in praise of rain

The rain is falling in soft, fresh waves outside my window, and it soothes my soul.

Sadly there aren't many things I can claim to share with my uncle Ian, aside from being family. He is a talented and successful artist, writer and illustrator. He lives in west london, me in the east. But we both seem to share a love of the rain.

And the elegant Tiko Tuskadze who runs my favourite local cafe, Little Georgia, and I always greet each other with dismay when it is hot and pleasure when it is cool or raining.

Everyone else is complaining about the rain and the 'rubbish summer'. I find this disappointment so strange. We have had many days of sun this year - remember the blistering May? So why the expectation that these have to be clustered around a few months in the middle of the year? It rarely happens and you'd think we'd have clocked this by now. Anyhow, I think the pleasures of rain are overlooked.

A few reasons why I love the rain:

It is watering our lovely community orchard

Playing melancholy piano sounds great with the rain

It means I dont get red sun marks when I walk to work

It makes a calming ambient soundtrack for writing and reading

It gives me an excuse to spend all of a sunday watching films and cooking

It means I can actually get stuff done, rather than feeling i should be outside pointlessly flopping around in a park.

paper anniversary

This time last week I was trying to get to sleep with sirens skidding past my bedroom window and helicopters circling overhead.

It was our second wedding anniversary and we had decided to walk home after dinner with some friends. Tentatively walking down Old Street and Hackney Road the reality of the riots we have been glued to on-line suddenly turned my stomach and pricked my skin into high alert. All the shops were closed and the usual stream of wannabes coming out of the pubs were nowhere to be seen.

It was shocking the scale of the violence and how arbitrary it spread. It felt like the illusion of peace and stability was just the emperors new clothes, and that night it felt like we would remain insecure and scared walking home at night, gangs of feral kids and police powerless to control.

And it was confusing; community spirit was revealed in the Stoke Newington shop keepers protecting their livelihoods and in rival gangs who normally shoot at each other for crossing into the wrong street were joining forces. Initial empathy for a generation who have been abandoned quickly replaced with deep concern for the small shop owners and the people fleeing their burning homes. 

Yet how quickly we return to familiar and the predictable. How quickly its over and we have to remind ourselves it wasn't a dream.

I can't analyse why or what caused the riots or what the solutions are. Its complex and there is enough analysis right now. But it did remind me of this poem. Did the rioters in England in 2011 know what they are fighting for? And did the Latin American revolutionaries know what they are fighting for?

I'll never forget my philosophy lecturer at university spontaneously scrapping the set topic and railing against the introduction of the tuition fees, how he had to publish a quota of articles in order to pay his family bills, leaving him no time to 'be a good tutor'. He apologised, said it was an outrage. He couldn't believe we weren't up in arms, protesting, rioting for the poor education we were getting at rip off prices. And this was over a decade ago, before university graduated you with a £25k debt. Well I remember feeling ashamed and momentarily inspired. But as soon as I left the hall I was out buying records and dancing at what felt like the most important place to be while the world outside shaped our future.

Self Portrait at Twenty Years

I set off, I took up the march and never knew

where it might take me. I went full of fear,

my stomach dropped, my head was buzzing:

I think it was the icy wind of the dead.

I don't know. I set off, I thought it was a shame

to leave so soon, but at the same time

I heard that mysterious and convincing call.

You either listen or you don't, and I listened

and almost burst out crying: a terrible sound,

born on the air and in the sea.

A sword and shield. And then,

despite the fear, I set off, I put my cheek

against death's cheek.

And it was impossible to close my eyes and miss seeing

that strange spectacle, slow and strange,

though fixed in such a swift reality:

thousands of guys like me, baby-faced

or bearded, but Latin American, all of us,

brushing cheeks with death.

Roberto Bolaño

(translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy)

magic in the waiting spaces

I've just returned from a trip to Italy by train and recalled a time I was waiting for the eurostar.

 I was sitting reading the paper and drinking coffee, waiting for the platform to be announced. In front of me a tired looking, slightly overweight, grey haired guy was leisurely tuning his trombone. The next time I looked up he had vanished. I wondered idly whether this was a busker or just a musician very precious about his instrument.

A short while later the same man appeared in a garishly floral waistcoat, and started warming up on his trombone.

A couple sitting near him also waiting, the woman jokingly asks "Are you the travelling circus then?"

"I'm seeing off the train to disneyland", the musician replied, "The magic starts here."

"So do you feel magical?" she says.

"No. Been doing this for 15 years," and then starts up with his music.

Harvey Krumpet

At home nursing a virus and feeling bored, I came across this delicious short animation.

It won an oscar and its well deserved, i love it. Particularly the Busby Berkeley inspired sequence with knocking wheelchairs.

folly for a flyover

For an hour I was transported to a mystical fairy land with flying horses, princes rescuing princesses and Aladdin's magic lantern. The sounds of the orchestra lifted us onto a floating carpet with bells and horns.

In the final battle scene between the sorcerer and the witch it felt like we were all part of a shamanistic ritual, as we shook our rattles and rang our bells.

 

The contrast with the concrete flyover that was our roof and the murky green canal made it seem all the more magical. 

The audience were all given different percussion instruments to create the different sound effects. It was a clever way of creating an enveloping cocoon and keeping your focus while we all suspended Hackney reality. 

This was a truly magical night out. It was created by the same people that made a beautiful cinema in an abandoned petrol station on Clerkenwell road where I saw Buster Keaton shorts and we drank beer in a transformed petrol shop bar.

notice the shadow orchestra blending into the scene

Apparently this is the oldest surviving animated feature film. I really loved its simplicity and beauty with the silhouette animation. A real work of art. And a great story.

After we enjoyed a beer in the amazing 'house' made of wooden bricks. what a brilliant invention!

Corner shop community

I went to the corner shop as usual on a sunday morning to buy the paper and was greeted by an unfamiliar face at the till. He could see my surprise so I asked and he replied, slightly annoyed, 'everyone has been asking that. He's moved on, gone back to Turkey.'

I realised I didn't even know his name. Yet i felt i had got to know the corner shop guy, who always greeted me with a smile and 'how's my friend' (Gustavo). He liked to tease Gustavo for his unkempt hair while stroking his trim styled beard.

When I got home we were both sad that we hadn't had the chance to find out his name, and tell him how much we appreciated his warmth, how he had been a key part of our local community - people you recognise and trust.

Had he been forced to leave by new owners, perhaps there was there some family problem that meant he had to leave London?

A few weeks later I bumped into this Kurdish ex-shop keeper and asked him what he was up to, that we missed him. He told us that he sold the business and had graduated from university. It was great to find out our assumptions were wrong and he was happy.

Searching for images of corner shops I found a blogger who had written about these guys. They used to give her a bottle of wine when it was her birthday. So I guess they were something special.

Fragments on a Night Train

Didnt anyone tell them?
You go on holiday to escape yourself
To give yourself a break
from yourself
your petty worries
your daily habits
your work routine

But here they are lugging their burdens in large wheeled bags onto the train flying through the night with light dreams of fields unseen.

I realised soon that i wasnt the one observing I was a mirror on their world.
They were watching their children and each other through my eyes

My presence alone, i need not speak, reflected back their lack of imagination.
A silent outsider I echoed back their dull coversation and their focus on food, phone games, multi distraction as the sights and play of light on europe sped past unnoticed.

Would they crack the glass and make me real with questions I couldn't ignore?
I waited but they turned their large backs and lay down to sleep.

As I too lay down, the soft carriage beats and humming wind carried me back to the same seat alone in a night sleeper to Delhi from Calcutta with another family, this time in brightly coloured clothes, sharing their food and excitement enveloping me in their family circle without conversing, but communing through their indian spices and smiles.

A fragment I found in an old notebook as I was tidying my desk and arranging a trip to Italy for a friend's wedding. We're going by sleeper train. My favourite way to travel.