No, Boka your Kotorska!

The bay surrounding Kotor in Montenegro is the stuff of glamourous films. As the teeny Fokker plane took us from Gatwick airport to the roasting tarmac of Tivat, James Bond could easily drop out of a plane in a parachute to land on a yaught moored on the bay, and sip some of the local wine. Postcard-style pictures are only too easy to take.






We picked up the colossal suitcase belonging to our friends, Chris and Vanja, which we had checked in as our own to save them a nasty baggage surcharge (a comical phrase, since they were getting married), and went through customs. The heat wafted off the parking lot, cooking tyres and the unprotected heads of relatives waiting, and the landlord of the self-catering flat we booked welcomed us in with a sign with my name on it.

"Hi, I'm David. We're just waiting for our friends", I bumbled.

"???", he replied

"Dobar dan" was my feeble attempt at greeting the man in his language as he started to gesture us towards his car.

"Ah, dobar dan!" he beamed awkwardly. And thus began our series of mimes and broken Serbian from a phrasebook which saw us through ten days of mistranslated fun.

Not so bad a start. Our apartment terrace looked over the bay, perched on a hill above the many seaside flats and tropical trees of Tivat harbour. The town itself had the tacky attractiveness of any seaside conurbation with its stalls of ice cream and odd flashy toys, minus the overweight families of Western Europe. Most couples looked like they were straight out of a swimwear fold-out of a fashion magazine; tanned and tight-buttocked with designer sunglasses to boot. Naturally we were completely inconspicuous.

Tivat has a harbour and lots of swimming and water-polo areas, but is otherwise fairly low-key compared to its neighbouring beach towns. We spent the next few days hopping on and off buses which careered down the coastal roads, brushing aside pesky pedestrians in their way, to laze about the little jetties and stony beaches of Stoliv, Prcanj (get your English-speaking tongues around that one!) and Kotor itself. The bay has endless coves, each of which seem to open up as you pass the previous one, all framed with white rocky hills and mountains, and is basked in sunlight from morning till evening. There are no tides. People leave fishing rods out when the day gets hot, and come and get their dinner on the end of the line when things cool down. God made lots of time when he made Montenegro.

We forgot our London rhythms and slowed down. Our flat had a massive terrace we could eat breakfast on every morning. Turkish coffee, fluffy white bread from the local bakery, cheap, local fruit and vegetables from the amusingly-named Panto supermarket. We took turns figuring out how to make a meal of the ingredients we got out of the teeny shops, not yet aware of how to get to the market. Meat and fish were readily available, but somehow we weren't hungry for that sort of thing until lunch in one of the local restaurants. Ten euros would see you through several courses of freshly-cooked meat or fish and a glass of the locally-grown "Plantaze" wine. The reds were better than the whites, and beer, of course cost less than fruit juice.



Of the ten days we were there, we spent three visiting historical sites and going on walks, the most memorable of which - for me - was the walk around the old city walls of Kotor, up to the fortress which overlooks the city. Deceptively close to the town centre, access to the fortress is by a set of stairs reminiscent of Citizen Kane's Xanadu. We went through two bottles of water just getting to the top, and had to stop to drink every few minutes. The view was definitely worth it, even though the fortress itself is a bit overgrown and graffitied, with confusing signs telling you not to enter it after you've been charged two euros to go there. But yes, memorable for the eyes and the legs alike.

Budva is another popular town in the bay. Its old town juts into the sea and is full of orthodox sites to visit, with the manageable feel of those stoney Roman villages with their cobblestones and piazzas. It's definitely the most touristy of the towns in the bay; the beaches are covered with signs in English and animations for party-hungry beachgoers, but restauranteurs and those pesky people who rent parasols on beaches were less than pleasant. We had a fantastic meal in an Italian restaurant, where 8 euros saw me through two courses of fish. Ruth enjoyed the food too, as well as the better quality of restaurant decor in Budva, and had plenty of time to poke about Budva's many jewelry shops while I enquired about trips to the local monasteries. The town is definitely worth visiting, but we were both left wanting to go back to Kotor or Tivat which are touristy but somehow more friendly and manageable.

Our trip finished with a flourish with Chris and Vanja's wedding. They had been busy sorting out last-minute details (like the location of the civil ceremony!) while we were swanning about beaches and wondering what to cook that evening, so we hadn't seen that much of them and didn't really know what to expect. We arrived at Tivat harbour suited and booted for the event to find a massive boat on two levels, all decked out for meals, dancing, a band and the table for the marriage registry to take place. The guests piled onto the boat only to be fed lunch on the way to Kotor for the church ceremony in St Nikolas, and were led in a procession into the church. The ceremony itself was sung by the two priests and was a moving set of rituals (incense, tying the couple's hands with a cloth, kissing and wearing each others' crowns of flowers...), all of which Chris followed in Serbian and performed flawlessly. Vanja's elegant train was trailed down the church steps and the guests proceeded to assail them with good wishes and take photographs with them. And despite the coordinated American-football style throw, Vanja's sister Sanja lost the bouquet flying past her outside the church to another maid.

We got back on the boat for an evening of festivities like something out of a Greek epic. Several courses of lamb, pork, potatoes, salads and vegetables were served, and drinks of every description were served for the rest of the afternoon and evening, complimentary to all guests. When I shyly mentioned I couldn't eat meat, the waiters went off and came back with a massive plate of fried squid and potatoes which I gladly murdered before the bemused eyes of the rest of the guests. The band played, the speeches were given, the guests danced, and we occasionally looked up from what we were doing to remind ourselves of the gobsmacking surroundings it was all happening in. Turquoise water with fish literally leaping out to see our boat, mountains and trees reaching over the bay... We were even greeted by a nun on an island in the middle of the water, who waved her approval of the wedding proceedings as we sailed past. The hills were, indeed, alive with the sound of music (i.e. the band on our boat).


The evening culminated with the civil ceremony, translated into English by an interpreter, with the wishes and blessings of Tivat's officials. The best man's speech was tame by British reckoning (but surprisingly unflattering to the groom by Montenegrin standards), and both fathers gave their wishes and thanks to each other's families. Chris stunned the guests by delivering his speech in Montenegrin, and translating it for the Anglophones, reading some parts off the page, but speaking others unfalteringly. He then proceeded to lose all kudos gained from his speech with Vanja's family by dancing alongside his beautiful bride.

The sky lit up with stars over the coast and fireworks over Kotor's festival, also going on that night, and we indulged in the power ballads of the band by dancing, drinking, eating and squawking our little hearts out (yes, Ruth I was actually dancing, it wasn't a seizure). By the time the boat docked and everyone was off, we were all worn out from an experiential overload, and had to head home to pack for our 8.30am flight home (sorry Vanja! I know you wanted me to embarrass myself further by dancing in a club).

After a speedy packing process and long showers we got home for a few hours sleep before hopping back on our little Fokker of an airplane (sorry, I can't resist!) with our tans, our bottle of local red wine, and minus about 4 years of worries and stress which Tivat's coastal breeze blew away for us.

What more could you ask for of a summer holiday?

Back by popular demand

'Tis hard to say if greater Want of Skill
Appear in Writing or in Judging ill;
But, of the two; less dang'rous th'Offence,
To tire our Patience, than mislead our Sense

Edmund Spenser, from An Essay on Criticism

Unsure as to whether to continue torturing this carcass of a weblog, I write on.

Recent months have been eventful. Moving to a new flat in Ealing, combining the pressures of a Masters and a full-time teaching job in a super-academic French school, and trying to squeeze in time for my partner in between short spates of sleep... It's been hectic, horrifically hectic, but oh so fun.

Twenty-eight is an odd year to celebrate, if that's what it is that I've been doing. Spending the evening at home enjoying time with people I really want to be with seems to be a whole lot more fun than going out and painting the town red. Then again, I've always been a bit party-shy. I guess I feel old and young all at the same time.

London life suits me right down to the ground at this stage of my existence. Down to the underground, to be more precise, which is where I seem to spend most of my day, bussing between lessons I teach and lessons I am taught both in and out of academic contexts. I love the hectic, unforgiving, bustle of London now, and no longer see it as a drag, despite the days when it literally drags me downwards by the shoulders (a leftover symptom of September's glandular fever perhaps, or perhaps just a psychosomatic emblem of London's energy drain...). I arrived in the Lycee this morning to see the sun reflecting off the rooftop of the V&A museum thinking yet again that my morning trip to work is a lifetime pilgrimage for so many visitors to the UK. I'm darn lucky to have landed here.

Cédric Clapish made a film a few years ago, the title of which summarizes my feelings about London right now: L'Auberge Espagnole. Like the fabled Spanish taverns, this city brings back to you whatever you bring to it. Be careful what you wish for if you decide to live here.

Musings

Long time no write. I guess it must have been the move, the new job, the new partner, the whole new life, and the new annoying glandular fever virus that have kept me from this blog for so long. Oh, and the new pain in my rear lack of internet access from home too. I hate BT. With a passion.

Now that I've got something worth describing, I thought I'd summarise the last few months' experience of London, for all my huge audience around the world. Firstly, there's been the new job. A myriad of oddness, working for the French government, teaching English - sometimes the British curriculum - as an Irishman, thought to be English, among French colleagues... The school is something of a conundrum. I won't go into the politics here, but suffice it to say that the little channel of water which separates Britain from France is no barrier compared to the cultural chasm which separates how they think of education.

The move; I now live in Acton. It's an odd place, full of internet cafes and dodgy grocery stores where people look at you funny if you come in and ask for things they'd normally have in a grocery shop. It's an odd mixture of Arab-muslims, antipodeans and Poles, and shops which seem to cater for one of those three groups. It's got a great Portugese restaurant, though, where I just had a fresh coffee and apple pie for £2. In these times when the pound is worth less than the rouble, it's worth saving where you can...

My new lady. What can I say. It makes all the difference to have someone in one's life who can both boost and kick your self-satisfied male ego. That's Ruth. The most colourful, musical person I've ever met.

Onto a less pleasant subject, glandular fever. It's the strangest illness, because it's viral and can't be medicated, and doesn't express itself till I make some kind of physical effort. So no running, and therefore a feeling of constant tiredness. It basically doesn't go away, but dies down within 6 months, if you're lucky. Until it does, you feel like you've been hit over the head with a shovel half the time, and feel absolutely normal the rest of it. People get tired of you feeling tired. Are you ill or are you well? You were fine yesterday, make up your mind... It's all the more frustrating for someone like me who wants to either be healthy or die trying. Grr.

Finally, my MA course. It's in Critical and Cultural Theory, and we started last Monday with Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. I wasn't too impressed with this essay, but have taken to reading Benjamin, and think I might be a convert after all. Meanwhile, it's got me back into reading all sorts of pretentious European philosophy. That's the idea.

This exhibition is what I got up to yesterday before burning out and going home to sleep. This guy makes waxworks of various bodies, and they are frighteningly real. You arrive in the exhibition hall and it looks like somebody has just fainted or fallen down.




As you can see in the second picture, the body is just a reproduction of himself. It doesn't look like much here, but it's really convincing when you're actually there. He captures a lot of what Foucault had to say about the body and how we have a pornographic way of looking at bodies nowadays. Our aesthetics in the media seems to be obsessed with turning the body into something to be admired or loathed, but in any case changed and improved. Xin shows us the body the way it is, and we wish it wasn't.

Too loose

It's been a while. I've been so caught up with visiting apartments around London I've hardly squeezed in enough time to write a short entry.

I was watching Les Poupées Russes by Cédric Clapisch today, which had to be one of the best films I've seen in recent years. It's the sequel to L'Auberge Espagnole, a rambunctious tale of a Parisian exchange student's life-changing year in Barcelona, and the odd cultural mixity he finds there. This sequel skips about ten years into his life, where he becomes a script writer for French daytime television, and narrates his experience of trying to make it as an author, punctuated with his complicated love life.

The film contrasts Xavier's expectations as a single Parisian male in his thirties with those of his British and Spanish friends and girlfriends. He seems uneasy around butch, testosterone-driven men and prissy, girly women, being much more comfortable around his lesbian best friend. A sentiment I can definitely empathise with. Too much of one hormone seems to really mess people up.

Being back in Toulouse, I've had the joy of being around my niece a lot, go running when I want to, cook meals with my sister and play badminton with my brother-in-law. It's my idea of the best sort of holiday. It contrasts nicely with the frenzied, money-fuelled, angst-driven existence of London life. I just can't imagine going on one of those package holidays full of drunks like my housemates seem to do.

While I was running along the canals in Toulouse yesterday, one of the barges was named "Too loose", which seems to summarise a foreigner's impressions of the city in a clever pun the locals probably don't get. The Toulousains are chilled out, not too bothered about things. Great for a holiday, but probably too loose for my liking, as a place to live.

Off to Avignon and the Dentelles de Montmirail in the morning. Let's see what that brings...

Blues Festival

Another weekend going down like a fine wine into Gorbachev's gizzard. Boy am I loving this city.

I was flathunting in Acton, looking for the perfect house, which I might well have found, to share with a new cohort of potential housemates. While I was left waiting in the estate agent's office, I picked up a paper which had an ad for the Ealing Blues festival. It was going on all day, but I would have enough time to attend when the flat visits were over, since one of my friends bailed on me for dinner that evening (not mentioning any names, Kades).

So here was some of the result. The sound is pretty awful on this because it was so loud in the tent, but I've rarely come across a band as good as this one. Funkydory, they're called. They rocked the funk out of the whole funking audience. I like saying 'funk' as a euphemism, you'll observe.

This festival is the closest the English get to the big Mediterranean musical gatherings like those you get in Andalucia or Marocco. Babies potter about your legs, and drunken granddads dance unabashedly as you order your beer and your burger just outside the tent. It feels like a giant family holiday with really good food and music.

I'm hoping the afterlife is something like this. There's an episode of Six Feet Under where Claire visits her dead father in a dream and they end up in a sort of festival like this one, to represent life after death. If only...

An Odd Weekend

Rufus Wainwright's voice is haunting. I found that out after receiving a text message on Thursday saying:

"We've got an Xtra ticket for Rufus Wainwright on Saturday. Want 2 come?"

to which I willfully replied

"F*** yes!"

and off to the gig I went. The venue was Kenwood House, up the back end of Hampstead Heath off towards Highgate. You either take a bus all the way round the park (if you're clever), or you walk all the way through the Heath and get hopelessly lost about forty times, along with countless other wayfarers with their picnic hampers.

Yes, how Hampstead. It was an outdoor 'picnic' concert in a heritage site, and the Pimms flowed aplenty. The sun, however, didn't. A layer of threatening dark cloud sat over the whole of London as Rufus mocked himself between songs, and prayed that his audience didn't vanish off home with the first signs of downpour (I don't know that many fans who are that fanatic as to sit in a muddy park for the evening when they could be at home. It's not Woodstock after all!). But the rain held off long enough for me to be blown away.

He was interesting, funny and poignant at intervals. He stopped songs halfway through if he didn't like them, and had the confidence to deliver the standards with real gusto rather than warmed-up hackery. I was left in that reverent that the really good concerts give.

So Saturday night edged to a close as we all left the park and tried to cram onto buses to get home. Sparing you the account of the journey, I was back in Twickenham by about midnight, preparing for the race I was meant to run the next day.

I had signed up for a 15 mile race out in Kent, in a really pretty area called Bewl. The idea was to break myself into longer distance running by trying out a half marathon, and I had to get out there on a train. Now luckily on Saturday night, despite getting home a lot later than planned, I checked the trains only to find there was no way from my place into London to get the train I wanted. So I set the alarm for 6.00am to be ready to get the Tube into London.

Everyone in this city is completely used to the idea that transport just doesn't work. It's the norm. Nobody complains that the bus is 20 minutes late; they just look at you blankly when you comment on it, as if to say "Well yes. What else did you expect?" So by 7.45 I was still sitting on my rear, under the rain, with all my running gear on, cursing my stars that the transport was bust.

I decided to go into town anyway to see if I could at least get the next train in, and run the distance even though the race was over. But then as I approached Picadilly Circus, the Tube packed up completely with runners. It turned out the London 10km run was on that very same morning, and was about to start at 9.30. I took my chances and went to see if I could enter. And I did.

It was a gruelling race, trying to keep up with the front row of runners I ended up with. These are people who don't go to bed at night without running at least 10km or the equivalent on a rowing machine. They look like they're made of sheer sinew. Hardly any bone, not even to mention fat. Just bark-like sinew.

I completed the run in 41 minutes, which is a competitive enough time for a beginner, and to my glee, gave chase to a Ugandan who looked like he was born running. It rained, the sun shone, the cloud came, and it rained again, and still the crowd of charity runners cheered us on. It was a real privilege.

Where else but London could you wake up after a Rufus Wainwright concert in a park, only to stumble into a 25,000 person race the next morning...?

Badgers

"The world of badgers is in some ways analogous with the human world. Like us, their behaviour is greatly influenced by their need for homes and living space, and being social like we are, they too have their problems of learning how to live together ..... and with us"

Ernest Neal

Ah, the badger. A completely irrelevant and unimportant issue in today's Britain with its teen knifings and its completely volatile political landscape, and its overpaid bottom-teeth-grinning Keira Knightleys. But think again...

In the words of the great www.badgerland.co.uk...

The Badger (Latin name Meles meles) is one of the most popular animals in the UK. Widespread across England and Wales (with a few in Scotland), the badger is loved by most but seen by few. All too often the Badger and its environment are harmed by man (by accident or deliberately).

There's food for thought to fill your lost internet hours.

"Um why the bejesus are you filling up this godforsaken weblog with this drivel?" I hear you ask. Well for two reasons:

Firstly, there's a badger in my garden, right now. It's there, burying itself under a bush, which is right under my clothes line, and I actually shied away from the little fuzzball. How wimpy am I? Then on reflection, I had a good look, and the little critter was curled up in a ball with its head underneath it, pretending I wasn't there.

See now in that sense, I'm surrounded by badgers. People who turn away from reality, bury their heads, and hope nobody notices them, whenever things go wrong. I mean, there's a bit of badger in everyone, and I'm no exception. Right now, for instance, I'm badgering my way out of marking the piles of Year 10 coursework that's stacked on my desk. Why else would I be blogging about badgers.



My colleagues like to avoid any conversation which doesn't relate to work, ever since I called them on singling out people they don't like from their little "friendship" groups. They asked to make sure that nobody invited the Drama teacher for drinks with us even though she was right there in the same pub, so - being who I am - I went right over and invited her to join us. From that moment, it was decided I was to be avoided at all costs. I'm no longer part of that badger set. I cry a river every night in my cosy little bed, as you can imagine.

And if you're wondering, yes, teachers are always that immature. It's uncanny. They spend their time around petty, surly groups of teenagers, telling them to grow up, and this is what they do.

So I've been badgered out of the group. But still, there are times when curling up in your own ball and keeping the outside world out can actually be a creative way of dealing with a problem. Recently I've taken to wearing an AIDS badge on my lapel, in support of a Stuttgart-based initiative I was involved in, and a good few kids started asking what it was and why I was wearing it, which encouraged me to keep wearing it. Silly me for thinking that kids should be asking questions nowadays when it comes to AIDS. But in the den of brilliance of my staffroom, this was read as code for being gay. Of course, who else would wear an AIDS badge but a gay man? And this wasn't just the gaggle of gossiping English teachers, but an outwardly gay teacher who was alerted for exactly the same reasons. He thought: "single, vegetarian, interested in theatre and musicals, wearing an AIDS badge... there's no way a straight man would live like that" So when I was asked as to my sexual preferences by one of the more dim-witted teachers, the conversation went something like this:

(Let me just set the scene here)

Dramatis personae:

Me: me
C: Dimwit blonde middle-management English teacher
D: Outwardly gay Canadian drama teacher

D: (Opening his mail, without looking up) So what's with the AIDS button?
Me: I wear it all the time. I was involved in an organisation which brings AIDS patients into schools and has them dispel fears from the kids
D: Really? I see. I just started wondering about you. You know... you eat fish, you like theatre, now the AIDS badge...
C: See I knew there was something there
Me: Right...
C: See D. likes young men so you'd better watch out. Much younger men.
(D shuffles awkwardly, reading his mail intently)

C: (Trying to break the silence after the awkward 'joke') So are you...?
Me: Am I what?
C: Well... No, I was just joking.
Me: Well, you just never know, do you?

(C looks at me askew)

Me: Like Woody Allen says, it increases your chances for a date on Friday nights by 50%
C: So you're not letting on then.
Me: I just did.

(The conversation moves on to something even more inane and pointless, probably to do with the colour of somebody's skirt on the weekend, while C flicks her tall heels at somebody an twiddles her hair. I'm not even sure, I probably was mentally dead by then)

So that was my badger moment this week. It keeps them guessing, that lovely coven of well-intentioned teachers and the concerns which keep them from realising how boring their lives are and throwing themselves under the first Picadilly line train.

Then again, it's good for the psyche having people around who keep you on your toes. No wonder I'm in such badger-mode around my staffroom.

So let's finish with a literary moment, just in case this post hasn't been insane enough. John Clare who went totally loop-the-loop and ended up in an asylum, wrote this poem with a predictable title based on this post. I bid you goodnight and good burrowing.

Badger

When midnight comes a host of dogs and men
Go out and track the badger to his den,
And put a sack within the hole, and lie
Till the old grunting badger passes by.
He comes an hears - they let the strongest loose.
The old fox gears the noise and drops the goose.
The poacher shoots and hurries from the cry,
And the old hare half wounded buzzes by.
They get a forked stick to bear him down
And clap the dogs and take him to the town,
And bait him all the day with many dogs,
And laugh and shout and fright the scampering hogs.
He runs along and bites at all he meets:
They shout and hollo down the noisy streets.

He turns about to face the loud uproar
And drives the rebels to their very door.
The frequent stone is hurled where'er they go;
When badgers fight, then everyone's a foe.
The dogs are clapped and urged to join the fray'
The badger turns and drives them all away.
Though scarcely half as big, demure and small,
He fights with dogs for hours and beats them all.
The heavy mastiff, savage in the fray,
Lies down and licks his feet and turns away.
The bulldog knows his match and waxes cold,
The badger grins and never leaves his hold.
He drives the crowd and follows at their heels
And bites them through - the drunkard swears and reels

The frighted women take the boys away,
The blackguard laughs and hurries on the fray.
He tries to reach the woods, and awkward race,
But sticks and cudgels quickly stop the chase.
He turns again and drives the noisy crowd
And beats the many dogs in noises loud.
He drives away and beats them every one,
And then they loose them all and set them on.
He falls as dead and kicked by boys and men,
Then starts and grins and drives the crowd again;
Till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies
And leaves his hold and crackles, groans, and dies.

John Clare