There are a lot of Thatcher Death Party soundtracks floating around at the moment. One of my favourite collections in this one, because it includes some tracks that aren't just angry punk screaming.
Like this classic bit of rave-era revenge: sampling Thatcher ranting about acid parties to provide a self-referential soundtrack:
And now I'm going to go home and slump into oblivion. I've seen several dissertation students, counselled more by email, and been to 3 long meetings. No marking, no preparation and certainly no chance to sneak off for a swim. Feeling very fat and unhealthy at the moment.
There's plenty of other work to do too. I've agreed to review two new collections of R S Thomas's poems for Poetry Wales (Uncollected Poems and Poems to Elsi) which might add to the legend of RST, and a piece for the Literary Encyclopaedia on JG Farrell's Troubles. Plus several papers to start thinking about… But for tonight: the waters of Lethe. Once I've got the ironing done. It's a rock and roll life I lead, I tell you. At least I have the new Kurt Vile and Gesualdo LPs to soothe me, and the meta-genre stylings of my new literary discovery, Keith Ridgway's Hawthorn and Child.
Until tomorrow, I bid you adieu. Or rather, I'll let Jahn Teigen and Anita Skorgan do it for me, with the song of that name which formed Norway's entry to Eurovision 1982. A classic, I think we can all agree. And quite a contrast to the Thatcher track.
Showing posts with label Norway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Norway. Show all posts
Thursday, 11 April 2013
Monday, 1 August 2011
Quiet Is the New Loud
You might remember the title of this post as the Kings of Convenience's first album title. They're a duo from Bergen, Norway, who slot in between the simple folk-pop of Simon and Garfunkel, and the baroque chamber-pop of the Pale Fountains.
They come to mind because, over the days since the Utøya massacre, I've been musing, in an uninformed way, on Norwegian culture. I may have mentioned before that I think it all went wrong for the British Isles when Harold Godwinsson resisted Harald Hardrada and his armies in 1066. OK, there'd have been a little light pillaging, but we'd have ended up in a lovely left-wing paradise, with liveable cities, good pensions and unprepossessing international respect.
Brevik hasn't changed my mind about this. To me, Scandinavian culture is one of respect: for each other as citizens, for other cultures, for the environment. This is hopelessly naive, of course: the existence of Norwegian death metal is the natural concomitant of a general culture of tolerance. The murder of Swedish PM Olaf Palme in the 80s, Norway's presence in Afghanistan, the rise of the fascist right in several Scandinavian countries and the wave of dark crime thrillers all point to an obverse to the tolerant wonderlands you see in tourist ads, and I'm certainly romanticising them as civilised alternatives to the greedy, shrill, selfish, consumerist, cheap, short-termist hell that the UK has become (characteristics that have affected me, however much I'd like to deny it).
And yet… can you imagine the response of a British government to an atrocity such as Breivik's? In a sense, we don't need to. There have been plenty here, and the response is always the same: war, covert surveillance of entire communities, internment without charge, shrieking headlines and above all, politicians fuelling the hysteria with harsher, dumber, more sweeping attacks on anyone who might be a little different. We saw it all last week: the Sun immediately blamed the killings on 'Al-Qaeda', while the Prime Minister wheeled out the same tired old rubbish about security crackdowns ad infinitum.
But in Norway - still reeling - the tone was different. They could be forgiven for going on the rampage, banning this and burning down that. But they didn't. Their politicians made the kind of speeches that would have ended their careers in Britain, once the Sun and the Daily Mail had their say. They called for reflection, for thought, for research, for debate. They pointed out that curtailing a free, tolerant, liberal society in response to a man who hated free, tolerant, liberal societies would be to give in.
Scandinavian societies might be a little bit dull (as some Norwegians told me!), but they still have a public discourse which isn't dominated by vicious extremist tabloids and the venal, short-sighted politicians who make their careers by pandering to their know-nothing instincts. Instinct is the key to this: Scandinavian societies don't jump to their instincts, whereas we seem only too happy to abandon our intellects in favour of jerking our knees in mindless unison.
Which brings me back to the Kings of Convenience and their slow, calm, thoughtful songs. Rather than giving in to the shrieking of our newspapers, rather than bombing and bullying our way round a world which thinks we owe it a living, how about we adopt the Kings' motto and agree with Norway that Quiet is indeed the New Loud?
They come to mind because, over the days since the Utøya massacre, I've been musing, in an uninformed way, on Norwegian culture. I may have mentioned before that I think it all went wrong for the British Isles when Harold Godwinsson resisted Harald Hardrada and his armies in 1066. OK, there'd have been a little light pillaging, but we'd have ended up in a lovely left-wing paradise, with liveable cities, good pensions and unprepossessing international respect.
Brevik hasn't changed my mind about this. To me, Scandinavian culture is one of respect: for each other as citizens, for other cultures, for the environment. This is hopelessly naive, of course: the existence of Norwegian death metal is the natural concomitant of a general culture of tolerance. The murder of Swedish PM Olaf Palme in the 80s, Norway's presence in Afghanistan, the rise of the fascist right in several Scandinavian countries and the wave of dark crime thrillers all point to an obverse to the tolerant wonderlands you see in tourist ads, and I'm certainly romanticising them as civilised alternatives to the greedy, shrill, selfish, consumerist, cheap, short-termist hell that the UK has become (characteristics that have affected me, however much I'd like to deny it).
And yet… can you imagine the response of a British government to an atrocity such as Breivik's? In a sense, we don't need to. There have been plenty here, and the response is always the same: war, covert surveillance of entire communities, internment without charge, shrieking headlines and above all, politicians fuelling the hysteria with harsher, dumber, more sweeping attacks on anyone who might be a little different. We saw it all last week: the Sun immediately blamed the killings on 'Al-Qaeda', while the Prime Minister wheeled out the same tired old rubbish about security crackdowns ad infinitum.
But in Norway - still reeling - the tone was different. They could be forgiven for going on the rampage, banning this and burning down that. But they didn't. Their politicians made the kind of speeches that would have ended their careers in Britain, once the Sun and the Daily Mail had their say. They called for reflection, for thought, for research, for debate. They pointed out that curtailing a free, tolerant, liberal society in response to a man who hated free, tolerant, liberal societies would be to give in.
Scandinavian societies might be a little bit dull (as some Norwegians told me!), but they still have a public discourse which isn't dominated by vicious extremist tabloids and the venal, short-sighted politicians who make their careers by pandering to their know-nothing instincts. Instinct is the key to this: Scandinavian societies don't jump to their instincts, whereas we seem only too happy to abandon our intellects in favour of jerking our knees in mindless unison.
Which brings me back to the Kings of Convenience and their slow, calm, thoughtful songs. Rather than giving in to the shrieking of our newspapers, rather than bombing and bullying our way round a world which thinks we owe it a living, how about we adopt the Kings' motto and agree with Norway that Quiet is indeed the New Loud?
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
From the horse's mouth
People seem to be accepting Tory Scum's apocalyptic cuts to public services because we're in a terrible financial hole. OK, they're saying - we'll suffer in the short term to improve things over the long term.
Sorry people - it's a con. The plan is just to abandon lots of public services (health, education and lots more) to corporations and charities. How do I know?
David Cameron (inherited millions, attended Eton at £30,000 per year plus extras including 'tipping staff', Oxford University) said so.
There's loads of money floating around - we gave it all to the banks, and to hedge fund traders by not taxing them properly, and to buy-to-let speculators through the tax system, and to the rich by turning a blind eye to their tax avoidance, and spent a lot more on illegal wars. We've let the Tory Scum and their hateful newspapers persuade us that taxation and government are inherently evil.
My solution: either copy Norway or simply invite them to take over this country. You've invited the Dutch and Germans in voluntarily before (and King Alfred has a lot to answer for) - why not beg an enlightened Scandinavian country to take pity upon you? You'll get high taxation, beautiful, friendly cities, low crime, lots of bikes, low pollution, sensible financial planning, proper democracy, reluctance to throw yourselves into whichever foolish military adventure the Americans propose, and you'll all magically become very very attractive. You might even get fjords.
Sorry people - it's a con. The plan is just to abandon lots of public services (health, education and lots more) to corporations and charities. How do I know?
David Cameron (inherited millions, attended Eton at £30,000 per year plus extras including 'tipping staff', Oxford University) said so.
Citing the dramatic increase in the deaths of firefighters, and an increase in deaths as a result of fire, she asked him: "Will you give me a pledge today that when these austere times are over, and you have the money back in the bank or you're balancing your books, that you will look at anything that is cut during this period and go back and get in those fire engines back in the places they are needed to support the public?"
Cameron refused to make the pledge.
"The direct answer to your question, should we cut things now and go back later and try and restore them later, I think we should be trying to avoid that approach," he said.Stewart Lee had something to say about Call Me Dave, in this week's New Statesman:
Dave seems to be encouraging charity organisations to take on many of the social services currently provided by the government. There may be some logic in getting us to take responsibility for ourselves; Dave himself is a good example of someone who has made it to the top of society on is own initiative despite a difficult start in life.Personally, I don't think there is a financial crisis. As Amartya Sen says about famines, there's never been a food shortage: just a distribution problem.
There's loads of money floating around - we gave it all to the banks, and to hedge fund traders by not taxing them properly, and to buy-to-let speculators through the tax system, and to the rich by turning a blind eye to their tax avoidance, and spent a lot more on illegal wars. We've let the Tory Scum and their hateful newspapers persuade us that taxation and government are inherently evil.
My solution: either copy Norway or simply invite them to take over this country. You've invited the Dutch and Germans in voluntarily before (and King Alfred has a lot to answer for) - why not beg an enlightened Scandinavian country to take pity upon you? You'll get high taxation, beautiful, friendly cities, low crime, lots of bikes, low pollution, sensible financial planning, proper democracy, reluctance to throw yourselves into whichever foolish military adventure the Americans propose, and you'll all magically become very very attractive. You might even get fjords.
The Dark Place as it could by under the enlightened rule of Norway
The Norwegian Birmingham
Stoke-on-Trent, Norwegian style
The Hegemon. Potentially
Invadere oss, behage!
Thursday, 3 June 2010
I for one welcome our new Viking overlords
I've said it before, and I'll say it many times again: we all need to move to Norway, or at least beg them to take the UK in hand.
They're not in the EU, but they don't need to be - they have decent governments. They are in the European Free Trade Area, and contribute massively to EU funds. If EU membership is important, Sweden and Denmark are equally wonderful, and are members.
They're not in the EU, but they don't need to be - they have decent governments. They are in the European Free Trade Area, and contribute massively to EU funds. If EU membership is important, Sweden and Denmark are equally wonderful, and are members.
I'm listening to Heavenly's Operation Heavenly. It really is!
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Wolverines!
The big news (to me at least) apart from David Laws's defenestration (guilty, but the Daily Telegraph is clearly on a homophobic, anti-Lib Dem crusade to destabilise the coalition from the right), is the remake of infamous, awful, horrendously racist and rightwing 1980s film, Red Dawn.
This kind of rubbish always appears when a nation is culturally stressed: the 80s was packed with neo-fascist militarism in response to getting a huge and well-deserved hammering in Vietnam.
The interesting thing about Red Dawn the remake is that the evil, invading Other is no longer the Soviet Union with support from Cuba and the Mexicans, but China - clearly Hollywood's bothered by that country's financial, military and soft power.
Why is it that Americans are so keen to produce films in which they're the plucky underdogs resisting the cruel oppressors. A quick review of history: it happened ONCE, when you (very impressively) chucked the British out (though they burned the White House in 1812). Since then, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, Cuba (repeatedly), Diego Garcia, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada and Iraq have reason to differ - and that's not including all the countries tossed around by your mates. The US hasn't been the resistance since 1789.
Star Trek, the Rebel Alliance, the A-Team (now a film too), Red Dawn, Terminator, Jaws and a host of other texts suggest that you're in deep denial about being the Empire. At least in the 1950s, your Westerns featured a sheriff who was sure that he was Doing The Right Thing, enforcing justice and the American Way even if that did mostly consist of killing as many Native Americans as possible. Now you seem insecure, always looking for ways to appear the plucky underdog. Give it up. The first stage is to admit that you are a global superpower. Then you can think about the responsibilities that brings, rather than pretending that you're the victims here.
Meanwhile, here's a thought. It looks like the European hegemony is well and truly over, thanks to the activities of the bond markets. America may well be next, given that China's buying up Africa and quietly collecting as much US Treasury debt as possible. The question is, why fight it? You obviously approve of superpowers dominating the globe - give someone else a go.
One fascinating fact about the Red Dawn remake that supports my suggestion that it's time to ask somebody else for help is this: the scenes of urban devastation were all filmed in Detroit, because that's what it looks like - one of the former richest cities in the US has lost a massive chunk of its population to drugs, drink, murder and escape. Huge swathes of residential and industrial areas are abandoned and the economy is dead. Well done, capitalism. (New Orleans has also been used for post-apocalypse scenes too).
If you're not convinced, read Gwyneth Jones's Rainbow Bridge, in which the assorted rock stars and hippies who've been forced to take over England after representative government collapses, eventually realise that a Chinese takeover is by far the best option, and devote their efforts to persuading the remains of the armed forces and other bands to choose life over principle (there's a lot of sex and Arthuriana in it too).
OK, I'm mostly joking - the Chinese regime is almost as awful as some of our allies, such as Saudi Arabia. But as the product of Britain's colonial rapaciousness, I've learned a thing or two. Subaltern cultures adapt, survive and maybe even prosper. States aren't innocent, or they don't remain so - they all want to invade someone. If you do it enough, and use the right weaponry, you get a permanent seat on the Security Council.
Me? I'd like the Norwegians to invade, or one of their neighbours. Seriously. Greener, good food, high taxes, great healthcare, high degree of equality, low crime, less conspicuous consumption, better welfare provision, better education - and yet they're still much, much richer than the Anglo countries. Ask the CIA!
This kind of rubbish always appears when a nation is culturally stressed: the 80s was packed with neo-fascist militarism in response to getting a huge and well-deserved hammering in Vietnam.
The interesting thing about Red Dawn the remake is that the evil, invading Other is no longer the Soviet Union with support from Cuba and the Mexicans, but China - clearly Hollywood's bothered by that country's financial, military and soft power.
Why is it that Americans are so keen to produce films in which they're the plucky underdogs resisting the cruel oppressors. A quick review of history: it happened ONCE, when you (very impressively) chucked the British out (though they burned the White House in 1812). Since then, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, Cuba (repeatedly), Diego Garcia, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada and Iraq have reason to differ - and that's not including all the countries tossed around by your mates. The US hasn't been the resistance since 1789.
Star Trek, the Rebel Alliance, the A-Team (now a film too), Red Dawn, Terminator, Jaws and a host of other texts suggest that you're in deep denial about being the Empire. At least in the 1950s, your Westerns featured a sheriff who was sure that he was Doing The Right Thing, enforcing justice and the American Way even if that did mostly consist of killing as many Native Americans as possible. Now you seem insecure, always looking for ways to appear the plucky underdog. Give it up. The first stage is to admit that you are a global superpower. Then you can think about the responsibilities that brings, rather than pretending that you're the victims here.
Meanwhile, here's a thought. It looks like the European hegemony is well and truly over, thanks to the activities of the bond markets. America may well be next, given that China's buying up Africa and quietly collecting as much US Treasury debt as possible. The question is, why fight it? You obviously approve of superpowers dominating the globe - give someone else a go.
One fascinating fact about the Red Dawn remake that supports my suggestion that it's time to ask somebody else for help is this: the scenes of urban devastation were all filmed in Detroit, because that's what it looks like - one of the former richest cities in the US has lost a massive chunk of its population to drugs, drink, murder and escape. Huge swathes of residential and industrial areas are abandoned and the economy is dead. Well done, capitalism. (New Orleans has also been used for post-apocalypse scenes too).
If you're not convinced, read Gwyneth Jones's Rainbow Bridge, in which the assorted rock stars and hippies who've been forced to take over England after representative government collapses, eventually realise that a Chinese takeover is by far the best option, and devote their efforts to persuading the remains of the armed forces and other bands to choose life over principle (there's a lot of sex and Arthuriana in it too).
OK, I'm mostly joking - the Chinese regime is almost as awful as some of our allies, such as Saudi Arabia. But as the product of Britain's colonial rapaciousness, I've learned a thing or two. Subaltern cultures adapt, survive and maybe even prosper. States aren't innocent, or they don't remain so - they all want to invade someone. If you do it enough, and use the right weaponry, you get a permanent seat on the Security Council.
Me? I'd like the Norwegians to invade, or one of their neighbours. Seriously. Greener, good food, high taxes, great healthcare, high degree of equality, low crime, less conspicuous consumption, better welfare provision, better education - and yet they're still much, much richer than the Anglo countries. Ask the CIA!
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
The search continues
No jobs at Bergen University or Prince Edward Island University… still excluded from paradise!
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
News from Norway
Not the most thrilling story for most of you, I admit, but they had a general election in the Nordic Paradise on Monday. The ruling (in coalition) Labour Party gained a few seats, the Socialist Left party lost a few. The Communists and Greens have no seats, unfortunately, nor do the Republicans. The Conservatives gained a few and the rightwing Progress Party quite a lot, but the Labour/Socialist Left/Centre Party coalition will maintain power. Hooray!
How did Labour and their allies do it? By promising to spend MORE on the already wonderful Norwegian Welfare State! Meanwhile in Britain, we're going to respond to being bankrupted by naked capitalist bankers by electing the naked capitalist Conservative Party, on a ticket of slashing public services and punishing the blameless poor, to pay for bailing out the bankers. Well done, people of Britain.
Thursday, 3 September 2009
Why Stoke should be razed to the ground (part 43)
This is disgusting. At least, I think it is.
As I departed Stoke-on-Trent yesterday, I passed a family outing. Standing next to his mother was a boy of about 14.
On his t-shirt was the revolting legend 'I eat pussy like a fat man eats cake', adorned with a picture of a slice of cake.
This led me to ponder the parental choices made. Is this somehow OK now? Am I really deeply conservative and the world has moved on? How is this possibly acceptable as children's clothing?
I'm guessing that a fat man eats cake with little care for enjoyment or other people's pleasure, so in fact the slogan's quite threatening. It links consensual activity with selfish consumption, and uses a particularly revolting term to boot.
Worse than that, it was clearly untrue. This boy was large. Very large. It should have read 'I eat cake like an sex-addict eats pussy'.
Nobody in Norway wore slogan t-shirts.
Monday, 24 August 2009
And finally.
A few more images for you. They show you how beautiful this city is, but can't come close to explaining how joyful it is. Riding around on our Grifters, we were truly happy. The place feels confident without arrogance, clean and neat without being reactionary, indulgent without selfishness or smugness.
Quisling's Castle. He was the Norwegian Nazi leader who declared himself Prime Minister when the Germans invaded, and he grabbed this royal residence. They kept him on as a puppet 'Minister President'. He was executed in 1945 and the castle was turned into the Holocaust Museum! He's why traitors are called Quislings.
Thanks for your conundrum posts by the way - very interesting and thoughtful. I'll respond when I get a bit more time tomorrow.
Some gulls for Dan
Dan loves gulls - he's even doing a PhD on them (and other urban wildlife). Even the sealife's friendlier in Norway.
The locals were somewhat shocked at where we stayed - near the train station. It was clean, calm and quiet. We were offered drugs and 'a good time' (really, I doubt it), but more politely than the average British waiter offered a large tip… we declined. We're clean-living and we were already having a good time at huge expense.
Beautiful, beautiful Oslo
What we did on our holidays
What did we do in Norway? We ate fine food, in small quantities. We visited a sculpture park and proved that you can take the boys out of Britain, but you can't take the Britain out of the boys - especially our 'Carry On…' sense of humour. We nursed half-litres of bog-standard beer at c. £6 a glass and talked to interesting people (not just women). We walked, and cycled a lot, and took a boat trip which included a 'rip-the-head-off-yourself' lunch of shrimps pulled out of the sea and on to our plates. We went to the architectural museum, the botanical gardens, the opera house and many other sophisticated places, and a great soul night.
Here are some pictures. The rest are here. First up - James responding sensitively to Norway's completely sober and mature understanding of sexuality and the human body.
Vole at the Ibsen grave.
Oslo? Oh No. Wolverhampton.
James tells me that he feels the black dog today, and I can't look out of the window without comparing the squalid scene before me with Dusseldorf or Oslo. Neal feels the same way.
How to explain? We landed at what Ryanair calls Oslo (Torp) Airport. There is an Oslo airport, and it's in Oslo. Those brackets elide a distance of 110km: that deception was the last bit of non-Norwegian shenanigans we encountered for three days. Even the airport was lovely - clean lines, food which didn't, unlike British stations and aerodromes, treat you as a captive to be charged small fortunes for the worst kind of pseudo-food.
On the train, a Norwegian man started a conversation with us! He told us about his idyllic life on a western island, where he formerly worked for Rolls-Royce. Bucolic, friendly, everybody knows each other, everybody has a boat and catches their own fish etc. For a treat, he'd been to Britain to watch Manchester United and four other football matches, at places like Huddersfield. He does this kind of trip ten times per year. We began to understand what it means to live in the world's richest country.
Didn't I mention that? Norway is a massive country of mountains, fjords, fish and oil. It has a population of 4.5 million, about half of London. Unlike certain countries I could mention, the state didn't privatise the oil. Rather than using the cash to flog off the family silver (BP, BA, the railways, water companies, telephones etc. etc. etc., Norway invested some of the oil money in public works and services. Most of it, they've saved for when the oil runs out. Everybody earns a lot, and people pay a lot of tax, especially on alcohol and petrol (just under a pint of beer or a small cappuccino: between £5-8). Nobody minds. Nobody starts fights in pubs either, or vomits in the street. There's no litter. The police don't patrol the streets much because they don't need to. The trams are frequent and the city bikes are not only practical, they're cool - like Grifters. We saw a huge chunk of the city by bike, and the rest by going on a cruise around the Oslo fjord.
Perhaps it's a bit naughty to get so rich off dirty old oil, but the Norwegians are getting clever about that too: 99% of their power is hydroelectric, so it's basically free and as clean as it's possible to be.
So anyway, apart from this guy's claim that Oslo was overrun with East Europeans (er, no), he was friendly, helpful and kind. As was the train conductor and everybody else. They all spoke flawless English, which was kind of a shame as we all wanted to try to get by in Norwegian - it's very like Danish and comprehensible if you've a little German. It sounds beautiful too, very musical.
An example of local charm? We went to a small bar called Bonanza, on a big square. It turned out that it was the bar's opening night. In Britain, despite James and Neal being handsome and charming, people don't talk to us unless they're very drunk, and usually not then. In Norway, attractive strangers wanted to talk to us - and then did so in an interesting and intelligent fashion, without any of the predatory or ridiculous nonsense all this would entail in the UK, as though we were all grown-ups. It was a vision of mature equality I've never experienced here.
In Bonanza, two attractive girls approached us for a chat. Before long, and without any giggling, immature Anglo-Saxon immaturity, they were showing us the sex toys they'd purchased at a 'sexhibition' that afternoon. We chatted about various other things and then they left. Not long after that, we got talking to another group of ridiculously beautiful, intelligent women who invited us to join them at another party. They were all students or graduates, and although we ended up not attending the party, James made friends with one and the rest of us had genuinely interesting, friendly conversations - despite none of us being drunk or desperate. The very same thing happened to us again on the next night.
Norwegians all appear to be direct, outgoing, intelligent and good-looking, without any preening, posing or pretentiousness. They don't seem to need Dutch courage either. Weirdly, though, they all seemed rather down on Norway - as though it's a boring and ugly backwater rather than one of the most cosmopolitan and beautiful places I've ever been. They were really surprised that we were there on holiday! Sure, it was expensive - £350 for almost three days, plus flights, but I'd rather be poor, hungry and sober in Norway than drunk, stuffed and rich anywhere else.
This is the news
Before I go back to bemoaning my forcible return from Norway (and believe me, I contemplated claiming refugee status), I'll tell you about the parcel I just unwrapped. I received copies of In The Loop on DVD, and Alan Moore's Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, and also a second-hand copy of Schoenbaum's Shakespeare's Lives, a brilliant piece of anti-biography in a way.
I said earlier that Norway is a country in which life-enhancing projects are undertaken ambitiously and successfully, whereas Britain is a tired place full of begrudgingly doled-out second-hand junk - there's no pride. There's a sense that every political speech, every idea is expressed with a silent 'whatever' or 'that'll do' at the end. We are the 'whatever' culture. Here's a clip from The Thick of It (the TV series from which In The Loop came) which expresses our depressing cynicism. This is the densest chunk of sustained swearing I've ever experienced, so don't play it if that kind of thing offends you, OK?
However, it's the wrapping of the Shakespeare book which fascinated me. The bookseller packed the volume in a beautiful fragment of a 1934 map of Capel Wood, near New Romsey, and in a few pages of The Times, from Saturday August 7th 1858 (price 4d)! Every page is in beautiful condition, the language is formal and measured, and it's really hard to read - as was traditional in those days, the first few pages are tightly-packed classified ads. I think I'll post a couple of them each day for your amusement and interest. Some are enigmatic, some heartbreaking
.
Let's start with a few of the personal notices, and just imagine the stories behind them - perhaps there's a novel in these:
WILLY,– RETURN or WRITE at once.
GEORGIANA.– RETURN HOME immediately.
Your father is heartbroken.
SEMPER EADEM, "always the same" "All's
well."– 8th and 27th August.
FRIDAY-STREET or KENSINGTON.––WIL
LIAM may RETURN immediately, as all is satisfactorily
arranged.–LIZZIE.
M.P.–Your father is now in a very dangerous state.
Let him have the consolation of seeing you. Not an hour is
to be lost.–E.O.
INDIA.–Initials.–J'éspere que vous parviendra
et que vous me donnerez de vos nouvelles à la meme addresse.
Soyez assuré de mon estime, et que je vous regrette toujours. Je ne
puis plus ici. Dieu vous garde. Newbury.
(This last reads: I hope that you succeed, and that you will give me your news at the same address. Be assured of my respect/admiration, and that I miss you always. I can do no more here. God keep you.)
Feel free to come up with mini-stories for these in the comments section. Perhaps births, weddings and deaths tomorrow.
I'm back. How I wish I wasn't.
My friends, Norway is awful. Never go there.
OK, it isn't. It's wonderful in so many ways that I don't think I can express them sufficiently. I just don't think that we're worthy. Perhaps other Scandinavians might make the grade, but the rest of us would just mess it up with our fat guts and junk food and linguistic failings and reactionary tendencies etc. etc. etc.
Coming back to the UK was like being expelled from Paradise. Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden with a lighter heart than James, Neal and I did on Saturday. I can't even be coherent about it - just everything was better. Many of them even support Stoke City, because it was a top club when British football matches started to be shown in Norway during the 70s.
I suspect that most of my posts today are going to be 'another great thing I've just remembered about Norway', and I'll post a few pictures.
One of the big things we all noticed is that Norwegians believe in using government to do big things - transport, opera houses, stunning cities that are actually brilliant to live in and get around. They undertake big projects at government expense and get them right. It's such a huge contrast to this place. Here, we wonder about doing something, then decide that if it's got to be done, better some consortium of lying thieving bankers should make money off it, and then wonder why it's shit. I refer you, of course, to 'NHS' hospitals and schools built on the PFI principle. If you don't know what that is, it involves faking the maths to make it look better to get a private company to own and run a hospital or school, renting it to the government for 30/40 years at a massive profit. It doesn't work. The hospitals are rubbish, smaller, dirtier - read this if you don't believe me.
Norway seems to be a confident, bright, caring country. The population seem to actually like and care about each other, which makes them happy to get together for the public good. We live in a selfish, atomised society in which we actually don't want to take responsibility for each other. Sure, we'd like clean hospitals and decent schools, and trains which run on time and cities you'd actually want to live in/walk around/be proud of - but we certainly don't want to pay for it. We'd rather get our kids into private schools, and get private medicine (over-rated, by the way), buy more plasma screens and generally turn away from public space, towards private, short-term pleasure.
It's embarrassing. If you haven't been to Germany, Denmark or Norway, you probably think Britain's a first-world nation. You'd be wrong.
I'm sorry. I'm in a bad mood because I've returned to litter and pollution and filth and poor architecture and an office in which some of my artwork has been smashed. Glass everywhere.
Monday, 20 April 2009
Horrible summer weather
The sun's shining - so I'm in a bad mood. I hate hot weather. It makes me sweaty and uncomfortable, tired and irritable. Which was a shame for the students whose presentations I was marking today! (Just my little joke - I'm scrupulously fair. I learned quite a lot from them. Some of it true).
One day I'm going to move to Norway, Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia. Preferably somewhere with socialist governments, high taxation, a national health service and a lot of snow. Is there a University of the Faroe Islands?
Thursday, 11 December 2008
When armageddon comes…
This is where I want to move to - though Norway and the Faroe Islands appeal too...
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