Preoccupied...

We’ve had some spectacular sunsets over the last week or so, but I’m sorry to say that I missed them all, busy with other things. Well, when I say busy maybe preoccupied would be a better word. Yes, preoccupied – occupied with things that happened before whatever is happening now, like the sunset.

Over in Wales, whilst I sat being preoccupied, another spectacular sunset was taking place. I missed that one too. I don’t get to Wales much at the moment; another of the downsides of my preoccupation. It’d be nice just to stand in my usual field and watch the sky burn then gradually fade to dark.

Just look at it - magnificent. It looks just like something is sucking the sky away. I wonder where it’ll end up.

Bowie is dead…

Bowie is dead. Well, not actually dead but as close to dead as any musician can be if the papers are to be believed. David Bowie, one of the greatest composers to have ever lived hasn’t written anything in six years apparently. Instead he stumbles around New York just managing to pick up his daughter from school. He’s even started calling himself David Jones – well, it is his name.

Of course Mr Jones is no Beethoven. No he’s far more versatile than that, reinventing his musical style every few years and mastering it all. I have nothing against Beethoven, in fact I love his work, but most composers tend to stick to a limited sound range, the range that they are comfortable with for their entire career. Beethoven pretty much did, they all do. I said THEY ALL DO.

Take the Stones; they’ve been churning out the same song, over and over, for the last thirty plus years. Oh, the Beatles seemed to try, but of course they couldn’t stand the course.

Innovative, fresh, new – from Newley-esque to New romantic, Pomp to Punk, Soul to Salsa  he’s tried it all. Just where would he go next? Gangsta? Well, wherever he is it’ll be good, it always is.

Not writing? No he’ll be writing, humming away in his head. It’s like breathing to him. How would he stop? If I were to stop blogging (please, I hear you whisper) I would still write, maybe not publish, maybe no even compose, but I’d write in my head - tales, thoughts, opinions. I don’t really have a choice.

No Bowie is still writing songs every day, even if they are about picking his daughter up from school.

Maybe one day we’ll get to hear them.

National Geographic...

Back then it was called The National Geographic Magazine. I started reading it in the school library when, instead of a full colour photograph, a border of oak leaves surrounded some lines of serif text describing the content of each issue. It took me everywhere, to the jungles of Borneo, the bottom of the Pacific, even to Mars. I’d pore over it for hours, marvelling at the incredible artistry of the photographs, the detail of the wonderful descriptions. I felt like an explorer sometimes as I climbed through the pages and up Everest in my mind or crossed the murky waters of Lake Titicaca in my imaginary reed canoe.

I learnt more about geography from those magazines than ever I did from Ronnie Moore our geography teacher with his dry picture-free text books and ancient map of the world which showed the British Empire, even though the Empire was long gone. Yes, my lunchtimes were never boring and you would usually find me up the Amazon or wandering across the Gobi.

Much later, long after I’d left school, a miracle happened. For no reason at all the National Geographic started tuning up at my home in darkest Birmingham. At first I though it might be a promotion, but when they kept on coming I began to wonder if maybe it was an error, a mistake by the Post Office or The Society themselves – well, with a circulation of around four million readers it was perfectly possible. It didn’t stop me ripping off the polythene wrapper and devouring the magazine though. I really looked forward to seeing each yellow-edged, glossy, full colour, cover when it popped through my letterbox every month, even though I didn’t know where they came from.

Eventually though, some light was shed on my phantom subscription. An old mate of my dad’s had given him the National Geographic as a Christmas gift and my dad, who only read the sports pages of his paper, had transferred the subscription over to me and then forgot to tell me. Well, I didn’t mind at all and for a few years I was surrounded by giant pandas, visited Vesuvius, New England in winter, dived down to see the Mary Rose; I even used some of the articles as inspiration for a series of paintings of grinning American farmers.

Then one day the Geographic stopped arriving. I waited a while to see if it would start coming through again, but it didn’t. My adventures in the world of National Geographic were over. I though about mentioning it to my dad, but felt a bit awkward to ask - perhaps my dad’s friend had hit hard times and cancelled the subscription, maybe they’d fallen out, perhaps he’d even died. So I left it and carried on with my life exploration free and adventureless.

A long time after I mentioned it to my mum on the phone one day, I don’t why, maybe the mystery had become too much for me, I was never very good with mysteries. I was surprised by her answer and more than a little taken aback when she told me that my dad had transferred the subscription to my teenage nephew. I didn’t say much as she went on to tell me that they didn’t think I’d mind and supposed that I didn’t really bother to read them anyway. Supposed? No, only cover to cover, each and every word. No I didn’t read it, I lived it actually.

Apparently Alex, my nephew, was really interested in animals and countries and all sorts of stuff, and he did so like the pictures. Yeah, so did I.

I placed the receiver back its cradle wondering if Alex was, at that very moment, building an igloo, perhaps white-water rafting the Colorado River on my National Geographic. What could I say? It was my dad’s subscription to do with as he pleased. I wasn’t so much miffed as… well, it would have been nice to be asked; I wasn’t quite ready to hang up my crampons or take off my flippers.

I still read the National Geographic, I don’t subscribe but occasionally buy a copy when an article catches my eye and when I’ve got a spare fiver, and there’s always the doctor’s waiting room. Talking of doctors, Alex was officially made a doctor today, not a medical one, a doctor of countries and animals and stuff I think. I also like to think it was the sacrifice of my National Geographic that did it. After all, I didn’t bother to read it did I… Oh, well at least Alex got a doctorate out of it.

Emmanuelle...

The problem with what I still call the Web Wide World is that it springs news upon you when you are least expecting it, sometimes news that you don’t want to hear.

Today, whilst looking for something completely different, my eyes were caught by one of those news items that they disperse within the text. Generally I don’t notice these things but my eye was drawn to two words ‘Sylvia Kristel’ and from there to the third word of what turned out to be a very sort sentence - ‘Dies’.

Sylvia Kristel Dies.

For a moment the clock on the wall stopped ticking and I was seventeen again, a memory of rattan chairs and puffy nipples flooding through my consciousness as, for a brief instant, I remembered the excitement of being young with a world of possibility in front of me. Reading on I was surprised to see that Sylvia was only a handful of years older than me. I’d always thought of her as the older woman, worldly wise, an ingénue – perhaps because she was Dutch or maybe it was the hair - but as it turned out she was just twenty-two to my seventeen when she starred in Emmanuelle. No difference at all really.

Back then Emmanuelle had seemed so racy with its mile-high, lesbian, oral, group sex, rape scenes – all heavily censored and simulated of course in blurred soft-focus long shot. It was erotica really, hardly soft porn, these days even the soaps are nearly as graphic. But it caused a sensation back then; the film was even banned in France for a while before becoming the country's highest-grossing film of all time

I have three distinct memories of Emmanuelle.

The first was a trailer I saw in the interval of some other film excursion, The Three Musketeers or maybe Carrie, before I even saw Emmanuelle. The words ‘Coming Soon’ in big letters appeared on the screen, to be followed by ‘Emmanuelle’ in that distinctly cursive typestyle... the cinema erupted in howls of laughter.

The second happened on the day I plucked up the courage to go see the film. I’d skived off school with my girlfriend and we’d caught the bus into Oxford. We were patiently queuing in our furs and tatters outside the Odeon, all ready for the two o’clock performance, when who should come out of the cinema after watching the eleven o’clock? No other than Chunky Gould, my English master, raincoat discreetly folded over one arm. He looked at me, and I looked at him as he mumbled: “I think you’ll like the first film better than the second.” The first film was Confessions of a Window Cleaner, and I didn’t – but I was never reported for skiving.

My final memory is of being on another bus one morning when the inspector got on. This was some time after I’d seen the film and become a fan of Sylvia. He asked to see my pass, which I gave him not realising it had expired the previous day. After ticking me off and taking the 1/-3d fare (which I had to borrow) he removed the pass from its plastic see-through wallet only to find a naked Emmanuelle I’d cut from a newspaper hiding behind where the pass had been. He went scarlet, passed back my pass and scuttled away down the stairs.

Hard to believe that the beautiful young woman in that old cutting is dead; sixty is really no age at all. Apparently Emmanuelle dogged Sylvia all her life and she appeared in several of the increasingly tawdry, pornographic sequels - not ‘Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals’ though. Years after she told a reporter: "I was on a train and I couldn't jump off. What is it they say? Be careful what you wish for."

Be careful what you wish for, advice I’ve somehow never been able to follow.

Twice divorced and with her money gone - lost to alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine addiction - Sylvia spent her final years in a small apartment above an Amsterdam cafe. She tried her beautiful hand at painting, a second career as an artist; she could paint a bit and lived on the modest proceeds, supplemented by money from the occasional television interview. I like her paintings very much.

I can’t explain how or why I feel the way I do about Sylvia Kristel and Emmanuelle, perhaps it’s a right of passage thing. It’s all wrapped up in a time of my life - well, in a time of my life when I was having the time of my life. If only I’d know it at the time. Anyway, another small piece of my youth gone; goodnight Sylvia, sleep well.

Writing...

nope....

Bring on the beer...

Instead of worrying my pretty little head about what I am going to blog about tonight I am instead going to concentrate on these three beauties which I bought from Sainsbury on special at £1.00 a bottle.

The standard India Pale Ale is 3.6%, the gold 4.1%, and the Reserve 5.4% and just look at those wonderful colours. I'm in for a treat.

I don't hold with warm bottled beers so have had these, and two other sets of triplets (having spent the tenner I won on the lottery and given the spare pound to the chap that used to be a manager who generally sits by the shop entrance) in the fridge all day, so they should be nice and cold.

My favourite beer glass - long, tall and shapely - has also been in the fridge all day.

Now, I know that I must drink responsibly - the government says so - so I'm taking extra care when pouring not to irresponsibly spill any, although I'm saddened to say it looks like I may be going to exceed the 3-4 units a day recommended by the UK Chief Medical Officer. I do hope that Dame Sally forgives me, but professor or not I think I know better than she what my needs are.

Oh well, another end to another rather tiresome day - bring on the beer.

Bring on the balloons...

Today is one of those days. I couldn’t believe the strength of the wind when I left the house this morning. It whistled and gusted, picking up the fallen leaves and tossing them into the slate grey sky… wait a minute, didn’t I blog about this last week?

Like I said, today has been one of those days; they all are. Sometimes it feels like my life is on a loop, replaying the same day over and over with slight variations, over and over and over and over. I find myself focussing on things that I wouldn't  but do; like the rain which was cold and wet, a sure sign that winter is on its wintry way and Father Time, on the house at the end of our street, spun around and around as the gusts knocked him this way and that. Father Time, fallen leaves…if only I could look up and see some balloons.

It’s not a loop, I’m not stuck in a movie or lost in a time warp in the twilight zone; I’m just in a bit of a rut. I’ve been here before and eventually something comes along to get me out of it, something new, or a shock, a catastrophe, maybe even an ending. But ruts have never held me for long, although this one seems to be the longest and deepest to date.

I’m even beginning to wonder if this blog is part of the rut, holding me in by keeping my interest and feeding me with a lukewarm feeling of almost achievement. If only I could… if only I could what? And that’s part of the issue. I seem to ask that question all the time and each time I end up with that same old ‘what?’

What, what, what? I don’t know.

Bring on the balloons.