Lacking in wonder, lashings of ginger beer (and pain)

For two weekends in a row, both on a Sunday, I have been in the presence of Helena Bonham Carter. Not in the flesh you must understand, but first in the cinema and then on the small screen. Altaa and I had chosen to see Alice in Wonderland 3D in Bluewater Shopping Centre since the local Odeon was only in 2D. Having been in the schedules for a week or so, I thought enthusiasm would have died down and we could have a screening of our choice. That was not to be. We got there at about 1pm and, already, not only had the 2pm viewing become fully booked but also the 4.30pm display. We had to wait until the 7.15pm showing. That meant we had to kill almost six hours. We did first by eating at La Tasca tapas bar, then we idled around the mall going our separate as dictated by our interests, so neither would be bored and meeting up at designated locations. I swiftly found Waterstones and became engrossed there. At about 5.20pm, I was told that Waterstones had actually closed and who did it happen to be telling me, but Rachel Johns, who had not recognised me from behind. A pleasant surprise. As she said, “Just proves that I do work here.”
For the next hour and a bit we retreated t a bar near the cinema, I watched Sky Sports reporting of the main footballing events (and the goals) of the day, while Altaa settled down with a discarded fashion magazine left on a table, while we both nursed our drinks.
At last we could see the film. The 3D glassed handed out weren’t a good fit and kept slipping down my nose, but the special effects were the best part of the movie. Tim Burton’s conflation of Lewis Carroll’s two stand-out works, it is arguably his weakest work. The movie was of interest in its incidence but it didn’t emotionally grab me at any time. Bonham Carter played the Red Queen with terrible tantrums to compensate for the absence of pulchritudinous looks. Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter was the best thing in it, but his final dance was uninspired disappointing – a microcosm of the picture in general. Altaa surmised that it must be of greatest interest to children who wouldn’t object so strongly to linear, non-surprising narrative. As 3D creations go, Avatar was superior in most respects.
As we left, we faced a twenty minute wait on a cold platform for the train after arriving at the station but, by happy chance, the previous service was eight minutes late, meaning we had arrived just in time to hop on.
This past Sunday we watched Bonham Carter play Enid Blyton in Enid. Blyton was another idealised writer with feet of clay – a despotic, selfish monster of a woman who could not accept anything that wasn’t in her control (not unlike the Red Queen), much of this stemming from the neuroses created by the collapse of her parents’ marriage. In a way, she had to invent a make-believe world to cope, but frequently extended this in to reality to the detriment of all those around her. Of course, this was a drama and so we must take everything here with a pinch of salt, but it was immensely enjoyable in the sense of being gripping. Altaa felt a bit too much was crammed in to 85 minutes, but it wasn’t something that bothered me. It was far better than the entertainment in Bonham Carter’s motion picture the previous weekend.

Rochester candlelight pilgrimage

Yesterday, just before 7.30pm, members of my church and several others from the Diocese of Rochester, gathered inside Rochester Cathedral coming through the disabled entrance. There were about 20 of us, a fairly large group for this kind of Lenten tour. After mingling, at 7.30 the Chapter of Rochester Cathedral, with a verger (there, as he put it, "because Chapters do things like leave doors unlocked), welcomed us and we began out peripatetism. It was a pilgrimage of sorts for ourselves, while along the way were explained to us the pilgrimages of the past, as the Chapter combined historical comments on the building and its environs with the spiritual side of things both accidental and deliberate in its construction. Just a few interior lights were on and prior to descending to the crypt, we were given candles to carry which we proceeded to light(in plastic holders, to stop wax dripping on us). As we reached the high altar, the final station on our journey outside and in the magnificent building, we handed the candles back and stepped into the sanctuary. Here the carpet had been rolled back to reveal a circular mosaic of the Zodiac, with black marble streaked with a flash of white at the centre. Not very Christian one might think, but the reason it was here was because in the stained glass window at the centre, the head of the cruciform, was Christ the King, looking down on the pattern. Therefore, it sends a clear message that its not the seasons and the stars that affect our destiny, but the one behind them all that created them. The black marble with its fleck of whiteness was akin to the moment of creation out of chaos. There were many other fascinating titbits, from frescoes to the architecture. We sung in the crypt "Seek ye first" and we rounded off the evening singing "Be Thou my vision" at the high altar. We had a little bit of conversation after it all had finished (around 9.15pm) and then departed very much refreshed in our selves by this excusrion.

Now that the health reform bill has been signed into law by Barack Obama yesterday it can truly be said that it was not premature to say 'Camelot regained' all those months ago. As well as providing near universal health care, it makes a big inroad into the deficit of the USA. It may cost $940 billion but over twenty years it will save $1.3 trillion. $350 billion is not to be sniffed at. Without this, trying to keep America's finances in order would be impossible, like shifting sands in a desert. In terms of its main provisions, it's disappointing that its not got the public option (federal insurance) that would have forced insurance companies to keep their prices low for customers, but half a loaf is better than no loaf at all. Liberal extremists have refused to compromise for several decades over elecotral reform and so the system is as bad as ever, whereas a few half loaves over the years would have produced more than the sum of a single bill and formed a good body of law. So we should be grateful that there is something momentous on the statute books. Furthermore, there is always hope that in the future it can be built upon - though not in this presidency, for it is a landmark in itself.

So its advantage Manchester United after Chelsea slipped up against Blackburn Rovers to still have a game in hand but now stand adrift by four points. But, as in tennis, advantages put you in a position to win but they have to be taken, since they are not of themselves the clincher. There is a lot of football still to be played and who says Chelsea won't break Man Utd's serve with victory at Old Trafford? That daunting penultimate game at Anfield may not be so bad given Liverpool's travails this season - indeed they could be out of the running for the Champions League fourth spot by then but would love to stop Man Utd overtaking them on league titles in the bag. So let's see what happens instead of making hopeless predictions of the kind people obsess about in the run-in. All that matters, is that Newcastle United are in the Premier League next season and there triumphantly.

Did a good deed for the day on Saturday for a pooch with ruddy features, stubby legs and a partially recessed head like Clive Anderson (if Clive Anderson were a dog) - I'm no dog expert, it could have been a mastiff, but its fur was a close-cropped and wiry dark brown with patches of white. He was clearly lost and distressed and I felt the impulse to help him out. He had run across two roads (that I had seen at least), sniffing keenly any stranger he came across and running into the front yard of every hosue that had one so he could ascertain if this was home. There was a fair chance he would be hit by car having two near misses. He (and it was a guy because of his balls) had no collar and might have slipped its leash while the master was in a shop, then going AWOL in search of his master. So we enticed him into our front garden and shut the gate behind him. The RSPCA helpline (automated voice) advised us to phone the council. This had to be done not on the QT, but on the emergency lineas everyone else had gone home. Minutes later two policemen turned up and I thought 'that was quick'. However, they were examining a flat tyre on their patrol car and saw the dog poking his its head through the railings of the gate and whimpering. They radioed to check the progress of the dog warden and then were on their way to Kwik-fit before it closed for the day. Meanwhile, I fed the dog some German ham that we had just bought from the supermarket before we met him and he gobbled that up in no time. The dog continued to whine when left alone as I observed from my upstairs flat window (landlord rules - no dogs in the house). He rattled the gate a lot and I feared he might shake the latch free. I went downstairs once or twice to pet him and distract him, but even then he still returned to the gate after a minute as if 'this is all fine but now I need to resume finding my master'. After about 10-15 minutes, the dog warden arrived to take him to the kennels in the hope that his master would retrieve him or, if he had been chipped, where his home was. The warden informed me that it was not illegal for a dog to be stray, only if it got involved in something like a road accident. And with this legal nugget delivered, she led him away on a soft cloth leash off to her van. I hope the dog fares okay in the end.

Green Zone is a film with Paul Greengrass at the helm and Matt Damon as lead and thus is a classic example of guaranteeing a good time with big names without compromising or dumbing down. I knew little about it before, but these two persuaded me it was a good bet for the night. Its intelligence and action with a social conscious were all present - everything the last James Bond film failed to deliver with any coherence.
It does make you feel angry that though the leadership of Iraq were a throughly vile lot, they were no longer a significant threat to their population as though they are estimated to have killed 10,000 after 1991, the estimates of the organisation that calculates genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia believes that as a direct or indirect result of the invasion (from all the lawless anarachy that was prevalent) a million people died. An Iraqi child is now less likely to see their fifth birthday than before the 2003 incursion. Yet the war criminals in the West still stay in plush residence free to travel wherever they like. The movie also makes clear the senseless loss of life in the conflict. Inevitably, The Guardian is name-checked (with the Wall Street Journal taking a kicking).
We are also reminded of the lies that too many people were happy to swallow, including many useful idiots in the press, as they supported the war. An once the Americans were in occupation, the ones in the ascendancy within the Washington DC administration had not a clue, not a clue, about how to rebuild a country. But there were Americans who did understand what was needed, but they were ignored as they spoke the truth, something those who wanted the war were not interested by in general. Until competent people - Bob Gates and Dabid Petraeus - were belatedly appointed, the Iraq adventure was a disastrous farrago.
Within Green Zone, the denouement to the final action scene was utterly predictable in its bathetic conclusion. The maxim that a gun shown in the first act will be fired in the third act came to the fore. An evil shit of an American who took pleasure in torturing others took all the coincidental paths that led to his doom. Overall, however, despite us knowing the wider outcome, this is a taut and classy conspiracy theory thriller, the tension sustained right to the coda.

Despite Chelsea being knocked out of the Champions League, I still back them to win the Premier League, as I thought from the start of the season. Moreover, with Chelsea out of Europe, it is less likely their English players will suffer from burnout ahead of the World Cup. The disappointment might even spur them on, whereas you couldn't say that of Ballack who saves his best performances for his national team anyway. The German makes Berbatov look like Stakhanov.
It was a surprise result, but I wouldn't write off Internazionale wining the champions League. Porto were similarly unheralded in 2004.
The Italian club's players seemed intent on demonstrating that they weren't real men, but pansies when it comes to facing English-inspired grit. Yet it was over-the-top from Pat Nevin in his criticism when he said of one Inter player he's "rolling around like's he been shot in the back of the head with an AK-47," - if that's happened, you don't roll around, you lie motionless; smashed with the butt of a gun, yes, shot, no.

Further peregrinations

Wednesday 3rd March was appointed as the day to set out for my grandfather Jim in Hinckley, Leicestershire. Just as well that I had seen Claire 24 hours prior and not then as a line-side fire near Charing Cross was cancelling all services on the North Kent Line into London (affecting Gillingham to Dartford). As it was, getting into London Victoria was far from routine, with the increased rail traffic being diverted there. A delay of more than half an hour ruled out a trip to the Mongolian embassy as being too tight (though feasible) before embarking on the trip north at Victoria coach station.
That evening, as Altaa retired to the bedroom, my grandfather and I watched on the television England versus Egypt at Wembley. Egypt were far more organised as a team, which was not surprising given that they had played much more recently together than England (the latter’s last international being in November). Moreover, during January they had further forged team spirit by retaining the African Cup of Nations. Of those not attending the World Cup in South Africa this summer, only Croatia and Russia were ranked higher. A Torrid first half for England was further compounded by three of the first choice four defenders had been struck down by injury. Eventually though (and after a good half-time team talk), England’s quality proved itself in being decisive to the home nation’s 3-1 win. Altaa and I helped my grandfather around the house, including cooking and with his shopping, as he had the month before been involved in a car accident, which had made his car a write-off. We incorporated a visit to this part of the world by dropping in on Derek and Coral Hallums in Kibworth Beauchamp (pronounced Beecham). They arranged for us to have a lovely salmon, mash potato, chips and vegetables for lunch washed down by some of Derek’s vintage white wines, followed up by apple pie and custard. On Sunday we went twice to Hinckley Baptist Church. The morning was primarily family worship, with a recording of Chris Moyles getting an airing praising a British Pentecostal Church he saw on TV one Sunday morning; the evening was devoted to scriptural study with my grandfather’s close friend Dr Leonard Taylor followed by communion. Then the Grand tour was concluded by returning home on Monday 8th.

More peregrinations

Continuing with this Grand Tour, such as it is, I used up my remaining holidays of the current tax year and on 2nd March, in company with Mel Leigh and Tom and Lynsey Jenkins, visited Claire Cohen and ten month-old Ruby in Ash Green (via Dartford for myself and Mel). Tom regaled us with escapades in the police, including being awarded a medal for gallantry cited by incapacitating a knife-wielding hoodlum. He played down the incident, saying he had been wearing a stab jacket and applied mace and a truncheon-beating of the leg to this truculent thief (he had been spotted by a plain-clothes policeman), before handcuffing the now compliant yob. Often, such thugs taken into custody issue grievous threats to the copper bringing them in and to said copper’s family. Tom at first was incredibly worried that he would be hunted down, but the frequency of these idle boasts and the fact that he has recognised them in town while this was not reciprocated as he himself was in his ordinary clothes means that now he joins in the banter to show they are not getting to him.
Tom also gave us a rundown of a memorable stag weekend to forget, in Frankfurt-am-Main of all places (but why, why?). His account of it was especially entertaining and I advised Tom to write it down, but he demurred, explaining that speaking for him was a different matter to committing such thought to paper which did not come so easily. So I’ll record much of what he said.
Essentially nothing happened that could not have realistically taken place inside of a marriage. The twee attitude was compounded by the man getting hitched, Joel Lucas, having his father come along – it was organised by Joel’s brother – who, according to Tom, was quite camp. The game plan was that they had to abroad (?), they had to watch football while there (?) and they had to time it to coincide with Viki’s hen party (???). Viki had planned for it to fall during her half-term holiday her being a teacher, which meant during the brutality of February. Tom and other would have much preferred Joel’s do to have been postponed a few weeks as he was not under the same constraints as Viki. As to the first two conditions, Frankfurt, Germany’s financial district in the industrial heartland of that country, was chosen. Tom was not he only one non-plussed by this decision. When first told this, I instantly thought of four Teutonic cities more appropriate – Hamburg (where The Beatles started out), Munich (famed for its beer), Berlin (with its fashionable nightclubs and cheap prices) and Dresden (for the culture), with the first three good for fußball. But no, it had to be Frankfurt, whose stadium has that stupid television cube hanging from the centre, deflecting any balls hit too high (the architects were probably not au fait with footy), as happened during England’s World Cup match with Paraguay.
They flew from Stansted on a budget airline, having the most enjoyable part of the experience on the town in Bishop’s Stortford before they departed. However, unbeknownst to them, when they landed in Germany their airport was closer to Cologne than Frankfurt, while Chris Brown flew from Heathrow with British Airways, got served dinner and landed at Frankfurt’s main airport which was just ten minutes from the hostel where reservations had been made. Once the bus from Frankfurt-Köln airport to Frankfurt-am-Main proper was factored in, Chris didn’t end up paying much more and travelled in luxury for that. The hostel was absolutely crummy, stressing Mark Michael out to Tom’s delight. By chance, it was located right next door to a World of Sex emporium and a big gay gar (potential for a few ironic drinks), yet neither were frequented.
The temperature in the daytime was a continental -10°C; at the stadium pints developed an impenetrable frozen layer after just five minutes and boiling hot chocolate from the kiosk was lukewarm by the time Tom got back to his seat. Though the main man Joel always returned to his room in the hovel of a hostel early and never got drunk, the others found some fun at a local nightclub after inadvertently joining a group of gay men on a bar crawl. This was after being threatened by some German heavies at a crappy go-karting circuit (Tom was victorious in the race, despite Joel betting against him) after one of the group was crashed into by another German on the track, dislocating the steering wheel but expected to pay for the damage. After refusing this demand, they pelted it past the closing gate but Joel’s dad was as clam as can be and so too slow. Not wishing to leave him to his fate, they rattled the gate to be let back in and, in the end, bartered the cost down to half of the original demand. The nightclub was a drunken laugh, but again, nothing out of the ordinary occurred.
Among other activities they watched the FA Cup where Southampton was pulverised by Portsmouth at the former’s home which did not put Chris Brown in a good mood; the Jersey group left early one morning for the carnival. Leaving the Canterbury lot to kick their heels playing pool at the hostel.
Aside from Brown, their coach returning them to their distant point of departure in Frankfurt-Köln, collided with a lorry that first dragged itself along the side, shattering some windows, letting in that nice -10°C air, before jack-knifing in front of them, with its load pinning them to the central reservation. They evacuated the rear of the bus to the front for fear that anyone might be careless enough to ram into them. It made for a chilly old time waiting to be freed by the emergency services before driving to a stop-over station where they boarded a replacement bus. All this for £400. What an outlay for such a time.
In general at Claire’s we shot the breeze and, for a while, tried to make Ruby’s alphabet caterpillar toy say rude words – it partially subverted our attempts with words that ended in ‘k’ with “that tickles,” but was helpless when ‘k’ was supplanted with ‘c’ (which was hard) and a host of others that had no such limits imposed. We took a brief tour of the local area, taking in the playground and before long it was time to return (especially as I had a PPC meeting that evening to attend).

Ban them all

The latest in a long line of footballing road abusers, Steven Piennar has been convicted of having almost twice as much alcohol in him as the drink-drive limit sanctions and so has been given a ban. It seems one week or another, a footballer is in trouble for badly driving their car. Think of the list: Cristiano Ronaldo, Jermaine Pennant (twice), Kieron Dyer, etc.. One player was involved in a fatal hit-and-run. Ashley Cole nearly crashed his car after being 'insulted' with a £50,000-a-week offer from his then club Arsenal - I hope that mobile phone was on a hands-free set. And it's not just in Britain. Inter Milan's goalkeeper had panda eyeshadow for the Champions League first-leg tie with Chelsea after totalling his vehicle. What's wrong with these guys? You don't hear about women footballers getting into such scrapes (but then women drivers in general are less prone to accidents). These male hotheads who kick a ball for a living should be banned from driving their own cars until they are, say, 35 when they can keep their testosterone under control instead of being the boy racers they seem incorrigibly to be. I mean they are rich enough to afford chauffeurs in the meantime.

Peregrinations

The visit to my maternal grandfather Bryan on 27th February represented the first port of call on something of a grand tour over the next nine days. We went on a visit of the aatchi Gallery and their new exhibition. Titled ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, without even an ironic nod or wink in the context of Episode V of Star Wars, it was hardly inspiring, doing a disservice to the works on display. No doubt any extravaganza crafted around some loans from the Hermitage would be called ‘From Russia With Love’.
Now, I’m no art expert and am thus no natural in noticing nuances that are not literary. I am a prole. If meaning cannot be discerned and there is no shock value attached (such as the camel folded into a suitcase, which reminded me of a stall in Dalanzagad, southern Mongolia), then I’m not going to be befuddled, much less moved, just indifferent. Of course, I will make an effort to extrapolate any questions posed or ideas raised, but for an untrained eye, I know what I like.
One highlight was a cow buckling from a concrete sewage pipe forced around its neck. Called ‘My Suburban Nightmare’, I felt it showed how suburbs desire to replicate the joys of nature in an urban setting, with nature suffering in the attempt to create this. The industrialisation of cattle production and how unnatural it is was possibly another theme.
A further source of interest were four panels who changed what they showed, like a hologram, depending on the position of the light (or, in this case, as they were affixed to a wall, one’s own stance). Under the heading ‘One Rupee’, it grabbed two news stories, counter-pointing each other, with the story of a mother who could not afford the rupee to feed her daughter, to the telecoms technology tale where anyone in India can call each other via landline for just one rupee. It alludes to the fact that while much of the subcontinent lives in crushing poverty, there are those Indians for whom money is easy to come by with tremendous economic progress overlaying the tragic aspects the wider world does not always see. The boom cannot totally obscure the poor relations with in the country – in many instances they are side by side.
Best of all was ‘Army of Enlightenment’ where a collection of figures constructed loosely from what looked like coathanger wire sported the kind of luminous stretch lights one might find in a kitchen. It was clearly, within the parameters of the show, a reference to the British Army and the Victorian ideal of its ‘civilising’ mission in India and other ‘dark’ places. Liberal interventionism has made a fashionable comeback in recent years though with the sensitive word ‘empire’ dropped from all references to it (‘crusade’ for that matter as well). Thus, these automata could represent the US Army and its allies in Iraq as easily as the British during the years of the Raj. Soulless and mechanical, the enlightenment they purport to bring is artificial. They have the technology but any excuse of the imposition of progress is a sop for the real reason of an army which is to advance and/or secure the values of those that control it.
There were other interesting installations and wall-hangings but these three really engaged my intellect. As you might have gathered, though ostensibly about the British presence in India in the 1920s and 30s, the Amritsar massacre and Gandhi’s salt tax protests, the focus was blurred with much reference to modern India. It could be that this Saatchi spectacular is saying that though a new superpower is in the offing, many of the injustices and inequalities that existed under the British still scar the aspirations of New Delhi; or it could just further underline the laziness of whoever decided that the title of the exhibition was apposite.
Another item of curiosity was Richard Wilson’s work. As you stand on a veranda looking across an unconventional cavern of a room, your first impression is that it is quite deep, yet there is a telltale pungent wisp in the air. You realise that the room does not have such depth after all, but is a reflection of the ceiling and seconds later it dawns that is not black glass in front of you, but oil (and that thus the room might be as deep as you might first have thought it). While playing with our ideas of space and perspective, it also creates dissonance, with a welded metal gash as jagged in shape as lightning, jutting in from the side of the room – a dose of reality injected into the illusion.
Departing the gallery, we then had a very high-class meal, with conversation to match, in the adjoining restaurant before returning to chez Oakes. Tim, Joyce’s son-in-law, unexpectedly popped round and we had fun with the new dog Lucy Bell, Hardy, the previously dog having been very chic in entering (albeit unwittingly) into a euthanasia compact administered by the vet. Lucy-Bell is a bundle of unrestrained energy and with the two brown spots above her eyes reminds me of many Mongolian canines who have a similar trait.
Speaking of the British Empire, Google commemorated St. David’s Day (1st March) on their homepage with that symbol of English might oppressing the Welsh, Caenarvon Castle.
End of part one.