We had been at sea for several weeks. We had left Singapore on the S.S. Captain Cook, docked at Colombo and then traced our way across the Indian Ocean before rounding the Cape of Good Hope. As we sailed up the west coast of Africa we disembarked briefly in Sierra Leone.
The sands on the beaches of Sierra Leone shone as brightly as a magnesium flare; on the horizon a line of pure deep ultramarine blue marked the division between sea and sky. Then, as the sun began to set, and as it turned orange then amethyst, a landrover – open, metallic, khaki – took us back to the S.S. Captain Cook and, once again we headed out to sea. No sooner had we settled back into the familiar routine of lessons, of school-book red ink corrections, of sharpening crayons and hiding in lifeboats when my father announced that ‘something special’ would shortly take place:
“We shall be visiting a French colony.” And so we did. The Captain Cook docked in Dakar. “You will notice certain differences …” said my father, mysteriously.
We tripped cautiously but excitedly down the gangplank and set foot in Senegal. As we did launches sluiced their criss-cross way through the oily waters – their polished brass sparkled, their wooden steering wheels shone with the patina of warm usage. Men in white, women in scarlet and lemon, lime green and electric blue thronged the quayside. The harbour was stacked with crates, with livestock – pungent, penned, alive, half-dead – with a million baskets of flowing cotton. Cages filled with chickens or sweet twisting tiny birds were hanging from iron hooks. Ochre and cinnamon and caramel spices spilled from big fat sacks. Everything was either languid, lugubrious and deathly or intense and alive, light or dark.
My father drove through the city pointing out the various pastel coloured buildings and the intricate ironwork of the balconies that decorated both the houses and the hotels in little flurries of elegance. “One day you will go to Paris,” he declared: “There you will see, a thousand times over, the same ironwork, the same beauty. Paris is a marvellous city – like no other. Your mother and I spent our honeymoon there: in the Rue Faubourg St.Honore, in the officers’ club. It was the height of luxury to have a boiled egg for breakfast.”
[Later my father was to tell me how he would save empty tins of sardines that still contained the last droplets of oil – droplets left behind once the fish had been eaten. He gave the tins to a German schoolmaster. It was immediately after the war – in 1945. “I was administering the district around Bremen,’ said my father. Fat, oil – anything edible – was in terribly short supply. War is a wretched and dreadful business; never let anyone tell you otherwise. And never waste anything. Remember well that German schoolmaster: a man who would wait patiently for a droplet of oil from an empty sardine tin. The man was as civilised as any you could ever meet – and now barely surviving in the aftermath of war.”]
Dakar, like Capetown, divided itself between the white walls, flowering gardens and black cars of the Europeans and a haphazard drum beat of rude earthen dwellings that gradually spread out in little ribbons along the dirt roads that led inland. Everywhere clusters of children swarmed and played, always smiling, always laughing – always the ambiguity of an alien charm. ‘I wonder if they play cricket,’ I thought.
My brother and I never knew why we stopped at the different ports on our journey from Singapore to England. But later, as we disembarked, as we left Senegal, we knew, somehow, that we were on the last leg of our journey ‘home’.
“We shall be edging past the coast of North West Africa, of Morocco,” murmured my father, “And then on to Spain. In a few days we will be crossing the Bay of Biscay. We shall be able to listen to the BBC and the shipping forecasts.”
As we sailed north, we caught sight of the first big Atlantic clouds and felt, for the first time, the slightest chill in the evening air. A tangerine coloured radio appeared and announced that ‘storm force’ winds were expected. Not though in Rockall or Shannon or German Bight; instead, Finisterre and Biscay were to set for a rendez-vous with the tempest.
By now the sky had turned the colour of anthracite except for a few slashes of burnt orange. The atmosphere on board ship was unlike anything my brother and I had experienced. The ghost of fear was all about. The wind had dropped. Voices were hushed, clipped, expectant. The lifeboat drill had been unusually humourless. Something was afoot, something sinister, something ominous. Then the storm struck. The Captain Cook reared and lurched as the dim light of day turned black. The waves poured over the bow of the ship and slammed against its sides. The grey terrifying sea lashed above the portholes. My brother and I clung to our bunks. Our life jackets had been strapped on and around us. All night the storm hit hard as terrible shudders and groans replaced the friendly slap-slap of the equatorial waters. As the night wore on my father reached out a comforting hand:
“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. These ships can go through hell and back.” And so my father magic-ed away fear. Now the storm was a devil to be dared. And we knew that ‘who dares, wins.’
As the storm abated we passed through Biscay and came upon the Irish sea. We saw the lights of Ireland.
“Look, the lights of Ireland!” …
At last, on a February morning in a frost-pale daybreak we arrived in Liverpool. We looked out from the upper decks.
I saw my first wife just the other night. It was the first time I’d seen her in 50 years. She looked pretty much the same as she had looked 50 years ago. Her face still resembled the face of Brigitte Bardot. When I first met her – back in the old smokestack days of long guitar solos and crushed velvet trousers – I thought that she looked just like Brigitte Bardot; however, the photographic evidence doesn’t exactly validate my perception. But, back then, I tended to view the world through Brigitte Bardot spectacles.
In addition to my wife being a Brigitte Bardot look-a-like she was brilliant and crazy and a communist. Because of her looks – her blonde hair and mascara-big eyes and her mini dresses – a lot of people thought that she was a bit of a bimbo. That was a big mistake. After a few minutes in her company their bimbo concept unravelled and they were left picking up the pieces of a million broken synapses. The synapses didn’t know what had hit them; many flew off, in desperation, straight into the dynamic concepts of Sigmund Freud. All their ego-defence mechanisms were in overdrive.
By the time my first wife was 24 she’d written a book on language-use and social class. Her beauty and brilliance meant that I was clearly punching above my weight. My wife wasn’t going to hang around with me for long; that much was obvious: She left me one wintry night in London; I’d just had my wisdom teeth removed. (I don’t think there was any causal connection.) We were attending a reception at the London Institute of Education and because of the teeth (or lack of them) I could not eat anything. Perhaps a glass or two of wine made the rupture – the break-up – easier for both of us. I took a taxi home – and that was that.
She was carrying a heavy leather bag when I met her again after all those years. I never thought to ask her what was in the bag – but I still wanted to carry it and take the weight from her shoulders.
We went into a café to catch up on what had been going on between 1974 and 2024. A woman approached us – a woman wearing a distinctive ring; it had a central ruby cut into a special and very distinct oblong shape. The ruby was set amongst some clear but tiny diamonds. The woman passed by. I asked my wife what the shape of the ruby was and the identity of the ring. She answered: ‘It’s a synthetic a priori ring.’ I smiled: she’d lost none of her brilliance. I started to feel an intense longing to discover, to understand, more of what had been going on for her during those 50 years. But we kept things light.
After a while, I asked her about where she was going on holiday and she was really pleased to tell me that she was going south to the warm seas so as to do some diving. She said that under the sea (where she was going to be diving) lay the home of the old long-ago bumper cars – the dodgems – and you could see them far below on the sea-bed – orange and pink and shiny yellow – with chrome bumpers – and if you listened you could hear the sound of the old fairground music. She told me that the fairground music came from huge barrel organs that were painted in strong garish happy colours. The barrel organs floated on the surface of the sea and were washed here and there by the waves so you never knew how well you were going to hear the sounds – the melodies – coming from them. She said that it was just like seeing the Lonely Hearts’ Club Band playing their songs on the curving chemistry of a super eight cine film.
I had never asked myself before about where old dodgems go to die. Now I know.
Quite why Jake accepted to work for an orthodox and traditional arm of government is one for the depth psychologists. Jake – or J.D. – had studied political philosophy at a very good university during the radical years of the late 60s; in consequence, he had developed a generalised anti-bourgeois outlook. It follows that J.D. was not, prima facie, suited to work in a conservative institution that was in the business of social control rather than social change. J.D. looked like the kind of man who was into political philosophy: he was thin, had straight dark shoulder-length hair, rarely smiled, and wore varieties of blue denim. When he spoke his voice sounded like a drying wind streaming over symphonies of sand paper. He was clever – in a sparing kind of way; his gaze was penetrating – unsettling even.
J.D. drove to work in an Opel Manta; his car was painted a kind of antique yellow: it had shiny black plastic seats and it rocketed him to work through the country lanes of Hampshire. (Nowadays it would be a ‘cool’ car to drive. And I would certainly like to have one.) En route, he listened to Radio 4 news on his car radio; he shouted expletives at what he heard and interspersed his Radio 4 listening with music tapes. J.D. read ‘Rolling Stone’. That meant he was pretty much up-to-date with all things rock; his music tapes reflected that up-to-date-ness.
Of course he didn’t really want to work for the government – or anyone else for that matter. He wanted to be a rock music critic or a writer. The trouble with J.D. was that he was an angry man – and so he tended to find fault with things and his anger was prone to realise itself in plain nastiness; he allowed his agonistic outlook to surface in his writing – and that didn’t always make for good reading. He even shouted abuse at the philosophers who suddenly appeared on the TV in the 1978 series called ‘Men of Ideas.’ They didn’t deserve to be shouted at; anyone should know that it’s not easy conversing in an intelligible manner about philosophy. BUT J.D. did not find fault with a picture of Van Morrison that he discovered in the rock magazine ‘Rolling Stone’. And the photo showed Van Morrison sitting in the kind of place that makes for good rock photos – a place made a million times better because next to him was a new kind of music machine – a Hitachi ghetto blaster. J.D. admired the whole concept of the ghetto blaster and its semiotic mix of the now and the hip and power and mobility. The photo served to underline the complete mis-match between him and his job in government service.
As he drove to work, and as he listened to his music, and as he shouted at the musings of the Radio 4 people, strong and powerful images of alternative ways of life started to take shape in his mind. Maybe a catalyst was Springsteen’s ‘Darkness on the edge of town’. ‘Darkness on the edge of town’ went well with J.D. and his Opel Manta but it didn’t go so well with country lanes in Hampshire; that’s obvious. Maybe Neil Young’s ‘Comes a time’ was a major factor; maybe for J.D, the time had come to stop playing the government game. But for sure, Waylon and Willie’s new ‘outlaw’ music album had something to do with it: he paid close attention to the mood of the album, to that strangely perfect melding of melody and lyrics …
He knew the words of Waylon and Willie’s ‘Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys’: they went like this:
‘Cowboys ain’t easy to love and they’re harder to hold. They’d rather give you a song than diamonds or gold. Lone-star belt buckles and old faded Levis, And each night begins a new day. If you don’t understand him, an’ he don’t die young, He’ll prob’ly just ride away.
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Don’t let ’em pick guitars or drive them old trucks. Let ’em be doctors and lawyers and such. Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. ‘Cos they’ll never stay home and they’re always alone. Even with someone they love.’
Suddenly, it was all very simple. J.D. didn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer ‘or such’: he just wanted to ride away …
Which he did. I never saw him again.
P.S. The photo shows the back cover not of ‘Rolling Stone‘ but of ‘The International Times‘. It was the kind of thing those of us studying politics or psychology or all the good-time counter-cultural stuff in the ’60s would see and read.
It was the beginning of June. The harbingers of summer had already zig-zagged their insouciant way through the bright transparent air. Which harbingers? Why, those large determined big-eyed flies – the bluebottles! Something reassures me when I hear the buzz of the bluebottle: it’s the sound of dazzling skies and long-grass meadows, of the deep green shade of chestnuts, swallows on the wing, picnics and riverbanks – and days that begin dawn-pink in the east and die slowly in the glowing farewell of orange or bronze at sunset. It’s the memory of my parents disturbed during their afternoon reading – and swishing their rolled-up newspapers again and again as they tried to dispatch the wilfully wretched importunate beasts.
The sound of the bluebottle reminds me of 1969 – of those transistor radio days . It was in this year that the still avant-garde and underground band ‘Pink Floyd’ released their album ‘Ummagumma’ and which included Roger Waters’ beautiful composition, ‘Grantchester Meadows’. ‘Grantchester Meadows’ begins with the chirp and tinkle of birds singing – and then, every once in a while, we hear the drone of a fly. Thereafter the song begins in earnest: it is charming; there are dog-foxes and kingfishers and ducks taking to flight from the surface of water. Overall, a lovely dreamy version of England emerges through the Floyd’s plangent hypnotic sound. (It’s an England that is worth preserving.) BUT after six minutes or so the fly re-appears. Its drone rises and falls in random volumes until we hear footsteps and the swish swish swish of a fly-swot. Then there is one final swot … and silence.
In 1969 I also first read Mervyn Peake’s trilogy of novels, beginning with ‘Titus Groan’, then ‘Gormenghast’ and lastly ‘Titus alone’. The novels describe the life of Titus – the seventy-seventh Earl of the ‘umbrageous’ brooding crumbling kingdom of Gormenghast. In the second novel Peake tells us about Titus’ schooling; like mine it was an ink-stained kind of schooling that no longer exists; the young Titus, like his classmates is sleepy; while the classroom swims ‘in a honey-coloured milky-way’ of sunbeams, Titus begins, for the first time in his life to attend, at length, to the effortless flow of his thoughts and the fruits of his imagination. As he does a fly starts to buzz around in the classroom. And Peake tells us about this fly:
“Every time it passed certain desks, small inky hands would grab at it, or rulers would smack out through the tired air. Sometimes it would perch, for a moment on an ink-pot or on the back of a boy’s collar and scythe its front legs together, and then its back legs, rubbing them scything them, honing them, or, as though it were a lady dressing for a ball, drawing on a pair of long invisible gloves.”
Peake then considers the ultimate meaning of the fly:
“Oh bluebottle, you would fare ill at a ball! There would be none who could dance better than you; but you would be shunned: you would be too original: you would be before your time. They would not know your steps, the other ladies. None would throw out that indigo light from brow or flank – but, bluebottle, they wouldn’t want to. There lies the agony. Their buzz of conversation is not yours, bluebottle. You know no scandal, no small talk, no flattery, no jargon: you would be hopeless, for all that you can pull your long gloves on. After all your splendour is a kind of horror-splendour. Keep to your inkpots and the hot glass panes of schoolrooms and buzz your way through the long summer terms.”
And so, through his parable of the bluebottle, Peake identifies the eternal problem confronting that which is truly original: it is before its time. But, there is something else: it’s not too far-fetched to find in Peake an anticipation of the anti-aesthetic – the ‘horror-splendour’ that came to characterise so much of contemporary modern art.
My father was an army officer. He had no illusions about war; in part, this was because he had studied some of the classical writings about the conduct of warfare and had supplemented this with some of the great literary works that took, as their subject, ‘war’. He was, on reflection, an unusual character because he placed virtually no restrictions on the education or life-choices of his four sons. To that extent, I and my three brothers enjoyed a life that was virtually free of surveillance. He did, however, impress upon us the need always to be well-mannered, to be polite and respectful, to avoid excess – and to have what he called, ‘integrity’. He also expected his sons to do well at school and to achieve high – or at least reasonably good – academic standards. He occasionally made some suggestions about those literary works which merited close attention and appreciation if ‘one’ were to have some of the necessary elements of a good education. Amongst them was Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’. My father had been hospitalised during his army career (after his experiences during the Second World War) and this had given him the opportunity, over a period of three weeks, to read every word of Tolstoy’s remarkable achievement. I remember him saying: ‘If you are going to read War and Peace, you will need to set aside three uninterrupted weeks – and read the text carefully.’
Whilst I was at University in Scotland I spent some of my time trying to become better educated. I was studying psychology and philosophy (over a period of four years) but my conversations with some of the students who were ‘reading’ literature, politics and sociology, revealed the limitations – the inadequacies – of my cultural knowledge. I also experienced the scarcely articulated feeling that works of literature were as valuable in learning about ‘psychology’ as were the attempts to place psychology upon some sort of ‘scientific’ foundation. (Later I noticed that writers such as the brilliant Elias Canetti asserted that reading an author such as Balzac would be more or less sufficient to grasp what humans were ‘really’ like and why they did what they did.) And so, once the terms had finished I did not simply read the ‘set texts’ on psychology or philosophy but also various works of French, German, Russian and American literature. Amongst the latter was Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace.’ Sadly, though, I did not follow my father’s advice. I did not read the work nearly as carefully or as painstakingly as I should have. I did not dwell sufficiently on the various stories nor on the range of insights that Tolstoy was able to identify for his readership. Now more than 50 years later I have begun to re-read ‘War and Peace.’ In a way it has been a very sobering experience because – as my father implied – the book requires the increasingly contemporary mind (where everything has been speeded up) to work against itself, to ‘slow down’ and to persevere with the gradual unfolding of the text. It requires a concentration of effort. It requires a willingness to pay close attention to detail and to remember that we now live in a stylistically and expressively very different world. We now see ‘things’ differently: and this is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than when Tolstoy describes the process of a childbirth that was to take place in the Rostov household as, ‘the most solemn mystery in the world …’
But, the effort is worth it – although initially I was sometimes inclined to agree with Henry James’ criticism that ‘War and Peace’ is rather too sprawling and a little over-extended. It might also be preferable to view it as a detailed historical document rather than a novel. The text is also a disturbing case-study in the extreme gendering of mind-and-body that marked human social and cultural existence in Russian (and European) society in the 19th Century. On top of this, the sheer levels of misogyny are often profoundly disturbing. But the various distinct stories within the whole are riveting and unswervingly reflect the fact that no human life is ever free of problems – and always subject to the one unavoidable certainty: death. One of the most striking features of the book is its ability to show the way emotion and irrationality continually triumph over reason and clear, dispassionate critical thinking. It also highlights the extraordinary power that a leader – such as an Emperor or a military commander-in-chief – can inspire in a young man: the phenomenon of charisma is perfectly captured – as are its psychological effects and consequences.
But there is also the telling observation that quite suddenly a person may come to realise that the grandeur and mystery of the world (in its infinitude) can render a once-revered leader no more than an insignificant presence in the totality of a universe – a universe that always profoundly transcends the individual human. This point is nicely made in the case of the thoughtful and yet ‘enchanted’ person of the Russian Prince Andrew Bolkonsky who finds himself (seemingly) fatally wounded during the famous and tragic battle of Austerlitz: Tolstoy describes how a blow to the head causes him to fall to the ground and, as the supine Prince lies on his back, he soon becomes aware that: ‘Above him was nothing, nothing but the sky – the lofty sky, not a clear sky, but still infinitely lofty, with grey clouds creeping gently across. ‘It’s so quiet, peaceful and solemn, not like me rushing about,’ thought Price Andrey, ‘not like us, all that yelling and scrapping [with scared and bitter faces] those clouds are different, creeping across that infinite sky. How can it be that I have never seen that lofty sky before? Oh, how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! It’s all vanity, it’s all an illusion, everything except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing but stillness and peace. Thank God for that.’
The hours pass – and then Tolstoy tells us that:
‘Up on the Pratzen Heights Prince Andrey Bolkonsky was lying where he had fallen … bleeding from a head wound and moaning pitifully, without being aware of it … By late afternoon he had stopped moaning and lay perfectly still. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious, but now suddenly he felt alive again, not least from the burning, lacerating pain in his head.’ And then: ‘He listened, and there was the sound of approaching hooves and French-speaking voices. He opened his eyes wide. There was the same lofty sky above him, with clouds floating higher than ever and through them glimpses of blue infinity. He didn’t turn his head and couldn’t see the men who had ridden up and stopped. It was Napoleon himself with two adjutants.‘
As Napoleon looks down on the fallen Prince, he remarks, ‘A fine death this one’; Prince Andrey knew that they were talking about him, ‘but the words sounded like buzzing flies. They were of no interest to him … he knew it was Napoleon – his hero – but at that moment, Napoleon seemed to him such a tiny inconsequential creature compared with everything that was now transpiring between his spirit and that lofty, sky-blue infinity with its busy clouds.’
Then – later and significantly – as Prince Andrey begins to recover, he is brought before Napoleon as a ‘prize capture’; but by now, ‘all the things that Napoleon stood for seemed trivial at that moment, his hero seemed so petty in his squalid vanity and triumphalism, compared with that righteous and kindly sky – all of which led Prince Andrey to muse on the insignificance of greatness, on the insignificance of human life, the meaning of which no one could understand …’
(Occasionally, whilst I was reading ‘War and Peace‘ I would keep up with the latest media presentation of news stories and pay attention to various other media manifestations – and even those posts on ‘Instagram’ featuring such extraordinary levels of self-promotion and narcissism. And, none of it was ever like seeing into the sky-blue infinity …)
Oscar Wilde believed that what helped to make Russian writers’ books – books by, for example, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, and Gogol – ‘great’ was ‘the pity they put in them’; in truth, their novels, as the translator Anthony Briggs mentions, demonstrate that ‘everyone – even people in advantageous or privileged circumstances – finds the living of life a worrying and difficult business most of the time.’ (My own life has turned out to been a fairly unbroken sequence of discomforts – both physical and mental!) On top of this – and with specific reference to ‘War and Peace‘ – a series of questions confronts and engages a few of the central characters – questions which also await the reader: these include: What is happiness? How do you distinguish it from fun? How is it possible to live on in the sure and certain knowledge of death? Is the concept of God any help? What are the roles of fate and luck in human experience? What should you do with a human life? In many ways, the genius and brilliance of ‘War and Peace‘ lies in its ability to lay bare the ethical shortcomings that lie (probably) at the heart of the human condition. The text continually shows the partiality or self-interest or moral weakness of its various characters: people lie, misrepresent, deceive, cheat and express various evils – and the debates between for example, Pierre Bezhukov and Andrey Bolkonsky, underline the apparent impossibility of achieving any kind of moral agreement in relation to how one ought to live.
Not so long ago my colleagues and I found ourselves in an institution where we really did, in the context of ethics, explore the question ‘What should you do with a human life?’ The very fact that we were addressing this question was one way of answering it. The strange thing about reconsidering ‘War and Peace‘ is that I realise my attempt to ‘teach’ ethics was largely a waste of time. And now, as I live out a life of quiet anonymity, I have to come to terms with the fact that, despite the claims of others, there is very little difference that I can make to any human life and absolutely none whatsoever to the powerful forces which govern the behaviours of people and nations.
I live right next door to an art college. Art colleges used to be a law unto themselves and the students would explore and express lots of radical ideas and forms of subversion. Now they are more like factories that turn out graduates to serve the creative industries – and hence to make the world seem like a happy glossy place – or, to turn it into a spectacle. (Meanwhile the wars drag on.)
The college next door (which now calls itself a ‘university’ and which looks ‘corporate’ and alienated) runs all sorts of degree courses ranging from Fine Art to the new forms of Digital and Media Art. They also have a degree programme on photography. One of its modules is (or was) called the ‘stranger’ project. I don’t know all the details of the brief but, on two occasions, a different student has knocked on my door and asked if I would be the ‘stranger’ that would be the subject of their project and the focus of their photographs.
On both occasions I said ‘yes’. In fact, I was pleased to participate. For one reason or another I have rarely been photographed and I hoped that the ‘stranger’ project would remedy this. (I looked forward, as Roland Barthes has suggested, to ‘loaning’ my presence as it would come to be manifested in a photograph.) However, on both occasions something very odd happened: After a preliminary meeting the first student, a young woman, then declared that she did not want to do the project and, when it came to photographing me, she said that her camera now ‘felt like a gun.’ I knew that it was common practice in photography to use metaphors drawn from hunting but I suggested that there were other forms of speech that could describe what was going on: and so I asked: “Why not think of the camera as a means of inquiry?” But she resisted this idea and sat disconsolately on a chair as she looked out of the window. For quite some time she carried on looking out of the window. I said nothing. I waited. Then she told me that she would ‘go away’ and ‘think about’ what to do.
In the next meeting, she arrived and announced that I would not actually appear in her photographs. She would photograph some parts of the house in which I lived – and my only involvement (as a presence) would be to sit at a typewriter typing out some notes on white paper. So that was it: I think the only parts of me that may have been included in one of her photographs were the tips of my fingers. But what was even more unexpected was the fact that she never showed me any of the photographs that she submitted to her tutors at the culmination of her project.
On the second occasion, a year later, a young man appeared at the front door hoping to find someone to be the ‘stranger’. It turned out that his first choice of ‘stranger’ had fallen through and he was, it seemed, a little behind schedule. So I volunteered willingly and made an effort to help him by outlining the life I had lived, some of the things I had done, and some of the things I was still doing. I even drove him around to visit the places I liked – such as a blacksmith’s forge in a nearby city. However, he was one of the most introverted characters that I have ever met. What was particularly surprising was that he hardly ever asked me anything. As his taciturn visits unfolded I thought I would get out some of my treasured possessions: I reckoned that he’d be able to do a good project if he focused his camera on the objects and get me to say something about them.
So, on his fourth visit I was ready to show him those prized possessions. But he wasn’t interested. In fact, he didn’t even see any of them. Instead he suggested we play chess – which we did. (Perhaps he was a partial re-incarnation of Marcel Duchamp. Who knows …) And then, just as with the first photographer, I never got to see any of the photographs that he had taken – either of the inside of my house or the ones he had taken from my car window as we drove around or of the places we had visited. I think I may have featured in some of them but I will never know if those were the ones he chose for inclusion in his final work. So for the second year in a row I was left baffled about my failure to appear in a photograph. Maybe I was supposed to remain a ‘stranger’.
But, the ‘stranger’ project did have one good outcome. It served as a catalyst for me to identify some of the really precious objects that I possess. And so the process made me less of a stranger to myself. Still, underneath it all, I had really hoped that somehow, a photographer would actually make something of my presence instead of leaving a kind of nothingness.
I had been invited to a ‘Symposium’. It was to be held at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) in Farnham, Surrey. Four ‘Masters of Fine Art’ students would be ‘presenting’ - although quite what they would ‘present’ remained a little obscure. I wasn’t sure whether to go. I have had one or two previous experiences of this kind of event and I find them rather odd. In truth, I don’t feel quite ‘at home’ and something of an alien. I am not sure about what is really ‘going on’ and what sort of response (if any) the artists want or need. This is partly down to what I perceive as the culture of contemporary Fine Art – as well as the rather too obvious ethos of the university as a ‘supplier of talent’ to and for the creative industries. The institution looks more like a corporate affair with buildings and marketing ‘noise’ to match and nothing like the art colleges of former times. I have also been told that such ‘artists’ talks are themselves peculiar and hybrid affairs in which the artist tries to match or attach a verbal communication to a sequence of images and/or images of artefacts which they have made. In addition, the work of the artists is projected (as a result of the genius of computer technology) onto very large projection screens – and so, in a way, the actual work itself is transformed into something cinematic. (Which it isn’t – unless it features actual films of some sort.) In the end I decided to go in the hope that I would ‘enjoy’ the experience. Since, though, an MA in Fine Art is firmly located in the relatively recent history or tradition of ‘advanced’ art, I will begin with a very short note on that history – before turning to reflect on some of the specific content of the symposium.
Part One: In 1967 Lucy Lippard and John Chandler wrote their now famous paper entitled ‘The de-materialisation of Art’; it was subsequently published in ‘Art International’, (volume 12, number 2, pps. 31-36) during February 1968. In the paper the authors identified the emerging presence of a distinctive kind of art – an ‘advanced art’ – that was ‘highly’ or ‘ultra-conceptual’. At its core they perceived what they called a fundamental ‘de-materialisation’ of art – by which they meant that this new mode of art underlined the primacy of thinking – both the thinking process and (somehow) the concrete tangible expression of ‘the idea’. In doing this they highlighted nothing less than a paradigm shift in the identity of art itself – and of art making. Their highly influential paper isolated and proposed a number of key features that defined this ‘advanced art’, central to which were:
The changed role of the art object – emerging now as a medium rather than an end in itself – a source of ideas (ideally to be followed through …)
The aspiration for and expression of a fusion of disciplines – e.g. art and language, art and science, art and sociology, art and anthropology. (Related to this was ‘cross-genre’ art-making)
A response to and exploration of the ‘zeitgeist’ – the spirit of the age – including the impact of conceptions of relativity and entropy (chaos) – and the role of chance and indeterminacy
In addition, the studio or site in which the ‘advanced’ artist worked was re-defining itself as a ‘study’, a place where ideas, including very abstract and difficult ideas, were identified, debated, researched, clarified, and given some form of aesthetic or artistic expression. To understand (properly) the new manifestations of art it was necessary to see them as signs that convey ideas; the works were not things-in-themselves, straight-forward things (or sensory entities) to be ‘consumed’ by the spectator but rather allusions to, symbols of – or representatives – of ideas. The work was a medium – a catalyst – rather than an end in itself; in a nutshell, whilst abstract ideas could drive art, art was now positioned to drive thought. However, this did not (and does not) mean that such advanced (conceptual) art was or is anti-aesthetic; Lippard and Chandler noted that, ‘as visual art, a highly conceptual work still stand or falls by what it looks like’ and they moved on to emphasise the fact that in principle, and perhaps ideally, ‘intellectual and aesthetic pleasure can merge … when the work is both visually strong and theoretically complex.’
Although this form of advanced conceptual art had developed as a reaction against the exclusionary conventions of the 1960s ‘art world’ and was an art which had, coincidentally, come to include electronics, light, sound and ‘performance attitudes’ in its expression, it, too, was soon to become mainstream: now, serious artists were encouraged and expected to inform their work not only with ‘ideas’ but also with incisive critical perspectives and at least some philosophical awareness. (A brilliant and accessible overview of a range of different critical perspectives is provided in Lois Tyson’s (1998) book ‘Critical theory today’ – a book which has secured its place as a key resource and essential reading on any MA in Fine Art degree course.) On top of this they had to find ways of expressing, visually, whatever it was that they had come to investigate. This was not easy. It is still not easy.
Part Two: The day of the Fine Art symposium had arrived. It was a very cold and very frosty morning and I almost decided to stay at home and not put myself through the unsettling experience that, in all likelihood, lay before me. Then I noticed, next to the front of the house, the very first japonica blossoms had begun to appear in divine shades of coral pink. The green leaves of a few hyacinths were also edging their way out from an earthen darkness into the light; if they could brave the cold then so could I. And anyway, prior to the event, I had enjoyed some vigorous communications with the artist, Lucy Bevin, in which we had contrasted the way different artists tackle the problem of embedding ‘theory’ in their work: in the light of this, I felt I really ‘ought’ to make the effort and go. Which I did. Despite the fact that I never felt comfortable during the proceedings, the MA Fine Art symposium at UCA in Farnham, held on that freezing morning of 16th January 2024, provided me (us) with an excellent example of the sophistication implicit in the ‘advanced’ forms of art that Lippard and Chandler had identified nearly 6 decades earlier. The titles of the four Masters’ presentations bear witness to this; in turn they were:
‘The present remembered’ by Christine Banat; ‘Trace. Embody. Ephemera’ by Darrell Kingsley; ‘Altered States and the (Un)Earthly’ by Lizziy Parker and, ‘Materiality and Symphony of Time’ by Kasia Alexiou.
Notwithstanding the fact that such artist’s talks are strange and unusual forms of communication, each of the artists successfully provided for and gave their audience a synthesis (or an amalgam) of the intellectual and the aesthetic – which in turn yielded various degrees of pleasure. But each did this in very different ways and through, as the titles show, the expression of very different ideas. Each of them also gave their audience a glimpse of the terrain that they had covered and were covering as they developed their practice on the MA course.
Kasia Alexiou began her presentation – her artist’s talk entitled ‘Materiality and the Symphony of Time‘ – by giving out a box of sweets (from which I duly took a green one – although I forgot to thank her at the end of the symposium!). Her art is necessarily complex because her subject deals with ‘time’ and the ‘being’ of things (including their ‘materiality’) – a focus which immediately locates it in the tradition of Heidegger’s philosophical work; her hypnotic short-film studies of light and the movement of water once again made me think about the way the past, present and future converge – even as the present becomes the past and the future becomes the present. (I was also to learn that the beauty I saw was a mirage: the orange glow on the waters and the blinding shafts of white sunlight encoded and referenced the horror of nuclear destruction. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were ‘here’ amongst us.) She also revealed the transfiguration of objects – either through the way their meaning alters according to the context in which we apprehend them – or the way the artist herself effects a transformation though some form of creative ‘representation’. Kasia concluded her work by requesting the audience to ‘advise’ her on how she might make progress as an artist in the future. I responded to this with the suggestion that, since she is interested in objects (material things) and ‘time’, she might read Roland Barthes’ short book ‘Camera Lucida’ mainly because he provides a deeply thoughtful and sensitive way of thinking about a material object – and specifically, in this case, a photograph of his mother. (In his reflection, he finds the ‘essence’ of his mother in just one of the many photographs of her - and as he does so, he reveals or discloses some details of the workings of his own ‘mind’.) I also made this suggestion because I am left with the uneasy, but definite, feeling that it is almost de rigeur for the artist (on something like an MA course) to attempt something that is virtually impossible because they are obliged to give concrete form to pure, contested and unresolved ideas or concepts. Many or most of these are far too rarefied and abstract to be effectively communicated through their work. For example, I remember once having to participate in a group show entitled ‘Time sinking’; it was a nightmare. ‘Time’ was already a problematic enough concept for me – on top of which I had great difficulties in finding ways of giving ‘time’ any sort of direction! In the end I ‘solved’ the problem by disinterring the ‘sedimentations’ in my memory of actual places that I had once visited – such as Paris in the early 1960s. In essence, I thought that Kasia might feel a greater sense of liberation if she worked from herself outwards. (I may well be wrong.) And, after all, what exactly does ‘materiality’ mean?
The title of Christine Banat’s presentation, ‘The present remembered’ impressed me (as had that of Kasia Alexiou) as something highly abstract and, at first sight, very difficult. As far as I know the present usually has to cease being the present for it to have a chance of settling into memory; on the other hand, I suppose that when we look back, we reawaken what was once in the present. In this sense the present is remembered. However, as she revisited and reviewed her work, I realised that she was in the process of outlining a partial visual anthropology; the central idea was based on the supposition that no one can ever escape the legacies that come their way and over which they have no control, legacies that are left by, from and through previous generations. These legacies – passed on through stories in which are embedded values, judgements and the meanings given to objects, actions and conduct – create, sustain and define the identity of individuals. (In fact, the art that is being made in the UK – with its emphasis on the ‘idea’ – is itself a product of the relatively recent ‘de-materialisation’ in art and the antecedent not-so-recent legacy provided by the history of art.) Christine also acknowledged that her art is informed by aspects of postcolonial theory and, to this extent, she referred to manifestations of an anti-colonial ideology that is now firmly ‘in place’ and expressed in parts of the African continent. Underneath it all, I sensed that what profoundly interests Christine is her fascination with the personal histories of some of the particular people that she encounters. But she, too, has a personal history and her own story to tell – and it might be even more powerful and pleasurable if she were to find ways of expressing her particular trajectory through life. Through her I was happily reminded of T. S. Eliot’s famous lines from the Four Quartets: ‘We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring. Will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time.’ (And just maybe, as a result of struggling with the processes of art-making we come to know ourselves for the first time.)
The two other presenters at the symposium also showed how the culture of Fine Art in the UK has the power to charm and provoke. Darrell Kingsley’s ‘Trace. Embody. Ephemera.’ – through the manner of his presentation – showed how forms of mark-making stand as the effective counterpoint to the over-elaborate vocabularies of conceptual abstractions. In fact, mark-making, of the type he expressed, seemed perfectly to integrate the movements of the body with a spiritual simplicity. I was prompted to ask: ‘Is mark-making at the very foundations and origins of art itself?’ However, I was unable to put this question to him because his ‘time was up’.
Finally, Lizziy Parker’s ‘Altered States and the (Un)Earthly’ included some wonderful huge collages of female forms each aligned with water, fire and earth. After listening to her and seeing what she had to present I was left wondering whether the ‘unearthly’ and the supernatural are in fact ‘natural’ to our human being. She impressed me as a very gifted and agile performance artist.
Did I enjoy the experience? Yes and No. I would love to be able to say, publicly, what I actually think but I don’t feel or sense that this would be really welcome. Oh, and one last thing: I was struck by the sentence: ‘All that is left behind‘ …
Years ago when I was either four or five years old my parents familiarised me with A. A. Milne’s book, Winnie-the-Pooh. During a recent discussion with my older brother about our memories of the Pooh stories and the setting(s) in which those stories took place he mentioned that my parents also had a 78 rpm record of the ‘Hums of Pooh’. But for our conversation, I would not have recalled this. I still have the original copy of ‘Winnie-the-Pooh‘ that was read to me: it has a bleached and faded red cover, is very worn and the spine has fallen by the wayside. The book itself is the ‘forty-second’ reprint and dates from 1952. So, the book is 72 years old. (I must make absolutely sure that my grandchildren, the twins Anais and Raphaella, take possession of it when I am no longer in the land of the living!)
It may seem strange but, in fact, my parents read me the book when our family was living in Singapore. So, far from the British Isles, Pooh and the ‘Hums of Pooh’ were with us. The geographical settings in which the Pooh stories took place were very different from those distant eastern landscapes that I experienced many decades ago. My brother Christopher, who was a year and a half older than me, may well have made more sense of the stories than I was able to achieve. I was, as I mentioned, only four or five years old. I did, however, remember the map at the front of the book: I liked maps and, somehow, I already knew how to ‘read’ them. The actual drawings (referred to as ‘decorations’) which accompanied the text helped me (very) considerably to get some sort of idea of what was going on: some of the drawings left an indelible mark on me: for example, I do remember being frightened and disturbed by what seemed like the terrifying presence of the angry ‘Heffalump’ hovering so menacingly above Pooh bear whilst he, Pooh, was in bed trying to get to sleep – and then again, hovering above Piglet’s bed when he, too, was also trying to sleep; the drawings vividly represented the fact that Pooh had fallen out of a huge tree and into a gorse bush which had left him covered in what must have been painful prickles. Pooh was also shown stuck in a burrow – and I knew that being stuck like that must have been awful. Things could easily go wrong for Pooh and his chums.
It is conceivable that, since we lived next door to what my parents had described as ‘a jungle’ – a place of relatively untouched ‘nature’ – which had columns of large marching ants, the ever-present threat of snakes and all sorts of worrisome ‘creepy crawlies’ – and the fact that we had to sleep under mosquito nets in order to be protected from the dangerous bites of the mosquitos – and avoid the spikes of lurking catfish at low tide or the stings of jellyfish that drifted in the warm seas – that I knew very well how dangerous ‘place’ could be; I could ‘see’ similarly that the situations in which Pooh and the other characters found themselves had real if seemingly lesser dangers too: there, in addition to the moments I have mentioned, one could get lost (in a mist) or get one’s head stuck in a pot, or get pushed into a stream or fall over and break (or spoil) whatever it was one was carrying. What’s more, the animals in the stories were not always very pleasant; Rabbit was a case in point; but even Piglet told lies and invented stories and Owl was pompous, pretentious and thoughtless and Eeyore was such dismal, miserable company. Since I had these perceptions – perceptions that were probably enhanced by the reading of the text that was transmitted to me by my parents (and their use of what Kristeva calls, the ‘semiotic dimension’) I somehow knew that the environment in which the Pooh stories took place was not exactly a paradise, was not a perfect ‘garden of eden’ – and I also knew that the characters in it were not more appealing to me compared to the boys and girls with whom I played in Singapore. (The boys and girls that I knew in Singapore were, as far, as I could tell, fun and convivial and I always enjoyed their company. (There are one or two photographs of us having the time of our lives with a huge canoe or simply swimming happily together or going to fancy-dress parties and so on.)
Nonetheless I really liked the Pooh stories. I liked the fact that the animals could pass the time without too many obvious constraints: like me, they could get out-and-about and find ways of doing interesting things. (I liked being able to do interesting things in Singapore – such as canoe-ing or swimming or fishing or tracking or larking about generally.) I liked the way the cocksure domineering know-all Rabbit got his come-uppance; I liked the whole idea of an enchanted place – even if there was something mysterious and disturbingly ecclesiastical about it. I loved the prospect of having a pencil case; and, I was amused by the playfulness of the puzzling, funny rhythmic rhymes and songs that Pooh generated. I also had the idea that sometimes it was really good to lie in the sun and do nothing or play skittles with pine cones or compete with others – especially my older brother – during games of Pooh sticks. I think the stories may have supported the obvious truth that a boy or girl can (provided they have not been too traumatised) create wonderful games by using the natural or not-so-natural materials around them. (After all, that is what I was able to do.)
Around thirty years later I read the stories to my two daughters. Reading stories to children can be something of an art. Whether or not I have that skill I do not know – but I would try to enhance the stories by making observations, pointing out details in the pictures or passing judgments as each of the stories unfolded. I remember my daughters being quite ‘taken’ by the experience: they would stare upwards or about them in a defocused kind of way and I could tell that they were following trains of thought and experiencing the pleasures yielded by their imaginations. They were to go on and read all sorts of books – as well as spending a large amount of time absorbing television programmes and films and all the media stuff. (I had a large Panasonic video camera and so, in the early 1980s, they used it to make films on VHS tapes.)
The years passed by. Both my daughters did creative things in the theatre. Both did creative things in Fine Art. Both are feminists. Both, partly as a result of their excellent schooling at Weydon School in Farnham, Surrey and then at Alton College in Alton, Hampshire, also developed a ‘postcolonial sensibility’ of sorts.
I now also have grand-daughters, the twins Anais and Rapahella, who are, at the time of writing, two years and eight months old; I could easily foresee that one day I would be reading ‘Winnie the Pooh’ to them. Part of the reason I had such a clear idea of this is because I would take them to a place where there are six distinct pine trees arranged in a very similar way to the ones depicted on the map at the very front of my (our) old Winnie the Pooh book. And this particular place has many of the ecological features that are profiled in the Pooh stories: in addition to the six pine trees, there are sandy paths, heather and gorse bushes – any number of ‘enchanted places’ – and so on. There are no oak trees, nor is there a stream – but there are Chestnut trees and boggy places. When I am in this heath and woodland setting the twins and I draw this and that in the sand, climb into pits made (presumably) by badgers, follow the tracks of dogs or deer or horses, play with fircones and collect berries and chestnuts. We play hide-and seek amongst the tall ferns and we don’t get lost. (We even collected enough chestnuts to be able to cook them and freeze them in readiness for our Christmas dinner.)
Then something happened: I was given the book ‘Positioning Pooh’ – a collection of academic papers edited by Jennifer Harrison – for Christmas – that is for Christmas 2023. The twins gave me a Christmas card that they had decorated – a card featuring two psychedelic fish and some surrounding red wires. (I was also given a pair of beautiful alizarine-crimson-and-black ‘Burlington’ woollen socks, and two lacquer boxes in which to put things; now that I’m thinking about the mood and ethos of the Pooh stories and the way they play with language and narrative these latter are completely unnecessary and peripheral details … but it’s fun to include them.)
The book, ‘Positioning Pooh’ has turned out to be full of highly stimulating literary criticism and very impressive levels of scholarship; it is provocative, disturbing and illuminating. It has made me think far more carefully about the ways in which children’s literature socialises, programmes and influences youngsters. In one of the chapters, a chapter authored by the PhD scholar Sarah Jackson, the question of ‘colonisation’ and ‘anti-colonisation’ is addressed as it features in the Pooh books. In truth, this was rather a surprise to me. I had not thought to uncover the residues of – or inclusion of – something as potentially unsettling as colonialist ideology that is, according to her, obviously reflected in the Pooh books. I had not really thought of the stories in these terms. So I revisited my understanding of postcolonial theory. The theory itself was partly derived from the study of colonialist culture and ideology – from its origins to its remarkable spread across the globe. It was sobering to be reminded that there is no getting away from the fact that colonial ideology plainly was (and is), highly oppressive; through all manner of means, it was and is profoundly controlling; it has subjugated and continues to subjugate indigenous people; it derogated (and still derogates) their culture(s) and, through various operations (political, economic, social and cultural) it turned (and turns) them into colonial subjects; as a result such subjects often turn to ‘mimicry’ as they try to internalise the ‘superior’ colonial culture – or feel degrees of ‘unhomeliness’ – because they belong to neither the colonists’ oppressor-culture nor to their own native culture. (They do not feel at home even in their own homes). Central and basic to colonial ideology is the practice of ‘othering’; ‘othering’ inevitably takes place in relation to the entrenched colonisers’ belief that they were (and are) the embodiment of what a human should be; and therefore, at its simplest, ‘othering’ divides the world into ‘us’ (the civilised, the superior type) and ‘them’ (the ‘others’, the less civilised, the backward or the savage.)
As I reacquainted myself with postcolonial theory I could see that, in many ways, it is the most helpful theory today for making sense of the social and cultural developments, the creation of identities and the struggles across the globe. (It also explains why the institution, a place referred to as ‘Bramshill’, in which I once worked, had to be abandoned because it had come to symbolise the deeper aspects of colonialism and colonisation.) Everywhere is having to respond to the rejection of colonialism and the reclamation of a pre-colonial past. However, quite how to reject something that is so deeply installed is difficult enough – but trying to ‘reclaim’ a cultural past – since cultures never stand still – is even more problematic.
Yet how does Sarah Jackson (and contributors to the book, ‘Positioning Pooh‘) illustrate the thesis that as, she says, ‘the Pooh stories are not immune from the influence of colonialism’ and ‘clearly reflect their nature as products of the British empire.’ She does this by identifying a number of episodes in the text in which the author parodies the colonising adventure-stories that were once so common in the 19th century literature for boys – such as the ‘expotition to the north pole’ or ‘the hunt for the woozle’; she finds plenty of evidence of ‘othering’ – especially by Rabbit, by Pooh himself as well as by Piglet; there are the colonising actions of Pooh – actions which mirror the appropriations of the colonisers – when he, for example, sought to take the bees’ honey for himself. And so it goes on. In other words, Jackson looks for forms of conduct in the stories that, in form and essence, parallel or replicate the controlling, exploitative and hierarchical beliefs and actions of colonisers. (There is even a hierarchy of Milne-the-author, then Christopher Robin, his son, then the animals in the landscapes – and then hierarchies of control within the animals themselves.)
On top of this, other students of the Pooh books such as Kutzner have asserted that all children are ‘colonised’ – and that earlier pre-Second World War children’s literature (including the Pooh books) is pervaded by the colonialist ideology – an ideology that was ‘everywhere’ in the UK when the books were written. Overall the classics of children’s literature are never immune from the cultural world in which they were produced.
So, in the light of all this, and given my affection for the stories in Winnie-the-Pooh, how was I to respond? How do I now ‘see’ the books. First, I am not entirely convinced that the setting in which the action takes place is as ‘arcadian’ as some critics suggest. It is more dangerous than it is assumed to be. And this raises the possibility that it comes rather closer to mirroring the dangers of the ‘jungle’ – the jungle, for example, that was adjacent to where my family was living in Singapore. It rather suggests that we have to be alert, wherever we are, to the powers intrinsic to nature and the folly of seeing it either as something to be exploited or as a place in which, safely, to escape. Second, I think the brilliant analyses in the book ‘Positioning Pooh’ may well underplay or ignore the dynamic relationship between the text, the reader and the listener. The reader may wittingly or unwittingly accentuate the colonist ideology (often by being unaware of its ‘presence’) or actually emphasise, in one way or another, anti-colonialist criticism. The reader may underline the wrongness or pitfalls of ‘stealing’ someone else’s honey or co-opting others to execute a nasty oppressive plan or even highlight the need to work with nature, wherever we may find ourselves, rather than against it. The ‘enchanted place(s)’ may be presented as sites in which marvellous transformations of being can occur – and so on. Even if significant traces of colonialism are reflected in the stories there is also plenty of evidence that the colonial aspects are held ups for ridicule; and if, as Jackson suggests, newcomers to the heathland and the woods, are obliged to live in some kind of ghetto the rest of the inhabitants are denied something – they are diminished in some way: they miss out on the vitality of Tigger or the assiduity of Kanga.
I am also not convinced that the texts are ‘syrupy’ sweet and overly sentimental as some critics seem to think. They suggest a ‘place – a world or a community – where things go right and things go wrong, where just about everybody has shortcomings, weaknesses and liabilities to which they (we) are susceptible. The controlling and apparently knowledgeable ‘beings’ are fallible, dangerous – and ‘all too human.’ Love matters – even if (sadly) it is not shared equally.
The overall idea that we are all more or less colonised and cannot ever escape the particular way we have been socially programmed is worth taking very seriously. And the great thing about books such as ‘Positioning Pooh’ or even Daphne Kutzner’s ‘Empire’s children’ is that they oblige us to be acutely sensitive to the hidden and very negative aspects of colonialism that are embedded in seemingly innocent children’s literature.
So, I shall read the stories to Anais and Raphaella as a sensitively as I can – and when we next see those six pine trees in the Bourne Woods, close to Farnham in Surrey, we can scurry around looking for pine cones and then we can ….
1955 : Singapore – and going to school in an army truck
Selerang Primary School was the place where I learned about gold stars, deception and fakery. Each morning after breakfast my brother and I would stand outside our house in Singapore and wait for the three-ton army truck to arrive. That was how we were taken to school – in a huge khaki-coloured three-ton army truck. We wore light cotton shirts and white shorts and our satchels were full of bits and bobs – as well as pencil cases and exercise-books.
When the lorry arrived the large brawny driver would get down from the driving seat and hoist us up and then manoeuvre us into the back of the truck. The back of the truck had two benches on either side and there was so much space between the two benches that we were free to mess around and play all sorts of games. We used to kiss the girls and they would mainly shriek – with a mixture of delight and horror. Not all the girls were exactly the same; one of them really liked to be kissed – but in the main they were more restrained and ladylike. In fact, it wasn’t easy kissing the girls because the truck would bounce over the bumps ands fissures in the road and we’d arrive at school well-shaken and stirred. Our kisses would be well aimed but they’d usually miss the mark.
School was light and airy and fun. If we did what the teacher wanted we would be given stars. The stars had three colours – gold, silver or bronze. I liked the silver ones best but we were encouraged to go for gold. I wasn’t that interested in the disciplines of learning but I did once get a gold star – although the circumstances in which I got it were rather odd: a singing class was taking place. I had (and have) no talent for singing; none whatsoever. But the singing teacher was full of enthusiasm and she urged us to sing with our mouths wide open. I tried this – but after a while I ran out of breath. So I carried on opening my mouth as wide as possible even though no sound was coming out. The teacher suddenly saw me and expressed her delight at my efforts. ‘Well done,’ she exclaimed and at the end of the lesson I was given a gold star. But it worried me: I knew that I did not deserve the gold star but simultaneously I also learned that people could be taken in, that they could easily be deceived – and that appearance was not reality.
1960: Henry V
The film, ‘Henry V’ was a 1944 adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play of the same name. I was taken by my parents to see the black-and-white film in a cinema in Farnham, Surrey in 1960. I used to think the cinema was called the ‘Palace’ but it wasn’t; it was called the ‘Regal’. (Cinemas thought highly of themselves in those days.) Although I scarcely understood most of the screenplay – I adored the ‘look’ of Lawrence Olivier as the warrior king and I also idealised the beautiful princess Katherine played in the film by Renee Asherson. I was captivated by her; entranced; everything about her was perfect. I wanted to be Olivier and, with luck, I could reach out and touch Renee Asherson. The battle scenes were good, too.
Of course, I had absolutely no idea that the film was made near the end of World War II and was intended as a morale-booster for Britain. Years later I learned that the film was partly funded by the British Government.
1961: The hill and memories of a cycle ride
I was aged 11 and my brother was aged 12. We lived in a detached house in Fleet, Hampshire. Fleet, at the beginning of the 1960s, was the kind of town that had many advantages – such as the folk-music club at the ‘Station hotel’ and the coffee bar in the high street. The town was divided on class lines – and that was an advantage because it served to educate young people like me about the sociology of the nation. My brother and I played football, and went tracking in the woods behind our house, and collected the bits of weaponry left over from the exercises that had taken place on the nearby army training grounds. We both had good solid bicycles. Mine was very heavy and a little too big for me; it was called a ‘Zeppelin’. We had lots of things to help us with our cycling: lovely leather saddle-bags and gloves with holes in, and capes to keep off the rain. We had school-books and a sandwich box with sandwiches – and each day we had to cycle 7 miles to school.
But the real challenge on the ride to school was the hill. Beacon hill.
The long approaches to Beacon hill began at Crookham crossroads. The road edged alongside some desolate army barracks before passing through a short tract of wooded land. My brother and I cycled on and on, steadily and silently, as the road climbed gently towards the hill. Then, as we passed the lane that led to Butler’s farm the road began to rise steeply; it curved upwards: and we began the ascent of Beacon hill.
We did not dare to look towards the summit. We had to concentrate on standing upright and looking no more than a few yards in front of us. We had to find a rhythm; we could not speak to each other; we knew we had to keep our momentum going as we struggled against the unforgiving hill.
We stole a glance at each other; we both feared that the hill would break us – but we hoped that we might defeat the hill. We went on and on. In our imagination we heard the voice of our father urging us to keep going, urging us not to give in. And through his voice we refused to let the hill beat us. It took about five minutes to get to the top and then we coasted along for more than a mile until the trembling in our legs had ceased and we could, again, breath easily. We had won.
Sometimes, when we misbehaved at school we were made to write out the lines from Kipling’s poem ‘If’. My brother and I liked the poem because we knew that every time we ascended Beacon hill we had done even more than ‘60 seconds worth of distance run’. And, in this way, we were made in England.
1962: Stanley Shepperd and MAD
Stanley Shepperd was the son of an American Pan Am pilot. His family, the Shepperd family, was posted to the UK in the summer of 1962. They rented a huge house in north Hampshire. Stanley’s mother, Mrs Shepperd was called Elinor. She came from Connecticut; she wasn’t overly upset about living in England: it was something to do with it ‘having culture’. Mr Shepperd was called ‘Shep’. He wasn’t so keen on the idea of being stuck in the UK. So, to console himself he had his car – an Oldsmobile – shipped over from the US to his new, albeit temporary, home. But since he was a Pan Am pilot he was away for most of the time and he hardly ever got to see his Oldsmobile. Still, the Oldsmobile looked great parked on the front drive of the huge house situated in Reading Road North, Fleet, Hampshire.
Life being what it is, Mr Shepperd, the pilot, wanted to know what he should do about his children’s education. He asked my father who replied: ‘Why not send Stanley to the Grammar school in Basingstoke?’
Mr Shepperd took this advice: Stanley Shepperd was duly sent to Queen Mary’s grammar school in Basingstoke. I made friends with Stanley; we travelled to school together and, for a while, we sat next to each other in class. Stanley was a quiet American. Instead of listening to the latest pop records that his older sister Judy played ceaselessly on her new-fangled GE stereo-player, Stanley liked to make paper aeroplanes; he would sometimes spend a whole day perfecting the design of his paper ‘planes. He would launch them from his bedroom window and watch them glide over the heather-lined lawns of the garden below. Then he would evaluate how well his emerging designs compared, one with another. After a while Stanley reckoned that he had invented the most aerodynamically-efficient paper aeroplane that it was possible to make: ‘Gee, this plane sure can fly.’
Stanley Shepperd – who was just 14 years old at the time – used to get a copy of Mad comic sent over to him from the States. Mad was totally different from English comics – comics like the Eagle and the Beano. By now I was great friends with Stanley, and I had never seen anything like Mad. Mad was bitingly crazy; it was about lifting the veil concealing all the lies, nonsense, deception, and falsehoods that were on offer via the cultural colossus of media-marketed America. Mad saw through the idea that all those washing powders could wash whiter than white. Mad mocked the American dream; it saw lunacy everywhere and the dream-as-nightmare.
Besides reading Mad and making paper aeroplanes, Stanley applied himself to his studies at the Grammar school: He did amazingly well at Pure Maths, Applied Maths, Physics and Chemistry; he got top marks in all his ‘A’ levels and went on to study at MIT. At MIT he did brilliantly and then, after graduating, he did pioneering and original work on the mathematics of ellipses and orbits – and so he helped space rockets and satellites to do their thing. Right now, there is probably a satellite that is where it is because of Stanley Shepperd. He’s probably famous; who knows …
[I think he owns an island somewhere in New England. Reports are that he still wears only plain black trousers with plain white shirts. Stanley always had a thing about predictability; this is just as well if one remembers that his mathematics had something to do with getting things into the right place in space. Satellites in weirdo orbits would be alarming.]
Let’s get back to Mad magazine. It’s still going after all those years. And, seemingly Mad, like Stanley, has helped us get to where we are today: in 1977, Mad achieved its 25th anniversary; the New York Times had this to say about its initial effect:
‘The sceptical generation of kids it shaped in the 1950s is the same generation that in the 1960s opposed a war and didn’t feel bad when the United States lost for the first time and in the 1970s helped turn out an Administration and didn’t feel bad about that either… It was magical, objective proof to kids that they weren’t alone, that in New York City on Lafayette Street [where Mad was produced], if nowhere else, there were people who knew that there was something wrong, phoney and funny about a world of bomb shelters, brinkmanship and toothpaste smiles. Mad’s consciousness of itself, as trash, as comic book, as enemy of parents and teachers, even as money-making enterprise, delighted kids. In 1955, such consciousness was possibly nowhere else to be found.’
Mad is often credited with filling a vital gap in political satire in the 1950s to 1970s, when Cold War paranoia and a general culture of censorship prevailed in the United States, especially in the literature for teenagers. The rise of cable television and then the internet had, however, diminished the influence of Mad, although it remained a widely distributed magazine. To a large extent, Mad’s power was undone by its own success: what was genuinely subversive in the 1950s and 1960s is now pretty much the norm. In 2000 I bought a copy of Mad whilst I was living and lecturing at the City University in New York City. The imbecilic face of the grinning gap-toothed boy – the annoying face of Alfred E. Neuman – was still on the cover.
Mr McGill smoked ‘Du Maurier’ cigarettes. He lived in an ultra fashionable modernist house that was open-plan, clean cut, geometric and beautifully light. Overall Mr McGill wore his affluence as easily as his stylish cravat; he was racy without being flashy; above all, he was perfectly suave. He spoke with poise, assurance and loads of sophistication. Mr McGill worked in the new world of advertising and marketing. Design was his thing.
Mr McGill was elegantly mirrored by his wife. She had long raven-black hair, wore strong red lipstick and profiled her curvaceous womanly figure in the clinging sweaters that even anticipated the sexiness of Ms. Quant. Mrs McGill was, by now, entirely used to the good things in life. She also understood design: the interior decoration of their home had nothing to do with the past.
I listened to my parents exchanging chit chat with Mr and Mrs McGill. Mr McGill even reproduced the sentence, ‘Do have a Du Maurier.’ but he said it in such a funny way that everyone knew he wasn’t really offering anyone a cigarette. I continued to listen as Mr McGill described the pleasures of driving around in his brand new Humber. He intended to tour France in his new driving machine.
Then I heard Mrs McGill say something that caught my attention: she was referring to her daughter – a daughter who was called ‘Sherry’. Up until that moment I imagined that girls were only called Angela or Susan or Diana or Elizabeth. But here was a girl called ‘Sherry’. The strict conventions of naming were shattered. People could have great names or strange names or romantic names. And then something else was revealed: Sherry was away at art school. She was an art student who was ‘going through an abstract expressionist phase.’ Mrs McGill pointed towards some of Sherry’s paintings. ‘They express her feelings,’ said Mrs McGill. Hot colours swirled across Sherry’s canvasses. I was quietly transfixed. I had no clear idea as to how paint expressed feelings. (Underneath its all in thought words might do a better job.)
And if one surprise wasn’t enough, Mrs McGill announced something I would never forget: ‘Sherry,’ said Mrs McGill, ‘has a theory about why we are so drawn to the sea and why we like swimming.’ She paused. I had never heard someone use the word ‘theory’ in this way before. ‘She thinks that we all evolved in the sea and that we only came to land by accident. So when we are in the sea we feel as if we are back from whence we came. We feel at home.’
It was the idea of holding a personal theory – outside of all the school-books – that was so powerful. Somehow it was touched with the allure of taboo and the spirit of freedom. I did not realise that I was standing on the threshold of a kind of liberation.
1964: The 4:12 train from Basingstoke
Each day of the school term I took the train from Fleet in Hampshire to Basingstoke; I then walked half a mile or so to the school, and, in the late afternoon, once the school day was over, I took the train from Basingstoke back to Fleet. In a way, it was quite a thing to take the train to school; most of the other boys arrived by bus or on foot. (It didn’t pay to be too different at school – but a little difference was always a good thing.) After a while, of course, I had learned all the names of the stations between Waterloo and Basingstoke and between Basingstoke and Southampton. The announcements made over the loudspeaker by the British Railways man made it well-nigh impossible not to learn the names. In fact, I found it both appealing and re-assuring to listen to the rhythm of the announcements and the predictable naming of the stations:
“The train arriving at platform 2 is the 4:12 stopping at Hook, Winchfield, Fleet, Farnborough, Woking and all stations to Waterloo.” They were a good set of names. Hook reminded me of Peter Pan’s Captain Hook; I knew that there was a famous airshow at Farnborough; But Brookwood … well Brookwood had a mental hospital … I felt a curious fascination about Brookwood – although I thought it best never to go anywhere near the town. Lunatics were scary. (They were too different.)
I liked the British Railways trains. The compartments were always comfortable and I felt secure on the fading velvety seats. I liked watching the angled threads of rain streaming down the almost opaque windows; I liked the warm homely fug in the compartments during the winter months and I liked the bright cheerful framed posters that decorated the compartments: the posters sang the praises of places like Torquay or other English coastal towns. And I liked watching the express trains racing through the stations en route to the big city or to the farthest reaches of the West Country.
The morning journey to school had an entirely different character to the one in the afternoon. In the morning I was under pressure to complete my homework on the train; and the anticipation of school was OK because, in the main, school was fun. But it was a constrained version of fun. In contrast the afternoon journeys allowed just about enough time to commit and enjoy varies acts of delinquency. There wasn’t much point in being a boy unless the rules and regulations of life were ignored or over-turned. It was just one of those things.
One autumn afternoon, I, along with my schoolboy companions, hatched a plan to experiment with fireworks. We decided to have our own firework display in one of the deserted carriages. We would do this whilst on the train home from Basingstoke. Little by little we acquired a dozen fireworks with names like ‘Mine of serpents’ or ‘Molten volcano’. Our ‘piece de resistance’ was a large rocket. (Rockets were all the rage. Telstar was on the airwaves and everyone was going to the moon.) So, on one afternoon at the end of October, six boys armed with one large rocket and a number of assorted fireworks chose the most isolated carriage and found a deserted compartment. Time was short so we first wedged the rocket into the small rectangular sliding windows that the designers of the British Railways carriages had placed above the larger carriage windows. The front of the rocket stuck out towards the moving countryside and the long wooden tail pointed back into the compartment.
‘Right,’ said the oldest boy. ‘It’s ready’. Another boy lit a match and held it against the blue touch paper. Just for a second we all caught our breath. Suddenly the rocket let out a searing jet of bright fire that sprayed all the way to the back of the compartment and scorched the door. The rocket ‘launched’ itself and sped across the fields – never more than a few yards above the earthy ground. In the bright autumn sunlight it was scarcely visible; it snaked its way onwards – but soon it had disappeared, disappeared completely. However, the inside of the compartment was not only singed and slightly burned but also filled with a pungent intense blue grey smoke – a smoke that refused to disperse. It hung there like the unshakeable shadow of guilt. Of course, we, the boys, fled the scene. Who was to know if a guard might happen along? Who was to know if an officious grown-up might discover the pyrotechnic remains and report them? We all got out at the very next station. As we looked at each other we wondered what to do with the remaining fireworks. And then one of us, in a moment of studied reflection, nicely anticipated the future by declaring that what we had done ‘was not rocket science.’
1973: Basingstoke/The Dark Side of the Moon
There was once a pub in Basingstoke called ‘The Bass House’. It was a new kind of pub – with just one huge bar and a lush carpet in dark red and gold. Those who frequented The Bass House were a real mix of people – and we all knew that Basingstoke had nothing, absolutely nothing, going for it. So, we made the best of that nothingness; we were strangely free; we had no image to sustain. I must admit that living in a Basingstoke council house with my brother Roly, a dissolute Frenchman called Philippe and an austere Austrian called Heinz was to be one of the very best times of my life. Liliana was there too as was Debbie.
Most evenings we’d go to The Bass House. Sometimes up to 25 of us, friends and acquaintances, would congregate there; we’d pull together tables and form a great big circle – and lose ourselves in talk and dreams. The jukebox was enormous and sparkly and ’70s modern – all chrome and shine-on-you-crazy-diamond. And the song that we played over and over again was the Floyd’s ‘Money’. Money was on Pink Floyd’s LP ‘The Dark Side of the Moon‘; it had been released in March 1973, and had become an instant chart success in Britain and throughout Western Europe.
The years went by: 30 of them in fact. Then someone decided to release a special 30th anniversary edition of ‘The Dark Side of the Moon‘. I bought it and decided to wrap it up and give it to someone as a present. But when the day came I couldn’t bring myself to give the ‘special edition’ record away. I gave the person a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label whisky instead. The whisky bottle came in a bright pillar-box red tin. The tin had ‘Johnny Walker Red Label‘ written on it; it had a velvety interior. Perhaps it was a kind of tactile version of the whisky. Who knows?
I’ve still got the Pink Floyd 30th Anniversary LP. And it is still wrapped in beautiful gold wrapping paper. It has never been opened. The 30th Anniversary edition has itself remained untouched for 20 years. I want to leave it to my twin grand-daughters. They are still not three years old – but they already like moving to the music. (Oh – and I gave them the blue vinyl version of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Hackney Diamonds’ LP for Christmas. )
Go Ask Alice 