe.
(originally published 29/09/22)
This week I’ve been in London. I was born in the suburbs of South London and spent all my life in various areas of the capital (apart from a couple of years travelling abroad and then four years in Birmingham) until last year when I moved away. It was a strange feeling to be back – partly that it’s home but partly that I couldn’t live there anymore as it’s too fast and crowded. Especially walking around the area I lived in for 20+ years felt odd as I still dream about it.
The first place I lived in London, and the first place I lived away from my family. I still dream of it regularly. Going back was strange because I dream of it so much that it didn’t seem real. But it was.
The video is here: https://youtu.be/ad6nWjTb-UM
But an architecture of complexity and contradiction has a special
obligation toward the whole: its truth must be in its totality or its implications
of totality. It must embody the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the
easy unity of exclusion. More is not less.
“The easy unity of exclusion” put me in mind of the ‘diversity’ initiatives
prevalent in public service and probably in private companies. They trumpet
diversity but what they really seem to be after is this:
that everyone, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, religion, ability,
age, etc., must want the same things and aspire to live the same way. When
someone comes along who is really diverse (usually non-neurotypical), see them
close ranks right away. Allowing for people who actually have different lives is far more tricky for them to deal with. How does a business relate to someone who doesn't want to make money? How does our social structure relate to people who don't want sex, or whose perception of the family is negative?
(Venturi quoted in “Architect”,
https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/learning-from-robert-venturi_o )
(originally published 14/02/22)
The Bridge Cafe is accessed via the department store in Cavendish House or via the Arcade. I recall that many years ago I was sent to sell cupcakes on a bridge in the Bullring in Birmingham – among the stranger jobs I’ve had (although it was part of my work as a Housing Admin).
The Cafe has a cheerful aspect – there is nothing forbidding about this place, it is down-to-earth to a fault and the fault is that you might expect it to be not all that good. However it is quite adequate with a possible exception we shall come to later. The menu shows breakfasts and brunches and sandwiches and cakes and lunches. I go for a bacon and egg bap and why not, and a coffee. It arrives quickly - service is cheerful, polite and efficient.
The caveat was the coffee. Really quite watery was my Americano and I looked out of the window longingly at a cafe I could see in the street below, thought, shall I go in there afterwards, but I didn’t.
Bridge Cafe
Regent Arcade
Cheltenham
GL50 1JZ
bridgecafecheltenham.co.uk
I had:
Bacon and Egg bap £5.80
Americano £2.60
Would I return? Yes, though as I say the coffee needs to be improved.
(originally published 31/12/21)
Pleased I did. Parked my own bike outside and went in for pancakes with bacon and maple syrup - which were just right - and coffee which was also good. Sat outside which was nice.
I would certainly return.
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Deli full of good things in the front, cafe in the back, Farmhouse hides good things behind its simple facade. I am put in mind for some reason of the magically-named “Donkey the Breakfast Farm” in Thessaloniki, but this is good plain Farmhouse, which has a reputation built over 50 years in Gloucester and Cheltenham for local produce including hams and pies and is also now open for breakfast and lunch.
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I had:
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Americano coffee £1.50
Would I return? Definitely, especially to browse the range of deli foods available.
Farmhouse Deli
92 High Street, Cheltenham GL50 1EG (also two locations in central Gloucester)
… we’re all going to go down the pub and get ratted. That’s what you do at a wake, isn’t it?
Actually tbh I barely drink alcohol these days. Nothing terrible, I just got fed up with feeling like shit in the mornings. But what I mean is that the last ten days have been, to once more quote Andrew Lloyd Webber, ‘mourning all day and mourning all night.’ Yes, Queen Elizabeth II was like the nation’s granny, and a lot of the shock is that now we have a King who is quite clearly not an elevated being of any kind, people are going to be hard put to see why we should give him any deference just because of who his mother was. And be asking why can’t his son - who does seem to be genuinely popular by default, i.e. he hasn’t actually done anything crass or terrible - be King instead, assuming we have to have one. Charles III or William V, or better still, William V and Catherine the First?
As a Green Party member I should be a republican, and basically am. You don’t even need a functioning monarchy to enjoy its history - Portugal has been a republic for a hundred years and still does well out of its monarchical history, plenty of sites to explore and so on. Meanwhile we have a prime minister who should really be called the sub-prime minister and appears to be some kind of robot Margaret Thatcher. (did Joe Biden really describe her as “Drunk version of Thatcher”? Probably not, a lot of things come from comedy sketches etc. and that may have done). She is also not only uncaring of the natural environment, she actually seems to think destroying it is a good idea. In that, and only in that, would I stand with King Charles, whose views on environmentalism have got him largely pilloried and mocked by the right-wing press. Which would you choose?
16/10/1991
Arrived in Patong Beach, Phuket. Paradise Hotel (no false modesty here!). The room has a big noisy fan, and a gently erotic picture over the bed. This is the last place I have a room to myself. Last night was spent on the train. I can smell cooking (this is not surprising in Thailand).
There are men working on a building site opposite. Work gangs here start early (6 am or so) and continue far into the night.
I have a sore throat possibly due to the small amounts of tapwater I swallowed with my malaria pills, while cleaning my teeth, etc.
RED SNAPPER AND TROPICAL RAIN
Phi Phi Don, 18/10/1991
This evening we walked back along Ton Sai’s only street, ankle-deep in water. The rains came as we were looking for food, and hit the little village as we deliberated over marlin, pomfret and snapper. The journey home was made barefoot in near-darkness, interesting if not comfortable.
The Phi Phi Cabana is almost a caricature tropical village. Set between crescent beaches of white sand, it comprises rows of palm-fringed huts divided by coconut palms. There is no hot water, but there is a fan.
“Hi there,” says a sea-food restaurant waitress, trying to sell us fried seabass and vegetable rice. I smile, explain we’re going to have a drink first, and walk on.
Behind the huts local boys play a ballgame which seems to be something like ‘keepy-up’; kicking it from one to the other without it touching ground. The oldest local men wear kilts; the others wear baggy blue trousers. No shirts, in any case.
Lunch today was down by the port. I asked for chicken with ginger on rice, didn’t get it, was told a while later they’ve run out of chicken. Okay, I’ll have beef. But why not tell me earlier? It’s hard to be annoyed with these people; it isn’t their way.
It’s to Ao Nang tomorrow. Tonight’s storm lit up the sky behind the hills like a rerun of an ancient war, and this afternoon as I sat in a deckchair looking out across the bay I thought, “This is the long-awaited trip. The one I’ve been going on about for so long.” Because it is, you know.
The young Serge is interested in art and sculpture, and enrolls in the
School of Arts in Moscow. Come the Revolution of 1917 he fled Russia to go to
Turkey, and after adventures through Europe he finally settled in Paris in
1923. He was also a guitarist and played cabarets, which remained his
professional job for several years of his painting career.
Once established in Paris, he enrolled at the Académie de la Grande
Chaumière and the Académie Forchot to progress his painting studies.
It was in 1935 that he met Marcelle Perreur Lloyd, a descendant of Sir
Thomas More of Irish and French origin, who became his wife. It was at her
insistence that he continued his studies in England, at the Slade School of
Art. During a visit to the British Museum he is struck by the colors of the
Egyptian sarcophagi. From then on, his art became less figurative and rather
dominated by blocks of color. He gained a reputation for abstraction and pure
color.
On returning to Paris he met the painters of the time, such as Sonia and
Robert Delaunay and Wassily Kandinsky, and the sculptor Otto Freundlich. In
1937, his first personal exhibition took place, at the Galerie Zak, in
Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The Zak also gave the first exhibition to Kandinsky,
who is a supporter of Serge: “For the future I bet on Poliakoff,” he says.
During the war, his works became darker and more abstract. After the war, he
had an exhibition of his abstract compositions at the Galerie de l'Esquisse,
which put him in the spotlight and he received good reviews in the press. Two
decades followed where Serge's reputation grew, and he met several of the big
names in art and cinema. A room reserved for his paintings at the Venice
Biennale in 1962, in which year he became a French citizen. Retrospective at
the Whitechapel Gallery in 1963, and an exhibition at the Galerie Ex-Libris in
Brussels, and at Circle and Square in New York, and so on. Yves Saint Laurent
designs a ‘Poliakoff’ dress. It was about the Whitechapel retrospective that
Pierre Rouve (diplomat and communicator) said, “His art, flourishing in a
perpetual present, is also an art of boundless presence”.
What characterizes a work by Poliakoff are blocks of color, a strong
intensity as if the color were all that remained of a scene. He was influenced
by the icons of the Orthodox Church, which are not exactly portraits but
objects of meditation. The Russian Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) was of the same
opinion; his art simplified to a black square. Poliakoff did not know
Malevich's work until the 1950s, so he had to walk the same path separately.
It is also possible to make comparisons with the art of the Catalan Joan
Miró (1893-1983) with its somewhat marine forms, reducing living beings to
stains of color. All other consideration flees and you find yourself faced with
pure light, the “boundless presence” as Rouve says. It is considered
'tachiste', a movement that includes such as Hans Hartung and Antoni Tàpies,
and can be seen as the European equivalent of American abstract expressionism.
Following a heart attack in 1965, his health weakened, and Serge Poliakoff
died on October 12, 1969, aged 69. The following year the Museum of Modern Art
in Paris devoted an exhibition to him, and more recently others took place in
Bergamo (1970), Oslo (1976), Milan (1983), Paris (2013), New York (2016 and
2021). In the 13th arrondissement of Paris there is the “Place
Serge-Poliakoff.”
The progressive art journal Hyperallergic
characterized Poliakoff’s current reputation as ‘for France, like a respected
old uncle who is sometimes visited; but for the United States, a forgotten
name' and suggests that it is because in the 1950s when Serge was approaching
the peak of his career, Paris was losing its crown as 'art capital' to New
York. Even so, Poliakoff's importance as the innovator of a color sense above
all else, the 'unequaled colorist' as Van Gogh foresaw, has already begun to be
rediscovered.
(translation of a piece written for a French course - originally published 05/02/22)
With Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh, Omar Sy.
This film is inspired by the short novel "L’Ecume des Jours" (“The Froth of Days”) by Boris Vian (1920-59), in which, according to its author, "A man and a woman love each other, and then she dies. " However, it is a completely surreal story, where water lilies grow in lungs, and a house shrinks as its inhabitant becomes poor.
And there is always the jazz, necessary in Vian but which is lacking in several films where it is should be. Also as oddly modified Peugeot cars, like a transparent limousine - which is in the novel, when Colin and Chloe go on honeymoon - and conforms to the style of the text with its mechanical-biological chimeras - by example a “modified rabbit… you keep whatever function you want.” Vian was an engineer as well as a novelist and jazz musician.
The impulsive style of the first part of the film won't appeal to everyone, but it suitable for the journey that we the public take at the same time as the characters of the story - that their world is ideal only for a few well-to-do young people at the top - the ‘Froth’ of the original title, perhaps, and it turns out to be pretty dystopian otherwise.
When Colin has to find a job to pay Chloe's medical bills he finds himself in a world deprived and full of misery. It's a world full of religion - like the France of the 1940s and 1950s when the novel appeared - and the religious are mostly followers of a strange and apparently harmful morality, a world where as in "L’Arrache-Coeur" - another novel by Vian, published in 1953 - "God is luxury. "
Gondry’s film is the third time the novel has been adapted for the screen - the first film being the well-known 1968 version by Charles Belmont - Marie-France Pisier and Jacques Perrin in the roles of Chloé and Colin - and then in 2001 the Japanese Go Riju made “Chloé” with Nagase Masatoshi and Tomosaka Rie.
I found that Gondry brought the strange and overwhelming atmosphere of Vian's world to life. Although the characters are not deep - maybe this is on purpose - the world they inhabit comes true: which results in a stylized film and little to the taste of a large part of the audience, but faithful to its origins.
(originally published 27/11/21)
I will be putting the reviews from the last year (December 2021 - December 2022) on here as I migrate the content.
Yes, it's the latest iteration of the blog.
A year ago I moved from Typepad to Write.as - notes on this below. But now, given that Write.as really isn't what I want and this blog already existed, I've moved on, or rather consolidated my content provision to Blogger.
I'd for some reason forgotten I had the Blogspot blog, which at the time was called Alt.Kingston - being a series of pieces from the time when I was living in Kingston upon Thames. No reason I can't revive it with some of my old content and then produce some new. There was also something called Jintiboohah (!) which may have been renamed and rebranded as Alt.Kingston, I don't recall. It doesn't exist now.
Here's what I wrote a year ago.
My old website is now defunct. Newer cafe reviews and a couple of other pieces have been uploaded – the older cafe reviews are now on Flickr. As to the rest, it also exists on my PC and in the Cloud and is no longer needed online. It’s a shame in a way as there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with Typepad as such: it’s straightforward to use (rather what Wordpress was ten years ago when I was using it more), but when a company won’t even allow new sign-ups and directs prospective users to a sister company using a rival technology, then it is probably time to call it a day. (tl;dr: even Typepad’s owners want you to use Wordpress). And I also don’t need the huge number of pages and posts on there to still be online.
I’ve had a website of some kind for several years, probably since 2000 –
there is a very early homepage that says ‘revised September 2001’ and has a
SFF.net logo so it will have been hosted there. At the time (2000-2001), I also
did work for local sites such as the Fulham and Hammersmith Historical Society
(still going but I handed it over to them), H&F Local Agenda 21, Cycick
(cycle repair company), H&F Pedestrians Association, and Haughton and
Naughten (costume designers). Much of the ‘my site’ pages on my PC date from
the mid-2000s, including a vehicle list from 2004 and the pubs of H&F
survey (2002-03). The precursor to the pubs list shows dated updates from 2002
and 2003. It also references walkingspace.org, a domain I owned at the time but
which is now owned by a walking tours company. There is a page on it for
Horncastle School (i.e. not a separate site); this also links to the
Yahoogroups mailing list. There is also a list of domains I owned, which
contains:
fhhs.co.uk, fhhs.org.uk, fh-pubs.org.uk, chrisamies.com, deadground.com,
chrisamies.co.uk, haf21.org.uk, hfla21.org.uk, horncastleschool.co.uk, last-orders.com
At one point I had something called Bathos, on the NTLWorld server,
which appears to have been a link page to my other pages. (Pubs list, FHHS,
Horncastle, Pictures for SPPHRE whatever that is).
In Autumn 2005 I declared the intention to move to a blog-based
solution, which I said would be Livejournal and for a while was (finally
leaving LJ on 19/01/2018, although I didn’t use it much after around 2015).
At the time I still used FTP for the FHHS and Horncastle sites and also
for a separate website for the Hammersmith and Fulham pubs list. I said I was
going to move to blogs in 2005; but the Wordpress account dates from nearly
four years later, so did I not have a website for four years? I’m not sure, but
it seems likely that either I didn’t, or I did but just let it be and didn’t do
anything with it. In the same piece I also noted moving images to Flickr, which
in terms of the pub list did happen. Years later I’ve followed it with the
earlier (i.e. pre-Cheltenham) cafe reviews.
Wordpress: joined June 2009. Personal website will have been there from
6/2009 until 3/2014 (4 years 9 months). I don’t think I’ve ever paid for
Wordpress, but they may yet make it a paid-only service in which case I will
either need to pay for hosting for the Horncastle School site (the most likely
outcome) or move it elsewhere. The earliest page date for that site on WP is
15/06/2010. During that era I also designed WP sites for Martinworks
(handyman), The Spirits Authority (experts in whisky etc.), the Fairfield
Tavern (not used), and The Silver Wizard Project (rock band, sadly split up
before releasing their first album or the website).
The Solitary Review: Typepad website 16/03/2014 to 28/11/2021 (7 years 8
months).
3/12/2010 is the date on the earliest article, which references my
Nanowrimo work, _Brothers of the Shadow._This will have been a page ported from
my Wordpress site.
Charge has always been US$8.95 per month, so at least there were no
unwelcome increases.
Let us begin ... at the beginning. A white page, ahead of you, one of those days. Although to say 'One of these days' is to invite comparison with Pink Floyd channelling the Doctor Who theme, incorporating it, just as it's too easy these days to use The Lick in a piece of music, just for jolly, wouldn't you?
Here is what I wrote in 2018 about the 'flaneux' idea, about the philosophy behind The Solitary Review.
To step outside your door can be an achievement. Home is (reasonably) safe. I’ve made it that way. Despite being hauled over the coals by threatening builders who made off with my entire life savings for a job of work that should have cost a third of what I paid them, and despite a desperate attempt to claw back money via AirBnB guests who very often made me feel unsafe instead, I achieved a level of security.
Of course that making home reasonably safe has come at a price. I don’t entirely understand the word ‘lonely’ – I’m a massive introvert, ISFP if you believe Myers-Briggs and heavy on the ‘I’ part of that four-letter acronym. The whole family thing is anathema to me – too dangerous and not in a way I like the sound of. I have my own things to do.
I don’t collect things. Mostly. This might surprise people who think I’m some kind of geek – my book collection is dwindling as I get rid of them and rely on the local library (a marvellous underrated resource), my tiny house is almost empty of knick knacks and tchotchkes. I do however have a database of pubs. Public houses, drinking establishments, watering holes. First visit dates for each one, name, address, postal area (that’s for example the W8 in W8 1AA), some notes on the visit (who with, etc), a note on its history or name changes, and for a while its rating out of 10 on the Beerintheevening website – which if not actually defunct is now somnolent, unmoderated, beset by spambots, and of less use than the Campaign for Real Ale’s excellent Whatpub site (which also does let you add ratings, but only if you’re a CAMRA member). At the moment the number of visited pubs is somewhere over 1,520 [edit: over 1,660 by November 2021]. But I don't, or very rarely, drink alcohol these days.
It’s the very quiet places you have to beware of and yet it is those very quiet places I am drawn to. Empty cemeteries like Brompton with its colonnades, and its loitering youths like something cooked up by Jean Genet and Samuel R Delany – whether it’s Delany or Burroughs depends on whether you want bodily secretions or centipedes. Burroughs’ south-of-the-border drug-fuelled hallucinations include gigantic centipedes rearing above fastened sacrificial victims atop great grey stone pyramids, creatures with the fangs of the rain god Chac and an endless, mindless red-eyed thirst for blood. I dream of those grey brooding stones, and the cave-dwellings of the Pueblo peoples, and the rose-red walls of Petra, and the way their forms are repeated in our modern-day apartment blocks and factories. Long ago (until barely into the present century) I lived in a complex in the West Kensington area of London, an intricate place in red brick that one of my friends said looked like ‘a prison’. I suggested that he should know – and besides I later worked in a residential scheme whose walkways and security doors put me far more in mind of a jail. For me the flats were a fortress, but in a good way – a safe place, a small but warm community planted with trees and flowers. And if the trees, as is their wont, kept growing, they would enfold and overshadow the blocks themselves and the result would be cliff-like buildings hidden in the shadows, quiet, patiently waiting, like their occupants living their contented lives.
I suspect the pubs are like that for me – a safe place, or supposedly, a shelter from the screams and the light outside. There are times when all sound for me becomes undifferentiated screaming – a PTSD holdover, I am told. That the pub sells beer is a plus, but the beer is not the point very often – the word ‘pub’ is short for ‘public house’, as in, house, public. My first introduction to the Campaign for Real Ale was the London Pubs Group, whose concern is mostly history and architecture; their pub walks would involve a half pint of beer in each pub, possibly a soft drink if there was no decent beer choice. It was only when I got involved with local CAMRA branches that I was introduced to the idea of having a full pint per pub, the focus being far more on drink, and this was not so much to my liking. I preferred to keep moving, pub to pub, six or seven or eight in one day even. Constant movement, not exactly drifting – a nomad does not just wander; Not all those who wander are lost. (JRR Tolkien, “The Fellowship of the Ring”).
The public house is a semi-public space, the public are allowed in at certain times and with restrictions. You, dear reader, may never be able to afford to stay in St James or Mayfair but due to the miracle of the pub you can go there and sit and read the paper and eat and drink. It’s perhaps hardly surprising that in the present day with its shady interests who want to snaffle everything up and stop the public from gathering and using the public space, the pub is under threat. It is democratic, it is vulgar, it is libidinous, it is not controlled. It is everything Tory Brexit Britain hates, though the traditional Brexit voter will swear they love their old pub.
So you’re saying … you flaneur from pub to pub, growing
steadily drunker like one of the minor adventures of Ulysses? Pretty much – or
I did. In St James I entered a pub with a flurry of snow and asked ‘Where is
the snowman?’ said, ‘I am the snowman,’ for I was.
[This part updated on 26 November 2021 and again in December 2022]
These days I travel by bike into the small town I've moved
to, and go places by train, and take pictures and videos, and go to cafes. I
sit with my back to the wall or at the bar and write, or draw, and hope that
the world in this moment will leave me alone, surrounded by people who,
themselves, are minding their own business, and by etched glass and stained
wood and the low gentle murmur of the outside world, when my own tinnitus, like
a roar of traffic inside my head, allows it.
