It must be hard, soul-destroying work being a modern witch. Not only do you have to do all those tedious magical things, like collecting newts’ eyes, harvesting mandrake and sacrificing the odd virgin, but you also have to spend an inordinate amount of time hanging around popular tourist spots in Glastonbury looking really, really sinister. It’s a tough job, but I guess that someone has to do it.
A particularly sturdy young witch was on duty in the Abbey Gift Shop a couple of weeks ago. Clad in a curiously fetching albeit distinctly unseasonal heap of purple and black taffeta, she was wearing really interesting Goth-style makeup and absolutely loads of ironmongery. She was also clutching a slightly bedraggled funeral wreath in one hand and a black coffin-shaped PVC handbag adorned with a pentacle in the other (a bit of a give away, I thought).
The poor dear was making a huge effort to look mysterious and evil and it was a crying shame that none of the other tourists seemed to so much as notice her. They might at least have pretended to be a little bit nervous. It was such a hot day and she looked so uncomfortable and under appreciated that I was sorely tempted to buy her a rum and raisin ice cream.
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
Monday, 9 April 2007
Brian - The Ubiquitous Anti-Chameleon
There is nothing in the least exotic about Brian so the word protean feels a trifle excessive; however, he is something of a shape-shifter and he comes in various guises. His age varies from mid thirties to late sixties; however, he is generally middle-aged and always male. He can be found in various habitats from the Far East to Torquay Pier; however, whatever the environment, his physical malleability seems designed not so much to make him fit in but rather the reverse. Wherever he is found, Brian can be expected to stand out like a sore thumb. I strongly suspect he is the president of the Swindon Photographic Society or just possibly of the Crawley Camera Club.
My first encounter with Brian was in the rather glamorous surrounds of the five star Hyatt Regency Hotel in Hua Hin, Thailand. The year was 1986. We had escaped from Bangkok for a short break and were relaxing in the really quite magnificent air conditioned lobby. The waiter had just brought us cocktails when there was a sudden thrashing from an adjacent floral display and a rather alarming albeit diminutive figure emerged from the lush decorative foliage. Clutching a huge Nikon and looking like a stand-in for the photojournalist in Apocalypse Now, the bedraggled khaki-clad figure hurled himself to the ground and with an extraordinary look of grim determination started clicking. At first I though he might be a member of the paparazzi and glanced around to see if any celebrities were present. But then I realised he was taking photographs of the foliage. In a flash of intuition I realised that the short, dishevelled would-be photographer could be none other than Brian.
After that first encounter, I was always spotting Brian. Whether perched on a portable step-ladder (the ‘photographer’s friend’) and dressed in Gulf War camouflage at the Chelsea Flower Show or emerging from the shadows of the Coliseum dressed in his more usual khaki shorts, matching waistcoat and heavy boots, the only constants were the huge camera, ‘kit bag’ and the complete and utter incongruity with his surroundings. He also wears an air of what might be described as the inverse of studied nonchalance. It is a look of painfully self-conscious yet somehow wilful gaucherie.
My second close encounter was at Stourhead Gardens one early morning in the spring of last year. I was there to try out a very costly tripod that I needed for a photographic job the next day. I hasten to add that I am not a professional photographer and am most definitely not a member of Brian’s camera club. However, I didn’t want to look too incompetent when I turned up my client’s offices and the tripod required some mastering, being both heavy and extremely cumbersome. Realising I needed help, I happened to look up and there dramatically materialising from the swirling early morning mist who should I see but Brian.
Despite the affected professionalism, Brian turned out to be quite hopeless. After fumbling for a while he gave up and expressed his frustration in a glare of absolutely blistering contempt directed at my digital camera. It would seem that he is a purist, a ‘film man’. In a charitable attempt to defuse the situation and to mask any embarrassment he might be feeling, I asked what he thought of the hideously expensive tripod. His eyes took on the gimlet look of a high court judge and he considered for a moment. “A most acceptable bit of kit … for a first tripod” he opined with nauseating condescension before striding back into the mist. Had I been of a more violent disposition or had faster reactions, I would have hurled the thing at his head.
Last Friday I spotted Brian again. He was on Park Walk in Shaftesbury, a place much favoured by young mothers with pushchairs and elderly couples taking their afternoon constitutionals. As is always the case, it would have been virtually impossible to miss him. Not only was he clutching the longest telephoto lens I have ever seen, but he appeared to have transmogrified into a clone of Robert Capa and was busy striking extremely dynamic poses more suited to a particularly hellish war zone than to a genteel and rather sedate Wessex market town. I tried to capture his picture using my own pocket camera, but my wife thought I was being cruel and dragged me away. As I turned to go, I saw what would have been the perfect photo opportunity. Wearing an air that combined professionalism and menace, and with finger on the trigger of his camera’s motor drive, and with gleaming, perfectly calibrated telephoto lens, Brian was advancing towards a bed of pansies.
My first encounter with Brian was in the rather glamorous surrounds of the five star Hyatt Regency Hotel in Hua Hin, Thailand. The year was 1986. We had escaped from Bangkok for a short break and were relaxing in the really quite magnificent air conditioned lobby. The waiter had just brought us cocktails when there was a sudden thrashing from an adjacent floral display and a rather alarming albeit diminutive figure emerged from the lush decorative foliage. Clutching a huge Nikon and looking like a stand-in for the photojournalist in Apocalypse Now, the bedraggled khaki-clad figure hurled himself to the ground and with an extraordinary look of grim determination started clicking. At first I though he might be a member of the paparazzi and glanced around to see if any celebrities were present. But then I realised he was taking photographs of the foliage. In a flash of intuition I realised that the short, dishevelled would-be photographer could be none other than Brian.
After that first encounter, I was always spotting Brian. Whether perched on a portable step-ladder (the ‘photographer’s friend’) and dressed in Gulf War camouflage at the Chelsea Flower Show or emerging from the shadows of the Coliseum dressed in his more usual khaki shorts, matching waistcoat and heavy boots, the only constants were the huge camera, ‘kit bag’ and the complete and utter incongruity with his surroundings. He also wears an air of what might be described as the inverse of studied nonchalance. It is a look of painfully self-conscious yet somehow wilful gaucherie.
My second close encounter was at Stourhead Gardens one early morning in the spring of last year. I was there to try out a very costly tripod that I needed for a photographic job the next day. I hasten to add that I am not a professional photographer and am most definitely not a member of Brian’s camera club. However, I didn’t want to look too incompetent when I turned up my client’s offices and the tripod required some mastering, being both heavy and extremely cumbersome. Realising I needed help, I happened to look up and there dramatically materialising from the swirling early morning mist who should I see but Brian.
Despite the affected professionalism, Brian turned out to be quite hopeless. After fumbling for a while he gave up and expressed his frustration in a glare of absolutely blistering contempt directed at my digital camera. It would seem that he is a purist, a ‘film man’. In a charitable attempt to defuse the situation and to mask any embarrassment he might be feeling, I asked what he thought of the hideously expensive tripod. His eyes took on the gimlet look of a high court judge and he considered for a moment. “A most acceptable bit of kit … for a first tripod” he opined with nauseating condescension before striding back into the mist. Had I been of a more violent disposition or had faster reactions, I would have hurled the thing at his head.
Last Friday I spotted Brian again. He was on Park Walk in Shaftesbury, a place much favoured by young mothers with pushchairs and elderly couples taking their afternoon constitutionals. As is always the case, it would have been virtually impossible to miss him. Not only was he clutching the longest telephoto lens I have ever seen, but he appeared to have transmogrified into a clone of Robert Capa and was busy striking extremely dynamic poses more suited to a particularly hellish war zone than to a genteel and rather sedate Wessex market town. I tried to capture his picture using my own pocket camera, but my wife thought I was being cruel and dragged me away. As I turned to go, I saw what would have been the perfect photo opportunity. Wearing an air that combined professionalism and menace, and with finger on the trigger of his camera’s motor drive, and with gleaming, perfectly calibrated telephoto lens, Brian was advancing towards a bed of pansies.
Thursday, 5 April 2007
Fruit of the Loins
A solitary, unwholesome pleasure bringing a momentary illusion of connectedness, of being one with another – lover or stranger, it is just enough to sustain the brief fantasy that there is this shadowy ‘other’. An urgent, not-to-be-ignored quivering next to the thigh; a furtive personal pleasure that must be satisfied even if it entails a withdrawal to some squalid semi-private place, or – if too insistent – a discrete albeit public unholstering and frantic manipulation with fumbling or shamefully expert fingers. Indeed, satisfying such an intensely private act under disapproving public eyes adds a certain frisson to the thing. The spasm passes, the throbbing ends and a brief instant of gratification, la petite mort: yes, oh yes, your BlackBerry® has brought you mail.
We were always told that such ‘filthy’ activities brought with them the risk of blindness, although our Victorian forebears were probably not thinking of eyestrain due to staring at BBMilbank text on a minuscule screen. We were warned that it was a habit that if carried to excess broke up families.
A puerile joke about attending to throbbing tools in public? Well, Research in Motion asked – or just possibly begged – for it . Why on earth name the thing after that most engorged, must turgid of fruits?
We were always told that such ‘filthy’ activities brought with them the risk of blindness, although our Victorian forebears were probably not thinking of eyestrain due to staring at BBMilbank text on a minuscule screen. We were warned that it was a habit that if carried to excess broke up families.
A puerile joke about attending to throbbing tools in public? Well, Research in Motion asked – or just possibly begged – for it . Why on earth name the thing after that most engorged, must turgid of fruits?
Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Memoirs of a Coup in Thailand - The Evening of Living Fatuously
News of a new military coup in Thailand, elicits memories of the last one, which took place on 23rd February 1991. The events that eventually resulted from this event were tragic with a great deal of bloodshed, much murder and the suppression of the political rights of a gentle people. On a personal note – it lead to my exile from a country I love. However, all this was to unfold, and that Saturday night was anything but tragic.
On first hearing news of the coup, David and I were propelled into resolute action. Fiercely grasping our trusty cameras in expert albeit clammy hands, we took to the mean city streets of the Asian capital – streets that seemed so strangely innocent but which at the same time exuded an atmosphere of well-neigh palpable menace and sinister political intrigue.
I hailed a taxi, brutally barked instructions and we were heading directly into the very ‘heart of darkness.’ Our destination: the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, then located on the top floor of the five-star Dusit Thani Hotel on Silom Road, Central Bangkok. The journey took a matter of minutes yet it could have been an eternity. David spent the time fiddling with his Nikon, his knuckles white with suppressed tension; seemingly more relaxed, I nursed my Minolta on my lap as though it were some dangerously deranged child and merely ground my teeth. On reaching the hotel foyer, we gave a curt nod to the resplendently clad doorman, strode across the deep-piled carpet of the lobby and were wafted to the top floor by a turbo elevator. Brusquely pushing through the padded leather doors, we entered the Club. Aside from a couple of bar staff, we had the place to ourselves; there wasn’t a journalist in sight.
Congratulating ourselves at being first on the real scene of events and sneering at the so-called professional reporters who were doubtless merely at some besieged government building or at the Army HQ, we resolutely ordered the first beers of the night and took up strategic positions in a pair of really comfortable and tastefully upholstered armchairs. From there we could command an overview of events as they unfolded. We gazed through the tinted plate-glass windows at the panoramic view of the brightly-shinning city lights some thirty or forty floors below and thoughtfully slurped our ice cold Singha beers.
It can’t have been more than a few minutes after our arrival that David broke the silence. With a decisive yet strangely cynical curl of his lips – a true mark of the ‘old Bangkok hand’ – he suggested that we ordered a book of drinks vouchers. I grunted my even more cynical assent. It was going to be a long night.
In that atmosphere of sombre menace, soft furnishings and even softer piped string quartet music, strange things can happen to a man, even to hard drinking, hard living and hard-bitten journalists. Perhaps it was the sense of bitter irony evoked by the sight of the lights shinning so peacefully yet so deceptively in the distance but I felt a change coming over me. Suddenly I was James Woods's character from Salvador while David was apparently transforming into that played by Mel Gibson in The Night of Living Dangerously. We took it in turns to snarl “god damn it” at each other through gritted teeth.
At some point in the evening we decided that it was important to get a little local colour, to obtain an authentic Thai perspective. Given that David claimed to possess an unsurpassed fluency in the language, this was ‘his baby’ (as we journalist call it). He headed or perhaps lurched in the direction of the only remaining Thai, the other bar staff having long since given up and gone to bed. Even at this distance in time, I can still hear his earnest, almost conspiratorial yet oddly slurred tones as he interviewed the somewhat perplexed-looking barman. It is hard to judge exactly how much the latter actually understood – David explained that he was from outside Bangkok and clearly had a rudimentary grasp of the local idiom – but he did come over later with a bowl of peanuts. However, both David and I felt that it would trivialize the occasion to eat them. For once in cynical agreement, we ordered potato chips instead.
On first hearing news of the coup, David and I were propelled into resolute action. Fiercely grasping our trusty cameras in expert albeit clammy hands, we took to the mean city streets of the Asian capital – streets that seemed so strangely innocent but which at the same time exuded an atmosphere of well-neigh palpable menace and sinister political intrigue.
I hailed a taxi, brutally barked instructions and we were heading directly into the very ‘heart of darkness.’ Our destination: the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, then located on the top floor of the five-star Dusit Thani Hotel on Silom Road, Central Bangkok. The journey took a matter of minutes yet it could have been an eternity. David spent the time fiddling with his Nikon, his knuckles white with suppressed tension; seemingly more relaxed, I nursed my Minolta on my lap as though it were some dangerously deranged child and merely ground my teeth. On reaching the hotel foyer, we gave a curt nod to the resplendently clad doorman, strode across the deep-piled carpet of the lobby and were wafted to the top floor by a turbo elevator. Brusquely pushing through the padded leather doors, we entered the Club. Aside from a couple of bar staff, we had the place to ourselves; there wasn’t a journalist in sight.
Congratulating ourselves at being first on the real scene of events and sneering at the so-called professional reporters who were doubtless merely at some besieged government building or at the Army HQ, we resolutely ordered the first beers of the night and took up strategic positions in a pair of really comfortable and tastefully upholstered armchairs. From there we could command an overview of events as they unfolded. We gazed through the tinted plate-glass windows at the panoramic view of the brightly-shinning city lights some thirty or forty floors below and thoughtfully slurped our ice cold Singha beers.
It can’t have been more than a few minutes after our arrival that David broke the silence. With a decisive yet strangely cynical curl of his lips – a true mark of the ‘old Bangkok hand’ – he suggested that we ordered a book of drinks vouchers. I grunted my even more cynical assent. It was going to be a long night.
In that atmosphere of sombre menace, soft furnishings and even softer piped string quartet music, strange things can happen to a man, even to hard drinking, hard living and hard-bitten journalists. Perhaps it was the sense of bitter irony evoked by the sight of the lights shinning so peacefully yet so deceptively in the distance but I felt a change coming over me. Suddenly I was James Woods's character from Salvador while David was apparently transforming into that played by Mel Gibson in The Night of Living Dangerously. We took it in turns to snarl “god damn it” at each other through gritted teeth.
At some point in the evening we decided that it was important to get a little local colour, to obtain an authentic Thai perspective. Given that David claimed to possess an unsurpassed fluency in the language, this was ‘his baby’ (as we journalist call it). He headed or perhaps lurched in the direction of the only remaining Thai, the other bar staff having long since given up and gone to bed. Even at this distance in time, I can still hear his earnest, almost conspiratorial yet oddly slurred tones as he interviewed the somewhat perplexed-looking barman. It is hard to judge exactly how much the latter actually understood – David explained that he was from outside Bangkok and clearly had a rudimentary grasp of the local idiom – but he did come over later with a bowl of peanuts. However, both David and I felt that it would trivialize the occasion to eat them. For once in cynical agreement, we ordered potato chips instead.
Thursday, 14 September 2006
On Approaching Seneca
…But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Just Possibly a Preamble
Three O’ Clock in the morning is always the deep dark panic hour, a time of bug-eyed terror, mournful sighs and palpitations. A gnashing or at least a chattering of teeth is not unknown. Sometimes I worry about whether the Jesuits were right: perhaps Hell exists in all its horror, in all of its eternally crepuscular fury; perhaps Hieronymus Bosch’s only artistic failure was a lack of imaginative fecundity; perhaps St. Ignatius Loyola was giving a highly expurgated version in his Spiritual Exercises and glossing over the particularly nasty bits. I have so far avoided the temptation to disturb the sleep of the local Roman Catholic priest, but I keep his number to hand just in case. One can imagine the conversation:
Me: It is an emergency father.
Priest: The Last Rites, my son?
Me: No, St. Ignatius’ Book of Spiritual Exercises and – if it's not too much bother – St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul.
I omit the unfortunate sleep-befuddled priest’s rejoinder but I imagine that it would be delivered in a heavy Irish accent and would be to the effect that I should go forth and multiply forthwith.
More usually than not, the sweat inducing panic is over things I have omitted to do and that I might never have time to do now. Sins of Omission were always more terrifying than Sins of Commission because there were just so many things you could omit. At 48 and somewhat on the stout side, the SAS is out of the question and I don’t suppose the Americans would be particularly keen to have me in the Special Forces. In fact, given my propensity for improbable accidents, they would probably prefer that I joined the opposition. I grow old, I grow old … will I have time to become a famous novelist, read Dostoyevsky in Russian, walk the entire length of Patagonia or visit Bognor Regis before the Grim Reaper pats me on the shoulder or rather more likely before I inadvertently kick him in the groin?
Am I, as my ever cheery friend Mike suggests, an obsessive compulsive? This is another thought that constantly runs through my mind like a toy train spinning manically round a track to the rhythm of W.H. Auden's "Night Mail". Obsessive compulsive … Obsessive compulsive …. The thought plagues me on a nightly basis and it might well be true; on the other hand, the possibly Iago-like Mike is always applying some label to me. At another time he described me as neurotic. Another train joins the track: obsessive compulsive … obsessive compulsive … neurotic.
This time anxieties centred around post-Socratic Greek philosophy. Do I know enough to justify my existence when I meet my Maker? Might Charon not demand a drachma, sesterces or Euro but instead insist on a deconstuctive analysis of, say, Epicureanism before allowing me onto the ferry? I could face extinction at any moment. Deciding to start at once – that is, at 3.22 AM – with the Stoics, I hurled myself out of bed, picked myself up off the floor & made for the computer, pausing only briefly to apply some Savlon to the carpet burns. A few minutes later, Amazon was in receipt of a fair amount of my cash, and my salvation was on its way in the form of a number of standard texts. But still, there was at least a day to wait and anything might happen.
Quivering wimpishly before my keyboard and rubbing more ointment into my sore knees, it occurred to me that that a good dose of Stoicism might be just what I need.
To be continued (maybe) ...
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