Lockdown Time

Elastic Time
Time seems to exist in a multiverse in these times of Covid-19 Lockdown. I seem to have all the time in the world. And time passes like whispers in the wind. Is it April? Is it June? Was that Friday? Is this Saturday? Have I had breakfast? Did I sleep at all? Am I who I have always been? Or am I, my city, my country, my continent, my planet changing irrevocably? There have been personal earthquakes in recent times – some obvious political ones, but also natural disasters (The Year of the Flood) and personal convulsions (Beginning to Look Back). In my handwritten book of Helpful Life Quotations I can usually find something that fits most scenarios: in this case, Andy Warhol’s They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Distraction Techniques
I thought this peculiar “Lockdown” would be a perfect time to do a hundred jobs still undone: declutter shelves and cupboards, sort out books and photographs, tidy the cellar, finish writing my trilogy of novels. Instead I seem to have a problem with concentration and with not being able to stick to the easiest of plans. Freshly-crucial activities have risen to become weirdly compelling: planning shopping like a military campaign, watching Box Sets on TV, doing jigsaws, cooking, baking, cleaning, walking, Skyping, Zooming, reading, clapping, handwashing, watching and rewatching parody songs, witty memes and entertaining tiktoks. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wisely said Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time” is to say “I don’t want to.” I’m known for spending (wasting?) time imaginatively dreaming of time-travelling, lurking in Shakespeare’s language or being absorbed in the fantasy worlds of Narnia, Middle Earth, Pern, Westeros, Marvel Comics, Robin Hood and King Arthur. Why haven’t I spent more time in Wonderland during Lockdown? Why does making a Victoria Sponge suddenly seem so important?

Luxury of circumstances
In Lockdown I have the absolute privilege and luxury of living in a great house with plenty of resources. So when needed, I can marshall support easily. I can bathe in forests, stride across meadows and walk along the River Aire within minutes. I know other people are facing Lockdown under enormous pressures with vulnerable dependents, restricted movements, money worries, job worries, underlying mental and/or physical illnesses, the demands of children out of school, genuine fears about what tomorrow will bring. The distraction techniques of the latest tiktok don’t distract everybody. The endless summers of childhood only seemed endless because the “normal” world was operating within “normal” parameters and “normal” September would come around soon enough. Charles Darwin wrote: A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. Well, Darwin, my old mucker, as my bowl says, The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. If Lockdown has taught us anything, it is that Time can feel Elastic but Lockdown means nothing to Time. This too shall pass.

Garden Rooms at York Gate Garden

An idyllic acre in Adel, Leeds
An Emily birthday trip in July included a visit to York Gate Garden which, I thought, contained flavours of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. It’s a quirky and memorable oasis where Sally and Emily could revel in their creative thoughts about gardening. The place was founded by the (late) members of the Spencer family in 1951 and over subsequent decades developed into its current format with a dedicated staff of gardeners and volunteers. Perennial (a horticultural charity) have looked after the site since 1994.

Garden Rooms
I’d heard the phrase “garden rooms” before and finally fully appreciated it here. Hedges of yew and beech separate small areas which are strangely distinctive, so you feel you are visiting a series of gardens rather than just one. There are formal sections, streams, places to rest, views to inspire wonder and suddenly, a meadow. Well worth feasting your senses for a couple of hours (and feeding your belly if you have time to spend at the café.)

Tolkien, Shakespeare, Others and You

Private audience with a theatrical knight

Legendary icon
It was hard to stop smiling in astonishment and wonder at the sight and sound of an almost-octogenarian’s tour de force one-man-show at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry tonight. I attended with my long-time Shakespeare buddy, Michael Thompson, who’d badgered the box office for returns and who’d not only got the triumphant call – “yes, we have two seats for you” – but, it turns out in a miraculous alignment of the stars, that one of the seats was sponsored by Sir Ian McKellen so we were invited backstage afterwards to hear the legendary knight throw out some extra choice anecdotes and bestow his iconic glory in a private audience. I’d seen him in a backstage environment before with a group of students during the second run of Waiting for Godot in London (see picture below.) I saw him in that play with two casts, playing opposite both Yorkshireman, Patrick Stewart and the late, great, Roger Rees, as well as superb supporting actors – as witnessed below with Ronald Pickup and Matthew Kelly.

Saw this production twice with two casts but one McKellen....

Over 80 venues across GB
Sir Ian McKellen’s stamina, memory, bravura acting techniques and vocal command are, live in the theatre, marvellous to behold. This particular show started as a one-off review and then expanded into an 80th birthday celebration of a tour of upwards of 80 venues across Great Britain. The profits from each performance are donated to local charities that are either drama or education or community based. The audience become the second character as he drags people onstage, invites shout-outs of answers and the names of Shakespeare plays. But more importantly he controls the audience mood as adeptly as any mind-altering wizard. The gossipy anecdotes are hilarious, the moving tales of his childhood and political activism draw us into a circle of quiet intimacy and his geographical range of acting experiences take us around the globe from Bolton to Yorkshire to the North-East to Nottingham to London to Stratford-upon-Avon, up mountains in New Zealand and to the throne room of Buckingham Palace. Wondrous!

Explanation for this pic in paragraph below...

Tolkien, Shakespeare, T S Eliot, G M Hopkins and more
At the flick of an eyebrow he moved from a doddering, ancient Agatha Christie character to a gauche and youthful Romeo. He mugged mercilessly in pantomime mode as Widow Twankey and recalled the ignition of his passion for live acting when seeing a performance of Peter Pan. He gave us a preview of his forthcoming film performance as Gus, the Theatre Cat in T S Eliot’s and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats (directed by Tom Hooper and adapted by Lee Hall) and dextrously delivered Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry in the finale to the first half. Just when it seemed impossible to admire him more, out poured forth from the depth of his soul one of his party pieces, the famous speech from Sir Thomas More (probably the only example of Shakespeare’s own handwriting which I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog – click here) – the speech which appeals to our shared humanity in how we should treat refugees. A memorable moment at each performance was his reading from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and the invitation onto stage of an audience member to wield Gandalf’s mighty sword, Glamdring. Above you can see my dear friend, Amy Lancelot (Creative Education Manager at Leeds Playhouse), receiving the polaroid outcome of just such an encounter at a later performance.

Some of Sir Ian McKellen's Film and TV roles

McKellen TV and Film performances that made an impact on me over the years
1970: Edward II in Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
1976: Macbeth in Macbeth by William Shakespeare
1981: DH Lawrence in Priest of Love by Harry T Moore adapted by Alan Plater
1982: Walter in Channel 4’s Walter by David Cook
1985: Sir Andrew Charleson in Plenty by David Hare
1989: John Profumo in Scandal by Michael Thomas
1995: Amos Starkadder in Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons adapted by     Malcolm Bradbury
1995: Richard III in Richard III by William Shakespeare
1998: James Whale in Gods and Monsters by Christopher Bram adapted by Bill   Condon
1998: Kurt Dussander in Apt Pupil by Stephen King adapted by Brandon Boyce
2000: Magneto (Eric Lensherr) in X-Men by Tom DeSanto & Bryan Singer (a role he   went on to play in X-Men 2, The Last Stand and Days of Future Past)
2001: Gandalf in Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (a role he went on to   play in a further five films and numerous audio projects)
2006 “Sir Ian McKellen” in Extras, created by Ricky Gervais
2015: Sherlock Holmes in Mr Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, book by Mitch Cullin   adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher
2015: Norman in The Dresser (with Anthony Hopkins)

A fraction of Sir Ian McKellen's stage appearances

McKellen Stage performances I have seen
1979: Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night and Andrei in Chekhov’s Three Sisters on   tour at Dewsbury Town Hall (September)
1988: Acting Shakespeare at Wakefield Theatre Royal (22nd May)
1989: Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon
1997: Captain Hook in Peter Pan at the National Theatre in London
1998: Dr Dorn in Chekhov’s The Seagull at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
1998: Garry Essendine in Coward’s Present Laughter at West Yorkshire Playhouse,   Leeds
1998: Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
2007: King Lear in Trevor Nunn’s production of Shakespeare’s King Lear and Sorin   in Chekhov’s The Seagull at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon
2009: Estragon in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at Theatre Royal, Haymarket in   London
2017: King Lear in Jonathan Munby’s production of Shakespeare’s King Lear (in a   CinemaLive broadcast)

Easter 2019: the Ian McKellen bonus....

Careless People

Bruce Dern, Sam Waterson, Mia Farrow, Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby

Ralph, Sam, Tom and Daisy
There are some moments in reading that caused me such profound and deep shocks of instinctive understanding that they emerge regularly in the way I see the world:

• Ralph weeping at the end of Golding’s Lord of the Flies: “for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart”
• Sam, because of his innate goodness, unable to kill Gollum on the slopes of Mount Doom in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: “he could not strike this thing lying in the dust, forlorn, ruinous, utterly wretched. He himself, though only for a little while, had borne the Ring, and now dimly he guessed the agony of Gollum’s shrivelled mind and body, enslaved to that Ring, unable to find peace or relief ever in life again.”
• The final verdict on Tom and Daisy Buchanan in F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Andy Serkis, Sean Astin and Elijah Wood in The Lord of the Rings

Brexit Day Comes & Goes
After voting Remain back in 2016, I have been thoroughly expecting to Leave because I am a fan of democracy, although am now ready for – and believe we should have – a fairer form of proportional representation. But, against my political instinct, I respect the result of the Referendum, however much I think it was skewed by misinformation and however much I resent the 13 million who never turned out to vote. I DO think Leave should have meant Leave on March 29th 2019. But the government since 2010 has been, I believe, incapable of managing a whole range of serious matters (Welfare, Housing, Health, Education, the Environment, Criminal Justice, Foreign Policy, Industrial Investment, Brexit…. You name it!) And, it also seems that, under Theresa May’s leadership, the government (cabinet? Just Theresa May herself?) has been quite tone-deaf.

James Aubrey in Lord of the Flies

Feeling like Ralph and Sam
Today I feel like Ralph weeping for the inexplicable evil in the human race. I feel like Sam staring at the Gollum of the UK and pitying its broken, wretched shriveled reputation, waiting to plunge into the volcano….

• Do I blame John Bercow or parliament for the mess we are now it? NO. They are following historical, legal precedents and are open to find a way through the impasse.
• Do I blame the DUP? NO. They are consistently sticking to their principles (unlike many others), principles dating back centuries to protect their hard-won place in the United Kingdom.
• Do I blame Labour or Conservative parties en masse? NO. Because the votes are volatile and split both parties – the parties are just as divided as the country.
• Do I blame Leave voters? NO. They voted democratically.
• Do I blame Remain voters? NO. They voted democratically.
• Do I blame the 13 million voters who COULD have voted in the Referendum but chose not to? NO, although I wish we made voting mandatory – for historical and citizenship reasons.
• Do I blame the EU? NO. They want to get on with other priorities, for example passing the regulations that will stop rich people avoiding paying tax…. (Oooh, surely that didn’t motivate some Brexiter campaigners?)
  

Which Toms & Daisys do I blame?
Where does the blame lie for the current UK debacle? These are the (alphabetical) names of the people I think are responsible for where we are now (and they’re not all Conservatives and they’re not all politicians): Aaron Banks, Stephen Barclay, David (Porky) Cameron, Nick Clegg, Jeremy Corbyn, Dominic Cummings, Paul Dacre, David Davis, Matthew Elliott, Nigel Farage, Liam Fox, Daniel Hannan, Kate Hoey, Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom, Brandon Lewis, George Osborne, Dominic Raab, Theresa Mayn’t, Patrick McLoughlin, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Roland Rudd, Will Straw, Gisela Stuart. (If you don’t know who they are, look them up.)
Vast carelessness
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Should I blame?
Should I blame Nick Clegg for forming an unnecessary coalition in 2010 allowing Cameron/Osborne and the architects of austerity to ferment the cruelty and discontent that led to the atmosphere resulting in Brexit? Should I blame the sloppy social media moderation that allowed manipulation, lies and misinformation to spread during the Referendum campaign? Should I blame the Media for stirring up alt-right finger-pointing? Should I blame hardline Brexiters (from both main parties)? Should I blame Labour for being vague about their oppositional policies and tactics? Should I blame Theresa May and her advisers for arrogantly calling a general election and recklessly losing the government’s majority? Should I blame Theresa May for not forming a cross-party Brexit cabinet after triggering Article 50 – a Brexit cabinet who could negotiate a deal that would pass through parliament? (All of these factors attract blame, in my opinion.) What happens next? As I’ve said before, Time Will Tell. I would love to see a History book from 2119 and read the paragraph summing up the events of the past two years. I am 100% convinced that neither David Cameron nor Theresa May will appear in the top 50 UK Prime Ministers of all time….

One can only hope....

Puck's Glen

Somewhere over the rainbow
Our first day in our holiday house in Inveruel began with a rainbow over the loch (second photo in previous post) before setting off with backpacks containing a fine picnic into the wilds of western Scotland. Five go on an adventure….

Puck’s Glen
Puck’s Glen felt like the route to Rivendell in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. And it had the same name as a well-known character from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. So the magical features of both those works of fantasty fiction infiltrated my mind as we crossed wooden bridges, climbed moss-covered stones, gaped at picturesque waterfalls and ascended to a high ridge overlooking a panoramic view of this section of the Argyll Forest Park. At times you had to pinch yourself that you were in Scotland and not in a tropical rain forest with the proliferation of wild (and sometimes giant) ferns and with the rivulets and cascades appearing on every bend, bouncing off ledges, tumbling round corners. Douglas firs towered above us along the way, so emerging on the high ridge at the top of this dramatic gorge, Puck’s Glen, felt like quite an achievement to start our week in Scotland.

Too many words?

How long does it take to write a novel?

Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights is a one-off. It is a unique achievement, experimental and audacious, surprising when you take time to read it more than once, and is in my opinion, without doubt, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Being about a third of the way through completing the first draft of my first novel (almost a year in terms of thinking about it and seven months after starting to commit words to paper) it is salutary that Emily Brontë took only nine months from start to finish to create Wuthering Heights (October 1845 to June 1846.) My only excuse is that Emily had fewer options in daily living to distract her, and it is clear from her biography that many elements of Wuthering Heights had their seeds sown earlier in childhood games and popular reading (see my blog about her life here.)

Who should see draft novels?

I’ve reached 55,232 words in Rhenium Tales Book One: Raydan Wakes and my personal target word-count before anyone reads the full story is 85,000. Daughter Emily has given me astute and friendly critical feedback on Chapter One and that experience was valuable but provoked plenty of minor and major revisions so I know there’ll be a lot to do after draft one is complete. I’m also determined to have Book Two and most of Book Three finished before I try to get an agent or a publisher or a self-publisher. If I never get there I will simply see it as an absorbing retirement activity and carry on regardless. Did Emily Brontë ever show Wuthering Heights to anyone other than her sisters? They famously read aloud in the Parsonage lounge whilst walking round the central table.

How long should a novel be?

Emily Brontë’ wrote Wuthering Heights in 107,945 words.
Number of words in selected novels shorter than Wuthering Heights:

• Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird: 100,388
• JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit: 95,022
• JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: 77,325
• Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: 63,766 (the nearest thing in this list to my novel)
• William Golding’s Lord of the Flies: 59,900
• Tony Johnson’s Raydan Wakes (!so far): 55,232

Too many notes?

In Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus the Emperor Josef famously (and amusingly) tells Mozart that The Marriage of Figaro has “too many notes.” This apparently was a contemporary complaint about Mozart shared by more than just the Emperor; other quotations from the time reveal many critics thought Mozart was overdoing it: "too strongly spiced"; "impenetrable labyrinths"; "bizarre flights of the soul"; "overloaded and overstuffed". Can a novel have too many words? Yes, indeed. Some novels do indeed have too many words – it’s possible you could direct that accusation at Wuthering Heights but only with a 21st Century lens because tastes for prose have changed. We’re keener on leaner now, so the redrafting and editing process now is usually about taking stuff out, not adding stuff in. I for one, though, am glad that Emily Brontë never had a serious editor because they would have probably done what most film versions of Wuthering Heights do and stop the story at the half way point, missing what I think is the heart of Wuthering Heights…. (the subject of my next blog.)

For me the heart of Wuthering Heights is the oft-neglected Hareton Earnshaw....

Would Shakespeare want us to leave Europe?

Great Britons

Shakespeare is one of the greatest Britons ever to have lived. He seems to be in the Top 20 of most lists I can find and in the huge survey conducted by the BBC in 2002 he sat comfortably at Number Five (after Winston Churchill, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Diana Princess of Wales and Charles Darwin.) Other writers who (in my opinion) make the list without question are Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles Dickens – I think of Those Three as the writers who forever transformed Poetry (Chaucer), Drama (Shakespeare) and Prose (Dickens.) Nudging them (in alphabetical order) I would include the following writers for a variety of reasons: Jane Austen, William Blake, the Brontës, Agatha Christie, Caryl Churchill, CS Lewis, JK Rowling, GB Shaw, JRR Tolkien, Oscar Wilde and William Wordsworth and there are, of course, many more vying for attention. We have a truly great national tradition of writing that changed the reading and literary habits of the world, as did, I think, the ones I’ve mentioned.

Great Britons

Would Shakespeare, as a Great Briton, vote Remain or Brexit on June 23rd 2016?

I saw Cymbeline at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre recently and (one of) the villain(s) in that strange Romance is the thuggish Cloten who is definitely a Brexiter as he stands up to the Roman Empire by refusing to pay them tribute:

                            Britain is
A world by itself; and we will nothing pay
For wearing our own noses.

So is Cloten speaking for Shakespeare when he wants Britain to stand alone without paying out any money to any foreign power for trade rights and protection?

Current RSC Cloten Marcus Griffiths singing to Bethan Cullinane's Imogen, Anton Yelchin in the 2014 film of Cymbeline and Thomas Gorrebeeck's portrayal as the nationalist Cloten

Confirmation bias

As in the whole of Shakespeare’s work you can usually find a contradictory opinion because Shakespeare seems to see both sides of every human dilemma. The history play King John ends with lines that might well echo Cloten’s sentiments:

This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror….
….Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.

The King of France and two King John Philip the Bastards: Pippa Nixon and Rikki Lawton

But these words are spoken by a cynical (though appealing and persuasive) character, Philip the Bastard. Conversely,  in the final scene of the more popular and potentially patriotic history play, Henry V, Shakespeare writes about England and France ceasing their hatred and hopes

                     ....this dear conjunction (will)    
Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord
In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance
His bleeding sword 'twixt England and fair France.

So does Shakespeare wants us to stand alone (“England to itself”) or work together in a group (with “neighbourhood and Christian-like accord”)? Perhaps we hear what we want to hear when we listen to Shakespeare, just as we tend to read newspapers or go to websites that already confirm what our opinions are.

Henry V with Donato Giancola's painting of Agincourt, Olivier and Branagh - a Shakespeare king as patriotic hero, senseless warmonger or bringer of peace to Europe - potentially all three

European settings

As well as locations throughout England, Shakespeare presented many European locations on the Jacobethan stage, even if there is no evidence that Shakespeare ever travelled abroad. In the plays we travel to Actium, Agincourt, Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, Bohemia, Cyprus, Elsinore, Ephesus, Florence, Harfleur, Illyria, Inverness, Mantua, Marseilles, Messina, Milan, Mytilene, Navarre, Orleans, Padua, Pentapolis, Philippi, Rome, Roussillon, Sicily, Tharsus, Troy, Tyre, Venice, Verona, Vienna. (Those places cover Europe and north Africa pretty widely: modern-day Austria, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Macedonia, Turkey, Scotland, Spain, Wales, Yugoslavia.) Shakespeare’s imaginative landscape was definitely outward-looking.

from Shakespeare Fangirl's Pinterest page

Think well, love well, sleep well

Curry capital

Bradford has been named curry capital of the year for the fifth year in a row and the Autumn nights and approaching winter means that going for a curry is a great way of celebrating. Zaara’s remains my favourite place to have a curry in Saltaire for two very good reasons (Edited 2020 - Zaara's has sadly now closed): I can walk there; and, more importantly, the dishes we choose are always cooked to perfection. Recent research has shown that curry may be actually good for you, easing arthritis and even affording some possible protection from Alzheimer’s. What’s not to like?

The glory of Zaara's in Saltaire

Tolkien’s wisdom

Hobbits famously had two breakfasts during their morning routines and, since I’ve blogged about the joys and dangers of drink, it feels that the time is ripe for talking about the wonders and glories of tasty food. Tolkien wrote: “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." Too true. And Virginia Woolf, a writer very different from Tolkien, concurred: "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." 

Luxury Carriage
In an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun Dick Solomon expressed one of my default justifications of why I enjoy eating so much: “Why should I be concerned about gaining weight? My body is just a carriage that carries my brain around. And my brain deserves a smooth luxurious ride.”  There is Shakespearean precedent too, to celebrate plump people.  In Julius Caesar, Caesar himself says:

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:    
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;    
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

Joys of Food and Drink

Retirement Pleasure

Eating cheaply but well, shopping carefully and trying new recipes – these are all retirement activities that are new to me. But after all these years of over-eating, I wonder whether or not I could become healthier by losing some of my luxury carriage that is surplus to requirements. I’ve been doing some research into men’s attitude to weight loss, made notes, devised a spreadsheet and bought some cheap dumbbells. (Typical man, I think, reminiscent of Mr Toad's hobbies.) I’m hopeful I won’t become a bore about it because I am a foodie through and through – but I’ll try and keep a track of my progress – or lack of it – and let you know how it goes….

Mr Toad from The Wind in the Willows who enjoys new hobbies....

Man's Dominion

Graffiti in Dunedin

What is “cultural cringe”?

New Zealand tourist guides write about the “cultural cringe,” a self-deprecating Kiwi inferiority complex – the idea that everywhere else must be better!!?? Yet my reading about North Island and South Island suggests to me that New Zealand punches way above its weight. Three activist facts alone suggest a country with robust politics where tradition is not hidebound:

New Zealand suffragettes and the sinking of the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior

• New Zealand was the first country to offer universal female and male suffrage (in 1893)
• Between March 2005 and August 2006 New Zealand became the only country in the world in which all the highest offices in the land were simultaneously occupied by women (Head of State, Governor-General, Prime Minister, Speaker and Chief Justice)
• In the wake of the French bombing of the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, in 1985, a flotilla of private New Zealand yachts occupied the Pacific Ocean where France were intending to carry out nuclear tests – radical and brave!

Prince William participates in a Maori greeting

An idealised alternative England?

In shorthand media mythology, New Zealand promotes Commonwealth values of democracy, fairness, tolerance, equal opportunities, sustainable development and environmental guardianship. Commonwealth values are indeed inherent, but so is weird comedy in the form of the Flight of the Conchords (Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement.) Tolkien might be English but it took a New Zealander, Peter Jackson, to realise successful movie versions of his works. Director Jane Campion and actors Russell Crowe and Sam Neill are three more examples of why “cultural cringe” is unecessary.

Sam Neill, Jane Campion, Peter Jackson, Flight of the Conchords, Russell Crowe

Other notable cultural figures and history makers include: Manu Bennett (actor), Eleanor Catton (novelist), Richard Curtis (writer), Alan Dale (actor), Kerry Fox (actor), Janet Frame (writer), Sir Edmund Hillary (mountaineer), Lucy Lawless (actor), Jonah Lomu (rugby player), Katherine Mansfield (writer), Temuera Morrison (actor), Anna Paquin (actor), Ernest Rutherford (scientist), Kate Sheppard (suffragette), Kiri Te Kanawa (soprano) and Karl Urban (actor).

Successful Kiwis

Add these to Lorde and Aaron Smith and you see what I mean – “cultural cringe” is unnecessary.

Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider

Asserting Identity and Sacred Nature

One of my favourite films is Niki Caro’s film of Witi Ihimaera’s book Whale Rider starring Keisha Castle-Hughes. I think the film shows that you can assert your own identity against the odds. New Zealand, in such a remote location, has certainly asserted its identity. The tension between tradition and modernity is at the heart of Whale Rider, as the Maori people in the film/book negotiate modern times. The beginning of the story introduces the interdependence of mankind and nature; humans as stewards of the natural world. I get the sense that New Zealanders take the governance of the planet seriously - and in a humanitarian way. The following poem (found on David Hardy’s website and reproduced with his permission) captures the message:

Man’s Dominion by David Hardy 

When settlers came from overseas 

Overwhelmed, they were, by trees 

Like nothing else they’d ever seen 

For most of them were evergreen 

It wasn’t long before they tried 

To make the landscape countryfied 

They burned the bush and planted grass 

The scar might show - but time would pass 

Besides the cattle, sheep and horse 

The predators were brought in force 

They introduced for sake of sport 

The animals that could be caught 

To hunt and shoot and fish and snare 

They brought the rabbit, deer and hare 

And very soon the people found 

Erosion, rocks and barren ground 

The deer ringbarked the forest trees 

That died as though they had disease 

The goat came later on the scene 

And ringbarked where the deer’d not been 

The rare and tender little plants 

Most succulent inhabitants 

No one, then, assessed their worth 

They disappeared right off the earth 

With ignorance and greed they came 

And mankind now is just the same 

We’re losing species year by year 

So at that rate they’ll disappear 

AND SO WILL WE

The horrors of Isengard and the beauty of Fangorn

David’s poem chimes with the environmental messages built into Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings with the destructive forces of Sauron and the military violence of the Orcs pitted against the homely values of the Hobbits in the Shire and the world-weary Ents, the ancient shepherds of Middle Earth forests.

Isengard being destroyed by orcs; Merry and Pippin enjoying an Ent ride in Fangorn.

It strikes me that New Zealand was the perfect place to film Tolkien’s works since it has had its share of environmental struggles. The history of the country is riddled with battles, massacres, treaties and land negotiations between the European colonizers (from 1642 onwards) and the Polynesian migrants who developed the Maori culture and who began settling first around the year 1200.

Journey to the other ends of the earth

New Zealand is only one possible destination among many. Will I go there one day? Time will tell.





In the meantime, I’ll enjoy a glass of crisp and cold Marlborough wine and hum the theme tune to Fellowship of the Ring.

There And Back Again

One Ring To Rule Them All

It would be hard to resist visiting some of the film locations of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit if a dream visit to New Zealand ever happened…. My understanding is that New Zealanders have embraced the tourist, creative and employment opportunities resulting from Peter Jackson’s films of Tolkien’s works. Weta workshops are now firmly established as an international leader in 3d modeling, costuming, armour, weaponry and special effects of all kinds.

From Hobbiton to the Dead Marshes….

I imagine that travelling is a key aim for most retirees. “All we have to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given us.” (I imagine Ian McKellen’s voice as Gandalf intoning those words….) I have been lucky over the years to travel to some unusual places: Kenya, China, Finland, Milledgeville (in Georgia, USA.) I hope that retirement will feature some further memorable experiences, before Shakespeare’s seventh age of man kicks in.

Seventh Age: "second childishness and mere oblivion."

There and back again.

It can feel uncomfortable being adrift, as Bilbo Baggins tells his nephew: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

I blogged earlier about my idea of home being where your loved ones are. I’ve always taken the subtitle of The Hobbit to heart - There And Back Again; after a journey, it’s always satisfying to return to hearth and home. Going out, coming back. Ebbing and flowing. In the middle of a holiday, it’s good to know that your slippers are waiting at home (unless you took them with you, of course.) Would New Zealand feel just too far away? Perhaps I should stick to walking along the local canal?

Into the Wild

Journeys into the wild are good for putting personal concerns into perspective. When I lived in Helsinki for a year, I undertook a road trip with two Japanese men and a son of one of them; and en route to Nordkapp we called at Hammerfest, the most northern civilian settlement with over 5,000 inhabitants.

Hammerfest in northern Norway

I’ll blog about my year in Scandanavia in the future, but what I’m remembering now is the sense of being on the edge of the world at the mercy of nature. When faced with the spread of cosmic existence, evident in the sight of the galaxy of stars in remote places like Hammerfest (or, I expect, New Zealand), human anxieties can seem insignificant. Worries can gain perspective. “All we have to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given us.”

Cate Blanchett as Galadriel and Elijah Wood as Frodo, image created by vanderstelt-studio

The Smallest Person

Galadriel tells Frodo “Even the smallest person can change the course of history” to reassure him that he has the strength to endure on his quest. The quest goes on. Excelsior!