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 | So, what did you do the day after?
Friday was twitchy, as you might expect, but deciding that if I did not drink myself into oblivion the terrorists had won, I walked along the Mall, pausing to take the photo of a couple outside Buckingham Palace, pressing themselves against the bars of the fence to flatten the ubiquitous police out of shot. Many, many police.
The Mall was holding an exhibition of military vehicles from previous wars, as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations. Sleek, round-bodied, they made violence as it used to be dealt seem impossibly stylish. Ideologically, the causes fought over might have been as repetitive as ever, and the bodies tear in just the same way, but the forces ranged on both sides could have waltzed into Bluewater.
Also on the mall was Martha Rosler's Garage Sale exhibition at the ICA, now regrettably closed. Since we don't really have garage sales (unless I have never been suburban enough), the feel was more like a church hall - the gag of a jumble sale in an art gallery feels, I think, less penetrating when you're used to wandering around municipal space looking at Tiffany singles. The accompanying video, with its ruminations on how the worth of things changes over their life - I hope you think that these objects are who I am (not really, Martha, the Rokit tag is still on that poncho) - was pleasantly uncertain, though; 30 years since the first showing, and it seems Rosler is still not quite sure what's being achieved here.
What was, in fact, being achieved, and for a mere £2.50, was this.
Paid. In. Full. Paid. In. Goddamn. Full.
Chainsaw Warrior. What we did before computers, instead of, and sometimes along with, the sin of impurity.
And then, finally, my patriotic duty at the pub. With a chainsaw.
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| Thursday, July 14, 2005 |
| By the time I got to the vigil, the main speakers had concluded, and instead the stage had been handed over to celebrities, Londoners and members of the public, giving and receiving thanks and reading poems. Some of the poems, and I say this with love, were awful.
Richard Madeley warned us not to give in to hate. Given that under normal circumstances the only hate I might be at risk of succumbing to is that of Richard Madeley, the day took on a strange hue.
Beppe, remarkably, turned in a barnstorming rendition of Henry James on London. As I arrived, somebody was reading Anna Akhmatova, and my eyes stung. Strange combinations.
Again, there was something quite London about it - no overnight stays, no candles, everybody out by half past eight. One young woman waved a New Zealand Flag, another a Union Jack embroidered with the legend We're Not Afraid. I uttered a silent imprecation at missing the chance to kick-start interest in my own website "We're a bit nervous, but, meh, what can you do?".
Ultimately, however, it was the compère who mattered - who could they find who represented the indomitable spirit of Britain, the calm acceptance of the ever-present risk of death, and, most important, the triumph of love over death? And at short notice?
Rupert Giles, ladies and gentlemen. Rupert Giles in the Square. If that's not a calming influence, I don't know what is.
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| Wednesday, July 13, 2005 |
| 
Hundreds of the little bastards, all unrecyclable. Most reformatted. Those too old and knackered to be reformatted pried open and the disc itself cut into four with nail scissors. Those that still worked and had anything of archival interest plundered. The older ones containing documents written in formats that can no longer be recognised, which does not exactly fill one with confidence for one's posterity.
Much of it was long-obsolete work, scraps of short stories or poems long since completed or discarded - the usual digital detritus. One, however, badly degraded, sick and ill, yielded up buried treasure: archives of emails from my final year at university. Most of the files were corrupt, mercifully, but a few of the received-mail archives were more or less intact.
A pause for the Haus rules on buried treasure. Anything of actual value never stays buried for long. So, your buried treasure is actually likely to be a source of mild but time-consuming reverire, or just plain monkey's pawtastic. This one was definitely the ebola of two evils. Then again, for a long time I thought a trove was a place where you put treasure, so what do I know?
But yes. Astonishing. In some ways the salad days don't seem very far away, measured primarily in worldly achievement. In others they are alien, dead-star-distant, horrifying.
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| Friday, July 08, 2005 |
| The sirens haven't stopped, but they are at least a little more infrequent than yesterday. where a constant threnody for police car, ambulance and fire engine drifted up from the streets.
It's strange to think how our reference points for insane situations are mediated. Yesterday, as I walked through the silence, no cars, only the sound of sirens, I was thinking of 28 Days Later. Today, with the sound of helicopters over my head, it was more like a very orderly Apocalypse Now.
The way the city changes under these impacts is freakish. Unable to see the areas themselves, all you have to go on is the circles of exclusion, the difficulties in movement. When the Admiral Duncan was bombed, I saw it only as an inconvenience when I was already late - having arrived in London post-IRA, it just didn't occur to me that something as eternal and unchanging as Old Compton Street could be the scene of such violence. It was only when I finally arrived in Oval to find my hostess desperately concerned for my welfare that I discovered that it had not been a burst water main but a crime scene. Strangely, a group of people who would later become close friends were on the other side of the ribbon.
Of course, there was no such ignorance this time - instead frantic flurries of email as we all tried to work out how bad it was. The first person I got hold of (London Bridge, 8:45) learnt what had happened (or rather, what hadn't - the story was still a power surge) from me, but that changed quickly.
Meanwhile, as the engines start to turn on campaigns to restrict our freedoms in the name of the war on tairrr (ID cards being, as far as one can tell, made out of Qaedanite; I'm not sure whether to admire or revile Charles Clarke for getting in a pitch for them in the middle of the crisis. Talk about presence of mind...), it might be worth recalling Lord Hoffman's comments on the threat to the British way of life:
The Attorney General's submissions and the judgment of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission treated a threat of serious physical damage and loss of life as necessarily involving a threat to the life of the nation. But in my opinion this shows a misunderstanding of what is meant by 'threatening the life of the nation'. Of course the government has a duty to protect the lives and property of its citizens. But that is a duty which it owes all the time and which it must discharge without destroying our constitutional freedoms. There may be some nations too fragile or fissiparous to withstand a serious act of violence. But that is not the case in the United Kingdom...
This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community...
The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory
We are as a nation neither fragile nor fissiparous. Best of all, refusing to give in to fear will really annoy Melanie Phillips, who is more likely to be fissiparous than vivipaorous if the bloodwork from the lab is anything to go by. Watch her all but accuse Lord Hoffman of being a stooge of both Hitler and Stalin here.
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| Sunday, July 03, 2005 |
| As London struggled with twin battles against homophobia and global poverty (and there's a Queer Eye special that has to happen), I was thinking on matters of inequality also. I've seen Henry IV Part 1 a good few times, but never Henry IV Part 2. After a double-bill at the National, I realised why.
There's no need for Henry IV, 2. Really, none. Henry has shown his commitment to the crown. he has redeemed his past and demonstrated his worth. To find him back in the pub in Eastcheap in IV:2 is not just disappointing but dull. This is how normal people behave.
IV:1 is really about Henry V, and IV:2 is basically about Henry V's mate, John Falstaff. If I were Henry IV, wheeled in just before the interval to look wretched, I'd be livid. The Elizabethan crowd loved Falstaff, and IV:2 is clearly an early example of a sequel attempting to increase the role of the funny man, forgetting thereby that the point about comic relief is that it is relief. See Jar-Jar Binks.
Henry IV part 2 is, in effect, Dream a Little Dream 2. The creators are aware of what was important about the first (the presence of Falstaff, the presence of Coreys Haim and Feldman), but they don't really have anything for the characters to do. So, the courtly plots in the second part collapse into anticlimax - Scroop is deceived, Northumberland overthrown off camera - while we are subjected to interminable Falstaff scenes that the poor director has to try to make funny with physical comedy, pratfalls, funny voices - anything not actually in the script. For Ancient Pistol throwing himself around the stage, read Corey Feldman's Michael Jackson impression. Scenes drag on far beyond the point of resistance, there are unnecessary romantic interludes, scenes are inserted or extended to pad out the length without increasing the props budget. Corey the Fourth.
Not helping this was Gambon's delivery - when he hit the lines, he was terrific, but some of his readings were so phlegmatic as to be impenetrable. It may have been Shakespeare fatigue, but the scene between Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet, played as a strung-out Eastender with Blade Runner hair, was for significant periods pure garble, to be endured rather than enjoyed.
Which is a shame, because MacFadyen's increasingly exhausted Hal was better in Part 2, and the scenes at court, despite Westmoreland being disconcertingly tiny, worked well. But there is just too much sub-standard clowning in the run-up. I'd recommend 1, not 2 - also, Harry Percy (last seen as Lord Asriel, playing convincingly younger this time), Glendower and Mortimer (gay as a window) brought energy that simply dissipated in their absence.
Still, society and culture, and the society was good. Without the time to cross the Thames and take Pride, we wandered to the Coin Street Festival, helped to make trade fair in ways that remain obscure, ate kimchi and listened to Funky Lipstik. That last was more environmental than voluntary, but what's not to love about the UK's premier covers band giving "Teenage Dirtbag" a mild drubbing?
Great 15-foot tall pantomime dame, also - pics to follow. Walking back along the South Bank, the young people of London all full of pride and giggling amorous humour, made me feel like London was contributing something of worth.
So, how was Pride? Or, alternatively, was all of Live8 that bad?
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