Olympian Glimmers

Some glimmers of heartening news from the Nazi torch relay, as it makes its tortuous way from Cornwall, to widespread spectator disappointment. Firstly, the 'eternal flame' is periodically going out (owing to a 'malfunctioning burner' - who'd have known?), providing a little comic business along the way. And then there's the glorious news that several of the torchbearers have been so overwhelmed with the 'honour' bestowed on them that they've coughed up the 200 sovs to buy their torches and whacked them straight onto eBay at prices up to £100,000. This surely is a sign that, even as this once proud nation bends to the IOC yoke, we have not entirely taken leave of our senses.

Dabbler alert...

Over There, I'm celebrating the silvery Wandle.

When Paradigms Collide...

One news story over the weekend that really made me laugh was this. It's the juxtaposition that does it - 'Go to anger management classes or get shot.' A wondrous collision of worlds is  evidenced here - the world where 'therapy' (i.e. counselling) is the solution to every problem, and the world where shooting out someone's knees is deemed equally effective. When even the kneecappers are invoking anger management as a viable alternative to their traditional methods, Therapy has surely conquered the world. 'You appear to have issues around managing your anger and we would advise you to seek professional help in addressing them. Or we'll blow your knees off. In a caring, non-angry, non-judgmental way, of course.'

Botanising on the Asphalt

Talking of flaneurs, I've just finished reading the chapter titled Paris, or Botanising on the Asphalt in Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking. She's good on Paris, and this chapter takes us through the transformations of the city - 'now a landscape, now a room' - and its immense walking possibilities (now curtailed by car domination) by way of the obscure Restif de la Bretonne, the more familiar Buadelaire and pals, the Surrealists, Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, and on to such faintly absurd figures as Christophe Bailly with his talk of  'une grammaire generative des jambes' (please!). And through it all strolls the archetypal but elusive flaneur...
It's one of the better chapters in a patchy book that tends to veer into academic waffle, journalese and right-on political attitudes. I bought it because it practically threw itself at me. Spotting it in Foyles at St Pancras, I turned it over in my hands and thought Hmm this looks interesting... but I didn't buy it. Then, a week or two later, there it was again, in dubious company on a shelf in my local Oxfam. Clearly, this time, I had to buy it... When Solnit settles down and gets immersed in her subject (as with Paris, as with Wordsworth and the romantics), she can be very good, but there are whole areas of walking that she barely touches, e.g. the strange history of pedestrianism, the epic walks of medieval travellers, walking 'fugues'. Iain Sinclair's reflections on walking in London Orbital and elsewhere are more rewarding (and better written). However, Wanderlust  is full enough of nuggets of information and choice quotations to keep me reading. For example, there's Hazlitt on Wordsworth: 'He sees nothing but himself and the Universe.' And Dickens on his compulsive walking: 'If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should explode and perish.' I know the feeling, though I have seldom walked as fast or as far as Dickens, who had the happy knack of falling into a kind of waking slumber while his legs carried him along through the night at a steady four miles an hour - which, for a man of his height, is fast indeed.
The picture, by the way, is R.B. Kitaj's The Autumn of Central Paris (After Walter Benjamin). The phrase 'now a landscape, now a room' is Benjamin's.

The Utility of the Flaneur

Yesterday evening, I was strolling through the expensive back streets of Kensington in the direction of the underground railway when I noticed, on the other side of the road, a small boy - a very small boy - blithely scooting his scooter across the road at a T junction. Fortunately there was no traffic and I assumed anyway that a parent or nanny was close at hand and had given the go-ahead. But no. I looked around and was alarmed to discover that there was no one in view who had anything to do with this child. He was probably three years old - barely taller than his scooter's handlebar - and apparently quite on his own. I watched in mounting alarm as he scooted on to the next junction, apparently with every intention of crossing it. By this time, happily, I'd caught his eye and mouthed and gestured at him to halt, which he did. Still no sign of anyone in charge of him - and the amazing thing was that no one else had noticed this tiny boy on his own. A young woman passed within a foot of him but was too absorbed in her mobile phone and whatever was coming out of her earphones to see him, or anything. Two businessmen passed by, talking and equally oblivious. Another woman appeared and scurried off around the corner having noticed nothing. By this point I was beginning to think I'd have to go over and take charge of the boy myself, and no doubt get arrested for my pains - but then I spotted a sensible motherly looking woman coming my way (equally unaware of her surroundings). I roused her from her reverie, and together we crossed to the small boy. He gave his name and told us that he lived 'here', but was keener to talk about his 'skateboard' (i.e. scooter). At this point, the story turns anticlimactic, because at last a woman - presumably his mother - hoved into view, approaching at an unconcerned saunter. I exchanged a roll of the eyes with the sensible woman, thanked her for her help, and went on my way.
You can say what you like about us flaneurs, I thought to myself as I flaned along, but we seem to be the only ones on the street in these days of electronically enhanced self-absorption who are actually looking around us and noticing what's there.

At Last - A Quiz about Sandwiches...

As lunchtime approaches, my mind naturally turns to sandwiches. Tragically, I did rather badly in this quiz - a mere 3 out of 7. And me something of an authority on sandwiches - or so I thought...

1816 Again?

Mid-May and, after the weekend's teasing taste of something sunnier, Mai, Lieber Mai has swept back in with heavy rain and Arctic winds, driving me back into my winter coat and scarf. Yes, mid-May - the season evoked in the Ode to a Nightingale with images of  'White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.'
Could we be in for a repeat of the Year without a Summer? This was 1816, when Europe and North America suffered incessant rain, cold and crop failures. In the West of England, it rained on 142 out of 153 days, there was snow in the Lake District in July, London's average 'summer' temperature was 13 degrees C, and soaring food prices led to riots. The principal cause of all this seems to have been the eruption of Mount Tambura on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, and the airborne ash from this event produced unusually spectacular sunsets - which are said to have inspired some of Turner's most striking images. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the holidaying Shelleys and their friends, driven indoors by the relentless rain, competed to write the most frightening story, and the result was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. As for Keats - newly qualified as an apothecary - he spent the summer with his brother Tom in Margate (also a favourite resort of Turner's).
There have been no volcanic eruptions to account for the cold wet summer we're having now, so I guess we'll just have to put it down to global warming.