Ecstatic Gaucho

The site of the original Viking parliament or Althing at Þingvellir

The rain in Spain stays mostly on the plain, but the wind in Iceland gets everywhere. It is voracious: after creeping through vents in your coat, it chomps its way through your sweater and then freezes your marrow.

That’s the summer version, presumably the winter wind is more merciless. I learned quite quickly what a Southern Softie I am.

We were on a lightning fast, four day trip, to see friends in Reykjavik, Iceland. The visit was timed to coincide with Menningarnótt, or Culture Night, an annual event featuring music, performance, and open galleries, and a firework finale. Although it’s called Menningarnótt, it’s really a Menningar dagur og nótt – culture day and night – as it starts in the morning.

In the end, the wind and child-care issues drove us home. By the time we left, we’d learned two lessons. Firstly that choirs are very popular in Iceland. At one point there seemed to be another group of singers around every corner, Hanni our Icelandic host and guide explained that choral singing was a national mania shared by many members of his family. Secondly we learned that architecture in the capital is probably not the main reason the city centre was buzzing with foreign visitors. With a few exceptions, buildings were grey, functional and built to resist high wind speeds.

We made it out of Reykjavik for a quick trip into the countryside. Soon after driving out of town you are transported back in time, not to a pre-industrial world as in some developing countries, but through geological ages to a time when the earth was still cooling.

The landscape could be described as desolate, bleak, harsh or inhospitable. You might also say, at the very least, extraordinary. Some parts look like moors in the North of England, while other areas are lunar – Neil Armstrong and his Apollo team trained in the north of the country.  Grey moss covers the ruptured rocks and fractured cliffs of endless black lava fields. On the moorland, shrubs or bushes grow and sheep and horses graze. Bilberries, a close relative of blueberries, are one of these plants and in August the hills are alive with berry harvesters. These hunched figures can be seen holding a dustpan-like scoop with serated edges with which they pick the berries.

The country is also alive: steam leaks from holes and water jets from geysers. At one point we drove through The Valley of the Farts (not its real name) overhung with a great cloud of sulphurous gas and later visited ‘the stinky spring’ (its real name) where small streams boil and mud holes bubble up more smelly gasses.

Volcanic landscape and moss in Iceland

At night we ate the local delicacy ‘rotten shark’ – if you were wondering, yes, it is shark that is starting to decompose. Usually eaten at special Norse festivals once or twice a year, the dish is also brought out for curious, or fool-hardy, visitors. Luckily it is usually consumed with with Brennivín, the local schnapps (which apparently has a strong aftertaste of rubber tyre.) We used vodka, but it still helped to deaden the overpowering taste of ammonia. Hanni, said that a friend of his makes rotten skate and it’s very simple. Just take one skate, put it in a plastic bag, leave it next to the radiator for a month, then cook. Yum.

The shark wasn’t a nightly event. We weren’t tough enough.

Buglers in their scarlet tunics in Bugles at Jalalabad

It is almost a commonplace to say that the current Allied engagement in Afghanistan wasn’t meant to be like this. In April, 2006 the Secretary of Defence, John Reid expressed the hope that “we would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot because our job is to protect the reconstruction.” With hindsight we can laugh at his optimism, but he wasn’t the first.

As Lady Florentia Sale put it, “it is easy to argue on the wisdom or folly of conduct after the catastrophe has taken place.” She wrote that in the 1840s after witnessing the disastrous retreat from Kabul in the First Anglo-Afghan War. Those words also form an ominous preface to The Great Game Afghanistan, a series of 12 short plays about Western involvement in that country over the last 170 years which is currently running at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn. Interspersed between the plays, short monologues, dialogues, and verbatim reports from key players and observers give further insight into the situation.

The plays are broken into three parts, each of which deals with a different era. Firstly, we’re introduced to the era of British involvement from the 1840s to 1920s, then the arrival of the Russians (and the Americans seeking to defeat them) in the eighties, before finishing with Operation Enduring Freedom, the campaign launched by the USA and later NATO in 2001. Theatre goers can either spread this over three nights during the week, or one day of intense theatre-going over the weekend. Autumn and I plumped for a Sunday theatre-athon that started at 11.30 in the morning and finished more than ten hours later at 9.55pm. By the time we finally stumbled onto the tube home, the fine company of actors (including Jemma Redgrave and Nabil Elouhabi from East Enders) felt like old friends (we’d never spoken to).

The Tricycle is famous for its political productions, and has been called “Britain’s foremost political theatre” by The Guardian. For this production, each play was written by a different playwright, many of them famous for their politically-engaged work. However, if this is political theatre, it gives no easy answers to the fiendishly knotty issues raised. To help the less informed members of the audience, a hefty programme contains a modern history of Afghanistan and a ‘Further reading’ section stuffed with pertinent analysis.

The play cycle shows us that Afghanistan’s complex present arises out of an equally complex past. But even if you’d never heard of The Great Game or President Najibullah, the drama is still funny, sad, exhilarating and always engaging. Autumn, hasn’t been following the issues as closely as me, still enjoyed herself.

Proceedings start with British army buglers discussing the massacre of Elphinstone’s army in Bugles at the Gates of Jalalabad, with Lady Sale sitting at the side of the stage as a solitary chorus recounting her experiences. Tales are told of the slaughter of British and Indian troops, and so begins one the central exercises repeated throughout these plays and through history: constructing tales about the Afghans. Savagery and martial prowess are defining characteristics of ‘the Afghan’ to the present day.

A bloody handprint seen on a wall at Eastcheap, the City of London. A sadly appropriate image.

Not only do foreigners ideas about the peoples of Afghanistan loop forwards through time, but the various notions of how Western interests are best served becomes familiar too. We hear stories of absurd self-serving politicians, meddling and then disengagement, the state of women as a genuine concern and as a pretext for military action. There are ‘surges’ hailed as the solution, as well as the ever familiar support for tribal insurgents to further geo-political ends. I had no idea that in the 1920s, long before Charlie Wilson’s War, the British were supporting conservative religious elements within the country against the reforming, but anti-imperialist king Amānullāh Khān. The plays not only weave themes, but also histories. In Campaign we learn of Amanullah Khan’s advisor Mahmud Tarzi, who turns up in person in Now is the Time. A map of key political figures and military engagements gradually becomes discernible.

Two of the highlights for me where Durand’s Line, in which Amir Rahman Khan is pushed into signing his name to the new border between British India and his country in 1893 by the Foreign Secretary Sir Mortimer Durand. The two, richly comic characters bounce off one another like a regal Jeeves and a very peevish Wooster playing a metaphysical chess game with the future of Khyber region. Amir Rahman says of Durand’s plans, “It is a kind of magic with you – to believe that is not the map which describes the world but which brings it into being.” Like the Radcliffe Line fifty years later, the consequences of the division would not be painless.

In Miniskirts in Kabul, a meeting between a journalist and the communist president of Afghanistan, Mohammad Najibullah, set in the imagination of the interviewer shines with a strange lyrical quality. This complex man’s perspective on his regime gains added emotional intensity from his imminent death – when the pair watch a video of The Spice Girls singing Wannabe, the song seems to embody the melancholic hedonism of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Both the stories of Najibullah and Amānullāh remind us of a tension between city and country, conservatives and reformers, within the country itself.

The final plays bring us bang up to date with the history of the last ten years: the cruel Taliban, initial Western disengagement followed by aid agencies, and then the military involvement that is so familiar. In the theatre, it all looks like the perfect Gordian knot of a conundrum, but on the ground it’s a bloody tragedy.

Blue sky, trestle tables and community spirit

This Sunday I had no lie in. Instead I went to hang bunting and erect trestle tables on the street.

Sunday 18 July, 2010 was the second national Big Lunch. Run across the country, this is  ‘an annual one-day get together with your neighbours’ with a meal at its central focus. These lunches were started by the Eden Project in Cornwall with the aim of starting a process they call ‘human warming‘ which is ‘a journey into rebuilding our communities’ and an attempt to  ‘make isolation history’.

Apparently, about 100 big lunches were scheduled to happen in London this year and in the end 1 million people joined in across the country. Last year Lewisham put on 27 lunches, which made it one of the boroughs with the largest number in the city.

To get the lunch going, the organisers first had to get permission from all the residents of the street. Apparently, in our road three people initially didn’t like the idea, but eventually came round. The second phase is to drum up participation, the Rokeby Road lunchers held (at least) two meetings to come up with ideas and assign tasks. Somehow we managed to completely ignore/forget about these, so helping out in the morning was an opportunity to make up for lost time. Autumn knocked up some salads and a few other tasty treats too.

The Rokeby Road Big Lunch 'office' - nerve centre of the whole operation

After an overcast morning of preparations, the sun finally burnt the clouds away to leave us with a deep blue sky. A veggie and meaty barbecue catered for both sides of the banger divide, and two tables were piled high with salads, flans, salsa, and an intriguing baked bean pie. People started turning up and a large, weathered sound system from Camberwell started pumping out Motown classics, 60s reggae and a broad selection of other top tunes.

It didn’t take long before I was talking to people I’d never met in almost four years of living on the road. Some of them I don’t recall even having seen before. I couldn’t tell you what anyone was called, but that’s because I have a brain that instantly scrambles names. It’s a memory not so much like a seive, but a vertical drainpipe – there isn’t even a mesh to retain the slightest detail. At one stage I found myself serving ice cream to a crowd of eager kids – satisfaction guaranteed!

Piratitude at the Rokeby Road sound system

As well food there were activities planned: balloon shaving, handbag throwing and a tug-of-war. But by the middle of the afternoon Autumn and I had to go and visit a friend who was making a rare foray into London, so missed these. When we returned later,  the tug-of-war rope was still hanging from the railings in the same jumbled position we’d last seen it and it had been tugged. Perhaps there weren’t enough people to make two teams.

There had been a few murmurs around the tables earlier that the turnout could have been better, the group picture showed about 50 people. As well as residents who preferred to stay inside, there were apparently others who deliberately went out for the day to avoid the commotion. Sound systems are not everyone’s cup of tea. My elder sister used to call family activities with her reluctant son ‘forced family fun’, and perhaps some wanted to avoid ‘forced community fun’.

One woman (who I’d never met before) told me that there used to be lots of parties in Rokeby Road. It’s probably true to say that the street has changed a bit in the last few years: more white people have moved in and replaced the West Indian families who lived here…and had parties in each others houses.

I’d already met my two next door neighbours when I was digging up the garden last summer when I was unemployed, but now I can definitely at least say hello to a few more faces in the street. The Big Lunch may not promise radical change, they’re not proposing a change in the ownership of the means of production, but it’s surely a step or smile or sausage in the right direction.

See more pictures of the Rokeby Road Big Lunch here.

All that was left after my bike was stolen

My old bike might not have been the best, but I was sad when it was stolen. A Ridgeback Velocity, it wasn’t top of the range, but it did the job. Made from steel, it felt as heavy and as sturdy as cast iron. The bike may not have been shiny or new, but each scratch had been hard won.

As there’s no garage at work, I’d left it chained to the railings in front of the building like usual. By lunch time there was a space where a bike should have been. I reported it to the Met, and received their letter informing me the case was closed by the next post. In some ways it’s comforting to think that my bike got so little attention from the police. Surely it must be better that they spend their time tracking and preventing bigger crimes.

When reporting the crime to the police I was asked if I’d registered the bike with Immobilise. I’d never heard of it, but made a mental note to investigate. Immobilise won’t prevent your bike from being nicked, but it might help the authorities recover it if it is pinched.

Immobilise is a website that enables you to add your stuff to a national property database, CheckMEND, so if it is stolen the police and second-hand trade can identify it more easily. The service claims to be the ‘world’s largest free register of possession ownership details’.

They also offer products to aid in the identification of your property. Top of their Products web page is the ImmobiTag Solid Frame Bike Tag, which is such a fantastic product it has its own website: Immobitag.com. This gadget promises  ‘electronic cycle protection’, which conjures images of a James Bond-like tracking device that follows the movements of your stolen bike on a screen. It turns out it is a tag which you hide in your bike’s frame, and it contains a unique serial number linked to your details which the police can use to re-unite you with your wheels. However, the bike has to be found in order for these details to be read, and there’s no Google Maps plug-in that allows you to follow your stolen bike… just yet.

Bike Register is a similar service and allows you to register your bike on a database that the police can access. There are three levels of service: Bronze is free and allows you simply to register your bike; for £14.95, Silver gives you kit to mark your bike in addition to registering it; Gold costs £24.95 and gives you a ‘uniquely coded electronic datatag’ – pretty much like the Immobitag.

When using these databases, remember that one of the most important pieces of information to note is your bicycle’s frame number. This can be found underneath the ‘bottom bracket’ – the round bit the pedals stick out from. Other tips to secure your bike include locking both wheels to a lampost or railing, lock it up in the most publicly-exposed place you an find, spend at least 1/10 of the price of your bike on a lock.

But, to really scare off the crooks, there is the lock which sets off a 120 decibel alarm when the wire is cut. If only it also administered an electric shock too.