Spanish timekeeping

Spain is a wonderful country.  I absolutely love the place and its inhabitants.  But my love for all things Spanish is equalled by the frustrations that arise in me whenever I am there.

Exhibit A: timekeeping.  I have always been fussy about timekeeping.  I could count the number of times I have been late for events on the fingers of one finger.  I am never late.  I don’t have a problem with other people being late as long as it is due to something outside their control, such as traffic or a train being delayed, or losing their keys or falling over en route.  But when somebody is late just because they couldn’t be bothered to get ready on time or because they wanted to look in the shops on the way, that’s when I get really angry.  Not outwardly angry, but angry in an internalised, very English way.  The kind of anger that will give me terrible blood pressure problems in my mid thirties, around the same time as I’ll be wondering why these outwardly angry southern Europeans are living so much longer than me.  I probably won’t even let you know I’m angry.  Instead I’ll insist that it’s fine and express it in another, wholly inappropriate, slightly passive aggressive way later on.  Anyway, one stereotype that does ring true is the Spanish tardiness.  True, Catalans are considered punctual when compared to Andalucians, but that is scarcely anything to be proud of.  In his book, Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell sums up in just a few sentences not only the Spanish approach to timekeeping, but also of the contradictions apparent even in that:

“In Spain nothing, from a meal to a battle, ever happens at the appointed time.  As a general rule, things happen too late, but just occasionally  - just so that you shan’t even be able to depend on their happening late – they happen too early.  A train which is due to leave at eight will normally leave at any time between nine and ten, but perhaps once a week, thanks to some private whim of the engine-driver, it leaves at half-past seven.  Such things can be a little trying.  In theory I rather admire the Spaniards for not sharing our Northern time-neurosis; but unfortunately I share it myself.”

My first few weeks living in Spain were stressful for me.  I must have spent hours waiting for other people and approximately 20 percent of my time was taken up trying to get the attention of waiters.  With time, you learn to deal with it.  The more of a fuss you make, the longer things will take and if you allow it to stress you, you have yourself to blame.  The culture in southern Europe is different.  Things take longer, so people just do a bit less.  Their lives tend to be a bit happier for that. 

We could learn from them.  Or just love the difference.

Mummers and Sons

What better way to blow away the Christmas cobwebs than a journey to a Somerset village to watch the annual Mummers Play?  It is perhaps thanks to the various elemental forces in play that the sun shines as we leave our car in picturesque North Curry to head towards the homely and perfectly formed village green.  No danger here of old English traditions going out of fashion as it seems like most of the inhabitants of the village have turned up in eager anticipation of this ‘ancient’ spectacle.

Although I was brought up deep in the westcountry, I currently reside in a part of London where I share a street with more people than live in the whole of North Curry.  So this kind of activity is a fairly alien sight to me, and even more so for my wife (not from these here parts).  It’s impossible to avoid thoughts of the eerie 70’s masterpiece, The Wicker Man, as the troupe of actors processes towards the makeshift stage area playing haunting flutes and other assorted instruments, no doubt made many years ago from discarded sections of unfortunate local animals.

The language of the Mummers play is old, but understandable.  The audience, including many children, certainly have no difficulty in comprehending what is going on.  The play itself tells us the story of how St George, fresh back from his exploits overseas, attempts to slay the dark knight.  He loses the battle and St George’s mother calls upon a quack to revive her fallen son.  Despite some terrible early attempts, the quack (played ably and somewhat appropriately by the local village doctor) eventually manages to bring St George back to life, whereupon he slays the dark knight and natural order is restored once again.  It soon becomes clear, even without explanatory notes, that the play is a thinly veiled allegory for the story of the seasons.  St George, clad in resplendent white, represents the summertime, while the dark knight represents the winter.  The fact that the play is repeated each midwinter at the same time in the same place echoes the cyclical nature of the seasons.  This performance also serves as a helpful reminder to us on one of the shortest days of the year that before long we will be back in the sunshine, revelling in those long days.

The Mummers play in its current form stretches back to the 18^th century, but it has existed in some way since medieval times.  There is even a claim made in the introduction that “This is what there was before there was Christmas”, quite a refreshing idea in a world where people often lament that we are losing the real spirit of Christmas.  I don’t think the originators of this performance are being deliberately anti religious in saying what they say, but they are suggesting that there has always been some kind of festival at this time of year and it seems to make sense that the Christian concept of Christmas has attached itself to the latter parts of December.  We always talk of Christmas being a time for hope but within a week of the event we tend to sink quickly into the depression of January.  The Mummers play provides us with a far more positive message – the dark knight of winter has been slain and summer is once again in the ascendency.  The days are starting to get longer even though it is probably a little bit early to be whipping out the knotted hankies.  All that said, there is very little evidence that the Mummers play existed in any format before Christanity, as Peter Millington explains far better and in more detail than I ever could here:

 http://freespace.virgin.net/peter.millington1/Mystery_History.htm

I found it extremely interesting to see the depictions of good and evil, including a version of evil in the dark knight that would be unlikely to be accepted by modern day race and equality groups.  What I found most refreshing, however, was how engaged the local community was to a performance that on the surface bore no resemblance to the modern world.  Of course it was performed in a rural society, for whom tradition is important, but it’s not like these people are backward or misguided.  There is a lack of cynicism in seeing the Mummers play, as well as other local festivities in this area, such as the Wassailing festival (which I have not yet witnessed) and the Bridgwater Carnival (which I certainly have) that would be as welcome as it would be unlikely on my North London street.  

Those elemental forces that kept the weather unseasonably good throughout the performance did what was asked of them, and no more.  Almost as soon as the performance ended, the clouds darkened and the heavens opened, soaking everybody present as they decamped to the village pub.  Nobody seemed to mind a great deal though, and I’m sure they will all be back to watch the play again next year and for many more years after that.

The Mummers play is performed every Boxing Day on the North Curry village green at 1pm (and also at one other nearby village at midday).  More information can be found at the address below. 

http://www.fromthegreenwood.com/Mummers/Mummers%20Play.htm

The Descent: Part 2

The Descent broke a lot of new ground in the horror genre. It was unusual and refreshing to watch a horror film without any male characters at all. This worked in its favour, with an ensemble of characters who interacted in a far less predictable way than we have come to expect. There was no jock, no geek etc (at least not in a conventional way) and as a result, the film felt new and pleasingly original.

Fans of the first film will say a sequel is unnecessary and some might even say impossible, depending on whether they saw the US or UK version and their contrasting endings. Nonetheless, we join the action shortly after the first film. A search and rescue party has been dispatched to finding the missing group of cave explorers. They enlist the help of Sarah Carter (played by Shauna Macdonald), who has miraculously escaped from the caves. At this point, the audience is politely asked to set aside any sense of realism and simply accept the fact that a severely traumatised woman, still so distraught that she is unable to speak, is being led back down into the caves less than a day after her original shock. My opinion on that, for what it’s worth, is that it is better to let that thought go, sit back and enjoy the impending terror.

We move deeper into the caves, it gets darker and darker and the rescue party discovers more about the fate of the original expedition.

From this point, we essentially experience a reworking of the original film, but with new characters and a different dynamic (we have a few men for a start, which inevitably leads to a touch more posturing and a dab or two of sexual tension). The successful formula is faithfully recreated: Darkness plus tight spaces plus the nasty crawlers equals some powerful stuff.

The Descent: Part 2 is far from perfect. It takes a few liberties with the plot from Part 1 and squeezes in one or two characters with a suspiciously large shoehorn. Director Jon Harris, making his directorial debut (he was the editor on The Descent) seems to be caught somewhere between creating a carbon copy of the first film and creating a completely new vision. He achieves the first part of this with a good deal of success but struggles more with the second.

The sense of claustrophobia and fear is still present and this makes up for a questionable script and a touch of dodgy acting. There are no real surprises and it is not as strong as The Descent, but it will still get your pulse racing and you will find yourself squirming in your seat forgetting to breathe. And let’s face it, as horror fans, that’s all we really want isn’t it?

Mike Salisbury

Stress

There have been so many books written in the past about stress, approximately none of which I have ever read. Something that has occurred to me recently, is that pretty much every person you ever meet will tell you that they are under stress.

I certainly feel like I have a stressful life. I work (just) inside the walls of the City of London and it stands to reason that life is stressful for anyone in that situation. But then you ask a 16 year old about to sit their GCSEs and they will tell you that they are under, like, the most unbelievable stress right. I look back at those exams now and wonder why I even worried about them at all.

In fact, I don’t think I know anybody who would tell me that they don’t have any stress in their lives. That they sleep soundly through the night, have the right amount of money to live the life they want to live; have no conflict to deal with.

All of this makes me think that perhaps stress is just a state of mind. I know that’s probably obvious to anybody with any kind of grounding in psychology or an understanding of how the brain works, but when you think about it, it’s your brain that creates most of the stress you experience rather than external factors like exams or money or work or family conflicts. I wonder (and this is my own original thought even if it has been thought a thousand times before by other people) if this is something that humans have managed to evolve for a reason.

Without stress, what would we be? The majority of people in the western world, certainly in my generation, have grown up without really experiencing any kind of genuine threat to our lives. I have never gone hungry; there have always been jobs available even if they aren’t necessarily the jobs I would have chosen. Even if everything goes wrong and I lose my job or ability to work, there are people that would support me and look after me.

So maybe stress is some kind of evolutionary defence mechanism that we have as human beings in order to keep us functioning as well as possible. We have very few natural predators (in central London at least) and without that sense of pressure, maybe we would just start to take things a bit easy and stop evolving. I would even put it into the same boat as theories about roller coasters and horror movies – why do we put ourselves through this voluntarily? It could be because we have little left to threaten us but we need our bodies and our minds to keep on form in case something dangerous comes along. (I will return to horror in future posts as I find this fascinating).

I haven’t seen any of the Stephen Fry documentary series “Last Chance to See”, but I recall him mentioning a parrot from that series called a kakapo that, having dealt with predators for generations, suddenly found itself completely free of threat. In a sense, the kakapo had the completely stress free life that we all crave. Which was delightful. Until suddenly some predators came along again and started eating up the kakapo. The poor old parrot, comfortable and relaxed in the knowledge that all it had to do was just potter around, was suddenly finding itself being gobbled up by all these predators, who just couldn’t believe their luck. The kakapo had become so comfortable and trusting that it didn’t do anything to defend itself.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lastchancetosee/sites/animals/kakapo

Is there more stress in our society now than there was 50 or a hundred years ago? Probably not. I’ll never have to go to war, or worry about smallpox, but I’ll wager that I feel more everyday stress than an average 29 year old man in the 1960s. Maybe the key is just not to let the stress worry you too much.

Roman Polanski

At the risk of sounding a bit like a Daily Mail journalist jumping on any old middle England bandwagon, I’m a little bit confused by this whole Roman Polanski thing. In the extremely unlikely event that you head to this blog before reading the news, the acclaimed director has been arrested in connection with having sex with a minor (as opposed to the less serious crime of having sex with a miner) back in 1977.

No great surprise there, as he has effectively been on the run since pleading guilty to the crime over 30 years ago. What I do find surprising is the fact that he seems to be receiving overwhelming support almost everywhere you look. The French government has waded in, claiming that the arrest is ‘a bit sinister’ and ‘a disgrace’. I’m trying to understand if I have missed something obvious here.

I’m certainly no fan of Gary Glitter (real name Paul Gadd), but he must be feeling fairly aggrieved at the moment by the media reaction. I’m not suggesting for a second that their individual crimes bear any real comparison, but the fact is, Roman Polanski committed a serious crime, he was convicted of that crime and he has not yet served his sentence. Why are the Sun and the Daily Mail not all over this like a rash? Surely it couldn’t be because he is an incredibly gifted filmmaker? Could it?

No newspaper I have read has been able to convince me to feel sympathy for Polanski, no matter how hard they try. They keep reminding me that he is 76 years old; that he has suffered a great deal of tragedy in his life; that he was greatly affected by the murder of his wife. All true, but that doesn’t explain what he did and the fact remains that he has not served his sentence.

All this sympathy stems from his ability as a filmmaker. He is so revered as a great director that people seem to think he should be forgiven the odd ‘mistake’. Like he only did this because he is an artist. That we should allow artists to get away with whatever they like because if they do enough artisty things, we might get another masterpiece resembling Rosemary’s Baby (unlikely – I think those days have gone Roman) or Chinatown (overrated, and you probably want to be avoiding Jack Nicholson anyway.) It’s like when a football manager defends a player who ends an opponent’s career with a horror tackle by claiming ‘och aye’, (because it’s usually Alex Ferguson defending Wayne Rooney) ‘it shows he’s passionate – if you took that part of his character away from him, he wouldn’t be the same player’. No, that’s a good point. He wouldn’t be the same player, but the opponent with a hole in his leg would also not have a hole in his leg.

Thinking this all through, it’s not the fact that we (for we, read ‘the media’) allow certain people to escape moral censure for their actions. It’s the way they’re so damn inconsistent about it. Roman Polanski drugs and has sex with a 13 year old girl and is treated like some poor hard done by gentleman, Russell Brand leaves a message on an old man’s answering machine and he’s the next incarnation of Satan himself.

Right, I'm off to watch Rosemary's Baby again now. I know I probably shouldn't out of some kind of protest, but it is so good. 'What have you done to his eyes?'. Genius - but also a criminal.

Introduction

As this is the first of hopefully many entries to this weblog, it is my first duty to introduce myself. At the time of writing this, I am a 29 year old human male, approaching that stage in life where I am not yet mature enough to take on full responsibility for my actions, yet established enough in my life and career that I can’t drop everything and start everything again from scratch. Maybe that’s the point of this blog. It’s an imitation of a writing career without any of the pressure of being good. People can read it or not read it. They don’t have to pay for it so they have little right to complain if it’s rubbish. It’s a way of being allowed to spout crap now that it’s too expensive to go to the pub every night. What could be better?

I’ve always thought the idea of writing a blog is slightly arrogant. Kind of like those facebook status updates that tell you how many times Roger has visited the lavatory today or how Mary is vowing never to drink again. Again. That’s the last thing I would want. My aim is not to bore anybody with the minutiae of my life, although for the purposes of journalistic interest, I have been to the toilet a couple of times today and I fully intend to drink again – starting in the next couple of hours.

I am a man of many interests, but few of those interests are deep. I would consider myself slightly above the level of Jack in most trades, but certainly not approaching Master status in any. My life outside work closely resembles the vagueness of the final paragraph of a CV: I enjoy reading and I take a keen interest in sport/music/needlework/pulling the wings off flies, but don’t dare question me too far on any of those interests as I may go all quiet and stare off into the distance.

With this in mind, the intention is that each entry to the blog will comprise various musings from my oft tedious but occasionally interesting life. Different subjects each time, some of which may be interesting, many of which will be repetitive and meandering and almost all of which will contain a good standard of grammar. Inevitably, these musings will veer away from my life to people and subjects of far more interest. News articles, album reviews, knitting patterns; nothing is out of bounds for me.

I therefore advise you, dear reader, to sit back (or forward if you tend to hunch your shoulders like me) and enjoy the ramblings of a dangerously sane man.