A Boring Country?

A boring country?

Belgium undoubtedly has an image problem:  art limited to dreary old oil-paintings; buildings full of faceless Eurocrats; and cuisine peaking at moules-frites!

Certainly when my brother’s family relocated to Brussels last month, I had some doubts - but I also saw it as a fantastic opportunity for the kids to learn a new language and culture, and a smart career move for the parents to where the real power lies.  Plus it’s a fun new place for us relatives to visit – including what remains for me the thrilling, baffling concept of going under the sea in a train.  Maybe the Belgian capital has been sadly underrated? 

Art, far from being absent, was there in abundance:  from the traditional equine statues and fulsome nudes, to more contemporary stuff – the well-known Magritte, Tintin and Brel, but also rope sculptures, graffiti-art and playfully-decorated oversized sprouts!  There are also dozens of museums, though this time we only managed those dedicated to flight and musical instruments – mainly to eat and admire the views!

Buildings are also surprisingly varied.  Whilst it’s no Gaudi-inspired Barcelona, there are plenty of impressive examples of art nouveau architecture.  Even the glass and steel modernism of the European Parliament is impressive in its own way - not the grandeur of Westminster, but what it lacks in style it makes up for in influence...  And as for the Grand Place, this is surely one of the most beautiful squares in Europe, up there with Sienna and Krakow - and must be breathtaking when carpeted with flowers every other August.   

Cuisine, too, was a pleasant surprise – we would have avoided mussels anyway, even before learning that their favourite food is poo, but had lovely fresh waffles in the park, and delicious Leffe and Kriek beers at lunchtime (the latter was crisp and tasty, nothing like the recent trend in sweetly artificial fruit-flavoured beers).  And, unlike their Gallic neighbours, the Belgians offered decent veggie food – even when I thought I’d played it safe with a lasagne I actually got layer upon succulent layer of mouth-watering spinach and pasta.  As for dessert – what could beat Belgian chocolate?

Anyone can criticise.  But don’t believe all you hear.  Contemporary Brussels offers a positive ABC of Art, Buildings and Cuisine – this is certainly not A Boring Country!

In Praise of... Open Doors

Many cities have a split, real or imagined, between their universities and their civic aspects - ‘town versus gown’.

Oxford feels this tension more than most – the ancient university dominates the centre, sitting awkwardly alongside newer, brasher and frankly uglier civic buildings (and people).

The design of colleges doesn’t help: enchanting, mysterious piles with beautifully manicured lawns, but often only peaked at over high walls or through iron railings, there to keep out the hoi-polloi.

How refreshing, then, to witness the doors of the city’s colleges and many other intriguing places being thrown open the other weekend for all to enter.

In London, regular open weekends are a great way of seeing the quirky or otherwise inaccessible.  My native village in the Pennines hosts open gardens, popular with the green-fingered and long-nosed.  And in Brighton I adore the open houses, a brilliant way of overcoming the lack of exhibition space during the annual festival by simply turning ordinary homes into galleries (though I suspect as many go to snoop as to appreciate the art).

Oxford Open Doors is in this fine tradition, and I just loved being able to wander freely into old colleges.  Many times I have walked along the High Street with no idea that Queen’s atmospheric cloisters lay just the other side.  I did know Trinity had wonderful lawns, having gazed jealously at them from Broad Street, so it was fantastic to just stroll in.  Best of all, All Souls had the most stunning church carvings, put on a brass band for the guests, and even let us onto the grass (an honour, I’m told, generally afforded only to ‘fellows’, whoever they may be).

It's not all colleges - we also visited the fantastic Pegasus Theatre, the antithesis of elitism: this lovely new space bends over backwards to encourage young, disabled or disadvantaged locals to get involved – all power to them.

Of course many visitors go just to avoid the usual entrance fees (it’s certainly why I went to the castle’s fascinating ‘prison unlocked’ display that day).  And I’m sure some places open reluctantly, like snooty artisos watching National Trust welly-wearers tramping their estates, a slightly less unpleasant alternative to paying taxes.  Could it be that some colleges grudgingly open up once a year and hold their noses for the weekend, just to ensure they can keep the doors firmly closed at all other times?

Some dismiss it as tokenistic, but I’d rather see it as the thin end of a welcome wedge.  ‘Car-free days’, ‘Meat-free Fridays’ and indeed ‘the season of goodwill’ are all well and good – but can’t we dream of bike-free weekends, meaty Mondays and the odd misanthropic moments, on the understanding these become the exception not the rule? 

So thank you Oxford Open Doors – I look forward to your redundancy, replaced with a new normality of everyday openness, perhaps with the occasional ‘Locked Door weekends’. 

Cycle safely - lose the helmet!

If you drive, you wear a seatbelt.  On a motorbike you have armour head to foot.  So if you’re brave enough to cycle then at least you should wear a bike helmet.  You’d be crazy not to, right?

The argument in favour seems pretty compelling.  If a driver smashes you off your bike, your head is both highly vulnerable and very likely to either hit the road or another car. 

Around 70 percent of all fatal bicycle crashes involve head injuries.  And if you care to Google “lacerations, bruises, skull fractures and traumatic brain injuries” then I’m pretty sure you’ll want to avoid them.

On the basis that it’s a sensible safety precaution to wear a bike helmet, surely government has a role too.  They are meant to protect us from avoidable harm, which sometimes means taking brave and unpopular public health measures for our own good.  Otherwise we’ll end up like the countries where those in charge don’t enforce the seatbelts and motorbike helmets mentioned above, right?

And on an individual basis, knowing that wearing a bike helmet is right, we have a moral obligation to do so - not just to preserve ourselves, for us, loved-ones and dependents, but also to role-model good behaviour to others. 

You can’t duck this one:  every action you take sends a message one way or the other – how you vote, what you eat, where you bank – and especially how you travel.  Sure, if you cycle you’re being a good role model.  But then if you cycle with a naked head, aren’t you saying something like ‘Let’s do the right thing for the environment, but be irresponsible about our own safety’?

My little niece recently, innocently, asked ‘Where’s your bike helmet Uncle Oly?’.  I confess that my response – ‘at home’ – left rather a lot unanswered.

So that settles it, right?  Not only should we wear bike helmets, but our government should make it obligatory.  We’d all be happier and healthier.

Actually, no!

To be honest, the main reason I don’t wear a bike helmet is probably as I really love the feel of the sun on my face, wind on my, er, bald patch.  Cycling is a beautiful, liberating experience.  I wouldn’t want to constrain it with a helmet any more than I would shinpads to walk the hills or a dry-suit to go skinny dipping. 

And one of the beauties of cycling is it’s so easy – just jump on and go (ok, with a twist of the bike lock, yellow jacket and lights at night).  But there’s certainly none of the horrors and hassles of fuel, insurance, breakdown, MOT, parking and the rest – I really don’t envy those stuck in their cars.  And I don’t react kindly to anyone trying to make cycling less free and easy.

In fact, I don’t much like being told what to do by anyone, let alone by this weak and unprincipled government.  Surely even Cameron and co wouldn’t be so stupid to make cycle-helmet wearing compulsory – it would no doubt be popular with the Clarkson petrol-heads and Chelsea-tractor drivers, but would rightly infuriate my strange bedfellows on the libertarian right.

But I’d like to think that is not just because of political expediency. There is actually a strong argument against wearning cycle helmets, and it goes beyond freedom of choice.

Wearing cycle helmets is actually not good for our health.

‘Really?  I don’t think many brain surgeons would agree with you on that!’ I hear you cry. 

Indeed, but that would be a rather self-selecting audience, wouldn’t it?  Would you trust dentists on discouraging children from sugary fruit, or mass-poisening of your water with hexafluorosilicic acid?

What, for example, would a public health doctor say about bike helmets?  I suspect you would get a very different take from the neuro specialists.  Basically they would look at the bigger picture, not just the individual.

You see, wearing a bike helmet will indeed reduce the risk of head injury for the individual cyclist, but may in fact make cycling in general less safe. 

Cycle safety depends very much on ‘safety in numbers’ – the more bikes on the road, the fewer accidents (per kilometer cycled).  And cycling numbers depend largely on perceptions of safety:  if it feels safe, you’ll hop on your hybrid; if you’re scared, you’ll cower in your car. 

So if you want to make cycling safer, you have to get out there on your bike and show it – and you won’t help one bit if you insist on donning ice hockey armour for an innocent little potter down the road!  Rather, take the example of Boris Bikes – 15 million hires in London in a couple of years, and not a helmet in sight.

So ok, doing your bit for society is all very well, but as an individual first and foremost, you do the best for yourself.  Even then you might be better off without a helmet.  You see, whilst you’re likely to have a better outcome when helmeted if you are smashed off your bike, if you don’t have one it’s less likely to happen to you in the first place!

It’s hard to prove, but anecdotally this makes sense to me:  on the rare occasions I’ve worn a helmet, I feel so safe, so protected – so I take many more risks.  Conversely, the very occasional times I forget my lights at night, I cycle super-carefully. 

There is a connection between the amount we perceive we are protected and our behavior on the roads.  Maybe Land Rover and Lexus drivers come across as bullies because they feel so safe?  Well, they probably are just selfish wankers, but you get the point…

So what to do?  Get on your bike?  Certainly!  But maybe you should leave your plastic bonnet at home…

Maybe it's because I'm an Oldhamer...

Are you proud of where you come from?

I’m not. 

Only, I should add, as I believe you can only be truly proud of something which you yourself are responsible for.  It makes no more sense to be bigheaded of where you are born than boast of having two nostrils or brag that your country bagged loads of medals.  You didn’t achieve it, so how can you be proud of it?

But, by the same logic, I’m certainly not ashamed of it either.

So what does Wikipedia say about my hometown?  Early reports are not encouraging:  “A scattering of small and insignificant settlements spread across the moorland and dirt tracks which linked Manchester to York”, with “little early history to speak of”.  Cheeky tykes!

Nineteenth century visitors weren’t too gushing either:  John Marius Wilson in 1872 called it “dingy”, and in 1842 Angus Reach of Inverness described it in the Morning Chronicle as “a mean-looking straggling town [with] a shabby underdone look... filthy and smouldering” (and, with apologies to Invernesians, his ain ‘city’ is no Venice). 

To this day I hear the town of my birth derided – why, just the other week on Desert Island Discs, popular tv science heartthrob and one-time popstar Brian Cox  summed up on his childhood with the comment, ‘there aren’t many celebrities from Oldham’.

Really?

So where did our greatest ever leader, Winston Churchill, spend his formative years?  Elected in 1900, he learned his most important political lessons as MP for Oldham. 

And our greatest composer?  Sir William Walton, place of birth:  Oldham (we can’t seriously claim Frideric Handel of Halle-Wittenberg).

Great sportsmen come and go, but not so long ago David Platt was captain of England whilst the mighty Mike Atherton his cricketing counterpart - Oldhamers both.  And of course Oldham Athletic are the best football team on earth!  (Ok that’s moot – but they do have the highest ground in England, which is pretty much the same thing right?).

And when it comes to business, only a century ago Oldham was the most productive cotton spinning mill town in the world.  The town spun more cotton than France and Germany combined (and if you don’t believe me you can check for yourself – just read Oldham Council’s 2008 ‘Contaminated Land Strategy’!). 

What about science?  Well, there’s Louise Brown of course.  What do you mean you’ve never heard of her?  Only the world’s first test tube baby.  Where did this historic event  take place?  Oldham General Hospital, of course!

Impressive eh?  So why do I only ever read bad things about the town?  (Ironic given that the UK's largest newspaper publisher, Trinity Mirror, pumps a large chunk of its papers from its huge printworks in, you guessed it, Hollinwood Avenue (Oldham).

I don’t deny there’s a downside – the first by-election of this Parliament was due to disgraced Oldham MP Phil Woolas being thrown out of office after illegal race smears, the first ruling of its kind in 99 years.  And we could have done without him getting "white folk angry", after the shameful race riots which started in the town in 2001.  And when it's not communities being blown apart it's gas explosions...  

Maybe I’ll just say I’m from Saddleworth instead, as that’s where I grew up.  You know, Saddleworth – renowned for its beautiful Pennine setting, Whit Friday band contest of Brassed Off fame, just over the hills from Last of the Summer Wine country.  Oh no, because of course when I say Saddleworth everyone thinks of the bloody moors murders…

I don’t think I can win this one, so I withdraw to my local Yates’ wine lodge with a pint of Lees and cheeky plate of chips. 

And then I brighten.  Yates’, Britain’s oldest pub chain, opened in 1884.   The first chip shop:  John Lees’, founded in 1858 at Tommyfield Market.  And where do you think these seismic events happened?  Oldham, of course.

So maybe it’s because I’m an Oldhamer, but I think the town of my birth has much to be proud of, and I for one love Oldham town.

Scary Psychos

Having barely survived four terrifying episodes of Wallander, with some creepy psycho women hunting down abusive husbands, I know I’m just not cut out for scary stuff.  I should have stopped after my post- Girl With The Dragon Tattoo bed-wetting.

So I gently declined my mum’s suggestion for summer reading, Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test, in favour of less frightening cultural distractions. 

I particularly enjoyed a good Hamlet.  As a Globe Theatre touring production it was traditionally staged, but reliably acted and zipped through without compromising the text.  The setting, the grand quad of Oxford’s Bodleian library, was stunning – not in the least chilling, in fact warm and dry!

But then it rained all summer, so I read the Ronson book anyway.  And, of course, it scared the pants off me!

The focus is on madness, in particular psychopathy – the chronic inability to feel guilt, anxiety or remorse for any actions.  More precisely, psychopaths are defined by a 20-point checklist devised by the psychiatrist Bob Hare. 

So what do you think defines a psychopath?  I would have guessed at traits like lying, manipulation, callousness and irresponsibility.  But would you also expect charm, impulsivity and promiscuity?

You might imagine the scariest bits of the book to be gruesome descriptions of serial killers, but whilst one of the most frightening scenes is in a secure mental hospital, the terror comes not so much from the inmates (sorry, patients) as the system. 

Tony explains he is a petty criminal who feigned insanity to get a cushy sentence – but laid it on too thick and ended up in Broadmoor!  Worse still, the more he protests his innocence, the more it’s taken as evidence of his deviousness and lack of remorse.  It’s the modern witchcraft - scary indeed.

Ronson meanders more than a Polonius farewell, but does pose interesting questions about madness, and is disarmingly frank about his own tenuous grip on rationality.  In fact everyone in his book is somewhere on the insanity spectrum.

Just like Hamlet in fact – surely a play about madness?  He does at one point say he’ll feign “an antic disposition”, and later claims “I am but mad north-northwest…”.  But how would you keep your wits if you had your father killed, mother seduced by the murderer, lover barred and friends turned against you - oh and your right to be king snatched too? 

And it’s not just him.  Take dotty old Polonius (funny mad), with his daughter Ophelia (sad mad) and son Laertes (angry mad).  The mental health of Hamlet’s mother must be in doubt.  And his dead father even loses his marbles beyond the grave, haunted by his hideous murder, wife’s faithlessness, and son’s procrastination. 

In fact pretty much everyone in Hamlet is an apple short of a picnic:  from potty prince to gaga gravedigger - who says the prince was sent to England “because a was mad. A shall recover his wits there; or if a do not, ‘tis no great matter … there the men are as mad as he!”.

Now I’m an expert psychopath detector (skim-read the 20 questions and you’ll spend your life psychospotting), I have a new take on the old play – everyone maybe crazy, but only one character is a proper psycho.

Claudius has all the signs:  killing your brother must tick the box for ‘failure to behave responsibly’.  As for ‘criminal versatility’ he’s got it all, from poisoned wine and tampering with weapons, to hidden death-notes and  pouring hemlock into his own brother’s ear. 

His ‘lack of remorse’ is total, save one occasion when he is caught praying (and even then I wonder if this could be played as him tricking Hamlet – it certainly stops him being killed).  And how about this for ‘callousness’:  in the final scene, his new wife Gurtrude takes a poisoned cup, and rather than save her and risk revealing his deception he just lets her drink – how cold-hearted can you get? 

Yet he’s ‘charming’ and ‘cunning’ too – he keeps Hamlet in Denmark and names him heir, then manipulates his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and later Laertes to betray him.  In between times he schmoozes his way not just into any bedchamber, but that of his dead brother’s wife. 

My verdict:  total psycho.

As usual Shakespeare is way ahead of us.  Ronson only hints at a theory - that whilst only 1% of society would be termed psychopathic, when it comes to our political and business leaders it’s more like 10%.   If true, that would be sensational - surely it merits a whole book?

Think about it:  just as everyone at Elsinore is somehow mad but it’s the psycho Claudius who comes out on top, so it is in our crazy world, where smiling villains like Madoff, Diamond, or indeed Blair, charm to power and then remorselessly shaft us all.

So it’s no longer Swedish serial killers keeping me up at night. 

Rather, I awake sweating, fearing how Mr Cameron would score in the test.  Now that is really scary.

The Best of Books, The Worst of Books

On naming my top ten favourite writers, I was surprised – and a little embarrassed – when it was pointed out they’re all male.

In my defence, for most of our history, women have had little encouragement or opportunity to write, so there are far fewer female-authored novels.  Or maybe as a bloke I just naturally prefer books by men?

I do have other criteria.  For a start my strict 200 page rule – brevity is the soul of wit (Shakespeare being the sole and occasional exception).   

I also keep to the present - historical novels in particular don’t float my boat (I can read a textbook - or better watch Horrible Histories, far too funny, clever and educational to leave to kids).  

And I don’t put much store by popularity (Booker disappointed me with Life of Pi and when they did choose one of my list, Ian McEwan, they picked his worst novel, Amsterdam). So I stick to authors I know and love – Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Martin Amis (not only male, but also white, middle-aged and British – suits me just fine!).

So when my lovely sister-in-law Sasha gave me Wolf Hall I may have been less than gracious: it spectacularly failed my size test (a whopping 650 pages), was set way back in Tudor times, was famous mainly for having bagged the Booker - and was by some unknown guy called Hilary Mantel. 

The early years of Henry VIII just didn’t appeal.  Eight wives all chopped, right?  Or was it divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived?  Should I care either way?  Worse still, it wasn’t even about him, but rather his little-known fixer, Thomas Cromwell.  Never ‘eard of ‘im.

Oh how wrong could I be?  This is a stonkingly good read.  The atmosphere of medieval England is deliciously evoked, the political and social intrigues captivating.  I’m still not sure why I should care, but I really did – I couldn’t get enough of it.  

Frustratingly, I struggle to put into words just why this is so well written – I even re-read pages to pinpoint how it was done; there’s no fancy long words or complicated structure, just somehow brilliantly put together and utterly gripping storytelling.

So there I was – this Hilary Mantel bloke had just shattered my reading prejudices.  And then I go and find out she’s a woman: gutted!

What next?  With eyes opened and mind widened, I went straight for another author unknown to me but celebrated by others – and who, I am led to belive, is a also woman:  none other than E L James and her ubiquitous 50 Shades of Grey.

If the contrast were in a novel, you would dismiss it as an improbable fiction.  I kept reading at first in the mistaken belief that it just had to get better; then out of perverse curiosity as to how much worse it could get; and finally I was in crud stepped in so far that returning were as tedious as to turn over.

I feel slightly cruel pointing out that this is an utterly terrible book, but you’ll thank me if it saves a week of your precious reading time.

Seriously – this is the worst book I have ever read.

E L James simply can’t write.  How was someone with such a limited vocabulary allowed to pump out over 500 pages before her editor took pity?  Take the main character, a smarmy perv called Christian Grey, for whom our silly heroine falls in lust.  His description is painful:  fingers are without variation “long”, character always “mysterious”, eyes predictably, repeatedly “gray”.  

Yes that’s right – he’s called Grey, and he has gray eyes – clever eh?  Clearly emboldened by this stroke of literary genius, she bravely travels the spectrum to offer blushes “red as the communist manifesto” (probably confusing it with Mao’s little books, bless).  When she stumbles on a potentially more interesting description like “oxblood” for furniture, she uses the same adjective three times in as many paragraphs.  Please, somebody, give this woman a bloody thesaurus!

After over 100 pages of mind-numbingly mundane build-up, we finally get some of the much-hyped bedroom action:  orgasm 1 has heroine “shattering into a thousand pieces”; orgasm 2, demonstrating her astonishing range of descriptive skills, sees her “splinter into a million pieces”.  

Unable to develop character or drive the plot through dialogue, James stoops to unbearably crass use of her main character's ‘subconscious’ and ‘inner goddess’.  Conversations are followed in italics by such profound analysis as “Whoa!”, “Holy hell!”, “Crap!” and “Jeez!” (I kid you not).  The only mercy is her kind editor removed the multiple exclamation marks.

This is basically the faintly ridiculous fantasies of a semi-literate teenager.  James would have struggled to scrape a GCSE in English even before the grades were toughened up.  Fail!

So where does this leave me?  I still insist life is too short for long books, with rare exceptions.  Popularity makes a book worth investigating, but not necessarily reading.  

If my horizons are broadened, maybe I should escape from little England to French, African, North or South American novels?  Scour book prizes and best sellers to keep up with literary fashion?

Sorry, but for now I'm still sticking with what I know - whilst 50 Shades... besmirches my recycling bin, I’m devouring the sequel to Wolf Hall, the equally thrilling and unputdownable Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel, one of my favourite authors.

How to write a love song?

An unexpected request:  “Dear Oly, “I'm looking for someone with a way with words who is also a hopeless romantic, has a sense of humour, patience, and an ear for music.  Oh, and will volunteer their services with no promise of financial remuneration…  Would you be interested in writing lyrics for a love song I wrote?”

How could I resist?  Yet where to start?  Luckily Katja had the answer:  Leicester.  Leicester?

One of the few British cities I’ve never visited, I had only Adrian Mole for cultural bearings – and his cringeworthy paean ‘Lo The Flat Hills of my Homeland’ hadn’t encouraged me, and would move few to lyricism.

Yet every year Leicester hosts the great little Summer Sundae music festival in the surprisingly pleasant grounds of De Montfort Hall.  There was a great mix of people, a chilled ‘vibe’, and a fun safari theme:  we loved wearing khaki and getting our faces painted as crocs and lions - though I was a slightly reluctant camper, and distinctly unimpressed at the morning trek to ‘hunt the working shower’.

Fortunately there were also all sorts of fringe events to cheer me up, including Laughing Hyena comedy from Slightly Fat Features and a pleasing range of worthy causes:  Oxfam on ‘food power’ (I loved the guy’s talk, only slightly undermined when I spotted him the next morning sneaking away with a bacon butty), to Educating for the Alternative’s ‘ditch cars and carnivores and cycle your own banana smoothie’ (I’m crazy about both cycling and bananas – though is there a love song in that?).

But what about the music?  (And more importantly, the words?).

The early afternoons were largely electronica – locals Dark Dark Horses all smooth guitars and laid-back beats, New York’s Friends instrumental inventiveness, and Death In Vegas creating a great atmosphere.  But there were more DJs than instruments – and few lyrics.  My favourite band was the nattily-named Molotov Jukebox, who really got us going in a Gypsy Kings kind of way - but still slender pickings for the love song hunter.

Asian Dub Foundation raised the tempo with overtly political songs, whilst latest pop idol Katy B heightened heartbeats, but the words I could make out were of bad boyfriends and worse discos – still not the inspiration I needed.

Perhaps crafting songs is for the older guys?   I had high hopes for François and the Altas Mountains, billed as “Morrissey’s younger brother”, but it applied more to lilting delivery than word-smithery.  Uncle Frank from Fun Lovin’ Criminals was lively, unreconstructed hip hop, but his promise of “Ideal Food for Love” had all the romance of Benny Hill.  And whilst Adam Ant was great nostalgia for us 80s kids, “Prince Charming” is hardly a love song (“… ridicule is nothing to be scared of”).

Sometimes inspiration strikes when least expected:  if truth be told, we were only in the main hall for Saturday’s mid-morning session to use the non-camping toilets – but were attracted to the stage by an intriguing guitar / drums / cello / violin combo, Her Name Is Calla.  

We arrived just in time for “And finally, a love song…”.  The build-up was terrific, but rather than leading to amorous words, it was the precursor to a lively and unexpected performance, the East Midland’s answer to Pussy Riot (Katja:  “that guy’s practically raping his guitar”).  Maybe Leicester love is different?

We had a great time, and I’d recommend Summer Sundae to anyone - unless you like a nice quiet weekend in the shower. 

But I’m still looking for lyrical inspiration. 

I can’t even sing about my dilemma without encroaching on an F R David classic:  words, for love songs at least, don’t come easy to me.