victory

so my ancient amp finally gives up the ghost and we have a bit of a run into edinburgh to get a replacement, not least because the van's working again and t's under the weather so it did her good (well that along with the indian food i filled her up with!)

and then an amp, a piece of equipment which only just remains compatible with my so-called luddite tendencies, which sounds lovely yet i still have to operate with a remote control and, despite the myriad of technology, only has 3 inputs. what's all that about!?

but, to the point. as we lounge through our indian t mentions, almost absent mindedly, that maybe i'd care for a walk across the bridge on the way back. oh no, not me i protest but on the way back i find myself pulling in and getting out of the van in a very no time like the present manner.

and so we went off. i couldn't of course walk anywhere except the line that was equidistant from the yawning chasm on either side. and the mild breeze that was blowing was to me a gale that would pitch me to my doom with every gust. other than that it was fine. i could look out to the horizon no bother it was only looking down (or up. oh the up!) that caused me problems, a feeling of complete disorientation, akin to dizziness but without any sense of control. i didn't like it at all.

but it was useful. not least because t saw me in a state of somewhat lackadaisical fear but fear nonetheless. so i guess i'll do it again sometime. but not soon...!

cesare pavese

Alter Ego

Dal mattino alla sera vedevo il tatuaggio
sul suo petto setoso: una donna rossastra
fitta, come in un prato, nel pelo. Là sotto
rugge a volte un tumulto, che la donna sussulta.
La giornata passava in bestemmie e silenzi.
Se la donna non fosse un tatuaggio, ma viva
aggrappata sul petto peloso, quest'uomo
muggirebbe più forte, nella piccola cella.

Occhi aperti, disteso nel letto taceva.
Un respiro profondo di mare saliva
dal suo corpo di grandi ossa salde: era steso
come sopra una tolda. Pesava sul letto
come chi s'è svegliato e potrebbe balzare.
li suo corpo, salato di schiuma, grondava
un sudore solare. La piccola cella
non bastava all'ampíezza d'una sola sua occhiata.
A vedergli le mani si pensava alla donna.


From morning till evening he saw the tattoo
on his silky chest: a russet woman,
lying concealed in the field of hair. Beneath there was
sometimes chaos, she leapt up suddenly.
The day passed in cursing and silence.
If the woman were no tattoo but
clung alive to his hairy chest, he'd
cry out more loudly in the little cell.

Wide-eyed, he lay silently stretched on the bed.
A deep sealike sigh swelled
the big solid bones in his body: he lay
as on a boat-deck. He rested heavily on the bed
like someone who on waking might jump up.
His body, salted with spray, poured out
sweat full of sunshine. The little cell
was not big enough for a single one of his glances.
His hands showed he was thinking of the woman.

trans unknown

tyehimba jess

martha promise receives leadbelly, 1935

when your man comes home from prison,
when he comes back like the wound
and you are the stitch,
when he comes back with pennies in his pocket
and prayer fresh on his lips,
you got to wash him down first.

you got to have the wildweed and treebark boiled
and calmed, waiting for his skin like a shining baptism
back into what he was before gun barrels and bars
chewed their claim in his hide and spit him
stumbling backwards into screaming sunlight.
you got to scrub loose the jailtime fingersmears
from ashy skin, lather down the cuffmarks
from ankle and wrist, rinse solitary’s stench loose
from his hair, scrape curse and confession
from the welted and the smooth,
the hard and the soft,
the furrowed and the lax.

you got to hold tight that shadrach’s face
between your palms, take crease and lid
and lip and brow and rinse slow with river water,
and when he opens his eyes
you tell him calm and sure
how a woman birthed him
back whole again

in between

the reading of poetry again and the watching of films we actually made it away. i cycled a good old way and my knees weren't too bad - have tried adjusting all my angles, lowering the seat etc so now my left knee doesn't give way as much but my right knee does. will it ever end! lol

so, anyway, we ended up in oban seeing geo and, to save my poor joints i decided a bit of sea kayaking would be in order. t had mentioned she'd fancy the idea of a trip but, given the fear of water/boats/swimming i suggested a taster suggestion might be a better deal. before she could bottle it i was into the rather excellent sea kayak shop in oban where i not only booked her in but had phoned geo, who is almost as afraid of the water, and got him involved as well.

cue much buying of wetsuits before i realised that i had no kit with me and the thought of doing it in waterproofs felt a bit too much like bravado so my kayaking kit expanded ever so slightly. t was very happy tho so that was all that mattered. at least until she got into the boat.

i have to admit i noticed neither the fear nor the tears which was just as well as by the time we were heading back in from our morning out i was looking at her form with quite some measure of envy. true she was burst when we got back in but it was burst and cheery so only then did she tell me how close she'd been to running away. maximum credit to helen the instructor. i'd told her i was only along for the paddle but she managed to not only give loads of attention to two complete beginners (and fearties) but also to get me on my edges without a dunking. i was very impressed. and the other two loved it. i'd highly recommend it.

but what t hadn't done was get swimming. so a couple of days later i packed her into the van and off to st andrews for a dip. i let her paddle about a bit before doing what i swore i never do again after ruining myself on the west coast and actually went for a swim in the north sea. it still isn't pretty water!

but again, just as well as i soon realised just how petrified of the water t actually is. no matter, we braved the waves, splashed about and i'm confident that after a few more sessions a measure of confidence will have been gained. i don't think t'll ever be up for big waves but equally neither might i. full credit tho for confronting the fear head on. i was well impressed.

so much so i felt some sort of reciprocation was in order just out of respect for her effort. me, i'm petrified of heights over water, land no problem, but water!! it's really quite annoying but time to get a handle on it so i suggested we walk over the forth road bridge at some point just so that the shoe could be on the other foot. even the thought makes me feel sick! lol

a full report shall follow...

umberto saba

Citta Vecchia
(da Trieste e una donna 1910-1912)

Spesso, per ritornare alla mia casa
prendo un'oscura via di città vecchia.
Giallo in qualche pozzanghera si specchia
qualche fanale, e affollata è la strada.

Qui tra la gente che viene che va
dall'osteria alla casa o al lupanare,
dove son merci ed uomini il detrito
di un gran porto di mare,
io ritrovo, passando, l'infinito
nell'umiltà.

Qui prostituta e marinaio, il vecchio
che bestemmia, la femmina che bega,
il dragone che siede alla bottega
del friggitore,
la tumultuante giovane impazzita
d'amore,
sono tutte creature della vita
e del dolore;
s'agita in esse, come in me, il Signore.

Qui degli umili sento in compagnia
il mio pensiero farsi
più puro dove più turpe è la via.



Old Town

Often when I'm walking home I'll go
by way of some dark street in the old town
The thoroughfares are crowded, the streetlamps
shine in puddles with a yellow glow

Here. among the men that come and go
between tavern and home or the brothel,
where goods and the people are the petty
flotsam of a great sea port,
Iin passing find eternity
in wretchedness.
Here the prostitute, the sailor, the old man
shouting curses, the woman in a twitter,
the dragoon eating fritters
sitting in a store,
the lovesick adolescent girl
who wants to be adored,
allare creatures of this world
and uits reward
of sorrow; and in them all, there moves the lord.

Here, when in the presence of the lowly,
I feel my thought
in the streets of squalor grow most holy.


trans unkown

matthew vaughn

after a run of frankly dire films which has seen t reluctant to even watch a dvd, as she was felting the other night i idled in with kick ass. i was hoping it might be okay but expecting less than that so i figured she could watch it in between the wool action.

how wrong. we were glued to it. i've always been a fan of layer cake and vaughn returns to the same colour palette that he used in that. if there's a director who loves yellow more than he does then i don't know who it is. plus he seems to have a fascination for industrial settings that i've yet to see equalled. and aside from all that, even if you're not up for the violence, explosions, script etc you get to play spot the art. any scene that sets up the baddie with marc quinn's blood head is alright with me.

and it's this attention to detail i was loving from the start. the film is alive with references, not ladled on as some sort of homage but just there, letting you know the writers, the director etc are all really into it (check out the credits for the spice girl henchmen). this is reflected in the performances which are uniformly excellent. mark strong in particular is delightfully unhinged. exception must be made obviously for nicolas cage, for whom the words great performance should never be applied. here, he says, he's channelling his inner adam west. it's just wrong.

one of my other reasons for watching was the media controversy around chloe moretz's language. true if you're not a fan of the salty language then this isn't for you and, apparently, swathes of journalists were shocked out their seats by the sight of an eleven year old girl calling the bad guys 'cunts'. they seemed somewhat less appalled by the ensuing violence. and for me this is the issue around which the film revolved. true there are other moral questions raised but the sight of a wee lassie as the main protagonist in laying down gleeful savagery i found genuinely disquieting.

at the same time at no point did i have the slightest doubt that my own daughter at eleven would have loved it. as with his references vaughn makes it plain he's questioning this (a similar tack is taken to the issue of the aftermath of killing in layer cake) as the character of hit girl jokes with her dad she wants a puppy and a bratz makeover for her birthday when in fact she wants a set of knives. hit girl is doubled against the girlfriend of kick ass who occupies a much more conventional set of behaviours. she needs the hero's assistance, she wants him at home rather than endangering himself. hit girl has no such conscience but then again she is a child soldier and endowed with all the viciousness that such a state can bring.

of course there are bum notes. nicolas cage every time he's on screen for instance, even if you could argue that given the source material there's needs to be an element of cheese. and vaughn it appears, can't do fire.
but those are small complaints. if you're after a film that does characters, dialogue, action and still manages to ask questions without needing to beat you around the head with them, this is worth a watch.

so much so that t and i are reserving a rainy winter's day to watch all three vaughn movies, stardust, kick ass and layer cake, in that order. i look forward to it.

cesar vallejo

piedra negra sobre una piedra balnca

Me moriré en París con aguacero,
un día del cual tengo ya el recuerdo.
Me moriré en París -y no me corro-
talvez un jueves, como es hoy de otoño.

Jueves será, porque hoy, jueves, que proso
estos versos, los húmeros me he puesto
a la mala y,
jamas como hoy, me he vuelto,
con todo mi camino, a verme solo.

César Vallejo ha muerto, le pegaban
todos sin que él les haga nada;
le daban duro con un palo y duro
también con una soga; son testigos
los días jueves y los huesos húmeros,
la soledad, la lluvia, los caminos…



Black Stone lying on a White Stone

I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,
on some day I can already remember.
I will die in Paris--and I don't step aside--
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is Thursday, in autumn.

It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday, setting down
these lines, I have put my upper arm bones on
wrong, and never so much as today have I found myself
with all the road ahead of me, alone.

César Vallejo is dead.Everyone beat him
although he never does anything to them;
they beat him hard with a stick and hard also

with a rope.These are the witnesses:
the Thursdays, and the bones of my arms,
the solitude, and the rain, and the roads. . .


trans unknown

alice oswald

Time Poem

now the sound of the trees is
worldwide
and I'm still here
staring when I should be bathing
children.
it's late, the bike's asleep on its feet.
the fields hang to the sun by
slackened lines...
when the grass breathes, things fall.
I saw
the luminous underneath of a moth.
and a blackbird
mouth to the glow of the hour in
hieroglyphics.
who left the light on the step?
pause
what is the pace of a glance?
the man at the wheel signs his speed
on the ringroad
right here in my reach, time is as
thick as stone
and as thin as a flying strand
it's night and somebody's
pushing his mower home
to the moon

missing

i was saddened yesterday to hear of the passing of laurent fignon. he'll always be remembered for 'that' race, something i've always felt somehow diminished him as a racer. also he had plenty to say for himself which, these days, seems quite unusual. fifty is far too young.

a far better innings by the others. i'm surprised by the lack of attention to the passing of frank kermode around blogland. at 90 it wasn't altogther unexpected but i was still reaching for my copy of shakespeare's language immediately on hearing the news. i said something at a reading recently that went along the lines that when a person does not really die as long as the things they touched are still used. i can't read shakespeare or forster without, at some point, referring back to him. you can hear him, briefly, here.

and of course, edwin morgan, who leaves a massive whole in scottish poetry but more than that by the outpouring of warmth from those who knew and read him. like kermode it seems he has left a well of affection amongst those who knew and read him. i've heard a lot fo these responses recently and i'm amazed at their variety (was he really the first one to translate eugenio montale?), a wee bit like reading morgan himself.

so what have i been doing? got out on the bike, read shakespeare's language and morgan's selected poems (and got involved in an edwin morgan memorial). they may be gone but in now way are they absent. chapeau, the lot of them!

why i loathe computers

and all their incarnations.

so i need to do another site. maybe not a blog type thing but another site. off i go to google sites.

so far so good. there's a wee video man that tells me all the things i can do. even better. so i get my site - and then the trouble starts. where's the wee video man? he's vanished to be replaced with the ever helpful google help pages.

so i go to make a page. but surely there's a make page button. nope.

except according to google help there is. right there at the top right hand corner. where it isn't!

i go back to google help. i find the same query for some guy who lists the various languages he can program in but, like me, can't add a page on a google site. yeah, says google help, you need to go to the make page button at the top of the page.

eventually the help pages acknowledge that this button may not exist. uhm, change your browser they suggest. that might work but maybe best not use google chrome!

by this time i'm ready to throw my laptop out the window. obviously i delete the site. that right there is an hour of my life i won't be getting back. there is no limit to the resentment i feel about this!

i'm quite certain that there's a logic in the way these computer boys think, that really in their heads it is all quite simple. except that it's not supposed to be simple for them. loads of my work is spent getting people to understand systems and concepts they have no real idea of. it's not that tricky but there is a knack, a knack that seems entirely absent in the realm of 'helpful' software (rage, your name is indeed adobe)

so, off outside and breathe..... lovely

bloater

in lieu of the cycling i have been spending much time in the garden. first it strawberries, then unfeasible raspberries, both wild and homegrown. the other night we got into our red currants, a massive bowlful stripped form our overly prolific plant. red currant coulis with vanilla ice cream. that's all kind of goodness.

still to come, assuming i can get up the hill, are the blueberries, possibly a smattering of cranberries (some of which are happily growing in a bucket on the back step) and yesterday i even managing to scavenge a couple of early brambles as i cycled down the back roads.

nature is always better than tescos!

the knee story

no cycling posts for a while you might well observe. and this a race weekend. what have i been up to? up and down the glens, trying out unrelenting hill circuits around the house and generally readying myself for long days in the saddle?

all of these. it may be that i'll never be much of an endurance cylist and it's very likely i'll never show off the most skills but this year especially i've got my legs into a state of brutalising strength so muhc so that i can;t cycle with anyone as they can't cycle long enough, far enough or fast enough. all good then for the racing you might say.

which is true. except for one small detail - i'm having difficulty walking. i'd noticed niggling pains in my left knee and an increasing tendency for it to give way until last month i stopped being able to walk uphill and was struggling to walk home. i could still cycle but walking? no way?

i tried getting a quick mri/arthroscopy but it turns out in the world of orthopaedics i'm no young enough, female enough or pretty enough to be done any favours. with no strings left to pull i'm left flailing in the world of gp. i'll keep you posted.

so where does this leave me? getting fatter and unfitter and it's not pretty esp as this is the best summer i've had for years. am i bothered? to an extent yes but at the same time i have to accept my best days are behind me and i'll be, even in a best case scenario, cycling less years in future than i already have done. as such i've been enjoying the bike more and more with the certain knowledge that i'm enjoying a finite activity and this has communicated itself to the rest of my life. doing something is always better than moaning about something you can't!

stewart lee

one of the maddest things i've seen someone else do in this country came a few years back when myself and my partner of the time decided we'd go to stirling castle to see braveheart on site, a curious decision as neither of us liked it, indeed i'd go so far as to say i loathed it but it was free and it was at the castle so off we went.

all our fears were immediately confirmed by the swarms of drunk tartan army types hoaching around the place. but, just to get them psyched up that wee bit more, the organisers had decided to do a bit of re-enactment. cue some dressed up english mentalist giving the wallace character a proper kicking in front of the assembled masses. quite how he wasn't attacked i've never figured out but the film started just in time and it didn't happen. (we stayed until the tartan army boys started standing up to recite their favourite lines in conjunction with the rather unlovely mel gibson. pretty it was not.)

anyway, that was about as full on as baiting scottish people got. or so i thought. stewart lee is a comedian i can't be all that bothered with, too many pauses, too many repetitions and just a bit too laboured. until i saw this. and then this. from the repeated 'scotch' to the look on the face of the large gentleman. and gaelic - priceless. stewart lee, i thank you.

Jag är en farbror!

it took a while but we have a new addition to celebrate as t's brother and his partner had their new daughter. they're still in hospital at the moment but should be home soon. we're off to stockholm in a few weeks where we can begin our new role as eccentric relatives!

new map

so i was browsing along thru the guardian the other day and i cam across this.

i'm now willing to accept that there are two types of people in the world - those who find it dull as dishwater and those others (like the occupants of my house) who are completely absorbed by it.

if you're one of the latter any further explanation is superfluous. if you're one of the former i can't explain it to you.

today it seems as if most of europe has bought a book before going to work. i get israel and malta for the first time. latin america remains quiet. i must go and do some work. in five minutes....