Go South Young Man

Hullo now from Oxford. I've now returned from a week of bliss in Tromsø. Aside from (although maybe because of) the frighteningly expensive cost of eating and drinking there, I had a great time. The reason for being there was to attend the ACTIF conference and give a paper on a flood-forecasting system that my lovely friend Emma had written. Due to the same reasons that she couldn't present the paper that she had written for the conference I went to in Australia, again I was forced out of my comfortable life in Oxford but this time instead of it being the searing heat of Australia I was driven north to the frozen wastes of the Arctic.

Life is hard sometimes.

The ACTIF conference was largely a academic/bureaucratic affair on the uncertainty in flood-forecasting (think our inability to predict where and how much rain will fall with much confidence, for example) with limited scope for applied case studies, which was where I came in. The obvious question that comes up a lot is 'why on earth was it is in Tromsø?. By the way, it is not 'Tromso' but 'Tromsø' when you pronounce Tromsø you need to turn the ø into a quick 'er' sound, and not an 'o'. For a start Tromsø is a lot less frozen than you think it is. In fact, its coldest recorded temperature (-18C) is warmer than that recorded at Benson (-20C), which is about a mile from where I work. But the principal reason that it was held in Tromsø was that this is where one of the organisers lives. I can't say I was that upset about it.

Tromsø is quite simply magnificent. Hell, here's a picture. It's the view from the room that I spent five nights in:

I miss this view.

A lot.

The country pulled together people from about 25 countries, including the UK, NZ, the USA, Columbia, Oz, Denmark, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Belarus, Iran, Rumania, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Slovenia, Ukraine, Russia, China, Italy, Spain... There were only about 100 delegates, so from many countries there was only one delegate. This made for a whole lot of meeting and greeting. The beautiful thing about this was that almost everybody was up for it. As we all nursed and bemoaned and laughed at our £5 'pints' (pints a way to generous a word for the 400mL glasses I was served) the ice, as it were, was broken. I knew a couple of people, darren and Paul, from work, and there were two Belgian girls, Severien and Siegi, that I had never met but have dealt with a lot as they are clients of my companies. Then there was Albrecht, the Dutchman who organised the last ACTIF conference (see here for my coments on that one - where the hell does a year go?), and he had a colleague Micha, and with that we had the bones of a drinking posse. On the Sunday night we managed to add Brummie Tim and Jan, a colleague of the Belgians.

Come the brewery tour that wasn't (a long and dull story - essentially the £40 that we each paid only covered entry to the brewery, a meal and a half glass of wine that Darren, using his authority as conference organiser and indignation at being ripped off, managed to turn into a 'pint' of beer), and the realisation that some of had unwittingly eaten seal and/or whale as part of the meal (yes, that is a legitimate part of the diet up in those parts), those of us left started wandering the streets of Tromsø in search of a pint that cost less than £40 and didn't come with a side of marine mammal. By this stage we had picked up the Dutch Maaike, the lovely and engaging Anna from Sweden, and the ever-so-quiet but very pleasant Markus from Finland, as well as 'three missed planes' Dave from the UK Environment Agency.

It's hard to put into words, but the vibe in the group was really nice. There were no knob-ends of people, no-one dominated the conversation, and we all seemed to become good friends, despite having met in quite odd circumstances. If I could bottle the vibe and live off it I would. About the way I can think of describing it that it is like crawling into bed and listening to the rain on the roof and feeling all snug. And that probably sounds naff, but that's how it feels. The following night we added a trio of Italians, and another dutchman and all talked about nothing and nursed pints in Skalvern, a pub that had seemed to become my local (I went there three times in five nights). the group photo is below (the names are for my benefit so I don't forget).

Cinzia, 'three missed planes' Dave, Anna, Markus, Moi, Brummie Tim (but he's behind the pole and you can't see him), Darren, Albrecht, Micha, Severien, Jan, Luc and Enrica. Siegi, who is expecting had long since offed to bed. To the right (and out of shot) is a bunch of loud-singing-glass breaking Norweigans who seemed to being singing an Arctic version of Bliss, the New Zealand drinking song. Ja-ja-ja-ja-jah-ja. Forget about the last one, get yourself another. So long as you have the deed to your house and a promise of your firstborn when you attempt to buy a round, that is.

By the time I managed to get round to presenting my paper the following day, and, with the belief that even though she hadn't got my desperate email for prayer that Jane would still have prayed in hindsight, it went really well. It was not really my goal but I seemed to make my audience laugh several times (try to remember, Richard, that this is a academic conference and not new-faces in Tromsø comedy scene) and I was complemented on my paper by several random people. Nice. And with that, a first multinational contingent made a dash for Tromsø airport (a surprising amount of flights - about a dozen 737s each day - come in to Tromsø each day, and most of them are full, which isn't bad for a city of 60,000). This time the group was comprised of myself, the two Italians girls, a Chinese man living in Holland, a Columbian living in Spain, and (you can't make this stuff up) an Ethiopian living in Norway. This group was a brilliant way to end the conference. We all sat at the airport and laughed some more.

By the time we landed at Oslo, it was down to just Cinzia, Enrica and myself, as we were all staying in Oslo that night. Despite it being 10.30pm, the three of us wandered the streets of Oslo to find food (no Scandanavian Airlines - budget or traditional - serve food for free to the Economy classes). This required dodging all the prostitutes that were on every street corner and offering a variety of goods and services to ageing Norwegian men. This just seemed desparately sad. Almost all of them were African women and it didn't take much to wonder at the pimps who no doubt ran them and the journey they must have taken to get to Oslo. With one last 'pint' I escorted the girls to their hotel (what a gentleman) and then ran the gauntlet back to mine.

Tromsø: what a fantastic place. Beautiful, but like any great place it is the people that make it so. Thanks to everybody who made it so, be they Belgian, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Italian... or be they Jim, Matt, Tom, Jon or Jane who prayed for me, or a Canadian-Czech guy in the blogosphere who encouraged me. Life had been hard before I left. I'm not saying it isn't anymore, but I needed to have an experience like this.

Did I see the Northern Lights? Did I Bollocks.

Go North Young Man

Goddag from Tromsø. That would be in Norway. At the top part. NORTH of the Arctic circle. I am here for a conference; I am speaking on Wednesday. I learnt the other day that the definition of the Arctic Circle is that it is the line of latitude above which there is at least one day that the sun never dips below the horizon, i.e, the line of latitude that marks the midnight sun. It also marks the point of the all day darkness in winter, for the pessimists in you.

Theoretically it is also a place where you can see the Northern lights. That would also require a little less cloud in the sky...

It's a beautiful place - there will be photo's to come later in the week when I get home - and a weird mix of suburbia and barren wilderness. Out my window at the Rica Ishavshotel I can see the sound, the bridge, snow capped mountains with waterfalls and the amazing Tromsdalen Church, or Arctic Cathedral.

Before the business side of things here started, I spent Saturday walking round the island alone, ok, not alone but with a stuffed cow (long story), and asking God a few things. I think I found a few of the questions I need to start exploring (that will make sense to Matt, Jim, Patrick, Tom and pretty much no one else till I write more), which was useful.

Tonight (fifteen minutes from now), I am off to Macks, the world's northern most brewery. Although being the northernmost anything here is a little bit taken for granted. I am sure the world's most northernmost stuffed cow is in my room. And in actual fact, there is a brewery in Murmansk, Russia, that is further north.

More to come when I return from the brewery. At NOK59, or £5 a pint, it's very likely I won't be under the influence. This would be an expensive place to get drunk...

An Epistle to the Oxfordites

The following is from a friend of mine. It is a very late letter from last Christmas. Due to his request for anonymity/paranoia that the feds will get him I have removed any reference to him. He shall hence be known as Mr K.

Every Christmas letter should be written in this style.

4/1/05

Mr B.
You jammy bastard. I do not know how you managed to time it, but your card made its way to me on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, damn your britches and damn your duck pond! I of course look the complete prat as I never sent you one. Until now. And it doesn’t support a charity but I am a complete prick and stand to inherit a small share of a small forest so I am as keen as an Asian in a karaoke bar and insist that as much paper be wasted as soon as possible, as fast as possible, where ever possible.

I regret to inform you that my loot was neither large, nor shiny nor made in Japan this Christmas past. Some of it did fold, but there were far less zeros than there should have been. In fact the loot this year was rather light, I trust the same cannot be said for you. However I am more than happy to report that the beer was cold and the food plentiful. The belt has been let out more than one notch and this occurred well before 4:30pm on Christmas Day. I am delighted to inform you, sir, that in my new position as a CLERK I was rather spoilt as far as wine, beer, food and lunching went. In fact I have had three rather pleasant and relaxed business lunches and one dinner in the past four weeks in some of the best eateries that CITY 1 and CITY 2 have to offer. All completely over rated and utter wank fests but there you are. Shipping companies really seem to like us. Don’t know why.

Do not hurry home for summer Christmas’ sir as they are wet and windy and not the ones that make up the memories of your youth. If one is going to be cool and wet at Christmas, one may as well stay in England. Trust that you had a white Christmas. Ours was verging on grey.

New Year’s was a complete write off. We won’t even go there. Nor was there a day at the beach with cricket, as the weather has stayed consistently wet and I hate getting sand out of various wrinkles and crevices that seem to creep up on you when your back is turned or as you pluck hair out of your nose.

I trust that your mooching paid dividends especially as far as snogging went and that you took suitable precautions if you weren’t being too fussy. I hope that you haven’t caught anything too new nor too exciting. Trust that the slam poet in Prague was … well… slamming and the beer flowed freely and without much fuss. Trust that you have seen ‘Team America. World Police’ because it is damned hilarious and worth a watch after a beer or two… with a port chaser.

The force is with us… always.

Happy Freakin New Year. (Where’s my jet pack!!?)

Mr K.

PS Guess who got a ‘shot’ chess set for Christmas? (Courtesy of Mr and Mrs X). I await a chance to match drunken wits against you sir upon such time that fortune favours us both and smothers us in the ample bosom of favourable timing.

Malaria

For the sake of completion and humility I am going to keep this post up, but I've decided I don't hold the opinion below all that tightly. I'm also willing to accept that I might be wrong and that Jim (read the comment below) is more likely to be more informed.

Flakey? Moi? Yup.

Go to the Wikipedia entry on DDT. When you get there read the section on the environmental effects of the pesticide. In particular, read the piece on the effects on humans. Surprising, huh? Then go and read the section on the effect that DDT has on malaria.

So DDT might kill a few fish, but think about the number of human lives it would save.

Battle Scars

On the road that I drive down to get access to my house, one of these is often parked. Apparently it is 1.94m wide, which is an arse in the narrow streets where I live. Last night it was illegally parked and came close to preventing access to my street.

I feel an almost irresistable urge to kick it whenever I see it. Perhaps if I do the owners will appreciate it because it will look like they have actually taken the car off road once in its life. And do you think that when Toyota named this beast Amazon they had any sense of irony?

High Fidelity 2

Ok, so we made the tape. I broke some of the rules. There are two by The Go! Team (but we knew I would do that, didn't we?) and two in the middle by Taylor Mali.

The complete track listing is:
Ladyflash - The Go! Team
Welcome Home - Dave Dobbyn
Good People - Jack Johnson
Dry the Rain - The Beta Band
Call Me Names - The Specials
Superstylin' - Groove Armada
All the Way to Reno - REM
Amen Omen - Ben Harper
The Impotence of Proofreading - Taylor Mali
Playing Scrabble With Eddie - Taylor Mali
Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
I Believe - Stevie Wonder
Lost in the Plot - The Dears
Evil - Interpol
Everyone's a VIP to Someone - The Go! Team
Redemption Song - Bob Marley

I figure it's a reasonable slant on what I'm about. Had to leave out the eleven minute live version of Sultans if Swing, Danny Solis' One Match Fire, Coldplay's What If, Tears for Fears' and Groove Amarda's Pharoahs and a whole lotta Eels 'cos to really appreciate them you have to listen to the whole album.

And there is a nice comedic spoken word break in the middle, which I suspect will annoy more than amuse....

High Fidelity

My friend Grace has asked me to make her a mix tape. As soon as she suggested it I thought of the movie (ok, and book) High Fidelity, where record shop owner Rob has to assemble a mix tape for his then girlfriend:

To me, making a tape is like writing a letter-- there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention...

I like music. I am almost always with it, when I work I indulge, and quite frankly, I almost always use it in the definition that I create for myself. Right now I'm listening to Pop Art by the Pet Shop Boys (they write the best pop music and Pop Art has great minimalist album art) and exulting in the news that Jack Johnson is coming to the UK in March. I am hypocritically intolerant of overly manufactured music, submerge myself in fine lyrics and can air-guitar every note of Dire Straits live album Alchemy. I like a lot of my collection, but are willing to accept that there are too many greatest hits (the Stone Roses, Bob Dylan, the Jam, Bob Marley and Neil Diamond spring to mind) in my collection, especially where those collections are the only body of work by those artists, and there are a few too many lemons (TWO albums by the Corrs, but then they do look good, and Orbital's The Altogether, which I could not get into despite loving Illuminate, which I heard in a CD shop in Auckland in 2000). There are two hundred plus albums in there and I have to get fourteen songs down. This is a lot of pressure here. It's like a little window on my soul. I gotta be true to myself but I've also got to make a balanced tape that she will actually want to listen to. Man, I hope she likes this...

I'm thinking about that opening corker, and I'm thinking The Go! Team's Panther Dash. I'm also wondering if there is some room for some of Taylor Mali's poetry, who incidentially is coming to Oxford next month just to compere a Hammer and Tongue slam. How sweet is that? then I'm thinking some Frausdots and the Beta Band's Dry the Rain. But the rest of it, blimey, that is going to take some thinking...

Usefully the web is crawling with stuff about this process and there are some instructions on making a mix tape here.

You think you know who you are. You have no idea.

Tonight I took my hat and scarf for their first winter outing. When the woollen coat comes out we know we're in trouble.

The reason for the outing was it was cold out and I wanted to go see the movie Crash at the Ultimate Picture Palace. The last movie I went to was Downfall (grim, but Bruno Ganz was astonishing as Hitler) and that was in March. I'm kind of avoiding talking about Crash because it is a movie that has hit me hard. Maybe it is because I am a white middle class man and what happens in this movie is so beyond what I experience that this movie is so powerful.

The movie is an exploration of the interactions between the Black, White, Hispanic, Middle Eastern and Asian cultures in Los Angeles and the prejudices that inevitably arise. There are moments in the film that made me sit bolt upright and there were moments in the film when tears were a mere blink away. The movie pieces together five concurrent stories and as these five stories move in and out of each other there is the odd convenient coincidence.

Damn, I think I'm sounding like a movie reviewer.

So I'm going to stop that and try to explain just what it has done to my head. It has made me acutely aware of some of my prejudices. This is not to say that I should put myself over the rack because of this (the movie points this out) but also it endeavours to explain the origins of some of those, as well (for me) revealing some of the origins of the fears and prejudices that exist within the other cultures that the film explores.

Amidst all the corruption, depravity, despair and hopelessness of the characters, from the fall of the beat cop, the powerlessness of the senior cop and the prejudice of the DA's wife, there is also the possibility for a character to experience reformation. God (with a capital G), may there exist such hope and such openess in real people.

This film has not left me with a feeling that the world will heal itself, but instead it shows that within the lowest parts of the human experience there remains a hope that humanity has the capacity to prevail. But it is not so naive to state that all people will rise to the moment, and that we are all fallible and that sometimes there are tragic mistakes.

Spammers

Matt has pointed me in the direction of a new feature on blogger that requires anybody placing a comment to undergo a word verification test. The font the word appears in can be a bit unreadable. If that happens, just persevere and find one you can read...

Three Down

Hey Patrick,
Happy Birthday! Here's to an excellent year.

Cheers,
Richard

(That's three down in the list of to-do's. Just got to wax the Malaysians and update the sidebar. I've eaten and said au revoir to Steve and Flick but didn't feel the need to do that on-line. However I am not sure I am done shooting comments spammers.)

Comments Spam

I post, I get spam in my comments. Often it takes about thirty seconds. Please make it stop. I don't want to prevent anonymous comments.

Why must people persist in ruining good things by trying to make a buck by pointing me in the directions of their ceiling fan website (I honestly got one from them) or candy?

"On the Candidates' Blogs, Writing Right and Wrong
As a former Catholic schoolboy from the Bronx, surely Fernando Ferrer knows that falsehoods can trip you up.
I have been searching for a good blog. I think yours is really nice and I am boing to bookmark it.

See my candy corporate gift store. It has lots of candy corporate gift related items. "

Piss off you bastards and leave me alone.

Under the Weather

Last Thursday I went to the Holywell Music Rooms, a venue I was last at to see the Hammer and Tongue Oxford Literary Festival poetry slam in April, to see the Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN) lecture on denial with respect to climate change. The speakers were Georges Marshall of COIN and Monbiot of, well, George Monbiot. They began the evening with introducing the fact that climate change is happening and that despite all the evidence and despite all the associated bad shit, we, as a species, are doing nothing about it. That is to say we are sleepwalking towards disaster. The question was therefore, why are we doing nothing about it? Having just read Michael Crichton's State of Fear, I did wonder about the somewhat bigger question, but I'm prepared to let that go. I'm also willing to accept that one shouldn't get the basis for science from a Michael Crichton novel. But... I'm also quite keen to hear the converse argument whether that be denial that it is happening, or a less dramatic doomsday scenario. Which is NOT to say that I am living in denial, I just want to have a more informed view.

The Georges spoke to a packed audience and I got the feeling that they knew they were on home territory, which without being too stereotypical, was largely comprised of Oxford Guardian readers; of which I am one. However Monbiot riled me up on several occasions. He started by linking global warming with the Judeao-Christian myth. He did it as follows: J-C is a myth that assumes a progression (the coming/second-coming of the Messiah) as opposed the circular nature of Hinduism, Buddhism and Animist religions (I noted that he left Islam out of the progressive religions), the progression is associated with growth, which is development, which leads to increasing consumption of resources, which leads to increased discharge of CO2, which finally gives us global warming. I have just two issues here. Firstly, I think he is being disingenious here (it's easy and popular to blame the Christians) by simplying the J-C myth to that (there's a little more to it than that), and secondly I seem to recall communism (a somewhat athiest ideology) being not that helpful towards the environment. If you're talking about tangible ecological disasters (which is NOT to deny the tangibility of climate change), then the biggest one would be the wreck that is the Aral Sea, and there are relatively significant ones like Chernobyl, and those would be where? But this is a little off the point, but I would like to stress that are far as I call tell the J-C myth is not the same as capitalism.

Monbiot succeeded in riling me a second time when he dismissed nuclear power as a viable source of energy. I don't have a problem with nuclear power. I have a problem with nuclear weapons, but they are not the same thing. But for the sake of brevity I'm willing to let this one go. I don't think we should dismiss glow in the dark energy out of hand. It kills less people than car accidents, it's just when it does go wrong, it's really bad. Like a jumbo jet, I guess. Effectively it comes down to risk and how we respond to it.

Where the Georges did succeed was in provoking a few questions:

• Is it necessarily a bad thing if oil becomes so expensive that air travel becomes the domain of the rich? Effectively it is already, it's just that we don't see ourselves with our credit card debts as rich.
• Can we live with a certain amount of environmental damage and therefore climate change? No matter what we do, we are going to change our environment so how about we accept that we are going to raise the earth's temperature by a degree every hundred years, but fight tooth and nail to keep it at that rate? Monbiot suggested that in order to maintain the status quo we would have to become 90% energy efficient. I'd like to believe that is possible but doubt that it is.
  
• Apparently the earth would be cooling naturally now but due to our polluting we are causing it to warm. So actually we are almost holding it in balance. Wow. So... do we want it to cool? Ok, so that was a bit silly, but it is 11.30pm and I'm tired.

I'd like to come to a conclusion here but I am tired and I'm rambling so I'm going to stop now.

notes to self

• rant about george monbiot
• wish patrick a happy birthday
• update sidebar
• wax malaysians
• shoot comments spammers
• say good bye to steve and flick
• eat, damnit.
  

Lazy Student

That lazy student from below has a play on tomorrow night at Oxford Brookes University Western campus. The play is Alberto's 'thesis' for his masters in humanitarian studies. It starts at 8.30pm and concludes with a thirty minute discussion.

Get yo' ass there!

I still can't pretend to be street.

Whatever that means.

Fashion - Turn to the Left!

It was Elizabeth's birthday yesterday. Being the gentleman I am, I didn't ask her age. To celebrate we went out to Anuba, a new bar on Park End Street. Can you see what they've done there? Being the sickeningly punctual man that I am I was there for the opening at 7.30pm. Four years in this country and I still can't get the hang of continental time and give up on lifetimes anal retentitiveness. Here's a tip. If it starts at 7.30, tell me it starts at 8. Three years in the 'shire and I've never been out on Park End Street, despite that Matt and Gareth are often found spinning at Thirst bar, a mere 20m further up the road. Sad really. Anuba is managed by Rob, a Scottish born south african looking bloke. Rob goes out with Jo, who designs jewellery. Having spent a lot of time talking to them last night I thought I'd throw in a quick plug - you can peruse her creations here.

Elizabeth is into fashion. A year and a half or so ago she did a colours course, and she decided she need to practice her new found skills. So for an hour I sat in front of a mirror and studied the imperfections of my face while she draped various colours on me. The hour passed, I grew familiar with the acne that should really have passed before I hit 30 and then learnt that I was a warm and deep autumn. I enjoy throwing that fact into conversation.

Earlier this year Elizabeth put on a fair trade fashion show at part of Women's Week in Oxford. She managed to commandeer the Oxford Town Hall, as well as a bagpipe player. When it comes to bagpipe players, I believe you could murder one in front of 100 people and there would be no witnesses. Two weeks ago I heard one through the traffic in Kuala Lumpur. The bastards get everywhere. Since then she has managed to go from strength to strength. On the 8th of October she is putting on another such show. Except this time it is in Paris as part of Paris Fashion Week. This little fact just happened to creep out in conversation last night. There is a lot to admire in her humility. I was floored when she told me. You can read more about the show here.

So last night I hung out with fashion designers, jewellery makers, night club owners, models as well as the usual crowd of trainee vicars, graduated vicars, hairdressers, actresses, lazy students, and youth workers. Once DJ Gareth finished spinning his tunes (only to be hijacked at the end by DJ Matt who needed to spin Peyton's Higher Ground - which in turn was hijacked by Simon, the co-owner) we were ushered up to the VIP lounge at the Bridge. Now, I'm a pub man most of the time - give me a pint and the associated old man's decor (preferrably with pictures of dogs playing cards or snooker) and I am a content old soak - so I felt particulary smug strutting past all the plebs in the crowded non-VIP lounge into the slightly more crowded VIP lounge. But as by now I'd made some new friends, been wowed my friends achievements and (more importantly) knocked back three Moscow Mules I was in heaven. I need to get to know more bar owners...

Pacific Blue - It's really Choice

To get from NZ to Ostralia I flew with Pacific Blue. They are the cheap version of Virgin Airlines. Very very no-frills. The flight that David and I used to cross the Tassie ended up being delayed by three and a half hours due to a nice duvet of fog. You should know that the flight was supposed to leave at 7am and that we had been up since 3.45am. I had got to the airport via Kamal the taxiu driver. Kamal assumed that traffic signs were mere suggestions, the road was his personal fiefdom and that other vehicles were trespassers. He also saw no need to slow down due to the weather and would high beam anybody who got in his way.

When we boarded the plane at about 6.30, the fog was pretty thick. It was clear to everyone that we weren't going to be leaving at 7am, or even 8am. The Pacific Blue cabin crew realised this at the very beginning so from the outset started to amuse us. Actually, I think they were amusing themselves. They also told us that we were going to stay on board because if we left the aircraft we would lose our slot in the departures order.

The following are genuine quotes from the cabin crew, Mack, Melissa and Sanome:
"Thanks for flying Pacific Blue, that's really choice"
"Hi, I'm Mack and we're going to try and make your flight as sweet as"
(To me when I declined sugar for my tea) "You obviously don't need any sugar, you're clearly sweet enough"
(From the pilot) "we should be away soon as the weather is increasing". Increasing to what???
"Welcome to Brissie, it's a choice place"
"Make sure when you get to customs that you declare all your food, cos if you don't you'll get the rubber glove treatment and you probably don't want that."

OK, so it doesn't actually read that humoursly, and yeah you probably had to be there, but when compared to the captain on the BA flight that I flew on that was two hours late who never said a word to us till we were approaching Heathrow and then said "Thank you for flying BA and we hope you enjoyed the flight. We hope to see you again soon. Cabin crew, prepare the cabin for landing", I know who I'd rather have serving me.

Fly Pacific Blue. It's cheap and it's choice.

Hey Ow

It's been four weeks now. I am sick at the sight of my suitcase and the presence of my laptop backpack makes me want to drop it from the six floor of the Micasa Hotel. This is my current 'home' till Sunday when Singapore Airlines and the Oxford-Heathrow express take me home.

Going home has been an interesting experience. When I first arrived I thought it all seemed a bit provincial, and I started to notice the New Zealand accent. To be honest I was rather condescending towards it. OK, so I was very arrogant. After a week or so, I realised I was really enjoying myself. It was also nice to look at the issues of the day in NZ and realise that it's actually a good thing to be worried about little things. Don't get me wrong here, issues are as big or as small as they need to be, but given the choice of having to worry about the levee breaking or the price of petrol hitting $1.50, give me the petrol each and every day. When I first arrived the big story of the day was to do with Helen Clark, the PM, being asked to explain why her motorcade was doing 170 km/h on the road (the speed limit is 100km/h) and when the police motorcade drivers went to court she denied she was aware that the car had been going that fast. Most people would agree that unless you are in the space shuttle or an Malaysian Taxi, it is not that hard to spot that you are in a vehicle that is driving quicker than normal. Which goes to say that unless she regularly gets driven at 170km/h then I think she lied. But I would rather have a PM that lies about that than a PM that lies then starts a war based on that lie, or a PM who lies about what a desperate emigrant threw overboard and then whens an election based on that lie (she never did drop a baby, did she John?). I like that NZ has littler issues. Which is not to say that they are not important!

But issues aside, it was staying with Simon that did it for me. Simon lives not far from Auckand city centre and very close to Ponsonby Road. Simon has carved out a little world for himself, and in his words, he finally "understands how to live in Auckland" and from what I could see, it was a life that had many things in common with the life I live in the UK. May be it was there all the time and I had to go to the UK to see it. Wandering round the near central blocks made me start to ponder the reason I still live in the UK.

I've often been asked what I love about Oxford and what people should do when they go to NZ. Supposedly I'm an expert on both things. The reason I love Oxford is the people. That is what makes Oxford a great place to live. Just like what Rhys said in an email to me:

Like you say - NZ _was_ great. No, I take that back. A country is never great. It's the people that make a place great.

Auckland is also a great place. There are some good places to live, there are some fun things to do, but there are also some stupendously good people there too. The Simons, Muzz's, Ians, Sarahs, Craigs, Alices, Davids of this world will guarantee that. In the same way, Rotorua, a place I wouldn't normally go will be just as great cos that's where Jolinda lives, and Wellington will be great because that's where Chris, Sarah, Michael, Karen and wee Charlotte live. And damnit all, that is just the people that I know. The richness of these friendships makes me have a hell of hope for this world. Sure, there are bastards out there, and people will still try to screw me over, just like from time to time I'll be tempted to do the same to them. Maybe it's a bit cheesy, and I know I have a cynical streak in me, but when it comes to the human being, I believe that they are intrinsically good. Leaving NZ again yesterday just about made me cry. I'm not sure how many more times I can put myself through that. The names above are people I am going to know and love till the day I die, and the fact that there are about ten names there is pretty damn cool.

Yes I know I get repetitive sometimes on the topic of my friends, but sod it, this is my blog, get your own if you don't like it.

Before other cities get jealous, Oxford, Edinburgh and London are also great places.

I've been listening to Conscious Roots - The awakening of the Aotearoa Roots Movement, a collection of kiwi Dub. It reminds me that New Zealand song writers are some of the finest in the world. No, they are the finest. (Best poet I've read - Don McGlashan of the Muttonbirds.)

And Sarah and Craig introduced me to bro'Town. It's an animated cartoon made by the comedic group The Naked Samoans and if we must do the comparison thing, then yes it is kinda like a Samoan/Maori South Park. bro'Town is hits my spot. It treads a very fine line and, damn, it is funny when it gives the finger and declares "not even, ow" and jumps across that line.

Aotearoa, the whanau (that's a Maori word for family) make sure that it's a great place to live.

Let us sing together
All of us forever
Let the loving light
Lead us to your dawning
-Cornerstone Roots

Paddock Bashing

I have some family in Matakana, a small but growing development near Warkworth, which in turn is about an hour north of Auckland. My cousins Stephanie, David and Paul are a lot younger than me (15, 13 and 11). They are immensely talanted (it is possible that Stephanie will be representing NZ in the youth sailing world cup in the Canary Islands next year and we kiwis are very good sailors. Actually, when I say we, I really mean the rest of us as I couldn't sail across the bath (as much as I would like to think I can sail round the Horn by myself)). My cousins have a paddock, and they also have a deregistered Mazda 121. This is the basher. The basher is fueled by petrol that Paul and David steal from the lawnmower. After learning handbrake turns from the eleven year old Paul I strapped myself into the basher and drove around the paddock as fast as it will go. There is something very liberating about driving straight towards a small ditch and hit the accelerator. Nice to not have to worry about suspension. When I was finally prised from the drivers seat, David got a turn. After some really impressive turns the car ground to a halt. The young fellers immediately popped the bonnet and reattached the battery that had come loose. Still no life in the car. Being the senior man in the party I had a look. Being as good a mechanic as I am a sailor (my diagnoses with car failures are a short and sweet list: Did a) it hit another car, b) the car run out of petrol, c) the battery die, or d) the alternator die) and having had experience with a, c and d I said get more fuel. So we stole some more from the lawn mower. That didn't work. We tried a few more times and then I declared it to be flooded. So we walked away from it to let it, um, de-flood. After several more attempts an hour later she still didn't start. We popped the bonnet one more time and then I noticed a large accumulation of grass at the base. The amount of grass had compressed a rubber hose leading into the whirry engine thing. I declared it to be blocking the fuel line so we prised it all away and gave the key a turn. First turn and we were bashing again. Big technical fault that, grass under the hood.

But paddock bashing, by golly, that was fun.

(Pictures of the dirt and the basher when I return to blighty)

Different pipe, same cargo

Sir Joseph Bazalgette was the civil engineer behind the design of the London sewers in the nineteeth century. His great-great-grandson is Peter Bazalgette, a television producer for Endemol, and he is responsible for producing Big Brother. I guess the cargo was in his veins.

Somewhere else I could live

Having spent only a couple of days there this week, (although I did grow up there too, so there is some strength in what follows) I figure that if pushed to leave Oxford I could happily settle down in Wellington. It is a beautiful, smallish city (Yes, I know it is bigger than Oxford) that seems to have a great culture.

It also has very steep hills, unlike the low rounded excuses we get in Oxford.

Not as Crooked

I'm still a little ill - I think I unlocked somat when I unpacked a suitcase of old clothes. In future I think I'm just going to throw the suitcase on the fire and enjoy it.

But I'm not as ill as some. Poor Alice spent most of last night being sick on Sarah. Now she has been diagnosed with viral gastroenteritis. Now... I've had that as an adult and it is deeply unpleasant, albeit one hell of an effective weight loss program (try twenty kilograms in three weeks), so I feel very sad for the little one.

This trip has, while being a trip of closure, also been a trip of hellos to a new generation. There are lots of little folk in my world (my brother and sister in law have nineteen month old Charlotte, Sarah and Craig have one year old Alice, Gabrielle and Clint have one year old Fearne, Chris and Sarah have three year old Aimee and nine month old Jessica, and I'm sure there will be more to come... It's been really fun. I've kinda felt like Uncle Richard to a lot of them as well as Sarah and Mike three wee ones, but to actually be a genuine uncle to Charlotte is very cool.

Tomorrow I am off to Rotorua to see Jolinda, then do some actual work with our New Zealand agent (a loud Yorkshireman). Then up to Warkworth with the family, then the three yearly trip to Cityside Baptist Church to remind them of who this person who is on the 'prayers for people who are far off' section lof the newsletter is, and hopefully continue to have my mortal soul prayed for for another three and a half years.

Drove for the first time in NZ today. Managed to fail most tests involving the location of the indicator stick and failed the only test of the NZ give way rule. Luckily no harm done. The drive to Rotorua could be a different matter.

Crooked

I'm ill.

Brown Bread

What beef has God got with labour politicians this month?
First it was Robin Cook, then David Lange and finally (I hope) Mo Mowlam.

He's been taking the good ones. So I figure Blair is on safe ground.

Boxing

Today I arrived at my parents place in Wanganui. Wanganui can be found on a map by finding the North Island of New Zealand. Then go to the big bump on the west coast of the North Island. Wanganui is in the armpit of that big bump.

I have been going through all the boxes that I stored with them some four years ago when I left NZ for the UK. I started with the approach of thinking I should throw all of it away. Then as I started delving deeper I discovered that there is a whole lotta my life that I would like to hang onto. Old school stuff, a dodgy tape collection, a very good collection of contempary literature, a near new toasted sandwich maker (those were the days when I was a student and lunch could be made with four slices of bread, some cheese, some ham and a sprinking of paprika and oregano), and the finest cheese grater in the world. This cheese grater is sharp and most importantly hexagonal in base shape so it is very stable. Even though I have committed myself to living in the UK for the forseeable future and even though seeing as I haven't this stuff in four years, I am loth to get rid of it. I can always get it shipped over if I really settle down. I have decided to pack the bulk of it away, but have decided to chance my arm with the weight allowance by putting into my baggage the weighty tome that is a collection of James K Baxter's poetry, a copy of the NZ Anglican Prayer book, and a bunch of CD's.

The whole experience of going through my stuff, including my clothes was rather sad. So many things that pertained to a life I once had and no longer feel connected to. There were also some rather pleasant moments when I discovered some of the treasures in my book collection. In some ways it was carthatic too. It is increasingly becoming clear that this trip to NZ is one of closure and I remain unsure of how this sits with me. It has been great seeing my friends and family, but I look forward to being back in Oxford. I know that most of you people don't understand it. When I think of something you can understand that is similar I will try to put it in writing.

I played Taylor Mali's 'The Impotence of Proofreading' to my dad this evening. It was worth it for the look on his his face.

Sleeping on Planes

Kia ora tātau!
Now we are in New Zealand. It's been very strange being here. I last visited the shakey isles in March 2002 and like the collection of copper coins on my shelf at home, I think I have left it too long.

[Aside, one of the more ridiculous things I have done since being in the UK has been to collect every single copper coin I have been given in change or have found on the side of the road. There is no a jar that weighs about 10kg on my shelf. I know not what to do with it. I should have stopped a very long time, but I didn't and now it's too late. I suspect a boozy smokey poker night might be the solution. Unless I win, in which case I will have only made the problem worse. End of aside.]

But the weirdness comes from not knowing how to relate to the people who I had left behind. It feels a slight presumptious to wander in and to expect people to welcome me back into their lives. In fact, to use a slightly intended pun, it feels a bit rich, this coming from a person who makes no secret that it is Oxford that is home for me now, and most likely will be for the forseeable future. And NZ doesn't feel like it is my home anymore. Usefully I have been staying with Craig and Sarah and baby Alice who have lived this experience so know what I am going through. I accept that I am still tired, despite sleeping a fair bit on the plane (I think I clocked up six hours sleep on the leg to Singapore - breaking my own record by about five hours), but there is a strong sense of numbness. From where I sit I am looking out over south Auckland, through a large Pohotukawa over Penrose to Mt Smart Stadium (or whatever it is called now) and then over to the Manukau harbour and it is surprisingly pretty(with respect to Penrose, there are much nicer suburbs in Auckland) but it feels like I am looking at a picture rather than a place. This visit is a only a trip so I know it is a temporary re-engagement. Please don't get me wrong, it has been great and a thing of beauty to begin to see my friends. But I miss my home. On Sunday I spent time at HTB with Jon March as he gave a sermon and then I watched the ducks in Hyde Park with Jane while eating a truly vile cheese and salad sandwich. The cheese was like that horrible smoked cheese we used to have in NZ. Then I got on a plane and went away.

Usefully Craig and Sarah have a one year old called Alice. Alice and I get on really well because I think it is easier to relate to one year olds than thirty one year olds. Especially when you are trying to come to grips with a different world. The lowest common denominator certainly appeals. As it happens today I am babysitting Alice while Sarah works. The wee girl is just waking up now and it is possible that for the first time in my life I am going to have wipe a bottom that belongs to someone else... Stand by the doors.... She's clean! (oh thank God.)

But tonight I am going to go out and play in Auckland. My friends Grant and Rebecca are in town from Dallas and together with Mr K we are going to go Belgian beer drinking (good to know some of the 'skills' I have acquired in Oxford are transferrable home). Then tomorrow I am going to see the folks in Wanganui.

There is this sneaking suspicion that by the time I finish up here I will have adapted and won't want to go back to unshakey isles...

Playing Away From Home

On Sunday I leave Oxford for five weeks. I am flying out to NZ for a bit of rest and a bit of work, my first trip home in three and a half years. I'm looking forward to it, but not entirely for the obvious reasons. I am looking forward to seeing my family and friends, and some time to reaquaint myself with them. I'm also anticipating that first drop of Monteiths Original Ale. But one of the things that I am really looking forward to is not having to think about cricket, poetry, hOME, support at work... All those things that I do and love, but which have drained me this year. Hopefully when I come back I shall have a renewed energy for them.

I play my last game of cricket this weekend. I plan to go out and enjoy myself. Maybe hit a 100 or so... I think I bat best when I believe I am better than the opposition and when I feel relaxed. It'll be a shame to say goodbye to the boys. I also plan to take some poetry CDs with me to NZ to play to the good folk out there, with a unsubtle attempt to convert them. Taylor, Danny, Derrick and Steve should do the trick. Maybe there is no escape from poetry after all.

On I must go - with only two working days left I have a lot to do. My colleague Ruth will be covering for me while I am away. In the past when I have covered for her she has always left everything tidied up. I feel that I should do the same for her. Damn, I'm a good person. Oh, and the poor wee thing has got food poisoning in Mexico this week.

The next blog will be from NZ. Yippee!

Oh, and I have meaning to day this for a while. And it's not a happy thought. The death of Anthony Walker makes me sick. The fact that this sort of thing can happen here revolts me. I know the futility of this statement but I need to add my voice: Just bloody stop doing this people! And apparently I was partly wrong about the restraint shown by the British public in response to the London bombing. I hope it is only a very small minority, but regardless it aint good enough so I say it again, just stop bloody doing this people! This is not an acceptable approach to race relations and no way to stop the terrorists.

Grrrrrrrrrr.

Stand up

I believe this wave will bear my weight so let it flow

Yesterday I spent the day in London with my friends Rhys, Monica, baby Grace, Megan and Jane; an all kiwi gathering, except for Grace as she was born here. We began with lunch in the Sun Inn opposite Barnes Pond, where I tried another Belgian fruit beer, Fruli. This is technically a white beer but feels more like a blend of kriek and a strawberry smoothy. Regardless, it was very tasty and there was no hesitation in having a second one when round 2 started. We moved from there to Jane's place for tea and Cadbury's mini rolls...

After we finished our mini rolls (except for Rhys who took one for the road) we went our separate ways, Rhys, Monica and baby Grace back to theirs, Megan back to Camberwell and Jane and I managed to negotiate London traffic to go to Holy Trinity Brompton, a church that Jane goes every week and a church where my friend Jon recently became installed as a curate. Now, HTB is not really my sort of church. I prefer smaller churches with less singing and more Groove Armada and U2 in the background. Churches like hOME in Oxford and Cityside in Auckland. I like to be able to ask questions in the middle of the service and I like to be able to opt out when I feel uncomfortable (church for cowards maybe??) or when I just feel tired (church for the lazy??).

I don't know that much about HTB other than it is where the Alpha courses started. But I respect my friend Jane's judgement and I love and want to support my friend Jon so when in London on a Sunday I'll leave it open as an option for a thing to do. I'll be there again in two weeks time on the day I fly to New Zealand. That's also the same day as Jon preaches for the first time. However, all this is not really the point of this entry (tip - when blogging get to the point sooner). And unfortunately for the wider world, I aint going to go into too much detail as there is some stuff that isn't really for public consumption. But the point I can share is that at HTB last night I found myself being somewhat threatened and most uncomfortably I had nowhere to hide, no dark corner with loud music, so I had to sit and listen. The sermon/talk was on the parable of the talents. Having grown up in the church I got complacent about a lot of things, but in recent years I think I have forgotten a lot of it or, moreover, lost understanding of a lot of it. As the parable was being read, I couldn't help but think 'go on, explain this to me, what on earth are you on about'. Somewhat more uncomfortably, the next passage in Matthew is the splitting of the sheep and the goats. As I listened I was challenged over and over again to stop living my comfortable christianity. It became a bit of a slap in my face. Quite what I am going to do about it is not something I am planning on writing about online, it is more something that I am planning on talking about with friends over a beer, especially another Fruli if I can find somewhere in Oxford that sells it.

But in summary, I found HTB a surprisingly useful experience (the surprise comes from the fact that I have the bad tendency to be smug about my cutting edge church, when last night I wondered if I was missing the point). It made me challenge some of the stuff that I hold to and while I might be right about such things, it is useful to be open to criticism.

If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor

Straight outta Oxford

Yo yo yo!

It's an Oxford crew slammin' on Tuesday. Get yo self and yo bruvvas down to da Zodiac to see Straight out of Oxford, it's gonna be wikked!

Oh, forget it, I don't know how to be street... But the gig will be excellent.

Self Interest

It's election year in New Zealand. The country goes to the polls on the 17th of September. The Labour government has been in power for the past six years under Helen Clark. I voted for Labour in both of those elections (and, scarily enough, a recent election elsewhere). I'm not sure that I am eligible to vote in this election, although usefully I will be in the country just before so I can find out for myself. In the previous two elections it has essentially been a foregone conclusion that labour was going to win, but in this coming election it seems that the country of my birth could be in for a change. The National party under Don Brash is currently equal with Labour in the opinion polls on 39%, with the New Zealand First party under Winston Peters next on 7%. Under New Zealand's Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system the government will almost certainly be a coalition, with National and NZ First aiming to be coalition partners.

Simply put, from Left to Right, we have Labour - NZ First - National. In addition we have the Greens, the Progressives, Act, United Futures and the Maori Party. In my ignorance, I have no idea about much of those other parties, suffice to say that it is likely that almost all of them will win seats. All of this is by the by. I am hoping that NZ doesn't get a change in government because I don't trust Brash and Peters as they are both populist and reactionary politicians of the worst sort. I do here that Clark is losing the plot a bit, but in this case better the devil you know. But then, I am living in the UK, am essentially out of touch, except for what I am fed via the NZ Herald, Public Address and an email chat group of likely lads in NZ that periodically comes to life in NZ, but which most often discusses rugby.

However, in the past day or so, first National announced tax breaks and then secondly Labour announced a new policy for student loans. Now, I hate finance, I live in denial about it, but the second announcement did perk my ears up. The announcement went something like this:

"The Government will scrap interest payments on student loans held by people living in New Zealand, Prime Minister Helen Clark announced today. She said the proposed change, which would begin on April 1 next year, would massively reduce loan repayment times. "

Maybe it's an April fools joke. Now, I have a student loan and it's large. The reason it is large is because I studied from 1992 to 1999 with a year off in the middle. I lived away from home for most of that time and sure, I was a little (or a lot)irresponsible with my borrowing. In 2002 the government finally stopped charging students interest on their loans while they were studying. While I was studying my loan was rocketing while I could do nothing about it. Even if I had stopped borrowing (and eating) I would have been seeing my loan rise. Since I have been in the UK I have stepped up student loan repayments and are now making a sizeable dent in the bastard. If I felt inclined, I could go to a website and see how much I could save by going home using an online calculator. When I visit home next month I know I am going to be nagged about this by my mother. And if I was an economist I would work out how much I would be better off if I were to return home. I am sure I should be making these sorts of financial decisions, but as I say, I live in denial about it.

Maybe I'm being short-sighted, but I choose to live in Oxford because I have carved out a life for myself here. It is a life that I could not have lived in NZ, not because of what I am paid, or because of it's proximity to Europe, but because when I grew up in NZ and then later as an adult, I lived in the shadow of a lot of people. It took travelling 16,000 miles for me to effectively become my own man. Since discovering this, I have started to use this knowledge and self-confidence to spread my own shadow, if you like. That is, I have got myself involved in things I never thought I would have got involved in and I have been to places and met people that have challenged the way I think (thanks Patrick). I am now as content here as I have ever been. Sure, if I had bit more money (or a love life) I might be more content, and maybe my decision to not go home and save money on my student loan might come back and bite me in the arse in a few years time, but that seems to be a risk worth taking.

Still, this could be a moot entry 'cos Don and Winston might win and then I certainly won't want to go home anyway.

Oh, and by the way, in response to www.WereNotAfraid.com, I like what you are trying to do. But, I need to say that I am afraid. However I have no plans to change how I lead my life. Next time I am in London (Sunday) I plan to use the tube. There's nothing to be afraid of in being scared, as it were, but it is all about how you respond to that fear and the terrorists WON'T be scaring me home.

Maybe we are on the same wave length after all.

Postcards from Southern Africa

Two folk I know are making a bit of a name for themselves in southern Africa. My friend Dave Ball is writing for the South African Sunday Times as one of the sports editors. Here's his most recent work.

And a guy who guided me round Namibia last year is setting off on his own. He's Sven Strohmenger and while he doen't yet have a website you can email him using this address: sstrohmenger@momentum.co.za. He's a great guy and a someone who knows his stuff. He's a big believer in environmentally sustainable tourism. He's also the sort of bloke who can be driving a truck and spot out of the corner of his eye a mongoose in scrub at 200m whereas the people on his truck who are peering through binoculars don't see a thing. If you're planning on going to the Nam, Botswana or SA, look this guy up. Really. He's the white guy in the middle of the picture.

A Reference

Messing about in boats

The office I work in is bordered by the Thames, and due to the water related nature of the work we do, it is inevitable that we would own some boats. There is a proper riverboat, the Florinda II (the name 'Florinda' is awfully close to the name of a girl I used to go out with in KiwiLand - it aint Jo and it aint Linda) and two three person Canadian canoes. Given the hot weather, it seemed a good weekend to go for a wee trip on the river. So...

Yesterday my friend Jane and I took a picnic lunch and our panama hats and with the aid of one of the canoes paddled our way upstream. We managed to get on board without tipping either the canoe or ourselves into the river, a significant achievement in itself, after a relatively short while managed to develop a rhythm that didn't involve driving into the side of the river bank. Negotiating the wilds of Oxfordshire, including not being picked off by the dozen or so Red Kites that were circling the river we made it to Benson Lock. Here we enjoyed the free ride up two metres of the Thames. The river broadens here and on the banks are old WWII bunkers that were designed to stop that nasty Mr Hitler. There are also some decidely posh houses along this stretch. The other trick was to avoid the vanguard of fisherfolk that were trawling for trout and salmon. Once we had passed under Shillingford Bridge we then began to looking for the 'Perfect Spot'. The Perfect Spot was an undefined spot that would allow us to have our picnic. The main consideration was that there weren't hundreds of other people to share it with. The trouble with this part of the river is that there is lots of unfriendly riverside vegetation, and any gaps in them were occupied by the aforementioned fisherfolk. Finally we found our 'Perfect Spot', a small and unoccupied break in the nasty vegetation and ran our boat aground. I produced my bottle of Villa Maria Pinot Gris, which, much to Jane's surprise was chilled (note to self: it is always good to have a cold bottle of wine up your sleeve).

When it was time and when we were suitably tanned, we gently made our way home on the shady side of the river, back through Shillingford Bridge and Benson Lock, under the circling Red Kites and after avoiding the fisherfolks lines back to the boat house.

It had been a damn fine day. We had got out of our respective cities and gone country, we had put our world to rights as we discussed the issues of the day, and we'd even got some exercise.

Today I am very very brown.

Next year we are thinking that now we have got this canoing lark sussed, we are going to take on the Nile.

Kia Kaha

It's been a week since the London bombings. Once the initial confusion and then horror passed, I have been astonished with what followed.

From my observations the response here in the UK has been very measured. There has been more shock at the idea that the bombers were/are British but outrage? Not so much. I don't think they understand how one of their own could do this, but they aren't going to damn the whole community for it. Every single noted public figure, from Tony Blair through Michael Howard (a man I normally associate with appealing to the masses and political point-scoring), through senior policemen to church leaders and imans have either stated their desire that the British public not alienate any community in this country, and that they recognise this for what it is, a bunch of extremists committing an extreme event.

Maybe it is the circles I move in, but I haven't seen too much overreaction. Even the virulent Daily Mail has reacted with restraint. It has been one of the truly remarkable things about these events that the (vast majority) of the British public have been stoic in their response. They might not take a sporting loss very well, but they respond a lot differently in the face of national tragedy. There's been a lot of nostalgic comparisons to the Blitz and the chin-up spirit of the British, and I don't think this is entirely unreasonable.

Every community has their bad eggs. There are plenty of nasty people in Britain. Read this story to see what I mean, but from what I have seen this week, people like this are a minority.

I grieve for the people who have lost loved ones, and especially for those who, a week later, still don't know for sure what happened to them. I also grieve for the families who have discovered that is was their sons and brothers who committed these acts. Just as I grieve for the people who died in the latest suicide bombing in Iraq. But I have seen enough this past week to have hope for the future here. The response of the British people may prove more effective in healing rifts than the approaches taken by Bush and Blair in recent years.

Giving

If anybody feels like buying me something nice, I'd quite like this book. The book is a collection of essays about New Zealand edited by Russell Brown. Brown is the man behind public address, a site that mixes media comment with observations from writers around the world.

Enclosed Spaces

The past two weeks have provoked some interesting responses within me. It began with seeing U2 in Cardiff, watching a bit of Live8 on the Roger Mellie, then seeing London win the Olympics, followed by the bombings in London and then, last night, saying goodbye to my friend Evelyn while (and this is NOT a metaphor for something else) watching some badgers frolic on the lawn.

So we'll begin at the beginning. That seems to be a good place to begin. I drove out to Cardiff with Caroline and Evelyn, meeting Justice, Anita, Kate, Jules, Martin and Pete. I became a stress monkey when the pressure on finding a carpark began to mount. Finally achieved this goal and found myself outside the magnificent Millenium Stadium. Kate and Ev had seats whereas the rest of us were unreserved standing. Now, thanks to Jon March who had been to U2 a few nights earlier in Twickenham, we knew about the Enclosure. The Enclosure was the area up the front that the first two thousand only could get into. Abandoning all sense restraint and community spirit we raced down to the floor and then took a brief pause to look at the people who were crammed at crash barrier at the edge of the enclosure. We smiled knowingly to ourselves and the pushed and shoved our way to the side of the stage where they were letting people into the Enclosure. There were no special tickets required, access merely required promptness and knowledge. Now we could be within a few metres of Mr Bono and his little friends.

Here is where I break into a email I sent the day after the concert. There's a lot to write about (as well as a lot of work to do) so I need to be efficient here. And besides, I like this email.


so.... we went to U2 last night. Went with kate, caroline, anita, justice and evelyn. bumped into jules martin and pete. that was kinda arranged. managed to break into the front enclosure with jules and martin being in the last ten through. took a picture of myself with my phone looking smug. noticed a woman laughing and smiling at me. thought she was taking the piss out of me. maybe she thought i was fit. I started talking to jules. realised she was talking to Nathan and that the woman was in fact Nita. Felt extraordinarily stupid. They had by complete coincidence decided to stand in the exact same spot as us. So quite a few past and present homies there.

had a great show, starsailor were good, the killers amazing and u2 were, well, u2. set list lives here: nice symmetry of starting and finishing with the same song. they didn't play one tree hill but apparently that hasn't been played live in 12 years so no great surprise there, then. One Tree Hill is a new zealand institution cos the original one tree hill is in Auckland and not the place where some tortured american kids play basketball and suffer emotional trials. Visuals were stunning, mr bono preached his bit about us all getting along and about it being Aung San Suu Kyi's birthday. she's the leader of burma that has been under house arrest for about as long as u2 have been touring. visuals included her reading the universal declaration of human rights.

bono struck me as being a little smug and quite like a marrionette as he walked around the stage. he didn't appear to bend his knees - his legs looked very stiff. then when we all sang along to 'but I still haven't found what i'm looking for' it seemed we were his prisoners till he decided to start another song. we sang that line over and over again. it seemed vaguely like were the sheep and he the shepherd. and boy did we bleat. happy lambs we were. he seemed a good shepherd. but not in a christlike way. ok, not completely like a christlike shepherd.

It's all quite amusing to me. Apparently at the Croke Park concerts in Dublin, he got told to shut up and play some music when he began talking to his audience. Now it could be just me, but when U2 play, you gotta expect a little 'preaching'. He is not ashamed of his Christianity, and nor does he shirk from his desire to make a difference in this world. And nor should he. I have two observations to make about this. Firstly, when he preaches (if that is the appropriate term for it), there is no overtly mainstream Christian message. He does not call people to become followers of Christ. Instead, and again it could be just be me, when he preaches he uses the model of the only sermon that Jesus is known to have preached, that being the Sermon on the Mount. Secondly, there are few ways to bring about change in this world. One of those ways is to reach the masses via the popular culture, which is precisely what he is doing. How successful he (and Sir Bob Geldolf) will be remains to be seen, but I would argue that it would be irresponsible of him not to use this forum. I'm sure he has an ego about what he does. Find me one person on the planet who could play to crowds of 60,000+ (and let's face it, U2 could sell out 120,000 seater stadiums) and not have an ego.

My reflections on Live8, the Olympics, terrorism and badgers will have to be another entry. I gotta work!

Flags

One Good Move has the wonderful Eddie Izzard empire building and flags sketch here.

(De)Fused

(I've never done anything like this before so sorry for the gushing).

Hey all,
It was fair to say that yesterday was just a little bit stressful. The stress began when a certain Canadian poet rang me at 5.00 on Monday to tell me that one of the four poets hadn't actually left Canada. That stress grew some more when he rang me again yesterday at 3.00 to tell me his bus from Cambridge wouldn't arrive in Oxford till 7.00. For a gig beginning at 8.00pm. Now that might sound like an ample window, but these guys have to sound check and be fed. After racing through the streets of Oxford in my little Micra, cursing at the dedication that the Oxford City Council has to repairing roads (councils should not be allowed to dig up two arterial roads at the same time), I discover that my little micra is not designed for three more people plus their kit. Somehow I squeeze them all in. They are all tall but usefully they have narrow hips. I feed them at 7.30pm. First thanks go to the Red Star noodle bar. The rest of Hammer and Tongue are all assembled there. At 8.10 I decide that I at least best cross the road to the Zodiac. I walk into the downstairs part and I nearly die. There are about fifteen people there, at least half of whom I know have not paid to get in (guest list!!!). I wonder if I can hide under the sound desk and cry. People start to drift in, including my performers. I'm still feeling acutely embarassed. At 8.30 the show gets underway with five of the poets (the three canadian fugitives - Brendan, Mark and Barbara, Steve Larkin and the Naked Mystic) doing individual pieces. By this stage there are about 50 people in the audience and I'm starting to settle down. I start to mingle among the various sets of friends I know there and start to feel pretty relaxed. Barabara Adler (the tall and gangly one) gets it under way by swearing at us and demonstrating her anarchy. The naked mystic gets up and stays clothed, much to our disappointment. By this stage I am sitting on the floor at the back, leaning against the sound desk. At this point I'm beginning to enjoy myself. I spot Evelyn and her friend Tracey walk in. I go to talk to them (in between poems, of course, not while they're being performed). I by them a drink ('cos I'm a good person) and turn around and the audience appears to have doubled. Spotting Steve Larkin I ask "where the hell did this crowd come from?" He shrugs and tells me he doesn't know.

The show passes. Much of it is a blur. There is an open mic session, featuring Rich Brotherton (he used it to talk about haemaroids), Lizzie Mc, Alan Buckley, and Justice. I know I'm biased, but Justice was bloody amazing.

There is a set from the Fugitives using the backing music skills of Inflatable Buddha. Again this passes in a contented haze. I know that I am enjoying myself that the poetry is very very good but I seem incapable of taking much of it in. I remember Steve Larkin being in very fine form. He seems very relaxed and free to express himself in whatever manner seems fit, including miming oral sex. There is then a break and a set from IB. Then there are alternate pieces form the Fugitives and IB. The canucks finish the evening with a fine fine version of 'I'll see you in July'. Then the bouncers tell us to get the hell out of the zodiac 'cos it's midnight.

We go to King Kebab on the Cowley Road where IB and the Fugitives get fed. I then drive them to Larkin's house. Except this time there are five people in the car. Brendan McLeod is sitting on the handbrake. I feel his a*se everytime I need (or want) to change gears. I get to Larkin's house and as I pull in I hear an almighty screech. There are now twin scatches down the side of my car as I have hit a concete lump. Luckily the scratches are low down and shouldn't affect my car's resale value. I say goodbye and go home. I have a brandy on my way to bed.

And now the thanks:

• First and foremost: The performers. You were really really really good.
  
• Steve Larkin for helping out so much in putting this together.
• Justice and Kate and the two Chris's for being such good friends and for making me feel so damn good about doing this.
• Chris for sorting out the propaganda for me at essentially no notice.
• Sue for making me dance when I so clearly needed to.
• Kate, Ev, Sue, Emma, Jenny amongst others for spreading the word and bringing friends.
• Sophia for emapthy yesterday afternoon.
• God. It wouldn't be an Oscar speech without a mention of him.
  

Seriously, I am very grateful to everybody who came and helped out, and those didn't come but were with me in spirit. You made me very proud to be associated with such fine people.

And if there is one random observation I have from the night, ones friends make the best heroes.

The canucks will be back in november. But I've seen them in July.

Music Fusion

The Canadians are coming! Because I am tired and a little lazy I have decided to simply insert my press release about this. This is the first press release I have ever set free. At the same time I find this all frightening and very amusing. Not to mention excited. If you're reading this and live anywhere near Oxford I strongly encourage you to come to this, this will be a great night out.

Hammer and Tongue Presents

The Music Fusion

A Trans-Atlantic extravaganza of award winning slam poets fused with music explodes on the Zodiac stage.

Event: The Music Fusion

Time: Tuesday 5^th July 2005

Venue: The Zodiac 192 Cowley Road, Oxford

A fusion of Canada’s ‘The Fugitives’, one of the finest slam poetry teams in the world, and Oxford’s own Inflatable Buddha, comes together at Oxford’s Zodiac for a one off gig. The Fugitives were the Canadian team at February’s celebrated and sold-out Four Nations Slam in Oxford, and Inflatable Buddha have been described as Oxford’s finest “worldfolkpunkskiffle / acid-cabaret” band.

The Vancouver-based Fugitives have been wowing huge audiences in North America for some time. They are made up of Barbara Adler, Brendan McLeod the reigning Canadian National Champion, Mark Berube and the mind-bogglingly talented human beatbox CR Avery. CR Avery can, among other things, play harmonica while beatboxing at the same time.

The legendary Tom Waits says of Avery: “Search this man out, CR Avery is terrific”.

The Fugitives deliver a unique hybrid of spoken word and music. They run the gamut from comedic to hard-hitting, insightful spoken word, and combine it with adventurous strong structures performed on piano, accordion, guitar, harmonica, beatbox, and voice.

Inflatable Buddha are fronted by the current Spoken Word Olympic International Champion Steve Larkin, one of the best slam poets the world has to offer. They are as entertaining, talented and unusual band as you are ever likely to see combining instrumentation as diverse as hurdy gurdy, accordion, double bass and tabla with the unmistakable vocal and lyrical talents of Larkin. Accordionist Rupert Allison (aka poet The Naked Mystic) said “This promises to be a memorable gig. We were blown away by The Fugitives when we got our first taste of them in February. I can’t wait to jam with their incredible beat box guy and compare our champion poet to theirs.”

The event is being promoted by Oxford based poetry organisation Hammer And Tongue, who have successfully plotted the meteoric rise of the phenomena known as slam in the UK. Promoter Richard Body said “I think I’ve hit gold here, after witnessing so much live performance in my native New Zealand and here in The UK I’ve finally found what I consider to be the perfect combination in the Canadian slam team and this crazy talented band with it’s poet singer. I’m proud to promoting them on the same bill."

ENDS

Note to editors

1. The Music Fusion will take place on Tuesday 5^th July at The Zodiac, 192 Cowley Road, Oxford. Doors open 7pm, £6/£4. Box office 01865 420042 http://www.the-zodiac.co.uk/shonkweb/zodframe.html

2. Details and photo’s can be found at: www.hammerandtongue.org or

http://poeticdream.com/photo.htm.

3. For details of inflatable Buddha and Steve Larkin check www.inflatablebuddha.co.uk and www.stevelarkin.com

4. Recent feature of Hammer And Tongue in Isis Magazine can be found at http://isis.ospl.org/?issue=MT-2004-1&article=11

5. For more information call Hammer and Tongue 01865 200550, or Richard Body on 07734558477 email poetry@hammerandtongue.org,

6. Hammer And Tongue takes place on the first Tuesday of every month at The Zodiac where anyone can take the mic 3 minutes.

I should have added that...

...it's a return flight. I'm sorry to dash those hopes in both countries.

I swear I could listen to The Go! Team all day...

U2 and The Killers and Starsailor minus 12 days...

In My Head and My Hands

In my head I have some momentus information concerning a friend of mine. Can't give specifics, suffice to say it makes me very happy.

In my hands I am holding tickets for a flight to NZ in mid August. I'm going home, babies!!

Today is a fine day.

Except for the shitty weather.

Half Full

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree" - Martin Luther

Our Town

Last Friday I went to the Pegasus Theatre in Oxford to see the Oxford School of Drama's production of Our Town by Thornton Wilder. It's a simple little play set in a small town in the northeast of the United States between 1903 and 1913. The cast is comprised of the host of characters that you might expect to find - a doctor and his wife, the policeman the milkman, the reverend, and the paper boy. Over three acts we see the progression in their lives, from 'Daily Life' to Love and Marriage and, inevitably, 'Life and Death'. These three acts are all narrated by a stage manger.

As an observer I quickly gained an empathy for many of the characters, despite, or maybe because of, their simplicity. In the second act we see the doctor's son George and the neighbour's daughter Emily get married. The wedding itself is a small part of the play for, as the narrator observes that he wants to show us "how this all began this wedding, this plan to spend a lifetime together ... I'm awfully interested in how big things like that begin." Which, to me, is an interesting approach. Kind of like how a series of trickles create the Mississippi. I guess it is like the outcome is not so important, whereas the process is.

The third act has one of the main characters dead, and it is their funeral that the cast attend as the dead look on in from the graveyard. In this act it is the dead that provide the commentary and the living are mere bystanders. It is the dead who understand: "Whenever you come near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense .... We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names ... that something has to do with human beings."

The curious thing about the play was that despite it's simplicity (or again, maybe because of - oh dear, repeating myself, now that's not good writing skills...) it lingered in my mind throughout the weekend. It became one of those plays that you felt that you had not so much observed so much as been a part of.

Not Isolated 3 (love and Justice)

Justice and Anita got engaged on Friday. He popped the question on a beach that he was sharing with a nuclear reactor.

C'est Magnifique!!

Is it a bad omen that when Anita told Kate the news Kate was in Tesco looking at a sign advertising their 'bag for life'?

J'ai adore Jutice et Anita.

A lot.

Not Isolated 2 (The Oddity that is Communion)

Went to hOME last Thursday, but due to the need to practice cricket I only caught the last fifteen minutes. Naomi was leading a talk on Jesus, which inevitably led to on to communion. It struck me that communion is an incredibly odd thing. Why would Jesus say "do this in rememberance of me"? I couldn't (and can't) get my head around it; it is just so abnormal.

I feel like it's one of those things I ought to know, having been church going all my life. But, to quote Gandalf, "I have no memory of this place". I probably knew it once, but I've forgotten it all.

This feels odd, and somewhat of a loss, but it also feels like a wonderful opportunity to discover this stuff all again as an adult.

Because I had not eaten, I picked up a kebab on the way. As I (noisily) sat down to eat it at the back, we started breaking the bread. I'm not sure that Jesus said "this is my kebab, broken for you", although I was eating a donner kebab and Jesus did call himself the Lamb of God. Oooo, metaphysical!

Ahhh.... Christian humour.

Not Isolated 1 (contentedness)

(I didn't want to treat this as an isolated entry)

At the moment I am feeling quietly content with not being defined by anything. Or Much. I have a tendancy to define myself by what I do, or my singleness or by my Christianity (not as much as I should). Right now I feel like I am comprised of a balanced agglommeration of a lot of things and this is good.

The best answer I have heard to the question "what do you do" was by Wendy when she answered a question directed at Craig with "he skims stones on frozen lakes and makes lovely noises".

Justice doesn't like that question either. Speaking of Justice, see Not Isolated 3 (love and Justice).

I still wouldn't turn down a snog, but...

Isolated Entries (NOT how I want to blog)

More random notes to myself, I'm afraid. It's been a while, and so before I forget I have decided to Get Shit Down.

Discovered the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. Don't know how to pronounce their name but love their work. My goodness gracious me, so fine.

Discovered Dorset. Don't know if you've heard of Dorset, but it's worth a visit. This was also my first trip to the South Coast for bank holiday weekend (and was incidentially also the first time since I've been the UK that I have done something specifically for a bank holiday weekend). Specifically I discovered Dartmouth with Jane, Monica, Rhys, Megan and Grace.

Dartmouth is the birdshit capital of the world.

I don't know what this website is about.

Patrick has a lovely random conversation about napping and underground systems.

I cannot bat to save my life. It has been over a month since I scored a run and almost didn't get out in the process. In addition WCC has not been doing so well. We haven't won in three weeks. Grrrrrrr. And the league took all our points for one of our wins. I'm not a happy engineering bunny.

My under 15s keep winning. This is good. Tonight Shrivenham got put to the sword. They had the noisiest player I've ever heard. He chirped on constantly for an hour and a half with such witticisms as "he swings like a rusty gate with no hinges", and "I've seen better swings in a child's playground", and "that aint a bat he's holding, it's a fishing rod", and "decorate those stumps like my mum decorates the Christmas Tree, all nice and red". And repeat and rinse. And repeat. I needed a vodka and an aspirin to get him out of my head. The little punk couldn't
half bowl though. He impressed me. Needs to shut up, but.

Punted on Sunday with Evelyn, Steph and Gareth. Did most of the work, which was satisfying 'cos I only ran aground a couple of times, although in a similar vein to when I 'ice-skate' I did feel on the verge of falling in all the time. But it was one of those times when I remembered why I love living in this city so much. That was a relief because Simon, Malcolm, Muzz, Greg, Gedge and Gareth were all in Rotorua watching the Lions play Bay of Plenty. As Simon said, I am in the wrong country, man. That may be true, but I fear I love two mistresses, and the one whose love is most engaging at the moment is Oxford. God, I love her. I'm sorry, Simon but I can't come home, cos, damnit, Oxford is home.

Good to have Evelyn back in Oxford after her trip to France.

Big gig at Hammer and Tongue and the Zodiac tomorrow night.

Inflatable Buddha on Wednesday night at the Bully. They are opening (I hope) for my Canadians so I am Doing Research.

Have started noticed women speeding.