Spirou

It’s raining outside. Pouring. Chucking it down. Cats. Dogs.

Inside, it’s too hot or too cold depending on whether the single brown electric heater in the corner is switched to on, or to off.

I’m inside a temporary “mobile” building that has been in use for a few years longer than it was intended. Timber beamed floors stretch and strain and scrape and groan as people walk across them. Some windows are locked tight having expanded in the wet air, others won’t close. The sound of the rain is ever present, bouncing off of the felt roof above. Everything echoes. There is a slow, drip, drip, drip, drip… drip toward the centre of the room. A space has been cleared and a bucket fills under a small hole in the ceiling where the felt has failed. It smells. It’s a mix of wet dog damp, as the soaked occupants slowly dry, competing with the dry dust, throat choking burn from the electric heater and Dean Birch’s ammonic underpants that haven’t been washed this month.

I am ten or eleven years old.

It’s another wet playtime at school.

As a class we are imprisoned, hunched and dejected at our desks, unable to talk to one another as Mr Collins, our tweed clad teacher wants a few minutes peace and quiet. Guard and fellow inmate, Collins is crashed, jauntily backward in his chair, his legs crossed, red socked and brogue’d feet resting on the desk top. Eyes closed, he is lost in a personal reverie that no doubt involves Guinness; he unconsciously twirls one end of his waxed moustache. He’s a decent teacher. Fair. Engaging. Funny. Caring and considerate. But no one risks his wrath. Silent, we sit.

A few minutes earlier, we’d all lost a race to collect the scraps of comic books and annuals kept at the back of the room for such occasions. Dean Birch always won. Less because of the smell and an unwillingness to get too close but more for the threat of the psychotic kicking that he would threaten and inevitably mete out by you winning. The comic books were years old. Creased and faded. They’d been read a hundred times by hundreds of souls in the same position as I. They had been fought over so often that they were now ripped to shreds. I doubt that there was a complete comic in the collection. It was standard to be left with a few pages of part stories from Eagle and if you were lucky and Dean Birch had overlooked it, a single crumpled page from Beezer or Dandy.

But my overriding memories were of reading Asterix and TinTin. I didn’t like either. As a kid I was Roman obsessed, so always picked out the historical inaccuracies in Asterix and hoped that the Romans would win. I mean… “What did the Gauls ever do for us?” And TinTin was, just, painfully bland. As a hero, he lacks such bite and charisma that there was never a hope of me warming or remotely caring what he did or why.

I’d not thought of either for an age until I found myself absorbed in an exhibition space in Castillo de Santa Catalina, Cadiz back in September. 

There was an exhibition dedicated to Spirou, a Belgian/French comic character that originates in the 1930’s but continues in a form today. A dozen or more artists had interpreted the character and it quietly captured me. I loved so many of the pictures.

But I had never heard of Spirou.

A bit of research shows that Spirou sits in the wider European tradition of comic strips and storytelling. I won’t get involved too much in its history, but the first few years are of interest, to me, if only because of the changes and compromises that had to be made to the character, the stories and who his enemy was. First published in late 1930’s Belgium, the strip continued through German Occupation. Spirou has continued and remains, in a form today.

Spirou was originally a bell hop working the lift of a plush hotel. He became embroiled in adventures alongside a journalist side kick. Through the years his character has changed. He is now, also, an investigative journalist. But still, today, he continues to be pictured dressed in the red/purple harking back to his original uniform.

I have no idea if the comic strips remain any good. I have struggled to find any English translations and my only point of reference is the video linked above. And that is crap. My search for translated versions is also tempered by my general reluctance to embrace the art form.

Back in Mr Collin’s classroom and claustrophobic rainy day playtimes, one of my key issues reading comics was that, I never saw the need to use the form as anything other than a vessel for laughs. At home, I was a regular subscriber to Beano and would look forward to Friday evenings to pour through the latest edition cover to cover. But looking back, I can recall few of the characters or strips that I was reading… Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Bashstreet Kids… There must have been more, but they are lost in the annals of time.

Summer holidays were spent in Dorset, where my Grandma would save up editions of Sunday Post’s cartoon section for me. Hours would pass, lost in Oor Wullie and The Broons. It wasn’t until the 1990’s that I realised that the strips were written in dialect/colloquialism. I used to pour over them and try and guess what the characters were saying and what they meant. It was as if I was treating them with the same intrigue and reverence as A Clockwork Orange. 

I don’t know if this made the stories better or worse.

Oor Wullie "hanging" after a night of ultraviolence and Knifey Moloko's down at the Korova Milk Bar.

So, I've never bought into the whole serialised story telling that comic illustration offered. Even as I grew older and my parents subtly tried to encourage me to read (I was quite late, catching the “reading” bug; even today I question whether I have ever really caught it) I would rather pour over football statistics in Match Weekly and Shoot than follow a story.

I’ve a vivid imagination and a visual memory. Perhaps the whole comic “thing” passes me by because I feel cheated at having such a large part of a story laid out and controlled for me. Comic books offer a strict visual interpretation of a character. It makes me lazy, so I’m not inclined to worry about the content. Through the years, I’ve watched friends become lost in graphic novels that stalk the edges of fantasy. Even when I became a semi-avid reader - through fantasy – they left me cold. I couldn’t see any depth. The simple comic screens and friezes made language cursory and blunt. I may be wrong. But that’s how I saw it and still see it today.

But it doesn’t mean I dislike comic strips. I don’t. As I grew older, I realised that they are a perfect tool for satire and humour.

My father always had about 100 copies of Private Eye sitting around the house. As a teenager, I found the majority of the serious and quality information impenetrable. The rag has always delved into detail and the minutiae of stories. The net result was that it often offers views, perspectives and ideas on topics that I had no knowledge of. Match it alongside the small typeface and busy layout I found it near impenetrable. But, the jokey middle section and the comic strips drew me in. I have the most incredibly warm memories of “Taffy” Kinnock’s heroic failures dealing with Herr Thatchler, Von Tebbit and Rudolph Hesseltine in “Battle for Britain” and even greater memories of the follow up strip after 1987 – “Dan Dire Pilot of the Future?” I couldn’t get enough of the Eagle pastiche, setting Kinnock as Dan Dire fighting against The Maggon and Han Solotine.

It was the age of Spitting Image on the telly. Satire changed its game and became quite personal and increasingly challenging. It became incredibly visual. I suppose it was a result of TV having a far more hands on approach to journalism. More channels, more news shows, better technology meant that MPs – even backbenchers – became visible and better known. Like it or not, they became celebrity. Between our MPs and media, they played up to it. And comic strips of the time captured me. Who can forget John Major and his underpants in Steve Bell’s works?

As I have aged, I’ve grown to accept the beauty in the design of comic strips. Helped by some real quality of work churned out by Private Eye but also by illustrators such as Gerald Scarfe. Ihave come to look beyond the literary aspet of comic strips and focus on the “art”. Even looking back at the bland, short comings of dear TinTin, I recognise that the strips are beautifully crafted. Simplistic yet detailed. Created to make the most of the constraints in newspaper printing techniques, many have become iconic.

Which is why I can end up losing myself for a short while in Cadiz looking at images of a Bell Hop and a squirrel that I know nothing about. Imagery that captures a moment of action or emotion with the briefest and minimalist use of colour or line. Images that have an air of timelessness about them, despite the obvious mid-20^th Century airs.

Converse Used To Be Good

Another update and another toilet.

July 14^th 2011. The 100 Club. Oxford Street. London.

I note the above was scrawled on the wall adjacent as I took a leak. It made me smile. On and off, I have lived in Converse for over half my life. I like them so much, I have been known to sleep in them but remain otherwise naked. Used to be good? Nah. They still are!

To understand why I was standing in the Gents at the 100 Club, I need to step back a few years. To a summer day in 2008.

In my last post, I spoke of the cyclical music loops at Topshop that the staff became conditioned to ignore.

I recall a day when I strolled across the shop floor toward some dull but vital meeting with a department manager. As I noted last time, you only really took in the music when it warmed your heart and cockles or spat in the face of all that is musically pure and holy. On this day, my ears pricked up at the sound of an angular bass line setting off at a relentless pace, accompanied by feedback, jarring guitar riffs and an obtuse and challenging chord structure. I couldn’t make out the lyrics but the vocals were delivered at the same break necked speed as the bass. It was all underpinned by a swirling, fairground like organ.

I was smitten. It was utterly magical.

I slowed my walk to make sure I took the whole track in. With no phone on me, I couldn’t Shazam it. Other than realising that it was “greatness” incarnate, I had no idea who or what it was. I felt like Tim Smith (Cardiacs) and JJ Burnell (The Stranglers) had had a car crash and the resulting sound was being broadcast to me.

I knew it was on a loop, so over the following days, I kept returning to the shop floor to hear it again. Over the course of the next week, I made up more and more spurious reasons to eschew the safety and comfort of my ivory tower office and step onto the shop floor into the firing line of the stores demanding staff and pesky customers. All because I was determined to hear this beautiful masterpiece one more time, to maybe get a lyric that I could google.

Despite my best efforts, I never heard it again.

Plan B was to resume my normal working patterns in my office but get a copy of the recent store playlist and work through it in my spare time.

A regular complaint of Topshop from its customers was that they never posted or published the playlists in store making it difficult to ID a song that was played. And I was in the same boat, except I had an advantage of Joe or Joanne Public; I could just go and borrow the various discs from the team responsible for updating/uploading them into the system. So I did.

There were dozens of discs. All with about 20-25 tracks. The team responsible filed them in an unhelpful pile in a drawer. Few had content lists, fewer still had dates or anything that may indicate when they had been issued. What I thought would be a ten minute job seemed to stretch into forever. I was left with the formidable task of sitting through all the discs to explore all the music designed to be ignored and find it.

For over a week, I dedicated a couple of hours each night to the search. My Colliers Wood flat rang out to the sounds of the appalling and anodyne gush that passes as “Alternative”, these days. I’ve said before. I love and hate music in equal measure. At times it was a pretty tough task.

Most tracks were skipped after thirty seconds. They clearly were not what I had heard and they left me cold. Forgettable.

Many tracks that I played through resulted from acts of involuntary masochism. I would sit open mouthed and stunned as the tepid and insipid numbed me to the point of oblivion. Coldplay. Kings of Leon. Foo Fighters. Tragic.

There was some pretty shite stuff being ignored at Topshop in 2008.

But some demanded my total attention. They seemed beautiful. Smitten, I became distracted while I wallowed in aural delight, exploring back catalogues of bands that I had never previously heard. A fair few times, I fell head over heels in love.

After two weeks, I had reviewed each and every disc available. And my song wasn’t included on any of them.

Did I imagine it?

I began to question myself. Had I, created an epic soundtrack in my own mind to take me away from the moment?

It began to convince myself that it was conceivable.

Thinking back to the day I heard it, I was probably on my way to have a conversation with a shoe concession who had lost a pair of shoes sometime in the previous 18 months and wanted someone to look at CCTV images to see who had been near them, or some such nonsense. I would have been walking through the store with leaden shoes, a leaden head and a heavy heart. The meeting was probably offset against a background of dealing with one of my staff who had managed to get another two weeks signed off work by their doctor because they had a slightly sore throat or felt “an ickle bit funny”.

It was entirely possible that my little, fizzy brain had given up on the bollocks that was weighing me down and I had created something that would make me feel momentarily happy… If only I was able to have transcribed what I had imagined; I could have made some money.

Step forwards to a night out in late 2008 or early 2009.

Somewhere in London.

I meet up with my brother, who produces a small CD sized bag and offers me a Birthday or Christmas present. I doubt that it was around either my birthday or Christmas when this happened. My brother and I have a habit of presenting and receiving gifts early or late. Year’s merge into one.

Unsurprisingly, as usual, the bag contained a CD.

Silvery. Thunderer and Excelsior.

My brother enthused – he had heard them on the Gideon Coe show on radio 6 – and kept using the words like, “Cardiacs” and “Sparks” and “Incredible” and “Best Album of the Year” and “Whhhhaaaahhhhhhooooowwwwwwww” all the while grinning like the type of demented cat only Lewis Carroll could imagine. 

I had already latched onto two key words. Sparks and Cardiacs.

These two words were enough to make me need to hear the album. But Alex went on to explain that one of the tracks appeared to have Sparks lyrics being spoken across a solo (still haven’t found that, yet), another detailed the demise of a class of UK diesel locomotive and a third listed off a series of London’s Lost Rivers as a near chant during a fade out.

My brother had clearly thought through his sales pitch well. He sold me three irresistible ideas and concepts. What more could I want from an album?... See notes, below.

But he missed out a few more surprises…

>> Allusions to ghosts and flying saucers above cemeteries.

>> And a muse about the demise of a ship which was crewed entirely by mice, bar the ships cat.

But I think that it still took a couple of days to find the time to give it a listen. I was probably locked in the rota-cokey shift patterns I wrote about last year.

You can guess the rest?

Track two. Devil in the Detail.

The sound of an angular bass line setting off at a relentless pace, accompanied by feedback, jarring guitar riffs and an obtuse and challenging chord structure. I couldn’t make out the lyrics but the vocals were delivered at the same break necked speed as the bass. It was all underpinned by a swirling, fairground like organ.

Sitting in my Colliers Wood living room, I was immediately taken back to that solitary walk across the sales floor at Topshop. Although the album turned out to sound like the inside of my head, I realised that I hadn’t imagined it to make myself feel calm and free of daemons. It was real. Very real. Almost flesh and blood. And it became more beautiful as I listened to it over and over and over.

It’s late 2015 and I still feel warm each time I hear the album.

By the time I got to see Silvery live, for the first time at The 100 Club on July 14^th 2011, I’d found a live bootleg from the Bull & Gate (RIP) and waited at the edge of my seat for the second of three official album releases – Railway Architecture. Back catalogue entirely absorbed, I’d read a million words about them and become lost in their old world videos. I’d had a moment where, back on the shop floor, on the receiving end of an earnest whinge, for something I or someone else had done or hadn’t done… who cares? I’d bitten my tongue to the point of bleeding to stop myself shouting at them:

“Blah Blah Fuckity Blah. Don’t trouble me with your bollocks! I’m listening to Nishikado!”

And that night in 2011, alongside my brother and about another twenty fair souls they were as good and great as I imagined that they would be. Like the best gigs, I was pulled into a vortex where my brain could relax and swirl around and around like something out of The Wizard of Oz leaving me giddy and wound up like a clock-work toy by the end. But – for all my passion for the moment - I sensed that James Orman wasn’t feeling it that night. He seemed disengaged and remote… the rest of the band had to persuade him to play “You Give A Little Love”.

But it mattered not, to me. I was lost. But found.

Now, I’m not going to encourage you to visit Topshop. I doubt they play Silvery anymore.

And I’m not going to say that you should all go out and buy everything that Silvery have ever released. That would be senseless.

But, I will say that, if you don’t go out and buy everything that they have ever released, I consider you an idiot.

For Reference:

Christ On A Bike

The Charge of the Light Brigade

                                      

NOTES

I suppose that the album could include Sarah Nixey making a fake BBC public announcement regarding an imminent nuclear threat to London. I would have to wait until 2015 to have that appear on an album, thanks to Luke Haines.

Echoes From A Shopping Centre

I’m standing at a urinal at Heathrow Airport. Terminal 4.

It’s early June. 6am. I have just been “deplaned” rather than disembarked the plane from Bahrain. My ears are yet to adjust. Sounds are muting, amplifying and echoing at their own pace and own rhythm, no matter how much I fuss with and rattle them.

From a cubicle, I hear a voice singing along to a tune playing over the airport PA. I'd been ignoring it but become aware that it is something ghastly by Michael Jackson. Something from his post “OK” phase and eons away from his “good” phase. A phase that ended in 1982, if I am feeling generous.

The occupant of the toilet cubicle sounds happy. But he is murdering the song. Murdering it slowly. No quick bullet to the temple for this one. This evil, sadistic fucker is killing it by the death of a thousand cuts.

I find it a truly unpleasant thing to hear.

But, it got me thinking. It was the first music I had heard in a public space in months.

This is a difference between life in Saudi Arabia and the UK. Silence in public spaces.

In the UK, music is everywhere. You can’t avoid it. Even when you think you are out of harm’s way, it creeps up on you. TV jingles, advertising, ring tones, computer games… some little bastard on the back seat of the bus playing with his bastard phone. It is always there, replacing the dull throb of the humdrum. And you become so used to it, by and large, your subconscious deploys its own mixing desk and fades it down so low that it may as well not be there. All though you are largely tuned into it, you are simultaneously tuned out; grabbed into the moment, only when you hear something that you either love or hate.

Back in my Topshop days, it could be quite startling and unsettling when the PA system stopped. Not just because it meant that it may be a precursor to a fire alarm and – as an employee – I'd wait to establish whether it was a male or female voice cutting in to politely reassure me that the incident unfolding was being investigated. The gender of voice determined the level of blind panic you were required to deploy (see notes below). It wasn't that. Without music, the store just lost something.

Topshop was a barn, so everything echoed. Music filled the void. Without music, it became cold. Time stood still. It became utterly dispiriting. Lonely. Somehow – I have no idea why – it seemed to die. 

But, to counter that, and to hark back to a previous point, the staff simply ignored the cyclical music soundtrack that was pumped out hour after hour, day after day and week after week to fill the gap. No one praised it. When it was mentioned, it was always criticism. Staff pushed to breaking point by music that they didn't like. But mostly, it was ignored and unnoticed by all and sundry. I lost count of the times, while talking to a colleague, I would refer to a track I had heard on the shop floor that I liked - a track that had somehow passed the Bruno Brookes taste test (see notes) to be included on the playlist – only to have them stare at me as if I were an imbecile. 

There was usually a blank look in their eyes:

“Music?"

"Music played on the shop floor. Is there?" 

"What song? Who?" 

“No Pussy Blues?" 

“No Pussy Blues” was the very first song I heard being played while I walked across the shop floor as a Topshop employee. Thinking back to a couple of horrific, cringe worthy conversations in pubs that stepped right to the sheer cliff face of personal humiliation, perhaps it was prophetic. I mean, I was about 100 years older than most of "the young and the beautiful" that I was working with. 

But, hell, the track still gets to me every time. Magic!

But, back on topic.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of music being so ubiquitous and unrelenting. 

I love music. But, by default, I hate music in equal measure. I do not understand people choosing to use it as background noise. Music is there to be heard. As an experience, it should be immersive. You should swim in it and you should be prepared to drown in it. 

The best music is life itself.

So I have always been confused by and often plain offended by music being used in the background. 

But I wasn’t ready for Saudi and it's silence.

Picture a shopping centre where the only sounds are the low throb of air con and distant traffic, the sound of feet walking on tiled floors, the click click of metal hangers on metal display arms, the muted sounds of a thousand disassociated conversations endlessly echoing around a soulless glass and concrete space.

Cold. Emotionally dead.

But it steps beyond the shared space, over into the thresholds of the individual stores. 

No music. No muzak.

Not even Richard Clayderman being piped in. "Live from hell".

This is how I find Mall of Dhahran, Venicia Mall and Al Rashid Mall. Musically silent.

I’m going to pause. I typed “Al Rashid Mall” into Google to check my spelling and immediately linked to the following YouTube clip. Take a look… it is NOT a fair representation of the real experience. The only tiny temper that you are likely to hear in there is from an irate child/husband being denied some sweets.

I spoke with an Arab colleague about it the other day. He agreed. But he couldn’t explain the logic or reason why music is not played. There are radio stations out here. Western, Arab and Indian music is not difficult to find. It’s intrudes in advertising and jingles as much as in the west, so it isn’t music per se. Music may not be encouraged but it is not outlawed. My colleague highlighted that it is probably driven by the proximity of mosques and prayer spaces in the shopping centres… which I understand, but I am surprised that music isn’t piped and faded for prayer times. The technology is there. But – hey - who am I and what do I know?

But I cannot help being troubled. A year on, I still find it slightly unnerving. shopping centres feel as if they are closed. I walk round feeling as if I've been locked in or am trespassing. Almost as if I will be approached imminently and escorted to the exit for to be fed some wise words by a Security Guard before being thrown on my arse into the street.

Restaurants are the same.

Think what it is like at a chain restaurant. Take away the music and all you are left with are echoes, the sound of extractor fans, cooking, scraping cutlery and furniture and mastication. Everyone talking in whispers to avoid being overheard three tables away. 

There is a void.

A void of mild discomfort.

Many restaurants get around the issue by turning the volume up on the TV. So you eat with the sound track to the news in Arabic, or to round the clock sports coverage or – as in my case, in a Thai restaurant – a documentary about abattoirs. I don’t watch TV anymore (see notes, below), so I find this even more distracting, intrusive and unnecessary than loud music.

TGI Friday can be found all across the Kingdom. I’m not a fan of their food. It’s frozen. It is heated, rather than cooked. It has nothing vibrant or fresh associated with it to offer. It is as plastic and fake as the presentation.

But, in the UK, I get that it offers something beyond a McDonalds meal deal. 

Like it or loathe it, it is a destination based on the atmosphere that it chooses to create. It aims to be the party of all parties. Whatever the day or time it may be, it wants you to buy into the idea that it is the night before the biggest weekend of your life.

OK. I’ve started something… I guess I ought to finish.

In Saudi, the weekend runs Friday through Saturday, so the chain should really be renamed TGI Thursday.

And realistically, I am not sure that they should keep the “G” in the name, given the religious connotation. It doesn’t mean “Golly” because that could be deemed racist. If it means “Gosh”, then that is because of the stupid, vacuous, wet morals of Christians choosing to play fast and loose with the word “God” to get around the whole, apparent, blasphemy issue.

The “G” stands for “God”. We all know it. No good hiding. No good pretending. Move on. (See Notes)

Now, I am not suggesting they replace the “G” with an “A”. Ignoring the fact that it would be commercial suicide, it would just be silly. Perhaps they should go with an “F”, instead. After all, it was one of Chris Evans’ two ideas and it worked for him in the UK; it’s wild and rebellious streak really put punk to shame.

OK. Back on track.

What TGI Friday in the UK does to create an atmosphere, is pump up the volume. For all the dark lighting, all the big personalities among the waiting staff, it is reliant on the musical backdrop to set the scene of unparalleled fun.

Back off track. 

In KSA, TGI Friday have also done away with employing staff who are wannabe actors or natural extroverts. TGI, over here, is staffed by average blokes taking orders, delivering food, hanging around, waiting for you to finish to claim a wage at the end of the day. In silence.

TGI provides an eye wateringly loud and bass driven soundtrack to your night out. It gives you all the latest homogenised, viciously calculated and "sales demographic" driven pop hits alongside hateful, classic party anthems that you could wish for. In my case, it gives me 100% more of this type of music than I could ever actually wish for. And so it goes. You have to shout to be heard like you are at a nightclub. Conversation is retarded. You eat the overpriced food and think about what you will do when you've been set free.

It’s fun. Honest. I love it. 

At home and in KSA. It's my favourite.

So, in Saudi, I have reached a point where going out I wouldn't care if I heard “Earth Song” or some other abomination that Wacko left us as a parting shot to the World. A point where I wish for almost anything to fill the void.

It’s mid September. London.

I’ve, again, been “deplaned” by Gulf Air. Again, I am in the toilets.

Washing my hands, I note the music playing. It’s something ghastly by Culture Club. Something released after their “Not the best” phase. It’s sweet and sugary. My teeth are immediately set on edge.

I am immediately brought back down to earth with a crash. And it makes me think: "Heathrow Airport really knows how to test me".

NOTES

Topshop Fire Alarms - A female voice meant that it was probable that it was a false alarm or drill. A male voice meant that the incident was urgent, ominous and very real. With a male voice, your life expectancy had just been shortened and it was now every man, woman and child for themselves. Even the mice would head for the exits. The chaos, panic, paranoia and senseless drama it caused was only surpassed at opening time on Boxing Day.

Bruno Brookes - Sorry to ruin any dreams you may hold that a bunch of fashionista in Shoreditch dream up what is played in Topshop and Topman stores. It is a bunch of accountant types in an office in Kingston working for former Radio One DJ and alleged domestic abuser, Bruno Brookes. I don’t think he has ever been cool or "on trend". Note; even when he played an uncensored version of “Killing in the Name Of” with it's 17 "fucks" on prime time radio, it was an accident.

Television - About three years ago, my TV broke. I decided not to replace it, as its primary use was as background noise. I used to waste days channel surfing without knowingly watching anything. I have a TV in my apartment in Saudi. I’ve been here over twelve months and am yet to switch it on. Recently, I got a message from a colleague telling me that one of the Saudi channels was showing a decent film that I should make an effort to watch. Relenting, I decided to watch it… After five minutes, I could neither find the remote control nor figure out how to switch the TV or cable box on. I read it as an omen. I don’t watch TV.

The "G" Word - When I worked at Topshop, there was a period where the staff T-shirt had a front print reading “OMG Topshop” in bright yellow print on black. The design was the winner of an in house competition among the staff who were going to have to wear it. There was a fuss in the management team because one staff member (maybe more) refused to wear said shirt based on his/her faith. Many of my colleagues were annoyed and vocally stated that they should just “get on with it” because it was just a generic phrase that everyone uses. The staff concerned considered it inappropriate and a betrayal of their beliefs. Now, I do not share said beliefs and the slogan didn't impact me at all, but I had sympathy for them. If you believe in something to the core, you should never compromise. I was on their side. It got sorted out, they were allowed to wear a plain tee instead, from memory. Obvious. Common sense.

What amazed me about the situation, though, was that after the resolution was reached, we were told that the “G” in question did not and never did to refer to or mean “God” but “Gosh”. And it struck me that senior management appeared were trying to claim some ridiculous moral high ground. It seemed that they were trying to convince me that they were showing benevolence to the foolish rather than just accepting that they hadn't considered that some people get touchy about glib blasphemy (actual or not). As always, I just let the arrogance wash over me... Worse still, within the management team, even after the compromise was reached, the conversations/gossip/bullshitting/general backstabbing/political positioning went on for an eternity and I recall one person – remaining nameless to protect the fucking stupid – who would correct you if you dared to refer to the word “God”. And it left me stunned. Did she really believe the utter and total bollocks that Topshop fed her? Worryingly, I think that she did.

Finally

I'm posting this on 21st October, Lux Interior's birthday... Had he lived, he would have been 69 years old today.

So let yourself be immersed. Feel free to drown.

RIP Lux. Stay Sick.

Coppice - 30th September 2011

INSTAGRAM

As a kid, I was once in the grounds of Grimsdyke on the edge of Harrow. Myself and two friends had been taken there as a treat. I guess we were seven or eight. Running wild. Exploring.

We had found a tree that had partially fallen and dared each other to climb the remains. It seemed easy. All long straight bows and thick branches. I was the least nimble of the three and struggled as my friends reached higher and higher, branches bending under their weight. But they grew bored, navigated back around me and returned to terra firma.

But I remained rigid, stuck and unmoving. Not very far from the ground, but stuck still and petrified. I couldn’t reach higher but I couldn’t retrace my steps. I didn’t dare just jump and let gravity do its stuff. I couldn’t move.

With resignation and a good degree of embarrassment, I accepted the help of my friends' mother who eventually stumbled across me. She reached up, prised me off the branch where I was stricken and lifted me back to safety.

I was ripped to shreds by my peers. Even their mother joined in. I was mortified.

So, since then, I’d been wary of trees. I left them to the birds and the leaves.

Step forward to the more recent past.

September 30. 2011.

Autumn hadn’t even threatened. Summer seemed to be endless when I found myself off work and at a loose end. I’d already been up and out, early, trying to capture a few autumnal, misty shots near Tring in Hertfordshire.

Tring.

But the weather was incredible. Clear. Bright. Warm. It was no day to waste staring out of a South Harrow living room.

Mad Bess Woods in Ruislip called.

I walked and walked in the shade of the still green leaved trees. I watched the dappling light play and pattern on the woodland floor but I was drawn to the canopy, high above me. A dozen shades of green and yellow on a pale blue backdrop. The trunks of the coppiced trees reached, stretched and crawled skyward toward the light. I was smitten.

I snapped away. Shot after shot. But nothing was quite working.

Until I sensed a tree calling me. It could hear it and feel it whispering…

“Climb me. Climb me. Climb me.”

Which is when I started to recall the incident at Grimsdyke so many years ago.

But the tree was insistent. So I listened to its croaky tree voice, accepted the dare and gave the tree a climb.

I felt alone. On a weekday afternoon, you can go an age in Ruislip Woods without seeing another soul. And so it was on that late, late September afternoon four years ago. I was alone but felt conspicuous, as I crawled to a suitable vantage point.

And from my vantage point a few feet above the ground, wedged and locked in the old coppicing cuts of a hornbeam or an oak (apologies, I am no expert), I captured the shot of the canopy that I had been searching for.

For a better resolution, follow the Flickr link, below:

Coppice - FLICKR Gallery

The tree reaching upward seems to form a tunnel guiding you/your eye to the light. Layers of coloured leaves high above appear kaleidoscopic. Other worldly. All the main, dark trunks in the image seem separate yet are all from the same tree, cut and coppiced many years ago.

I stayed in the tree for a while. In part, because I was captured by the moment. The movement of shape and colour above me. But, also, because I was revelling in breaking my idiotic and needless fear of tree climbing and wallowing in my defeat of a stupid childhood demon. But, I also remained tree bound because, in all honesty - after all these years -, I still find it far easier to scale a tree than climb back down.

I suppose that makes me a Treecreeper. Not a Nuthatch.

A Short Walk to Nowhere

There is small, open gate in the fence along the road from Dammam Airport to Al Qatif. You leave the car there, next to a mobile telephone mast.

You are below sea level at this point. It’s marginal, but you are just below. It is a natural basin at the edge of the desert. Which explains why water gathers there in a lagoon. A lagoon surrounded by reed beds that, undisturbed, grow in excess of nine feet tall.

It is barely past dawn and the start of a short walk to nowhere.

Soon after I arrived in Saudi, a friend posted a comment about a picture I posted of the Dammam Riyadh highway suggesting that it lacked the romance of Lawrence of Arabia. He was right. It did and where I live, it does. The mental image of the desert is of vast rolling peaks and valleys of golden sand. Of light and shadow. These exist. There are thousands of square miles of them. Vivid reds and yellows, stretching toward and beyond the horizon toward forever. Most are to the south of Arabia in the Empty Quarter. The south of Saudi and the edges of UAE, Oman and Yemen. But out in the Eastern Province, it isn’t really so. Its pancake flat and a dull yellow brown. Worse still, it is regularly littered with building rubble, scrap metal, food waste and plastic bags. One day, I swear, I will find a faded Sellanby bag from South Harrow which I will save and keep. Treasure.

Sellanby was a 2nd hand record store in Harrow.
It's plastic bags were legendarily strong and long lasting. When it closed, 1,000+ students had to swallow their pride and buy proper bags to carry there stuff. It was a sad day. 

Despite the above, I still hold a romantic notion that the desert will offer me drama; offer me the long shadows of dunes at dusk and dawn. Failing that, it’ll offer me the unexpected. Which is what led to me heading out close to Dammam airport for a walk on an early morning in early July. I’d read about a place on a great Saudi Birdwatching site called, unsurprisingly, “Birds of Saudi Arabia”. Out of the way, remote and isolated. Heaven.

Birds of Saudi Arabia Website - see note below

It starts in low drifts of sand with grasses and roots holding it together. Occasional exposed stretches of sand show tell-tale signs of lizards. Twists in the sand showing the twists of their bodies and tails. Fragile and small paw prints – hand prints – showing the direction of travel.

The paw prints bring relief. You would rather be walking in knee deep grass risking a casual encounter with a lizard than a snake. I’ve left my antivenom at home. Come to think about it, I don’t have any antivenom.

Francis, my ever intrepid if vaguely unwilling companion, stops to draw my attention to the tracks. We argue for a while about whether they are snake or lizard tracks. I think that he is trying to convince me that they are snakes, so that I will relent, give up and go home back to bed. He is clearly knackered and his heart isn’t in it. But I remain steadfast and bullish.

Walk on.

After five minutes you are up close to the reeds; a formidable, verdant barrier in a barren waste. Tall, lush and thick. You cannot see through the barrier but can tell that the lagoon is behind them, but only because of the myriad, non-plussed alarm calls of one hundred invisible birds rising around you.

Heading north you look and fail to find a gap in the reeds bar one that is waterlogged and unpassable to idiots with unsuitable footwear. Sure, Peter O’Toole would flounce off through the gap, carrying his supplies and camels on his shoulders.

But I am not Peter O’Toole. I am an idiot.

Walk on.

4x4 tracks skirt the edge. The sand is flattened down to concrete. You follow, as it is easy on the feet, and begin to disturb Egyptian Nightjar. One. Two. Four. Sixteen. The numbers are close to becoming exponential. They are sitting, invisible at the side of the track until they rise in silence on long wings that betray their relative small size and silently glide to safety. They start ten meters away from you. They are happy when they reach twenty five, where they settle down again and, static, blend back into the dusty grey brown soil and heat haze. In time you grow use to them and you start to pick their shapes out and focus on their wide, watching eyes. Watching them, watching you. You walk, guessing how many steps it will be before they are again spooked into rising above you to twist and turn their way to safety.

The car tracks break away from the reed beds.

Stretching to the horizon, two tyre width strips lead the way. You follow and become increasingly aware of the damp presence of water. The soil surface is dried and caked. Salt crystals have formed at the surface. The top soil cracks and crunches under foot exposing a dark brown undersoil that is sponge like. Where you pick the wrong place, the top soil sinks to an ankle depth. If you stand still, you seem to sink further. If you hurry through, you trip yourself up. It is abundantly clear that you you’re walking on a dried lake bed that appears to have no boundary or border.

So you choose the car tracks. Progress improves as you follow the crushed soil lines. You walk, single file in near pigeon steps onward toward the horizon where you see sand dunes, proper sand dunes waiting. Light and shadow. White and gold.

You walk for fifteen minutes in a straight line and reach the first of the dunes. Unimpressive. You feel cheated at dunes that would look half-hearted in parts of north Norfolk. Even in a low breeze you can see the shifting sands but the presence of thick grasses testify that this is not the dynamic moving dunes of your dreams. But that is where you stop.

The low horizon has already caught you out. What you thought were the start of a range of dunes is merely a low hedge like barrier to another endless and barren salt crusted plain. It seems to stretch for miles, again with the faint promise of sand dunes on the far side. This time, there are no car tracks to aid your trekking.

You are forced into a choice. Onward or bust.

Way behind you, Francis is walking in the opposite direction. Toward his car where he has shade from the fast rising sun, air con, Saudi Aramco Studio 1’s classic rock on the radio and a place to sleep.

Decisions have been made. 

Lawrence of Arabia will have to wait for another day.

Notes

As a rule, when travelling, I tend to look for local ornithology sites. Yes, I am interested in bird life, but generally the sites are great starting points to identify areas to get out and about exploring, often off the beaten track. The Birds of Saudi Arabia website offers not only great tips on locations to watch birds but also posts some great photos that capture nature/natural life in the region. I'd recommend a look.