Lanka/Lancashire

He stood on the brink of the hill and watched the dogs melt into the snow below him.  Fine.  Now he could leave them behind. 

He had risen before dawn becaues dawn had come so late: 8:04a.m - the shortest day. 

It was a piece of naff marketing to evacuate the world on this day; they could have waited until February at least but then everybody would have been busy with tax return forms and would have been so concerned with how much they could get back that they'd forget that they were supposed to leave.  Lately the government had been giving money away.  A whole village in Wales who had opted never to leave their hills had tried to spend evey last penny in the local pub but had drank themselves to death before they'd even started on their Post Office Bonds. 

He kicked a ledge of snow with the toe of his boot.  It shook itself into a thousand flakes then settled back on the ground.  He wondered how long it would stay there, unwalke dupon, after he'd gone.  Surely in a week it would all melt.  They said this was because of the Hottening Up but as far as he cuold see it was because it rained and had always rained where he came from. 

Sighing, he took his boots off.  His best, buffalo leather boots bought in Tokyo.  Bustling, beeping with electronics, bloody excellent Tokyo.  He loved that city more than women.  So much so, that when it had come to choosing which shuttle to leave on later that day, after it had grown dark, he had asked for a special exemption to the EU rule and had been granted leave to depart with the East Asians on a shuttle fitted with sushi chefs.  The Japanese had already cleared the Pacific of tuna in preparation for today: D Day.  The environmentalists had gone mad, 'Leave The Earth As You Found It!' they'd chanted on their rainbow-painted ships. 

But none of us remember how we first found the world, thought the man, wasn't that the point?  We - or rather, our elected rulers, had decreed a beginning to the world's existence, a time when change did not exist, and now had decreed today, the shortest day, as an aribtrary end to mankind's residence on earth. 

The transit planes that had been dropping out the thick porridge of clouds launched their loud speakers now and the metal sounding pre-recorded voice of a foreign leader assaulted the hill, the dogs, the man.

'Ladies and gentlemen:  Gather yourselves!  We will leave with hope for our species and for the world...'

He put his hands over his ears and tried to squint out the planes as he took a final look at the sky.  There was very little time left before the world would have completed yet another rotation around its star.  But the day was not darkening; it was growing pale blue and bright orange.  It would be dark soon, of course, but he always forgot this: that first came so much colour. 

Even his toes were turning purple.  This was the first time in his life he'd been barefoot in the snow. 

So there are two more chapters of Sven, but I'm feeling rather bad about my treatment of Thomas in them.  You see, I don't want to paint the usual portraits of 'Africans'.  I don't even want to call them 'Africans'.  And yet as ever I am drawn to the stereotypes, the cliches. 

Chimamande Adichie, Nigerian author of the extremely readable 'Half of a Yellow Sun' takes a convincing stand on the need to hear multiple stories about a country, and for people of every country to learn to tell and listen to different storeis about themselves.  Can that extend to a white person writing about a non-white country or is that too deemed post-colonialism? 

Listen to her speech on ted.com
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

New chapters of Sven! 

'Off Record' has not been aborted, it's just gone 'off record'. Watch this space for further news. 

What have Sri Lanka and Lancashire got in common? Oktoberfest

I have attended three Oktoberfests in my life. Two were in Sri Lanka, the third, today, was in Lancashire.

There wasn't really much difference between the two versions. When you erect a large marquee, fill it with a few hundred people and give them leather trousers, accordian music and two-litre glasses of beer, it's amazing how the cultural differences slip away. In both in Sri Lanka and Lancashire the venues for Oktoberfest smelt authentically of roasted pig. In both Sri Lanka and Lancashire the playlist for the evening consisted of 'Country Roads' followed by 'Brown Eyed Girl' followed by Shania Twain. In both Sri Lanka and Lancashire people started the evening dancing on tables, and ended it falling off them. But Lancashire was unique in bringing in a German oom-pa-pa band to play such Anglo-Saxon favourites as 'Hitler has only got one ball,' 'Ere we go, Ere we go, Ere we go' and, my personal favourite, 'I've got a luverly bunch of coconuts.'

It was October 31^st, Hallowe'en. The night when the living scare the dead back into the graves. If the looks of some of the people at Oktoberfest, the graveyards in Lancashire should be pretty quiet after tonight. There was a barperson of indeterminate gender wearing a dirndl, a lot of men wearing blond plaits and a woman who, with beery conviction, seemed sure that that her husbands was Patrick Swayze risen from the grave and accordingly threw herself at him men with gay and heavy abandon when the Dirty Dancing megamix hit the decks. Then there was Igor, the bone-crunching bouncer, who was called upon around 11pm when a brawl broke out. One of the many things I love about Lancashire is the gender equality that is in place when it comes to brawls. Here you can find women against women, women against men, or even a lucky dip. It's very twenty-first century.

Or is it? Is there something historical, genetic, about Lancashire women that makes them, well, a bit vicious? If you were around in 1612 you could have diverted yourself of an evening by reading 'The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster', a book by one Thomas Potts which recorded the trial and hanging of ten witches from Lancashire. The book had an easy ride onto the the bestsellers at the time, since England, compared to the rest of Europe which was ablaze with women roasting on stakes, was a relatively safe place to practise the dark arts with disappointignly few accounts of witch torture and murder. The trial of these Lancashire witches was an anomaly. And what made it and indeed makes it an interesting trial to this day, is that the women accused of complicity with the devil needed no prompting or torture to confess!  They actually seemed to believe they were witches.   One of them even added that the devil had sucked her blood and made her mad. Anyone watching 'True Blood' may have something to say about that.

I was in Lancaster, site of the witches trial and hanging, for the early stages of Hallowe'en. Lancaster is a city of tall, greystone buildings and hilly, narrow streets. From its tallest hill you can see the bleak brown Irish sea and the jagged mountains of the Lake District to the north. It is a city that wears its full moons well and whose trees seem happiest when their branches are bare and can wave their spindly arms and gnarled fingers gleefully in the cold black sky. It is a city of Guardian readers and vegetarians. It is very middle-class, very pretty and not really very scary. Hence I wasn't too worried to see teenage witches in miniskirts going from house to house for trick or treat. There were plenty of parents around anyway to stave off predators, accompanying two foot tall draculas and lots of small female fairies. As with Oktoberfest, this was a safe risk. There would be no murders or blood-sucking or hangings tonight.

And yet I come to Lancaster every week to volunteer at a charity that deals with abuse and even murders of children accused of being witches in Nigeria. There, now, as in England in the 17^th century, these beliefs are linked to Christianity, but also to a dangerously unsettled society that has undergone dramatic changes within the shape of a few generations, changes that can shake belief systems and leave communities prone to violence and mistrust.

It is late. Past the witching hour and I am awake writing this. An owl is calling outside. I drove home from Oktoberfest with my car window open to the cold, squinting at the yellow smears from the odd street lamp scattered beside the country roads, their bulbs like cats eyes against the sky. This time last year as I was leaving Oktoberfest at the five star Hilton hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, I stopped for a moment by the five star hotel pool, drawn in by the tiny lights that winked up at me from beneath the still, inky water.  My eyes lifted from the pool to the glinting galaxy above and I basked in the warmth of stargazing in the southern hemisphere.  Between me and the Oktoberfest marquee were trees resplendent with waxy green leaves.  The sounds of the oom-pa-pa band I'd left  behind filtered through the foilage, reaching me as a dull thud, it could have been the coded message from another country, another planet.  It was time to leave and go to sleep, the next day was a working day and after work there would be more lime juices to be drunk, more trips to the beach to be planned, more reports of war. But still, there was that sky, that moment's pause -

Before winter, perhaps, before evil slips into less recognisible guises and we lock ourselves up in our houses and forget that we ever once laughed and drank and danced in the face of the oncoming dark.

Can Streetdance make Preston hip? Lara doubts it.

Last Wednesday night I went to a Streetdance class in Preston. There are many things I love about Lancashire. Preston isn’t one of them. Nearby Bolton has its civic pride, Blackpool has its tongue in cheek charms, but Preston?

Preston’s biggest claim to fame may be the Battle of Preston, when Cromwell beat the Scots. But a hundred years later Prestonites were cheering on Bonnie Prince Charlie and his mates as they passed through the town heading south. I don’t think Prestonites really cared much who won. Because Prestonites are essentially sheep people, weavers of wool. In the 19th century the town was churning out clothes faster than you can say ‘Primark’ and Dickens reputedly used Preston as inspiration for the town in his book ‘Hard Times’. Today the factories of Dickens’ day sit like huge red brick mausoleums round the edge of the town, while on the high street girls buy miniskirts (made in India) which they wear as they queue up for the disco in the northern drizzle of a Friday night.

To get to the dance studio I drive past Preston Prison and down London Road. (Does London Road really end in London? I suspect it circles back on itself to take you back to Preston. A cruel trick the town planners have been playing on Prestonites for years to stop them from thinking that better places exist.) I eventually find the studio above a second hand car sales garage on a dark stretch of dual carriageway. The studio’s newly furnished with floor to ceiling mirrors, a sprung dance floor and surround sound yet something about it’s depressing. A sunbed-leathered woman takes my money at the door while she talks to someone else. I creep past her, round the edge of the dancefloor where a streetdance class for teenagers is taking place. Sitting at a table at the dancefloor’s edge I watch the adolescent females strut their stuff. Only there’s not much strutting going on. They look insecure and unsure of their moves. This is what it’s like to be a teenager, I remind myself. But it’s more than that. The teacher, a London Streetdance star with elastic limbs patiently repeats: ‘Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight’. But still they’re not getting it. Why?

A few mums watch on from neighbouring tables. One of them has brought a little dog with her, the sort that would bite you if it got the chance. It frees itself and runs across the dancefloor behind the teenagers who are too busy concentrating on their moves to notice.

Then it is our turn, the adults. We are fourteen women and one man. Why? We’re mostly white, even though Preston is pretty ethnically diverse. Why? But most striking of all: we’re mostly miserable. Why?

We start with star jumps. I am knackered after five minutes but notice that the teacher isn’t joining in. When we start the routine he’s good at explaining the moves but interrupts from time to time to talk about the fashion show where he was made to wear embarrassing shorts, or about his mate who’s got a recording contract, or about some song I’ve never heard. He’s trying to reach out to us, the dancers, but no one speaks or laughs. Why?

Why didn’t streetdance in Lancashire do it for me? Perhaps there’s something odd about going to a studio to be taught a dancestyle that was improvised on the street. Perhaps it’s the aggressive music. Or perhaps it’s because Preston hasn’t made streetdance its own yet. The streetdance class has yet to develop its equivalent of ‘The Lancashire Cuddle’ and the talented teacher from London could do with understanding that. We’re not from the hood here, we’re not that angry, we don’t really fight, we just go to work, come home, watch tele and get on with it. This is Preston, luv. We may have crap streets but if you want to understand us you need to come inside, have a chat, a cup of tea and a hobnob. Hobnob: that’s a biscuit, luv, not a dance move.

Baby George learns to speak... (read more)

Ripe stench by the road alerts me:
It’s rambutan time of year.

It’s late and the roads are as near
to deserted as ever they’ll be.

We don’t slow as we pass by them,
these mountains of spikey red fruit

and the salesmen hunched over their loot
with a small gas fire to guard them.

I don’t want to eat their white flesh
but to know they’re there tonight,

tomorrow and all July’s nights
feeds me. I cannot rest.

(Colombo, July 2008)

In Lancashire, sixty year old farmers don their best shirts on a Tuesday night and head out to salsa, while teenage girls cake their faces with make-up and wait for instructions on how to body pop. Lara investigates. First up: Salsa.

The Time: Autumn. 7.15p.m. Just about time to get home from work, turn around, pick up your dancing shoes and go to:

The Scene: A sports club hall, somewhere in the north of England. Wooden floors have been mopped clean of last night’s spilt beers. Across the long bar at one side of the hall, metal shutters are opening up. Disco lights and tall speakers sit heavily on a stage. In the main space we find:

The Hero: The dance teacher. His sixtieth birthday party was a night to remember but he’s turned out to party every night. The beard is well-trimmed, the black and white brogues well-polished and his smile welcomes each new and returning dancer that enters the room. His wife sits at the door taking £5.50 from:

The Cast: The youngest is about 18. She wears tight jeans and scuffed trainers. The oldest is pushing seventy and wears a smart blue shirt, tucked in, belted slacks and metal-framed glasses. Inbetween are the newly weds (he’s dancing so she’ll let him watch the football on t.v.), the about to wed (practising for their wedding dance), the looking for a date (the old farmer who’s wife’s died), the recently divorced (he couldn’t dance anyway), the coming with her mates (it’s more fun than the gym) and those like me, who just love to dance. Later on we’ll meet:

The Chorus: They turn up when the boring bits are over and the floor is full, the Latin vibes are pumping and they can swing into the centre spinning on their suede-soled shoes and push their hips like a gearstick around a girl’s soft-swishing skirt. They don’t dance with beginners but they make the beginners want to learn to dance like that. Not quite one of them yet, but almost is:

Patrick Swayze (R.I.P.): His pert little buttocks sit neatly in tight jeans. His brightly-coloured shirts are like a peacock’s backside. This male approaches the mating dance like the tournament it ought to be. Each turn is done with precision, each new movement carefully memorised, practised in his sleep. He doesn’t like it if his dance partner gets it wrong. It makes him look bad. When he smiles he doesn’t move his eyes.

‘Next up we’re gunna do the cock archer,’ says the younger male dance teacher, the one with the gold chain and the thick Lancashire accent. I snigger. He looks at me and then at the female dance teacer.

‘It is called the cockarcher, innit?’ he asks her. She nods. ‘Aye, the cuc-acca.’

‘Right then, we’ll do four basics, two cross body turns, two cuddles, two basics and two cockarchers.’

I suspect that the ‘cuddle’ is a salsa move not found much in Cuba, indeed, not found much outside of Lancashire. It involves the woman turning so that she has her back to the man and he can ‘cuddle’ her from behind. If he likes. There is nothing raunchy or sleazy about a cuddle though and any cuddle you might get here is the sort you could give to your grandmother.

Later as I leave the beginners group behind and ascend to the dizzy heights of the intermediates, more physical contact is recommended by means of ‘the wiggle’. If performed in a non-Lancashire fashion, the wiggle might be compared to grinding. The woman faces the man and has the opportunity to rub herself across his front. Only in Lancashire when I practised the routine that included ‘the wiggle’ with Paul (forty, large, bald and perspiring but very patient and very friendly) the sultry movement morphed into one reminiscent of windscreen wipers, ticking rigidly from side to side. Paul is just one of several kind, older and experienced dancers that I have met at my salsa class, who bravely try to tame my own wild dancing style into something less likely to do injury to others. I have two new friends, both in their sixties, who have taught me other non-Latin sounding moves such as the ‘Half-Titanic’ and ‘Magic Hands.’ Last week one of them complimented me on my choice of floral dress and thereafter invited me to dance with a cheeky nod, saying, ‘Cum on then, Daisy.’

I love dancing in Lancashire. Each week when it finishes, I walk into the carpark in my flimsy salsa dress, oblivious to the cold as I am hot and euphoric from the dancing and filled with a joy for life. At about 9.30p.m each Tuesday night, a hundred or so people gather for what is nick-named ‘The Bachata Barn Dance’, so-called because it is danced in a circle, with the men staying in one place in an inner circle while the women on the outer circle move from man to man. The first time I danced it I started off with a Greek man who told me that the dance was called ‘The Ciabatta’. Who knows, maybe it is in Greece.