The Year Zero

Last week I finished The Reader. A powerful, profound, thought-provoking book by Bernard Schlink that was turned into a film starring Kate Winslett. It’s about a 15 year old German boy in post WWII Germany who falls in love with a woman twice his age. She has skeletons in the cupboard relating to her past life in the SS.

Of course, people experience things differently. I saw it as a love story but a colleague at work thought it was about child abuse. It unnerved me that Michael could never, ever move on from Hanna. Was he scarred for life or was it that they were meant to be together? For him, their ‘connection’ was deeper and more profound than any other he would make. He had other women, was even married, but all seemed insignificant compared with Hanna. In so many ways they were badly matched (not least because she was twice his age); but a connection is a connection.

The story touches on a lot of issues and raises a lot of questions. Guilt, literacy, forbidden love, history, morals, skeletons in the past, etc.

That first chance encounter changed the entire course of their lives, especially his. Life is strange like that. The ‘Sliding Doors’ moment. A concept I have always found difficult to get my head around. How life can take drastically different directions based on tiny differentials.

A highly recommended read. A good article here in the New York Times, too.

JG Ballard, the British writer, died late last night after a long illness. He was – I do believe – the author whose work I most coveted.

I first started reading Ballard way back at university. Specifically, it was 1994. I’d just started university. One of my courses was contemporary British literature and I found it very hard to keep up with the reading (not just for that, across the board). I was also doing two history courses, two politics and another literature (Colonial American I think).

On the syllabus was a book called Empire of the Sun. I had never encountered it before and knew nothing of it or what it was about. It got to the night before the seminar at which I would need to talk about it. I hadn’t read it. I read it. That night, in one sitting (whilst popping ProPlus like Smarties, if memory serves – no wonder I had such bad sleeping patterns in those days). Immensely powerful is how I found it. It became – very quickly – one of my most important books. I will always remember reading it that first time – the intensity with which I found the story and my absolute identificaton with Jim – the protagonist.

It resonated on multiple levels. Whilst I was born in the UK, that was only for immigration purposes as my parents were living abroad at the time as they did throughout the 70s and early 80s. I just felt utterly attuned to the wavelength of the book. His disillusionment on returning to the UK, the grey banality of it. I remember thinking that too after our long stints in East Africa and then the Middle East.

I have read a lot more of his work in recent years. Off the top of my head I can think of: Read the rest of this entry »

Enjoyed the first episode in the new eight part second series which has returned to the BBC.  Series one was one of my favourite TV shows last year. Hard to say why I like it as I have little interest in police dramas usually. I just love the depiction of the 1980s. That decade has so much resonance and seems so formative. The attention to detail in the series is great – seeing all those reminders of that decade – also the music.

The sexual chemistry between the two main characters – Alex Drake (aka ‘Bolly Knickers’) played by Keeley Hawes and Gene Hunt (aka Phil Glenister) appears to be toned down somewhat. The rest of the cast are all still there which is good.

No sign of the David Bowie ‘Ashes to Ashes clown’ so far – which haunted her throughout the last series. Instead, she hears voices spoken through random people and even a police dog!

What looks to be a recurrent theme throughout the series is police corruption (at senior levels of the Met police). I imagine that was fairly rife back then but I don’t know that for sure.

I really do quite like Keeley Hawes. Thought she was fantastic in Spooks as well.

Watch series 2 episode 1 again on BBC iPlayer.

Incidentally – the only other police drama that I really did enjoy very much indeed – was Wallander which aired last year for three episodes. I really, really would like to see more of that; it was brilliant.

The film Deliverance was on TV the other day and I recorded it. I’ve seen it before, but not for ages. It is a powerful film and well worth watching if you haven’t done so. It’s generally acknowledged to be one of the best films that came out of the 1970s, up there with The Deer Hunter, The God Father I & II, etc. I watched it last night and got a lot out of it – the acting is really first class.

The film summary from the blu-ray.com website is pretty good:

Deliverance is based on a book of the same name by James Dickey. Originally published in 1970, the book became a smash hit only after the film adaptation was released in 1972. This is the story of four friends from Atlanta on a canoeing trip down the Cahulawassee River before it is flooded and destroyed to generate additional electricity for Atlanta. As the story progresses, the foursome is thrust into a horrific situation and the trip down river turns from one of relaxation, self-discovery, and fun into a race for survival against both man and nature. The turning point in the film comes as a shock to the first time viewer and remains one of the most disturbing sequences in film history. Source.

Lots of themes come up. About the clash between nature and urbanity. A lot about male gender roles, masculinity. Also decision making – snap judgements, living with the consequences of decisions we make, survivor instinct, etc. One of the key themes is the portrayal of the local ‘hillbilly’ people as totally inbred, backward, deviant. You can’t help but be fascinated and think “whilst it’s surely quite unlikely, I wonder how many grains of truth there are to that portrayal”. Was certainly very demonising to them as a people, I thought.

Aside from the fact I’m no movie reviewer, I shall say no more because if you haven’t seen this classic – you really ought to.

Click to play

I’m 18 going on 19. It’s 1994.

I’m starting university way up in the north of England at a redbrick university far from home. Life had changed so much in the preceding two years.

I’d been at boarding school for 5 years. During which time I’d been happy. Fitted in. My parents’ marriage dissolved during that time. Which in a way I suppose was fine. We had lived abroad for much of my early life and I remember the terrible rows they used to have by the end.

But then my father lost his job. And thus the school fees could no longer be paid. At the 11th hour I didn’t go back to the school I’d been at for 5 years, instead going to a local grammar school. The grammar had a good name and was a good school, but felt ‘gritty’ in contrast to the comparatively ‘ivory tower’ school I’d been at before – with its tuck shop, its chapel and its formal chits for exeats, its summer balls, its annual carol service in the cathedral, etc.

I didn’t much like my 2 years at grammar school and that showed in my A-level results which were disappointing compared with my GCSEs. Thankfully, and by a stroke of luck, although I didn’t technically get the BBB required to go to my first choice university – they still admitted me as I’d been up to the open day (with my father), met – and got on with – the director of studies, and all was fine.

It was in the 1st year at university that I first started listening to The Levellers. I was on an all-boys corridor of 8 and we had a radio/cassette recorder in the kitchen. One of the blokes on the corridor – Jack – was obsessed with The Levellers and played them all the time. A bit like REM a year or two earlier – I had no traction with the music initially but I warmed to it very quickly.

For me, The Levellers will always represent 1st year at university.

Really very much looking forward to this. Series 2 premieres on BBC1 next Monday 20th April at 9pm. I really did enjoy the first series which aired last year.

As mentioned at the time, I don’t watch cop shows normally. I have little to no interest. But it’s the depiction of the 1980s, a decade hot-wired into my brain for reasons I’ve never quite been able to grasp. Just something about that era. The music. The things that happened. Extremely formative years for me (I was born in 1976) and I do see myself as a child of the 80s.

PS The (somewhat underwhelming) trailer doesn’t really do the series justice in my opinion!

These days I catch the tube every morning. Two in fact (though only one in the evening as I take a different journey home). Whilst the tube is a lot more efficient than most Londoners give it credit for – I still think of it as quite a dirty way to travel. I will absolutely dread a hot summer as it will mean I’ll get to work sticky and I don’t like that feeling at all, especially in full work garb (though no longer having to wear suits means it shouldn’t be quite so bad).

Thing about the tube (like the grime-encrusted Dickensian city itself) is that it is – perhaps in no small part due to its ancient and subterranean nature – a rather dirty affair. Sure, the tubes are cleaned all the time, but such a huge number of people using them each day, I worry about the kinds of people whose hands have held the bars that I must then hold. When did they last wash their hands, what is their level of personal hygiene, etc.

One’s never really thought of oneself as OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) but as a matter of course – I always wash my hands as soon as I get to work (annoyingly, with Fairy Liquid as they don’t provide soap in the kitchens though I have suggested they should). Doubt I’m the only one that does this.

In one of the first London flats I ever lived in – in a rough part of the city – there was a disused Chinese next door. And we had cockroaches in the flat. Was awful. Real low point of my 10 years in this city (for more reasons than that; I’d moved in with a real bastard of a guy who I went off as soon as I’d moved in).

I know germs and bacteria exist everywhere. That’s fine. I don’t mind germs from friends or colleagues quite so much. It’s just, like every big city, there are some really grim and squalid people in this one from all parts of the world and some do use the tube and psychologically I need some sense of purification and dissociation from that.

Perhaps you’re the same, or maybe you have other OCD inclinations.

An enjoyable day.

Met a colleague at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly to take in the new Kuniyoshi exhibition (of Japanese wood block art) that opened at the end of last month. Loved it! Really is my kind of thing.

The Royal Academy of Arts presents an exhibition on one of the greatest Japanese print artists, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861). Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition presents Kuniyoshi as a master of imaginative design. It reveals the graphic power and beauty of his prints across an unprecedented range of subjects highlighting his ingenious use of the triptych format.

The majority of the exhibition has been drawn from the outstanding collection of Professor Arthur R. Miller which has recently been donated to the American Friends of the British Museum. This is the first major exhibition in the United Kingdom on Utagawa Kuniyoshi since 1961.

These pictures are, if you like, the earliest form of comics and manga. They were hand drawn, then the master printers would carve the image onto wooden slats which they then used to mass print. Really, really good show. I enjoyed it so much I bought the catalogue (like a coffee table book, softback) to admire the images again and read about them in more detail. I am a Japan-ophile, in case that wasn’t obvious (I lived there in the late 1990s), so most things Japanese do really interest me.

After an hour or so at the (rather busy!) exhibition, I took my colleague/friend (the ex-army one) to the Japan Centre for lunch. I’ve been going there for 6 years or so. To my mind the most authentic Japanese food in London and such good value and unpretentious. It’s like a Japanese cultural centre and there’s a big supermarket, large cafe/restaurant, travel agent, etc. Really good place and somewhere you ought to visit if ever you come to London.

The (late) lunch was wonderful. We each had the kara age chicken set menu which is my favourite. As most know – I don’t eat either chicken or lamb (or veal and a number of other things) – but they use really good quality organic chicken and it’s deep fried in such a scrummy way, that this is the one time I break my own rule and do eat chicken. Served with miso soup and sticky rice. When Hen and I worked together I took her here too. We drank genmai cha which is a favourite of mine (green tea and roasted brown rice).

We then leisurely strolled to the station (through St James’ and then Green Park and then past Buckingham Palace – the front of which was packed out with tourists. Very stately Mexican flags lining the Mall as there was a state visit a couple of weeks ago). Weather has just about stayed dry so can’t complain too much. I’d just missed a train (not the end of the world) so did an M&S food shop. Stocked up on Gold Label teabags of theirs which I really like, also their sparkling water, fruit and some other random bits and pieces. At the Japan Centre I’d stocked up on genmai cha and also wasabe peas.

A good Easter Sunday.

It’s Easter and I’m having a quiet one in London. The city empties out (suburb wise) at this time of year as people tend to go away. Don’t even get me started on the centre though. I’ve never seen so many tourists in all my life as there were last week. A collapsing £ against both the $ and € means that this usually horrifically expensive city is now marginally more affordable than once it was.

I had a meeting in Baker Street on Thursday afternoon and, due to the ‘credit crunch’, I can no longer take taxis – and so I took the tube – and it was like travelling in peak rush hour! At 2.30pm in the afternoon! And the tourists – lord almighty they dawdle. They really do move at about 0.01 mph. Sooo frustrating to be behind.

But to those in the UK we have a four day Easter weekend which is good. No work on Good Friday or Easter Monday. Even in this ultra-politically correct age, our Christian roots still hang on; just.

Last night I went to Sheridan’s for dinner. He’s not much of a cook, generally speaking, but he’d bought some very expensive and absolutely delicious fillet steak from the upmarket butcher close to where he lives. And boy it was good. Served with asparagus, cabbage, carrots and mash (I did the mash).

Enjoy Easter!

Hot cross buns,
Hot cross buns,
one ha’ penny,
two ha’ penny,
hot cross buns.
If you have no daughters,
give them to your sons,
one ha’ penny,
two ha’ penny,
Hot Cross Buns