Fat Boy Slim and the Blue Horizon

I can't help myself. It isn't something of which I'm proud. The carrots come later.

My "set top box" receives UK TV stations, perhaps entirely illegally, here in the Irish Republic where I live. When I say receive, what I mean is an unreliab inter pte signa that ca star quit str ng but brea up badl . You get the idea. Quite frustrating at times.

Strangely (or probably not at all strangely) the only stations unaffected by this fractured reception are the selling channels of the QVC and BidTV type. Sometimes that is all that there is to watch that has any coherence, and I've become ever so slightly addicted to them. I have never bought anything from these channels and should news reach you that I have, then you have my permission to track me down and fell me with a single shot from a whale gun (great value at £99.99 and it is on Easy Pay too. UK P&P £14.80...a purely arbitrary sum as I'm sure you know).

What transfixes me is the entirely spurious sincerity of the presenters. When I used to watch "Middle Class Big Brother"...er...I mean "The Apprentice", I was initially amazed at the salaries claimed by many of the contestants, some of whom weren't possessed of towering intellects. What they did possess was that killer instinct; that ability to sell whatever it was to whoever would buy it and regardless of the morals involved. What we should recognise as "cunning". Making sales was all and it is scarily Faustian in many ways. I do not doubt that this is a skill, but I do question a society that places such a premium on it (especially when nurses, social workers and others doing infinitely more worthwhile jobs attract such paultry rewards).

An old girlfriend and I reconnected, in a generally chaste way (there were undertones of our past relationship but she was by then the mother of three grown up children) after a hiatus lasting nearly thirty years. In the last ten years she has risen to a very well paid position (and boy wasn't that an important detail!) in a "cosmetics party" organisation. She had started as a simple "party host" but had, by sheer hard graft, climbed the pyramidal structure (make no mistake - this is pyramid selling) and ended up doing very well thank you. The words "six figure salary" were ones oft repeated. I know what you're thinking, but you'll have to trust me when I say that my eyes have stayed resolutely blue.

She had changed, as I'm sure I have, in the years in between our earlier liason and now. What I noticed about her most was an impatience and a need to live in the present. She took decisions quickly, didn't consult and, if it was wrong, moved on with barely a backward glance and little evidence, outwardly anyway, of regret. She seemed to be slightly embarassed by the "lowly status" of her policeman husband and keen that I should know that she was the main wage earner in their house. In some ways elements of this were admirable and she had certainly reaped the material rewards for her approach, but most things in her life were obviously measured against a scale where aquisition equalled worth. You can read about my reflections on measuring worth in a previous blog of mine which I entitled rather unimaginatively "For What Its Worth".

Where does the carrot come in to all of this? Well, as some of you might know, the carrot is not naturally orange. Left to it's own devices it would rather be purple, but the Dutch, in a fit of patriotism, bred the now more familiarly coloured root vegetable of today. Marketing, plain and simple. It had to become something different, in a permanent way, to succeed. How many of us have seen a purple carrot at "Alec Rose - Greengrocer"?

It is sometimes hard to hold on to who one truly is. Many forces lay siege to us and any of us might be tempted to trade ourselves, or a part of ourselves, in pursuit of success, however we measure that. The mistake is, I believe, in using an external scale - the bigger my car/house/salary, the more value I will be seen to have as a person. The folks on QVC, Alan Sugar's apprentices and my ex-girlfriend are not necessarily inherently bad people. Probably they're not. What they have achieved could be seen as some kind of victory in fact. They are well paid and enjoy the trappings of monetary success.

What worries me is what I percieve as their lack of personal insight. How the degree of comfort that they have in manipulating the rest of us for, essentially, there own ends is so complete. Targets, targets, targets. Do they believe that, when the time comes that it is no longer required that they maintain it, the persona can be dropped like a mask, revealing the true, original them? Alas, I fear that this is not the reality. When one acts a part for a sufficiently long period, one becomes that person.

So carrots - revel in your purpleness, just in the way that a very flaw-filled me intends not to trade my imperfect centre for something (probably monetarily based) that others might judge me well by. When I reach my final rest it is important for me that I reflect, not necessarily on a life well lived, but at least one that did no harm.My acquistions will mean nothing - only the methods I employed to obtain them will be of note. On the other hand - £25.60 for a 3 litre, non-stick, tabletop, electric skillet that will revolutionise all of my cooking requirements...and it's got an indicator light...

"Sell, Sell, Sell" by Alan Price from his brilliant soundtrack for the Lindsay Anderson film "O Lucky Man!", the sequel to "If".

Some weeks ago, as a result of reading the unfailingly interesting Jante Weight-Reed's "My Life As An Artist" blog on here, I was inpsired to follow her advice. I created my little "painting corner" on one end of my dining table and then I allowed myself to select a subject to paint and use it merely as a "jumping off point". She had insisted that this was good and liberating. She was right, and to shake free of verisimilitude as my goal made it all much more fun.

I'm presenting one of my better efforts here because I've received a couple of enquiries about how it is all going and to continually sidestep the matter could seem like false modesty.

This was my jumping off point:

...and this is where I jumped to:

I jumped and floated. I did not fall. Thank you Janet!

As most of those in my embarrassingly small (but delightful, and hand picked(?) - each one of you!) readership may already have devined, I have a military background. It was well over twenty years ago that I left it all behind; it was the Royal Navy and I was glad to get out, but I do nevertheless have some small part of me formed by that experience.

Tonight, at the end of a day of breadmaking, sundried (well, OK, oven dried) tomato making and enduring an ESB (think LEB or whomever your electricity provider "of choice" is) power cut of several hours, I allowed myself a wallow in some musical nostalgia that took me back to my basic naval training.

On my hard drive I have a file under the "music" tab containing several downloads listed as "unknown album". I decided to tidy this up, so imagine my delight at one of the "unknown" tracks being something from my very earliest navy days! I won't pretend that I was 100% content in the navy. As a nurse I spent the vast majority of my time in Naval Hospitals (a vanished, class ridden and inverse snobbery driven society) but was only truly happy at sea, where I felt myself to be part of a special and supposedly ephemeral brotherhood (I remain in touch with my shipmates; hospital colleagues much less so).

Anyway, back to my musical memory. I was sixteen, brought up on a small island and suddenly what might as well have been a million miles from home (not a bad thing as it happens, but that is a story for another day). On Saturday afternoons, just before I joined up, I used to listen to a programme on Radio One (yes, THAT Radio One) that captured my imagination. Paul McCartney had acrimoniously split from The Fab Four and was furiously trying to establish an independent musical credibility. This was to go spectacularly wonky later, but for now, he had a direct connection to the zeitgeist. On this programme he demo-ed the somewhat edgy (and later banned by the Beeb) song "Hi Hi Hi" in which he codified his enjoyment of cannabis and the song featured here which, according to wikipedia has equally, but less controversially, establishment mocking lyrics. Oh, how cutting edge it all was back then.

Later, somewhat isolated by my artistic sensiblities and with the homesickness of a sixteen year-old who has suddenly realised that he isn't as grown up as he thought he was, that same song came on the radio.

It was a Saturday afternoon in November, and those of us too shy or tired to negotiate the delights of early seventies Torpoint Town sporting a crewcut and dressed in full uniform - this was a time when the mullet was de riguer (even Macca had one) and servicemen were despised by some - had just been marched back from the barracks cinema where the compulsory entertainment for those not "going ashore" had taken place (a worn print of "Gunfight at the OK Corral" as it happens). I flopped on to my metal sprung bed, turned my Grundig Radio Boy on and this little piece of sanity, of civilisation, of who I really was, squeaked out of the speaker:

This isn't really much of a post, relying as heavily as it does on the reflected glory of one much more talented than me.

Why bother then? Well, as it happens I was moved to post this beautifully written song after reading today's entry by Janet Weight-Reed who blogs here too - rather more frequently and interestingly than I can usually manage - musing on the imminent departure of a dear American friend of hers. Still, I possess the "calm confidence of a christian with four aces", as Mark Twain is attributed with saying, that my blogging will come right one day...and indeed, some days I think that it nudges near.

So, I should receive no praise whatsoever for merely knowing that there exists a song about South Dakota, from where Ms J W-R's pal hails as she tells us, even though this one is NOT from the film "Calamity Jane". I shouldn't receive praise but, at this non-self effacing juncture in my life, I'll take what I can get.

The source of glory here is Nanci Griffith and this song drips with the ennui of any number of middle-of-nowhere bars I've frequented on wasted, sunny afternoons when dust raised by the flapping of old newspapers scintillates in the shafts of light and induces, supports and fortifies one's temporarily louche disposition.

No wassname doodahed Nanci, just thingy and I'll oojah.

Well, OK, I don't know for absolutely certain that dinosaurs were blue, but since no human ever saw one stride the earth, it follows that we can't know what exact colour they were. So, until categorically proved otherwise by the relentless march of science, I shall maintain that they are as likely to have been blue as any other colour. Not a navy, airforce or sky blue; not an electric, Egyptian or Persian blue, but something akin to cerulean...more properly called dinosaur blue of course.

Definitely NOT purple like that execrably twee American Kid's TV offering.

I was led to this thought by listening, accidentally, to a Robin Ince podcast I'd downloaded to my laptop some time ago. It was called "Show and Tell" and Robin's guests included Chris Addison - an intelligent and thoughtful comedian, probably best known for his role in the political satire "The Thick of It".

Chris Addison talked about enjoying visits to the Horniman Museum in Dulwich, East London and which, by the way, sounds fantastically eclectic and interesting. Anyway, he was drawn to their specimen of a Canadian walrus. At the time of it's inclusion in the museum's collection in the 1880's the natural shape of walruses was not at all familiar to Victorian taxidermists. As a result, who ever did the stuffing of this naturally wrinkly creature carried on past the wrinkly stage to produce a smooth skinned, markedly over full specimen.

Here's my point. Most things in life are built on supposition, much as we like to think that they are certain, proven, inarguable. It is mostly a guess, circumstantial happenstance, nothing more. Was fire "discovered" as the result of a lightening strike? Does the presence of water on other planetary bodies give evidence of life? Was Jesus really the son of God or was he a chancer who got lucky? Were Beethoven and John Lennon both really geniuses? Did Gaia exist? Did our parents really love each other? What is love anyway?

None of these questions is designed to offend, just to cause a moment's pause for thought. We skate on the thin ice of our own lives. Our only decisions are - do I stay at the edge of the frozen pond, strike out for the middle or try a bit of both? When making such decisions it is important to remember that when the railways came there was a genuine concern that, should the speed exceed 30 mph the human frame would burst through it's skin upon braking.

What can I learn from those who came before? What is truth and what is aspiration? History is written by the victors/survivors (same thing). "It is believed..." does not make immutable truth. The stegosaurus had beautiful, violet eyes...possibly.

I was running late.

I'm not religious.

I am spiritual.

Spuds and mussels are involved, but only peripherally. Oh, and a trawler in a garden.

Don't let your heart sink too much - these statements are connected.

As drives to work go I am one of the lucky ones. The road that I take (written as if I had a choice!) skirts the edge of a sea lough. I go through a tiny Irish town that I will not name (Hello Maguire's Bar, Hello Brennan's bread delivery man!) and wend past mussel beds (seen at low tide only), serious fishing boats pulling at their leads and on to a dormitory town (as if such a thing were necessary) for Derry City. There's the Gaelic Football field, the man selling potatoes from a little van on bricks at the front of his house and the retired fisherman who has had a one third size model of his old trawler built and plopped right there on to his front lawn.

Tractors, those who are village hopping in questionably roadworthy Mazdas and a lugubrious school bus dictate my progress.

Eventually, inevitably, I reach the bridge "on the northern side". Built from steel plate in the same Belfast shipyard that famously forged the RMS Titanic (and many more successful ships), she is known locally as "the new bridge" despite being now more that twenty years old. She curves langorously across Lough Foyle and in that curve lies her glory, taking on the colours of the day. By turn - pinks or greys or some blues yet to show up in any Windsor & Newton tube.

So, I was driving to work and I was late. I'm sure you are familiar with the scene - everything timed to perfection, from the alarm clock sounding to the amount of time that you allocate to choosing to ignore it. On to the time that the kettle takes to boil and the shower to run hot and the thousand unthinking actions one takes before getting in to the car and embarking on an oft repeated journey undertaken in a fug of "I wish that I didn't have to work" or "I wish that my pleasure was my work" or "When I retire...".

I was running late. My routine had been upset and I felt as though I was up against the clock. Automatically BBC Radio Four sounded from the the radio once I started the car. Odd this, because months ago I stopped listening to the radio and started using CDs because the news had become so relentlessy depressing.

I drove past the spud seller, past the boats and mussel creels and saw the greenkeeper for a local golf course striding purposefully to work as he usually does. It has become my habit to pick this man up if I see him (I don't know his name nor he mine) and then drop him off at his work. It costs me nothing, it hopefully helps him out and I get a little company - albeit that conversation is limited to the weather and how it affects grass - as we make our way along the sea lapping by the lough.

After the golf course and the alighting of my temporary companion I turned to the radio once more. "Thought For The Day" was on. I'm not religious but I was struck by what the speaker (Canon Lucy Winkett of St Paul's) had to say.

I have no intention of transcribing Canon Lucy's thoughts, but would like to share with you how moved I was by what she said. I won't as a result become a Christian, but she did connect deeply with that part of me that is spiritual. As I said at the start, I am spiritual.

At a rich man's funeral, she recounted, one mourner said to another "How much do you think he left?". A fellow mourner replied significantly "Everything".

Her theme was that "worth does not equal wealth". I think it was one of the truest meditations on the human condition that I've heard. A thought not just for the day, but for much longer. Here is the whole thing (only three minutes of your life) so that you can make up your own mind:

I'm aware that my reports from the cultural front line that is Edinburgh in August fizzled out to no satisfactory conclusion.

Belatedly then, my final thoughts on this year's panoply of...of...of mixed quality will follow now:

Richard Herring - Hitler Moustache
Mr Herring is now a Fringe veteran. Funny to think then that I saw him when he was a callow youth in a basement venue one Sunday lunchtime and "was up" with a review from Oxford University. A fellow player in those days was the now rather better known Al Murray whose act consisted of a series of accurate but dull and tedious (and slightly worrying - how did he learn?) vocal imitations of "firearms of the world". And now, the AK47!
Anyway "Hitler Moustache" started as an exercise in experiencing life wearing said moustache but ended up as a show about claiming back the toothbrush "upper lip welcome mat" for comedy - after all, he argued, Charlie Chaplin had it first. The show included a non-jokey section as the comic expanded on the BNP's two seats in the European Parliament and how it was the apathy of those who did not vote, perhaps disenchanted with national politics, who handed it to them on a plate.
Thoughtful, funny stuff. Not as funny as he thinks he is, but a quality turn nonetheless.

Bridget Christie - My Daily Mail Hell
Bridget is actually Stewart Lee's wife. It isn't important if this reference means little to you. Her show was not, as many expected, an attack on her ex-employer where she had worked as the administrative assistant in the gossip column department. She shared juicy anectdotes about David (or was it Jonathan?) Dimbleby, Alison Pearson, Gene Wilder and a longer, very interesting one about the artist Jack Vettriano, among others.
In summary, it was a feel good hour in the company of an engaging woman who (she says) left school at 14 armed only with a strong westcountry accent and a dream of becoming an actress. Warm and witty.

Richard Herring and Andrew Collins - The Collings and Herrin Podcast
Yes, him again. This was a cheap, pre-lunchtime show in which these two friends recorded their popular podcast in front of a live audience. It was puerile, juvenile, coarse and unrehearsed. Some things worked and others didn't. I really enjoyed it. Whilst not courageous, they went out on a limb and it was good to watch them bouncing off of each other.

The Electric Cabaret
Sadly, my last show of the Fringe, and it left a nasty taste. I bought the tickets at the half-price booth and they still managed to diddle me! It started late and in a venue (a hotel) that ran out of beer, and was performed to an audience of mostly Southampton Uni students by...er Southampton Uni students. This was appallingly self congratulatory and nerdy. If you're that interested, please read my review at edfringe.com. I felt ripped off and we left after about ten minutes - we weren't alone in this.

First Class
A French company performed this two hander set in a post office. It was an avantgarde musical dance piece and had bags of brio. Something out of the ordinary.

Gavin Webster's Falderal
I thought initially that he had got his show's name wrong - surely its FOLDEROL? Well, as it turns out falderal is an acceptable variant and therefore perfectly OK. This was a late evening stand up act at that "fair on comedians" venue, The Stand. When I got in and found myself sat next to Jo Caulfield I thought I might be in for a fun hour - she wouldn't bother watching tripe would she? Sadly, this articulate (but not as clever as he thinks he is) Geordie only had twenty minutes of top notch material. He started strongly but gradually his star dimmed as it traversed the sixty minutes. Jo laughed like a drain at everything, but perhaps that's what one has to do when watching a fellow comic.

Knuckleball
A slightly preposterous story line did nothing to dull the intensity of the two young American actors who played out this steamy and eventually brutal play. So good were they that I genuinely feared for the wellbeing of the female actor at one point. I went along prepared to barely tolerate this play and emerged stunned.

I also saw some other shows, some free stuff and other bits and bobs, but this essentially marks the end of my Fringe reports for 2009.

Tips? You want tips?
1. Pre-book a few "bankers" before you go. The programme is available from mid-June and it means you'll see something that you like, guaranteed.

2. Go in the second week (it is a three or so week event). This way the shows will have mostly bedded in, Fringe fever won't have visited the performers yet (they often go down with the lurgy and have to deliver their final shows through rasping voices and Lemsips) and you'll get in to most things still - "London Weekend" comes at the last weekend and getting tickets then is a different story.

3. Loos - an important consideration. Temporary venues generally mean temporary porta loos. Yeuch! Try those venues which are usually churches or community centres, which are generally well maintained. No need to see a show there - just wander in. NB - This WON'T work in the pubs!

4. Try some "Five Pound Fringe" shows - these are professional shows but not usually household names. Worth a punt, which is what the Fringe should be about.

5. Try some "Free Fringe" shows - the two big players in this are "Laughing Horse" and "PBH". It will usually be a non-ticketed show in a pub's backroom. They are genuinely free although the pub banks on you buying a drink or two and a bucket is passed for the performers at the end - £1-£2 is the usual donation. The companies are often student shows or part time performers. Quality is hugely variable, but hey, it is a venture worth supporting because if you kiss enough frogs...

6. Accomodation - I can't say this to much...do the Fred Pontin thing and book early, book early, book early! The Edinburgh Festival is the single largest tourist attraction in the UK and at the time that it runs, the Military Tattoo is on too. Add to that the normal welter of summer visitors who've come to see one of the most beautiful and tourist friendly cities in Europe if not the world.

7. Diet - forget it! You'll eat junk and like it. Got it?! Actually, calling it all junk is unfair as there is some good low cost take away food out there. You will however eat on the hoof, at odd hours and in odd places. It is part of the whole experience and, after all, you are there for the culture not the cuisine aren't you? (Edinburgh has a plethora of first class restaurants, but they're pricey and full of luvvies at Fringe time, and dinner time is also showtime isn't it?).

So there you have it, in all of its ugly, raw, smelly, uncomfortable, beautiful, kaleidoscopic and life affirming glory. Go.

So, as the satirical magazine Private Eye (recommended as an effective Daily Mail antidote) would have it, farewell then Keith Waterhouse.

I used to be a nurse in another life. I worked on permanent night duty (12 hour shifts, seven in a row) for two years once in the very early 1980's. It was a personally and relationship damaging cul-de-sac as it turns out, but that has no relevance to my tale right now. At the time I was the male equivalent of a "Sister" and I was in charge of four wards, despite my youth. The staff were generally excellent and so, apart from regular (but not so regular as to be predictable!) rounds, unless there were new admissions or patients close to death - yes, dear reader, I'm afraid that people do die despite the best ministrations of hospital staff - I would sit in the various ward offices reviewing notes,treatment plans, drug schedules and the like. By 2 a.m. things had often settled on the wards - those in pain were comfortable, those who couldn't sleep were helped so to do (that's how it was) and those about to go gentle in to that good night had not yet entered their final hour.

It was then that I would read for a while. In Plymouth, where this tale takes place, there was a second hand bookshop that I loved and from there, as was my habit, I randomly picked, a yellowing, musty copy of Keith Waterhouse's first book, "There Is A Happy Land". This was one of those touchstone books for me that we all have in our lives. Ones that we will always remember, sometimes distortedly, sometimes nostalgically as "one of the best books I've ever read". What we actually mean of course is that the book connected directly with us at that point in our lives. Not necessarily because of it's subject matter, but because of some weird alchemy that turned base writing in to gold because we were in a place that made us receptive to it.

"There Is A Happy Land" describes life, from a child's eye view, on a council estate in Leeds in the post war years. The life there is colourful, funny and shocking in it's casual cruelty, but it is equally as warm and life affirming as it is raw and real.

It was the first of the author's books that I ever read and, despite reading several more over the years (although not his most famous - "Billy Liar"), none of the others, though they charmed and amused me, recaptured the un-put-down-ability of that second hand, dog eared tome.

No matter - if he were only to have written one book and that one was "There Is A Happy Land" then that would be enough for me. I look at it on my bookshelf even as I write.

Thank you Keith. You touched my heart and fired my imagination. Better still, you retain that power even from beyond the pale, every time I pull your book down and read the words you wrote, on a clanky typewriter in a land less priviledged than mine, where happiness was still in the rainbow pattern on a roadside puddle.

Another bittersweet song from the underrated Boothby Graffoe. I think that his facility with words and music are masterfully understated. This only gives more weight to what he is saying (pity then, that the audience laughed at the obvious in this otherwise subtley complex song). To be fair, he is a musical comedian and so they may have felt obligated.

The picture, just in case you are curious, is of Wigan Pier, made famous by either George Orwell or George Formby...take your pick.

In an attempt to broaden my experience I went, around midday, to an Edwardian styled building on George Street, just yards from the Assembly Rooms mega-venue, to see some Dostoyevsky. The so-called "New Theatre" was actually a temporarily converted Masonic Lodge (fab sinks in the loos!) but had the air of a proper theatre about it within the performance space in which "Cry From Underground" was delivered.

My own notes use words like "Scandanavian angst introduced" (the writer and lead was, I think, Norwegian), "overwrought delivery in first act" and "seedy bleakness well interpreted". Not a barrel of laughs then, but it would be churlish not to acknowledge the intensity of the performances in this two hander.

Where else but Edinburgh could one drop in to a pre-prandial slice of Russian soul searching? "The Scotsman" newspaper's reviews are rightly regarded as the bellweather of the fringe every year, and their account of this play could not be bettered by my less well informed drivel:

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/7100/Theatre-review-Cry-from-underground.5570438.jp