The previous month was March 2002.
The next month is May 2002.
I love it when this blog gets feedback, especially when its readers know more than I do and are happy to share their knowledge.
J writes to me today to point out that the title 'Defender of The Faith' (see previous post) actually refers to the Roman Catholic church and not the (Protestant) Church of England. I was correct in my assumption that it originated with Henry VIII (who initiated the split with Rome and the formation of the Church of England), but apparently it was granted to him before he needed the tricky divorce/annulment that caused the religious schism. He chose to retain the title because he liked it and it worked well in its new context.
A few days ago, the author of Ecritures (which recently significantly increased its English language content, so check it out) wrote with some background information on the French political scene following my open invitation to improve my knowledge on this subject. Apparently the eastern and southern regions of France are increasingly uneasy about the level of immigration that they are experiencing and thus many inhabitants voted for Le Pen to send a message to central government that they wanted the situation to be addressed. More details here (in French) and here (in English).
It's always great to hear from you. Keep 'em coming.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 30 April 2002 at 19:39.
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More AA Gill for you, this time from an article on his recent trip to the Kalahari Desert. He's one of my favourite writers - often contentious and always interesting. Some people don't like his prose, but for me it's a benchmark of good writing. I've ordered his new book, which I should be receiving any day now.
"The desert is amoral. It doesn't care: you're as useful dead as you are alive. Your position at the top of the evolutionary tree, your money, your cultured good taste, your hopes and expectations mean nothing here; you're just another roll of the dice, a stumble and a sting away from being a mass of skull minerals."
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 30 April 2002 at 17:42.
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Until fairly recently, I would
Until fairly recently, I would probably have been quite happy for the British monarchy to be abolished. The concept of an unelected, over-privileged, out-of-touch, hereditary lineage forming the constitutional basis of our state isn't something that fills me with a great deal of enthusiasm. However, I read a good article last month that made an interesting point: would any of the alternatives be any better?
Its (American?) author examined the notion that all cultures need to focus on something 'higher and better' and commented that the UK monarchy's traditional values of duty and respect provide a better role model than the out-of-proportion cult of celebrity currently worshipped in the USA. It also made the usual scaremongering references to President Blair (quite honestly, would anyone notice the difference?), though for me the prospect of President Thatcher would be infinitely more horrific.
The article springs to mind partly because of the current events surrounding the presidential election in France. At least if your monarchy misbehaves, you can have a revolution and chop its collective heads off. Harder to justify chopping your President's head off when you democratically elected him or her in the first place.
Maybe I'm following the cliché and becoming more conservative as I grow older (UK readers, very important: note the small 'c'), but I'm beginning to realise that there is one member of the royal family who actually makes me feel surreptitiously proud of the whole idea.
In the mid-1980s, Prince Charles was regularly vilified on satirical programmes such as Spitting Image for talking to plants (he claimed it helped them to grow better). He was also considered a crackpot for his ideas on artificial fertilizers representing a long-term danger to the environment. A decade or so later, the rest of the UK caught up with him as eco-consciousness grew and organic food became more mainstream.
In 1994, Charles caused a minor stir by announcing that when he becomes King, he aims to re-think the monarch's traditional role of 'Defender of The Faith' ('The Faith' being English Protestantism) and would prefer to be known simply as 'Defender of Faith' (i.e. an advocate of personal spiritual values). A small section of the middle-England Daily Mail readership choked on its tea and muffins and a much larger section of the populace simply thought "what?"
Now, eight years later, religious (in)tolerance is probably the single most high profile issue in the international arena. The appalling events of September 11 and the ongoing malaise in Israel and Palestine illustrate the very physical consequences of an inability to accommodate the intellectual possibility that another's view of the world may be as valid as one's own.
Prince Charles has just launched an initiative called Respect, a campaign that promotes religious harmony and tolerance. Yet again, he has demonstrated an uncanny knack for looking beyond the parochial British concerns with education, the health service, law & order and transport and hauling a more fundamental (if less tangible), long-term issue into the limelight.
Republicans will tell you that of course he can do this 'marginal' stuff, given his privileged lifestyle. Monarchists will tell you that of course he is concerned about these fundamental issues, he is our future king. Astrologers will tell you that of course he's a visionary with a spiritual bent, he's a Scorpio.
Whatever. I take a more pragmatic view: the guy has an interesting, valuable and mostly apolitical insight into modern culture. One day he will probably be our head of state. At the moment, in view of the current events in France, maybe that's not such an unattractive option.
Posted by Hg on Monday 29 April 2002 at 16:22.
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A tube poster featuring this caught my eye, because I recently took a very similar photograph. The artist is Paul Catherall and his work will be showing at the Clapham Art Gallery (London) throughout most of May.
Posted by Hg on Monday 29 April 2002 at 11:42.
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Been meaning to post this extract from a satire on the future of text messaging (SMS), which I ripped out of a magazine (Saturday Telegraph?) recently:
"March 2003: The Church of England announces the publication of TXT-KJV, a mobile-friendly, SMS version of the Bible. The book, which begins 'N th bgng G cre8d hvn & rth & th rth ws w/out 4m & void', will be sent to millions of subscribing mobile phone users over the next 52 Sundays..."
Posted by Hg on Sunday 28 April 2002 at 21:01.
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Choice quotes from AA Gill's restaurant review of the Clerkenwell Dining Room and Bar in today's Sunday Times:
"There's a point where fresh chilli does something erotic to your brain, so while your mouth's screaming 'No, no, stop, stop - for the love of God I'm being tortured to death,' your head's moaning 'Yes, yes, more, more, sear me sear me.'"
"Restaurants are becoming like pop music: it all begins to taste faultlessly the same. The pleasure becomes the comfort of familiarity rather than the surprise of originality, imagination or even eccentricity."
Posted by Hg on Sunday 28 April 2002 at 20:24.
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We walk along the shore. The wind is almost gale-force and the sea is brown, white and furious. The clouds race to form and re-form across the blue sky, as though captured in stop-motion photography. The beach is a vista of blue and grey pebbles littered with white and cream shells. We try to speak, but the wind seizes our words and throws them in opposite directions. Temporarily mute, we can only stand and stare at the expanse of water in front of us.
We sit by the breaking waves and I put my arm around her. The emptiness of the view empties our minds and words become unnecessary. For a moment we are just two people with our backs to our everyday existence and no desire to turn around.
Posted by Hg on Sunday 28 April 2002 at 20:11.
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A lunchtime conversation at Whitstable:"We
A lunchtime conversation at Whitstable:
"We really have turned into each other, haven't we?"
"Yeah - thank God I was the boring one and you were the interesting one..."
Posted by Hg on Sunday 28 April 2002 at 19:25.
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The online edition of Le Monde has gathered together this startling and thought-provoking collection of anti-Front National material. I find the 'guillotine', 'gun to the head' and 'non' images especially powerful.
If you need help with the language, Babelfish is good.
Posted by Hg on Saturday 27 April 2002 at 15:03.
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I seem to have inadvertently become part of a Franco-Benelux travel meme this month: caterina.net (Paris); Ecritures (Paris); not.so.soft (Brussels), digitaltrickery (Brussels), Dutch in Denmark (Netherlands), troubled diva (Amsterdam), brainsluice (Amsterdam)...
Posted by Hg on Thursday 25 April 2002 at 22:31.
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I've added more pictures to the gallery - selected shots from the black and white film that I took in Paris a couple of weeks ago. To be honest, I'm not that excited about them; they're a bit grainy and murky (in an uninteresting kind of way) and they compare very poorly with the Amsterdam ones. I like the one of the guy in the car, but that's about all. I'm going to stick with colour for now.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 25 April 2002 at 17:27.
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My Amsterdam pictures are now online in the gallery. Let me know what you think!
Useful photography tip (from Prol via ~E): always get prints with a white border around the edge. It costs a couple of pounds extra but it makes the pictures look ten times better.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 25 April 2002 at 07:40.
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If you're ever looking for a book or a publisher, or maybe you just want to catch up with the latest trends in library cataloguing, you need AcqWeb (specifically, sections II and III of the contents table). The cat graphics are cute, too.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 24 April 2002 at 16:27.
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Posted by Hg on Wednesday 24 April 2002 at 13:11.
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I was going to ask Prol to give me a list of names of the restaurants and cafés that we went to in Amsterdam, some of which I remember and some of which I don't (the names, not the places!). However, she's being telepathic again and so it appeared on her site before I even managed to e-mail her.
My last post about Amsterdam was from the viewpoint of early Friday evening. The night's main event was Prol's birthday meal. Indonesian food is not a common cuisine in the UK and the one and only time I had it in England, it was sticky, overpowering and not particularly enjoyable. Thankfully, our venue - which I'm advised is competent but by no means one of the better restaurants - demonstrates that my previous experience was unrepresentative. We had rijstafel (rice table - basically a buffet of rice and meat & vegetarian dishes) and everything was superb. Good company too - Prol has a knack of choosing great friends (of which I'm a prime example...). I've met S before and it was lovely to see her again, but also good to meet everyone else.
Afterwards, three of us headed over the road to de Balie, a trendy bar where the staff seemed intent on belittling my efforts to speak Dutch. C'mon guys, give us a break. If I ask for "water" (same word as English) and you ask me "rood of blauw?" ("red or blue?", i.e. the label colours of still or sparkling water), don't look all mock-puzzled when I answer "rood" in a vaguely passable Dutch accent. (I have to stress that this was quite the exception and that Dutch people in general are delightful. Bar staff can be arseholes in any country.) We headed home around 2am and ended the day with a season two episode of Buffy, eventually getting to bed around 4am.
Unsurprisingly, we got up slightly later than expected the next morning, around 11am. We shuffled around, drinking tea and regaining consciousness, then headed off to Maison de Bonneterie for brunch. This is a posh, slightly old-fashioned department store with a wonderful wood-panelled restaurant frequented almost exclusively by wrinkled little old ladies. They've all been going there for years, apparently, because they all seem to know each other. We soon find out why - the tea and coffee are great and the pistolet met oude kaas en pekelvlees (small, baguette-like bread rolls with mature Gouda cheese and pastrami-like ham) is hearty Dutch fare.
After brunch, we wander around the old side of the city and the canals. True to form, we soon end up in Café van Puffelen, apparently the largest brown café in the city. Brown cafés are fantastic. Not to be confused with the dope-smoking coffeeshops, they are a perfect mixture of old-fashioned British/Irish pub and continental wine bar. This one in particular could just as easily have been in Dublin as in Amsterdam. We sipped our freshly-squeezed orange juice (yes, very restrained) and turned a pale shade of envious green as we imagined the lives of the people who lived in the canalside apartments in front of us.
More walking, more streets, more canals. I don't want to make it sound as if I was getting tired of it all, I just don't remember exactly which route we took. We ended up at the Chinese supermarket on Nieuwmarkt, looking for some Indonesian items for me to take home. Emerging into the square with our white plastic carrier bags, we soon realised that we didn't want to walk, we wanted coffee. Thus we ended up, yet again, in a café on Nieuwmarkt. Just as we finished our coffees, we were phoned by ~E and so ten minutes later we ended up in her new apartment just off Dam Square.
We relaxed, drank juice, chatted, ate those curly crisp-like things that I've not seen since I was a kid (can't remember the English name, but in Dutch they're called Wokkels) and admired ~E's recent concert pictures. Around 6pm we headed off to a local Indonesian restaurant and had another great meal. After this we were getting tired, so headed back to Prol's, where I was introduced for the first time to the delights of Stella Street. It took me an hour or so to really get into it, but now I'm hooked - it's one of the funniest things I've seen recently. We chatted on into the early hours, trying to forget that I had to leave early the following morning for the airport.
On Sunday morning the weather was, ironically, probably the best it had been. ~E arrived around 9:30am to drive me to Schipol. I said my goodbyes to Prol and off we went. It's a quick journey and so we were there within twenty minutes. More goodbyes, then I hit the shops. At this point, I'll refer you back to Sunday's post to see exactly what I bought. We took a different flightpath to my outbound journey; the landscape was much more urban, but still noticeably Dutch.
So, a few closing words about Amsterdam? Loved it. Missing it. Want to go back. Will go back. In the meantime, I have my pictures to remind me - I'll get them online in a day or two. I'm a bit embarrassed at how badly I described my Parisian pictures, so I want to do a better job this time. I've asked Prol to fill in a few details and I'll also trawl through the guidebook and try and do them justice.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 23 April 2002 at 18:33.
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Posted by Hg on Tuesday 23 April 2002 at 11:53.
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"Mr Chirac, 69, has been damaged by persistent sleaze allegations, while Mr Jospin, 64, a stiff former professor, was seen as honest but dull."
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right French presidential candidate, has ousted Lionel Jospin, the left-wing socialist candidate, and is now seriously challenging the incumbrent French president, Jacques Chirac. I imagine that "honest but dull" suddenly seems much more alluring to millions of people in France.
One of the interesting things is the distribution of votes. I wonder why eight of the ten border provinces voted for Le Pen, whereas Chirac dominated elsewhere. Are the border areas more sensitive to any disruption to their own French identity? I wouldn't have thought so; my limited experience of the Alsace region is that its inhabitants feel more 'Alsacian' than 'French'. Maybe that's the issue - Le Pen is a Breton first and a Frenchman second.
[Update: I've read more about this today and it seems that the main reason is that the left-wing vote was split between numerous potential candidates and therefore no single socialist candidate attracted enough votes to beat Le Pen. On this basis, it's probably likely that western France is more conservative (therefore voted for Chirac), whereas eastern France is more socialist. I'm interested in understanding this better - if you can help, your input is very welcome.]
There's a cautionary tale here: always use your vote. Part of Le Pen's success is down to low turnout. I don't mean that to sound morally superior, either; I've failed to vote in the past and we've had occasional extreme right-wing candidates elected in London for similar reasons. The first time that happened, I stopped taking my right to vote for granted.
I'm going to be back in Paris for the election day (5 May), so interesting times are ahead.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 23 April 2002 at 06:27.
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I'm back at home, too blissed out to blog in any detail as yet. My memories are unfocused, in contrast to the comforting solidity of a fridge full of Gouda cheese (the old stuff - the good stuff), Dutch sausage and smoked eel. Dutch siroopwafelen, Indonesian coffee sweets and Malaysian durian cake all sit proudly on the worktop. Hell, even my Dutch Evian bottle makes me smile fondly.
I love to fly back from mainland Europe to Gatwick, love the way you can see the whole of England's south-eastern coast from the Thames estuary to Brighton. Crossing Surrey, the stockbrokers' swimming pools look like opal and sapphire jewels scattered over green velvet.
I have an all-day/all-evening thing at work tomorrow, so the rest of my Amsterdam story will have to wait. Like the best food and drink, hopefully it will improve with age.
Posted by Hg on Sunday 21 April 2002 at 18:15.
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The gig last night was at the Melkweg and featured Arno Hintjens, a Belgian singer who most native English speakers will never have heard of. I've heard him before, because Prol gave me a tape of some of his stuff a few years ago. Part idiot savant, part enfant terrible, he's an interesting character - kind of a cross between Gavin Friday and Serge Gainsbourg, with a very small hint of Gérard Depardieu and a rather larger helping of Johnny Rotten. He's intense and occasionally twitchy, though comes across as a nice guy and even somewhat shy in his comments between the songs (he appeared genuinely mortified when his microphone stand fell over and narrowly missed a front-row fan).
After the show we retired to a café to unwind. The Dutch artist/musician Herman Brood used to live above it and his artwork adorns the walls. I know nothing about him and must find out more. Back at Prol's it's past midnight and so time for her birthday present - the DVD of the British cult TV series Ultraviolet. Now I don't have to keep it a secret, I might tell you more about this series some other time. Or I might leave it to Prol, if she likes it.
This morning, Prol has an unavoidable work commitment, so I'm left to my own devices. (Or rather, Prol's devices: I'm slowly getting the hang of this pen mouse. Working out what the button on the side is for was a useful development.) I lazed around for a bit, surfing and reading, then headed off to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam's modern art gallery.
The exhibits are eclectic and thought-provoking: a display of twentieth century office equipment (you'd never believe that scissors could be so interesting); a feature on Dutch PTT/KPN (phone and post office) design concepts; plenty of paintings (including Mondriaan, Chagall and Malevich), sculptures and installations, plus the current special exhibition on Dutch and Belgian conceptual art between 1965 and 1975. The latter is variable and I have to be honest and say that some of it bored me stiff. However, there was much that was thought-provoking and even moving. I was particularly taken with On Kawara's work, which deals with the concept of time. Specifically interesting was One Million Years, a set of ten black, leather-bound books listing the numbers of one million years to the date of its creation. Its subtitle is "For all those who have lived and died."
I left the Stedelijk and wandered aimlessly, soaking in the atmosphere and trying to avoid soaking in the rain. I'm just too proud to stand there on the street looking at the map like some damn tourist, so predictably I never made it to the central, oldest part of the city. Looking at the map now from the comfort of the sofa, I see that I covered most of the Eastern Canal Ring. I had bought the Van Gogh and Gauguin exhibition catalogue on leaving the Stedelijk and it weighs a ton. Not the smartest of things to do when you have a couple of hours walking planned. By around half four my shoulders were aching from carrying the book and my legs were aching from all the unaccustomed walking, so I headed back 'home'. I've made a cup of tea (it's just an instinctive, Pavlovian, English thing) and now I'm relaxing and blogging, waiting for Prol to return and for our evening to begin.
The rain has gone, the sun is out and it's Friday evening. I'm in Amsterdam and I'm not remotely cool. I'm in Amsterdam! Hey! Life is good.
Posted by Hg on Friday 19 April 2002 at 16:28.
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I have laughed so hard at this that I've given myself a stitch. I work for an international company; it's all true.
[Via Elkit in Wonderland.]
Posted by Hg on Friday 19 April 2002 at 09:14.
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Right from the moment that the plane hits the Dutch coast, I know that I am in A Foreign Country. The landscape is alien in a way that I would have thought impossible for somewhere so close to home. The symmetrical precision of the fields, surrounded by and interwoven with water, makes for compelling viewing. We approach Schipol airport, but we're apparently too close to another plane and we have to continue north and loop back on ourselves to get another landing slot. I might normally be irritated by the delay, but the view of the IJsselmeer is fantastic and I could stay up here all day.
On the ground, we take the train into Centraal Station and then the fast train out to the apartment. Prol has a lovely place - light and airy; it's home from home. We relax for a while, then head into the centre. Technically, Amsterdam is everything that the guidebooks describe - canals, bridges, tall thin buildings - but that doesn't prepare me for the impact of actually being here. Water, water everywhere. It's disconcerting, coming from a city where you orient yourself by the (one) river. Despite the symmetry of the city's layout, the map of which I scrutinised in detail on the plane, I lose all sense of direction and I'm happy just to wander. We check out a few cafés and restaurants before settling on a Malaysian place, where the food is interesting and the beer delicious. We wander home via a brilliant Irish pub - a small slice of Dublin in the middle of Amsterdam, as far from a theme bar as it's possible to get.
The following morning (i.e. earlier today) we chat over coffee and then take the tram into the centre. After a lengthy queueing session for tickets for the Van Gogh and Gauguin exhibition, we have lunch at Wagamama's. I've never eaten here before, but I'll definitely be checking out its London branch when I get home. Then we head over to the exhibition. People, people everywhere. The exhibition is great, but trying to get close to the paintings is a bit like pitching into a rugby scrum - exhausting. I'll write more about the exhibition some other time - for now, suffice it to say that the comparison between the two artists and the story of their developing relationship is fascinating. We fall out of the museum and into a brown café with a soothing Art Deco / De Stijl interior. We take photographs and stare contentedly into space. Now we're back at the apartment, relaxing before a gig tonight.
I haven't really settled into Amsterdam yet, which is good. I like that feeling of dislocation. I want to know that I'm somewhere different, I don't want to start taking it for granted.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 18 April 2002 at 15:59.
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Hydragenic is three months old
Hydragenic is three months old today. Don't know how it was for you, but for me it feels much longer. I vaguely remember Life Before Blogging, but it's hazy.
Actually I'm being disingenuous. I saw my first ever blog in autumn 1999. I was involved in the early stages of one of the first collaborative blogs, log.nu, which was online for six months in mid-2000. It ran out of steam because, I like to think, its contributors were all too busy leading interesting lives to actually write about them. While I liked the idea of blogging, I could never really take it seriously.
For a long time I read only one blog, because I knew the author. I would occasionally follow links to other blogs, but little engaged me. Then, towards the end of last year, something caught my attention on a second blog and I started to see the attraction of keeping up with the life and thoughts of someone who I didn't already know. I don't remember exactly what changed my attitude; nor, in retrospect, can I see much of a difference between reading a blog by someone I don't know and reading a newspaper column by someone who I didn't know.
I started hydragenic because many other avenues of creativity in my life had slowly dried up. I started it just to see if I could and I wanted to remind myself that, on a good day, I can write. I didn't expect to start taking it so seriously and nor did I expect many other people to be interested.
The most rewarding aspect of the whole thing has been the way that it's put me in touch with other people. On 17 January, I was still reading just two other blogs. It's ironic that I never really found many blogs I could relate to until I started one myself; now it seems that they've found me. I have a handful of regular sites that I absolutely must check three or four times a day, plus an ever increasing number of other sites that I check every day or two. I'm quite a harsh critic - if I read something that I don't like, I don't tend to go back for a second look - but I'm still finding wonderful, interesting, fascinating people out there who I want to know more about. It's inspiring.
In a couple of hours, I'll be driving to the airport. It seems appropriate that, today of all days, I'll soon be seeing the author of that one blog that introduced me to the whole concept two and a half years ago. Back to where it all started.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 17 April 2002 at 07:18.
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Speaking of bugs:"A species of
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 16 April 2002 at 11:35.
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"Universal and Sony have both tested copyright protection formats for artists including Celine Dion and 'N Sync. But these have got bad publicity as some fans complained the CDs could not be used on CD players or PCs."
Hey, don't knock it. Some music lovers would call it a feature rather than a bug.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 16 April 2002 at 11:31.
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Kiasyd signs off, with a great couple of lines from one of my favourite songs. Temporarily or for good? Hopefully I'll find out later this week...
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 16 April 2002 at 11:24.
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Reasons to be cheerful this morning: being sun-blinded on pulling back the curtains, still half-awake; tea, warm and comforting, the great motivator; my wife's perfume, hanging in the air like a memory; steam rising gently from the black hood of a soft-top sports car; forty-seven precious saplings planted on the motorway verge, each encased in its own plastic tube; the way my sunglasses make the blues bluer, the browns browner and the greens greener.
I'm expecting a busy day. I need to hold on to these things.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 16 April 2002 at 08:23.
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Except from Messenger session this
Except from Messenger session this evening:
hydragenic says:
css is a psychological torture implement that preys on vulnerable people's susceptibility to peer pressure
You'd think I'd have got over the pain of the redesign by now, wouldn't you?
Posted by Hg on Monday 15 April 2002 at 19:29.
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It was a dual-purpose weekend.
It was a dual-purpose weekend. Sandwiched in-between two trips abroad, it was spent partly indulging in deliberate relaxation and partly in achieving a necessary set of practical and domestic objectives. Actually I should do more weekends like this - it might sound regimented, but it felt completely the opposite. Normally I leave all the practical stuff until it's too late and then end the weekend in a flurry, but not this time.
We watched AI: Artificial Intelligence this afternoon. I don't think I've really absorbed it properly yet, it's one of those films that I'll keep reflecting on for the next few weeks. I think it's a must-see. Much more Kubrick than Spielberg, it was moving, thought-provoking, funny and haunting in equal measures.
Posted by Hg on Sunday 14 April 2002 at 21:18.
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Sometimes you want opera and sometimes you want Kylie. Sometimes wide open countryside, sometimes a claustrophobic nightclub. Sometimes the market news from the Financial Times, sometimes the dumb thrill of a lottery ticket.
Sometimes you want to watch the world go by from the kerbside table of a Parisian café and at others you crave the cosy familiarity of a British department store restaurant. Thus I found myself this afternoon in Café Revive, the in-store coffee shop of Marks and Spencer, watching the middle class buy its underwear.
The shopping mall looked like a Doctor Who set, all white concrete open spaces and bizarre architectural details, so its setting in a former chalk quarry seemed strangely appropriate. I gazed idly out of the window, tired but relaxed. A late Saturday afternoon in mid-April; the world was going about its business. Sipping a skinny mocha, I looked out over the car park, watching families arriving and leaving.
Hardly an original thought, but I considered the notion of shopping as the new religion. All these people - some knowing each other, some not - gathering together for a shared experience within known parameters. The familiarity of the overall context, the pleasure of re-discovery on each visit.
Did they find the meaning that they were seeking? Did they leave fulfilled? Were their souls just a little less empty on returning home? I can't imagine that many of them genuinely needed the wares in their carefully branded bags, it wasn't that kind of place.
And me, which particular void was I aiming to fill by being there? The desire for participation, I think. I can't think of any other reason why I went. I could have bought food and toiletries closer to home, could have sourced my DVDs online.
Sometimes you want a different, individual, unique life and sometimes you want to be just like everyone else. This afternoon it was the latter.
In order to travel, you have to remember where you're starting from.
Posted by Hg on Saturday 13 April 2002 at 21:37.
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Posted by Hg on Friday 12 April 2002 at 12:59.
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I just read this week's NME magazine. It's fifty years old next week and will be publishing a special edition. It's also abandoning its tabloid format and becoming a regular glossy magazine. Hmm, not a strategy that worked well for Melody Maker. Hopefully NME's more forward looking online strategy will keep the wolves from the door.
I still have fond memories of Sounds magazine, which completed the UK weekly music tabloid trio of my teenage years. It had the most eclectic music coverage of the three. Sadly it folded - no pun intended - in the late 1980s.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 11 April 2002 at 21:44.
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Oh my God. My business e-mail inbox now has just three items in it, the oldest of which is from last Wednesday and the other two are from yesterday. I would never have thought this possible.
(To put this into context, I get around 30 to 40 messages a day and last week it contained just under two hundred items, the oldest of which was from last November.)
Posted by Hg on Thursday 11 April 2002 at 16:18.
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A quiet day today. I'm keeping my head down, getting on with work and occasionally thinking of people I know.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 11 April 2002 at 13:18.
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A friend of my three Amsterdam friends died on Monday and they heard today. I didn't know him, but I'm upset. This is entirely as it should be, it's about relationship and connection.
My thoughts are with his family and friends. May this be your last sorrow.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 10 April 2002 at 22:07.
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As the excitement of the Paris trip slowly subsides, I'm very fortunate to have something else to look forward to almost immediately. This time next week I'm off to Amsterdam to stay with the Prol. I'll also be catching up with a couple of other friends and maybe even making one or two new ones.
Paris was a spur-of-the-moment weekend break, whereas Amsterdam has been arranged for a couple of months and I'll be there for longer. I suppose there's a danger that having been to Paris two weeks before Amsterdam could take some of the shine off the latter, but I don't think so. Two different people, two different cities.
My friend in Paris is English, working there on a temporary contract. She's younger than me and used to live with us. Our minds work in very similar ways, though our interests are often different. This was a lightning-fast visit, organised in a Covent Garden pub only twelve days previously. It was just a continuation of all the times we see her in London, with no specific plans (though as I said previously, a couple of places in mind). I've visited Paris and other parts of France before; I speak the language and have a basic grasp of the culture.
In Amsterdam, my friend is Dutch. She's five years my senior and I've known her for many years. We've met up around ten times, but we're in touch on a daily basis. Sometimes we're almost telepathic and at others we're on different planets, but our interests and sense of humour are very similar. This is the first time I've visited her in her own country and it's a relatively leisurely five (calendar) day trip. We have plans: people to see, places to go to. I've never been to Holland and my knowledge of the language and culture is sketchy at best.
Paris was a fantastic and much-needed break from London, but with a certain degree of familiarity. Amsterdam is totally new to me - that's the fundamental difference. To repeat a phrase that I used last week: I can't wait.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 10 April 2002 at 12:01.
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Posted by Hg on Tuesday 09 April 2002 at 21:19.
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On Saturday morning, we woke up around 11am. After some caffeine and a shower, we set out for the Sacré-Coeur. We wandered through the busy streets of the 18th arrondissement, taking in the sights and sounds. Predictably, this being Paris, the food shops were spectacular - crammed with the most amazing looking meat, fruit, vegetables, charcuteries and seafood.
We ascended the hill and passed through Montmartre, a little touristy but still very picturesque. After a moment of brief confusion and a detour via the wrong street, we found ourselves to the side of the Sacré-Coeur, looking out over a magnificent, hazy view of the city. We wandered around to look at the Sacré-Coeur itself. It's just awe-inspiring, there's no other word for it - especially on a brilliantly sunny day with a clear blue sky.
By this time we were feeling very hungry so we didn't go in to the building itself, but it's a return trip I'd like to make soon. We wandered back into Montmartre but decided that the restaurants and cafés were too busy and commercial, so we headed off for the nearby Château Rouge métro station to make our way to the Centre Pompidou.
We reached the Centre around 2pm. Despite our hunger, we sat in the square outside for ten minutes or so, appreciating the spectacle of the building. The Centre is named after Georges Pompidou, former French President, and was opened as a modern arts gallery in 1977. I visited it with my family within the first year of it opening. (By coincidence, internal renovations were carried out in 2000, so again I was visiting shortly after major construction work.)
The concept of the Centre is simple. All building services, such as lifts (elevators), escalators, water, power and air conditioning, are positioned on the outside of the building. This ensures that they do not affect the purity of the space within. However, rather than try to hide these mundanities, they are turned into a feature and the building is well-known for its external coloured pipework. In my memory, this was indelibly associated with the late 1970s period, but actually the building has aged well and still looks contemporary.
We made our way up the escalator to Restaurant Georges on the top floor, admiring the breathtaking view as we ascended. What we hadn't realised was that the restaurant has a rooftop terrace that opens when the weather permits. This was a sunny day, with the temperature in the low to mid twenties centigrade, so the tables were mostly full. However, we were seated immediately and we settled down to enjoy the view.
I'd be hard pressed to identify a favourite part of this weekend, but if pushed, this was it. The weather was glorious, the view amazing, the food delicious. We were there for over two hours in the end, emerging blinking and slightly unsteady on our feet after the hot sun and the chilled red wine.
We wandered around the top floor some more, then went back down to the galleries. Realising that 5pm was approaching and that we were tired from the earlier walk, we decided to stick to the free parts of the centre and so ended up in the bookshop. I could have bought the whole shop, but instead settled for an excellent paperback on Yves Klein, a bargain at 7.50 €.
We headed back to the apartment, where we relaxed for a while over food and drink. Later on, we went downstairs to the café below and continued our conversation over some wine and beer.
My friend and I met in unusual circumstances. We got to know each other around three years ago, but had known of, then met, each other a couple of years before then. Without going into too much detail, it's probably safe to say that in the normal run of things we would most likely never have known each other. We wondered what we would have thought, on our first meeting in a small café in London's Euston around five years ago, if we had known that we would one day be sitting here together in Paris opposite the Moulin Rouge. After a few drinks we headed upstairs again and made it to bed just after 1am.
The next morning, we woke later than expected. I had promised to help my friend's flatmate sort out her laptop, so by the time this was done it was around midday. I needed to be at the Gare du Nord for 1:30pm to get my train, so we went on a whistlestop tour of Paris in the flatmate's open-topped Golf. (I was reminded of Marianne Faithfull's Ballad of Lucy Jordan, particularly the line about her riding through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.)
The weather was again excellent and if I had any nagging worries at the back of my mind about not having seen this or that, this drive dispelled them. My mental geography of Paris is minimal and I was too busy staring out of the car to do anything geeky like follow our progress on the map, but we must have seen nearly twenty different Parisian landmarks. Our driver's commentary was detailed and informative, but I'm afraid I was just too taken in by the splendour and style of it all to remember a lot of her descriptions. I do remember seeing the Louvre, the Assemblée Nationale, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysées and several palaces but there was so much more.
One of my overwhelming impressions of Paris is the sense of space created by the fact that it is mostly a planned city. It lacks the haphazardness of London, which of course has charms of an entirely different nature.
We arrived at the railway station on perfect time and said our goodbyes. I headed into the terminal, through customs and onto the train. The journey back seemed slow; maddeningly the train ground to a halt the moment it got through the tunnel and then later we were left sitting outside Waterloo for over twenty minutes with no explanation. However, I eventually arrived home just after 6pm, tired but buzzing.
I have more annual leave coming up, an open invitation from my hosts to return and the necessary Air Miles to pay for my ticket. Am I going back? Sure - I'd drop everything and leave now if it was possible! I had such an excellent time, due in varying proportions to the pleasure of seeing my friend, the buzz of being out of my usual environment and the more specific thrill of being in Paris itself.
I've added the first batch of my Paris photographs to the gallery so you can see what all the fuss is about. (Some of the commentary under the pictures duplicates what I've written above.) I also have a black and white film being processed at the moment, which I'll add to the gallery as soon as possible. I have to scan that one manually - can't get the lab to give them to me on CD, apparently - so it may be a week or so before you see those.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 09 April 2002 at 11:36.
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A brief diversion from the Paris stories, I've just discovered this sad news:
"Staff and management at Tara TV regret to announce that the channel will cease broadcasting at 1 a.m. on Thursday April 4th 2002. We wish to thank our many viewers for their loyalty and support."
Bollocks, how are we going to watch Winning Streak (Irish lottery gameshow, compulsive Saturday evening viewing) now?
[Update - this story on Digital Spy gives me cautious reason for hope.]
Posted by Hg on Monday 08 April 2002 at 22:56.
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The apartment is above a café and looks out over the Place Blanche (where the Moulin Rouge is situated). You enter via a gnarled, weathered, much re-painted door and ascend a steep, winding staircase made of age-slippery wood. In the apartment, everything radiates off a central hallway and the three main rooms have connecting doors to each other. It's a nicely configurable space.
The apartment is well-worn, but not shabby. In fact, it has recently been redecorated in wonderful hues of lilac, beige and bright orange (different rooms, not together!). The ceilings have fantastic mouldings, the floors are mostly wooden parquet throughout (except the red tiles in the kitchen) and the main rooms have exquisite marble fireplaces. Luca, the cat raised by dogs, runs to the door to greet us. We dump my bags and go to the nearby Monoprix store to buy food. We return to the apartment and only a few minutes later my friend's flatmate returns with another friend. We spend the rest of the afternoon eating, chatting, snoozing and preparing for a party later in the evening.
As the evening moves on, French guests start to arrive and, feeling a huge wave of underconfidence in my linguistic abilities, I retreat to chat to my friend in the kitchen, who is preparing food. As she is vegetarian, I end up cooking the chicken. We laugh at the irony of the two English people catering to the innately gourmet French.
Slowly the beer lowers my inhibitions and I start to speak to the guests. The conversation is mostly small-talk, but I'm grateful for their friendliness. They recommend places to see, shops to visit. We compare notes between London and Paris. One of them was based in The City (i.e. London's financial district) for a couple of years and laments the long hours that she used to work. "Paris is more relaxing," she comments.
By 3am most of the guests have left and I am ready for bed. The remaining two guests show no sign of leaving (in fact they end up staying over) and the music is still blaring. I'm sleeping in the room next door, but it makes no difference. I'm under the covers for less than five minutes before I'm out for the count.
Posted by Hg on Monday 08 April 2002 at 18:27.
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Forty-eight hours in Paris is just not long enough. Thankfully I realised this in advance, so I wasn't planning a huge itinerary - all I wanted to do was go to the Sacré Coeur and the Centre Pompidou. (Interestingly, in retrospect, the last time I had a 'tourist' day in London I went to a bridge that connects a significant place of religious worship with a modern art gallery - a theme emerging?)
Travelling via Eurostar was an anti-climax in many ways. Although the public side of the terminal at Waterloo looks very businesslike, the passenger departure lounge is cramped, uninteresting and now a little scruffy. The platforms, with their glass roof structure, are very impressive, but the trains are just trains (albeit exceptionally long in British terms). Maybe I should have gone Premier Class for more of an 'experience', but I booked too late to use my Air Miles and so was being budget-conscious.
However, the interesting thing was the transition through security and customs. I've travelled on trains over international borders before (Northern Ireland to Eire and Austria to Hungary), but this was the first time from England. Until last summer, I had travelled through Waterloo station twice a day for eleven years - it's a place of great familiarity.
However, on Eurostar when you've started encountering the French and Flemish announcements and signage, you've passed through the security checks and you've wandered around the pseudo 'Duty Free' shops, mentally you're no longer in a London railway station: you're in that international no man's land of mass transit. It's therefore very disconcerting, two minutes after pulling out of the station, to be passing through stations with mundane names like Vauxhall and Clapham Junction.
I also found that my mind was starting to play tricks on me. I had started trying to think in French and as the train travelled through the south London suburbs all the English signs on the warehouses and shops looked foreign. I enjoy that shift of perception, it's like when a non-London friend comes to visit and I start to see the city through their eyes instead. Empathy, I guess; being taken out of yourself.
Eurostar limps through the capital and Kent towards the tunnel, only picking up speed on the French side. The tunnel itself is uninteresting, though the twenty minute crossing time is a salutary reminder that the UK is much closer to mainland Europe that many sections of its population would like to think. Then you emerge on the other side and... it's pretty much the same, of course. Maybe a few more people on bicycles that you'd see in England and obviously different signage and driving on the other side of the road, but if you weren't paying attention or had fallen asleep before the tunnel, you'd have to look pretty closely to spot the differences.
Paris is a smaller city than London and consequently has less of a suburban sprawl. Once you start to hit the outskirts, it's only a matter of minutes before you're pulling into the Gare du Nord. SNCF, the French railway system, puts the disorganised British coalition of rail companies to shame. The sidings are full of impressive, sleek looking Thalys trains (the international service to several other countries from France), the platforms are clean and everything is well organised. From a British perspective, the station itself is like a grander Saint Pancras. Also, double-decker train carriages - such a simple idea! I think these exist in in the USA, but I've no idea whether they operate anywhere else. Britain needs to look at this concept in the long-term, despite whatever short-term barriers exist (tunnel sizes, presumably).
So, with a slightly late arrival it was just after 2:30pm and I was there. My friend was waiting at the end of the platform to meet me and we headed off into the Métro to her apartment. Now I have to do some work, so I'll tell you more later.
Posted by Hg on Monday 08 April 2002 at 12:38.
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Predictably today was utter bedlam
Predictably today was utter bedlam at work and, apart from a depressing and slightly embarrassing midday chat with the boss about our team's workload, things went entirely as expected. In summary: adrenaline, frustration, late lunch, last-minute panic, I'm leaving, oops I'm still here, I'm leaving again, oh I'm really leaving. Got home too tired to do anything apart from fall onto the sofa and get my weekly fix of Buffy and Angel.
Sometimes I wonder whether it's actually worth taking any time off work. The build-up and the comeback surely wipe out any benefit of the break itself. But I know that this is just the distracted pessimism of an over-tired guy and that tomorrow, hurtling through the Kent countryside towards the tunnel and France, things will seem very different.
I like to think of myself as a cosmopolitan person. I love the multicultural, international nature of London. I'm tolerant and open-minded. However, I'm still like a kid when it comes to the little things. My wife is quite glad that she's not coming with me, because she can picture the scene. "Look, French writing! Look, Euros! Look, the Eiffel Tower! Look, French cars! Look, the Métro! Look, French shops! Look, French rubbish bins!" Etc.
Demain, je deviens hydragenique. Back Sunday.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 04 April 2002 at 21:29.
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My eyes fixed on the motorbike rider straight in front of me. Clad in skin-tight black leather with a shiny ebony orb containing his skull and a single word across his back, he looked like a branded ant hurrying furiously towards a cryptic destination. I considered, with idle horror, how a simple kick of my foot could flatten him beyond repair. (Don't panic, it was an intellectual curiosity rather than a genuinely murderous urge.)
We hold our own and others' lives in our hands on a daily basis. We negotiate risk without a second thought. The world is a potential death trap, yet we are serene. Then something of an infinitely lesser magnitude takes us by surprise - a thoughtless comment or an unhappy coincidence - and we are all but devastated.
Those who have little to worry about often worry the most - this is a fruitless pastime of which I'm constantly guilty. Fortunately there's still just enough time left this evening for me to grab a beer, watch the setting sun and enjoy a few moments of reflection, relaxation and sheer gratitude.
The warmer it gets, the easier it is to chill.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 03 April 2002 at 18:10.
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"In fretting over paper, we have been tripped up by a historical accident of innovation, confused by the assumption that the most important invention is always the most recent."
I bookmarked this fascinating article a couple of weeks ago (via MetaFilter, I think). It covers the old chestnut of paper versus computers and comes to an interesting conclusion, which I'm afraid I've kind of given away in the quote above.
I was reminded of this article over breakfast, trying to read the online version of Le Monde. For some reason, it just wasn't happening. I found myself wishing I still worked in central London, where I could buy a copy of the paper edition.
Computers are great for searching and surfing, but when it comes to browsing (in the pre-internet sense) paper is still king. I get agitated when I'm trying to take in large amounts of text on the PC screen; my attention span becomes noticeably shorter.
Reading a newspaper, magazine or book is so much more relaxing. I wonder whether that's a result of the medium itself, or just the fact that we tend to sit in more comfortable chairs?
Then there's reading in the bath, of course. I spent almost three hours in the tub once, refilling with hot water every hour, unable to put down the book that I had just started.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 03 April 2002 at 16:11.
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When I was young, What Makes It Go? by Joe Kaufman was one of my favourite books. Sadly it's now out of print and the copies on eBay and zShops are a bit too expensive for a brief nostalgia trip.
However, it seems that there's a twenty-first century, online equivalent: HowStuffWorks.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 03 April 2002 at 13:01.
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"It could also be simply a case of the novelty wearing off said one analyst who declined to be named."
Declined to be named? Surely that has to be the voice of experience...
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 02 April 2002 at 21:59.
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Il y a quinze ans je pouvais parler français, mais a ce moment je le trouve plus facile de le lire que de l'écrire. Cependant, je voyage à Paris ce vendredi et je ne veux pas être l'un de ces gars anglais qui ne parlent que en anglais et cherchez toujours «une tasse de thé». Donc, je dois lire «Le Monde» souvent demain et jeudi, pour devenir un vrai européen.
Mon Dieu, three sentences plus a religious exaltation and I'm knackered already. This bodes well.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 02 April 2002 at 21:21.
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"There's already enough that is
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 02 April 2002 at 18:00.
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I'm constantly trying to find the right balance between routine and spontaneity in life.
Routine can be useful because certain tasks are predictable and largely non-negotiable. It's handy not having to reinvent my schedule every morning when it comes to shaving, having breakfast and getting to work. Knowing that there is a tried and tested pattern that gets me to my desk by 9:30am, I float through the whole process on autopilot and my mind works on other issues.
Equally, I find it helpful to schedule events like going for a swim at the same times every week, because otherwise I have a habit of putting things off. Also, when life gets stressful, difficult or just plain busy, routine can be comforting in the way that it reduces the number of decisions that need to be made.
Spontaneity is also good - without it, we become robots acting out a preordained destiny. We've all experienced those times where a chance meeting with a friend, an opportunistic beer after work or a last minute mini-break has been more fun than anything that was organised months in advance. Freed of expectations, we revel in the moment and have no time to wonder whether the event was everything that we expected it to be.
Too much routine can be mind-numbing, just as too much spontaneity can be disorientating. For me, the balancing act is achieved by having a routine allows me to identify blocks of free time, usually at the weekend, in which I can then be spontaneous.
This planned spontaneity might sound like a paradox, but I usually find that chaotic and purposeless free time is not worth a great deal. In my experience it tends to get frittered away on TV channel-hopping, window shopping, aimless net surfing or general navel-gazing. I like goals and objectives, the feeling of working towards something and then the satisfaction of achieving it.
On Friday I'm going to stay with a friend in Paris for the weekend, which is both a spontaneous and a pre-planned act. It's pre-planned because I've been talking about travelling on Eurostar (the rail link between London and Paris, amongst other locations) for years. Recently I heard that a friend has an assignment there for the next two months, which prompted the spontaneous part: I booked my ticket on Saturday.
For now, I'm going to finish this post, eat my lunch, have my regular weekly conference call, catch up on everything that I missed last week and make sure that I leave the office at 5:30pm, at which point I'll be aiming for my customary Tuesday evening swim. Tomorrow and Thursday will probably be equally mundane. Having been out of my regular routine for over a week now, I'm looking forward to the cosy predictability of it all.
At almost exactly this time on Friday, my train pulls into the Gare du Nord. As with my recent city breaks to Dublin and Cardiff, the lack of any agenda or schedule will be one of the many pleasures afforded by being there. I can't wait.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 02 April 2002 at 12:35.
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