Piglet’s expense account
Interesting times and not the best of them – I’ve had a couple of profound shocks to the kind of template to my rather eclectic belief system. The first was the discovery (thanks to my better half who is a big A.A Milne fan) that Winnie the Pooh and his fellow forest dwellers were all stuffed animals – toys that Christopher Robin was projecting his rather lonely scenarios upon. I was labouring under the illusion (for god knows how many decades) that they were actual animals! I’ve never noticed the stitched seams or Eeoh’s pinned on tail. Growing up in England with Australian parents the notion that small bears, small piglets (and Piglet has a kind of marsupial kind of nose) and kangaroos (okay the donkey was a bit left of centre) lived in a large forest seemed perfectly plausible. In fact the idea that they were actual animals was far more attractive to me as a child as I harboured ambitions of being a zoologist, or the very least an entomologist. I was surprised at the extent of my disappointment at this epiphany, perhaps even more disturbing was the psychological adjustment I had to make re: the character of Christopher Robin himself. Suddenly he now appears to me like a deeply isolated lonely only child reduced to acting out little plays with his stuffed toys in a large back garden. That’s a whole ocean away from talking with the animals. Then again Dr, Dolittle was another huge favourite book of mine and the ideas, and the fantasy of travelling across the bottom of the sea in a giant translucent shell of a friendly giant sea snail was up there with sitting for hours in the cupboard surrounded by smelly old raincoats eyes squeezed shut convinced that if I only willed it for another half an hour Narnia would open magically before me. C.S Lewis has a lot to answer for in terms of kids going through traumatic divorces wanting to escape. And I guess I should thank my lucky stars that at least the forests and talking animals of A.A. Milne were still pristine back then, because I can tell you as a wily street-wise 6 year old there was no way I was going to believe in talking stuffed toys. Magical kingdoms beyond the back of the wardrobe yes, talking lions yes – but again, I never realised Aslan was Jesus until I was thirty – which was one of the advantages of having secular left-wing parents. Which brings me to the next great getting-of-wisdom that is currently sweeping through the zeitgeist of the British Isles. And that is the scandal involving politicians of every persuasion claiming illegitimate expenses, the never-ending-story The Daily Telegraph has exploited to jack up their flagging circulation (nice to know there is absolutely no political bias or loyalty in the media).
Don’t get me wrong, I also think it’s inexcusable that a politician can claim for a duck island (a version of Eeoh’s twig house no doubt) or the upkeep of a moat, and even more extraordinary, for mortgages long paid off. But I also think we are living in perilously volatile times, and I fear the only people to benefit out of this expose are the extreme right and extreme left, with, maybe hopefully a few votes going to the Green party. The level of disillusionment in the general public is extreme. Remember the English have not had the hope of Obama, and I fear might even galvanise the normally complacent middle class into political action.. Revolution is not a British tradition – unless you count Cromwell but remember Royalty was finally re-instated. The best outcome would be that the whole parliamentary system is revised and, in my opinion, they bring in compulsory voting. A system that exists and operates very well in Australia. I also think they should introduce this in the US. It means everyone (who registers, which you have to do at eighteen, but I do know a few Australian anarchists who never registered and so deliberately stay off the grid) has to vote – or be fined. It also means everyone to a greater or lesser extent has to engage politically. It’s a way of offsetting the apathy that comes out of complete cynicism and having a party elected from a record low number of people actually voting. Failing that there’s always the option of sitting in the wardrobe wishing for Narnia. See you in there.
Sapien Trek
There was a couple of things this week that caught my imagination – one was the wonderful confirmation that the minute primitive skeleton found in Flores, Indonesia known as Homo Florensienses is an entirely separate species of an man-like creature. Giving raise to the idea that many of the mythological creatures that exist in folklore and fairytale might have their genesis in actual fact and the early co-existence of Homo Sapian and his ‘human’ brothers. After all we know that Neanderthal man lived alongside Homo Sapien and human skeletons in Portugal have been found with Neanderthal traits leading to the probability that they interbred.
Much folklore has its genesis in fact and perhaps the next wondrous discovery will be a Giant skeleton, or perhaps remains of a Big-foot type of man-like creature – even a Cyclops. The Homo Florensienses is only about the size of a three-year old child and possibly related to the leprechaun. There is evidence that the early sightings of unicorns were in fact antelopes or rhinoceros, sea cows – mermaids, and that the notion of the centaur came from horse riding invaders witnessed by peoples who had never seen men riding horses.
It did make me think about seemingly never ending cycle of invasion and colonisation that we, homo sapiens embark upon – a trait of our species which, no doubt, lead to the alienation of our humanoid brothers (that and the accidental bringing of strange viruses). A theme that is carried through many great works of literature and one that is the premise of another great modern on-going epic – Star Trek.
Yes, I confess, I’ve grown up with the series (both of them) and even followed Enterprise – which initially took some adaptation to the nuts and bolt frontier design of the space ship and more hard edged testosterone-pumped Captain Archer. But the latest film is fantastic. Apart from the tight plot and unashamed homage to the original series – there’s a kind of furtive tribal pleasure in sitting in a huge auditorium being swept out to Space with your fellow Homo sapiens on a mission to save other galaxy dwellers from their inherent murderous tendencies and evil neighbours. Why doesn’t this ring true when I think of the poor old Homo Florensienses or the Neanderthal?
Please Note: I shall now be blogging every second week due to my current writing demands.
Reasons to be cheerful
What a week! It feels as if we started with the first glimmers of possible economic recovery to finish with plague looming. Today I coughed in a bookshop (I have hay fever) and watched the shop assistant jump four feet back. Having researched the plague for my novel and attended a lecture at the London School of Economics which was a briefing on bird flu for businesses a couple of years ago I am well aware of all the ramifications of such an outbreak – and they ain’t pretty. In fact the epidemiologist giving the lecture (with a certain amount of relish I might add – I meant, hey these guys sit around all their working lives praying that they might get to witness an actual pandemic – a little like the seismologist in California predicting the big one) used the analogue of the British movie 28 Days Later sans zombies (not the US remake) – which was a brilliant depiction of an city emptied out because of plague with the obligatory satellite fortress communities of survivors. Actually this was the writing premise of The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio - young Italian aristocrats having fled plague-ridden Florence to their country retreat warning off boredom through all sorts of decadence and story telling. Blitz mentality – and I’m sure when the chips are down – and I sincerely pray this won’t be the case – it will all be orgies and religious epiphanies.
For those history buffs it’s worth picking up any biographical literature written during the plague years (I’m talking black plague here) to glean the kind of behaviour humans resort to face with their mortality. I wrote about the plague hitting Cologne – same year it hit UK. Samuel Pepys covers this in his diary - in his case plague broke out in London on the 25th of April 1665 (two cases) and by the 30th of April it was panic time (interesting synchronicity here – re: the current cases of English Swine flu) and the famous plague village of Eyam has a whole museum dedicated to the plague and the voluntary quarantine of the villagers – (no doubt contributing greatly to Brooks’s research of the same scenario in her book The Year of Wonders) - an action that resulted in a third of the village population dying, with one woman – Elizabeth Hancock burying her husband and six children within eight days. More recently I was both fascinated and shocked to read a letter in the museum in Julian, California written during the 1919 flu outbreak from a local woman to her brother describing the deaths of young people she knew and how quiet the streets were of Los Angeles. Much of the 1919 flu pandemic has been overshadowed by the horrors of the First World War, which just preceded it – but that strain was virulent, brutal and swift. Accounts like this are extraordinarily moving and really make real the ramifications of a pandemic: both social and economic. The good news is that we now have WHO and a far greater understanding of the need for global responsibility.
On a more upbeat note I am now in the closing pages of 2666 of Bolano’s extraordinary novel – the final section covering the fictional obscure German novelist Archimboldi’s experiences as a soldier on Russian Front in 2nd WWW and finding his voice as a inspired (but self-educated) writer in post war bombed out Cologne. This is really a book for writers – Bolano’s plot is sprawling, messy as all —-, and, at best, operates as a multi-faceted prism on the same scenario. However, as a reader, you just don’t care. This is because his prose is utterly magical, wise and philosophically uncompromising. He too was faced by his own mortality when writing this epic tome (he was dying) and I can’t help wondering whether this was a contributing factor to the clarity and passion of his voice.