17 April 2005

REUBEN & ROSIE - APRIL 2005 ................................................................................................ RERUM # 6   Much as I love the fierce, well, independence of The Independent, I return constantly to The Guardian, bastion of liberal/radical thinking & doing since its more parochial origins as The Manchester Guardian.     Today there was a fascinating piece about satellite broadband being made available to the remote island of Fair Isle, tucked out in the North Sea about a mile each way from the Orkneys to the South West & the Shetlands to the North East.  Named Fair Isle by some grimly ironic early mariner attempting to negotiate its inhospitable harbours in a force 9 gale, it contains about 70 inhabitants nearly all of whom live in crofts (small farms) on the southern part of the island.  Fair Isle has no pubs, restaurants or hotels & its single school accommodates its pupil body of 5 to 11-year-olds in one room.  Isolated from the two main island groups, Fair Isle has no access to national grid electricity & 85% of its power is obtained via wind turbines.    Last summer a satellite broadband link was set up & suddenly this most remote & inaccessible of outposts of the British Isles has leaped into the 21st century. In fact, more accurately it has leapfrogged. Fair Isle has never had a telecommunications cable link so in a sense with the availability of broadband provision progress has bypassed the 20th century.  But lest the Luddites amongst us should lament the drawing of this tenacious community into the world that the rest of us, with many misgivings, share, the inhabitants seem to be delighted.  The knitting cooperative Fair Isle Crafts can now market authentic wares via their website. Ecologist Nick Riddiford claims that only a few years previously he would have had to have lived within commuting distance of London to pursue his career. Now with internet access keyclicks do it all for him.  Crofter Dave Wheeler has turned around his own personal economy. Where once he made his living from 80% crafting & 20% outside work, now the ratio is reversed.    What was so heartening from this page 3 article (other papers would have awarded a couple of column inches at best) was the clear evidence of real synthesis between information technology & defiantly ancient & unaltered modes of working & living. Where we have become accustomed to the incursion of technology involving the rapacious exploitation & ultimate immolation of traditional cultures, here one of the most sophisticated of new technological media is contributing directly to its active conservation.   #   The Guardian notes with some concern that a new bill before Parliament proposes to reclassify magic mushrooms as a class A drug.  So mere possession of psilocybe cubensis, that phallic little fungus beloved of so many who would no more ingest heroin or crack than they would dine on broken glass, could soon entail a life sentence.  Real progress in the war against the illegal drugs industry there, then.  Renegade Labour MP Paul Flynn states flatly: “It’s election politics, pure & simple”.   #   The Guardian championed blogs, blogging & bloggers at a time when most news media either hadn’t a clue or saw the weblog as the natural successor to CB radio.  No surprise, then, to find nearly half a page of the obituary section given over to the death from breast cancer of Julia Darling, a writer, artist & blogger of inspirational courage. They even printed her poem End.   End   Eventually, I was placed on a bed like a boat in an empty room with sky filled windows, with azure blue pillows, the leopard-like quilt. It was English tea time, with the kind of light that electrifies the ordinary. It had just stopped raining. Beads of water on glass glittered like secrets. In another room they were baking, mulling wine. I was warm with cloves, melting butter, demerara, and wearing your pyjamas.   My felt slippers waited on the floor. Then the door opened soundlessly, and I climbed out of bed. It was like slipping onto the back of a horse, and the room folded in, like a pop up story then the house, and the Vale. Even the songs and prayers tidied themselves into grooves and the impossible hospital lay down its chimneys its sluices, tired doctors, and waiting room chairs. And I came here. It was easy to leave.                   10:57:07 PM    Mmm? [] RERUM # 5   The process of crawling over broken glass that is buying one house & selling another was made somewhat less painful at the end of the week. After losing our buyer the Thursday before last, we’ve picked up another.  We’ve graduated from one lone individual unburdened by the impedimenta of conscience or sense of personal responsibility to a firm of builders.  It remains to be seen whether we’ve simply taken on the same difference. But they have managed to shave £3,500 off the asking price so once again we’re having to re-budget the whole operation. However, it secures the Great Offley house so all we have to do now is tough out the next 28 days & maybe, just maybe we might pull it all off.   #   I’ve just closed the file on 4 hours of checking though exam preparation work by my 17+ students. Earnest, conscientious stuff that takes the English language to extremities undreamed of by Bernard Shaw or James Joyce.  There is always a very bad moment, somewhat akin to looking over the edge of the narrow bridge that crosses the canyon, when one scrolls down to see how far there is yet to go.  Three more pages dangle below dark with dense, impenetrable prose, innocent of punctuation & rich in mangled syntax & crass vocabulary.  Concepts that seemed crystal clear in discussion the day before lie there hacked at & half-chewed like the remnants of an abandoned meal.  Heartsick & wishing that the cat was still around if only to have something to kick, one pushes on, eventually to flop exhausted onto the open ground beyond…   #   I went to the theatre last night for the first time in nearly a year.  Part of the above Theatre Studies course requires that the students review a number of productions & I chose The Dresser by Ronald Harwood, a play some 25 years old that is enjoying current revival at the Duke of York’s Theatre in St Martins Lane, behind the Charing Cross Road.  The students were excited at the prospect of seeing it because one of the two leads, Norman, was played by Nicholas Lyndhurst, an enormously popular comic actor who rose to fame via the long-running sitcom, Only Fools & Horses.  I was pleased because the other part, ‘Sir’, was played by an old friend, Julian Glover, whose son I taught at around the time The Dresser was first in production.     It was a sparkling production, the delicate balance of comedy & poignancy beautifully handled by a fine cast.  Both leads were in great form.  Julian said afterwards that he & Nicholas Lyndhurst had hit it off from the start.  Apparently when director Peter Hall was considering mounting a new production of the play, Ian McKellen’s name was put forward for the part of ‘Sir’.  On hearing of the competition for a part that he had been very keen on playing, Julian wrote himself off immediately & was therefore both delighted & surprised when it was offered to him.    I reflected afterwards that there are plenty of profoundly conceited actors leading flourishing careers.  As a career all the coordinates are firmly in place for the successful actor to be seduced into believing in his or her myth early in the game. But the greatest actors seem almost universally to be genuinely & disarmingly modest & self-effacing. They are fully aware, presumably, that judgement of their greatness is on constant review, ratified or dispelled on the strength or weakness of their last performance.  Only the most level-headed of individuals could handle the pressure of that kind of continuous evaluation. Necessary passion, creative energy & practical commitment must be held in constant equilibrium with a rare objectivity & philosophical detachment.   A noble profession indeed when those qualities are in evidence.         1:07:05 AM    Mmm? []

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