April fool

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Ha, ha, ha… April first again, which explains why I’ve just taken a sip of coffee that tastes like seawater and bitten into a sandwich with a ham and toothpaste filling.

Oh how I love my teenage daughter’s sense of humour. Last year she removed the battery from my mobile phone – ha ha - and the year before she hid my car keys (for two hours) - and it seems she’s getting more inventive as she gets older.

All fools day – what fun!

In the early sixteenth century there was a belief that the ‘April Fool’, or ‘Aypril Foel’ as they called him, was a spirit who would visit the unwary and foolhardy on the first day of April. He was a little like the ‘Easter Bunny’ or the ‘Tooth Fairy’, a magical being who only appeared for a single day on April the first. He was something of a shady character and there was a belief that he was responsible for all manner of mischief, some light-hearted and some deeply dark.

Lunatics were often described as having been ‘Touched by the Fool’ - as were simpletons, unmarried mothers, bastards, single women, cuckolded men, hermits… in fact just about anybody who was slightly different to Mister Jack Normal.

The tradition of playing tricks on others came about wholly as a way to ward off the attention of the ‘April Fool’. This was called ‘Shrugging the Mark’. The idea was to trick your neighbour with some wilful prank, thus deflecting the attention of the Fool away from yourself and ‘Shrugging the Mark of the Fool’.

As the morning of ‘All Fools’ went by people became desperate to deflect the evil away from themselves and towards somebody else, preferably someone they didn’t like. But soon, as the clock ticked on towards midday, anyone would do – friend, cousin, father, wife, child – anybody and with any trick that could ‘Shrug the Fool’.

For those unfortunates who didn’t manage to trick someone before midday then the ‘Mark of the Fool’ would be bestowed upon them and at some time between ‘All Fools’ and ‘All Hallows’ in October, the ‘Fool’ would leave his ‘Mark’ on them.

For some living with the threat of the ‘Mark’ for seven long months was too much - many lost their minds, others drowned or hanged themselves, most turned to drink , whilst others simply ran away and were never seen again.

For the few that managed to get past ‘All Hallows’ without going mad, getting pregnant, being cuckolded, developing Alzheimer’s, or simply needing to be alone, then they would be safe until the next April first – when the ritual began again.

How very lucky for them? Maybe not - often those that survived three ‘marks’ without harm would be branded a witch and shunned or hounded from the village.

This belief continued well into the late eighteenth century and the ‘April Fool’ was a major character in the roving ‘Mummers’ players that toured the countryside from All Fools Day to May Day each year. The April Fool was instantly recognisable by his grey tailcoat, long pointed hat and the large pigs bladder - filled with lunatic’s urine - that he carried, splashing anyone who got in his way… thus marking them.

In 1787 one Noah Trueworthy of Devizes wrote thus:

‘On the stroke of twelfth did the Foole leapth into the croud crying and wailing hif heade and began a’poking and a’grabbing at the breafths and bootocks of the toun wenches and a’kickin in the cods of the knaves. With a greate cry did he a’start to fling around the piff of the lunatice overe bothe young and olde alike making them all frenzied and a'feared. And as foretold did many in the croud become afflicteth with the ague of the brain afore All Hallowf Eve.’

So - salty coffee and a toothpaste sandwich, perhaps I got off lightly. But I did have to pay by credit card at the services for a coffee because the two tenners that were in my wallet last night seemed to have magically turned into newspaper.

Perhaps it was the ‘Aypril Foel’.

I wonder what my daughter will say to her music teacher this afternoon when she opens her guitar case and finds that her instrument has no strings?

Don’t worry – she’ll get me back double next year.

What's in a name...

When we named Misty we thought she was a girl and, because she was the colour of smoke, Misty seemed the perfect name.

After we’d got over the shock that in fact Misty, our lovely little girl, was actually a boy we considered renaming her. ‘Perhaps we could call her Mister’ we said - after all it wasn’t a million miles from Misty - or maybe Mischief, she certainly seemed to get into enough of it.

Maybe a completely different name was in order? Malvolio – no… Mestopheles – definitely no… Marzipan – too silly… Marvo – plain stupid… Mysterio – I don’t think so… Major Tom – he’s a girl… Mr Tom – he’s a girl… Mac – he’s Welsh… Mr Mac – he’s a girl and she’s Welsh… Big Mac – groan… Macbeth – it’s unlucky to even say the word… so Misty it remained, nothing seemed to suit her as well as Misty.

It’s like that with a cat’s name isn’t it? It either suits or it don’t.

After much consideration (and a bit of argument and bickering) we decided that we’d stick with Misty – we also decided to keep her a girl in our heads. It wouldn’t matter, and it does seem to work okay. Misty seems happy enough with her name and seems not to care that we call her ‘Her’.

It just isn’t a problem. She comes on call to her name, even to the name variations that have developed - Gaynor often calls her ‘Misty Moo’ in a sing-song, up and down way, Holly has labelled her ‘Moo Moo’, and sometimes (when in deep conversational debate with her) I address her seriously as ‘Mister Misty’. She doesn’t seem to care, after all they’re just words to her, and not really names at all. We think that she comes to her name but it isn’t really the name she hears - she hears… warmth, food, milk, cuddles, not Misty, Misty Moo, or Moo Moo… we all know cats don’t really need names…

‘Do I look like a Misty? Fine hissing name for a cat. Do they think I’m a girl or something? And why the litter tray Misty Moo? Does Foodies think I’m a cow? Why does that whirling one call me Moo Moo? What does it mean… double cream? At least Hisfault sometimes shows a little consideration when he calls me Mister Misty - at least he recognises my gender. Not really good enough is it?

“Why can’t they use one of my real names? It wasn’t for nothing that my father called me ‘Tailswinger Toothsharp, scourge of spiders and destroyer of mice’ – so why can’t they use it? I can just imagine meal times – “Tailswinger Toothsharp… nin-nins… come on Tailswinger, come and get your foodies.” No, somehow I can’t see that working, not with Foodies.

How about the name my mother gave me? It’s a good name – Mow Mow the clever, opener of doors and maker of pictures? Even my little friend at the house over the road knows that name - she calls me Mow Mow…and if she can use it then why can’t they? I like her, she’s funny... and she tickles my tummy.

Of course there’s always my ancestral name, it’s very grand, it goes back thousands of years to the hot place where we were gods - Mau son of Bast, Cobra Killer – now that is a name. Pity that there are no Cobras around here - I’d show them! By the way… what is a Cobra? Is it a type of mouse?

When Reallynastyman left me at the farm perhaps he thought that the Cobras would get me - he won’t have known that I’m a Cobra killer. I didn’t like him. He was bad. He took me away from my mother and dumped me in that cold barn. I would have frozen my tiny whiskers off it Farmer Geronwy hadn’t found me and foodied me up. He gave me my Welsh name – Llwydaidd – I keep it for special like he told me to... March first only.

This naming business is so... well, so silly really. I don’t really mind being Misty, and even Moo Moo has a bit of a ring to it - but it isn’t anything like my REAL name, my essence name, my ‘Me’ name.

My ‘Me’ name is the name that I’ve given to myself, the name that sums me up for what I am. Only I know what it is. It’s a secret. If I were to tell you what it was I’d be in your power – you’d be able to make me do tricks, come to call, even make me go to sleep in baskets and… well, all sorts of things. So I’m not going to tell you.

I don’t want to be in your power, cats don’t like being in anyone’s power.

Tell you what… you can have three guesses. Go on guess away! No clues though!”

Yes, we all know cats don’t really need names.

Links to reality...

I dropped into a surreal landscape the other night. It was fantastic, magical, breathtaking, elaborate, sparkling, thought provoking, marvellous, wonderful, astounding… I liked it.

Sensory overload.

What is Cirque du Soleil about?

This is the third Cirque du Soleil I’ve seen. The first, ‘La Nouba’ in Florida had so much going on, so many images to take in, that I felt sick for the first half hour or so. There were just too many frames of reference for me to easily handle. Last year I saw ‘Delirium’. It was okay but I have to admit to coming away disappointed - too much music, some good spectacle, not enough Circus - and a little slow moving.

This week I experienced Quidam, I think it means ‘everyman’. There’s some sort of story going on, although I can’t say I understood it - but then, who cares? Cirque is about spectacle and Quidam does the spectacle thing really well.

One of the characters seems to have stepped straight out of a surrealist painting. Dressed in a raincoat and carrying an unfolded black umbrella, he reminds me of the painting ‘Not to be reproduced’ by Rene Magritte - a man stares into a mirror and, rather than his face being reflected as you might expect, you see the back of his head repeated in the mirror – only this character doesn’t have a head at all. Was he the Quidam of the title? He may have been.

There are some other odd characters in the show – a compeer/ringmaster, a human target, an angry lout with boxing glove hands, a she - rabbit, an angel with empty wings, dozens of lost souls wandering all over the place. It was like watching an animation by Hieronymus Bosch – very weird, incredibly wonderful – beautiful.

Quidam has plenty of circus – a man who rolls, spins, and tumbles inside a huge metal wheel, four tiny Chinese girls who whirl ‘diabolos’ high into the air, catch them up in the string, whirl them into the air again, all the time somersaulting and flipping as they do so – an androgynous aerial act who dangles and plunges in lengths of red silk – three women who whirl and balance in silver aerial hoops - a trapeze artist who flies and drops through the air on a swing trapeze – a spider’s web of rope tumblers.

... all gasps and applause.

… the skipping rope act is unbelievable. A stage full of people skip-dance and tumble in a multiple rope frenzy, each time jumping higher and faster. An acrobatic troupe that literally throws each other through the air, around the stage, tossing bodies from one to another, like a human chain, double flipping as they spin. The quiet beauty of the male/female duo performing a series of incredible balances, holding them for what seems like minutes, appearing to become living sculptures, at times entwined and interwoven into a single figure like a living Hans Bellmer sculpture, gorgeous in its strangeness. And probably the funniest clown I’ve ever seen, pulling and demanding people out of the audience to act out his clownish fantasies.

… all watching and laughter.

… and all of the time away from the main action, smaller actions taking place; a blue skirted women rapidly spinning for minute after minute in a corner of the stage, three celestial beings moving along the gantry above the performers, groups of drones statue-standing or dog-running between the circus performers, a pair of spike haired ballet dancers performing a routine in the wings.

For some these might have been distractions, but for me they are the attraction. It’s the incidental that gives the reality to the performance, the surreality to the experience.

No two people in the thousands strong audience see the same performance, no two experiences are the same, and every single person sees their own personal show.

Perhaps that is what Cirque du Soleil is all about.

And what about my Cirque du Soleil, the one single thing that I’ll keep to run over and over in the cinema in my head?

The twenty paper leaves that fluttered from the red balloon as it burst above the stage - the slowly moving, white-suited drone that blew them into the darkness using a huge silver desk fan on wheels.

Surreal.

For me that is what Cirque du Soleil is about.

A spell on the beach

Know anything about Runes?

To early people writing was a very serious thing - it was full of magical power.

In Europe our Germanic ancestors used a runic alphabet as their form of writing. They used it to identify their possessions - combs, brooches, shields, cattle, wives - help them to make calendars, encode secret messages, mark their sacred monuments and burial sites. They also used them to cast spells - make love charms, curse their enemies, cause their neighbours crops to fail, cure the pox. Usually the ceremony of writing the runes was accompanied by a chant or prayer and sometimes a curse to make the spell. They called this a rune as well, and the two runes combined – written and spoken - made the magic work.

They called it the ‘whispering, secret talk.’ I love that…the whispering, secret talk - it sounds so completely magical.

Ingwaz is the rune of harmony, approval, unity, agreement, love, peace. It’s an important rune, a powerful rune, a very positive rune. It was used to make fertility magic; magic for farming, growth, health, balance. It was the rune of the god Ing, and associated with Frey - god of the weather, generation and fertility - and it’s particularly potent at the time of the new moon.

I built this sculpture on Dinas Dinelle beach last summer – it’s the Ingwaz rune. I like to go there to watch the small planes at Caernarfon airport. They’re pleasure craft and go around and around in a ten mile circle, landing, taking off, then landing again. Don’t worry I’m not an airport freak, the airport is a really a landing strip and the planes are micro-lights, biplanes, and single engine Cesna’s…actually that does make me a plane freak doesn’t it.

It was a beautiful sunny day and the tide was out. The beach has a high pebble ridge along its length, falling away to firm sand at low tide. I found an old, rusty bike wheel, a broken branch and some polythene. I wanted to leave behind a statement about how beautiful the day was and how positive I felt on that day.

Yes, I’m bonkers - but you probably know that anyway, and if you need even more proof - here’s the whispering, secret talk I chanted to make the magic work.

Ingwaz
Rich dirt
My seed to grow
My hearth to simple burn
Rest godly laboured
Not worn in toil
Blessed by new life born

There you go, if you knew nothing about runes before, you know a little now… did the magic work?

Not so far I’m afraid.

Fish Circus...

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It’s a gloomy old day. Windy, wet, and cold - the sort of day for staying indoors or (if you’re bonkers like me) going for a walk on a beach somewhere. Still, it isn’t as gloomy as yesterday – I’ll try to be lighter today.

I love wrapping up warm (to quote Mothers everywhere), making ready to battle the wind and rain, and then sallying forth into the Weather (capital intentional). I enjoy the ‘struggle’ against the wind, rain, and whichever other elements are available in order to reach whatever goal takes my fancy (as long as the ‘struggle’ isn’t too struggley and the ‘goal’ has a nice warm fire at the end of it).

Yes, I like to sally forth.

‘Sallying forth’ – what a great term. It means ‘to set out in a sudden, energetic or violent manner often with an uncertain outcome’. Well, I’m not too sure about the sudden, energetic or violent part of the definition (I like to take my time when I’m sallying) but I love the idea of an uncertain outcome. Exciting isn’t it! Free in the wind and rain, a little unsure of where you are going or what you might find when you get there. It’s in that uncertainty that the anticipation and promise lays - or so I’m told. I won’t dwell on the uncertainty element though, it may take me off on a tangent.

Sometimes I sally forth along the beach at Porth Dinllaen towards the Ty Coch pub. The pub (which by the way is almost incidental to my sallying) is actually built on the beach in a beautiful little bay surrounded by mountains - it’s a great place for a pint (or two). We often sally there on New Years day. Once I found a long dried pipefish on the sand. I’ve kept it - it looks like a cross between a snake and a sea-horse. We’ve found a few pipe fish over the years - on various sallies along numerous Welsh beaches - and I’ve made them into a kind of sea sculpture (I really must post a photograph of it).

This brings me to what I set out to write about (at last)… Eileen Agar. God, I ramble sometimes!

Eileen Agar is number ten in my list of top ten surrealists, I’ll get around to them all eventually I expect, but let’s start with Eileen. She was a fervent beachcomber, often using the flotsam and jetsam she found washed up on the shore in her work. ‘Fish Circus’ features a real starfish that she found on a sally in 1939 near Toulon on the Mediterranean coast. She’s pinned it to the painting with a large blue drawing pin and painted and collaged other sea creatures along with some inevitable surrealist chequerboard patterns to the work. I don’t know what it is about surrealists and chequerboard – maybe it’s a perspective thing - perhaps they just like chequerboard.

She used ‘found objects’ in her sculptures as well. ‘Marine Object’ is one of my favourites, and yes, I know that it’s simple and anyone could have made it, but in the context of its time…

All in all, I think ‘Fish Circus’ and ‘Marine Object’ are lovely, light, whimsical works that on a grey day like today, and after a black day like yesterday, lift my spirits and make me want to sally forth along the nearest beach to see what I can find to ‘do’ something with.

How about you? Up for a sally? I’ve even arranged it so that you can do your sallying from the comfort of your own armchair…

- Here’s the Ty Coch webcam.
http://www.tycoch.co.uk/Java1.html

- And sally forth virtually along the beach at Porth Dinllaen on a sunny day.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northwest/sites/walks/pages/porthdinllaen.shtml?1

Better still… sally forth along there sometime. It’s a great place in any weather and you never know what you may find.

Chin up! Summers just around the corner and I’m off to see Cirque du Soleil tonight which is a completely different kind of circus to Eileen's fishy one.

Dali's cat 2...

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You’ve probably noticed a surrealist theme emerging in my blog? Truth is - I guess I’ve always been a surrealist at heart. There is something about stumbling across the unusual in the usual, finding the the-out-of place in the in-place, seeing the slightly odd in the perfectly ordinary, that makes my imagination set alight.

André Breton was the major spokesman for the surrealist movement, he was a poet, and didn’t paint as far as I know. He wrote their manifesto. He said that Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in ‘an absolute reality - a surreality.’

Interesting…how often do you awake from a dream unsure if you are still dreaming? Could it be that just for that split second the world of dream is joined to the everyday rational world? Perhaps in that split second you truly are experiencing the surreal. What do you think?

People use the ‘surreal’ word a lot, usually out of context - I wish they wouldn’t. They use it to describe things that aren’t surreal at all. I once heard a friend describe a man walking along a busy high street in top hat and tails as surreal – ‘now that is SURREAL!’ he said. It wasn’t. It was just some man walking along a high street in top hat and tails probably on his way to a wedding. Now if his face had been devoid of any features, or he’d been floating in mid-air, or even if it’d been a sunny day and he hadn’t cast a shadow then he may have qualified. Another time I heard a chap in the pub call a packet of crisps 'surreal' because they were described as hedgehog flavour. Watch - my - lips.... Hedgehogs (even cooked hedgehogs that have been used to flavour crisps) are not surreal, they are just hedgehogs.

Anyway – here’s my Dali cat built from found stuff on the best wash-up beach in North Wales. I’ve been doodling Dali cats for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve built one.

Hope you like it.

Oh, and by the way - that funny little thing below is something that followed me out of a dream this morning and stuck around. I think that it might be Yves Tanguy’s pet mouse.

New Year is just around the corner

George: “Isn’t it wonderful? I’m going to jail!”

So this year is nearly done with. It’s been okay. Not great, but okay. If you were to ask me for a highlight though…hard, very hard indeed.

And none of us know what next year is bringing, but if everything that we are hearing in the media is true…well lets just say we won’t dwell on it here. We can reserve that for the sleepless four o’clock in the mornings that most of us have occasionally.

What would life be like if it were worry free? Would we worry about not being worried? Knowing me I probably would.

Perhaps I should make it my New Year’s Resolution not to worry, but then I’d just worry about breaking it.

I’ve broken pretty much every resolution I’ve ever made within hours of making them, but ask me what my strong points are and I’d probably include ‘determined’ and ‘resolute’ – but then I’d also include ‘outgoing’ and ‘cheery’. None of these would be a lie. There are times when I am all of those things and other times when I am none of them. I think most people are like that and it depends a lot on circumstance.

One year I gave up smoking at the last ‘dong’ of midnight, bravely crushing my remaining four Benson and Hedges into a mess of brown tobacco, white paper, and fluffy yellow filter in front of an audience of drunken revellers.

By noon the next day my body was screaming, by two I was looking for a shop (any shop, any price) that was open to buy nicotine patches, gum, lozenges, anything that I could get my hands on, and by ten o’clock the next day I was smoking again. I tried to give up smoking on numerous occasions after that and then five years ago I managed it. Not as a New Years Resolution, but as a result of a really bad bout of flu. It wasn’t easy. I spent eighteen months on nicotine gum, then another year on plain gum, and I have ‘porked-up’ nicely as a result.

Each New Year I toy with the idea of starting smoking again. I’ve resisted it thus far but maybe this year. I’m often tempted. After all I can have a cigarette any time I want, it’s just that I don’t want one right now. I bet it would help me lose weight though.

So with 2009 just around the corner here are some resolutions that I’m toying with:

1. I will stop looking at women who are half my age in a certain way.
2. I will not embellish my stories to make them more interesting. I will simply stick to the facts. However unbelievable and extraordinary they may seem to others.
3. I will stop looking at women who are three-quarters of my age in a certain way.
4. I will not worry as much as I could, or as much as they want me to.
5. I will not put LOL in any texts or mails I send, or use silly emoticons ;o)
6. I will stop looking at women in a certain way.
7. I will not order a ‘Fruit Bat’ at McDonalds or ask the servers not to call me ‘mate’, even though they are not my ‘mate’, will never be my ‘mate’, and should be calling me ‘sir’ and not ‘mate’.
8. I will stop saluting Magpies when I see them as it often causes me to swerve all over the road.
9. I will not expect people to laugh at my hilarious jokes. It isn’t their fault they are humourless morons.
10. I will stop looking at women.

I think it was Eric Zorn who said; “Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle”.

Actually I know it was because I checked. He’s damn right though. In which case maybe I will resolve to do them all.

Get ready to cue the old guy with the sickle and egg timer (no not me).

Beach Sculpture

Pork Chops and Assassins

Clarence: Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?

I had pork chops in a cider sauce for my dinner last night and the pungent aroma of apples together with the smell of pork got me thinking of a boar’s head with a large red apple in its mouth. From here it was a relatively small mental jump to a candlelit-banqueting hall in Renaissance Italy, where shadows dance on rich red tapestries and gaily clad jugglers deftly catch brightly spinning daggers, tossing them high into the dim recesses of the cloistered ceiling, catching them up again as they reappear through the blue-grey wood smoke. Yes…very weird.

In a dim corner a lone figure watches, his stance full of intent, his shoes pointy.

Il marchio di due is upon him.

Assassino are hard to come by these days and killing people to order isn’t really socially acceptable any more. Even so there are times when you might wish that you could bend the rules a little and remove a problem using something other than reasoned debate and logic; it’d be so much quicker and cleaner.

This type of problem solving technique wasn’t always frowned upon. Once assassination was not only popular with the criminal classes but ‘de rigeur’ in royal circles all over Europe. The Borgia family knew the value of assassination, using it as a way of removing obstacles to both political and marital conundrums, and stories of Kali worshipping Indian assassination cults abound (or at least they did in the comics that I read when I was a boy, the Magnet and the Hornet).

So how did I get from pork to assassination? No idea, but all organisations need a variety of skills to function effectively and whilst I wouldn’t generally recommend having a fully fledged assassin within an organisation (after all who knows when you might become their next mark) having an individual who isn’t really bothered about pushing the envelope a little in order to achieve the required result is usually an asset. That’s why footballers fall over and writhe in agony for no apparent reason (or so I’ve been told by Mr Quickfit), and that is why ‘Whips’ and ‘Spin Doctors’ are held in such high esteem in Westminster.

By the way the pork chops were delicious – and not a trace of poison.

Pork Chops in Cider Sauce

Preparation: 5 minutes (apart from the fresh soup)
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Serves: 4 thin people or 2 fat ones

Ingredients:
4 thick pork loin chops.
1 small onion, finely chopped.
5 or 6 fresh, chopped sage leaves.
200ml cider – swig any extra down your neck before you get caught (buy a big bottle).
295g thick celery soup – basically stock, celery and cream cooked until soft and then blitzed, or use a can as it’s much easier.
1 tbsp freshly chopped parsley.
Salt and freshly ground black pepper.

3 tbsp Hemlock - (Optional as it will kill).

Process (top hole Mr Chummmers):

1. Get a big, sharp knife and score the surface of the chops lightly on both sides, making a criss - cross pattern.
2. Swig Cider.
3. Mix the onion with the sage, then mix in the butter.
4. Swig Cider.
5. Heat a large frying pan, add the chops and fry them over a medium heat for 2 minutes then turn them and spread the onion and sage butter on top. Cover and cook for another 4 minutes, longer if you want the fat to go a bit crispy but be careful not to dry them out. I stand them on their edges and hold with tongs and drink Cider to pass the time.
6. Swig more Cider.
7. Pour the measured Cider around the edge of the pan, cover and cook for 5 minutes until the chops are tender.
8. Arrange the meat on warmed plates and keep warm.
9. Bring the pan juices to the boil, add soup, whisk well while bringing it to the boil. It should make a smooth sauce if you are sober and a lumpy one if you are not.
10. Swig more Cider.
11. Add the parsley and season if necessary.
12. Serve with sautéed potatoes, green vegetables and lots of Cider.
13. Continue drinking Cider until asleep.

Wash up in the morning.

Online resources used to help me with this blurb.

Wikipedia
i-Google – Google Translate