More thug problems, this one a clear and present danger.

On the Tuesday 4th of August I was walking around my father’s land with his former tenant R*** H**** and we cut back through the right of access the C**** H****’s land. I noticed two excavators blocking the way and as we got closer I saw two trenches dug across the track Mr H**** approaching. Without stopping walking I remarked that they drained onto my father’s property, Mr H**** replied words to the effect of “You think so do you’ and “Is that what you think?”, I said that they clearly were. I told my father that Mr H**** seemed to be intent on engineering a confrontation, but the situation was serious and urgent enough that in view of the fact that we had previously found sewage in the ditch and that Mr H**** had also previously attempted to encroach onto our land we had to ask him to stop. My father and I went to the right of access via the public road where we found both excavators now working. I stayed the road side of the diggers to take photos while my father went the far side of them to talk with Mr H****, within ten seconds I heard the sound of a raised voice that was not my Fathers shouting and with the word “fucking” emphasised and repeated. Mr H**** joined me and invaded my personal space by standing provocatively close in front of me and also immediately used foul and abusive language referring to me repeatedly as a “div”, “fucking div”, “fucking idiot” etc. I believed then and now that he was aware that his actions were indefensible and he was trying to divert the “conversation” from his actions and to provoke a physically violent situation in which he would hold the advantage. I believe that by invading my personal space he intended me to raise my hands to fend him off and he would then characterise that as aggression, saying that I had threatened or struck first thereby apparently putting himself legally in the right. I was sufficiently unnerved by his manner, language and the implied threat of violence that I did not record all of the exchange on camera. Any attempt to discuss the purpose of our visit was met with the same abusive words and threats delivered with his finger less than two inches from my nose. During the proceedings our neighbour I***** B***** and former lodgers R*** H**** and J* D*** came and observed proceedings from the public road and he abused Miss B***** in even fouler language, calling her a “cunt” at least once and making at least aggressive approach toward the gate she was resting on, making her flinch. This is shocking behaviour to display towards an old lady.

Held at machine gun point by paramilitary thugs.

True story. In 1994 I was in the scenic town of Orgiva in the Alpujarras foothills of the Sierra Nevada, to the south of Granada, where I had washed up after giving a girl a lift there. She turned out to be a mental patient so I played it cool and gave her the space she needed to giggle at imaginary things.

I was relaxing after the better part of a year in Berlin, exploring the new territory left by the collapse of The Wall.

Having picked up a load of travellers cheques before leaving the cold streets of Berlin  I was now the proud possessor of a £100 Bedford CF camper van which, apart from large lumps dropping off it and the gear lever coming out in my hand, was perfect. I still had a modest supply of travellers cheques in Deutsch marks having sold my fifth hand Ford Escort to a friend once I’d reached Andalusia. I would camp out under under pines and wake to the silver snow capped mountains towering above me, trundle around the mountain roads with the front doors slid back playing my one cassette of reggae golden greats. Sometimes mental patient girl would come with me if there weren’t any trees to talk with.

Waking up one Friday morning in a hippie camp a passing beard mentioned that it was a fiesta and the start of a long weekend a – puente in Spanish. I therefore got my self down to the town in order to have enough cash to tide me over until Tuesday, I had slept most of the morning and by the time I’d found a legal parking space and got to the bank it was nearly 2.00p.m. the beginning of siesta time, after which time the banks wouldn’t open until Tuesday. With 15 minutes to go I was stuck at the end of a queue of Spanish country people all of whom, in the manner of ancient illiterates, wanted to make lengthy and querulous enquiries of the single cashier who worked at the rapid tempo one expects in  rural southern Spain. Eventually the last old peasant lady doddered out in her men’s shoes into the bright splash of sunlight beyond the shadowed portico and it was just me. And not before time, it was almost 2.00.

I resolved to demonstrate to the teller how efficiently these things could go if one didn’t include enquiries about all their interminable amount of relations into the proceedings. Putting down my passport on the marble slab in front of him already open at the page with my photo on it, I showed him the travellers cheques and enquired if I could cash one, being assured with a weary affirmative that such was indeed the case I countersigned in front of him and handed over the cheque and my passport.

It all went well until with my passport open in his hand he glanced at a piece of paper beside him, ldid a double take, looked at me and walked into an office leaving me in the empty bank for five minutes. Eventually he returned, I perked up; a small beer and a tapa were within sight. Instead he took me by the elbow and hustled me to the door. I protested, the cheque had been countersigned in his presence, he was obliged to cash it now. To no avail, the short arsed fool pushed my passport and cheque into my hands and slammed the door behind me. I whirled around to remonstrate but the dark wood of the door was unforthcoming. Sensing someone behind me. I turned to see a pair of Civil Guards, paramilitary rural police, Spain’s answer to the French Gendarmerie.

The Sergeant studied me with interest while the young corporal, I noticed, had what appeared to be a military assault rifle held at an angle across his body. A serious fashion  statement that, but surely a little unnecessary to have a weapon that will shoot through walls, cars and multiple bodies in a built up area I thought. I started to try and tell the “Guardias” about the outrageous treatment that they had just been witness to and the sergeant told me to follow them to the barracks, I protested that the culprit was inside the bank and the sergeant repeated what I now realised was an order. The corporal walked behind me with his long menacing rifle as the sergeant lead us through the plazas and emptying streets of Orgiva. Stall holders and shop keepers shutting up shop glanced our way momentarily and studiedly looked away again, bar staff served customers beer and coffee as they stared with mild curiosity at my predicament.

Somewhere between the bank and the barracks it belatedly dawned on me that I was being taken prisoner…

Watchmen review.

There is nobody so close minded and bigoted  as certain members of the left – what Americans would call liberals.

There are quite a few reviews of the Watchmen film around nowadays, nevertheless having just seen the film last night I feel the need to vent. Not so much at the film as at some of the reviewers.

For those who do not know Watchmen the basic idea is easy to explain: To treat characters like Batman and Superman as if they were real. Allowing two fantastic points, that some people dress up in masks and fight crime and that an American man has become a god, but letting  the rest of the subsequent events play out in as realistic a fashion as possible.

What kind of right wing pervert would dress up in latex and a mask and beat people in alleys? How would public opinion react? How would the cold war have been affected had the USA acquired a real live superman in 1960? How would a superman view humanity, if he could be bothered? All these questions are posed and answered in an intricately structured plot incorporating parallel narratives and multiple flashbacks heavy with metaphors, symbolism and allusion in an alternative 1985 where the USA won the Vietnam war, the right is vastly more powerful and Nixon is still president in a world haunted by an impending nuclear war.

I first saw Watchmen as each of it’s twelve chapters came out month by month back in 1986 and have been looking forward to a film of it since then. Now I have finally seen that film. I had feared an inchoate mess as about a third of the reviewers (generally those who hadn’t read the book), had given a picture of an effects heavy, pretentious and confusing film with the disturbed right wing vigilante Rorschach as the hero. Bearing this in mind I went into the cinema prepared for the worst a film which could only be properly understood if you had read the graphic novel. I emerged confused as to what film some of those reviewers had been watching, the film is as faithful an adaptation of the graphic novel as is realistically possible. Sure, the ending has been altered away from Moore’s original but the film’s ending is more believable and less silly. Yes, much of the plot line has been trimmed, such as the pirate comics, but overall the plot, like the dialogue is a recognizable version of the the original graphic novels. If anything the film could have been a little braver and gone further, much of what little Snyder’s team had added to the story fitted well into it and enhanced it.

The choices of actors were a little underwhelming with the exceptio0n of Jackie Earle Haley who plays a terrifyingly convincing Rorschach, who is admittedly such an extreme character that it must be easier to play than one more nuanced. The other characters also required a great deal  more make up and/or green screen which might well cramp an actors style some what. Overall I did enjoy the performances, especially the Silk Spectre’s fight scenes – for the first time I really believed a female could kick ass, she was as viscerally convincing in her fight scenes as all the male actors (even if she was wearing an all over body condom), but then Snyder remonstrated his skill at combat scenes in “300″ so this comes as no surprise.

I assume that the choice of these less than stellar actors was to avoid superstar dictating changes to parts of the story which they didn’t like., however that might not have been such a bad idea. While the film is very long, it has so much ground to cover and so many bases to touch that it feels somewhat cursory in it’s treatment of the most emotional parts of the book that give us insights into the characters and are slowly and painstakingly constructed and introduced. In the film these seminal events flash past as if in flash forward, as the film accelerates onward towards it’s deadline.  The result is a lack of emotional depth, to avoid this Zack Snyder should have cut the story even more ruthlessly to make room for the  necessary emotional development, as well as hiring some bigger budget actors.

If you haven’t read the book first this lengthy film will require concentration if you are to keep up with the plot and the characters histories, and it does suffer from not having a single protagonist as opposed to a crowd of characters all of whom have complicated back stories that must be filled in.

Maybe this is why some reviewers have seized upon Rorschach as the “hero” of the story, he is the first (live) character we meet as well narrator for  some of the film. Rorschach is nobody’s idea of a hero and it’s just laziness to latch onto the first character that comes along as well as assuming that Watchmen is a simplistic right wing tale. In fact Snyder seems to have made quite an effort to keep Watchmen’s 1980s left credentials intact, possibly because he got so much flak for the perceived right wing bias of “300″, the portrayal of Richard Nixon is almost a caricature albeit one I enjoyed it immensely.

Most reviewers have taken it seriously, but there is a large minority who seem loath to take any film with costumed vigilantes seriously and make no attempt to engage with it. There is an intellectual prejudice this attitude, not wanting to admit that serious issues can be raised in the context of a “superhero” film they make no effort at all to engage with the plot and the issues it raises.

I enjoyed it but, like the book, I need to see it again to decide if it stands up as a film in it’s own right or whether it is merely the film of the book.

A bit of creative writing. Should write the rest of this book one day.

La Tormenta

The wind parted the short, grey, fluffy fur with greedy, curious fingers. The dead badger lay on its side on the apex of the curve in the road, it’s stubby limbs sticking out at angles. It’s mouth a wreckage of smashed teeth in a hideously bent head. Swimming in a congealed mess of blood it’s tongue lolled obscenely from the side of the smashed jaw like the length of dried leather it now was. Greyish blue lengths of intestine spilled from a gap in the pelt of the unfortunate creature, the fur matted into dark metallic red spikes around the wound. A dried stream of sticky, stinking fluid had run down the camber of the road to its edge. A line from the pathetic corpse across the baking grey asphalt to the row of castellated blocks that comprised the crash barrier, sanctuary the creature had never reached.
Jay lifted his head from the greasy, clinging smell of death and looked out from the ramparts of the right-handed bend. The ochre landscape fell away and he could see for twenty miles, across and along the valley. On the far side there was the scattering of white cubes coalescing together to form a town with a church spire amidst the jumble of buildings. Someone had lit a fire a little way outside town and black smoke hung in the still air – a veil across the middle of the valley. Above town blackened hills rose up in the indeterminate distance.
Other white washed towns and villages huddled here and there in hollows of the vast terrain like accumulations of guano. The white utilitarian houses rose up out of the hillsides like a fleet of submarines from a stormy, swelling sea.
At the far end of the valley loomed the sierra, the mountain ranges rumpled skin blocked the end of the valley with a massive finality.
Often there was nothing. Whole swathes of landscape were empty, desolate grassland, flat and devoid of human life. Bleached blond sun dried plains of grass and weeds shimmering with heat haze. The sun a hot, brass coin in a blue glazed bowl burning above it all.
Jay peered down through eyes narrowed against the glare, he saw olives, bushes and herbs, ragged lines of cacti supporting the edges of the terraces closer to him that stepped down to the rambla. The dry riverbed, scattered with yellow rocks the size of cars, was as arid and unforgiving as the rest of this hard land. There was water somewhere there though because amidst the cacti there was a little grove of rattling cane, flowers popping up amongst sprigs of lush green grass all overseen by an enormously thick, gnarled olive. That must have been where the badger was going to drink he mused. It had never made it and now lay seething with flies. Still and all it was quick, whoever had hit it had being going a fair clip, Jay thought as he walked away from the droning frenzy. Some time ago too judging by the flies and stench, but that didn’t take too long in this heat.
Back across the road the car waited, standing on a patch of dirt in the shade of a sheer wall of rock A solitary, wind stunted almond tree stood guard above – an ancient, crippled crone, her hunchback turned against the cruel wind. Beyond that the broad sweep of the hill rose up away from him, an arid fell, far off to the right slow moving specks coalesced into a shepherd, his dogs, sheep and goats, heads down intently cropping what they could.
He got out of the eye squintingly bright light, walked into the shade and flapped the untucked bottom of his shirt to waft breeze over his torso for a moment, as he did so he caught sight of his distorted reflection in the car windows. There was an absent faraway look in his eyes that reminded him of a dog being scratched. Goofy, he thought, then collected himself, squatted down in front of the squat hatchback and peered underneath the car’s nose, no damage as far as he could see. Amazing, it had thrown the car all over the road hitting it like he did. But nevertheless there was no dent, hope it hadn’t put the steering out though, he fretted, a nightmare trying to get that done right round here Spanish mechanics could be right monkeys this far out into the sticks.
He straightened up, the faint effort making a prickle of sweat rise anew on his skin, and walked around the car.
He thumped down wearily into the driving seat, pulling the door closed, twisted the key. The engine caught and a split second later the car’s stereo lit up in a blaze of orange and green, blaring thunderingly inane music that mocked his mood like a slap in the face until he stabbed the off button and it abruptly died.
Dust boiled like liquid beneath the churning front wheels as they span, then first one, then another chirped and found grip as they climbed back onto the thick ribbon of asphalt and the Volkswagen scurried away round the bend, it’s shell gleaming with metallic luster it’s array of antennae spines cutting through the air.

Here are some of my old posts from Journal Space.

Global warming, schmobal warming

So much for the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, smoke curling through golden crispy leaves in the apple orchards.
Came out of the university gym just in time to see the sky turning an unautumnal shade of dark grey, I cycled across Cambridge in a hailstorm, quite surprisingly chilly that. But never mind, it stopped when I got to where I’d parked and put the bike onto back of the car, by which time I was thoroughly soaked and chilled . Great. Talk about Sod’s Law.
Got home, and after I’d eaten I found I was out of soya ‘milk’, by this time the outside temperature is only a degree above 0 Celsius and there’s a strong wind lashing rain against the windows so I decide to take the Land-Rover which is fresh from it’s muddy adventures with Hertfordshire 4×4 club at the weekend, the electric fan isn’t working, but some how I don’t think that’ll matter tonight. Hey, maybe I can contribute a little to global warming! I get the diesel powered biscuit tin moving and there’s sleet tipping out of the cone of light onto the misted up wind-screen, this is the sort of weather I was expecting in mid winter, not mid autumn. It’s almost freezing and don’t my toes know it! But then why am I surprised? This is northern Europe and even a cursory examination of history shows that in previous centuries it’s been much colder and much warmer at various times, it just so happens that Britain gets the gulf stream and is generally much warmer than it otherwise would be.
I realise as I trundle slowly along the pitch black lanes that although I’ve been scoffing at the whole global warming thing I must have been believing it really. I’ve been expecting milder winters and baking hot summers. I’m not the only one it seems, at the 4×4 trial there were people out in the muddy fields in indoor clothes, (I was in wellies and waxed jacket – I’m not quite that thick).
We seem to think that we are living in exceptional times and the old rules don’t count, whereas in fact the world keeps on turning; after seven fat years come seven lean ones and after some warm years it is quite possible that we’ll have a few normally horrible wet cold ones. Stupid of me not to have planned for the worst and saved my money for warmer socks and an Aussie Driza-Bone coat.
Tomorrow I shall split logs.

posted Oct 28th, 2008

water colour neon sky.

Lovely subtle sunset out the window, long brush strokes of purple, carmine and blue steel  against a tangerine and pink background. Spent contrails gradually being picked apart by the high up winds meander down to the horizon where the orange sparks of the streetlamps light the path of the great north road.

posted Oct 18th

Natural law; What goes up…

I have often thought that there might be a comparison to be drawn between economics and the natural world – survival of the fittest, red in tooth and claw, dog eat dog and all that. Particulary how the flow of money and the the inexorable flow of a river are comparable; sooner or later the water finds it’s way to the sea however we might divert it’s course or tap it’s energy.
Here in the UK, Labour’s Gordon Brown has long crowed that his party put an end to the boom and bust econmic cycle of the previous of government of the Tories. This is now being widely derided in the light of the world economy’s toxic debt problems, rightly so.
But why did people assume that the rosy situation that has prevailed for the past 13 years or so was a new reality and would endure forever?
I, personally, always assumed it was too good to last, whether ever rising house prices here or in Spain, (naive Spaniards in Andalucia were constantly claiming that house Spain was an exception and prices would never stop going up and that no mattter how unprepossesing the house they were offering, you couldn’t lose if you bought it, in part a symptom of a lack of historical perspective). One doesn’t need to be an economist or historian to discern the pattern, one merely needs to look back at the ebb and flow of the economy over the last couple of decades or so, it seems like almost willful ignorance. I am in early middle age now, so I have no particular store of wisdom, but when I saw the amount of big, expensive cars on the road and  parked outside of small houses it seemed very obvious that a lot of people were cashing up part of the theoretical value of their overpriced houses and living beyond their means. People expect cheap luxury as their due nowadays, it’s not enough to have a 2nd hand Toyota with wind up windows, they must get a brand new Lexus with electrically adjustable seats.
I assumed that outside of the noise and hurley burley the majority of the people in the bourses and stock exchanges of the world were quietly making safe, boring and conservative investments in preparation for the inevitable downturn that must sooner or later occur. Was I wrong?
Back here Brown would have been better advised to claim that he had taken the edge off the boom and bust and tamed the force of the economic waves crashing upon the shore.

posted Oct 15th, 2008

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie

Lovely sunny weather and the farmers are busy getting in the crops they should have earlier, in the process of course making millions of mice homeless. Bad time to be a mouse, good time to be a cat or an owl.
I was having a nice cup of coffee on the lawn when Manuka wagged her way towards me with something in her mouth, in the yard behind her I could see Otis the cat looking around for something with a pissed off look on his face. Manuka dropped a dead mouse in front of me, I congratulated her and went back to the credit crunch and short selling.
An hour later as I was crouched trying to clean something vile from her pelt Manuka opened her mouth in pleasure at what she assumed to be a particularly thorough stroking session and out slithered the mouse, now revoltingly slimy, onto my leg. She’d been sucking the thing for an hour, like a boiled sweet.

posted Sep 19th, 2008

Denkmal

Had a song running round my head for a couple of days now; Denkmal by Wir Sind Helden.
(“Komm mal ans Fenster komm her zu mir.
Siehst du da drüben gleich da hinterm Wellblechzaun,
Da drüben auf dem Platz vor Aldi haben sie
unser Abbild in Stein gehaun”.)

It reminds me of when I briefly worked as a civilian employee for the British army in Berlin. Between the windows of a canteen and the fence of Spandau there was a memorial (Denkmal) to the German dead of WW1.
Alone in the neat, clean base it was uncleaned  with a drift of dead leaves around it’s base. Not excessively so, but enough to let the passers by on the street see the contrast.

(“Komm auf die Straße komm her zu mir.
Überall Blumen und Girlanden halb zerknüllt.
Sieht so aus als hätten die unser Denkmal heute Nacht
schon ohne uns enthüllt.”)

The monument was deliberately snubbed by the soldiers it seemed to me, it was a memorial to the enemy, men who had killed and been killed by an earlier generation of British soldiers. It felt wrong to leave it so forlorn and alone, I felt that I should fetch a broom and clean it up. But I was not a soldier and I was scared of the reaction so I did and said nothing.

(“Komm auf die Beine komm her zu mir.
Es wird bald hell und wir haben nicht ewig Zeit.
Wenn uns jetzt hier wer erwischt sind wir für immer vereint
in Beton und Seligkeit.”)

Shortly afterwards I left the army’s employ and fell in with a group of artists with whom I lead a hand to mouth existence for a year.

(“Siehst du die Inschrift da unten bei den Schuhen?
Da steht in goldener Schrift wir sollen in Ewigkeit ruhen.
Hol den Vorschlaghammer… “)

posted Sep 18th, 2008

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