REMADE IN CHINA, REJUVINATED IN SWEDEN, RECHARGED IN CORNBURY, REVIVED IN EDINBURGH - AND SO MUCH LOVE AT THE LORDS - SUMMER OF 24

 I've had a humdinger of a summer. Do people still say, humdinger?   Four days in Edinburgh
during the festivals, staying at the Finlay, a converted ship in Port of Leith harbour, and the House of Gods in the heart of Edinburgh, watching brilliant and unexpected performances at the Fringe (Bills 44th and Why I Put a Flare up my arse for England). and to the International Edinburgh Book Festival where I learnt about the disruptively innovative Futures Library in Oslo.   

A week in West Sweden, the region outside Gothenburg staying in a glasshouse in the forest, foraging for wild chanterelles and making rather good mushroom soup.   And then to China, Anhui, to the Paper Museum, which was incredible, as if made out of paper (see pix), and the faces of the people even more evocative than the architecture.   The region inspired films Avatar and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.   China in miniature.  

And to top it all off, the cherry on the icing on the fike of a summer, was the event at the Lords, after seven years of research the de Bono book Love Laturally, published and Lords and Baroness and Knights attended and brilliant speakers and the sun shone.  de Bono did good, and for once I admit, so did I.  

NET ZERO

A zero this year, not as in net zero, but six zero. It was odd receiving cards with that number on the front as though it was meant for someone else.  Whatever sixty feels like, it feels very much like thirty.  Not forty, or fifty but thirty.  Perhaps it is because the past decade has been exceptionally productive, and the learning trajectory positively vertical, full of surprises. some of them shocking but always useful.   Sort of anticipating climbing the stairs and you end up peaking Everest.   As with climbing it's interesting to look back at what you've achieved, but even more so to continue on. So it is with a lot of my friends who find themselves at this age, 'retiring' to do something for themselves, hooked onto the structure of what they have been doing for the past thirty rather than what they have actually been doing.  I was with a friend who has lived in Hertford and is retiring from thirty years in teaching this summer, seeking out huge dramatic murals, which leads visitors and locals down paths they wouldn't have normally ventured. The friend is one of those who enjoyed both the work and the structure and is planning afresh, a change to another structure, less structured, but still structure.  For me, it's been less about structure and more about journey. Not as in Strictly Come Dancing journey which is a format, which is another word for structure.  

I feel very much life has been led along paths with the odd bit of drama, romance, adventure, fear, weirdness, and hope, and thinking of each trip as Freudian, Jungian or Tuckian (looked that one up in case it meant anything rude and it doesn't).   There's the famous Mappa Mundi displayed in Hertford Cathedral, the 700 year old map which 'scholars' have yet to fully digest and understand.  And I've been researching Edward de Bono's biography, about a man who championed thinking out of the box/lateral thinking, changing the patterns of not just how we do things, but how we think, our perceptions, which comes with age anyway. Read a book at ten, the same book at twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, you should read it differently.  If you don't you haven't evolved.  You are as stuck as the printed word.  So it was when I read Alice in Wonderland at ten and then again forty years later.   Same with films.  So many films I thought romantic at ten now I look at and go 'ouch' such was the entrenched misogyny and the male narrative norm.  (think Man with Golden Gun, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (although Madeline Kahn 'I'm tired' is priceless and how I felt for much of my forties).

As a freelancer for most of my life, the element of structure has always alluded me, or rather I have alluded it, recognising that although there are numerous positives (planning is much easier, although not guaranteed, bill paying is easier, although not guaranteed...) I have chosen to be, what one of my editors in the first week of meeting me recognised, free spirited.   This has given me the opportunity, or rather I have given me the opportunity to do many things I have dreamed of, some I haven't, and others I would rather have avoided (but not many).  So I find myself in a situation where I don't want to do different things or more of what I do already but really free spirit it.   Add a zero to all my efforts for the next twenty years.  An 80 is almost a 60 if you think about it.  Just completing the circle.    

NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS. - it's a beautiful world.

The world is bonkers. There's a song by Dizzy Rascal which is called Bonkers, but the world is really bonkers. News has been full of news about The Princess of Wales (always think of Diana not Catherine when I write that, but anyway) going to hospital because she has something wrong with her (too thin) which may have been triggered by multiple things (stress, not eating enough because of stress, which may have been triggered by anything from her husband to probably reading too much news).  People are at war with themselves. The media, the politician, the police force, the energy companies, everyone is mistrusted.    Anyone who smacks of authority is allegedly crooked, and anyone who has a voice is either pointing a finger at someone for being crooked or having a finger pointed at them. Lots of finger pointing.   Then there's AI which is allegedly going to lead to Armageddon, although there could be a meteor coming our way before that, and oh yes, it's important to live on a hill, because water levels will rise, although of course it is going to get hotter, so this may soak up the water.    Then the glaciers are disappearing, so there may not be any snow for the Winter Olympics in two years time.   In the meantime, more animals are going extinct more odd ones are being discovered and ... stop. 

Just had four blissful days in Bormio, northern Italy. Lovely food, company and experience. Lovely Italians.  Saw and hugged my brilliant son. Wonderful.  Walked in the park and Isabella Plantations which even in the rain and grey is stunning.   And in the morning, the view from the top of Richmond Hill, with the rising mist as the river turns is mesmerising.   I have set my algorithm to avoid politics, finance, sport, cars, war, celebrities and am left with astronomy (that's why I know about the meteor) and nature.   That's it.   It's a beautiful world.   

THE MALE SCRIPT - POOR THINGS

 I've just realised so many Christmas films read off the male script.   It wasn't really until I had to write about favourite Christmas films and had to analyse them in more depth I realised, everything centres around the male protagonist. The woman is something to be rescued, or is by default, an object where things happen to her.   My favourite film Chitty Chatty Bang Bang has a rather gormless (admittedly ok dancer) male protagonist, hapless, and meeting Truly Scrumptious who is made happy just by being loved by this 'lovely lonely' man.  

Then there's Home Alone, where the protagonist is again male, the mother has to go back and is the guilt ridden one, the father literally the absent one looking after the rest admittedly in rainy Miami and for Home Alone 2, Paris.   Nothing about the boy being irresponsible or probably possibly enjoying being by himself.  If I was the mother I would let the father take the lot of them away and take time for myself.   Go travel to Japan, perhaps take one child, the favourite and leave the rest behind. They all seem very over indulged and petulant any way, and that older brother.  Ugh.   But I suppose if you have that many children, you enjoy the company.    Is it only me who finds that uncle really annoying? 

Then there's Die Hard, which again is around a man, who rescues the day, from another man, and the woman is saved, although admittedly she does have a career and a maid called Marlana (is it Marlena?) beings with M 

Elf is male, It's a Wonderful Life, its about a male who messes up and then is redeemed by another (male) angel, ditto The Bishop's Wife, which is about a male vicar rescued by a male angel although the title of the film is about the woman but only in the role of a wife, so basically its still about the man she's married to. She only has purpose because she happens to be married to the vicar and flirted with by the angel.   

But probably the most chauvinist is Scrooge, where it's' all about him, his past, present and future, where he is fixed and redeemed.   Having just spent the last seven years writing a biography of a man, who had a host of women looking after him, following after him, I have felt a bit like trawling through his life like a ghost observing the scenarios in his past from various perspectives, including his own like a Who done it/who did it psychological murder mystery.   The women in his life have been merely buffers he brushed up against like a ball on a pinball machine, aiming for the jackpot, in order to fulfil his goal. He accomplished a lot but again without them, he could not have achieved what he did, but they are the B listers, the bit part players, paragraphs or one liners, who are happy, sad, angry at having met him.   

I feel the narratives of women in life reflect the narratives in the things we watch.   It's just that women don't have enough female narratives.  Even the super heroes who are women have more camera angles on their bums and boobs than they do on their (stunning cheekbones) face.   And this starts at school.  Get women to earn more than men.  To have that financial freedom.  Then the narratives will change and Scrooges ghosts won't bother turning up.  Least of all to fix a tight fisted old money lender. 

ALL LIT UP

The Christmas lights at Kew Gardens are magnificent this year. If you can go, please do, as they have surpassed themselves.   Incorporating ideas from a wide variety of sources, with over three quarters of their lighting LED, and all sustainable products. 

Attractions include Lili, an abstract series of towering, illuminated flowers by TILT, captivates visitors. ArtAV introduces Trapezoid, among the longest light tunnels at Kew, alongside a cascade of over 400 lights adorning Camellia Walk. The Hive, an evocative representation of a beehive with 1000 glowing LED lights and an entrancing score, makes its trail debut. Returning favourites include Pitaya’s Spark Ballet, a dance of 24 lanterns, and Candles, suspending a hundred flickering flames to enchant passageways. Admire the Christmas Cathedral and the reimagined Fire Garden, illuminating Kew's oldest Victorian glasshouse with 300 candles and mesmerizing LED displays. Each display punctuates a journey through the park, which is this year, not only dramatic and enchanting– as it usually is – but many times, extremely poignant. Music has been well chosen throughout to capture the fragility of nature, and messages in lights drawn bright about how we should save the bees, be respectful of nature and the planet.  The trees are carefully lit, unlike some Christmas light trails I have followed where all semblance of nature is subsumed by luminescent pink and orange dancing mushrooms, Cinderella’s and for some odd reason, Big Bens, which have nothing to do with nature or Christmas for that matter.  

 

The day I visited it was cool but not cold and not raining. When it is cold (skies clear) ones wants to jog round rather than stroll. When its raining (and therefore warmer) the lights are blurred.  It was just right as I walked (it takes an hour even without children) and there are stops for food (the usual mulled wine, mince pies and for some reason waffles which now need to be covered in cheese et al.   There are huge robins, stars perched in trees, portals of light, and a lake which becomes a sky of passing clouds, and then Northern Lights, and then flowing stream.  It is mesmerizing and memorable.  Father Christmas is in his home about a third of the way through, with his hut and heater, and the huge greenhouses are lit to resemble something out of Spirited Away, and Chinese palaces, while the final curtain call is the son et Lumiere over the lake, with its dancing fountains.   

 

With all that is happening with climate change, and the gentle messages that pervade throughout this trail, I found myself quite tearful.   We must not only sustain and be responsible with nature, but we must also regenerate, or else the lights will go out. For all of us.   

 

Embrace the seasonal magic at Kew and Glow Wild with tickets available at www.kew.org.

 

THE MADNESS OF GLOBAL MENTAL HEALTH DAY

 I've spent over an hour talking to my energy supplier about an outstanding amount which has been outstanding for over three years. I contacted the energy ombudsman who are nowhere near as sharp as the financial ombudsman at marking their own homework, and am stressed despite teaching yoga at seven, two work outs today and wanting to visit Epsom to see the amazing Horton Centre and the events there.   I overran the conversation with the energy company, and didn't get to the event.  E On Next are crap. Changed energy supplier.  Contacted Martin Lewis.  

There's obviously a buzz about electricity in my life at the moment. The house in France has suddenly developed issues with its electrics which are now costing over £2k.   Admittedly this is French 'stranger' prices, which are usually double that of the locals, but again, annoying and I am investigating if it is a cost that is able to wait till the spring. Although knowing the local workers, they will double the price, especially if they read this blog. 

Then back to editing and writing, a source of calm, although one particular narrative I'm working on has been on going - a bit like the E ON Next thing.  

As I will be holding a workshop on basically seeing the funny side and the importance of seeing the funny side to resolve issues at the Hawkswood Centre next week, I will attempt to do the same. I usually end up putting it somewhere at some point in a novel, but at the moment, I just think everyone is a fucking nuisance.  

FALSE PROPHETS AND PROFITEERS

 I listened to Russell Brand's podcast occasionally.   He interviewed I believe some genuinely good people. It will not have escaped him all that surfaces from now on, is a way of showing what he would often discuss in his podcasts.  Namely how establishment in all forms hides the truth, manipulates, misdirects, 'turns a blind eye' whatever that quaint little phrase means (plausible deniability I think they call it in court),  lied in plain sight, and got away with it.  

In the podcasts, Brand often claimed greed governed these organisations and they were not seeking truth, or the good for and of society. In knowingly ignoring his behaviour, these organisations have given weight to an argument he has relentlessly spouted over the years since he became a born-again wounded healer. There are a lot of these wounded healers about, offering their services for payment, having been through countless therapy sessions themselves, they have learnt by rote the vocabulary, and body language, and turned and twisted it, in the same way a coercive abuser behaves.  They abuse under the pretext of supporting.  But then again, so has religion and politicians over the years.  

Such is his ego, he will believe he is a Christ-like figure, putting himself out there, to illustrate how what he said all along was true.  How he has martyred himself to prove a point.   He claims establishment lies and co operates for the greater good - or greater greed - to maintain profit.  The only reason not to 'out' the abusers if they have more dirt on you than you have on them, and/or you make them a lot of money.   

Brand is one of a growing number of false prophets and profiteers who are increasingly preying on the vulnerable, in search of authenticity and guidance, because there is increasingly little authenticity and credible coherent guidance originating from religion, politicians, police, media, all of whom have shown themselves to be corrupt and corruptible.  The health service is broken through mismanagement both within and without - by consecutive governments.  Education and educationalists are bogged down in the ludecy of bureaucracy and attempting to devalue the role of teacher to one of social worker because parents don't parent.   Our so called leaders are appalling specimens, unworthy of the masses who are in their droves turning off their TVs, their radio, and challenging social constructs, some which should have been redundant decades ago, others more valuable. The baby always goes out with the bath water. 

The stories told by the women Brand is alleged to have abused triggered me, as I have found myself in a similar position on occasion when I was younger, and it was out of naivety or luck I managed to walk away, most of the time.  RB is the tip of iceberg. There are others who are disingenuous, dishonest, abusers, who still earn large corporations too much money for them to fail and fall.  They are fawned upon by the media, and validated, having seemingly become respectable, wounded healers, wanting to share their happy clappy brand of monetised healing, attempting to buy back their souls, by selling out others.