Underdoing It

We postponed our visit to the fitness centre to tomorrow, allowing a little more time for creaky old bones to straighten themselves out. The wisdom of our decision was clear from the fact that we both dozed off in the early evening, indicating some kind of need to recharge.

And my reading for the evening has been determinedly light so far: one of the TinTin collections I bought in KL. Question - Is TinTin a sort of guy thing? I don't think I can recall seeing any girl ever reading Herge, and he seems to create an entirely male-dominated landscape, loaded with the kind of machines (toys really) that guys love - the beautifully detailed drawings of cars, for example. And the books are full of that kind of cheerful violence, which seems to derive from boys' fighting games. The kind where you get shot and jump up bounding with health, as TinTin seems to do at least once in every adventure.

Overdoing It

In honour of the Monday Staff Wellness I did six laps of the track this afternoon. Unfortunately I am now getting in touch with the aches in most of the muscles in my nether regions. Since I went running on Thursday and Saturday, and swimming on Friday, I'm making an educated guess that my body is attempting to inform me it's no longer that of the young lad who could run about one day and be recovered the next. We are supposed to be going to the fitness centre tomorrow but I may need to rethink exactly what I'm going to do when I'm there.

I suppose my current bout of enthusiasm for all things physical is the realisation that once we begin the fast it will be very hard to factor in any time at all for exercise. Having said that it was interesting that when Noi and I discussed this difficulty she was obviously keen to try and keep something going - maybe in the late evening. This will need some thought. The fact that fasting means you need to thoroughly consider everything you do is one of the reasons it's such an intense experience.

I read somewhere the other day that we renew our bodies entirely every seven years or so - that is, the stuff that makes them up is completely different after each cycle. That's a liberating and frightening thought at one and the same time. (I think I read this in The Cartoonist which is a bit embarrassing. I knew it before - I think - but had managed to forget it. Another joy of reading: finding out about things you should know but had forgotten. I think it's Montaigne in an essai that points out what a great advantage it is to be forgetful because then what you read is guaranteed novelty value, but then I'm too forgetful to be sure of the reference.)

Snowbound

We are now reestablished in our Singapore home and gearing up for the dull but lively reality of an imminent Monday morning. I was hoping to get a lot of reading done over the break but I've had to compromise on this to some degree. The Drama Camp was so busy that the most I could do was dip into a book of poetry. Previous experience of such events has taught me the value of the slim volume and this time I plumped for something by Andrew Motion, Dangerous Play Poems 1974 - 1984. I bought the collection back in the late eighties but never really got into it in a big way. This time round I found several poems. possibly the majority of the collection, to be highly accessible, especially the longish Independence. However, there are still a number of pieces which seem irritatingly opaque, to the point where I wonder is it me or them. The problem is, it might well be me.

The big book for the break was undoubtedly Orhan Pamuk's Snow which I finished today. Now this was extremely accessible and instantly rewarding. The obviously remarkable thing about this novel is the sheer number of themes it encompasses: at one and the same time it's an exploration of political Islam, a treatise on the nature of poetic inspiration and an extremely complex love story. And that brief list is just skimming the surface of what also manages to be a highly entertaining, often gripping story. It was only in the last fifty pages or so that it flagged slightly for me, and this was specifically in terms of the relationship be between the main character Ka and the woman he falls in love with. Something about this didn't quite ring true, at least for this reader. Everything else convinced, in a big way.

I also read a little book by William Doyle in the Oxford Very Short Introduction series, this one on The French Revolution. This time last year I was ploughing my way through Carlyle's epic of the same title, more out of a sense of duty than pleasure I must admit, and found myself realising just how much I didn't know about a central event of European if not World history. So I suppose I'm trying to do a bit to put that right and, as usual, the books in this series make great places to start when battling one's ignorance of a particular topic. Anyway, I'm contemplating some bigger reads on the subject and maybe history in general in November/December.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get hold of Gaiman's Stardust in KL, but I kept my graphic juices bubbling with a couple of TinTin collections - yes, really a sign of second childhood. As also was my reading of Betsy Byars's The Cartoonist. Not in the same league as her classic The Midnight Fox, but she's too much of a craftsman (should that be craftswoman?) to ever entirely disappoint, and her observation of what we would now term dysfunctional families is bracingly honest (and funny.)

More About The House

We’ll be heading for Melaka this afternoon after an all-too-brief stay. The girls’ Ibu is in waiting for them there – as will be various cousins - for a reunion of sorts. I’ve just got back from 4 circuits of the taman. Noi is cleaning heroically. Meanwhile, some pictures of little and not so little things above.

About The House

14.30

We’ve just got back after a little jaunt around the hill and the girls are settling to watch HSM2 for the umpteenth time. We got Fa Fa out running yesterday, but Fi Fi claims to do quite enough exercise at school, thank you. They are both keen on going swimming today – we’ve discovered that a club on the hill allows open use of its facilities – but Noi seems to prefer the idea of going tomorrow. I’m trying to download the latest edition of an anti-virus thingie that has just come up from renewal and it’s taking a lifetime. Such are the major obstacles we face and decisions we need to make in our little lives here. This is all highly satisfactory.

22.14

And now we’ve just got back from munching nasi lemak from the Indian shop on the hill, after a dip in what turned out to be a very large, very warm, pool, which we had all to ourselves. The girls are reading – Fa Fa’s choice being a book we bought for her yesterday at KLCC, one of the excellent Geronimo Stilton series, (which I’ll probably sneak a read of myself before the weekend is out) while kakak is reading Simpsons A Go Go, one of my comics, actually. Noi has just put a big bowl of kerepok on the table as a final treat for the day. Once the epic download is done I’ll be posting this, a pretty good way to finish proceedings for the day.

Remembering History

I forgot to mention yesterday that another thing pushing me into my meditation on ages and, by implication, aging, was my involvement in the morning, before we set off to KL, in an interview for a book and film being put together by one of my former schools in Singapore. Trying to think back to what it was like to first teach in Singapore, some twenty years ago, was a perplexing exercise in that my memories of some aspects of specific events (Teachers’ Day, September 1988, for example) are vivid to the point of being as fresh as those of the Drama Camp we just completed, but they remain essentially uncommunicable, at least in the form of an interview for something as formal as a history of the school. I don’t think I make an easy subject for interview.

We handed a few pictures to Zarina, the girl doing the interview, mainly of stuff related to the musicals we did in the school in the early nineties. Of course, Noi was the one who knew where they were. She has always used photographs as triggers for memory, something which I think at one time I despised, believing that somehow it was the ‘real’ memory that counted. On this matter, as in many others, I’ve come to see how right my wife is. Handing over the pictures I was startled at the vivid recall they evoked of the textures of those times. I could smell the old orchestra pit at the Victoria Theatre and nearly fell back into it.

I wonder if twenty years from now I’ll be allowed to replay the good memories of the last few days in school when looking at the photos above? We can only pray for time’s mercy.

Some Ages of Man

This Far Place is now in temporary residence in its Malaysian home after a comfortable journey north with Fi Fi & Fa Fa in attendance. They are watching High School Musical 2 on DVD, borrowed from Khalsom. It seems this is the in thing amongst the pre-pubescent throughout the world. They tell us that, among the cognoscenti, it is known as HSM and is the chief subject of conversation in school, hence the desperate need to watch it, learn the songs, practise the dance routines, and so forth. I seem to remember childhood as a much simpler thing. I pointed out to Fi Fi that one day in the future (God willing) I’ll be teasing her about HSM as I now tease her about her days of Barneydom (a time when she’ll realise how ultra-hip my tastes in music are and be begging to borrow my CDs.) She sniffed and declared she would be loyal to HSM for life. That’s a long time.

And, talking of long times, it was good to meet Val & Peter after almost twenty years. Almost all the news of old friends and colleagues was positive (no deaths or grave illnesses) and Peter himself was looking extremely well (see evidence above) having come through his own encounter with cancer with a clean bill of health. Their children are no longer children – though, of course, they remain stubbornly so in my mind despite having children of their own and one having fought in the first Gulf War and the other being an Inspector for the police.

I have a theory concerning age that we are actually a mixture of ages inside with one age usually dominating as a sort of default position. I know that bits of me are distinctly five or six and other bits around seventy, and that this has always been the case, and I’ve observed something similar in most of the people I know well. It's interesting to figure out the default age of certain writers: Dickens is pretty obviously seven years old; Henry James around fifty. I’ve teaching one student at the moment who is strikingly middle-aged. My own basic age is a painfully callow sixteen.

Welcome to the Hotel Escandalosa

Just got back from the Drama Camp at the Hotel Escandalosa. (Actually a mafia-themed ACS(I)) Some of the evidence above. More to follow. Had a great time, and got to show off my Marlon Brando voice, as Mario 'The Don' Linguini - managing not to do too much damage to my throat in the process.

Should be seeing Val & Peter this afternoon and then getting ready for the journey north. Fruitfully busy.

Going Camping

Recent phone calls to Mum have revolved around the subject of a new video player Maureen & John got for her and how difficult it has been to programme the machine. It looks as if the saga is coming to an end with some kind of success involved, though this seems to depend on whether a recently recorded programme plays back as expected. For someone who claims to watch very little television ('There's nothing on these days'), it's odd how large all this looms in her life. Of course, it's a relief that she's fit enough for these things to loom at all.

I'm now considering what to pack for a Drama Camp we're holding for the next couple of days in school. I can always drive back for emergency supplies I suppose, but I'd like to survive comfortably without having to do too much motoring. Basically the students, or rather the Executive Committee of the club, will run the camp so the teachers involved are just around in an advisory capacity. It cuts into the holidays but it's not something that I greatly mind since it's easy to see the point of it all educationally. In fact, it has the makings of time well spent if it works.

Goodies

I spent part of the afternoon listening to an episode of The Verb a splendid literary-themed programme that goes out on the UK's Radio Three, introduced by the equally splendid Barnsley poet Ian McMillan. It can be accessed on the BBC's website here, on their Radio Player. This episode had food as its theme and made the insightful if not inciteful point that there are not enough poems about food.

This put me in mind of last night's sup tulang. If that wasn't a poem I don’t know what is. (See pictures above.)

We've also been munching away at various Teachers' Day goodies, with hot, sweet tea to boot. This means we'll be going out for a run tonight, to ease our guilt and waistlines.