ancient of days

I accidentally went to the wrong Tate for the Blake exhibition. More of that another day. So here I was - eventually - in the Tate Britain, entering the mythical gods and dark world of the William Blake exhibition, where God judges Adam.

We get Blake's portrayal of otherworlds, gods and science, as well as his own invented mythology.

I guess he’d have been a heavy metal album cover designer in more modern times. But no, this is 1795 and the years beyond. Different rooms showed his ever increasing size of canvas, from tiny matchbox-sized sketches through to wall coverings and even a few digital exhibits to show the well-meaning scale he’d envisage but could not recreate.

His mental models show the scale of his thinking. Deities, sometimes free, sometimes imprisoned. The spectre of a demon hovering over many scenes. Serpents writhe, kings are terrified, the Pope visits Hell. There's the ghost of a flea, where Blake considered all fleas were troubled souls out seeking blood. Notice the bucket.

Blake learnt to draw at the Royal Academy, but was disdainful of the lessons he received.

Apparently, in those days there was much light touch tuition and artists were expected to fend for themselves. Blake lived around Soho and was the son of a shopkeeper.

He learnt the trade of printmaking and there are some epic bank-note quality engravings in one of the rooms. The nature of his trade meant that he would have been familiar with many artists and their styles, being responsible for making the engraved copies used in the print shop.

Then we see his little book, Songs of Innocence and Experience, complete with its handwritten embedded text. He’d make do with the limits of the printing technology available, which could not print pictures and text together.

Onwards, through Dante's circles and towards commissioned works, including a whole bundle to a single sponsor. Add back Blake's words which coalesce with an altogether powerful presence. Here's Jerusalem.

There’s allegories to decode with chained monarchs rolling the sun, scaly beasts and angels. Newton appears directly and indirectly in the collection, and Edwardo Paolozzi echoed Blake's Newton in the sculpture in the grounds of the British Library.

compulsive distortion sham

Curious to note that the area around Westminster has been slightly light of MPs over the last few days. It is as if some of the MPs decided that they didn’t need to be there, what with the Conservative Conference being held in Manchester and all.

There’s another noteworthy occurrence too, which is that the roads around Parliament seem to be getting ever more barricaded. The routine traffic flow around the side of Parliament has been suspended and even the pedestrian access to the front has been limited.

Maybe It’s a way to stultify access to what is really happening? Boris has lied about the deal progress and positioned a laughable ‘tunnel of negotiations’ during which time there would be silent running..

I could understand if this was any normal type of negotiation, but as the so-called Prime Minister continues to bluster and mislead everyone about the status of the negotiations, the agreements reached, the bribes offered to Ireland and the status of reception of the terms by the EU, then it should be clear to all that the whole process is a sham.

Boris has presented an unacceptable mild rework of Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement as the basis of the latest deal. He knows it won’t be accepted by the UK Parliament, the Northern Ireland politicians nor by the EU.

For Boris, it is all about cultivating blame now. The slimy Gove was my original candidate for Boris and Cummings to select, but Boris has gone all in with a bigger game to blame the whole of the EU.

Of course he is gambling with our chips, which I find kind of insulting.

Dominic is laughing into his sleeve as he sees the entire UK Governmental system implode. He didn't have much time for the blundering tories at the start of this process, how ironic that he is now helping their fall.

Worse than that is the catastrophe that UK could find itself in on 1st November.

Boris is playing from a busted flush, and, despite what he says, might be prepared to break the law or use cheap trickery to get his way.

Meanwhile, Guy Verhofstadt is proposing the EU grant a unilateral extension to stop UK from crashing out.

#cheat #pantsonfire #humbug #liar

becoming ordinary

I joined a dystopian book club some time ago and we’ve read about a dozen or so books and discussed them in various pubs. I decided to branch out alone this time and read Atwood’s The Testaments, which is supposed to be a kind of Handmaid’s Tale II.

It’s a book that has five stars sprinkled all over it, so I was expecting great things. It seems to be a novel that the publishing industry has pinned hopes on, with a massive display in the local bookstore, a fast pass to the Booker, and freebie copies of it appearing on all the favourite news channels.

I was therefore somewhat surprised that I just couldn’t get along with this story. There’s a serious baddie (the stone-cold enforcing puppetmaster Aunt Lydia – a survivor who will do anything to stay in the regime) and two teenagers (chalk and cheese, Daisy and Agnes) who provide the main action and viewpoints and we get a kind of escape plot mixed with some gritty scenes as the unifiormed establishment rumbles along doing its bad things.

Maybe I’ve become hardened to the scenario portrayed?

The convent-like situation of Ardua Hall, with its strange rituals and humiliations, coupled with a power to do anything to anyone, made the story ruthless and unremitting. Oh yes, and the dodge of plenty of conveniently placed hidden cameras.

Maybe the scenes are too reminiscent of modern-day news channels?

Perhaps it’s about the type of questions being asked?

“Was I exchanging my caring and pliable woman’s nature for an imperfect copy of a sharp-edged and ruthless man’s nature? I didn’t want that, but how to avoid it if I aspired to be an Aunt?” (p. 328) and so it dragged me along over bumpy dialogue, sometimes discovering handy facts about a character, just when they would become useful to that character’s actions.

There’s the societal splits, horrible men usually missing in action with titles like “Commander”, women like The Aunts, Pearl Girls, Marthas, Econowives.

There’s some low-key humour as well, although it gets a little lost in amongst the grimness of the general setting. “Only dead people are allowed to have statues, but I have been given one while still alive. Already I am petrified.”

It occurred to me that another novel I’d read had played with the themes, no doubt in response to the Handmaid’s Tale. It inadvertently tipped me off about some of the reveals later in the story.

Then there’s the little quotes which are a vital part of the novel’s press releases. “As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” (p. 407) but these are quite well embedded, and often highlighted by other Kindle readers.

(non spoiler I think): At one point a character is put into the Thank Tank, a kind of police isolation cell. She observes that her mind goes soggy in the absence of others. Existence is relative to other people, she was a one person who risked becoming a no person.

She thinks:

“Whatever my resolve might be: after some days I lost track of that plotline. The plotline of my resolve.”

Is this post-modernist writing by Atwood, or a note that slipped through the sub-edit?

We could get some internalisation, instead we get the cell clanging open and light flooding in. And soon enough we are in an air-conditioned hotel (albeit with a mushy brain). Just time for a shower or two.

That seemed to be the challenge with this story telling.

The two disguised teen characters traverse this normalised puritanical totalitarianism with its street lynchings and institutionalised abuse.

The state of Gilead might be a hill of testimony, so perhaps these ordinary witnesses to events rely on someone else to interpret their words?

There’s a horrific regime in place, a manipulator in chief and a couple of escaping resistance fighters. We get a (deliberate?) clash of literary style influenced by Cromwellian times, with a kind of youth fiction escape story, involving trucks and a Lebanese flagged fishing trawler run by the tan-skinned and bearded Captain Misimengo. Fish fingers, anyone?

I paraphrase: “It’s okay though, he rubbed his fingers together, which I knew meant money (…to bribe the coastguard…)”

Luckily Cap’n had been tipped off by a minor character named ..er..Bert. Shiver me timbers.

So I’ve hauled myself through this book, including comments off along the lines of “If you’re not enjoying it then perhaps you should read something else.”

Margaret Atwood has written something that targets the same evil empire as a novel she wrote 35 years earlier.

Today's ordinariness with which the Handmaid's outfit becomes a Halloween costume, before being protested out of the stores.

The Offred, Ofglen and Serena Joy wine collection.

I paused at the start of these reflections to wonder whether I’ve become hardened to the portrayals. Now, I wonder whether we all have?

moves like Trump?

It's difficult to understand how Boris can still be in power.

He lied before the Referendum. He lied after it. He's misled the Queen. He's conducted an unlawful early termination of Parliament. He's saying, right now, that he will exit the EU on the 31 October, against the express legal framework voted for by Parliament.

I was going to call this one something like the man who had no power, but it seems that this is wrong. He clings to power and no-one is able to remove it. A vote of no confidence won't work either, because no-one can agree who would take the new lead.

If Johnson has behaved unlawfully and undemocratically (as the Supreme Court seems to suggest) then he shouldn't have any legitimacy in office. He's still unbowed and personally thinks that the Supreme Court were wrong in their decision.

So that's how he sees defending democracy and supporting the will of the people?

He's clueless about a revision to the Withdrawal Agreement (which is what his Brexit bluff is based upon).

Tomorrow, he is trying to get the Conservatives to propose another recess to Parliament, so that the Tory conference can continue. Kind of having a laugh, really.

The ripples have affected the Labour conference too, with Tom Watson's sensible speech, with its nasty, scripted walk-out by some of the more militant left wing now shelved to make way for Jezza Lite, with his cut-down crowd-pleaser speech, hastily re-edited by his minders to position Corbyn for fuzzy leadership.

Two conniving yet useless politicians being manipulated and putting their own self-interest above country.

disorder, disorder, and a plot bigger than Guy Fawkes

I come back into the UK and observe that the situation gets worse. At least the Supreme Court has called it.

First, the busted Labour Party scheming its drive-by firings and vote rigging by hall-stuffing and distraction, engineering it as a loyalty vote for Corbyn.

Then, Boris the Misleader shown to have illegally halted Parliament. Two useless parties struggling to keep their tattered remnants together at the expense of the UK. Will chancer Boris admit he has been found out, arrogantly challenge the Supreme Court, or throw Cummings under the bus?

"Order, order!" as the man with the colourful tie says.

And it is only Tuesday.

cryospace

It turned out that the hotel had a cryospace suite. They call it The Longevity Suite, built into a wall of the hillside. I was too much of a chicken to try it, but the idea was to sit in a Polish deigned, German TUV-certified freezer and be taken down to -195 Celsius for around 4 minutes.

It is supposed to be jolly healthy, but I decided that jumping into the Mediterranean's cool waters was more my thing.

And yes, there were actual sardines swimming around in the clear blue Sardinian waters, an altogether more pleasant temperature.

clio

We'd ordered a little Fiat 500 to get around the island, but instead were given a Renault Clio. I'm already familiar with the 500, but didn't know anything about the Renault. So here's some impressions. Firstly, I should not be coloured by the time we were awarded a Citroen C something in Norway, which was automatic but fairly hard work.

This Renault came as a pleasant surprise. I knew we'd have been able to get the luggage into the 500, having previously stashed a complete drum kit into one, but the Clio took the 2x 23k bags with ease. The rear seats folded and swallowed the bags without drama.

Then for the getaway. A manual shift, so always more of a challenge for a normal automatic-driving Brit, what with the gear stick being on the wrong side and all that. Actually, it all worked out quite well, and although a somewhat noisy car to drive (diesel) it was also quite frugal and sipped the fuel rather than guzzled it.

I've no idea what model we were given but we had start-stop and a curious key fob with a separate button to start the car. I'm not entirely convinced by this system, which meant I still had to fiddle to find the card and put it into a slot before firing up the engine. What's the point, except brochureware?

It also failed a couple of times when I wanted to switch the engine off, and I had to eject/reset the card and then press stop again. Flaky software?

Then quite a good surprise was the built-in satnav, which booted up in English and was quite helpful at sticking to routes. It got confused around the airport, where a number of new roads and roundabouts had been built, but that's just par for the course.

The rental car's diesel engine was pretty solid and managed to salvage a couple of my duffer hill starts that I attempted in third gear. That's just a mix of being used to an automatic and left-handed gearstick. But oh, that engine was noisy. "Listen to the engine note" might be a Top Gear line, but in this case it wasn't an option.

That was until the great stall. I was heading through a little town when the engine simply died. Peep-peep and similar expressions from the cars behind me. I couldn't get it to restart until I'd removed the key, counted to five and reset everything.

I empathise with the Italian hand-waving expressionism.

The stall only happened once, although there was the time I was trying to reverse out of a space and the whole engine appeared to lock up.

And the time I had to coast into a roadside cafe, when the engine cut out. I managed to "bump start" the engine on this occasion to park respectably.

I'll put these occasions down to something to do with the driver, but I can't help thinking that the start-stop (and its inscrutable options buried in the menu system) was somehow a factor.

And yes, the little car had all around beepers to help parking and a reversing camera with guide-lines to help reverse park.

The prevailing impression was positive from this little car; four door practicality, usable space, zippy enough and with decent telemetry. Clearly built to a price point, it even had admirable clip-on fake alloy wheels. I wonder about the stop-start, which was perhaps a gimmick that could have been avoided.

italia

I've worked in Italy and visited it many times. This time we're off to an island, so I wondered if the shaken up impression would be greater or smaller than in the old days.

Sure enough, we arrived and were bundled onto the bus to the terminal. I felt the surge of adrenalin.

My history of Italy goes back to the days of Lire, when the bars used to keep chewing gum in the cash tills to give as change for small amounts. Then there would be the craziness of Milan during the fashion week, when the whole city would turn over to the shows.

It is where I'd visit a quiet bar with a friend, we'd sip grappa and nibble grana and at random intervals there's be a flurry as a group of fashionistas arrived for a break.

My observation of Italian traffic that it was never parked, just momentarily at rest, like some giant arcade game. Arriving in Venice train station on the day of the Grand Regatta, with furious oarsmen rowing along the Grand Canal.

This time it is altogether more sedate; a chance to relax by the pool, or on the beach. Pass the sun creme.

poolside

If I position the sunshade just right it will edit the sun from the picture. The only thing that is missing from this scene is the cool beer.

escape route

I decided that escape was the best solution. To simply get away from the dystopia for a few days. To reset. In the sunshine. So here we are, at Heathrow.

“The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.*”

It's time to leave the country when the bookstores fill and flash warnings with political analyses and memoirs. Davy has made his self-indulgent and sorrowful attempt and plenty of others are attempting to cash in on the store visits. Why, even Ken Clarke has gone a Kind of Blue.

*Margaret Atwood may pronounce fair warning, but it amounts to another reason to leave. Enjoy the last moments of freedom of movement, read the book on a beach somewhere.

It has to be done.

our view from the man in a shed

There's an attempt to freshen the content for Cameron's memoirs.

So much has happened since he triggered the Referendum and Tory psychodrama that crashed the UK, it is not surprising he can't sleep at nights.

At least he has a choice of venue, with his Cotswold home and the west London one. Then there's his £25,000 shepherd's hut designed for writing, yet he preferred the garden. Or, come to think of it, the second shepherd's hut on his £2 million Cornwall holiday home.

In this recent publicity interview, he has called out Gove as mendacious, Johnson as appalling and acting with 'sharp practices' and that the Referendum campaign left him caught in a quagmire. That the pair of them "left the truth at home," when campaigning for Brexit. Hardly insightful.

"I think about this every day. Every single day I think about it, the referendum and the fact that we lost and the consequences and the things that could have been done differently, and I worry desperately about what is going to happen next."

Cameron accuses Gove of creating the false narrative (like Turkey or the NHS bus) although I suspect that Gove's assistant Dominic Cummings was significantly influential. He also mentioned that he offered Boris a top-five job to support him. Would Boris have behaved differently if it had been top-three?

Cameron's already received the HarperCollins reported £800,000 for the right to publish his memoirs. No wonder he can give away the profits from the book and audio.