As Time Goes By

I caught a few minutes of it the other day, grainy black & white, magical.  There was Bogie, in the club, and the piano.

A few days before I’d turned the first page of the latest work from Tahir Shah, a man who knows how to tell a tale.  It’s in his blood, ever since granny eloped from Edinburgh with her Afghan warlord.  And Tahir loves Casablanca, as devotees of his work will know.  It was no surprise to find an un-named mention of Dar Khalifa in Casablanca Blues.

Having told tales of travel, and stories from the souks, of djinns and guardians, Shah has now turned his not-inconsiderable hand to fiction.  His first, Eye Spy, is awaiting my attention, but Casablanca Blues demanded it quickly, knowing what the city means to the author.  And I was not disappointed.

So here we have a narrative built up around the legacy of the movie which weaves its way to the current day, messages from Bogart himself waiting through dust-covered decades to be handed on.  It’s the Moroccan way of things, family honour, promises binding successors.

I’m not going to tell you what happens, or how it ends.  But there’s an American, obsessed with the movie, and an Argentinian trans-gender pianist in an underground club.  And of course there’s baksheesh, corruption, and beatings.

I enjoyed the story hugely.  And if you’ve been following my previous comments on the author you’ll not be surprised to learn that, despite a dozen books to his name, he’s opted out of the publishing contract to do his own thing.  For Timbuctoo and Scorpion Soup he produced beautiful books; beautiful to touch and to smell and to catch sight of on the shelf.  But both his fiction works published in recent months, and there’s a third due soon, see a little bit less in the investment.  And the product suffers for that.

He’s a great man for social networking, and sharing bits of his life.  There’s some brilliant footage from his library in Casa on his facebook site.

Recent books have been available firstly as a download, then appearing in print.  But the printing is on demand, from Lulu.  So, fine tales that they are, they are bound by those horrible shiny, bendy covers that you get with PoD books, the ones that curl up at the corners, and don’t lie flat.  Bottom shelf jobs.  But then they are fiction, and wouldn’t get to the top shelf anyway, so why not?

Despite the feel in the hand I’ll still read every word.  Shah is a genius with a pen and an idea.  And he’s pretty adept at marketing.  But then publishing is as much a part of his heritage as writing.  And the publishing world for anyone who’s writing these days is very much changing.  Tahir Shah’s just leading the way.  Personally, in his case, I’d look for a hardback all the time, even with his fiction works.  And if Casablanca Blues is anything to go by those covers and binding would be richly deserved.  Go on Sam, read it.

Horses and History

My final literary journey of the year has been a bit of an epic.  The reading took a while, for various reasons, but the journey took an age.  In fact it was close on a decade of Tim Cope’s life.  I read of the young Australian’s first travels only a few months ago, a trip by recumbent from Moscow to Beijing.

A few years later he was off again, On the Trail of Genghis Khan.  From planning, and researching to publication took close on ten years.  The physical journey accounted for nearly four years, harsh years, winters in a tent on the open steppe, temperatures plummeting.  Then came the recovery, the adjustment back into ‘normal’ life, and eventually the writing.

The book is rich in the lore of the Mongol Empire, the Golden Horde, and a quest to discover the nomadic life.  Tim takes us from Karakorum to the Danube, mostly in the company of three horses and a dog.  Eventually the dog, Tigon, joined Tim back in Australia, with the love of his life met on later guiding tours in Mongolia.  The horses found a retiral home in Hungary, and a teaching role for children

The inner journey too was huge; setting out with his then girlfriend and little experience of matters equine.  Indeed he first sat astride a horse six months before departure, but came to know the wild ways of nomad mounts, even though the post-Soviet Cossacks had largely lost their ancestral skills.

The journey was interrupted and delayed several times.  Visas and travel permits, for man and beasts were not easy – Kazakhstan and Crimean Russia sandwiched between Mongolia and Hungary.  And there were trips for awards; to London to be inducted as a Fellow of the RGS; and Sydney as Geographic Australia’s Adventure Traveller of the Year.

And each interruption brought more problems, mainly with a safe home for the animals in Tim’s absence.  But he relied heavily on the goodwill of people he met on the way; and amongst the horse thieves and alcoholics there was huge goodwill, and lifelong friendships.  Tragedy was a burden to take along the way.  He coped with the very tragic death of his father, and more beyond.  The loss of several journals of notes, stolen from a car back home in Melbourne, was a huge loss, but he still brings us his tale.

The book is filled with photos of those we meet, of the lands of the khanates, and of course of the travelling companions.

Travel writing has two very distinct spheres.  We are blessed with writers who travel, and I am thinking here of the prose of, say, Robert Byron, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Colin Thubron and many others who produce phrases that linger, possessed with magic.  And we have travellers who write.  Tim Cope is undoubtedly a traveller first – the Fellowship of the RGS is not given lightly.  But as well as making films from his journeys, he can write too, and he can write well.

I tend to differentiate between reading the writing, and reading the story.  This is in the latter category, but suffers not for that.

This latest work shows how his writing has developed since that early cycle trip, the tale of which was written jointly with the chum on the other bike, alternate chapters.  But the writing here is all his own, as was the journey.  It is all the better for that.  And it’s a fine way to bring a year of literary travel to a close.

 

Have a good one

Credits to Chris Cairns and Stu Campbell at Wings Over Scotland, a seasonal gift they may not know they’ve made.

The temperature

…. may be on the mild side, double digits at times, but the songs of the birds fly past on the wind, gone, faster than the speed of sound.  The birds though are busy; busy emptying the feeders.

Most of the times the little ones, those WBJs and others, get to squabble among themselves in peace.  But there it was the other day, a crow, perching on the prongs of the rusty old clothes pole with his massive black claws, dipping his long, black beak into the tray, gorging, looking monstrous and out of place.  And at the edge of the field a jackdaw pecked around, pottering like a black duck out of water.

I notice them because of their colour, and their size, wishing the camera was handy.  Meanwhile the thrush is enjoying the remainder of the rowan berries, battling against the wind.

But most of the garden feeders are sheltered, in the lee of  high hedges.  The maple hedge is bare now, allowing light and breeze to filter through.  Below, the hard-packed dirt is peppered with white spots.  Its where I’ll often find Lonely, the sole survivor of The Night of The Fox.  She’s looking well, new feathers and healthy red comb.  She may even be laying again, but I know not where.  Traumatised she was for a while, for fox ache.

But up above, deep in the maple, the feeder is back in use.  And that’s where the sunflower hearts go.  So the birds that don’t bother too much with the seed and the nuts come back.  Expensive tastes, and endless appetites.  Half a dozen goldfinches queue for a turn, as the chaffies busy themselves, waiting.  The brambling’s been around too.

And over at the laburnum the wee brown ones demolish the seed, leaving the nuts for when supplies are low.  It gets quite busy over there, mainly chaffies, and sparrows, and dunnocks too.  Girl Urchin tells me Mrs Woody still drops by from time to time.  It’s the nuts for her.

It is fast and furious, the frenzy at the feeders, and the scratchings down below.  Daylight hours are in short supply, meaning that the fast and the roost is long, spanning more than two thirds of the day; but the solstice is upon us at last, and the feeding time will slowly stretch.  For now though, it is like watching Urchins at the dinner trough.

But I can’t hear them sing, not even the blackie in the morning, the one that shares the dogwood with the robin, for the wind, the wind, the wind.  It’s enough to keep a man off his bike.  Any excuse perhaps.

Dunnocks though, a name I’ve always known, a bird we take for granted.  Then I looked up my book, the Field Guide, for no particular reason.  It’s a Hedge Accentor apparently.  Bloody dunnock as far as I’m concerned; WBJ.  Hedge Accentor, that’s a new term on me.  Dunnock, runs round the mouth so much better.

At the desk though the birds are still singing.  The CD plays on, and there’s some downloads from the Radio 4 tweeting that The Sleepy Sparrow was talking about.  So when I need to dream of elsewhere I can hear the puffin, and the corncrake.  And I know what they are.  I can see them, with my eyes closed; and for the latter that’s more than I’ve ever managed with them open.

Now I have to go, for Radio 4 bursts into life again.  It’s Borgen time.  Oh you thought it was finished did you?

PS   And whaddya know, five dark brown eggs lying in the nesting box, the last place I think of looking.  What a good girl.

We haven’t talked about

…… the BBC for a wee while.

But a couple of things this week bring them right back to the fore, so far as the Independence debate goes.

I caught an article the other night; as always it’s the headline that takes your attention.  It was about a report by Fitch, the credit ratings folk, confirming the whole currency issue as being neutral.  It turns out that Fitch’s report was a year old, used by the BBC again for reasons known only to them.

But when I looked at it again within the hour, it came with a new screaming headline, one of the usual BBC ploys taking another pop at those of us who seek change next year.  I mentioned it elsewhere at the time.  Fortunately we have better people than me to pin all the evidence together; to articulate and expand on what simply rankles and has me spitting.

So, over to Newsnet Scotland, and the very mighty pen of G A Ponsonby.  Go on, see what he has to say, on that particular one and more.  It’s a truly appalling situation, and a failure of the duty of impartiality that comes with state funding.

Newsnet have had some good news on the BBC front as well this week.  For 11 months they have been pursuing the state-funded broadcaster on one specific issue, and finally the BBC Trust have agreed that BBC Scotland got it all wrong.  No doubt there will be no public apology, and no comment in any of the written press.  So again, head over to Newsnet for the whole story.

This was an interview with Irish Foreign Minister, Linda Creighton.  I can’t believe that was as long ago as January, but time flies when you get old.  It was all to do with the tactics of iScotland’s possible place in the EU.  Creighton clearly agreed with the Scottish Government, in terms of negotiating from within, as an existing member, but the BBC managed to spin it the other way, stating that Ireland agreed with Westminster’s then Scottish Secretary that this would not be the case and thus Scotland’s position was dodgy, as the BBC wanted it to be.

So they misrepresented a direct quote from a foreign minister, and used it to mislead the people of Scotland as doing so served their own means; and then ignored Ms Creighton’s correction of their errors.

They, the BBC in Scotland, have been held to task, by their superiors.  But is the BBC Trust on their case from now on, and can we expect standards to improve?  Lip service I suspect.  It’s a good article, and the promise of a more detailed report in the next few days.  Go back and have a look at that when it is published.  I know I will.

It’s a timely reminder that we need outlets like Newsnet.  As it happens they have a fund-raiser under way, as do Bella Caledonia, at the moment.  So if you haven’t already done so, and if there’s a spare shilling under the orange at the foot of the stocking next week, you could do worse than support these outlets.  Last week The Herald had a sneering gloat that the Yes Scotland crowd-funder was looking like missing the target, with a week to go.  I’ll expect a congratulatory message this week after the target was achieved with time to spare.  Let’s do our bit for Newsnet and Bella too.

Just a few more sleeps

Where did we put the reindeer dust?  The cake has a marzipan coat, looking good.  And the last of the cards will be in the post, soon.  It’s coming, you know.

On the way home I stopped at the supermarket, one of the big ones, the type I don’t usually use.  Just for tatties in case I didn’t get out the next day, awfy busy you know.  In the five minutes I spent wandering those hallowed halls I discovered all that is wrong with the modern Christmas, and I left feeling quite down.

There are pallets and pallets of excess, of things we don’t need, probably don’t want.  My pet hate are those piled pyramids of tinned sweeties, stacked high.  Our houses are filled with sweeties, and chocolates.  And I read of people planning their festive dinner at the foodbanks, starving, broke.  How I loathe those photographs of politicians smiling as they pack boxes at foodbanks, glad to be seen to be doing their bit.  Unaware of the irony, their policies, the ones that mean we need to have foodbanks to feed our people.

And the supermarkets, filled to overflowing, over-packaged goods all in little boxes, gift sets, truckles and truffle-filled pates.  And all those songs blasting out from the ceiling; the same wherever you go.

The Urchins are aware of it all; school’s nearly out.  I don’t think Johnny will get any presents from Santa after that.  Boy Urchin was in the car with me, both very low after a thumping defeat at the footie.  Our goalie had lost the plot, reacted to a numbskull on the terraces, seen red; mist and card.  We shipped five, and three much-needed points went across the city.  The manager had walked at the start of the week, and the search for the third one of the season began.  The coach has gone too now, other players no doubt.  It was one of the most depressing days at a home game that I can remember.  And we play the seem team again this week, in a cup tie, still rudderless.

I can barely function; too much lost sleep.  The dark hours, headphones on.  But they brought their secret weapon for the last one.  Blowers was back, thank goodness; and the night was filled with seagulls, and white buses.  But the air was still filled with the sounds of tumbling wickets, and celebrations of joy.  Gripping stuff, across fourteen largely sleepless nights.  The Urn Returns, as it says on the screen – we get highlights now, on some channel called Pick.

And I don’t think KP will get any presents from Santa either, or some of his colleagues for that matter.  But my Aussie shirt will be clean again for the next one, on Boxing Day, from the MCG.  Might even grow a moustache like Mitch.  Oh, haud on a minute.

So do you deserve presents from Santa, unlike Johnny and Kevin?  And does the sight of your supermarket turn you off the whole thing.  Where did I put my Humbug Hat?

In Recovery

With apologies to RLS:

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches.

And charging along like the troops in a battle

All through the meadows the horses and cattle.

All of the sights of the hill and the plain

Flash by at angles so strange in the rain

And ever again, in the wink of an eye,

Painted stations whistle by.

For here is a traveller as green as the grass

Clutching his belly and clenching his ass

The barges and bridges resist gravity’s pull

And the eyes and the brain in turmoil, the fool.

The night-time return, no horizon to see

Much worse in the dark, a ferry at sea

And here is a mill, and there is a river,

Each a glimpse and gone forever.

I asked my chum Mr Google for his views on the words pendolino and nausea.  56,000 replies he produced.  It’s not just me.

I endured torture on a recent venture south.  By the time we passed Lancaster on the long way home I was completely alone in the carriage.  Stifling, heat belting out, down at the feet, gathering under the table over which you hunch, suffocating, asthmatic.  I considered very seriously disembarking at Carlisle rather than suffer another 100 miles of the Vomit Comet, on the bendy stretch through the hills.  It mattered not that it was late at night and the car several hours up the road.

It may help to be forward facing, an aisle seat, away from the heaters, cooler air.  But the online booking systems may not give you what you wished for.  When the carriage is empty, take your pick.

Awful it was.  But you do get very pampered in posh class, eating dinner from a real plate with real cutlery.  Peace and quiet.  Armed with books and note-books, checking emails, researching.  I read little, wrote less, and wondered why I had eschewed the aggravation of airports and transfers and security checks, baggage class into the city and out again. 

Or perhaps it was just the thought of what else I could have done with the price of the ticket, but let’s not go there.

Virgin Trains.  I’d rather be on a ferry in a gale.  Going somewhere more interesting.  Mind you I might now be conditioned for Favourite Uncle’s yacht to St Kilda, especially as he has a newer model, bigger faster.  Wait a minute that’s what Virgin said.  It’s taken a while, recovery.

 

Tinsel Time

Was it really all a year ago; can time pass so quickly?

I guess it’s time to start thinking about Christmas trees and what to put on the dinner table.  We know this because, firstly the reindeer have been in town again.

Reindeer

But wait a minute, the reading on the car tells me it’s 12 degrees outside, and it’s usually sub-zero when the reindeer visit.  The rain is not unusual, driven in by high winds,but warm rain is.  Can it really be festive time?

Oh yes it is.  For the annual school show has been and gone; two performances, 29 children singing and dancing and acting their little hearts out.  Fantastic stuff it was too.  There was a time when we crammed it all into the half-portakabin that doubles as the gym hall, with a tiny audience and smaller stage.

But what a difference the theatre makes.  And we are seeing the benefit now, with a third year in a proper setting.  We can have the entire school on stage at the same time, a proper chorus, with dance moves.  And lighting directors in their little box doing what lighting directors do.  Down below there are changing rooms, male and female, and a nervous trot up the stairs, an entrance to be made.  There is room for a prompter, and musical equipment too.  And for those roles the whole community comes together, former pupils back to help the youngsters

Hamish & Gracie it was this year, the script tinkered to suit.  Our narrator was brilliant, in fact reminded me very much of the professional voice-over in those little Fear Factor movies you should have been watching.  And then there were those with acting roles, and the talking trees, the elves and the robbers.

And on the stage we watch as the senior pupils help out the little ones, a little touch here and there, a hand held, a dance step.  And tomorrow’s stars have trodden the boards for the first time, not a leg broken.

Out in the auditorium, spoilt with tiered comfy seating, it’s easy to forget what’s gone on to get us to the finished product, and lots of wiping of eyes is the evidence of the magic of it all.  But the theatre facility not only allows our children to mesmerise us with us confidence we didn’t know they had, but it unleashes the creative spark in the school staff; free to let it rip, unshackled by space constraints.

Costumes are produced, with no help from parents or committees; and scenery prepared, hung from a great height.  They’ve rehearsed and they’ve practised.  As parents we run through words and scripts with the homework, and listen as songs are sung along to CDs in the bedrooms, wincing perhaps.

But on the stage it is, as they say, alright on the night.  And orders for the DVD come flooding in, for granny’s Christmas stocking, and for those further afield who couldn’t be there.  Fantastic it is, and we realise what we have, in our Urchins & Joys, and those that take them through their early years at school.

I’d hoped to bring you a shot of said theatre, but the website seems to be down.  For these are troubled times, and our Old Mill is threatened.  So the country school coming to town helps us both.  Now if we can get other schools doing the same, the Mill might just survive.  And those of us witnessing the benefits of three years in the theatre, can only hope that the facility is still there for those on the front row, our P1 stars, who I’d really love to see on the same stage in a few years time.

Now trees, and dinner.  Which way to turn?  Round in circles it seems.

 

 

 

Inspiration

Those good folks at the Common Weal, from the Jimmy Reid Foundation, have had a makeover.  I couldn’t make the party the other night, but another lapel badge from the recent crowd funding is on the way.

I’ve updated the link on the side panel to take you to the new website.  There’s a cracking wee film to go with it.  Embedding doesn’t seem to work with this one, but visit the link here.  Go on, have a vision.  Be inspired.

And just to keep the smile on your face, in case you’ve been sleepwalking through the mess we’re in, here’s some piccies, courtesy of Munguin:

The One

So what is it to be?  We’ve nominations in from The Queen of Hearts, and from The Yellow Caravan.  There’s Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose, which started it all off, and Kerouac’s On The Road,  Some may be surprised that my seeming obsessive-like fetish for travellers’ tales does not make me a Kerouac fan; sacrilege it has been said elsewhere.  But it was the unedited anniversary edition, poorly written, that I read, which may have been a mistake.  It’s not for me.

I’ve given my selection a bit of thought, plucked a volume from the shelf, and tried to ponder on why and how it has influenced me, and may do so more.

Although this work brings back memories of Hanna-Barbera cartoons on the box in the late 60s, it wasn’t until much later that I delved in deeper.  Tahir Shah it probably was who sparked that wider interest.  For he tells tales, wonderfully, and they’re often based on centuries of stories.  Tales at his own father’s knee sparked it off, but the lore behind it all pre-dates the mediaeval.

I am talking here of stories with morals, and twists and turns, fables.  These are stories from the harem and the hammam; from exotic parts.  Other worlds.  As wells as Shah I have enjoyed other collections of stories behind the tales.  Even RLS has had a go.

Oh yes, I’m talking here of the Arabian Nights, of The Thousand and One Nights, that have passed the test of time.  And if you take your place in the circle, squatting in the dust as the night settles, and close your eyes, you travel back in time; back to that Other World; back to the exotic.  Filled they are, with wisdom and more, filled with learning, of other ways in other worlds, deep with meaning.

So I think that’s the one for me.  It’s not a book to read from cover to cover, but to dip into from time to time, a tale at a time.  But if I’ve a thousand and one nights left in me, then I think I’ll jump on the magic carpet and head back there.

My own version is Lane’s three volume edition, from 1912, published by Chatto & Windus.  It’s not an easy read, giving a bit more authenticity to the yarns.  I can’t promise to read one each day, but I will be visiting those old friends when I can.  And in the unlikely event that there is another world prepared to admit this humble Grasshopper, I think I know where I’d like to be.

But keep the suggestions coming.  Together we can put an interesting list together.