Lines Down

Now in Maison KL, but I'm afraid the phone lines are down, which means limited access for me to this Far Place. The missus blames the lizards (rather than the monkeys) for reasons too complex to go into here. Despite feeling mildly cut-off from civilisation as we know it - the kids are moaning about not being able to get on something known as Facebook - life is eventful here. Today we attended the wettest wedding I have ever experienced. In fact, it's the only wet wedding I've experienced - but it was, trust me, transcendentally wet.

Now eating roti prata and drinking teh tarik - so all is well. Not staying up for the England game. Too old. Too wise.

Gained In Translation

For any would-be cartoonists out there who are in need of a name for a cute cat of cutting intelligence I'm going to suggest Strindberg. Appropriate, eh?

This completely uncopyrighted idea was brought on by my reading yesterday of the Swedish playwright's The Father in two different translations. The reading originated as a labour of labour - I have to introduce the play to a class next term - but quickly turned into one of enjoyment, though never quite approaching the state of love. This was a big improvement on my previous reading, conducted in December, which left me flat, itself having constituted great progress from the first time I ever read the play. That first reading coincided with the first time I ever taught any Strindberg, Miss Julie for 'A' level in the early nineties. I was using a Methuen edition which bundled together The Father, Miss Julie and The Ghost Sonata. Miss Julie seemed to me a wonderful play, and very enjoyable to teach, and I read the other two plays looking for equal delights - which I didn't really find, well not in The Father anyway. It stuck me as so monomaniacal in its misogyny as to be preposterous. And I felt something similar in December, reading the same Methuen edition, with Michael Meyer as translator - the play was approachable in its simplicity, yet forbiddingly simple for all that. There was an extraordinary sense of direction and intensity in terms of the drama, but this seemed to replace any of the rich complexity you'd normally expect of a writer exploring his characters with some attempt at understanding.

Yesterday I read the Meyer translation again, but this time hand in hand with a newer version from Mike Poulton, the edition the bookseller provided for our students. Jumping from one text to another on a scene by scene basis (Meyer divides the 3 Acts into small scenes, I assume following Strindberg's own divisions since he does not do anything similar with Miss Julie or The Ghost Sonata) I found created a small kind of magic. Poulton's is a somewhat more idiomatic translation and more obviously playable on stage and the stiffness of the Meyer translation seemed to evaporate. At the same time I got a sense of the greater accuracy of the Meyer translation in terms of the literal content of the drama. I felt like I knew what Strindberg wanted on stage down to the moments of sly humour in the piece, assuming that Strindberg had a sense of humour, that is. An illusion, of course, my feeling of inwardness with the mightily crazy August, but effective enough for me to warm to the play and, for the first time, feel its power.

There's an odd but effective kind of comfort in reading these dramas. No matter how bad one's life might be it can hardly approach the transcendent rottenness of that of old Strindberg.

Keeping Going

Took Abah to the hospital this morning. His medication has been reduced so we're hoping for a reduction in the level of confusion he's experiencing. Then went to buy an inflatable tube for him to sit on this afternoon and had my first experience of the new super-large Jaya Jusco at a new mall near the already super-large Tesco in Melaka. A new Tesco is also springing up at Cheng on the way to Alor Gajah. And there are obviously plans for a major shopping area next to the new Jaya Jusco. Boomtown Melaka.

Observed the following slogan on a lady's t-shirt in Jaya Jusco: To die will be an awfully big adventure. Curiously cheerful. From Peter Pan, I think.

Getting Going

It doesn't get easier. That need to stir oneself and do the necessary. It's incumbent upon me to get it all together for the journey north when I'd rather just laze around watching the film version of The Remains of the Day that they just happen to be screening as I'm supposed to pack. But it's a reminder of sorts that if I don't get going there'll be precious few remains of my own day to enjoy. So here I go.

(Not) The Worst Band In The World

An unusual impulse purchase made last week: 10cc In Concert from the King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents series. I've never heard of this series of live recordings before and the cover looked pretty tacky. Priced at less than eight bucks the CD looked suspiciously cheap also, but the damage to the pocket being limited even if it turned out to be a bit, or a lot, of a lemon made me think seriously of breaking open a fifty dollar note I happened to be carrying. I'd also spotted Neil Young's Prairie Wind (acoustic Neil and gorgeously accessible) going for sixteen dollars and it seemed somehow sensible to wind up with two CDs for essentially the price of one. A triumph of cheapskatery!

But the thing that was really driving me on was a sudden memory of just how good 10cc were in concert. I'm talking here about the original four man line-up: Stewart, Gouldman, Creme & Godley, the band featured on the disk. The recording was from 1975 and featured material from the first two albums. I saw the same line-up live in Sheffield in 1976, I think, just after the release of their fourth and final album in this incarnation How Dare You. They were sensationally good being accorded the kind of rapturous reception only given to the very best which, at that point, they seemed undoubtedly to be among. Somehow I'd managed to forget that they were one of the most heavily featured groups on our collective play-list as university students, rubbing shoulders with Genesis (the Peter Gabriel line-up) and Steely Dan. How had they come to drop so dramatically out of consciousness - mine and that of the world of popular music in general? They were in a position, with the release of How Dare You, to inherit the mantle of The Beatles. (That's over the top, sure, but really at the time I'm talking about it seemed they could do no wrong. Excellent players, singers and writers - all four!)

I suppose the answer lies in the punk revolution and also a sense in which we'd seen the full flowering of what they had to offer by 1976 (and heard I'm Not In Love on the radio way too many times even for a great song). Four excellent albums are four more than most manage, and there were still one or two diverting toe-tappers to come from the 5cc team of Stewart & Gouldman.

Anyway I've played the live CD a couple of times and not been disappointed. It's clear they really could play so my memory was not at fault. The encore version of Rubber Bullets makes me live again the rocking version I experienced back in '76. And I enjoy reconnecting with songs that had sort of slipped from memory yet came back immediately within a few bars in all their wit and wisdom.

Further Adventures

The Mum I spoke to last night was the version who soldiers on regardless of her latest physical pains, problems, indignities, but finds explaining them in some considerable detail a kind of relief or temporary release. She's had a problem with some sort of wound on her leg that has been dripping copious amounts of clear fluid and to which she seems to have had at least two different doctors attending. As far as I can gather it has now dried up and she was expecting a nurse to come round with some new medicine. She sounded a bit miffed telling me that Maureen had said it was nothing to worry about, but that made me feel a bit more reassured that nothing major was going on. I'll be ringing later to see whether the nurse came and settled everything. If she didn't, I'll certainly hear about it.

We're intending to go up to Melaka on Tuesday and deal with another patient in the form of Noi's father. He's got an appointment at the hospital regarding his on-going treatment for a blood clot on the right side of his brain and it's our chance to help the family deal with things in a little way. His behaviour has been a bit erratic of late with his mind wandering. I'm hoping this is a temporary thing, connected to the medication and the effects of the clot itself, and that treatment will go some way to restoring a bit of equilibrium.

So things are far from hunky dory, but our knowledge that they could be a lot, lot worse helps us stay positive. Not that our feelings matter too much in all this. The only thing of any importance is that we try to be and are of some help in our woefully limited capacities.

An Adventure

I'll be ringing Mum later and, as usual, I'm wondering which Mum it will be. Cheerful, or relatively so, Mum is always a relief. This is the one who asks about everyone over here and can happily recount being about to make a cup of tea, how a book she's reading had made her laugh, and the like. Kooky Mum is a bit of a handful. This is the one who seems to think she once lived in Singapore and can't remember the house she lived in at Gresham Street for some thirty-odd years. Angry Mum is sort of refreshing on account of her energy, but repetitive in her truculence regarding most aspects of the world. Despairing Mum is sad and painful to listen to, but bracing in her honesty.

The adventure lies in the unpredictability surrounding which one you're going to get. The change from one evening to another can be startling. But all are valid and I'm grateful, or try to be, for which ever one it is on the other end of the line.

Repletely Complete

Noi treated me to a slightly delayed birthday dinner this afternoon, except it wasn't dinner, it was high tea, which was even bigger than dinner. At least the one we munched our way through at Royal Plaza at Scotts (I think that was the name of the place) was. The experience was ferociously satisfying and I recommend it to any out there attempting to drive up their cholesterol levels and pile on the pounds. Though I must say, we both ate reasonably sensibly given the circumstances, given the temptation.

Failing

Staring at the possibility of a painful failure at the moment, and I blame V.S. Naipaul. It's a long, long time since I bought a copy of his non-fiction work The Loss of El Dorado thinking that I was in for an enjoyable and informative read on the history of Trinidad. I knew next to nothing of the topic and also knew that Naipaul had never let me down in his work, fiction or otherwise. So I knew I was on a winner.

Now my copy looks distinctly the worse for wear, time and the humid climate having done their usual ravaging. But it remains stubbornly unread, despite some six or so attempts to put that right over the years. The last attempt began two days ago and it's fast fading (and it will be the last.) The darned thing is stubbornly unreadable. Who are all these people in the opening pages and what are they doing? And, more to the point, why should I care?

Old Dog, New Tricks

Useful activity for the start of the month: read the appropriate segment of Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar. Sort of nostalgic for someone raised in England, except that mad, sad Clare's England is long gone. It's actually disappearing as Clare attempts to capture it - possibly the reason he's trying to catch it before it vanishes.

He begins June with an odd rhyme: Now summer is in flower and natures hum / Is never silent round her sultry bloom. I'm guessing his hum had a drawn-out vowel sound, but I haven't much idea of Northampton dialect. Later he rhymes blooms with broom, which would seem to confirm this. He seems quite unconcerned about the sibilance at the end of blooms, by the way. No wonder those early editors tried to clean him up and fence him in to acceptable boundaries. I suppose his escape from enclosure was to go crazy.

And talking of rhymes in June, I can't help but think of Procol Harum's fine lyricist Keith Reid's take on the hoariest rhyme of all. It comes in one of the great (and oddest) songs of the later end of the twentieth century, A Salty Dog, and it goes: Now many moons, and many Junes, have passed since we made land. Gary Brooker sings the line with such gusto that most listeners fail to catch just how quirky it is, reinvesting the cliche with a strange power.

Which I suppose is really what Clare is up - reinvesting our fallen world with something of the meaning it should possess for us. You'd need to be mad to try it.