Life in the Bus Lane, #5

Sometimes I surprise myself

   As this afternoon began to decline into evening I found I was feeling gloomy for no specific reason; a condition Pamela Church-Gibson* used to include amongst her symptoms for “the great nameless angst”. The air had felt chilly all day and rain had fallen from low grey clouds for hour upon hour, making the spring-like weather we’d enjoyed as recently as Thursday seem like a collective false-memory. But this is England and if we didn’t have our weather to talk about we’d be even less likely to ever speak to people we hardly know.

   At about five o’clock the clouds had parted, revealing the promise of a blue infinity beyond. Now the setting sun gave tips of gold to the eaves of a distant building and then to the shining bellies of a succession of pelagic aircraft, easing steadily down from the sky, heading towards Heathrow. In a matter of moments, the sun sinks further down and its warm red streaks highlight only the wind-combed fringes of departing clouds. My current manifestation of the nameless angst is no longer truly anonymous; it is obviously SAD – Seasonally Affected Disorder.

   Well I’ve got that wrong – haven’t I? According to a quick scan on Google, SAD is actually Seasonal Affective Disorder. All these years I’ve been assuming that the seasons directly influence (yes, affect) our moods. “Like any fool noe” (Nigel Molesworth**) the long dark winters in Scandinavia contribute to alcoholism and higher rates of suicide…But in psychology, ‘affective disorders’ are those whose primary characteristic is a disturbance of mood. In my simple way I’d been assuming that gloomy weather produced a gloomy mood. QED. But apparently it’s not that simple. The word is affective not affected.  How depressing is that?

Or have I just invented a new condition, Etymology Affective Syndrome? It’s mine and I’m calling it ‘EASY’ for short.

   But, hey – surprise (!) – SAD has its own friendly association at www.sada.org.uk. My eye travels down the list of symptoms; “low self-esteem, low mood…negativity…apathy…lethargy…” Yes, tick, tick, tick, got all those. “Sleep problems, over-eating, irritability…” (Just because you’re paranoid, don’t imagine there’s no one watching you.) “Stress, anxiety, loss of libido…” Enough, already! If you weren’t feeling sad before you started on the SAD website, you are now.

   I turn back to the window and its bloody dark outside. From a nearby garden I can just make out the alarm call of a blackbird. It’s a brittle sound, like someone rattling a bag containing hollow stones. It takes me back to my youth when, on a Saturday like this, I would have been out and about all day with my friends. We would have started ambling home along familiar lanes when the light began to fade. And from the thorny hedgerows would come the urgent clatter of a blackbird, calling its shrill alarm for the benefit of all creatures great and small. “Nasty boys with air-guns are coming along this way! Hide your precious eyes and feathers; duck your tiny heads!” it seemed to say.

   But, thinking about it now, I don’t remember feeling sad in those days; or at least not for very long – if at all. The seasons certainly affected us. They determined our freedom of action, our targets, but not our moods. I dread to think, now, what we shot at in the woods and fields around Berkhamstead. It wasn’t just old tin cans and plastic aeroplanes, that’s for sure. Sad.

* www.fashion.arts.ac.uk/pamela-church-gibson.htm

**www.stcustards.free-online.co.uk

Next week: ….Cheer up with Springtime (for Hitler?)

This is #4

 St Valentine’s Day Mascara

  Eyewash! The silliest puns are always the most irresistible and, no, I haven’t suddenly taken to using eye make-up. With my non-existent skills in applying cosmetics the most likely outcome would be the appearance of a demented, undead, panda. So let’s put aside the eyeliner and the war-paint – I’m talking about saints here, not ‘masquerades’, ‘mascara’ or even ‘massacres’.

   The founding fathers of the Christian churches in Europe were remarkably ingenious in flexing the Christian Story to accommodate the rituals, beliefs, traditions and festivals of the polytheistic societies they were seeking to convert. In Judaism there is, and can only be, one God. Christianity departed from Judaism not because it claimed that the Messiah had arrived – presumably that can be proposed by any Jew at any time – (subject to certain stringent conditions being met – let’s not go there just now.) No, the Christian ‘heresy’ which ultimately took it away from Judaism, lay in the Nicene belief in a Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To the rabbis this sounded like three Gods, not one. Anathema.

   The Greeks and the Romans, by contrast, had gods for all occasions and natural phenomena. Their pantheon encompassed, inter alia, the sun, the moon, the wind, the rain, rivers, the sea and the trees. Pagan gods were more functional than spiritual. They were required to keep the tribe healthy, the soil fertile and the seasons processing. They don’t seem to have been heavily prescriptive as regards morality. A failure to observe the proper rituals, or make the necessary sacrifices, might prolong winter or ruin the harvest with fire, drought or flood. How barbarically or otherwise the average heathen behaved when that particular deity wasn’t watching was mostly left to individual tastes and preferences.

   The Christian calendar adapted itself perfectly to the cycle of seasons in the northern hemisphere. The further north you went the more important became the need for a mid-winter Festival of Lights with candles, log-fires and feasting. They called it Christmas. Two months later, the land remains barren, spring is still weeks away and food-stocks from last year’s harvest are running miserably low. A period of fasting is called for; they called it Lent. In pagan times a blood sacrifice seemed persuasive for easing the spring and ensuring the return of fertility to the land. Well that fixes Easter, doesn’t it? The Green Man, chocolate bunnies, Easter eggs – not to mention Xmas trees and Santa Claus in mid-winter – these are purely pagan and happily co-exist with the Nativity and the Passion of Christ.

    If you Google the BBC Religions website (that’s their plural for religions not mine) you’ll learn that “…St Valentine’s Day embraces a time of year that is historically associated with love and fertility. It encompasses the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera in Ancient Athens and the Roman festival of Lupercus, the god of fertility.” Elsewhere, I read that in the Middle Ages there was a belief that birds begin to pair on 14^th February. There may also have been a Roman custom that, in mid-February, boys picked out girls by name in honour of the sex and fertility goddess Februata Juno.

   There seem to have been more than a dozen martyred saints of ancient Rome named Valentinus. His name and the fact that his feast day falls on 14^th February, are all that is reliably known about St Valentine. In the Eastern Orthodox Church his feast day is 6^th July. Comforting if you messed-up or forgot on 14^th February - you can try again in July. There has to be an explanation of how Valentinus became the patron saint of lovers. The most convincing I can find is that Valentine was an underground priest (sometimes described as a ‘bishop’) who secretly conducted Christian marriage ceremonies during the reign of the Emperor Claudius – around 270 AD. Claudius believed that married men made poor soldiers and therefore banned marriages of younger citizens. Valentine continued to conduct his weddings “in the name of love” and this brought about his martyrdom. Before he was beheaded, tradition has it that St V fell in love with his gaoler’s daughter and smuggled a note to her which of course he signed “…from your Valentine.” An alternative, arguably less romantic, version has the saint miraculously curing the gaoler’s daughter of her blindness…

   Whichever thread one chooses to follow, St Valentine has accumulated not just the patronage of love and romance. For reasons that evade me, he is also credited with protection against fainting and the spiritual supervision of bee-keeping. It would be as well to have St Valentine on your team – or at least on the substitutes’ bench – if you are likely to need to ward-off bubonic plague or heresy. (You can’t be too careful, can you?) My favourite amongst the Holy Helpers remains St Vitus - feast day 15^th June. Apart from holding up his particular corner of the sky for all these centuries, St Vitus is venerated as the patron saint of dancers, entertainers and epileptics. He is also variously held to be effective against lightning strikes, animal attacks and oversleeping. Work those activities into a coherent legend if you can. Answers on a postcard…

Next week: ….surprise me.

This was 12 Feb: call it #3

 Cardigans must be worn.

   I’m going back to cardigans. I don’t think I’ve worn one regularly since I was six or seven years old; a time when I had little say in the choice of clothes I wore, and even then – or soon after – I think I saw them as a ‘girlie thing’. Later, I remember my Dad wearing them which sealed their image as old men’s clothing. And there they stayed even ‘though, if I’d thought about it (which I didn’t), I should have known that for the last four years I’ve been older than my father was when he died.

   Then, at last year’s “work’s” Christmas party G, youngest of the firm’s carpenters, was wearing one. Now G is what is commonly described as “fit”. He’s the sort of bloke my nephews used to describe as a “babe magnet”. I remember, not long ago, dealing with an irate customer (a woman) who was upset because we were late getting her order ready and had consequently missed the original fitting date. The customer was threatening to cancel and I phoned to offer her a new date, which would probably be one or two weeks later than she had wanted.

   “Okay,” she said, “I’ll accept that on condition that you send me a really fit carpenter on the day.” She said ‘fit’ with the degree of emphasis that didn’t just mean ‘athletic’. I sent her G.

   So there we are; G is outside the restaurant at Christmas, shivering in the cold, determinedly having a fag with the lads. And he’s wearing a ruddy cardigan! It’s quite a chunky knit and has big buttons. It suits him in that it’s the right size, isn’t at all baggy, looks good and has sufficient of the buttons undone to tell the world that he’s not wearing a vest or shirt underneath it. In my sour way I compliment G on his appearance, adding the jealous observation that he can get away with wearing a cardy whilst, if I’d worn one, it would have served only to confirm my ‘boring old git’ status. And the pipe and slippers wouldn’t have been far behind…

   Cardigans? Thanks to G I’ve dwelt on the prospect of wearing one since Christmas. Last week I saw my eldest son had one too and I borrowed it for an evening out. Cardigan technology has moved on since the 1950s; this one felt all right and – dare I say it? – didn’t look too bad on me. So, next day I’m on my way to Marks & Spark’s which I assumed (wrongly) to be the natural home of the cardigan. Distress – in recent years the b*ggers have had a make-over in the clothing department, presumably in a desperate attempt not to be so boring. It’s not for me to rule on whether or how far they’ve succeeded; I only know they didn’t have any cardigans at the branch I visited. Not a single one. I ended up going along the street to Debenhams (I think it was). They had a few but not many; not a great selection but definitely ‘fashion-conscious’ and clearly not the old men’s garb I had imagined. Evolution applies even in the world of cardigans. That’s what it’s all about – survival of the fittest – which must be why I mentioned G.

   It wasn’t easy, buying a cardigan. The most attractive on offer was a Jasper Conran design. I say ‘most attractive’ only in a relative sense. It wasn’t great, just a bit better than the rest. The problem was the price; over £40 and ‘fat-wallet’ didn’t feel up to risking that amount on a gamble. I wear my favourite clothes to destruction and thereby convince myself I’m getting real value from them. Something told me that Jasper’s cardy might not become a favourite and therefore….

   In the end, I did buy a cardigan; predictably a nice ‘safe’ boring/ traditional-looking grey woolly one. But it’s nicely shaped and doesn’t look too bad. It’s never going to make me look like G – that would require liposuction, plastic surgery and time-travel – but it might become a favourite and that way I’ll wear it till it’s well and truly ‘worn’. When you’re my age, “cardigans must be worn.” Until, that is, either they – or you – are worn out.

Next week: St Vitus versus St Valentine?

This was 6 Feb: call it #2

   No bus travel for me this past week I fear. Most of the journeys I make for my work could not be accomplished using public transport – well they could of course, but not efficiently when you consider the time everything would take. Neither would they work too well in terms of the kit I take with me – tool box, spirit level and step-ladder. I don’t always use all of these at every appointment but when I do need them it’s useful that they are right there - in the boot of the car.

   Public transport works for me when a journey is familiar and predictable: a simple ‘A’ to ‘B’, there and back, manageable when you know the route in advance and – if time matters - are equipped with a reasonable knowledge of how long the journey might take. My work-day journeys can arise at short notice and with little time to spare. Worse, my point ‘A’ – where I am at the start – is not necessarily linked by a direct bus route to my point ‘B’. It’s like the age-old Irish joke about the visitor who asks for directions to somewhere and receives the reply,

   “Ah, now, if I were going there, I wouldn’t be starting from here…”

   I remember a few years ago when Mayor Ken (Livingstone – he of bless’ed memory) introduced congestion charging for all cars, vans and lorries entering Central London. He seemed to believe that lots of frivolous journeys were being made and consequently the streets were getting clogged with unnecessary numbers of vehicles. That may have been true of private cars, Ken, but I can’t imagine there are too many people in the construction trades who were taking their vans and lorries into the middle of London purely for the fun of it. I mean, battling through the traffic and searching for somewhere to park – and all for no good reason. When the charge came in we did consider trying not to use our vans for one day and having a go at getting everyone and everything to site via public transport.

   Imagine the scene, if you will. It’s, say, 7am on a weekday morning and at every bus stop there are gathering plumbers, electricians, brick-layers, roofers, scaffolders, carpenters – all the sundry building trades in fact. And these travellers are queuing in addition to all the usual passengers, the hundreds of thousands of school kids and all the millions going to work in shops and offices and factories. But it’s not just the builders themselves; each tradesperson is carrying his tools and the supplies needed for the day’s work. The doors, the window-frames, the sheets of glass, the RSJs, the floor-boards and joists, the piles of bricks and bags of cement or plaster – not to mention the sheets of plaster board measuring 2400 x 1200mm (that’s eight feet by four in old money). Put it all on the buses, why don’t we?

   Like I said, I’d use the buses for work if I could. And not just buses; tube trains, over-ground trains and trams all work for me. Trams? But preferably not the trams we have in South London. As far as I can tell, these run from Croydon to Wimbledon via Mitcham. If there’s three places I wouldn’t want to go to it’s these. Having them connected by a clean, fast and efficient tram service moves me not at all. I need a tram route to go from Streatham to Highbury, via Battersea and Fulham with connecting branch lines linking us to Richmond, Twickenham, Chiswick and Ealing. Oh, and then going east, links to Dulwich and Greenwich would be nice.

   Did I say ‘clean, fast and efficient’? Never mind all that, more important is the sheer joy of the ride. If you know the Number 28 tram route in Lisbon you’ll know what I mean. If you don’t, look out for ‘All at Sea in Lisbon’ now being added to my pieces of TRAVEL WRITING on www.bydavidarmstrong.co.uk Well, if I don’t publicise it, no one else is going to, are they?

Next : Cardigans must be worn.

This was 30 January: Call it #1

We went by bus to see the new Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu movie ‘Biutiful’ at the Ritzy in Brixton last night.

You get a film that begins at the end and holds you - for what ? - 147minutes is it?  It holds you not least because you want to get an explanation of the opening sequence. There is a dead owl lying on the snow in a birch forest and Javier Bardem is talking to a younger man about the sounds made by the wind and by the sea. The vertical stripes of the trees are stark against the white ground, dividing the two men by space and – it turns out – by time.

The film is set in Barcelona but it’s not the Barcelona seen by tourists: unless you were there that day in the Plaça de Cataluña when the cops were chasing the African street-vendors away down Las Ramblas and into the old town. Distractions: we keep seeing a pair of immense industrial chimneys pumping smoke into the winter sky – I didn’t notice those either when I was there. Through the smoke and gathering gloom there recurs the silhouette of the never-to-be-completed Sagrada Família, seeming so appropriate to the story of Uxbal, a dying man trying to ensure a viable future for his own sacred family. He knows he has to put his affairs in order, but the real drama exists in the inevitable fragility of every move he makes to arrange anything for a future from which he will be absent. Even his efforts to ameliorate conditions in the present seem doomed. Events in the film grew so intense and battering it was only near the end that I managed to remember the name of Gaudí.

I must recommend this film but it’s a grim one. The corruption is all around and unfolds in layers; it’s not just the cop on the take or the cancer building inside Uxbal. His wife and his brother both take from him too. The African and Chinese immigrant workers are exploited by everyone and by each other. Uxbal and his brother Tito exhume the embalmed body of the long-dead father whom Uxbal never knew because he died far away in Mexico, a youthful refugee from Franco. The father’s body is surprisingly well-preserved from corruption of a different sort but will now be cremated anyway. Selling the father’s burial niche to a developer provides much-needed funds but who can Uxbal trust to hold them?

Buses? We took the159 from Streatham to Lambeth Town Hall and the 250 back. Thanks to all for the old gits’ Freedom Pass!