OK. I give up. I'm just stupid.

I'm upset - I could cry. I'm not very good with IT, as you'll have realised if you've been reading regularly. Today my visitor counter that I had endless hassle installing has disappeared from my sidebar. The code's in the template, but the counter I was so happy with has gone! I dunno.

So there I was, having given up on hard stuff for today, searching for blogs to do with organic farming, keeping chickens, sutainable development - all that stuff for the happy-ever-after plan, and I found a 'live journal' that I liked, and wanted to link to, so I thought I'd say hi on Meredic's comments page.

Oh no. I don't think so. This outfit have got their members locked in and battened down so hard that I can't get in to leave a comment unless, it appears, I join up and start a journal with them.

This is where I was up to when I thought that I could use the "Anonymous" option, having sprained an ankle on their other hurdles:

'My God - scary OpenID - I just wanted let you know that I LIKE your blog and am going to link to you, but the fun's rather gone out of it now...... don't want a journal and can't work out where to start on OpenID. Don't like anonymous comments but can't work out alternative. If designed as unnatural selection process to intimidate bear of very little brain, IT WORKED!!!!!! Hoooooooowwwwwwwlll!!!!!! '

When, a little later, I tried to post, their bloody spam robot detectors wheeled into action, asking me to confirm that I was human below (uh...yeah..) then rejecting my 'anonymous' comment four times before informing me that "Your IP address (number given) is detected as an open proxy (a common source of spam) so comment access is denied. If you do not believe you're accessing the net through an open proxy, please contact your ISP or this site's tech support to help resolve the problem."

I've already looked at their Help page and there are so many FAQs and so forth that seem entirely for journal holders that - as a poor outsider who just wanted to be friendly - I am completely baffled and demoralised. The well-meaning architects of these cyber-forts should realise that the rogues and sad-hats who hack and spam will always get through anything they throw up; it's only harmless saps like me who can't get through.

Who needs this?

Rain

I blog on Habibi's laptop, and his C Drive's full of my photos and downloads, so I thought I'd have a clear-out. But I just love this Chagall painting, and regret omitting it from C is for.....

So before I delete, Rain!

















Thank you and
























(Did R.T. instead of Escher.)

F is for Les Fauves (P.S. May 30th: and les ups de F***!)

Français encore!

I first heard of the Fauves in Judith Krantz's novel Mistral's Daughter.

I'd better confess to being a book snob. If it's got a hot pink cover with embossed metallic letters, and blurb along the lines of 'destiny unfurls through the lives of three generations of passionate women' my 'blick!' register hits red.

But I liked Mistral's Daughter. In fact, having got it free from the book club, read it three or four times over several years, and given it to the Oxfam shop when we were stripping down ready for moving overseas, I had to buy another copy a couple of years later. I've since lent or lost that, and you know what... now I come to think of it.......

Anyway, I like these!
Woman of Montmarte, painted by Kees Van Dongen in 1911. To me, this is very French - though I'm pretty sure Kees van Dongen wasn't! When I stop to think why, I realise that it goes back to a book I used to get from the library when I was little, small enough to hold my mother's hand as we walked up long, steep Manby Road to 'the top shops' and the little public library in one of the shops.

(P.S. May 30th. The more I return to this painting, the more I go off it. I think that it was the roses on the hat that appealed, and associations with those wonderful, outrageous big hats that society women used to balance on their outrageous grand coiffures. Beyond that - well - what? And the style reminds me more of Hairy McLary from Donaldson's Dairy! which is a delightful children's book. Anyway, I'm tired of it smacking me in the eye, so I've shrunk it!)
The little library at 'the top shops' (writes she, gleefully mythologising her childhood) had Madeline: repeat after me,

'In an old house in Paris
that was covered in vines,
lived twelve little girls
in two straight lines.

In two straight lines
they ate their bread
and drank their milk
and went to bed.

..(happy sigh)..

and the youngest one
was Madeline.'

If I made a mistake, I'm sorry, but that's what I remember, and it is such a happy feeling! And I've got the dopiest smile on my face at also finding 'Jeanne-Marie' online in her little red headscarf, and Patapon, and Madelon . ("Beh-beh-beh!" says Patapon. "Quack-quack-quack!" says Madelon. ..." This was GREAT children's literature!)

And the point of this story? Only that when I was five, I formed an impression of 'French' art on the back of Ludwig Bemelmans' illustrations for his Madeline books. That was Austrian-born American citizen Ludwig Bemelmans! Loose strokes and that very Parisian yellow. Who can tell what will stick in a child's mind? Later exposure to sugared-almond April in Paris tourist Impressionism built on this, before I discovered the real stuff. (Hairy McLary really demolishes that argument, but Madeline and Jeanne-Marie stay!)

At the risk of sounding ungrateful, does anyone else get sick of Impressionism? Yes, it's gorgeous, but it's everywhere! How many books on Impressionism do we need? How many prints, posters, greetings cards, coffee cups, napkins, duvet sets, embroidery kits, painting kits and courses? Heavens above! I cannot actually see the paintings of Renoir and Degas anymore, because they have been before my eyes so often that nothing registers beyond palette and line.
Isn't it ironic, the outrage of the French beau monde and the Académie of the time at this Betrayal of 'Art'?! (And perhaps it was only in reaction to the French obsession with rules and symmetry that the extraordinary artistic experiments of the early 20th Century occurred? In Paris.)

By the way, Woman of Montmartre also reminds me of glum 'Absinthe' (by you know who) and the Edwardian Big Hat musicals Gigi and My Fair Lady. (30/05/06: Uhuh.)

Charles Manguin painted this, The Prints, in 1905. I remember that in Mistral's Daughter, there was something about the insanity/wilful arrogance/genius of an artist using green paint for skin.

On the whole, I don't go for Fauve landscapes because I find them too busy: the brush strokes feature as strongly as the subject, and unsettle me. But this, Jeanne Resting at Villa Demiere, also by Charles Manguin, also in 1905, is so much about the mood of the sitter, in the dappled shade, with the world peacefully distant. I think it's lovely.

And this Georges Braques landscape from 1907, is just good fun. Very Australian somehow. Clarice Clift colours.

(May 30th. WRONG! That would be Clarice CLIFF. See:.......er......perhaps not. Bloggers in no-pics mode again.

But Clarice Cliff did gaudy Art Deco pottery in red,orange and yellow, and I wouldn't give most of it house room.

Clarice Clift, on the other hand, or extreme, went in for opaline majolica, which strikes me as pretty bland, but there you are.

OK, I'm bored now. Good night all.

Tomorrow I'll tell you all about my lovely students and their Kabuki Tour!)

New Toy!

Look in the sidebar! I've got a Guest Map! Do be my guest!!

Well it keeps me happy....................

Buggeribollox! Nemesised!

It did it again!

Well, relieved as I am that I'd taken my own advice, I don't think this the day to do a post on Nemesis.

Where's my teddy?

And my blanket.

Can I have the light on?

:/

Post off

You know when you've spent however long on a post, and maybe stuck in some links and pics, and maybe even looked things up just to confirm that the capital of Guatemala is Stoke Poges, Rodgers and Hammerstein was an Austrian boy band, and that's how you spell encyklopoodia?
A little time, a little care. Then you hit the PUBLISH POST button.

And find you're being prompted to log on......

Well, don't cry, because the RECOVER POST button works, even when nothing appears to be saved. I didn't retrieve all of my last post, but I did get most of it, enough to be able to remember the missing portion. Be brave!

And follow Samurai Sam's advice for your next oeuvre - Save it in Word first, then cut and paste!

Actually, I usually select and cut before pushing PUBLISH - just in case.

Nyx! This post is a Tangent

I was looking up Nemesis because of something that happened at work today (next post), and found this!

Nyx

by Ron Leadbetter

Nyx is the goddess and embodiment of the night. According to Hesiod in his Theogony (11.116-138),
"From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night Nyx; of Night were born Aether being the bright upper atmosphere and Day Hemera, whom she conceived and bore from union with Erebus her brother".

Also from the Theogony (11. 211-225); "And Night bore hateful Doom Moros and black Fate and Death Thanatos, and she bore Sleep Hypnos and the tribe of Dreams.

And again the goddess murky Night, though she lay with none, bare Blame and painful Woe, and the Hesperides who guard the rich golden apples and the trees bearing fruit beyond glorious Ocean.

Also she bore the Destinies and ruthless avenging Fates who were regarded as old women occupied in spinning, Clotho the Spinner of the thread of life and Lachesis the Disposer of Lots, she who allots every man his destiny and Atropos She Who Cannot Be Turned, who finally cuts the thread of life who give men at their birth both evil and good to have, and they pursue the transgressions of men and of gods, and these goddesses never cease from their dread anger until they punish the sinner with a sore penalty.

Also deadly Night bore Nemesis Indignation to afflict mortal men, and after her, Deceit Apate and Friendship and hateful Age and hard-hearted Strife.

From that great work we find that Nyx produced a host of offspring. Other sources give Charon who ferried the dead over the rivers of the infernal region as being the son of Erebus and Nyx, although according to the Theogony he was born from Chaos.

Also according to Aristophanes, Birds 693 ff, "in the infinite bosom of Erebus, Night with black wings first produced an egg without a seed. From it, in the course of the seasons, Eros was born--the desired, whose back sparkled with golden wings, Eros like swift whirlwinds".

And you thought your family had problems?

Thanks, Ron.

If you want any more check out the fabulous (arf!) Encyclopaedia Mythica.

P.S. There's a blogger called Atropos; now I know why. I just thought she was Greek!

......sigh.......I'm hopeless........even my tangents have tangents.......................

Beating (about) the Bush

Underground Dubai linked to this story in the Times Online, entitled Dubai’s building frenzy lays foundation for global power, from The Sunday Times of May 21st. I thought it was a carefully balanced story, which means that only half of it would make it into the local papers here. After I'd put in my tuppence worth on UD's blog, I sort of kept on going with some thoughts that have been building for a long time now, despite my efforts to Accentuate the Positive.

Basically, things are impressive here, but not perfect, and as I've written elsewhere, I'm nervous about the future here - not for myself, because after nearly thirteen years, it's just about time to go - but for Dubai itself. Whenever change occurs, something is gained, and something lost. Dubai's turning into a dazzling showgirl, but it also seems to be rapidly losing its humanity. That's one thing.

Secondly, although I agree with those who shake their heads at the underside of Dubai's development (See the article) this is another case of the distinctions between countries at different stages of development.

Thirdly, I think that the rhetoric coming out of the US - ok, Washington - ok, George Bush - is so counterproductive that I can't believe he gets away with it. So this is my opinion, for what it's worth, and then I'll say goodnight.

REPLY to UD's blog and reading the Sunday Times article:

Thanks for pointing this out. I was just thinking the other day about where this is supposed to be going - given that I along with nearly everyone I know find the construction, avarice, traffic, cynical exploitation of workers, shameless withdrawal of 'gifts' of land from long-established social and sporting societies, extravagant use of water, endless apartment blocks with no community facilities, etc. etc. oppressive and demoralising. And I thought to myself: it’s too ambitious to only be about being a regional hub for IT and commerce, and generating wealth for the national population; it’s got to be about becoming a beacon of Middle East success to the West and our neighbours: dynamic, safe, free of politics, corruption, etc. A sock in the eye for the detractors who stopped the Dubai Ports deal.

So it doesn't really matter what we temporary residents, transients, feel, or even what this generation of Emiratis think of it all, because we're not the target market. What we are experiencing now are growing pains as this emirate sets out to do in twenty years what other countries have taken fifty or a hundred years to achieve. No wonder individuals on the inside are disorientated, and outsiders keep talking about Disneyland. This will be a New Town, prefabricated for the next generation. It will be up to them to give it a heart to replace what's dying here.

AND the rest of it.

Then there will be leisure for a social conscience regarding the inhabitants of the place. All in good time. I don't subscribe to this. And yet, shouldn't we recognise that the First World countries critical of attitudes and practices here, built their wealth in the bad old days of slavery, colonialism and the 'renewable resource' of cheap and plentiful immigrant labour; and that their social, political and judicial structures and national consciences have evolved since then? Industrialised England, New York, the Great Wall of China, the Egyptian pyramids, and the Aztec and Inca cities were all built on the backs, blood and bones of labour deemed disposable according to the values of the time. Times change, and so do attitudes, but as we've already seen with international concerns about fuel emissions, dirty coal, nuclear energy etc. what seems only commonsense to a developed nation, sounds like economic protectionism masquerading as a global conscience to the developing nation pulling itself up through whatever resources it has. Nor does the recent record of First World countries in Third World Countries square with our educated liberal modern consciences. And what's the latest on Baghdad, Guantanamo and the Land of the Free?

Excuse the bitter little diatribe, but man's inhumanity to man, collective short-term memory and infinite capacity for claiming the moral high-ground, not to mention the almost literal reclaiming, by the dubiously elected leader of the secular United States of America, of the Divine Right of Kings, which does impart the flavour of crusade to his country's activities in the Middle East, no matter how well his speech writers try to spin it, is going to get us all killed one of these days.

Turkey, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran are at least open about the conflict between those who believe in an infallible God whose will should permeate society, and those who don’t, or who at least believe that individuals of conscience should group together to work for a just, compassionate and economically viable society. In the West there has been official separation of Church and State for generations, in some cases, centuries. Most westerners take it as fact that no individual, regime or system is perfect – or not for more than a few years, until circumstances alter cases – but everyone does their best according to their own lights, and we rely on the group - cabinet, parliament, electorate - call it what you will, to rein in the zealots, the corrupt, the megalomaniacs, the tired and disillusioned.

Part of what afflicts the world right now is the gap in understanding between the secular mindset – How can these people reject freedom of thought, speech, will, and mindlessly obey/believe/uphold that oppressive regime? And the religious mindset – How can these people disregard the laws of God, laid down for our benefit, and risk eternal damnation?

In the west, there is general mistrust of the political ambitions of ruling clerics – and not without reason, for do not these religious leaders with secular power have the usual human flaws? Europe took centuries to curb the secular power of the Papacy, and how many corrupt popes, linked by blood to various ruling families, played power games, or lived lives of debauchery before that happened? Didn’t Christianity split into Roman Catholic and Byzantine Orthodox long before the Reformation?

On the other hand, Russia and China both went down the paths of atheism – and the suppression of religious practices, groups and individuals – in pursuit of their ideal secular social model. It still goes on though the times, politics and names appear to have changed somewhat - but they don’t pretend otherwise, simply tell everyone else to mind their own business and leave their countries to them. They are open for business, not external reform, and look who's buying. So we’re all clear on Russia and China.

The one lesson that comes out of this is that ‘The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to to govern. Every class is unfit to govern...Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’

And this applies to both clerics and secular authorities. It would seem that democracy is the key to social justice and honest government. Being elected for a fixed term, with the guarantee of being booted out for incompetence or corruption, and a maximum tenure no matter how terrific you think you are, checks even the Berlusconis of this world.

Except that the other half of the equation is the electorate, which has a moral responsibility of its own: to think, to weigh the worth of the candidates and the needs of the parish/town/city/region/country; to vote according to informed conscience not out of habit or fear; to vote – not abnegate responsibility for the community; and to be patient and open, allowing representatives time to do their job, and not take up weapons and hit the streets when no magic solution is delivered within months. It’s so easy not to bother. Violent activity is such an easy vent for frustration. Responsibility isn’t as easy, or as invigorating.

So how does it come about that the citizens of what has been – at least until recently – the most powerful nation on earth, managed to elect not once, but twice, a barely competent, vain, arrogant, opinionated, blinkered, self-satisfied, isolationist, xenophobic, religious zealot to be their president? Did I miss anything?

The signs were there the first time around.

Kyoto Treaty? Handy short term domestic gains at expense of betraying international agreements and relationships? OK.

Steel tariffs? Handy short term domestic gains at expense of betraying international agreements and relationships? OK. (Easier second time around).

International War Crimes Tribunal? Nope, not for God-Bless-Americans!

9/11: Didn’t see that coming, better hit someone back. Oops, missed in Afghanistan –

OK let’s

1) whip up hysteria on the back of national grief so that I can do what the Lordy-Lordy I like,

2) deflect attention from failure – What’s happening in Eye-rack these days?

3) find a bogeyman (See 2),

4) whip up a pretext – ooh… well in the movies they always say they’re going to destroy the world……. What about……Weapons of Mass Destruction?…OK!

5) make oil reserves safe for democracy…… um…… make the world safe for democracy. OK!!!


Butbutbutbut what about diplomacy?
What – the talking and listening kind? Nah. Unamerican. And invasion plays better on Fox.
Butbutbutbut what about the peace?
What peace?
After the war……we need a plan, personnel, resources, someone who speaks Arabic.
.................Listen sonny, we’ve got to catch the morning papers and breakfast TV -
Oh......

And despite all the Not In My Name Efforts, off they went.

And despite all that followed, the fine Christian people of America, voted Dubbya in again. In response to what? Gay marriages (Find a bogeyman): the threat to Our Way of Life.

What happened to the separation of Church and State? What to make of George W. Bush’s Divine Smokescreen? God-on-our-side may have provided an unholy election miracle for the Republicans, but look at what it’s doing to the United States' international standing, and everything it touches these days! (Yes I know that there are thousands of Americans involved in relief efforts in some of the toughest places on earth, and many of them face hostility nowadays - I’m talking about this administration’s blinkered home-based electorate and self-righteous foreign policy.)

How can the people of America not see that their foreign policy has destroyed their almost mythic virtue in the eyes of their old allies? Cheat your neighbours. Betray your friends. Make scapegoats of political irritants. Destroy the old and iniquitous with no thought of how to encourage new growth, unless it means contracts for American firms. Make endless allowances for old friends steeped in blood and oppression; sign trade deals with old enemies in the hope that they’ll take you with them on their way up. Human rights abuses? No problem.

It can be argued that international diplomacy is always, ultimately about the bottom line. In fact if it weren’t for the unstoppable determination of traders and merchants to expand markets, most countries and continents would probably be at war most of the time.
Mammon the peacemaker.

To return to the beginning, and the critical stance taken by outside individuals, organisations and governments on the development of Dubai – how else will the world improve if not through the encouragement of best practice in all areas of society? It is good that First World countries wear their consciences on their sleeves, and actively seek to promote freedom and justice everywhere. And here in Dubai, there must surely be room for the personal and property rights of the individual in the brave new world rising out of the sand.

But for the identified leader of the western world (even if that perception is mistaken, and he’s just another bogeyman) to cloak the destabilisation of the Middle East through economic and political aggrandisement in the rhetoric of Christianity is not only disingenuous, but fans extremism in America’s Bible Belt as well as the Islamic world. We all know it’s about securing gasoline for American cars, and oil for American boilers: and the politicians and clerics in the Middle East all know it too. But how helpful of Mr. Bush to give them exactly what they need to inflame the hearts and minds of people already very angry about Israel, Palestine and Iraq. The worrying thing is, no-one really knows for sure whether this is political posturing, or if he really does see himself as Saint George. Either way, we’re in trouble.

If the American people as a whole (with the honourable but ignored exception of a large minority, many of whom live or have lived in the Middle East and elsewhere) are so complacent, so self-righteous and self-absorbed that the private lives of a tiny minority figure more powerfully than the lives of thousands of American service peronnel and thousands upon thousands of Iraqis, the ongoing misery and shame of Israeli state sponsored terrorism against Palestinians, (not just Palestinian terrorism against Israelis) and the USA’s descent, in the eyes of the rest of the world, from historical ally, powerhouse trading partner, and honourable – if flawed – defender of justice and democracy around the world, to duplicitous, racist, self-serving aggressor, ready to jettison constitutional human rights and ignore the sovereign rights of other nations whenever it suits, then I suppose that they have the President they deserve.

George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad certainly deserve each other, particularly as Dubbya’s foreign policy probably contributed to Ahmedinejad’s rise to power.

But do the rest of us deserve them? At the same time?

Maybe the joke’s on us. God is out there, watching the floorshow with a Deity Pack of Kleenex. Apocalypse Any Minute Now. Not delivered, as previously assumed, by God, but wilfully crafted by his ultimate creation. (No, not the dolphins, you idiot!)

Would someone like to explain the bit about God again?

Goodnight!

R.T. Part Deux

I think Blogger's having an off day. I tried to include 'Zeus'













and 'Melisande' from Erté.com,






and 'Broadway in Fashion'

from Progressive Art Media,










but they wouldn't load, and when I published, the end of the post got chopped off. Twice. Are they trying to tell me something? One more try on pics and links, because these are definitely worth seeing! ......................tumtitum..... .......upload pics...... .......just talk amongst yourselves....... ......Whoopdidoo! See - told you they were Fab!

And if you want to see more, just follow the links! I recommend the image pages as well. I think when I'm done with this, I'm going to do a page of 'inspired by's', because I've found fascinating original work inspired by palaeolithic art, Escher, and Erté, as well as the ancient Assyrians, Phoenicians, etc etc etc. This is fun! :D

(I like these punctuation thingies! ;P)

OK. I'm going now....... Bye......... See ya..... GONE!

Romain de Tirtoff

Ha! Never heard of him. Actually, I hadn't. Ever heard of him. Until discovering that










may be for Erté,

but R. T. (pronounced en français - yes, another one -) stands for Romain de Tirtoff, the Russian artist and designer who adopted this elegant new identity when he began his career in Paris.

The first Erté prints I ever saw were on laminated plastic trays at the local market when I was about fourteen. (I think Art Deco must have been in in the mid 1970s because lots of people had a Mucha poster on the wall - and he too was celebrated in laminated kitsch! Art for the masses!)

I remember sumptuous furs on a preternaturally sinuous body, balanced by a pair of greyhounds. Neither of these, which he made in the 80s, but something very similar.













Stylish, gorgeous, witty, utterly asexual and faintly unsettling. Perhaps I had an inkling that some mysogynist was about to invent the supermodel, whose sole function was to make clothes look good on a catwalk or photoshoot with no awkward bumps to break the line, thus raising a downright silly standard for the rest of womankind, who needed to be able to sit down, get in and out of vehicles, breathe and - I know, I know, pure indulgence - eat. Damn.

Tangent alert: Spot the tangent!) Wallis Simpson, the American divorcée for whom the almost-king Edward VIII gave up the British throne in the 1930s, probably did Britain a great favour, since said throne passed to the steadier hands of George VI, and thereafter to his impressive eldest daughter Elizabeth. However(!!) for the completely bloody stupid epigram "One can never be too rich or too thin.", she and all the idiots who quoted her so merrily - - ooh! - - words fail! Of course, the poor woman was probably only joking, but still, corporate empires have been raised on the shoulders of anxious women for whom 'female' has become the 'F' word, and the desired silhouette is, well, male.

Androgyny is for the birds, ladies (not necessarily verifiable scientifically). And MANnequins. We're built curvy, and in my book, the designer whose work looks better draped from a clothes hanger than from breast and hip is in the wrong business: he should be in curtains. Can't we allow ourselves our curves? (Though on a personal note, I could wish that my only remaining concave curve was not between chin and shoulder..... sob!) Not thin. Not fat. Female! (Tangent over.)

Because of the style, I assumed that Erté himself was long gone, but as I learnt today, he was alive and well, and yet to make the prints I've put here! So here they are, and there are more prints, stage designs and sculptures at the online museum and gallery at Erté.com.

Knit One P*rn One

A couple of weeks back, I was reading Show & Tell, and GirlPrinter directed me to some 'lovely' babyknit patterns. Now I have no babies to knit for, but the little blue booties she'd knitted were so cute that I followed the link to A BIG RED BOX WHICH SAID:

We apologize the site you are attempting to visit has been blocked

due to its content being inconsistent with

the religious, cultural, political and moral values of

the United Arab Emirates.

If you think this site should not be blocked,

please visit the Feedback Form available on our website.

Wow. What are they putting on their babies' tootsies in the land of Oz?

Tonight I've been getting my colour fix at A. L. de Sauveterre's glorious Two Pointy Sticks. She directed me to some baby knits, and lo! A B.R.B. which said:

We apologize the site you are attempting to visit has been blocked
due to its content being inconsistent with
the religious, cultural, political and moral values of

the United Arab Emirates.
If you think this site should not be blocked,
please visit the Feedback Form available on our website.

Wow again. It appears that Uncle Sam is also corrupting minors with subversive knitwear.

What is happening beyond the lifeboat that is the UAE? Is the world full evil - evil - EVIL - HA! Ha-ha-ha-haaaaa! people masquerading as grannies and favourite aunties, all cackling over gasp! POINTY STICKS?!?!? Oh noooooooo!!!!! nefariously knitting Aran horns and four-ply fins in a vile conspiracy to pervert the next generation? Gasp!

O Woe to the World! To think that Habibibaba is out there somewhere in the Outer Darkness, the Boundless Chaos, unaware of the cunning predators lurking in living rooms, market stalls and Townswomen's Guilds, waiting to snare him in sigils of sin!

Habibibaba, if you are reading this, my darling, listen to your Mother! If a stranger offers you a cable jumper - just say "No!"

How fortunate we are to have Etisalat to protect us from such things.

OK. I suppose I could just fill in the Feedback Form, but for heaven's sake, they block translation sites, cutting us off from foreign-language research and culture, and they block photographic links on the assumption that if someone's taken a photograph of it, it must be baaaaaaad.

I wouldn't mind, but I have stumbled across adult material online before now, so it's ironic - ok, irritating - that I'm barred from a pattern for baby bootees!

Incidentally, I posted this then pulled it to replace an o with an *. (Anyone seen my blog? I know it was there when I went to bed last night, but now there's just a BIG RED BOX!)

No point in cutting off nose to spite face..........

Kabuki to go

We're a week from performance and our students, who have worked tremendously hard as production team on two school plays, are really looking forward to performing.

Shibaraku (which translates as Just a Minute!) has an unstoppable teenage hero giving an ambitious and unscrupulous lord his come-uppance, and restoring honour to a noble house. Written as a crowd-pleaser to open a new season, it's lively, funny, full of swaggering and posturing, and beautifully set and costumed.

Of course, ours is a touring production aimed primarily at introducing our students to the acting tradition, so our set is minimal, nor do we have the budget for layered kimonos of hand-embroidered silk - honestly, what can you do?

Still, they're having great fun working on the stylised movement and vocal delivery, they're excited about richly coloured kimonos as a change from school uniform and their usual daywear - and an early exploratory session on wigs was a hoot.

Finding dead white foundation has been a challenge: the authentic white paint for the face, neck, shoulders, hands and wrists of aristocratic characters is called oshiroi, and may be plentiful in Tokyo, but in Dubai..... hmmmm... I've been testing facepaints with very unsatisfactory results - unless,when you think 'geisha' you think blotches and smears? BUT a very helpful woman from an international cosmetic house thinks they may have exactly what we need in their warehouse. Fingers crossed! **Update: She has indeed got exactly what we need, and is sending it to us without charge as encouragement to our students. Isn’t that great? I’m sure the results will be imMACulate.

I got black polyester swimming caps as wigbases from Géant in Ibn Battuta, wigs and hairpieces at Fida's in Satwa, and bamboo poles from the plant souk round the corner - since seven-foot tempered steel samurai swords aren't in our budget either!

There's still plenty to be done, but it's all coming together.So here are some pics of work in progress, and where we're heading with this!


Working on the walk.


And the wigs!


One kimono and several graduation gowns.





Yoshitsuna - noble, wronged hero




Katsura Mae - his fiancée





Takehira - evil lord who wants Yoshitsune dead and Katsura Mae as his 'attendant'. This is actually a detail from Kanjincho, showing Benkei, but we're taking it as a base for Takehira as it's about halfway between the delicate makeup for Yoshitsuna, and what they call the aragoto (roughly, bravura) make-up, required for the larger-than-life Kagemasa.



And here is Kagemasa - teenage hero (on a Brazilian magazine cover) The actor, Ichikawa Ebizo XI is going to be performing in London this June. You're looking at three layers of kimono over the heraldic undergarment, and you wouldn't believe the shoes and trousers, so I'll leave them out!





Finally, just in case you thought Kabuki was alien, elitist or whatever, here, from the Kabuki-Za in Tokyo, is indisputable evidence of its broader appeal:

This is a scene from Kanjincho. Yup! Snoopy is Yoshitsuna, with his little bodyguard of Woodstock and his buddies. The blonde guy - piano player - I forget - is Benkei, the warrior priest. Linus is Togashi, the sergeant of Yoshitsuna's elder half-brother, and torn between duty to his lord, and admiration for Benkei's loyalty to his. And Sally (? yes ? - How can I have forgotten?!) is - well - she must the obligatory decorative chick, because she certainly doesn't figure in the story! Are Hollywood values creeping into Japanese culture?

I have to say that you cannot appreciate Kabuki from reading about it and looking at pictures, though they certainly help. There are several excellent sites online, and if you just want to look at the gorgeous costumes and spectacular makeup, you could spend an hour or so in Google Image Search!

I ordered some DVDs for school from Farside Music, a UK company run by Paul Fisher who lived in Japan for some years. If you've not seen Kabuki before, the comparatively slow pace (compared with virtually any western theatre you've ever seen) takes a little adjusting to, but it's so worth it.

The DVDs that Paul's imported from Japan are first rate, with excellent commentaries, and the customer service is also first rate. None of this automated reply business that massive companies have to invest in. Kanjincho is truly touching. Terakoya is heart-breaking. And the double bill of the woman looking for her lost son, and the temple dancer who becomes possessed by the lion spirit - well it works for me. They're expensive, but you get what you pay for, and when I leave here, I'm going to have to order my own copy of Kanjincho.

Farside also does Nō, but not yet with subtitles, and CDs of traditional Japanese music.

Thank you Mme Cyn for introducing me to Japanese culture and starting me down this delightful path: I don't think I ever expected to get this far!

Bump

HEAD
I'm fifteen and my dad's just fixed my bike and I'm riding back from telling my friend I'll ride in with her tomorrow and I'm freewheeling at tremendous speed down the really good steep bit on Spilsby Hill and there's a titchy white pebble directly in my path and it's absolutely not worth breaking my lovely cruise for so I go right over it.

I'm picking my bike up and reassuring someone that I'm fine and wondering where all those people standing at their garden gates came from and I think I'll just push it the rest of the way home.

I'm in the kitchen when Mother stomps in from the shops and why didn't I tell her about my accident yesterday?

What accident?

When Mother went into Clixby's to buy wool Betty was very concerned. How was Little Yellow Duckling after her accident yesterday? LYD had been badly shaken up, hadn't she? She must have had a nasty bump and was she all right now?
Mother, now revealed as Mother Who Didn't Even Know! and also Mother Who Hadn't Even Noticed!! had to ask what Betty was talking about.

It seemed that poor LYD had gone over the handlebars of her bike on Spilsby Hill, had been knocked unconscious and carried into someone's house, where she had proceeded to revive and faint all over again all over the furniture before insisting that yes she was fine thank you, collecting her bike and going home.

This of course is news to me, but explains the instant bystanders.

Mother eventually saw the funny side, but I still only know this as a story, because I only remember before and after. And why would I tell her the before, and furnish her with final proof that I was a twit without the sense to avoid a pebble when hurtling down a steep hill with no brakes? I mean!

LAPTOP
Last year I tripped on my way to my friend's house for our morning ride into work. I went down like a ton of bricks, banging my knee and landing on my laptop, which has had a loose key and wonky space bar ever since.

BOTH
Yesterday evening I was crashed out fast asleep on the sofa when my mobile rang. In my rush to answer it I tripped over my laptop cable, sending self and laptop crashing to the floor, banging my knee and damaging the power connection on the laptop. But Mme. Cyn was still there when I picked up, so it was all worth it. ;)

An hour later, Habibi asks how my head is now.
It's fine. Why?
I banged it on the table as I fell.
No, I banged my knee.
No, I banged my head on the corner of the table as I went down; he saw me.
Nah. I fell, hurt my knee, damaged my laptop and answered the phone, all without a break. I'd remember a bump on the head! He was mistaken.

This morning I was dropping things and bumping into things, (in a manner attributable to being half-asleep and longing to be fully so) but also not interested in breakfast (Huuuuuh???!!!) and aware of a vague headache that warmed up nicely as the day wore on, radiating from a softish bit I found on my head during the morning, down into my shoulder. Mild concussion: nothing that Panadol and sleep won't sort out. But Habibi was obviously right: I bumped my head. Wouldn't you think I'd have noticed that?

Shakespeare Wallah!

We've been invited to take part in a Shakespeare festival in October, at a school in Delhi where they are building a replica of The Globe. Does it get any better than this? All I need now is a Shakespeare play that I can cut to a running time of 40-60 minutes, and rehearse in six weeks with a cast of up to twenty 14-18 year-olds as soon as we get back in September. Suggestions on a blogcard please!

I'd be grateful to hear from anyone who has been in a really enjoyable school or amateur production, or on the directing/production side of an abridged Shakespeare production. I've had some practice at abridging plays and adapting a screenplay for student/children's productions.

Reservations: A Midsummer Night's Dream has been done to death, and I have nothing to bring to it. I don't want to reprise R&J so soon. Our kids are familiar with Macbeth, but I'd say that cutting it to an hour would destroy it. They've studied The Merchant of Venice, and of course, the excellent film is available on DVD to help them to a better appreciation of the style and issues, but again, editing would almost certainly skew an already ambivalent play.

I need something with a strong storyline and uncomplicated subplot, to give a handle to young actors working with unfamiliar language on a very tight schedule. I'm up for a modern adaptation too, as long as it doesn't go down the Class-3B-thought-Shakespeare-would-be-boring-until- route! (Sorry, but I've seen some dreadfully cheesy or patronising 'accessible' scripts and productions, and I have to question their worth.)

I liked the Baz Luhrman R&J, and the Michael Almereyda Hamlet with Ethan Hawke and Julia Stiles - but they're perhaps a tad sophisticated for our requirements! Has anyone seen 'O'? Is it any good?

OK, time to stop. Goodnight all!

C is for

Marc Chagall!
I could not choose just one work, so here is a collection.
These paintings speak to me, and the stained glass fairly sings.
Feast your senses!




The Birthday














Evening Enchantment



















Loneliness


























The Chagall window in the Art Institute of Chicago. C is also for Creativity, Community, and Chicago. Here's what Jeff McMahon had to say about the Chagall window and The Importance of Field Trips for Chicago School Children. Nuff said.

Da Daaaaaaaah!

OK, it's C next, but in honour of the canning of The DA Vinci Code at Cannes, (That would be the Cannes Can........ sorry..... arf!) I give you L.H.O.O.Q., Dadaist Marcel Duchamp's joke on that famous painting.

En Français for maximum appreciation: El-Ash-O-O-Koo or Elle a chaud au cul. (She has a hot ass. Outrageous n'est çe pas?!)

Ah! French humeur - so sophisticated! Have you ever had the pleasure of seeing the play Ubu Roi, by Alfred Jarry? It's full of Pschitt. Mais oui!

Jarry is credited as a forefather of Dadaist, Surrealist, Futurist and Absurdist theatre. Hmm. Doesn't do much for me. Qu'est çe qui ce passe, Alfie?

Toodle-oo mes petits choux.

Lesson from Z.

I was saddened to see, yesterday, the obituary of a man I knew briefly several years ago. He was someone of great heart and spirit. Sensitive, full of wry humour, not perfect by any means, but a good man. ‘Philanthropist’ is a word I associate with rich men of conscience who endow libraries, children’s homes, museums and hospitals; using their wealth for the greater good. Yet philanthropy is simply love of one’s fellow man, and philanthropic acts simply the manifestation of that love. Z. was not wealthy, and he lived in an anonymous shabby building above the racket of shops, cafes and traffic, but he shared the wealth of his spirit, and did great good thereby.

(Brief confessional - feel free to skip. To my enduring regret, I behaved in a very thoughtless manner, and broke trust all those years ago, after which I broke contact. Sometimes others can forgive what we cannot forgive in ourselves, but to hide without making proper amends is cowardly, and compounds the hurt. Oh, I’m good on theory. Almost ten years in which I’ve wanted to start again, but ~. Don’t do as I do!)

OK you can come back now.

Z’s name has remained in my address book all these years as a sort of talisman of him, this good man living in this city, just as he was in my eyes a talisman of the best of humanity.

The newspaper obituary carried a photograph, taken years ago, and I sat there for I'm not sure how long with my hand resting on it, a last contact. Yesterday I understood for the first time why the bereaved kiss their dead, even though they know that the body is empty and cold. We cherish the outward sign of the inward presence we have loved for so long, and there is a half-formed but powerful desire to make it not true, to have another chance. Death makes charlatans of logic and fastidiousness: we have to touch, to confirm that our beloved really has gone, to bury the half-acknowledged, foolish, human hope that death is not what it appears, that if you wish hard enough, you can make the sleeper wake, just like in a fairy tale, and there will be more time.

I believe in ghosts; not the contactable otherworld entities, but the memories of those we have loved, which stay with us, gradually losing their poignancy, as we learn to live without tearing at the barrier between now and then, and live with what we have.

I think that when someone we love dies, part of us goes with him, at least part of the way. (I say ‘him’ for convenience, but most of the people I am thinking of right now are women.) For a while we continue to breathe and speak and mechanically perform the tedious functions required of us; like eating, and going to work, and paying attention to other people’s mouths opening and closing around us; but our spirit is absent, still agonisingly attached to the lost one. There are those who never recover; their whole being so inextricably interwoven with the other, that it is only a matter of time before the body follows. And we call it depression, pining away, dying of a broken heart.

But most of us come back eventually. It happens gradually, in small ways: we remember to eat without being told, begin to register tastes and smells, laugh at something funny, plan for next week, be content, even glad, in the company of others. In time we can hear, and even speak the beloved’s name without wanting to howl at the world in bewilderment, rage, defiance and bitterness. Eventually most of us rediscover our capacity for joy.

And just as we ‘departed’ with our beloved for a while, so he returns with us. Those we love imprint themselves on us, and we don’t realise it as long as they are physically with us, constantly overprinting; but once that part of our life together is over, and our shattered sense of reality begins to reassemble, all the overprinted images coalesce to become part of our new reality. The capacity for joy may remain a long way off; a part of us is lost, and we may ‘never be the same again’, but in exchange we keep a part of the other. The pain of the transplant subsides, and we go on with our new way of life, nudging our metaphysical passenger from time to time for his perspective, or just to remember.

So I would like to record the passing of a kind, perceptive and generous man who was deservedly respected by his colleagues and loved by everyone who had the good fortune to know him. There is no library or children’s home in his name, but – and the phrase is true for all that it is over-used – he will live in the hearts of those who knew him. That is part of his gift.

The other part is the lesson that kindness, generosity, compassion and humour come in all shapes and sizes. Look around. Recognise what’s there in front of you. Cherish and be joyful.

And if you screw up and hurt someone you care about, work to makes amends. Heartfelt apologies are only the start; you have to keep on keeping on, and live with not being quite trusted, for as long as it takes to rebuild what you broke. (If you've seen the basketball movie 'Eddie', with Whoopie Goldberg as the new coach, she has something to say about that to the basketball player who 'played away'!) Yes it does matter. Apart from anything else, you have to learn to trust yourself again, or by default define yourself to yourself as unworthy. That’s all very well for a soap opera character, but not the best basis for a well-rounded life! I will try to follow my own advice.

Yeugh!

Ugh! Internet Explorer 7! Yeugh! Yeuch! Yick! What is this?
Using this last night, not realising that it's a new release, I thought that Habibi's laptop was crashing, if not giving up the ghost completely.
What's with the horrible blurry back-and-forward buttons? I thought I'd picked up the wrong reading glasses!
And all that crap at the top, that distracts from what I'm doing. Duh! Am I at primary school that I need wallcharts of the 3 Rs in large reassuring letters with cheerful explanatory pictures? In duplicate?
And the pages and toolbar fields of bloody security warnings every time I click on anything at all! Do they think we're stupid? When I buy a bag of peanuts, I know that it may contain nuts. Hello-o! Patronising marketing alert.

It wasn't broken! Why 'fix' it?

B for Bruegel

This was my favourite painting for years and years. I had a small print when I was about 14.

Hunters in the Snow, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder is the December & January painting from his series 'The Twelve Months', painted in 1565.

I enjoy the crowded canvases of the Bruegels, like those big, sociable, eighteenth and nineteenth century novels with dozens of characters, each with his own story, or a Frank Capra movie where every character exists in his own right, not as mere window dressing to the principals, or light relief to a relentlessly linear storyline. Norman Rockwell is perhaps a kindlier, twentieth century Bruegel in his wry humour and attention to detail.

I like the peace, intimacy and tidiness of 16th/17th Century Dutch interiors with their immaculate black-and-white tiled floors, perfect fruit on gleaming pewter, and those distinctive sturdy Dutch faces. Pieter de Hooch's Interior with a woman peeling apples is just gorgeous: making long curly apple peels is one of those small pleasures that never wears thin, whether you're of an age to identify with the woman or the child.

On the other hand, having lived in the north-west of England where the climate is very similar to that of the Netherlands, I was the one who crossed Holland off our list of possibilities for when we leave here. I love rain, snow, wind, in fact almost all the energetic variations of seasonal weather (I draw the line at drizzle and sleet.) and I also love and miss the natural greenery, woodland, streams and ponds that come with regular rainfall; but I'm not moving back to a low sky and northern light!

For me, 'Hunters in the Snow' captures that feeling of anticipation bubbling through fatigue that carries you along the last stretch of a long journey, and that sense returning travellers have of the closeness and separateness of people's lives.

Dusk is coming on, and rooks flap through the cold air, beginning to roost on the leafless, snow-dusted tree branches. Meanwhile, the people from the the tavern get on with their outdoor chores beneath the lopsided sign. The hunters and their dogs trudge past regardless and unregarded.

Down below on the frozen canal and ponds, skaters potter and play, absorbed; unaware that they are part of someone else's landscape. The skaters in the painting are as familiar, and at the same time as unknowable, as the inhabitants of towns seen from a mountain highway, or from the window seat of a descending plane emerging from cloud cover.

So my B is for Pieter Bruegel -er - Breugel - um - Breughel - the Elder, a contemporary painter from 450 years ago.

I'm having such a good time on this little art alphabet project, which takes me all over the Internet in search of the images I want, and along the way introduces me to so much I've never seen. The colours are so rich on a laptop screen, plus it's quite intriguing to see the variations on the same work as it is reproduced on different sites. 'Hunters in the Snow' is a case in point: some had a greenish tint, some grey, some blue; and in some the details were really sharply defined, while in others, the church tower is hardly there at all - so until you can see the original for yourself, you can always pick your favourite version online!

A is for Art

It's been a rather discouraging evening, and I required distraction.
TV options: latest news 1:US bans weapons sales toVenezuela; latest news 2: more dead people - pick a country, any country; formulaic pout-glossed teen movie; Other Movie II; Spanish channel confirming that a) Spanish people speak even faster than I do, and b) I've forgotten everything again.
Book options - not really, brain in neutral.
Music - nah, nerves on edge.
Pictures - yes. Give me colour and line, and an artist's distinctive eye and purpose.
Feeling better by extension. So here I am again.

One of the things I really enjoyed about setting up this blog was the favourites list. Habibi says all those profile lists are a waste of time because no-one ever looks, and maybe he's right, but that barely came into it. Tired and crumpled at the end of a crowded term, I spent several happy hours contemplating all my favourite things, both current, and from way back, and felt much better for it. I also got a kick out of My Karma Just Ran Over Your Dogma which is drenched in style and colour - also surreal silliness......

So for my own pleasure - and yours too I hope, here goes an occasional alphabet of favourite - or newly discovered fabulous - art and visual pleasures. (Incidentally, here's some weird science for happy chemists. Don't ask me what it means, just sing along if you can!)

A is for the paleolithic cave paintings of ALTAMIRA, near Santander - in Cantabria, Northern Spain.

When I was eleven, I bought an old black hardcover book at a school sale or an Oxfam shop. It was The Testimony of the Spade; perhaps an odd choice for an eleven year-old; but I read about the cave paintings of Lascaux and the Sutton Hoo treasure, and Tollund Man, and studied the black & white photos and found it endlessly satisfying.

Time passed, and I read elsewhere about the cave paintings of Altamira, just over the border from Lascaux. And this time there were colour photos. The Altamira paintings are not as sharp as those at Lascaux - which are gloriously alive, teeming with bison, horses, allsorts; but, from that time before borders, they are believed to be by the same Magdalenian people who made the Lascaux paintings. (I confess, I can't retain these classifications, no matter how often I look them up.)

Where before I had responded to the energy, fluidity, and astonishing realism in the black and white photo images, now I could see the richness of the colours they used - these cavemen working 12,000 or more years ago!

I read somewhere recently that the artists worked with the natural curves and bumps of the rock, and on occasion worked the rock itself to better define the musculature of the bison, horses and other creatures they were painting. According to the inspiring and extremely well researched Wild Colour, which I have to return to our school library soon (Don't want to!) prehistoric cave artists were using pigments derived from ochre, iron, mineral clays, malachite and lapis lazuli.

I'm not alone in my fascination: do an 'altamira' image search in Google, and you'll find contemporary work inspired by Altamira and Lascaux, and no end of well-illustrated sites on the caves themselves.

Ok, happy now. Time for bed. Goodnight!

Area 51 GSM 4180

Strangely unsettled by a simple ten minute powercut, I go out to reassure myself that all has indeed returned to normal. On the path between the dimly lit buildings, light and shade seem oddly exaggerated. The long shadows cast by a melancholy yellow moon seem to thicken and close around me along with a growing awareness that something is not quite right.

No sound. No movement. The birds, so agitated earlier, are silent. Of the skittish geckos who normally break cover and dart ahead of me like anxious autumn leaves, there is no sign, not a startled glance, not a flicker. Nothing.

I remind myself to breathe. Relax. I move towards more open ground, and pause, puzzled.


I register twisted, angular shapes; green hearts and dessicated stems. What has happened to the plants?






Open ground at last. I sigh noisily, but relief drains away as I notice the lights. Someone has laid out a runway on the football pitch. What on earth is going on? You surely couldn't land a plane here? So who are the lights for? And who laid them?


Suddenly dry-mouthed I see more lights, red this time. I give myself a mental shake: it's the radio mast! I'll be wrestling with my own shadow at this rate. But then again; I pause and look carefully. No. Radio mast on my left. And two distinct horizontal arrays, over there, beyond the trees. They seem to be hovering. Are they coming or going?





I look round nervously, half-expecting to see a Hollywood-style alien containment team. I don't know what to do, whether to head for the mall or run for home. There's a young couple in the middle of the football pitch. Almost babbling with relief I rush towards them, only to slow down, hesitate, and finally stop several paces away, my words turning to dust in my mouth.





They haven't moved. They don't react in any way to the sight of this absurd woman running towards them. I take in their frozen angular shapes. The hands they've thrown up in vain defensive gestures do not mask the terror in their eyes.

What happened here? Where is everyone? Where are the joggers, the kids escaping from homework, the strolling grandparents, the maids following eight-year-olds who've begged one last bike-ride before bed?

There is no-one else, only unpleasant amorphous patterns on the road, strange dry tide marks with still-damp edges that gleam dully, suggesting something newly melted, vapourised.


Feeling isolated, and yet surrounded, confined, observed, I look over my shoulder. The man and woman remain, petrified. By fear.

But of what? I notice something I missed before: a cordoned area. The petrified couple are no more than fifty metres away, their eyes fixed on - on nothing! Just some red and white tape and some plastic cones and an empty space. There is nothing there!

But the grass is matted, the soil wet, churned, compacted. Something has been here, something so terrifying that not a single bird, animal or insect has remained within screaming distance. Why am I thinking about screaming?

A low moan comes from somewhere, and wearily I realise that my arms are wrapped around my body, and my face is wet. I swallow, striving for control, my mind racing through treacle, reaching for some kind of rational explanation. What happened here, in the darkness of our 'powercut'? Who, or what, has been here? The darkness lasted no more than ten minutes: how did the authorities react so fast? Was it 'the authorities'? And if so, what are the implications?

My feet move without my direction, and stop beside strange tracks in the sand. Something, or someone, has been dragged or wheeled to a tall green double gate in a high wall. The gate is bolted.

Stencilled on the wall in green are words and numbers, a reference number.





What is this place? Who, or what, is inside? Where is everybody? What is the secret of





?

Suddenly, I cannot stand it anymore. I turn and run, trying not to imagine watchful eyes, someone detailed to overtake and detain me. There must be someone else left!

I head for the most crowded place I can think of, finally plunging through the doors of the mall, my heart hammering in my chest, lungs burning, the stitch in my side hideously clenched. I subside breathless, half-hysterical, against the cool broad base of a pillar, under the nose of a bemused security guard. Another human being!

And more - dozens of normal people doing their normal shopping, and not even noticing the lunatic beside the pillar. Oh thank you thank you thank you. I must be nuts, paranoid, to scare myself to death over nothing. I need to get more sleep, do yoga, stop watching conspiracy films.

Dizzy with relief and self-reproach, I don't at first notice someone standing directly in front of me, but I sense that I am being studied. I look up and my heart seems to implode in my chest. I was right after all. And we're doomed.




















P.S. Thanks to complete strangers Fadi and Sumaiyah for 'looking terrified' for my camera. That was fun! :D

Battery power

The lights just went out. We're having a little localised powercut. I expect we'll be back to normal soon, but it never occurred to me that I could still be online in a powercut. We had one yesterday morning too. Sudden silence woke me at 5.15 as the A/C shut down. Back to normal 35 minutes later. Neighbours in other quadrants weren't affected.

So here - I'm quite proud of this - is our neighbourhood in the dark.

The red dots are the warning lights on the big transmitter, or at least I haven't heard the voice of the Mysterons so far.

Damn! I was about to go walking in the dark, but the lights came on again! I dunno - bloggin' instead of livin'.

I'll take a walk anyway. If you don't hear from me again, perhaps I was wrong about the Mysterons.

Little Red Boat

Owoo! I've been writing reports for a couple of hours, and wanted chill-time before bedtime, so went for a little pootle round the Net (no life... I know...) and there was Little Red Boat bobbing in the blue (Habibi had said she was really good and he was right!) and this babe-in-arms of 29 (Happy Birthday, What's a PayPal button? Eh? Can't quite hear you.) is a woman after my own heart. So just as I'm trying to get my links list to a sensible length, I have to add this one. If only to learn the Fifth Commandment of Stuff.

Have I taken my medication tonight? Huh? Have I taken my medication tonight? Huh? Have -

Time for bed.

Hormones: Ups & Downs (one for the girls)

I am one of those people who is quite useful in minor emergencies involving lost children, blood, fear etc. I suppose that growing up in a big family is eventful enough to encourage measured reactions, and I was briefly a St. John’s Ambulance Brigade first-aider, so one way or another, my instinct is to quell panic and do the necessary. Afterwards, of course, I get tearful and trembly, but that’s what the Great British Cuppa was invented for.

So when Habibibaba was about nine months old, and I found a lump in my breast, I took a deep breath, made a cup of tea - and a doctor’s appointment for a couple of days later - and waited to see what would come of it.

The doctor did the examination. This was quite an interesting experience in itself: the avoidance of eye contact; his concentration on the matter in hand (!) and mine on a patch of wall, all apparently as matter-of-fact as the wash and rinse before a haircut. Yes, there was a lump.

Well, actually I knew that, having surreptitiously poked at it morning and evening in the hope that I’d imagined it. Rats. There are occasions when one would really not mind being written off as a hysteric. An appointment was booked for ten days later, with The Consultant. At this point I thought I’d better tell Habibi, keeping it low-key, though we were both rather anxious at how fast I’d got a specialist appointment. This wasn’t what we’d heard about the NHS. Was there something we should know?

Ten days of being calm and sensible, of not thinking about how bereaved Habibi would manage with motherless Habibibaba, and of being perfectly confident that everything would be ok in the short or medium term. Certainly no more poking about: the nerves can only stand so much! It was comforting to know that my maternal grandmother, who had developed breast cancer in her 70s, made a full recovery, and lived another decade or so. Yes. I liked that.

The Consultant's examination; same experience, different room. There was no lump. Sorry? There was no lump. But there was! I’d found it AND the GP had found it. It couldn’t just go, could it?

Actually, it could.

The Consultant did not doubt that there had been a lump, but how had I found it?
By doing a self-examination, as explained in a magazine.
Sigh. Magazines. How regularly did I do these self-examinations?
Well, this was the first time I’d bothered really.
Sigh.

Basically, girls, self-examination is a good thing, provided we do it regularly; because hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle can and may generate lumps and bumps, which then subside all by themselves and no harm done; and regular checking familiarises us with those ups and downs, so that we don’t take fright over nothing.

I don’t mean to suggest that if you find something you assume it’s ok; or if you suspect something, you give yourself permission to ignore it: of three special women I know, who’ve developed cancers in recent years, two are still here, and the world is a better place for their presence; the one who could not bring herself to go to the doctors, for fear of what they’d find, well, she’s long gone, and we’re the poorer for her loss. If in doubt, you get your ass down to the doctor p.d.q. You owe it to yourself, and to everyone else whose life your life touches! But wait a while before practising your stoic smile and window-shopping for designer headscarves.

As for me, I left the room expressing decorous relief and gratitude to The Consultant, and went on my way. About four minutes later I was standing outside trembling and gasping, with my fingertips almost embedded in the bark of a tree, as my nervous system registered that it was now safe to release the self-control of the previous fortnight. Being brave had seemed almost easy, relief nearly floored me.

I expect I walked home quite jauntily afterwards, to the internal rhythm of ‘I’m fine! I’m fine. I’m fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!! Yeehaaa!’ Actually, I have no idea – the rest of that day’s a complete blank, but Umm Habibibaba’s still here, tralala!

1000 years of knowledge rediscovered at Ibn Battuta

No, I'm not on commission, but I do like exhibitions with a clear narrative or theme, with well spaced exhibits I can walk around in my own time, and good background information. I don't expect this in a shopping mall.

Since I can spend hours absorbed in such things, I also like to know that I can go rest feet, mind and spirit over a coffee, before going back for more. Aha! Shopping mall!

Here are a few images of an excellent exhibition of 1000 years of Muslim achievement, at Ibn Battuta Mall. Definitely worth a special trip, especially if you can get down during the week, or on Friday mornings, when it's quieter. Don't even think about Thursday or Friday night....


In Andalucia you can find out about Abbas bin Firnas who, in the late 800s, at the age of 70, strapped on a pair of wings and stepped off a cliff near Cordoba. And lived!








This fantastic model of an irrigation system is in Tunisia - between the food court, Gloria Jean's and Cinnabon, in case you're worried about your blood sugar on your long trek across time and continents.





This wonderful clock is in the big India court, separated from the elephant clock by the seductively squishy orange banquettes of Cafe Havanna. (There's a reason I never lose weight, no matter how enthusiastically I hurl myself about at the gym.) The figures on the right are supported by wooden levers to enable them to mark the hour.

This is only a fraction of what's on show. I am so impressed by the range and attention to detail on this exhibition. Excellent.

The Great Indoors

This is the mall in my backyard: Ibn Battuta Mall. I think it's gorgeous.

When it first opened, just over a year ago, there were teething problems with the A/C and the cleaners as the crowds poured in in those early weeks, but there's little cause for complaint now. It's quite simply a a beautiful place to wander through.

The faux masonry is hand finished. The roofs are vaulted, beamed, painted, tiled. The detail is exquisite.

If you've never been to Cordoba (and I haven't) you could do worse than stroll through Andalucia en route for Géant. The walls of Egypt are covered in murals. The Persian dome is extravagantly tiled. The Indian dome is serenely beautiful. And as for China, after the glimmering elegance and muted warmth of India, the bold primary colours of China are something else!


From the legendary city of Cordoba






you can wander through the streets of Tunisia,







stop for a coffee in Persia













and a tea in India - and perhaps some very decadent chocolate cake - (Please don't feed the Elephant.)


before catching a movie in China.








And there are shops too.

I've never met an Iranian I didn't like.

I mean it. Every Iranian I have ever met since I came here in 1993 has been cultured, generous and full of humour. They value their families and their faith, and they also enjoy music, art and long, long conversations. By the time I'd met a few I had to wonder how such people could come from the land of the ayatollahs? And how the ayatollahs have managed to establish and maintain their repressive and cheerless regime when Iranians seem so irrepressible and cheerful?

Those were my questions. Nowadays I know more now about modern Iranian history, the Pahlavis, etc. and also the limits of and on the international media. But I know almost nothing about how people live in Iran today, and what they think about themselves, their country, and the rest of the world. When my lovely neighbour and I get together for a chat, we talk about ourselves and our families. I don't turn up with a questionnaire on Iranian politics!

Today I wandered into Manal and Alaa's bit bucket, and saw the entry, Flame Wars: A Brief History of Blogging in Iran, in which Alaa reviews Nasrin Ahlavi's book about blogging in Iran, We Are Iran. I hadn't even thought about Iranian bloggers!

When I searched, I found the motherlode, Iranian Canadian Hossein Derakhshan's Blogs by Iranians site. So now I have no excuse for my ignorance. I'm going to need longer weekends.

One more thing. Alaa Abd El-Fatah is an Egyptian blogger currently in jail in Cairo, awaiting some kind of action after a protest in support of two judges who were themselves arrested for demanding an independent judiciary. Find out more on fellow Egyptian Sabbah's Blog.

Hai Ku Silver Linin'

The 16+ and 18+ external exams have begun, which means invigilation duty for a few weeks in addition to regular classes, i.e. regular 40-minute shifts patrolling anything from 3 to 157 teenagers seated in seven silent rows. This is not their natural condition. Surreal.

You know how adorable children are when they're asleep? (Ah! Those 'I-love-you-Mommy'.-'I-love-you-cute-little-blonde-haired-kid.' movies...) Their peaceful faces, their stillness - and the fact that they're staying still long enough for you to stop thinking about their homework/acne/anxieties/field trip/diet etc. and just contemplate how miraculous they are. Of course it's different when you're a teacher and they're asleep in the back row of your classroom.....

But I find something similar at work when I invigilate these exams. These kids that you've known for five, maybe seven, years - maybe only one - are suddenly working on this major project to convince anonymous examiners that they're good enough for whatever it is they want to do next. There they all are: the high, low and average achievers, the clowns, the bullies, the athletes, the singers, the little old men and the puppies: every last one of them head down, shoulders hunched, and not a peep for two hours - nothing except the odd sigh, the flexing of fingers, the roll of a wrist or neck.

You remember, don't you? Writing, writing, writing, while outside the sun shines down on another perfect day. Everything you know or wish you remembered. Quick looks at the clock, in case your watch is wrong. Sun on the back of your neck despite the blinds. A distant awareness of the school bell and the brief surge of noise as classes change. The concentrated silence; and wild, hastily controlled mass hilarity at the unsuccessfully suppressed fart that shatters it. The quick naughty eye contact with neighbours. The irrepressible grin as you turn your thoughts back to the task in hand. And writing, writing, writing.

In the long silences, as you (that's I, back in the present, and invigilation mode) scan for unusual movements, odd posture, or overly-alert stillness, part of the mind wanders, noticing a new hair colour, or broadness of shoulders, comparing the tall, bent figure a couple of rows away with a clear memory of the shorter, squarer, infinitely noisier version that first appeared in your classroom five years ago; seeing young men and women where last week there were 'students'. You gotta love 'em.

So here are some exam haikus, kus hai like haikus. Ha!

Leafy branches dance.

The red second hand marks time.

Shadow dappled clock.

Candidate number.

Do not turn around or speak.

Answer all questions.

Do exams matter?

Ninety people in a room.

A single heartbeat.

Pen scratches. Ink flows.

Time moves ever more quickly.

Outside, sparrows flirt.

Inspiration soars.

The Grade 7s have football.

And the crowd goes wild!

Gecko

This fella jumped 'pat!' onto our bug screen last weekend. Habibi and I like geckos. I think they're such improbable creatures - translucent slivers of not-very-much, surviving in impossible conditions.

So there he was, with his perfect toes and that kink in his tail, out on our balcony. He's not the only unexpected guest, either. Lately we've had mosquitos staying for dinner when we've not been looking. The gecko is much more welcome, especially if he has a taste for mozzie al dente.

Having met our fair share of mosquitos out here, both the usual beige ones, and the vicious, acid-filled monsters with the black stripe down their backs, which we encountered when we lived near the old fishing village in Umm Suqeim/Um Sugeim/Um Sugaim/Umma Squim (Not kidding - Habibi always meant to photograph all the different versions on shops and public buildings, but you know how it is.) we've also bought our fair share of mozzie repellent.

I hate the stuff. I'm quite sure it kills them, but I'm pretty certain it doesn't do me much good either. And I don't know which is worse, the unperfumed versions (pure poison) or the perfumed ones, which put me in mind of old-fashioned murder mysteries: what is that residue in my coffee cup? the odd taint to my tea? this carved ivory handle half-buried in my chest? Actually, I prefer my poison straight, and in a killer-plug as far away from the bed as possible.

But here's an odd thing. For long enough, Jebel Ali Gardens seemed to be a no-mo zone. Winter came, twice, and no mozzies. OK! It took me a while to connect this with the occasional perambulations of the pest control special effects pick-up. I used to see it in the early mornings when I walked down to my friend's apartment before work; a pick-up with some kind of diabolical samovar on the back, brewing beautiful deadly white clouds that rolled across road and path in its wake. It's ok if you don't inhale - within a five hundred meter radius for about an hour afterwards. Sheeeesssssssshhhhhhh!

I was pretty sure that no cockroach would survive it, but it seems that that also goes for the mosquito eggs and larvae which should by rights be flourishing in our lavishly irrigated lawns and gardens. This was all fine by me, except that pesticides aren't exactly selective, so what else had been exterminated from our modest local food chain?

It was a relief to see so many sparrers, bulbuls and mourning doves about the place - hundreds of 'em - and regular trios of rowdy green parrots, occasional visiting hoopoe pairs, and - twice now - gorgeous blue humming birds or bee-eaters (I'm not sure. Does anyone know?). And the weekend before last, I saw a desert partridge in the shrubbery surrounding an electricity substation. I followed it round and round with my camera on extreme close-up, but after my third circuit after a buff coloured bird power-walking on buff coloured sand through buff-coloured dried-up undergrowth - yeah - well. So the pesticide can't be killing off all the insects.

So now we have our resident gecko. He moved in. I was up unusually early the other morning, and when I switched on the kitchen light there was a darting movement across the floor, and there, utterly motionless, was our gecko. I'm assuming it's the same one because of the kink in its tail. So there we stood, the pair of us, higher mammal and rather low-slung lizard, both instinctively adopting the 'If-I-stay-very-still-s/he'll-think-I'm-not-really-here' technique. (Gosh, geckos are so sophisticated!). Eventually, he left for his appointment behind the washing machine, and I got my cup of tea. And last night he, his clone, or one of three very unlucky geckos, was up on the living room ceiling. It's very exciting. Maybe he can reach the sodding mozzies from there.

Ooh! Hot tip, and one of the more useful things I've learnt here: If you get bitten by a mosquito, press some table salt on the bite. It will stick, and draw out the intestinal muck the mozzie left in exchange for your blood, leaving your skin itch-free and unmarked. If the salt brushes off and the bite stiil itches, add more. It works on a fresh bite, or on the burning morning-after cluster from of a little nocturnal mozzie banquet. Don't scratch. Put salt on it!

And maybe invest in one of those plug-in bug-buggerers.

Rock and the High Place

I thought this was beautiful. That's all.












Petra is billed as the rose red city. For 'red', read cream, butterscotch, peach, pink and maroon, and umpteen shades in between as the sun passes.

And then there's this - layers of vivid colour hidden away from the ferocious sun. Did you ever think that sun can fade rock?

As soon as we emerged from the Siq we were accosted by two or three boys aged maybe eight or nine, offering postcard concertinas, jewellery, and rock samples that looked like Viennese Fancies and Battenburg slices. With the British tourist's discomfort about bargaining and expectation of rip-off (sad) I didn't want the jewellery or cards; nor did I want to encourage a trade based on vandalising Petra, 5cm³ at a time.

Well I bought a necklace later, and without bargaining - it was not expensive, and the black-clad and burqa-ed woman in her 50s who was selling it was working in full sun for the privilege. As for the rock slices, I stopped at a stall set almost at the summit of the High Place (where Abraham would have sacrificed Isaac) to catch my breath and admire. Up on the top (proper blog another day) I stepped over a discreet inch-deep, foot-square, mini-quarry. The source of the Battenburg. Going down I gave in to tempatation: yup, just beneath the surface of this responsible eco-tourist, there's just tourist.

I was maybe two fils short of the low asking price, and the cheerful young woman had no change for my tourist notes so I was going to leave it; but she insisted I choose any piece I liked, because I obviously so liked, and so desired, one of those pieces; and I found myself in a strange topsy-turvy situation where not to buy this little thing for an embarrassing pittance would have been to reject the kindness of this gracious, laughing person. So I bought, and we were both happy in our 'bargain' and our encounter with each other, and it's an experience of unexpected generosity that stays with me.

Back in Dubai I bought a copy of Alan Keohane's excellent Bedouin, Nomads of the Desert, and learnt that the boys and women we met were Bedu who live in Petra, their right to do so recognised by law. This might not sound remarkable, but Petra is literally an ancient ruin, only open to the public until sunset. No tourist spotlights, no son et lumière in the eroded amphitheatre, no modern buildings or utilities. The Bedu live in caves: generations have been born there and continue to scrape a living through selling jewellery and postcards to tourists.

Here's a photo of home, sweet home, taken from the High Place. Cosy, hm?

Gaudi in Petra?

Finally, a portrait of Habibi and Habibibaba. Handsome, huh?

This was quite a warm day, but the Siq was cool. Hey it was awesome! :D

The scale. Absolutely not to be compared with the experience of walking between two office towers, unless Gaudi did some.


Guidebook note: In Hellenistic and Roman times, Petra was the capital of the Nabataean Kingdom (4th century BC - 106 AD) and became a major caravan centre.

The Nabataeans traded in the perfumes of Arabia, the silk of China and the spices of India, and carried these goods to Gaza and Alexandria. The Nabataean King Aretas III controlled Damascus.

(If you want any more, go visit and buy 'JORDAN, tracing 4000 years of history, publ. Plurigraf)

And the trough at the base of the rock face is a water channel which would once have held 'ceramic tubing [which] carried fresh water from Ain Musa to the city' (more guidebook). Wow. Still thinking Gaudi here.



Gaudi's House, Barcelona




















Is anyone else reminded of Imperial troops and anthropomorphic desert troop carriers in the Star Wars - er - sexology? - ?


When we were in Barcelona last summer, we went to Parc Guell, walked round the outside of La Sagrada Familia (fin-de-vacances cheapskates) and I spent a satisfying half day following the map from one Gaudi building to another. Of course, right now I don't know where I've tidied my Barcelona memorabilia, but in the course of Googling for non-copyright images - or at least, not for the ones that someone's trying to earn a living from - I found the chimney pots on Haabaa blogs. It's an interesting general interest blog with entries in English, Spanish and Polish - often translated from one to another, which is good for us flaky Spanish students!

Crack, Seam, Drip & Tumble

Going into Petra

I don't know much about physical geography or geology, but Jordan is sensational. We did a winter driving holiday from Jerash in the north, past Aqaba in the south and I absolutely loved the variety and structures we saw. So, the next few blogs will be pics of rocks in Petra, and when I've done a little research, I'll add it.


This is the obligatory photo as you come to the end of the Siq, the winding crevasse that leads to the Treasury.










As you emerge from the relative cool of the long Siq, where shade mutes the colours of its walls, the sunlit Treasury seems to glow across the sand.






Just look how this has been carved out of the sandstone cliff face!







And this is the interior, with its extraordinary rainbow geology. You couldn't make this up!

Comfort Zone

I am out of sorts this evening, hardly volatile, but, shall we say, moody? I've been edgy all day, in that unfocused, non-attributable way that greasily murmurs 'hormones' . I am after all, une femmme d'un certain âge, and we're not talking l'âge d'or. Mais san fairy Anne. Ça y est!

I came here to exorcise the ghoul with my favourite poem.

A smart move would have been to go to the gym, get on a treadmill and work it off: release the endorphin within. I recognised this at around 8 o'clock, some two hours ago, but couldn't muster that degree of discipline.

Instead I wandered around some blogs by way of displacement activity. This was fairly effective until I wandered into the thoughts of a woman going through a very tough time; and then there was a foolish boy capering in the body of an adult, gleefully shrieking naughty words at the world without Mummy knowing. Going down. But Chevy Girl's got Alannis Morissette. Upturn!

Definitely hormones.

POEM! It's A Fanfare for the Makers, by Louis MacNeice, and I first discovered it in 1974, as I know from the fly-leaf of Helen Gardner's New Oxford Book of English Verse. After thirty-two years, my New Book has begun to develop that old book smell which either soothes the spirit or brings on acute claustrophobia.

My maternal grandmother's house smelt of books, rugs, strong French coffee heated in a saucepan, and gentle, soft-bodied, soft-skinned, untidily chignoned old lady. We lived too far apart for me to really know Grandmère as a person - and I calculate that she was 62 when I was born (though Mother may correct me if she ever gets as far as this blog - Can you 'ear me, Mother?!) but (so?!) I found her enchanting.

At a time when my parents were elbow-deep in the responsibilities of raising seven children, I suppose that my other-worldly grandmother suggested a romantic happy-ever-after to someone who rather prided herself on her commonsense but almost lived in books!

Grandmère gave me a beautiful black doll in hand-knitted clothes to go in the wooden cot with powder blue corduroy covers from my parents. She gave me the blue hardback Grimms' Fairy Tales that someone later stole from its temporary hiding place under the big creosoted shed outside 3C's classroom; and The Arabian Nights, carefully sleeved in magical wrapping paper with wizards in robes of cobalt blue, buttercup yellow and magenta on a black night background; The Children of the New Forest, with my name on the flyleaf in her beautiful copperplate handwriting, now faded from black to brown; and a nightdress case of thick thick white linen with a Goodnight message and a border of hearts cross-stitched in red silk.

Grandmère was indeed from a different age and culture, but part of who my mother is, and who I am, comes from her: certainly our appreciation of colour, texture and detail, whether in the garden, in embroidery and textiles, or even in the ironing!

My scholar grandfather, who I never knew, imparted a love of books and study, and the appreciation of a good mind, something I also see in my father, who has always enjoyed books, but also playing with words, teasing out incongruities, and making shamelessly bad puns. Ach!

Anyway, enough of my shameless wallow. Here's the poem, A Fanfare for the Makers, by Louis MacNeice. This is what it's all about.

A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?
To the small fire that never leaves the sky.
To the great fire that boils the daily pot.

To all the things we are not remembered by,
Which we remember and bless. To all the things
That will not even notice when we die,

Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.

So Fanfare for the Makers: who compose
A book of words or deeds, who runs may write
As many do who run, as a family grows

At times like sunflowers turning towards the light,
As sometimes in the blackout and the raids
One joke composed an island in the night,

As sometimes one man's kindliness pervades
A room or house or village, as sometimes
Merely to tighten screws, or sharpen blades

Can catch a meaning, as to hear the chimes
At midnight means to share them, as one man
In old age plants an avenue of limes

And before they bloom can smell them, before they span
The road can walk beneath the perfected arch,
The merest greenprint when their lives began

Of those who walk there with him, as in default
Of coffee men grind acorns, as in despite
Of all assaults conscripts counterassault,

As mothers sit up late night after night
Moulding a life as miners day by day
Descend blind shafts, as a boy may flaunt his kite

In an empty nonchalant sky, as anglers play
Their fish, as workers work and can take pride
In spending sweat before they draw their pay,

As horsemen fashion horses while they ride.
As climbers climb a peak because it is there,
As life can be confirmed even in suicide:

To make is such. Let us make. And set the weather fair.

Israel & Palestine - my twopennyworth

Keefieboy's Democracy entry generated a very serious debate on the rights and many wrongs of the Israel/Palestinian situation. Now I’d like to add my thoughts, but Keefieboy’s had enough, so I’m putting it on my blog. I hope that's ok?

Bandicoot said: I’m a bit disheartened at how other bloggers seemingly decided to stay out of this (assuming anybody is reading our posts).... [W]ith very little chance that either one of us would experience a dramatic change in their minds and stands......... I believe we’re testing our ideas in a public forum of sorts, as we argue back and forth, forcing us and others to think and rethink this stuff. This I thought would’ve attracted few more people to participate, but unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Bandicoot and Tim - I for one have 'stayed out of this' because I have nothing to contribute except cheers for the fact that you both speak so thoughtfully and passionately from your own knowledge and understanding of a situation which matters to me, but also baffles me.

The books you quote, Bandicoot, are not in local bookstores as far as I am aware; and to find for myself the sites you cite (!) takes me through so many hideous, heartbreaking, rage-filled propagandist sites for both sides that I quit. I have followed your debate to learn, and have not interrupted because I didn't want to distract. I suspect that there are many more like me.

Keefieboy said: maybe I don't really know anything about Hamas. I think that not many of us foreign nationals do, really, beyond the balaclavas and bombs.

For my part, I knew nothing about Hamas's grassroots community work, their hands-on support for families living for years with unimaginable, and largely unreported, deprivation, until the election campaign began, and it was mentioned in a TV report on Hamas's appeal. To me, they were desperately misguided extremists; by no means justified in their suicide bombs, but a predictable product of generations of repression, and the extinction of hope for any kind of normal life through any other means. To Palestinian voters, however, they were a group with a track record of social action, and an alternative to a regime whose complacency, croneyism and corruption had long since leeched its credibility.

Anonymous said: People are being killed daily, prohibited the right to learn, to eat well. [W]here are the human rights now?

Bandicoot referred to: Israel’s policy of demolishing the homes and bulldozing the livelihood of thousands of Palestinian families.... of detaining Palestinians indefinitely without trial, wide-spread abuse and racism... and officially-sanctioned torture and assassination, and made what to me seems the obvious point that: Decades of daily humiliation, routine violation of basic human rights, and systematic brutality will not produce a nation of Buddhas! People who knew the reality of the Occupation, including many foresighted Israelis, warned repeatedly that the gross injustice of Israel’s military rule will only degrade the humanity and morality of both occupier and occupied. Their words couldn’t have more prophetic.

Tim Newman responded with: I flatly refuse to view the deliberate mass murder of civilians by terrorist militias in any context. It is inexcusable, period. echoing Keefieboy's any 'political' organisation that uses violence as a means to an end is a terrorist organisation in my book. That includes the likes of the IRA, ETA, Tamil Tigers etc. They may have legitimate arguments and claims, but bombing innocent people is 100% not the way to pursue those arguments, as both the IRA and ETA have now conceded.

Yes, it's inexcusable, and, as everyone eventually concedes, ineffective. Except: governments which use terror often win, at least for a time.

It's a matter of resources, ruthlessness, and connections. If you've got a big 'defence' budget; a social control network in which intelligent, educated and amoral strategists work with ambitious career executives to control and direct education, the judiciary, national media, international lobbyists, and the energies of large numbers of well-armed, semi-literate, underpaid, testosterone-fuelled sociopaths whose idea of a good day's work, or a good night off, includes rocket attacks, kidnap, rape, massacre, looting and arson; coupled with the de facto support of other governments either reluctant to criticise for fear of jeopardising their own interests; or defeated by the compexity or longevity of the situation - well, you have a very strong hand against internal dissent (or should I say ‘democracy’?).

A hand like that, well-played, can keep a system, incumbent or dynasty in power for a very long time. Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Ceauşecu, Amin, Mugabe, Pinochet etc. etc. etc.

A reign of terror is generally more effective if it's managed quietly, through a system in which people are ‘re-educated’ à la USSR or China or simply 'disappear' à la Latin America. You can get away with that for decades, generations even, especially if you’re big. Blatant massacre à la Janjaweed Militia tends to stir international outrage, but if you don’t mind, then it don’t matter. Political assassination by helicopter gunship à la Israeli Army also upsets people, even your friends; but if your ‘friends’ are rather nervous of the potential political fall-out from falling out with you – you can probably get away with that sort of thing for decades too.

Amnesty International and the United Nations do their best and have their successes, but velvet and rose revolutions may only be possible when a weaker dynastic or political generation coincides with the emergence of an individual who can unite and inspire a population otherwise numbed by oppression.

Candidates for this position should offer a broad education; good health; integrity, vision and moral and physical courage; charisma; emotional stamina for the long haul through national optimism, triumph, impatience and disillusionment; a gift for detail; recognition of their personal limitations; the ability to recognise and retain honest and talented colleagues; bone-deep belief in social justice, the rights and responsibilities of the electorate; and no dynastic ambitions whatsoever. Those afflicted by inferiority, persecution or messianic complexes, or a belief that what this country needs is military discipline, need not apply.

Long term political stability and economic development, in a social and political environment which respects individual freedoms, are far more difficult to achieve if the population has been denied proper nutrition, healthcare, education and employment opportunities for more than a generation. If, in addition to this, funerals have been a regular part of their community life for as long as they can remember, in communities where everyone is related to almost everyone else by blood or marriage, the emotional under-swell is unfathomable and, it seems to me, one of the greatest obstacles to social cohesion and stability. The sad, sad, ultimately hopeless need to make sense of violent death, to believe that someone precious ‘did not die in vain’, to use a hackneyed phrase, lies weeping in the way of any peace process, but most especially after ‘civil’ war.

How does either side forgive? How can you call it ‘quits’, shake hands, and start again? Those bastards killed your husband, your wife, your mother, your cousin, your eighteen month-old grandson. Because of them your daughter does not speak anymore, your four year-old draws nothing but APVs and explosions, your eleven-year old is more interested in throwing stones at soldiers than playing football, and your sixteen year-old has a look in his eyes that makes your heart go cold.

Melodramatic? Composite. And real.

Where does forgiveness start?
What do we do with the primal need to make someone pay?
How do we trust people who would do what these people have done: these Palestinians, these Israelis, these Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, insurgents, Americans, British, Tamils, Basques, these government forces?
Why should they have their independence, their territory, their self-determination, their theocracy, their democracy, their international support, their reconstruction grants, their control of oilfields, gas reserves, water supplies, fertile land?
Why should they get what they want when we have suffered so much, and been condemned because we had to fight for our survival as human beings?

To outsiders what looks like a bloody-minded rage for revenge, an irrational, barely human, urge in those people to perpetuate a cycle of death, begins to look a little different if someone of ours comes home in a box, if at all, after a landmine, a drive-by shooting, a suicide bombing. Then, what price forgiveness, justice, a rational appraisal of the most positive way forward?

To return to Tim: I flatly refuse to view the deliberate mass murder of civilians by terrorist militias in any context. It is inexcusable, period. Putting such acts into context gives them a veneer of acceptability that I do not believe they should ever be granted.

I agree that it’s inexcusable, but I think that we do have to recognise context, not to impart any spurious respectability, but to acknowledge the agony and desperation that produce these inexcusable actions, because it seems to me that that’s part of how we can contribute to any peace process.

Part of the difficulty facing foreign diplomatic agents in the Middle East is the perception that we’re all part of the Greater United States, and Zionists to boot. Of course, this is the line that Ahmedinejad, Osama bin Laden and Al Zarqawi promote, and which is probably peddled assiduously in Islamist mosques throughout Asia, the Middle East and the parts of Europe where Muslim immigrants are evidently nursing grievances of their own.

From Anonymous: Why do you look at dead Israelis and read their stories, but not even spare a moment to learn all the stories behind Palestinian deaths?

With respect, not true, or at least not entirely.

These stories are in the papers, and on the Internet, and people read them.

International channels and newspapers do generally aim for balance. Owners’ political agendas affect the appointment of editors, which of course affects both what is reported, and how it is reported. BUT – (big but!) we have a choice of newspapers in all the major languages, and these days, a remarkable number of people are fluent in two or more languages. There are British papers I would not use to line the garbage bin with, but others I trust and greatly enjoy. I make a point of following domestic and international news stories on both British and American news channels, not just to rule out editorial bias, but also to get the mood of the society they are reporting from and to. (The US is as foreign to me as any other country.) And I’m basically quite lazy about this: many more non-Arabs and non-Muslims try very hard to get to the truth; and to be fair, the reputable western national dailies aim to provide that, along with balanced editorial comment and background information.

No, not everyone reads deeply or regularly – but many do, because we want, we need, to know, to try and figure out what’s going on. Why else would we blog about all this? Why have Tim and Bandicoot gone back and forth on this for days on end? I quoted Bandicoot on that at the outset: we’re testing our ideas in a public forum of sorts..... forcing us and others to think and rethink this stuff..

Sure, there are racist bloggers, but they tend to limit themselves to pathetic kneejerk insults in other people’s comment blogs. I think you, Tim and Bandicoot are better than that. I know I try to be.

The creation of the State of Israel through the breathtakingly arrogant meddling of the United States, Great Britain et al, was a colonialist’s solution to an ancient wrong – the deportation of the Jews and erasure of their homeland, as an entity, by the Romans; plus an ongoing injustice – the anti-semitism which has pervaded European society since the Middle Ages; and of course, a specific disaster - what we would now term a crime against humanity, i.e. Hitler’s attempts to finish what the Romans started, by erasing the entire race of Judah from his patch. Iran and the Arab nations can dispute all they wish, but the Holocaust happened, and 6,000,000 Jews were exterminated. Accepting that is not a step towards accepting that what was done to Palestine was justified.

The Holocaust did not, and does not, excuse the displacement of 300,000 Palestinians to make room for a new State of Israel. Nor the subsequent actions of the Israeli government as quoted by Bandicoot. It is bitterly ironic that Jews, Arab Muslims and Arab Christians were rubbing along quite comfortably until then. Live and let live.

I also find it ironic that, at a point when Crusades, anti-Jewish legislation, Jew-baiting, and pogroms were receding into history, (salutary examples of our inexhaustible ability to make scapegoats of others); just as America was benefiting from the culture and skills of the second-and third- generation descendants of 19th and 20th Century refugees from European anti-Semitism; and the Wandering Jew of legend was discovering that the New World, the Land of the Free, might just possibly be his Promised Land too; when Europe and America was awash with guilt about what had been allowed to happen in Germany and Poland, and Jewish stock had probably never been higher (Er, no, I don’t imagine for a second that we were all about to live happily ever after in harmonious diversity. Come on!!) – at this point, in a mess of good intentions, political expediency, moral cowardice and paternalistic WASP blindness to the reality and validity of foreign cultures, Uncle Sam and his buddies orchestrated a folly only Dubbya could surpass.

We all live with the legacy of that decision. The world hugs itself with fear. But what’s done is done, and Israel is a sovereign state. Nor is that going to change, in my estimation.

When, in 1967, Israel’s Arab neighbours surrounded her and attempted to wipe her off the map, she fought back with everything she had, beat them off, and has continued to hold them off ever since.

Throughout history, the Middle East and North Africa have seen migrations and invasions, and the rise and fall of cultures. In modern times, English is spoken widely in the Middle East; many citizens of post-colonial North Africa are bilingual in Arabic and French, Portuguese or whatever; and there is other evidence of European influence; even so, no European country has successfully conquered any of these Arab states, or displaced their culture or religion. Arab society is built on community, and a sense of community is built on generations of continued occupancy of land. People are connected through their relationships with each other and their land. From this they draw their sense of who they are. Real estate is a western capitalist concept. Land is different. People hold onto their land.

It seems to me that the insertion of Israel into Palestine is both the exception to and a confirmation of this precept, and the key to the Palestinians’, and their neighbours’, inability to oust the Israelis (disregarding US economic, technical and diplomatic support) lies partly in the fact that some of the pre-Israel population was Jewish, and this was indisputably their land.

More important though (in my opinion), is the concept of ‘The Promised Land’ among the diaspora, and the fact that, as contemporary expats and first generation immigrants do everywhere, they kept their sense of self in foreign countries by retaining their customs and culture. Had they fully integrated into European life as immigrants eventually do, embracing their new home, things might have been very different; but having lost their actual country, and finding themselves the despised ‘killers of Christ’ in Europe, perhaps the only way to hold on to their identity and self-respect was to hold on to the culture that bound them together. A defence mechanism which only further emphasised their difference in aggressively Christian Europe, both before and after the Reformation.

Emotionally, spiritually, culturally, home was Palestine. And so in 1948, having had absolute proof that anti-semitism was alive and well in the modern world, Jews did not head for Israel as invaders or colonists: they went home. Being loathed and despised by their neighbours, being legislated against, insulted and assaulted, was nothing new. The Wandering Jew had returned to the Land of Israel, promised to Moses by God, and, by God, would stay.

Palestine belongs to the Palestinians.
Israel belongs to the Israelis.
Sixty years of Israeli oppression have not altered Palestinian determination to get their homeland back.
Sixty years of Palestinian resistance culminating in the Intifada have not changed Israeli determination to hold on to their homeland.

Both sides have committed disgraceful crimes for which their God will no doubt hold them to account. But if both sides are prepared to spend 60 years in a living hell of bloodshed, fear and mistrust, to bring up embittered children brutalised by modern guerrilla warfare, to face international condemnation for their actions, and can still square their consciences with their God, then it seems to me that neither is ever going to move out.

There will be no weary surrender from either side, and neither will ever – ever – know peace and freedom unless they are brave enough, strong enough, godly enough, to agree to disagree, to hammer the swords into ploughshares, and to develop as fair a division as possible of that stretch of land into two parallel states.

It is going to be very very hard. For many, compromise betrays the efforts of those now dead; but surely intransigence condemns the living to lifelong misery and fear, and betrays those not yet born.

Very silly

A frustrated poet cried, "Darn't!
Though I've borrowed la plume de ma tante,
I don't have the I.Q.
To write decent haiku!
Haiwud if Haikud but Haikan't!'

Some UAE bloggers of note
(nzm, Keefieboy, Grumpy Goat)
Consigned social critique
To the bin for a week
and gave themselves over to pote
(ry).

A limick's
just a gimmick,
but better than a sonnet
for a bee in your bonnet.

Night and Day

Street lamps light the night.
A sparrow sings cheerily.
Dawn brings confusion.

May brings thick damp heat.
The pharmacy demonstrates
Humidifiers.

Abaya flying,

Shopping cart rattling, Mum sprints.

Small son laughs out loud!

Invisible Women

Checking out Archer's Adda, I found today's entry, 'A consulate of any purpose?' and his link to GN's vox pop on minimum wage. (OK I haven't worked out how to get to the entry rather than the comment page. Will ask Habibi and come back. In the meantime, you know what to do!) One long comment later, I realise that I'd focused entirely on the male workforce, probably because they are the most visible. Hence this.

Expatriate women workers frequently work in caring or ancillary jobs in homes and nurseries. Which makes them invisible. As long as their employers are decent and honourable, as many are, there's no problem.

But who will help the young woman whose passport is in the safe, whose employer arbitrarily deducts 'fines' before handing over wages and pays late or in installments which may or may not be up to date by the end of any given month?
Will her two or three equally miserable co-workers go and stand up to the boss with her?
Will they insist on back wages and threaten to withdraw their labour and go to the Ministry unless they are paid what they are owed?
Will they in fact pop down to the Ministry for a chat over a cup of chai and a doughnut, confident that the understanding official, who is of course as fluent in their language as they are in his (hers?) will come straight back with them and persuade their employer of the error of her ways?

Who can the invisible turn to?

We have seen the awful stories of garment workers locked in at work and at 'home', denied proper A.C., sanitation and healthcare, fined for illness and misdemeanors, or not paid for months on end. We know what some maids have suffered. This is certainly visible.
The trouble is that it usually takes the intervention of outsiders - neighbours alerted by a stinking dumpster outside an overcrowded villa or sounds of weeping from locked windows - to attract attention. How long might that take?

And then what? A flight home with no savings. How pitiful. How absolutely pitiful. But at least those women go home alive. How many maids don't?

And is that little housemaid confident that rape by an employer will not somehow turn into seduction of an employer, occasioning free accommodation for a fixed term, a delivery in handcuffs, bonus exfoliation afterwards and a free trip home?
The mechanisms are in place to protect workers'rights. But the vulnerable don't know their rights: that's part of their vulnerablity.

And it takes confidence to deal with officialdom, even when you're an educated professional with a proper contract which you signed without help. Housemaids are not noted for their kick-ass confidence.

Isolated expatriate women workers need to know that their consulate is there for them, proactive on their behalf. Consulates do follow up the abuses and deaths that make the headlines. But while rights are limited, and expatriate women work out of sight and out of mind, preventive work is needed: consultation with the powers that be, to encourage positive and appropriate policy and practice on workers' rights, and a minimum wage. Yesyesyesyesyes!

And a properly focused community outreach programme ensuring that individuals know their rights, who to turn to if these are abused, and - most importantly - that they will be listened to with compassion, and the primary assumption that their claims are valid.

As they say, prevention is better than cure. At least that's what I think.