Armchair Gardener

A few weeks ago, I needed the script of Arthur Miller's The Crucible in a hurry, and when I drew a blank in the bookshops, I went looking for it online. Web-savvy friends pointed me in the right direction, and I found what I needed, but along the way I came across a recorded performance at Audible.com, a subsidiary of Amazon. I wasn't sure I'd actually use a subscription, but I went for the free trial download anyway! It was an L.A. Theatre Works production, and very good.

I decided to take out a subscription. I like something interesting to listen to when I'm knitting. I'm a fan of online BBC radio, and TED Talks, but at Audible there are readings of unabridged novels and non-fiction, as well as performed narratives and dramatisations of plays - and I can hear samples before I buy.

So today, I've been listening (again) to my February selection, a performed narrative of Paul Fleischman's novel Seedfolks. It's so good - and so well done! And on this dull, cold still-winter day, with the one visible tree between autumn berries and spring buds,

and even my sunshine puddies struggling for the energy to nod at me,

(We preserve the happy fiction that I actually bought them for my husband....) I've been listening to this story of a community garden, and doing Jigzone puzzles of growing things. No aubergines, unfortunately. I think the aubergine is one of the most beautiful things the earth produces.

Incidentally, Paul's name caught my eye because I read Sid Fleischman's books when I was growing up. Chancy and the Grand Rascal, and Djingo Django were titles that shouted from the library shelves! Father and son. Marvellous.

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Elif Shafak - identity politics

A friend - a New Zealander who has lived for decades in Spain and Turkey, and become fluent in three languages (¡Pués! ¿Donde está mi Aprende Gramatica Y Vocabulario?) - is reading The Forty Rules of Love, by Elif Shafak, and recommended this talk as an introduction to a remarkable writer.

Presumably to keep me occupied until she's finished, and lends me her copy.

Now resident in a third country - and an ex-patriate for half my adult life -I found plenty to think about here. Never mind the kids, let's hear it for us Third Culture Grown-Ups.

5. You live in the USA. Do you feel an immigrant or outsider, or do you feel committed with American history? How hard was it to do your creative writing directly in English?

It’s a bit ironic but my feeling of being an outsider, a latecomer, and a native-foreigner in Turkey subsided when I came to the USA where I am a foreigner. It is relatively easier to deal with “being a stranger in a strange land” than “being a stranger in your homeland”. Either way I have to deal with a sense of non-belonging and loss wherever I go. I am neither fully in Istanbul nor fully here in the USA. May be there is no such thing as being “fully rooted” for me.
In time I stopped asking myself where I belonged. I realized I belong to many places at the same time. According to the Islamic narrative there is a tree in heaven, which has no roots in the ground and instead has its roots where its branches are supposed to be. That’s how I feel. I have no roots in the ground but my roots are up in the air. It is in this sense that I am connected to both Turkey and the USA. Hague interview 2005

...... What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed......

Excuse me. I'm just popping out to Casa del Libro.......

P.S. This way to Elif Shafak's website (Turkish and English).

P.P.S. Love the Intel ad at the end - Ha!

Un poco más

We just got back from La Fontana de Oro. This is one of Madrid's many Irish bars, and a great live music venue. (The link is a Top 10 Live Music guide, and also lists Café Central, another favourite, so I'll probably be following up on some of the other venues in the next few months.)

This was our second visit. We took a walk last night, and came across it then - happily - because a) we were planning to go and listen to Sí Sí Riders again tonight - this time with lots of people from work - but couldn't quite find the Calle Victoria on our streetmap; and b) Capítan Soul happened to be on, playing a solid R&B set. They were very good, though the lead guitarist's vocals weren't up to their overall musicianship. Their website shows 2 female singers in a 4/5 piece group, but they were playing as an all-male three-piece last night. I'd definitely go again if they had their full line-up, and as it was, we stayed til gone 1 a.m. and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

La Fontana de Oro has its thirteenth anniversary this month, and a full programme of live music. Actually, it's the Irish bar that's 13 : the original FdO opened for business in the 1840s, as a cafe and - literally - a chat room - where people gathered to discuss life , the universe, and everything. Like the Café Comercial, where we went last week, this evolved into one of Madrid's tertulias, or literary circles, and the setting for Benito Pérez Galdós's first novel. Er..... that would be.... La Fontana de Oro ........

I'd never heard of Pérez Galdós before, but that says more about my ignorance of Spanish literature than anything else. Wikipedia says that many consider him second only to Cervantes.

Anyway, he was a contemporary of the Valencian artist, Joaquín Sorolla (Now him I have heard of, and appreciate: I saw an exhibition of his work last year, in Granada, and framed the poster.) And here's Sorolla's portrait of Pérez Galdós:

The FdO has a copy painted on tiles. A nice touch.

And Sí Sí Riders turned in another lively evening's entertainment. Those guys can really play.

I think we're having a lie-on tomorrow.

Oh, and it seems that there's a ghost, too. In England, we go for headless ghosts, but this one is apparently bottomless.

The weekend

Today's plan was to sleep til I woke, then go into school to go through Wardrobe for costumes to supply the gaps in our production.

That's the great thing about working in a school with a history of shows: plenty of costumes to be recycled individually or in sets.

In my mind's eye, I see the fairy costumes from our 2001 production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream': that production was very different in style from our 'Merry Wives' - and it was about actual fairies, not a bunch of jokers dressed up for a giggle - but the fairy costumes are the right colour, length and weight for adaptation for our motley assembly, so that will do nicely.

We're also using the Wicked Witch costume from last year's 'Oz*'; a veil from the 2002 'Arabian Nights'; the Blue Fairy from 'Pinocchia' (where we didn't have a strong enough boy for the lead, and cast a girl instead - and she was super), and some staff donations (our Expat Leaving collection).

Howsoever, having slept til I woke, at 9.45 - yay! - I plonked myself down on the sofa with a cup of tea and A Hat Full of Sky, sequel to The Wee Free Men, which I read last week, beginning reluctantly, and only for research purposes. I have to tell you, though: A Hat Full of Sky made me laugh and cry. Crivens!

The difference between this and the clever wise-crackery of Terry Pratchett's early books (as I remember them) is remarkable. Reading them, I could feel the writer working hard at being funny and clever; and there were times when the characters - however sympathetic or imaginative - read as vehicles for the tongue-in-cheek allusions and puns. And it irritated me.

Art catches you unawares, then draws you in through successive layers of meaning. (Note subjective opinion handed down as Truth. Don't you love blogging?) It gives you the swan (....just popping down to Cliche Central for a moment.......) gliding effortlessly on the surface of the water, not the rapid, urgent paddle of webbed feet, and a big sign with a pointing finger urging everyone to looklooklook at the cleverness of the illusion. Rembrandt and Monty Python don't belong on the same page except in MAD comics.

On reflection, I think that my irritation with the early Discworld books may have arisen from the day job. Habibi used to have a similar problem when we went out: he used to be an interior designer for a brewery chain, with the result that he could never go to a pub without analysing the use of space, texture, colour etc. Me, after a day spent recognising and guiding effort, encouraging potential and celebrating strengths in drama students, I just want to dive into a good book, and go with the tide - not get knocked back into teacher mode! There is also the fact that I know I generally try too hard to be entertaining company, so I recognise the signs and it winds me up! Gotta get me one o' they sense of humour thingies.

Anyway, I think that A Hat Full of Sky is superb: the work of a man who knows his craft; a writer of wit, intelligence and compassion.

I mentioned Philip Pullman a while back. Comparisons are odious, as they say. TP never set out to be PP, and vice versa. I'm enjoying both, and bouncing ideas that both have stirred. I really enjoy watching films, but I don't think you can beat the experience a good book. Riches for the mind and the spirit. Wintersmith next week!

As for the plan (Lie-In, School, Wardrobe) I'm not going anywhere today, because I am whacked. Body, mind and spirit. I need a break!



















So today I'm going to

• put on some music (because there's no intelligent talk radio here, except the BBC World Service, and we get too much interference for satisfactory listening)
• potter about restoring our living room from workshop to home (sweeping up plaster of paris and odd bits of wire and plastic, so we can walk barefoot or sit down without first checking all surfaces) pick a favourite vid that I've not watched for a while - probably Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe, which I taped in about 1995!
• and get on with knitting Habibibaba's birthday scarf. When I asked him what colour he'd like, he said dark brown and cornflower blue, to match the socks he was wearing at the time, and realised that he liked (male!). Unfortunately, I couldn't find the right brown or the right blue, or double-knit wool. Argh! What did I expect in a place where it's 30-something degrees most of the year round? (Meanwhile it's currently 6 degrees in London.) So here's a lovely blue, and yes it's acrylic, but it's ribbed, soft, and will be warm when I've added another 49 inches.....better get cracking!
  
  

Men Who Read Terry Pratchett

Strangely, most of the Men (of my acquaintance) Who Cook also Read Pratchett: father, husband, son, friend, and now several of the Pirates!

It was Friend who started it, arriving to stay in 1997 with his well-thumbed collection of the then twelve or so titles.

Habibi succumbed first, followed rapidly by Habibibaba, then aged about ten. Suddenly, all three were hooked, falling over each other to read and re-read The Colour of Magic, Light Fantastic, Wyrd Sisters, Pyramids, Equal Rites, Small Gods et cetera, et cetera, et cetera! They shared favourite lines, discussed favourite characters, renamed landmarks - I could direct you to the Dwarf Bread Factory in Al Quoz. Wha-wha-wha?!

So I joined the party, or tried to. The trouble was that, while I enjoyed Pyramids and Wyrd Sisters, and was entertained by the idea of some of the characters, like the Librarian, The Luggage, and Death (ok - I loved Death! and Binky!) I was put off by the writing style, and over-exposure to that tedious loser, Rincewind. Rincewind! Gimme a break! So I gave up, wrote it all off as a bloke thing, and left them to it, apart from buying new copies of favourites as they fell apart, worn to pieces by their devoted readers. After the second paperback copy of Colour of Magic disintegrated, I started buying hardbacks, on the basis that it would save money in the long run!

(But the Truckers trilogy, Johnny and the Bomb, and THE NAC MAC FEEGLE! Fabulous! There's no greater enthusiast than the late convert.

As to the research. Dad's due for a Christmas angel this year, and although I made a Scottish (He's a Scot!) Perfect Little Angel for his big sister a couple of years ago, resplendent in scarlet and green tartan, she's too feminine to repeat for a man. Hm. Puzzle. And then I remembered something about The Wee Free Men. Pictsies. Promising. Al-RIGHT! I would read a Pratchett!

The first couple of pages left me cold. I've just finished Philip Pullman's marvellous trilogy, 'His Dark Materials' and I'm still mulling it over, so the jump from Lyra Belacqua to Perspicacia Tick took some adjusting to, especially as other other parallels began to emerge: daemon and familiar; parallel and crashing worlds. A couple of pages later, well, I was cackling!

So Dad's getting a Nac Mac Feegle this year, six inches tall, blue skinned, red-haired, bearded, kilted, and heavily tattooed...... How on earth am I going to do this?!

Here's what these guys look like.

Just brimming with Christmas spirit, aren't they? Calico Gal? Not really. Perfect Li......??? Naaah!

















Then I remembered this little book, which I bought in a library sale when we still lived near Bolton, in England. Translated from the German by Christian Albrecht and published in 1969, it is now, I think, out of print. Until quite recently, I think that German craft books and French craft magazines set the standard for everyone else: in the 1970s and early 80s, most of the really imaginative craft books were translated from the German.




















These figures are small, only 7 inches tall (17.5 cm) and modelled from papier mache and clay on wire armatures. That would be the next stage after pipe cleaners, methinks. It's a sign!



This is actually the technique for the baby Jesus, who's about three inches long before he's posed.

The adults have wire and papier mache hands with fingers and thumbs. They also have whittled balsa wood torsos, and I'm not even sure I can get balsa wood here. Possibly at Art Stop in Jumeirah Plaza, or Elves and Fairies in Jumeirah Centre. Possibly an offcut of thick MDF from one of the hardware stores in Satwa. Otherwise it's going to be wire.







I'll let you know how I get on.

Crivens!!

Bookshelves

I go through phases. Enthusiasms come and go - and then come again.

A lot depends on what's happening at work. When things are routine I will pick up books and embroidery, and focus on detailed craft projects with lots of colour and texture. I wake up at weekends wanting to garden and write in equal measure. On the other hand, when we're busy-busy-busy I rarely read anything I haven't read before, but occasionally I'll disappear into a favourite for a day.

I go for children's and teenage fiction from the likes of Elizabeth Enright, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Joan Aiken, Michelle Magorian, Geraldine McCaughrean, Cynthia Voigt and Gillian Cross; action thrillers involving a central character with a history, like A. J. Quinnell's Creasy or Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan (I still haven't got round to Clive Cussler and good ol' Dirk Thingy!); or storytelling that involves a quirky individual shaking up someone else's dull but comfortable existence, and everyone coming out better off. Most Sandra Bullock films operate on that premise, though she tends to play women whose lives have never taken off, while I'm reading about older people who have not so much settled down as got stuck in a rut, as in Fannie Flagg's A Redbird Christmas, or Annette Sandford's Eleanor and Abel. I must blog on the fiction of the 'Deep South' one of these days, but this is almost all tangent already, so I'm exercising a little restraint tonight!

The other weekend I had a little love-fest all by myself (Habibi was busy!) and read a Mills & Boon trilogy. Oooh it was grand! I met 'Kate Walker' years ago when I had a Saturday job in a children's library. I read her first Mills & Boon manuscript, 'The Chalk Line' while babysitting for her then-toddler-now-English-teacher son, and when Habibi and I got married she gave us (ok - me!) a complete set of her novels - presumably to keep me going through the interesting early stages of married life?! I don't know how far she or I looked into the future, but this was an ongoing wedding present, and she recently published her fiftieth novel for a devoted 'Kate Walker' readership. We hadn't seen each other for a couple of years, so this summer I came back with nine novels! I have to say that as a rule I can't be doing with Mills and Boon, and most sagas leave me cold, but I do enjoy these, and I really enjoyed 'The Alcolar Trilogy'! Furthermore, in about six months time, when all my senior students are up to their nerve-ends in performance exams, I shall probably climb right back in there again!

Incidentally, our bookshelves are full, stuffed, packed. What doesn't fit gets poked on top. In theory there should be some gaps now that Habibibaba is off on his own, but somehow, it just hasn't happened. Habibi and I are resolutely not buying any more books between now and next July ...... except it's his birthday this month...... and mine next month...... and then there's Christmas....... ooooooooooooh! We're going to have to do our 'expat leaving sale' next summer. That's going to hurt........ =/

Da Vinci Lode

I eventually gave in and read The Da Vinci Code. I don't like the way Dan Brown writes, and as far as I can tell he's only written one book, because a quick look at the other one - something about bones or blood? I forget - soon told me that it was DVC all over again, but with Illuminati instead of Opus Dei, a professor instead of a curator, a niece instead of......need I go on?

(A friend said he wrote the Illuminati one first, and DVC is actually an improved rehash. Two sets of royalties for one book - not bad. Something for those who buy one handbag in three different colours?)

What interested me, being female and having been brought up Catholic, was all the stuff about the suppression of 'the feminine'. I already knew that St. Paul and one of the St. Augustines had a lot to answer for. So I did a bit of research. Nothing. Nada. Nyet. Or at least, nothing to support Dan Brown's so-called truth. Opus Dei exists. Not secret. The Priory of Sion does not, having been invented by a French charlatan, Pierre Plantard. Quite disappointing really, as I was working up a nice head of steam about the sexism, if not mysogyny, built into the operations and directions of the Roman Catholic Church. Ah well.

So all this hoohaa from Christian groups regarding first the book and then the film strikes me as bloody stupid mob rule. Honestly! All that superiority about Muslim outrage about cartoons that most had not seen, and then this! Islam prohibits the depiction of the Prophet (pbuh) even (especially) in reverence. The 'west' has no such dictate, and in fact celebrates freedom of speech and freedom of the press (including all the media). For Christians to insist that we should not be permitted the opportunity to read a book or watch a film, when all the counter-arguments are out there too, for those who care enough to check their facts, is arrogant, hypocritical and downright self-indulgent.

There was the same fuss about The Life of Brian about a million years ago. (If God made us, and in his image and likeness (not in our bodies, but in our souls) does it not indicate a divine sense of humour? Er... not about making us.... unless all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, and we're coming to the climax of a century-long black comedy?)

The Roman Catholic Church abolished The Index (a list of banned books) a long time ago (I think! Good grief! Could it possibly still exist?) in support, I believe of the principles of Free Will and personal responsiblity. Anyone who would ban books is very suspect in my view.

Children must be protected.

Adults have the responsibility to make choices, and do their homework about those choices.

Hmph. I will now get down off this soap-box before I hyperventilate.

In case you were wondering, this started when a colleague sent me an email, 20 Big Lies in the Da Vinci Code. I found it on-line in a Christian magazine. If you're still interested.

(P.S. I preferred the film to the book.)