A moaning-free zone

No moaning this week. Even though moaning is clickbait: last week's post, entitled 'Moan Moan Moan' attracted 2500 readers - the previous one managed a paltry 140. Clearly you're all monsters delighting in the spectacle of misery.

So anyway, no moaning, despite having plenty to moan about. Instead: happiness. Not solely because the new Doctor Who is very good – friends have had great successes this week, other friends are about to have a baby, another one delivered (see what I did there) an inspiring professorial lecture yesterday and my students made teaching this week a joy. The stars aligned for once, fate failed to vomit on my eiderdown, and the dew did not fall with a particularly sickening thud (bonus points for spotting the origins of those references).

The teaching highlights were this week's Shakespeare and We Are Many modules. Having shown the students the Helen Mirren/Russell Brand film version of The Tempest last week (I'm allergic to RB but he was very good as Trinculo), my lecture looked at race, power and colonialism in fairly standard ways, but the two-hour seminar concentrated solely on the opening scene aboard the foundering ship and required the students to puzzle out the dramatic and interpretive difficulties by acting it out. If that wasn't difficult enough, we gave them Renaissance-style scripts: only their own lines plus the last word of the previous speaker's line.

It worked really well. This scene is easily passed over as a device for getting the cast on to the island but actually it's packed with the themes that get taken up in the rest of the play. The sinking ship is an island of its own. It has multiple rulers claiming authority from different sources: the Master who knows how to actually sail the thing and the aristo passengers who think (like Cnut didn't earlier and Charles I later did argue) that rank outweighs competence (oddly enough, we're having the same argument here at work – so far the rankers are winning). Amidst impending death, they all stop for an argument during which the Boatswain puts forward the basically treasonous argument that unless the courtiers do what they're told rather than interfere, they're all going to die. Once on the island, of course, you have Caliban, Prospero and Trinculo vying for authority on various grounds, while the real work is done by Caliban and Ariel, and Gonzalo adds his vision of a utopian state.

It was really good fun taking the words off the page and making them do more work than advancing the plot: talking through the Master's and Boatswain's works and social responsibilities, how to handle their changes of mood, how to distinguish the various toffs in the space of only a few lines, and hardest of all, how to act when you don't have any lines at all. It helped that these students had taken my Making a Scene module last year so were used to climbing on stage, but they put in two solid hours of really good work. Going over the same forty lines multiple times could have been deathly dull, but they pulled apart the different potential meanings and tried different deliveries and had some good-natured disagreements about what was going on until suddenly our time was up. I was exhausted and no doubt they were too, but it really felt like new vistas had opened up.

The other class looked at Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas and Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto. One is carefully constructed 1938 epistolary  in response to a gentleman who asks how the daughters of educated men can contribute to the elimination of war. The other is a late-60s onslaught on society as a whole, the diseased product of male culture with only one solution. Its opening lines, with declarative cadences reminiscent of Pride and Prejudice's beginning, are

Life in this society being at best an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex. 

Woolf's essay is patient, witty, exhaustive, detailed and complex. Having explained that the uneducated daughters of the affluent have subsidised the private-school-and-Oxbridge trajectories of their brothers ('Arthur'), however dim, she poses the question of whether allowing middle-class women access to the professions (law, medicine, politics, the armed services, the clergy and academia) will reform them to the point that war becomes impossible, or whether women will have to conform to the expectations and cultural norms of this Establishment, thereby doing nothing to avert war. She has a couple of answers. Firstly, economic independence leads to intellectual and political freedom: women should join the professions. Secondly, women should simply withdraw from warlike activities: not protest or oppose, but ignore those who do engage, and not work in the industries which serve the prosecution of war. Compelling, but a difficult case to put as WW2 loomed large and a conundrum which may have contributed to Woolf's decision to end her life in 1941. Women's roles in militarism also contributed to LM Montgomery's death too: the later novels in the Anne of Green Gables series promote participation in WW1 as a way to establish manhood and a true Canadian identity – Montgomery later agonised over the possibility that her work may have led to enormous numbers of Canadian men's deaths, and that WW2 was going to repeat the same mistakes. Certainly the final novel in the sequel, The Blythes Are Quoted sees Anne reverse her support for imperialist warmongering: this is probably why publication was declined in 1942. 

The class was meant to start with a 20 minute presentation by a small group: the discussion provoked last 90 minutes, despite some of them not having read either text (grrrr, but that's another matter). Solanas went on to shoot Andy Warhol and died young after a miserable decline, but the Manifesto isn't, as some of my students suggested, a howl of anguish produced by someone with mental health issues. It's a provocation along similar lines to Swift's A Modest Proposal (tl;dr version: nobody likes the Irish, they're starving and having too many babies: their parents can breed them for food and profit) – in that it follows scientific and political concepts to (and perhaps beyond) their logical conclusion. It's scathingly satirical, funny, serious, rooted in Freudian psychology, reacting against 50s McCarthyites and 60s hippy cults alike, and fascinatingly, comes out as anti-sex. Where Woolf believes that social reform is possible, Solanas insists that the whole edifice, from men to money to the nuclear family, has to be ripped down and replaced by an all-female society of fully-automated luxury communism. While many of the students (all but one female) insisted that their experience of men wasn't anything like what they were seeing on the page, I couldn't help seeing Donald Trump's face as the selfish, oppressive, exploitative Daddy of whom Solanas writes:

If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President's stupid, sickening face; if SCUM every strikes, it will be with a six-inch blade'. What makes you a member of SCUM? '…you've got to go through a lot of sex to get to anti-sex, and SCUM's been through it all, and they're now ready for a new show…these females are cool and relatively cerebral and skirting asexuality…the least nice…too uncivilised to give a shit for anyone's opinion of them, too arrogant to respect Daddy, the "Greats"…given to disgusting, nasty upsetting scenes, hateful violent bitches given to slamming those who unduly irritate them in the teeth.

Thrilling stuff, but underneath the confrontational style not dissimilar to Woolf: both are adopting a literary style previously the preserve of male writers and turning it against its former owners. I hope it would get a good argument going and it did - occasionally drifting away from the cultural and political points being made, and slightly undercut by some students' unfamiliarity with the texts, but a little provocation goes a long way. It really was exhilarating. Handmaid's Tale next week (and yes, I did put it on the syllabus before the TV adaptation came along, so score one for me on the zeitgeist board).

Have I read anything this week, other than the texts for class? Not a lot actually. Jasper Fforde's Early Riser was disappointing: a neat idea for a comic sf-ish novel (humanity evolved in cold conditions by hibernating every year; our hero is one of the cops who stays awake to keep things going) but all the effort has gone into developing the concept rather than the novel. I've started Jonathan Coe's latest novel in his Rotter's Club series, Middle England, having gone to see him in (entertaining, thoughtful) conversation with Sathnam Sanghera at Birmingham Literature Festival – I'm only a couple of chapters in but it's promising. The rest of the week's entertainment was watching Michael Otsuka (@mikeotsuka) and Sam Marsh (@Sam_Marsh101) publicly rip apart the posh university pension scheme managers' dodgy maths, used to pretend that the fund should become meaner and more expensive. My own pension was downgraded to general public uninterest some years ago, but I've a feeling the USS pension debacle may lead to total victory. After all, there's already a Downfall parody on the subject.

Teaching Hamlet next week. A good excuse to show you my favourite version of 'that' soliloquy.



(And hey: almost no moaning).

Seal's nostrils and other delights

OK, I won't overload you with hundreds more photographs, but here are some from the 2.30 a.m. wander round Puck Fair after a very convivial night's dancing, and some from the Skelligs. The Puck Fair photo-set is here (or see daytime event favourites here) and the full set of Skellig Island photos are here. Or click on these ones to enlarge.

King Puck in glorious neon

This chap insisted I take his photo, in colourful terms. 

Looking down Killorglin Main Street, approximately 2.45 a.m. 

I like this photo for her face and her isolation, for the bright colours, and for the contrast between the street lighting and the van's internal lighting

General revelry, and I like the Keep Killorglin Clean sign amidst the mess. The pubs closed at 4.00 a.m. and the streets were clean again by 7.00 a.m.

Hazel takes advantage of a lull in trade at her catering van

Defocussed coloured lights over the Laune Bridge

I like the cheeriness of food vans, and the lighting works really well here. It's why I virtually never use flash.

Looking up Killorglin's Main Street from the bridge

A rare quiet moment on the Laune Bridge as a solitary reveller weaves his way home. Or somewhere.

One of the absolute highlights of the week was an open-air performance of The Tempest by the St. John's Mill Theatre Company, on the bank of the Laune at Ballykissane where the river becomes the sea. There was no set, and no props beyond a couple of lumps of wood and some costumes borrowed from the Killorglin Pantomime. Stage and seats were on a strip of shore twenty feet wide and a couple of hundred feet long: behind the actors was the estuary and the mountains of the Dingle Peninsula: perfect for a tempest, a shipwreck and a fantasy. It was a great choice of play: it explores the experiences of colonist and colonised, notions of civilisation and barbarism, and therefore had extra resonance in an Ireland multiply invaded by the British (and the IMF).

The performance was superb: clearly influenced by the Globe Theatre's recent version which I saw: that too used a minimal set and sexed-up Miranda as a naive but lusty young innocent. The audience was enlisted too: the 'natural spirits' which entrance and terrify the Milanese nobles were played by us: big laughs ensued as a bearded gentleman was cuddled and admired while Gonzalo notes his 'monstrous shape'. My companion was relieved of her wine-glass (at €4 for terrible plonk, littoral prices are on a par with London's) and other audience members were enlisted in various other ways. Playing out in real-time, the action's three hours covered late afternoon to evening. A few lights appeared on the other peninsula as darkness fell, no traffic or urban sound interrupted the play, bats and gulls flapped overhead, torches lit the final act and a seal swam past intent on raiding the salmon nets. It gazed at us then swam on unimpressed - everybody's a critic. 

I loved the Globe's interpretation of The Tempest, but I wonder if I'll ever see one as evocative as this one. The setting was wildly romantic, the subject matter given real edge by Irish history, the actors largely convincing and the music – performed by unseen musicians concealed behind a bush – keeningly evocative. The 'rough music' which entrances the visitors was in this case Irish-language laments, beautifully played. 

Sorry I haven't any pictures: I thought it would be disruptive and rude, not an instinct which occurred to several other audience members…
After a day's recovery, I achieved a long-held ambition to visit the Skellig Islands, two spiky and inhospitable rocks 12 kilometres of the Kerry Coast. Occupied by unsociable monks for 1000 years until the 1500s, frequently raided by Vikings, host to tens of thousands of gannets, puffins, guillemots, kittiwakes, other seabirds and a lighthouse, it's been a place of folk-lore, illicit marriages, pilgrimage and tourism for aeons. The islands are a spectacular sight, as is the view of the mainland afforded from the rocks. It's remote, but it's not isolated: the monks were carrying on the tradition of withdrawal they'd learned from Anthony and the Syriac monks, while the Annals of Inisfallen from the same period recorded current events from both their immediate surroundings and news from elsewhere, such as a sacking of Rome.

Or so I'm told. My visit was a more authentically Irish experience. As well as being lost in the mists of time, the Skelligs were lost in a far less metaphorical mist. Of which more anon. 

We got there by boarding Des Lavelle's boat on Valentia Island. There was none of this 'here's a lifejacket, emergency drill as follows' nonsense. 12 of us piled onto the open deck of this very boat, a 20-foot fishing vessel. The captain had a cabin. We very much didn't. 

And off we went, lurching and bouncing through tempestuous seas: even the captain described conditions as 'monstrous'. I narrowly avoided meeting my breakfast again on the way up, but it was a close-run thing. Occasionally the fog would momentarily lift to afford us the sight of a flight of gannets or other shipping, but I took very few pictures, so intent was I on not drowning. It was a sobering thought to imagine generations of monks heading out in all weathers in a rowing boat made of skins stretched over wood. I idly wondered how many of them actually made it over there…

After an hour or so of this, we finally got a foreboding glimpse of our destination:

Skellig Mhichíl (Skellig Michael or Great Skellig)

Getting on to the island was no picnic, even with the 19th-century quay and paths with low walls built for the lighthouse crews. 

Once on land, we met the (very impressively informed) Office Of Public Works staff. They pointed us all to the signs warning anyone suffering from vertigo, unfitness, heart failure, sea-sickness and a range of other complaints to stay at the bottom: between heart attacks and simply falling off, deaths are rather common. The island is a Unesco World heritage site and there are no amenities, whether toilets or intensive care units. We were told that 'the birds are angry' and warned not to eat up at the top: a determined gull will steal your lunch and drive you off the cliffs if it doesn't think much of your sandwiches. 

Was it steep? This gull thought so:

Sadly, not all deaths on the Skelligs are accidental. It's a notorious hotspot for bunny suicides, as this picture taken under a cliff shows:

Sorry. Here's a cute picture of a robin taking a bath to cheer you up. 

But back to the Skelligs. We started the climb up the 600 steps hewn out of the limestone by monks over the centuries, up to the narrow patch of almost-level ground on which they founded their monastery. 

At times the fog was quite useful: it was so dense that you couldn't see the immense drop from the steep paths into the sea or onto the rocks. 

Plus it was all very atmospheric: sidling up the wet stone or hunching in a damp stone hut gave a real sense of what it might have been like to live there, year in, year out. Except of course that we weren't starving, maddened by hunger (on tonight's menu: gannet feet served on a bed of weeds), fear, religious mania and superstition. 

Up at the top, you enter a stone enclosure marked by this cross engraved on an upright:

to find a range of these beautiful bee-hive huts for living and praying in. They're dark, cold and strong: well over a thousand years old and still solid. There's so little flat space and soil that even the graveyard is man-made - it's a small raised bed labouriously built in the middle of the settlement. 

The graveyard through a window in a bee-hive hut

Large cross in the monastery enclosure

A window in one of the huts.

After a while it was time to clamber down in the fog. 

Thankfully, some of the signage kept us on the right track:

And then we got back on the boat and headed off to Sceilig Bheag (Little Skellig), which as the world's second-largest gannet colony, is closed to landings. It also hosts thousands of puffins but they migrate in early August… a week before we got there. I saw one lonely puffin flapping forlornly out to sea. Whales and dolphins played around the islands the day before too, but we did see one dolphin crest a wave on the way back. 

 Little Skellig is amazing. The white encrustation isn't guano or rock: it's birds. Thousands of angry, squawking birds.

Sceilig Bheag

 Not just birds, either. Look closely and you'll see a pair of seal's nostrils:

Even better, a couple of seals had dragged themselves onto the rocks and were lounging around. One of them bothered to lift its head as our boat got close, but couldn't be bothered to panic and soon flopped back down again. After two weeks of big dinners, I knew exactly how it felt. 

And so endeth the holiday. Now I'm spending most of the next couple of weeks doing Clearing: basically being God with a database. Tremble before me, O Supplicant Students!