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Place names…

There’s a really strange element to traveling across Northern Ireland, in that almost every place name is familiar as the site of a bombing, or a murder or some kind of act of sectarian violence or political significance from the last 30 years. It’s like visiting southern california and driving past signs for Mulholland Drive and Sunset Blvd, only instead of feeling like you’re on a film set, you feel like you’re a bystander on a news broadcast. It’s a strange thing with place names – like Columbine or Waco, Darfur or Wounded Knee – they cease to be the name of a town, and become shorthand for disaster, for tragedy, for crazy behaviour.

It’s one of the interesting things about watching foreign news – or spending a lot of time in another country – you find a whole new set of significant place names. In the UK we’ve got Dunblane – site of a school shooting, Aberfan – site of a coal-slag-heap that collapsed on a school in the late 60s and wiped out an entire generation of kids there, Toxteth – area of Bristol where riots took place in the 70s. Brixton – more riots; Broadwater Farm – yet more riots; Lockerbie – the place where the plane blown up by Libyan terrorists crashed in Scotland… the list goes on. You drive past the road signs and they stick moreso than the rest of the small towns and council estates that fly past on long journeys…

Northern Ireland is littered with them. The sad thing is that it gets to the point where the feeling is a non-specific one – any place name you recognise must be the site of a tragedy, when in reality it could be that you heard it mentioned in a song, or had a pen-friend that lived there in your teens…

it’s been really lovely to spend a few days with lovely people in Belfast – the delightful Dr Higgins is a fantastic tour-guide to the psyche of the place (he hosted the amazing panel discussion at Greenbelt with the representatives from both sides that was so controversial they couldn’t release the tape of it). He’s a wise wise man, and I realise after just a couple of days how little I know about the history of what has gone on over there in the last half a century. I mean, I know the stuff that gets reported. I’ve read articles and interviews, watched the documentaries. But I’ve not even scratched the surface…

Belfast is one of those places that is now forever going to be a benevolent place in my mind – you know, those towns where the only people you know from there are lovely, so you subconsciously think that everyone there is delightful and friendly and wonderful? Nashville’s like that too. And Edinburgh is all about creative people being wacky on the royal mile… except it isn’t really, it’s just how you file things according to your experience. So Belfast is a place of community and parties and good food and great conversation and lovely lovely people and Neil Diamond, Bond Themes, hopes for the New Year, lots of hugs, a place to realise just how pathetic my knowledge of film is and how much catching up I’ve got to do, a place to walk along the beach in the freezing cold talking about child development and irving Goffman, Kierkagaard and the essence of self.

So at least one place has changed ‘Belfast’ is no longer just the site of orange marches and bomb scares. I’ll smile every time it’s mentioned on the news now.

Oh, and Gareth, if you haven’t written 2000 words today, you’ve no business reading blogs – get back to work. :o) x

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Tough times for the ecomonkey traveller…

So surely after the ferry troubles on the way here, I deserved an easy ride home? oops.

I’m sat in the departure lounge at Dun… dun… Dun something – no idea how to spell the name of the ferry port just outside Dublin. it’s pronounced ‘Leary’. Anyway, I’m here, the ferry’s about three hours late, the weather’s to blame, which means there’s an odds-on chance I’ll puke again on the boat… It’s certainly testing my resolve to do this any time I come to Ireland… Nah, it’s not that bad, I just end up sitting around a lot. it’s not an efficient use of time, that’s for sure, but it’s still better than taking yet more short-haul flights.

So for tne next couple of hours I’ll be here in the ferry terminal. Thankfully, this is a much quicker actual crossing than the car ferry, and hopefully there’ll be train to london not too long after we get into Holyhead.

in the meantime, I’m being treated to piped music in the form of some late 80s hits compilation – Dub Be Good To Me, anybody? How about some Technotronic? Oh yes, just what’s needed at a time like this, music from the motion picture soundtrack ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’. Cowa-fucking-bunga.

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, bloglings. I hope you’re having fun, spending it with people you care about, and taking the time to reflect on the year gone and look forward to the year ahead.

2006 has been a really interesting year. Some good stuff, some not so good. 2007 looks like being a year of transition and change for so many people I know, and I hope and pray for all of them that those are changes for the better, changes that enable them to live more deliberately, more fully and to see their own potential for changing the world around them.

I hope you enjoyed the parties… onward and upwards into the new year, friends. xx

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Saddam…

So Saddam Hussein has been executed. Tried in an Iraqi court for one of the many crimes he was clearly very very guilty of, and then sentenced to death. Killed for killing. The act of killing brutalises the killer, whether that be the government who sanction it, or a murderer who slaughters in cold blood. Iraqi democracy hasn’t been promoted through this, Saddam hasn’t ‘paid’ for his crimes, none of those he committed such atrocious acts against have received any restitution, and to delight in someone’s death is to allow yourself to be drawn into the brutality of their actions… Should be forgive Saddam? That’s not for me to say, as someone personally unaffected, but as someone who thinks the death penalty is a profoundly immoral law, I can’t possibly take any pleasure in his death, and am sickened by the celebratory way it’s been reported…

I was initially also sickened by the comment from the government, reported on the BBC site , but as the full quote taken from the CNN site below shows, she was grossly misrepresented on the BBC site…

“I welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein has been tried by an Iraqi court for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed against the Iraqi people. He has now been held to account. [the next bit was missed from the BBC site] The British Government does not support the use of the death penalty, in Iraq or anywhere else… We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation.”

If you miss the second half of that, it’s a completely different quote…

Anyway, Saddam’s execution is no cause for celebration, but it may be one for reflection for those who still see killing as a suitable punishment for killing. I hope and pray that the predicted upsurge in violence in Iraq is a misjudgement… As with so many of these things, there’s no pleasure at all in the doom-mongers on the left being right. I so hope they are wrong. People being killed and injured is never a good thing, least of all to prove a point.

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The travel-pain of the ecomonkey

So, as y’all know, I avoided a short-haul flight by taking the train/boat/train route to Belfast. Train, fine. Boat, hideous – the roughest crossing I’ve ever had, bar none. A veritable storm which had me retching into a sickbag, and falling asleep on the floor, unable to crawl back up onto my chair. The food was also appalling.

Still, I’m here now, with the lovely and wonderful Gareth, looking forward to a great New Year. Just don’t ask me to go on any boat-rides over the weekend…

On the bits of the journey where I wasn’t asleep or puking, I watched ‘I Know I’m Not Alone‘ again – the Michael Franti film, and read a big chunk of ‘As Used On The Famous Nelson Mandela‘ by Mark Thomas – an INCREDIBLE book. Vital viewing, vital reading. Just don’t try it on an Irish ferry in a storm.

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They say it's your birthday…

…it’s my birthday too, yeah!

Hurrah! Happy birthday me. 34 eh? Well, I made it to the big 3-4… er, OK.

Up v late today – first day for quite a few that I haven’t been woken up by nieces who think that jumping on uncle Stevie’s head at 8am is REALLY funny.

So how will I celebrate? By sorting out my accounts, of course! How else? Really ought to do some practice too, as I haven’t picked up a bass in almost a week. And then hopefully a hastily organised curry this evening… Yay!

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Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas y’all – I hope those of you that celebrate Christmas are having a fantastic day, spending it with people you love, and reflecting on the things that matter in your life.

For those that don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope you’re having a lovely time anyway!

I’m spending it in Somerset with my family, which is rather fun – it’s the first time I’ve been around kids on Christmas morning for quite a while, and it definitely takes on a whole other angle… My usual ‘grown up’ Christmas is usually just a day to relax and think about the birth of Jesus – this is the first year for ages that I’ve missed the Christmas eve and Christmas day services at St Luke’s, and it feels kinda strange, but it is lovely to see the kids down here.

Just watching Robert Beckford’s fascinating ‘Secret Family Of Jesus’ documentary – his program last year on ‘Who Wrote The Bible?’ was probably the best bit of TV I’ve ever seen on Christmas day, and this one’s pretty damn fine too.

Peace, in the name of the Prince of Peace (don’t you just wish that all those world leaders who claim to be Christians would remember that they are supposed to be following the Prince Of Peace?) xx

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Don't forget – Juliet Turner at the Purcell Room tonight…

Another heads up for tonight’s gig at the Purcell Room – Juliet Turner, Boo Hewerdine and Brian Houston – a better singer/songwriter line-up you’d be very hard pushed to find. I’ll be there, so come and say hi and feel oh-so-festive at this most marvellous of gigs. There are still tickets available – details here – and look, you can go straight from work and catch Tomorrow’s Warriors in the foyer for free before the gig!

There is no better way to celebrate the friday before christmas than a day sorting out your tax accounts for the previous year, followed by a Juliet Turner gig, unless you left out the taxes bit…

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more great thinking and writing on Climate Change…

No, that heading isn’t me bigging myself up for some super new poorly researched fanciful idea that I’ve come up with, it’s a reference to MarkLynas.org – Mark is the New Statesman’s chief writer on all matters climate change-related. He’s a great writer, and a very honest blogger by the looks of things.

I’m sure you’ve all by now book-marked monbiot.com for George’s weekly stuff about the same subject. Put Mark’s in alongside it… great stuff, and hopefully some inspiration to change the way we live a little…

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