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