The Land of the Blind (Where in the world am I? [26])

I have heard it said (one of those made-up statistics, and probably unverifiable anyway) that above 95% of people in this country are seriously short-sighted. I can well believe it.

Laser corrective surgery has yet to make many inroads here, and even contact lenses still seem to be something of a rarity, even amongst the super-rich. The modestly affluent still wear glasses - and often with frighteningly thick lenses that you suspect were issued without the benefit of a proper eye assessment, and certainly without regular updating. Almost everyone else walks around with uncorrected vision.

So - when drivers, cyclists, pedestrians do something incredibly selfish, obtuse, reckless.... sometimes indeed (all too often, in fact) run right into you in apparent oblivion of your existence, and you are tempted to yell, "What's the matter with you?! Are you blind??", you check yourself and reflect,"Oh my god, yes, the poor sod practically is."

I sometimes fret, though, that the limited visual field with which so much of the country suffers also contributes to another problem that is ultimately perhaps more serious - a limited field of imagination. A lot of people in this country do seem to have a serious handicap in terms of altruism - the ability to consider anybody's welfare but their own - and foresight - the ability to anticipate and plan more than a few minutes ahead.

I'm sure there must be some kind of connection between the two. A lot of people here don't seem to be able to see their hand in front of their face, literally or metaphorically.

Thought for the week

"Why is it that naïve people never realise how naïve they are?"

Do you find that irritating too?

Dissing the poets

I run the risk of being 'flamed' by any Irish readers out there for the slighting remark in my last post on their exalted poet Patrick Kavanagh.

But I find from the Wikipedia article on Kavanagh that my great literary (and boozing) hero, Brian O'Nolan (also known as Flann O'Brien, the nom de plume under which most of his books were published, and Myles na Gopaleen, the comic alias under which he wrote a long-running humorous column in the Irish Times called 'The Cruiskeen Lawn'; I have commemorated him on my other blog Barstool Blues as one of my 'Unsuitable Role Models', here and here, and he has earned at least one previous mention on Froogville, here) did a much better job of denigrating him.

As it says in the Wikipedia entry:

Arriving in Dublin in the late 1930s, Kavanagh often found his rural mannerisms and imagery the subject of mockery by the city's literary community. When the Irish Times published an early Kavanagh poem, "Spraying the Potatoes", Myles na Gopaleen responded caustically:

"I am no judge of poetry - the only poem I ever wrote was produced when I was body and soul in the gilded harness of Dame Laudanum - but I think Mr Kavanaugh [sic] is on the right track here. Perhaps the Irish Times, timeless champion of our peasantry, will oblige us with a series in this strain covering such rural complexities as inflamed goat-udders, warble-pocked shorthorn, contagious abortion, non-ovoid oviducts, and nervous disorders among the gentlemen who pay the rent."
[This last expression was a common Irish euphemism for a pig.]

Time for a poem

I posted one of my poems on Barstool Blues the other day - about recollections of a weekend romance in Dublin many years ago - which included a reference to a famous statue of the poet Patrick Kavanagh on the bank of the Grand Canal.

I really don't know much about him (other than that he is not to be confused - but often is! - with P. J. Kavanagh, an English writer and broadcaster, and creator of The Oxford Book Of Short Poems, which is one of my very favourite anthologies), and find, on looking into it, that I don't really like much of his stuff. But it seems he's terribly popular with the Irish. Revered, indeed. Oh yes, up there with Yeats. There's no accounting for taste.

Anyway, this one I quite like.


Memory Of My Father

Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London,
He too set me the riddle.
Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me:
"I was once your father."

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967)

Unexpectedly Canadian

My mention of The Crash Test Dummies the other day (no hyphen for them, it seems) brought to mind this great image from Gary Larson. Pity I can't find a bigger version of it.

I have just learned that The Dummies were a Canadian band! Funny how many bands are, without you even realising it. Especially the quirkier, more humorous ones.

Apparently, they are now pretty much defunct, as leader Brad Roberts pursues other projects. They did tour and release albums intermittently throughout the '90s and well into the '00s; but their finest hour surely remains 1994's "God Shuffled His Feet...."

What a wonderful thing Wikipedia is! And what a wonderful thing Proxyline is, which allows us to use sites like Wikipedia even in censorship-raddled countries like ****!

Art angst

I am about to head out to the city's 'art zone' - an industrial estate on the north-east outskirts that in recent years has become heavily colonised by studios and galleries (and, increasingly of late, by trendy boutiques, coffee-shops, and restaurants) - for an afternoon/early evening of 'culture'..... followed by some subsidised drinking!

The prospect does occasion a certain trepidation. Art today has surely become more elitist than at any time in history, the creators forming closed, incestuous cliques, cultivating a wilful obscurity in their work. These days, you almost always seem to get a mini-essay accompanying each work to 'explain' it, since there would be no chance that Joe Public would 'get it' otherwise. Now, I like some modern art; and I try to be open to all of it; and I do, in fact, have a few friends in the art community here. But gawd, it's hard work sometimes.

Last time I was up in the 'art zone' a few months ago, I found myself being interviewed for one of the local radio stations about one of these artist friends. Trouble was, I hadn't been able to find the piece he was showing, so I floundered rather. I don't think they broadcast that.

So, yes, I face my expedition to the north-east with enthusiasm tempered with a certain bewilderment - and an anxiety that someone may ask me to say whether I like something, or, worse, whether I understand it. Let's hope not.

This was a feeling amusingly captured by Brad Roberts of the Crash Test Dummies (whatever happened to them??) on his song 'When I go out with artists', which I was listening to just the other day. I've always particularly cherished this couplet, a great near-rhyme (deliberate bad rhyme):

If I were David Byrne
I'd go to galleries and not be too concerned

Quite.

Another old one

A small thing, but mine own. Continuing the 'What is poetry?' series.... Continuing the 'silly love poems' series....



is this a poem?


you can get away
with anything
so long
as it's real

you can even
get away
with calling it
'poetry'!

but the real poetry
is the way
you make me feel

Men of Respect

Amongst the several hundred (yes, pirated) DVDs I own, I finally got around to watching one last night that I had picked up a few years ago, a New York gangster flick of the above title from the early '90s. Ever heard of it? Probably not. It seems to have sunk without trace at the box office, and has hardly registered on IMDB (only a few hundred ratings and 5 reviews). A shame, because it's actually well worth a look.

Its 'gimmick' - which may have led to it not being taken as seriously as it deserves - is that it is based on Macbeth. Shakespeare purists are going to complain about the changes necessarily made, and the loss of the Bard's language. Scorsese devotees may gripe that it somehow shows a lack of respect to the gangster genre to rehash such an old story. And there is inevitably a certain lack of suspense, since the story is so well-known; also, a certain flagging of pace towards the end.

However, it has a top-notch cast: Peter Boyle, Rod Steiger, Dennis Farina, Stanley Tucci, Michael Badalucco, and a very funny cameo from Steven Wright as the "night porter". 'Lady Macbeth' - Katherine Borowitz, John Turturro's wife, an actress who has, sadly, rarely appeared on screen - is terrific. (The main weakness, in fact, is Turturro's 'Macbeth', really a bit over the top: he starts off pretty wired, and as he descends into madness becomes all goggle-eyed leers and twitches.)

And the script, by director William Reilly, is quite brilliant in many ways, inventively updating several of the key elements (the "witches", an eccentric family of spiritualists, are thoroughly creepy, yet also somehow believable; Banquo's son is established as a credible candidate for future power, and rather sinister), and slyly poking fun at some of the elements of the original that seem absurd or implausible to a modern audience. It really is one of the best modern-day adaptations of Shakespeare I've seen. Go check it out.

What would Zoltan do?

I don't do this very often. In fact, I've never done this before, and I may not do it again for quite some time. I am going to recommend someone else's blog!

In the last few months, I have made a new cyber-buddy here in the 'blogosphere' - a grad student in California called Leah. Her posting is infrequent (so, at least she doesn't overload you with too much to read, like me), but diverse in range, quirkily eclectic, and very well-written.

I particularly liked this recent post on the 'ethics course' her Faculty required her to take - in which the benchmark of moral rectitude is an elderly University gardener of Eastern European extraction called Zoltan. (Sorry, that name cracks me up. I know it's a perfectly legitimate and sensible name, but.... to me it always sounds like a Star Trek or Flash Gordon villain.) Honestly, read this and you'll soon find yourself, whenever faced with any kind of moral quandary, asking yourself not "What would Brian Boitano do?" BUT......

"What would Zoltan do?"

That would have been quite enough to keep a smile on my face for one week, but yesterday she dug up this absolutely brilliant video on Japanese sushi-shop etiquette. It would appear to be Japanese-made. If so, I find it very reassuring to learn that the Japanese do indeed have a sense of humour, and are capable of making fun of themselves. (If I discover it was made by non-Japanese I might have to reappraise my responses to it!)

A teacher memory (this week's haiku)

Exam Room

A clock carves silence.
Tiny scratch of pens racing
To an obscure goal.

Ah, that's more like it!

If only the Froogville half-birthday celebrations were like this!!!!

A great bit of fun from the British artist Beryl Cook. Check out her website or the Alexander Gallery in Bristol for more.

Now We Are One-Half....

Gosh, yes, this is
Froogville's half-anniversary - 6 months old today!

Happy not-really-a-birthday-but-still-a-landmark-of-sorts, Froogville! (If I get this excited about the half-way point, imagine the celebrations when we turn 1....)

And - with the anticipated flood of well-wishers visiting the site to join in the celebrations (Caren, where are you?) - we should pass 2,000 visitors at some point today. I can hardly contain my excitement!!

One from the archives

I am a terrible hoarder - of knick-knacks, papers, memories. From time to time, circumstances force me to abandon great piles of amassed bric-a-brac and old correspondence, the residue of former lives. I've just gone through this process again.... and happened on something that had somehow survived earlier such culls (something which I thought had not survived, had long considered lost)..... and has now survived this one. A file of my correspondence with the Great Lost Love of my life, the gorgeous Aussie redhead who later became known as The Evil One. Most of this correspondence took the form of poems I wrote for her (or about the relationship, anyway). I've already posted a couple of them over on Barstool Blues last week, here and here. And now - here's another one.

The great thing about this relationship was that we got on terribly well, terribly easily together, could chat for hours about almost anything. And, for a while at least, we were living and working relatively close to each other in London, hanging out in the same sorts of places, with overlapping circles of acquaintances - so we bumped into each other by accident quite often (OK, quite a few of those 'accidents' were artfully contrived by me; and a few of them, no doubt, by her), which gave a nice relaxed, casual vibe to the affair. The bad thing about it was that, well, the one thing she would never, ever discuss was the relationship itself; so I never knew where I stood with her, was in constant fear that this would be the last time I ever saw her (or the last time I ever slept with her).

A café table apart

we meet and we talk
we sit in pavement cafés
making the most of whatever sun
the English seasons offer
drink coffee, scan the papers
watch people passing in the street

we discuss literary theory
favourite books and favourite films
and it is all very relaxed
and very comfortable
and very civilized

but all the time
I want desperately
to be in bed with you
and I do not know when
or whether that will be again

and the distance between us
is so much more
than the 18 inches it appears

The Good Cabbie (Where in the world am I? [25])

As an antidote to my two recent 'Where in the world am I?' posts, which were both uncommonly negative and rancorous, I thought I'd like to share with you a more positive impression of my adopted home, a happy moment that I experienced a few days ago.

Taxis (and, more particularly, their drivers) in this city are an easy target, a favourite griping point for both foreigners and locals. It's true that there are many annoying quirks about the service (to which I may return at a later date). Taxi drivers are notoriously surly, unaccommodating, and sometimes downright aggressive. Frequently they are hayseeds from the outer suburbs, or from even further afield in the provinces; thus they tend to speak in guttural, incomprehensible accents, and to have a very shaky grasp of the city's geography. A few I've encountered have even been worryingly shaky on the basics of car control. But these are old complaints. The city's Taxi Supervision Bureau seems to have enjoyed a significant injection of funds in recent years, and has actually started doing its job: the days when any sun-burnished migrant who could claim some familiarity with his village's tractor would be able to get a taxi licence seem to be over. And our lives are a little less colourful for it.

Of course, many of the drivers are still pretty terrible and 'bad taxi experiences' continue to be a favourite topic of conversation wherever foreigners gather together.

However, I really do think such experiences - in my own life, at any rate - are getting rarer and rarer. And they have always been counterbalanced by the occasional 'good taxi experience' - something that can lift the heart and put a smile on your face for days!

On Sunday evening I was heading up to a party in a favourite music bar in the University district to the northwest. The driver I happened to hail was pretty old, maybe the oldest one I've ever had. And he was pretty experienced too (a low number on the driver registration card is always a good sign: some of these guys have been doing the job 20 years, and really do know the city like the back of their hand; they won't boggle in apparent incomprehension when you state your destination; and sometimes they'll even find you canny shortcuts to beat some of the gridlock on the major roads). And he somehow emanated a vibe of dudeness - maybe it was the thick mane of long, silky, silver-grey hair (slightly reminiscent of the recently ousted Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi - although this is not, I think, a comparison that the driver would have found flattering); maybe it was the ample Buddha-belly; maybe it was the sly, playful glint in the corner of his eye; but something about him immediately made me think this guy was OK.

So much so that I got involved in a long bout of SMS exchanges and paid no attention to where we were going at all (you really can't afford to do this with most of the drivers here). I suffered a moment of panic when I looked up and thought that he had turned the wrong way down the main road the bar is on. My skills in the local language are extremely limited. And what usually happens in these situations is that the driver will mirror back your panic to you tenfold (one favourite ploy of theirs is to randomly mention several other parts of the city in quick succession, places which are nowhere near where you want to go, and do not sound anything like the name of the place where you want to go; this rapidly convinces you that he didn't understand the destination you gave him in the first place, and probably wouldn't know where it was anyway, even if you could speak the language perfectly). This guy merely laughed and beamed and tut-tutted, and reassured me (in words and gestures simple enough for me to understand!) that we hadn't yet reached the road I thought we had just turned on to - which I soon found to be quite true. Remarkably laidback of him.

Better was yet to come. The fare on the meter was 25*, and I only had 15 in change. He didn't seem to have change for a 100* bill (or he couldn't be bothered to use up all his change at the start of the evening, more likely), so...... he offered to waive the rest of the fare. Perhaps such gestures of generosity are commonplace on the last day of the Lunar New Year festival.... but I doubt it. I was absolutely flabbergasted! In nearly 5 years here, I have never come across such a thing before.

As it happened, just as I was stepping out of the cab, I remembered I had a big roll of 1* bills in another pocket, so I hastily gave him those - probably rather more than the 10* I owed him, in fact, so it was my turn to force some New Year hospitality on him. I hope it didn't make him feel uncomfortable (they don't have tipping here - for anything).

Someone who's never been here, who hasn't suffered dozens upon dozens of the 'bad taxi experiences', may find this tale hard to appreciate. I know it seems like a very trivial incident; but it cheered me up for the whole of the first half of this week (when almost everything else in my life was cheering me down).

Goodwill - a sponaneous and reciprocal generosity of spirit in everyday transactions - is often thin on the ground in this city. When you find it, it is to be cherished.

Turning Japanese

Since we had some snow at the weekend - quite a heavy dump between midnight and 2am on Sunday; hopefully the last of this rather schizophrenic winter we've been having - I thought I'd offer you this additional haiku this week. One of 'mine', but translated/adapted from a Japanese original.

Flying flakes of snow:
How charming they seem, and yet
Also terrible.

This is the original (romanized version; sorry, can't handle Japanese script on here!), by one of the leading female haiku poets of the 20th Century:

Kaza-hana o
Utsukushi to mite
Ushi to mite

Hoshino Tatsuko (1903-1980)

My kitchen is CRAP (Where in the world am I? [24])

The reason my kitchen got into such a mess during the comparatively minor exercise of attempting to cook 6 or 7 different dishes for 40+ people last week is that it is CRAP. Not just that I am a crap cook, or that that was a ridiculously HUGE amount of cooking to try to undertake (although these things are also true), but because my kitchen is CRAP.

The reason my kitchen is some way off being restored to wholesomeness and inhabitability (and being able to accommodate the water-meter reading lady without SHAME) is because it is CRAP. Not that I am a lazy or incompetent cleaner, or that I have been too preoccupied with other stuff for the past couple of days (although these things are also true), but because my kitchen is CRAP.

The ways in which my kitchen is crap:

1) It has very little usable cupboard space. Only one of the cupboards is eye-level, and the shelves in that are too flimsy to support very much weight. The under-counter cupboards are SO LOW as to be pretty much inaccessible to lanky old me...... and they have an alarming tendency to fill up with the disgusting sticky gunk that is produced by local cooking oil (see points 2 & 3), so I can't really use them for anything.

2) Everything is dirty and sticky and oily, and always will be. It is just impossible keep anything clean in this country, especially a kitchen. Most of the locals, I'm sure (I know) don't even try. I don't know what's in the cooking oil out here, but it seems to achieve an aerosol form very easily during cooking.... and then coats everything with a semi-solid, tar-like, superglue-like disgusting sticky gunk. It wouldn't be so bad if I had a decent extractor fan (see point 3).

3) Well, at least I have an extractor fan. I just don't think it actually extracts anything - it merely circulates the air around in the kitchen so that every exposed surface and utensil can be more effectively coated with the disgusting sticky gunk.

4) I have very little effective working space. I know my kitchen is BIG compared to most local apartments, but it's still pretty TINY by the standards of the developed world. I basically have about 18 inches between the sink and the stove that I can use for preparing stuff. (I have noticed that the locals don't generally do prep work in the kitchen: they do it in the living room, or on the balcony, or out in the yard.)

5) The water-heater doesn't work. Well, it does from time to time.... but it usually gets tired and cuts out after 20 seconds or so. This makes doing the washing-up a very frustrating and protracted process! Of course, it doesn't help that the gas-fired heater is mounted in a sealed wall-cupboard: lack of oxygen is a major cause of its pathetic performance; however, even with both cupboard doors and the adjacent window wide open, it still cuts out every 20 seconds or so.

6) When the cupboard doors above the sink are open (see point 5), I bang my head on them approximately once every 2 minutes on average.

7) My gas stove only has 2 rings. The rings only have two settings: VERY HOT and IRON-SMELTING. Even on the very lowest flame, food quickly gets burned on to the bottom of the pan; it is quite impossible to maintain a gentle simmer. On the very lowest flame setting, the flame dies quite often. So, your food is constantly alternating between not being cooked at all and being burned.

8) I only have TWO powerpoints in the kitchen - one of which is obviously required for the fridge-freezer. The remaining 7 or 8 electrical appliances are all run off extension cords and multi-socket adaptors from a single outlet. Not very safe, I know - but what are you going to do?

9) The twin sinks are both too narrow to admit any reasonable-sized cooking vessel, or any size of washing up bowl available in local shops. Hence any attempt to cram such items into them results in water being redirected all over the kitchen floor.

10) The mixer-tap above the sinks is SO LOW that it is virtually impossible to get anything into or out of the sinks without bashing them against it (it won't fold out of the way properly - and who wants to move the tap every time you put something into or take something out of the sink??).

11) The mixer-tap leaks profusely from its base (adding to the slooshing of water all over the kitchen floor problem mentioned in point 9 above), something that (like the dodgy water-heater) my landlord has repeatedly refused to fix.

12) There is no waste-disposal. This is a rice-eating country. I am a rice-eating person. We had a number of rice dishes at my party at the weekend. Despite my most rigorous efforts, there will inevitably be a few grains of rice (OK, often maybe more than a few) that adhere to the inside of cooking pans. When these get washed down the sink, the plughole will clog instantly (adding to the flooding hazard mentioned in points 9 and 11). Number of grains of rice required to completely clog the sink: 6. (Yes, I've done exhaustive research.)

13) Lighting is provided by a single neon bulb of such low wattage that it cannot be measured in whole numbers. Using this light alone, it is impossible to see whether food is cooked, whether things are burned on to the bottom of pans, whether the sink is clogged, whether washed-up plates and glasses are in fact clean, etc. At least, not without seriously damaging your eyes. Therefore all kitchen activities have to be carried out in daylight, preferably on days of strong sunshine. On occasions when I am compelled to work in the kitchen at night, I have to use a torch.

14) It is the only room in the apartment with no air-conditioning. As mentioned before (in point 3), there is also no worthwhile extractor fan, and thus I generally have to work with the window wide open. In Winter the kitchen is frost-bitingly cold; in Summer it is swelteringly hot.

I could go on some more, but I think you've got the idea.

Why is this a 'Where in the world am I?' post?? Well, you see, this is not just my bad luck in my choice of apartment. In fact, I think I have been unusually lucky in my apartment, even in my kitchen. Most apartments, most kitchens in this country have very similar failings; the majority, in fact, are probably FAR WORSE. Mind-boggling, terrifying, sobering.

The difficulty of buying stuff (Where in the world am I? [23])

My efforts at restoring my apartment to livability after the weekend's party madness have been hampered by a lack of bin bags ('garbage sacks' may be the preferred term for some of my North American friends).

I discovered rather belatedly (just as the party was getting underway - aaaarrgghh!) that I only had ONE left.

And this was not a proper one. No, it was one of the ones made for local use - which are completely bloody useless: the plastic is not the durable, thick-gauge, shiny black stuff we are used to in more 'developed' parts of the world. No, it is so THIN as to be translucent; and it comes pre-torn with dozens of micro-holes. Even if you get a freak-of-nature one that doesn't have the holes in it already when you take it off the roll, it will sprout holes as soon as you put anything heavier or more jagged than a dozen ping-pong balls in it. (Picture me doing the destruction testing on this, lugging flimsy garbage sacks filled with varying quantities of ping-pong balls up and down my stairwell until they burst at the seams and spew their contents..... All in the name of science!)

There are a few of the big international grocery chains here now - Carrefour, Walmart, etc. - but they mostly target the local customer, and don't carry a lot of expat-friendly produce. For that you have to rely on a small number of local supermarket chains that specialise in servicing overseas customers. These places are a treasure-trove of international cuisine (German pickled vegetables and Russian chocolate bars are amongst my favourite quirky indulgences - did you know that in Russia you can get a Twix bar in plain chocolate? Outstanding!), and probably deserve a post or two to themselves at some point. Hmmm, this is in danger of becoming that point. Anyhow, you can get things like kitchen paper and semi-decent bin bags (which are only infrequently or never available in the local stores) in these places from time to time. Just not at the moment, it seems.

The leading chain in this little niche market has 4 or 5 stores around the city - but you would struggle to divine that they were under common management: each one has a markedly different inventory. They don't even carry the same stock in one store with any kind of consistency or predictability. If you see something you really fancy, you have to buy it immediately - otherwise it will disappear from the shelves again for months, perhaps forever. I have been known to send SMS alerts to needy friends when a rare breakfast cereal or chocolate bar, or some other coveted foodstuff such as Maple Syrup, Vegemite, or Molasses made a fleeting appearance in one of these stores. I have been canvassing such intelligence myself over the past week or so, as I struggled to find the necessary ingredients for my planned Jamaican foodfest (coconut milk in one store, lime juice and tinned mandarins in another, ground allspice in yet a third, okra in none....).

If this randomness of stocking is an occasionally galling problem with the "foreigner-friendly" grocery stores, you can imagine how much worse it is with the local supermarkets. You can pretty much guarantee that any product you develop a liking for will be mysteriously withdrawn from sale within a few months. The churn rate of new products here is astronomical; and it is not only local manufacturers who exhibit this phenomenon. Shortly after I came to live here, I discovered a local product engagingly called in English 'Ice Fruit Cream', which was basically a milkshake in a Tetrapak carton - absolutely delicious, especially the mango one. Now this was a good product, and I saw lots of other people buying it too, foreigners and locals. After 3 or 4 months, it completely disappeared. The American snack manufacturer Lay's for some months put out a potato chip flavoured with hot chilli (not very hot, but just enough to be interesting). Again, a fantastic product, and - you would think - very much geared to local tastes; hot food is big here. For a while, the stores seemed to be carrying way more of this than any other flavour of chip (forgive the lapse into American English here - yes, I should call them crisps.... but this is an American product, for heaven's sake), and I saw a lot of packets being bought. Then..... abruptly discontinued. Quite baffling.

It teaches us the Buddhist virtue of non-attachment, I suppose.

Anyway, I started this little stream-of-consciousness rant by reflecting that I still haven't finished clearing the trash out of my apartment from the weekend because I don't have anything to put it in. The three nearest local supermarkets all appear to have discontinued carrying even the uselessly thin bin bags they used to sell; and the expat supermarkets are also mysteriously out of stock of this valuable item (the proper kind, that is).

Is it a conspiracy? Perhaps so..... but beyond the inevitable sense of being put-upon, my accustomed paranoia is letting me down rather today: even my fertile brain struggles to produce any convincing theory to explain this latest inconvenience in my life.

Mastering the 'new technology'

You have to sympathise with those guys in IT support. Of course, they do spend most of their day hiding in their little office and not answering their phone (and playing online games a lot, one suspects; and scouring the Internet for silliness like this); but when they do 'answer the call', they are usually unfailingly patient, even with the very dumbest of their fellow humans.

Here's a very funny little video clip showing the earlier history of this noble profession (going back, oh, about 800 years or so). In 'foreign' (somehow that seems to make it funnier), but with English sub-titles.

Norwegian comedy - who'd have thought it?!

Thanks to my friend Amanda for unearthing this gem.

Traffic report - belated blog stats for Jan, Feb

I had to go back to the UK for a funeral in January, so there were 10 days when I didn't post at all, and a week or two on each side of that where the posting was only patchy. As a result I 'lost' a number of my regular readers (who are few enough anyway). I have recently been making attempts to advertise my blogs' existence to a wider circle of people, but it remains to be seen whether this will have any effect.

Despite the unfortunate interruption of 'normal service', I did somehow manage to maintain a fairly respectable average of posting: 29 posts in January, 32 in February, a little over 6,000 words in each month. Visitors numbered around 400 in each month.

Curiously enough, Froogville here has recently been outstripping its more alcoholic brother Round-The-World Barstool Blues by 20-30 hits per week; for the first few months of their existence their stats were identical, people were visiting both sites together. I am curious as to why this shift might have happened. I really don't think Froogville has become more interesting - or Barstool Blues more boring - of late!

And - if the 'visitor map' provided by Statcounter is to be believed (I am somewhat sceptical!) - I have been looked at by people in Poland, Nigeria, Vietnam, and Washington State. I don't know anyone in these places!! I hope the next time someone from such an exotic locale looks in they'll leave me a comment to let me know who they are.

Thought (motto?) of the week

"I could be flexible, but then I'd be denying you that pleasure."

A happy discovery

In the haze of after-party, I am in a mood to try to make resolutions, set new goals and directions for my life. Casting around for a poem to post, I happen on this - one of my favourite poets, in one of my favourite anthologies, yet I'd never seen it before.... an amazing oversight!

I absolutely love this, especially the last line.

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)

RE-DIRECT - the 'Blog Party' is over THERE.......

Today I am throwing a party. I am attempting to cook Jamaican food for a projected 50-60 people. I am having a nervous breakdown.

And I am going to try to ask my guests (and anyone else who happens by in cyberspace) to join in a 'live blog' over on my other site, Round-The-World Barstool Blues.

Please go and take a look - http://thebarprop.blogspot.com/2007/03/were-jamming-yes-blog-party-is-on.html. The party runs from approximately 8am-2pm GMT, but any time over the weekend will be fine.....

Hope to hear from you.....

More Yeats, and....

'The Wild Swans' is a fine poem, but - soppy romantic that I am - I rather prefer this:


When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)


I adore that last line - that's always how I feel, what I think of, after being rejected by a woman!

There's an interesting comparison to be made with this much harsher (more realistic?) piece by the great Tom Lehrer:


When You Are Old And Gray

Since I still appreciate you
Let's find love while we may
Because I know I'll hate you
When you are old and gray

So say you love me here and now
I'll make the most of that
Say you love and trust me
For I know you'll disgust me
When you're old and getting fat



An awful debility, a lessened utility
A loss of mobility is a strong possibility
In all probability I'll lose my virility
And you your fertility and desirability
And this liability of total sterility
Will lead to hostility and a sense of futility
So let's act with agility while we still have facility
For we'll soon reach senility and lose the ability



Your teeth will start to go, dear
Your waist will start to spread
In twenty years or so, dear
I'll wish that you were dead

I'll never love you then at all
The way I do today
So please remember
When I leave in December
I told you so in May

Answering a poetry request

I have been asked about the Yeats poem (possibly his most famous) that I mentioned the other day - so here it is (for those of you too lazy to look it up on Plagiarist!).

I have long been fan of Yeats. Once, in fact, I trekked up to Primrose Hill in North London to take photographs of a house that he used to live in, commemorated by one of the famous 'Blue Plaques' - not for myself, but for an American penpal, a guy I'd just happened to get chatting to over a game of pool in a bar in New Jersey a dozen or more years ago, discovering that Yeats was a passion we shared (an incident I recounted over on my brother-blog Barstool Blues a while back).

The Wild Swans At Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)

Another topical haiku

As the 'new year' celebrations reach their climax in the Far East, we're all starting to feel a little weary and shell-shocked....

Smoke thickens the air;
Warzone-shredded nerves cringing;
Firework overkill.