The man standing beside me as we waited for the lights to change was busy. He was carrying a child - she was about two I would guess. And he was talking on a mobile phone. I could hear enough of the conversation to reaslise it was about work - and important. The green man appeared and we crossed the road. The man continued his phone conversation as he crossed, also taking care to hold his child safely.
It was a picture of modern life. Doing one thing at a time would be bliss. I eat lunch while checking emails, talk on the phone while cooking, ask after my son's day while loading the washing machine. No wonder people are stressed. And that's before considering the news ...
But I was on my way to a little bit of bliss - or, at least, a new experience. Last Christmas I did some of my shopping at local shops, thinking that little, independent businesses needed custom and offered good products. My friend June, who has, in the past, worked as a cello teacher and midwife, is now an aromatherapist running a small, one-woman business. I bought some pots of cream as gifts as well as one for myself and June insisted I enter the free draw she was running.
Just before Christmas I learnt I had won. I hesitated to claim my prize, thinking of the strain the economic crisis puts on small businesses but last weekend June saw me walking past her shop and called out to me. We arranged an appointment for Friday the 13th - not a popular day for customers.
So this morning I walked into Scents of Harmony, ready for my first experience of an aromatherapy treatment.
We'd had some discussion of what treatment I should choose. According to June I could have any treatment she offered. That seemed over-generous and perhaps a little too adventurous. We settled on her February special offer: a strawberries-and-cream facial with hand massage.
I was slightly nervous during the initial questions when June checked my medical history - she has to be sure that nothing she uses is bad for clients. And when she asked what smells I liked I wasn't sure. I thought of lavender and rosemary and said I preferred herbs to citrus smells. She suggested frankinsence with marjoram and, while I settled myself on the couch, she made her preparations. Then she offered music while I relaxed. I chose a classical guitar compilation which began with Air on a G string. As the music played, June started work. And I rested.
I thought it would be strange to have someone else - a friend - apply oils, lotions and a face mask but it didn't seem strange at all. The scents, the music and June's massaging fingers, relaxed me. I wasn't asleep but I was at peace. Briefly I surfaced enough to recognize a familiar piece by Bach but I said nothing and June worked in silence. She'd explained what would happen, so I wasn't startled, even when she lay pads on my eyes as the facemask worked. She oiled and massaged my hands. By this time I was hardly aware of where I was. All the worries that usually occupy my mind had subsided. I thought I couldn't relax more until the scalp massage started. As June touched acupressure points on my scalp, my body responded and found calm. Finally she worked on my neck and shoulders.
It must be years since I've been so deeply relaxed. June gave me plenty of time to recover, first lying down and then sitting up on the couch, with a cushion to support me. Eventually I put my watch on and disovered that the consultation, treatment and recovery had lasted nearly two hours, but I'd been outside time. I suggested lunch, if June had time, and we headed to the Flying Goose cafe a couple of doors away where we enjoyed home-made soup with excellent, tasty bread and butter. Then I floated off down the High Street.
Does aromatherapy work? I used to think it a nice idea - something that might be pleasant but not much more. But it did work for me. My worries seem ... well, absent. And after the oils and the strawberries-and-cream facemask, my skin feels better than it has for months. I think I'll sleep well tonight.
We're still calling it "the credit crunch," although other terms have arisen: recession, depression, crisis, disaster. This morning brought a government admission of something most of us must have suspected for some time: that what has happened will be worse than the 1930s and longer lasting in its effects. Time to batten down the hatches, perhaps, and look after ourselves and our families?
While I'm concerned for my family - especially my children and my parents - that deosn't seem much of a solution. Nor can I feel any smug satisfaction in saying, "I was right all along - it's really bad." I may have realised it was bad but I don't know what to do about it. I've a few ideas - not well thought through - so if anyone trusts the public with information and a debate, I'll throw in a few sentences. But, so far as I can see, the government doesn't really trust or like the people. It seems to me that the more people involved in the debate, the more likely we are to curvive and cope. The government tends to treat the people as if they were a large class of obstreperous toddlers, too foolish and unruly to be trusted with the truth and too ignorant to have any useful ideas. Instead the government offers commands backed up by fear of punishment - or something worse.
So I'm living through the credit crunch or depression or recession or crisis or disaster - and trying to make sure that it is life and not mere existence. For me that involves reading books, fencing,listening to music, going to plays and films. Ideally this should involve communicating with other people and sharing experience, whether through discussion of a book or going out to an event. It's not a time for extravagance. I haunt the shops selling second-hand and remaindered books and look out for affordable culture.
On Sunday evening I cycled through the snow to the Paradiso Cinema. It's a new venture - a community cinema which doesn't set up to make a profit. Once a month, in the local secondary-school theatre, a film is shown. £4.50 buys a full-price ticket and there's a complimentary glass of wine or soft drink before the screening. This provides a chance to chat to other cinema-goers, and they seemed a friendly lot, even though there was no-one I knew and I was the only person attending the film alone. (I was the only cyclist too.)
The film was Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky, superficially a cheerful comedy from pre-credit crunch days (it opened last year), The main character, Poppy, as brightly dressed as her name, is relentlessly, infuriatingly cheerful. Occasionally this blossoms into a strength - she is credible as a good, loving primary-school teacher whose pupils flourish under her care. She has courage too, refusing to run away from the distressed and the mentally ill. But she is less happy meeting her sister, who tells her to settle down, grow up and get a mortgage. What she rejects is not this pathetic and limited definition of adulthood but the idea of adult responsibility. Poppy is an everyday Peter Pan who explicitly - at the start of the film - wants nothing to do with reality.
Viewers react to the film in different ways and it's open to opinions and interpretations. I'd have liked the opportunity to discuss it afterwards and hear how other people had responded. But the snow was still falling and everyone was eager to get home. My bike left clean dark tracks in the white of the cycle path as I headed away from the cinema and back to this credit-crunched, disaster-ridden world.
I don't know if it was the snow, the credit crunch or the need for a preview audience, but a message reached me on Facebook offering £5 tickets for previews of Glamour, the new play by Stephen Lowe.
These days Stephen Lowe is one of Nottingham's literary celebrities. His Brian Clough play, Old Big 'Ead in the Spirit of the Man, was one of the most hilarious and joyful productions I've ever attended. I'll never forget the Nottingham Forest and Derby fans thronging the theatre for the first preview nor the ecstatic response I - and the whole audience - gave to the stage Clough's rendition of "My Way" in which he was accompanied by roller-skating angels. Only at the theatre or sports ground is such sublime collective enthusiasm possible.Glamour takes an episode from Stephen Lowe's Nottingham youth as its starting point. The schoolboy Lowe was working at a small Nottingham cinema, the Moulin Rouge, where his tasks included booking foreign films, which were cheaper than new releases. "The continent" - especially Paris - came to embody the idea of romance, sex and glamour The young Stephen Lowe, represented by Jimmy Potter (not Porter) in the play, decided on a career as a film-maker. Undeterred by his reliance on a handheld 8mm camera, he settled on his first project: a short blue movie (literally blue since he dyed the film in the bath).This is the starting point of the play, which takes place behind the screen at the now-lost Moulin Rouge. Six actors are on stage. There's the young would-be film-maker and his girlfriend, who are torn between his desire for art, sexual experience and Lawrentian ideals and her Catholic upbringing (coupled with embarrassment about her small breasts). There's the chirpy, comic cinema-owner who has fled to Nottingham from London and his alluring, uneasy wife. There's the would-be singer who offers a different kind of glamour - he once appeared on Top of the Pops. And there's a quiet Irishman, working on a building site while writing poetry and talking of Joycean epiphanies. Off-stage - in the streets and the auditorium of the cinema we never see - are guests invited to the premiere of young Jimmy's film and a group of Irish building workers.The play is a comedy but, as with all good comedies, there's loss at the heart of it. Almost all the characters yearn for a life that's unattainable and dream of being somewhere else, where life is filled with glamour. Only Jimmy has much hope of fulfilling his dreams through the miraculous transformation (in 1966) of university. The rest live through projecting their desires on other people, seeing them as the embodiments of the glamour they desire rather than recognizing them as fully human. The older characters are more seduced by glamour than the young who still have the chance that luck will improve their lives - perhaps their greater chance of luck means the young can afford their forays into realism.I watched Stephen Lowe and the director, Bill Alexander, in the bar before the play. When it was over, I saw them in the back row of the stalls, with a sheaf of notes. There may be rewrites before the press night on Tuesday or the staging and timing may be changed. There was a little dip in attention for about ten minutes of Act One although the audience was willing the play to succeed. But such things often happen at previews - that's what previews are for. And the cast was brilliant, especially Michael Socha as the young Jimmy Potter and Melissa Simpson as his girlfriend. (They had real Nottingham accents too instead of the usual TV travesty.)The play as a whole was a delight: lots of laughs but, in the end, real emotion and a sense that the play had raised important questions, as good plays do. And for someone of my generation, there were delightful and embarrassing recollections of the 1960s - before the play began, I realised I could sing along to "Michele - my girl" (even the verse in French) while in the interval I was embarrassed by my familiarity with the Babycham ad. I'll be urging my friends to go.
I changed trains at Bristol Parkway once. It was a depressing experience.
I usually like railway stations. Even the smallest and barest rural platform - Honeybourne, for instance, midway between the small village of Church Honeybourne and the tiny hamlet Cow Honeybourne - has a distinctive character. The bigger stations may have the same shops (or "outlets" as they are now called) but they also have history and personality. But all that was distinctive about Bristol Parkway was a determined characterlessness. I recall it only in terms of platforms, notices, stairs and subway that were interchangeable with a multitude of other railway stations. There may have been a cafe but, if so, it was a cafe whose customers and staff had been drained of geographical or regional identity and, like the food, existed only between places. Bristol Parkway didn't feel like a real station - more like an intersection on a motorway where people could pause for a few moments so long as they didn't mistake their existence there for real life.
There are stations I've visited only once or twice that I shall never forget: Grindleford, and Worcester Shrub Hill. I've even developed affection for that difficult multi-platformed interchange, Clapham Junction. But Bristol Parkway belongs in a bleak vision of the future - unless it's the present that has stolen up on us.
A new Parkway station has landed in the East Midlands. To be accurate, I think people may have put it there, since I saw lights once or twice when the train rushed past the spot in the past few weeks. I haven't used it. It's another dull, anonymous halt, with train information spelt out in orange dots on electronic noticeboards. Sometimes one or two people get on or off the train there when it stops. Sometimes I see a uniformed member of station staff. But I'm growing fascinated by the large glass boxes labelled "Waiting Room." They are filled with identikit, hard-to-vandalise chairs which have the appearance of occupying an uncertain space between comfort and discomfort. The chairs are (have I got this right?) set out in rows in the glass waiting rooms. I have never seen a human being in the waiting rooms - perhaps the chairs are too terrifying.East Midlands Parkway Station is for motorists. Apparently this makes it a green initiative. Travellers are encouraged to get in their cars, drive on the M1 and turn off towards the railway station. Or they can arrive by bus, if they first catch a plane to East Midlands Airport. I expect it's a quicker journey than the buses that already run to other East Midlands cities. The publicity is all in favour of the expensive new stations. Meanwhile the service has been cut at the small local stations in the area - the stations with character. Some little stations on the line have lasted 180 years, founded in the days of the Midland Counties Railway. There are histories, memories and railway buildings that have been in used since Queen Victoria was young.And then there's East Midlands Parkway
You may like to read Craig Murray's new book for free on your computer. It's called The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and you can download it as a zip file by clicking here.
Craig Murray didn't set out to give his book away. He had a contract with a publisher, Mainstream. Then a firm of solicitors called Schillings threatened to sue Mainstream for libel and that's the sort of action that can bankrupt a small publisher, whether a libel has been committed or not. Craig Murray says he has legal advice that assures him he is not guilty of libel - and he's prepared to stake all he has on that by publishing the book itself. He's making it available free of charge on-line as well as publishing hard copies himself.
You can read more of the story on Craig Murray's blog. He also tells you how to buy a copy of the book, either from him directly or from Amazon. Obviously he'd like to make some money out of it. Writing is now part of his work, after all. And if you've read Murder in Samarkand, you'll probably want to read the prequel too. (If you haven't read Murder in Samarkand, please do.)
In the meantime, if you haven't had the time to read the whole book just now, there was a little preview in the Mail on Sunday. I've had a busy week and that's as much as I've managed to read so far. I've ordered the book from Amazon but apparently it's so popular that they've already sold out and are awaiting further copies. Once I've read it, I'll try to post a review.
When I was young, everyone knew the story. There was war between the Philistines and the Jews. The Philistines were brutal and bullying. Nonetheless, for some unspecified reason, they sent out their champion and invited the Jews to send their own champion to face him in single combat.
The Philistines' champion was Goliath - a giant and a one-man killing machine. The Jews had no idea who to send against him until David, the shepherd boy, volunteered with stories of how he'd killed a lion and a bear while looking after his father's flocks. King Saul did his best for David and dressed him in fancy armour but David couldn't even walk in it. Instead he chose to go out against Goliath in his everday clothes, armed only with a stick, a sling and five round pebbles. And of course, he had his faith in God - this is the Bible after all.
Even if you've never heard the story before, you know how it must end. David took his sling and a pebble and hit Goliath right in the centre of his forehead. When the giant toppled down, David hacked his head off. Then the Philistines fled.
The story's a popular one. I've known about the statues of David by the sculptors Donatello and Michelangelo. But I never wondered why they were made. It was only a few years ago that I learnt the way in which David was seen as the symbol of Florence, which saw itself as a weak city surrounded by larger, threatening states.
Florence certainly faced threats but these days we see it as strong and influential rather than weak and threatened. The symbol of David's weakness overcoming strength is one that could easily be appropriated by any faction, family or individual who ruled Florence. Even the strongest states and leaders often present themselves as victims.
Most states have been victims at some time. Britain, which ruled an empire with the usual mix of occasional benevolence and institutional brutality, saw rebellious "natives" as a threat - and the colonised could be cruel and violent. More recently, the Blitz in World War Two haunts us.
The United States grew out of British persecution of dissenters - and persecuted the American Indians to the brink of extermination. Recently the televised horror of 9/11 showed us America as victim again. What happened in Fallujah was not televised.
And Israel came out of centuries of persecution culminating in the mechanised brutality of the Shoah. When the state of Israel was founded, a horrified and remorseful west recognized the state at once. A culture soaked in Bible readings was bound to sympathise with the people of David. But the land was already inhabited and, shaken by its own war and refugees, the West didn't consider the newly dispossessed Palestinians.
And now we're watching Gaza, the land of Gath and Ashkalon, the land of the Philistines. There's another unequal contest between strength and weakness. Israel faces real threats. But it's a well-armed country, the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Gaza has starved under a blockade and most of its inhabitants are children. In the Bible the giant killing-machine is killed and a massacre ensues. In real life, I don't know what comes next. I long for an end to the violence and vengeance.
I came across that account of winter through T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Journey of the Magi." It's not a poem I greatly admire but I dutifully followed the reference in Southam's student notes and discovered the sermons of Lancelot Andrews. I couldn't agree with Andrews' theology - he was a high church Anglican and defender of the Divine Right of Kings - but I loved the way evocative phrases emerged from his careful translation and exposition, often in the movement between Latin and English. The passage quoted in the title of this post concludes by drifting into Latin and back to English: "in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter." Andrews may be trying to conjure up the journey of the wise men but, for me, what he offers is a harsh English winter, thick frost on the countryside and the muffled crackle of frozen stubble underfoot.
This New Year, the hard frost and fog seems to lock people into their separate houses. But the two young people and I set out for our separate new year celebrations: one to a party, one to a club and me to a dinner party prefaced with champagne and concluding with single malt whisky.
I reckon I had the best of it. I could hear the conversation, which (in the case of my fellow diners at least) sparkled while the food was excellent. There was even a special vegetarian dish for me - chestnut a la bourguignonne - served with side dishes of savoy cabbage and a delicious potato and celeriac mash. I'm lucky to include a terrific chef among my friends.
There were hints of other celebrations as I went out - young people, bottles in hand, checking house numbers. And at midnight the fireworks began at Nottingham Castle and the middle-aged, black cat whose house it was hid behind the bookshelves.
The only thing to spoil the evening was the lack of public transport. I contemplated cycling both ways but was deterred by the predicted minus 4 temperature. The combination of ice and alcohol would, at least, make me a danger to myself. And I feared the number of drunk drivers on the roads.
The dinner party was in Nottingham. Usually there are night buses, running every hour, but the companies claimed there was no demand for transport on the evening of New Year's Eve or on New Year's Day. The final buses ran at about 8.00 p.m. Taxis charge double in the early hours of New Year's Day. This is reasonable enough - years ago I used to babysit and welcomed double pay at Christmas and New Year. But not everyone can afford taxis. I worried about the risk from drink-drivers and feared that young revellers in skimpy party clothes might succumb to hypothermia when walking three or four miles home.
I reached home safely. So did the young people. The frost continues. There may be a little snow, or fog. And that takes me back to Lancelot Andrews:
"The waies deep, the weather sharp, the daies short, the sun farthest off, in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter."
The man standing beside me as we waited for the lights to change was busy. He was carrying a child - she was about two I would guess. And he was talking on a mobile phone. I could hear enough of the conversation to reaslise it was about work - and important. The green man appeared and we crossed the road. The man continued his phone conversation as he crossed, also taking care to hold his child safely.
