The Skies, Now Undisturbed
The wise elders would explain that inside the aircraft, passengers, who had only paid the price of a few books for the privilege, would impatiently and ungratefully shut their window blinds to the views, would sit in silence next to strangers while watching films about love and friendship - and would complain that the food in miniature plastic beakers before them was not quite as tasty as the sort they could prepare in their own kitchens.
The elders would add that the skies, now undisturbed except by the meandering progress of bees and sparrows, had once thundered to the sound of airborne leviathans, that entire swathes of Britain's cities had been disturbed by their progress
Alain de Botton wrote his piece in reaction to the last few days' "travel chaos" (i.e. man is not greater than nature). I am reminded of Ben Marcus' The Age of Wire & String, a strange little book which I struggled to understand. I think it is the ritualised language both de Botton and Marcus use.
Completely unrelated: Death Metal Lyric OR William Blake Quote? Go on ..
Meanwhile I am still torn on whether to use a particular yarn for a particular cardigan pattern. When I look at the yarn I think "texture! cables! I have 1700 yrds!" but the cardigan is rather plain and takes 1050 yrds. Woe.
Going Places
Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, a book on how to make geometric models using needlepoint, has won a prize given to oddly-titled books.
Written by Latvian mathematician Daina Taimina, it was adjudged the winner of the annual Diagram Prize after a public vote run by the Bookseller magazine.
I think it says a lot about me that I didn't batter an eyelid at the title. Besides, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes does not hold a candle to books like Highlights in the History of Concrete or Bombproof Your Horse, both previous winners.
I finished my Monkey socks this weekend. They are very pink/lilac, but they do warm my feet (perfect for that impending snow we are supposedly getting). I'm just happy I won't have to use the Yarn Yard Bonny again. Just too synthetic for my taste. I have wound two cakes of delicious sock yarn - The Thylacine's Wellington BFL/nylon and Old Maiden Aunt's merino 4ply - and have scoured Ravelry for sock patterns. Like Ms Mooncalf, I think it is time to admit that sock knitting is no longer abhorrent or strange. It certainly has a place in my life.
Some exciting news: I will be teaching knitting and crochet classes in Glasgow this spring. Topics include the usual beginners' courses in both knitting and crochet, but also some advanced courses such as Continental knitting, Fair-Isle knitting combining English & Continental techniques, beading, finishing techniques and, yes, sock knitting . I'll be posting more info on the Glasgow and Scots Knits Ravelry groups soon or contact me directly if you want to know more. All the courses will last one hour and are free. Woohoo!
Finally, two blog posts about how we relate to our bodies. Kate Davies writes eloquently about how to formulate and describe the relationship (particularly if you have fallen ill) whilst Lilith of Old Maiden Aunt writes about feeling disconnected from her body. Both posts ask pertinent questions to which I can relate. I wish I felt ready to write about my personal struggles in terms of body and mind, but maybe someday I feel comfortable adding my thoughts. I thank both Kate and Lilith for being bolder than me.
Shall I Compare Thee to the Great Pele?
After the years of Andrew Motion being poet laureate, him whining about it and his "official" poems going "Better stand back / Here’s an age attack, / But the second in line / Is dealing with it fine", it is a relief to have Carol Ann Duffy in the seat. Somehow she seems to understand the job better and is able to find poetry in the small things that fill our everyday lives (which, I would argue, is what poetry is all about) and the news story flickering on our screens.
Recently she wrote a poem about David Beckham's injury which sees him out of the England World Cup squad.
Achilles (for David Beckham)
Myth's river- where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boyflowed on, his name on its lips. Without him, it was prophesised,
they would not take Troy.Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...
but when Odysseus came,with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,
and it was sport, not war,Advertisement - article continues below »
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his charmed foot on the ball...
but then his heel, his heel, his heel...
The poem was originally published in The Daily Mirror, a tabloid, which employs Duffy as a regular columnist. Meanwhile, The Guardian, my newspaper of choice, looks at the poem approvingly but the comments section is where I found the biggest thrills. I particularly enjoyed FinneyontheWing, IantovonScranto and tw*tbeak but I strongly recommend the entire section. It is filled with limp poetry, bizarre imagery and iambic pentameter.
Something of Beauty
"..there is beauty in everything. What 'normal' people would perceive as ugly, I can usually see something of beauty in it" - Alexander McQueen
British fashion designer, Alexander McQueen committed suicide today. He was only forty years old. McQueen was one of the very, very few who deserved to be called a genius in his chosen field. I am deeply saddened by his death.
"There was always some attraction to death, his designs were sometimes dehumanised. Who knows, perhaps after flirting with death too often, death attracts you."
Karl Lagerfeld on the untimely passing of McQueen.
Still Waters
Yes, it continues to be cold. The novelty of snow has long worn off. My sole source of weather-related amusement is the media who insist 60,000 people will die in the Big Freeze, the British Army is being set in and the beginning of food shortages lead to soaring prices. Yesterday night BBC News ran a Breaking News! story which was - and I kid you not - that snowflakes were seen falling in London. Panic, panic, panic.. but I do find it annoying that we have to pour hot water down our loo every few hours so that the pipes do not freeze. One part of our apartment building had to be shut down because the pipes burst. If ever there was an argument against pipes being stuck to the outside of buildings and exposed to the elements, then this is surely it? Oh you wacky Britons.
While I was at work yesterday (and hello to those of you who came visiting), David went for a walk along the River Kelvin. It is almost completely frozen and signs are up warning people against letting their dogs run unto the ice. Despite all the stern signage, Dave did spot a few illiterate animals out and about on the ice - including a little mink drinking a bit of water. I continue to be amazed at how much wildlife we have on our doorstep, even if we live in the middle of a sprawling city.
I'm currently reading Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil which I gave David for Christmas (he hasn't had a chance to start it yet as he is reading his way through the other five novels I gave him). I bought it because I knew how much Dave had enjoyed Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and I got a similar vibe from CBTD. If you like Kavalier & Clay, early 20th century popular entertainment or maybe even Wilkie Collins, I think CBTD might appeal. I'm certainly enjoying the glimpses into vaudeville performances, music halls and larger-than-life personalities.
Finally, I'm listening a fair bit to Martha Wainwright's album of Edith Piaf songs, Sans Fusils Ni Souliers A Paris. You can get a taste of it by watching Martha singing L'Accordéoniste on Jools Holland's show (youtube link). Her darling brother is touring Britain in April and I'm hoping for a concert ticket for my birthday.
Losing Its Reputation
"Denmark is losing its reputation for being a good world citizen." - Naomi Klein
Danish police arrest 150 demonstrators as world leaders arrive at Copenhagen conference. Mainstream groups such as Friends of the Earth have been barred from the conference centre ("Every delegate from the international environmental campaign group arrived at the centre this morning to find their badges were no longer valid."). This follows the highly controversial preventive arrests by Danish police earlier this week, the arrest of a German spokesman for Climate Justice action, police raids on climate campaigners and, lest we forget, a warm welcome for President Mugabe by Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
"The Copenhagen conference is fast becoming an international shambles." - Andy Atkins
For me, I welcomed the incredulity on the BBC news readers' faces as they interviewed a spokesperson, Henrik Suhr, for the Danish police force, the use of "preventive arrests" and Mr Suhr's insistence that "if you do not want to be arrested, you should not be demonstrating" (let me draw your attention to the UN's own Universal Declaration of Rights and, in particular, Articles 19 and 20). The BBC journalists' reaction were very different to the type of journalism I had grown used to in Denmark in the last decade or so.
And as I'm typing this, a climate deal seems increasingly unlikely.
Twenty Years Ago Today
Twenty years ago today my mother woke me up early. She was crying. Last time she woke me up crying, Olof Palme had just been assassinated. This time, though, my mother's tears were not angry, horrified and sad tears. She was crying with joy. The Berlin Wall had fallen.
I went to school that day. My teachers cancelled all our scheduled classes and were bust talking amongst themselves. My German teacher - the great-grandson of Paul Gauguin, by the way - sat us down to watch news reports coming in from West Germany. I still recall another teacher crying in the school yard. She was part-German. Today I suspect her German family might have fled here from the East as they never visited any of their relatives until the early 1990s.
Today it is difficult to explain what life were like before the end of the Cold War. I lived in Denmark, a small country just north of both East and West Germany. Occasionally you'd hear stories about people escaping from East Germany across the southernmost Baltic Sea to southern Denmark. Occasionally you'd also hear about people travelling the opposite direction. Swedes were paranoid about Soviet submarines and Danes were paranoid about East German spies within Danish political ranks. I was just a child when it all changed but I could definitely tell something had changed. At school they stopped teaching us how to react in event of a nuclear war, for instance.
Twenty years ago today.
And They Lived Happily Ever After
.. and they lived happily ever after - they being the knitter and her own Liesl.
I frogged a scarf I knitted last year but only wore twice and miraculously I got an entire top out of my three re-purposed skeins of Noro Iro. Liesl is a magical pattern, I think.
Right now I'm really using knitting as means of escape from a very, very busy life. I cannot write about the things that are happening as I have vowed to keep certain aspects of my life separate from this blog, but I am currently facing a workload which is causing me to a) freak out slightly, b) stress and worry a lot and c) have brain-freezes. I wish I could pick up a book and escape, but my head is not in that sort of space at the moment.
So I knit. I knit a lot.
Earlier this year I was told to relax by watching trashy TV and reading crap books. I've finally taken those words on board and so I'm watching a lot more TV - whilst knitting, of course - than I usually do. This has lead me to conclude that FlashForward is very bad; that True Blood is very interesting; that Merlin is very silly, has pretty art direction and occasionally sports hidden depths; and that I have very little patience for reality TV (bar BBC's MasterChef which Other Half watches religiously).
In other news, the most despicable "newspaper" in the UK - the Daily Mail which does not deserve a link - has published a poisonous article on the death of boyband singer Stephen Gately of Boyzone (BBC link). I read the homophobic article itself earlier today before the Daily Mail found it necessary to edit it. In the words of the Guardian's Charlie Brooker (and his entire column is magnificent):
The funeral of Stephen Gately has not yet taken place. The man hasn't been buried yet. Nevertheless, Jan Moir of the Daily Mail has already managed to dance on his grave. For money.
It has been 20 minutes since I've read her now-notorious column, and I'm still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.
I hope Gately's husband and family sues the hell of Daily Mail. And I hope that other advertisers follow Marks & Spencer's example and withdraw their advertising money from the Mail. It is not the first time the Daily Mail angers me (in fact, you could set your clock by how often I feel personally insulted) but this is truly gobsmacking vicious.
Ah, a blog entry which is all over the place. And all I meant to say was that I really do love my new top and that I'm knitting a lot at the moment. The fact that this turned into a bit of a rant should give you a clue as to how stressed I am.
Pax.
The Best Little Country in the World?
What happened to churches as places of sanctuary, Denmark? Was it really necessary to get combat-clad police to raid a church at 2am in the morning? Are leading politicians serious when they say "it was a lot more gentle to do the raid at night; imagine what a scene it would've caused by day" because being dragged from your bed at night by SWAT teams attacking you with batons does not strike me as being particularly gentle.
I'm disgusted, I'm angry and I'm deeply, deeply ashamed of being Danish. Yet again.
PS. I'm also very interested in learning where these people will end up as it has been made abundantly clear by the Iraqi government that they will not be admitting the refugees. For shame, Denmark, for shame.