Health And Otherwise

In 1860, his annus mirabilis, it seems that Garibaldi, as he often did at various times, was suffering badly from chronic arthritis. It could affect him so badly that there were occasions he needed to be carried by others. The guy was amazing, as Christopher Hibbert's excellent biography makes abundantly clear. He was also, it would seem, amazingly lucky. You lose count of the number of times you think This time he's going to lose some battle or other when the odds are, as usual, stacked against him. Oddly, he generally, though not always, behaved as if he were assured of victory. This is a guy, you feel, who made his own luck.

Not so lucky, at the moment, is Mum with these damned shingles. The doctor predicted the pain would go in two to three weeks. It's now the fifth week, and she thinks it's getting worse. We're just hoping for a sudden change in the condition. I'm ringing on a daily basis so she can have a good moan about it. It's all I can do, and it seems to do her some good. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on the part of someone who's powerless to be of any real help.

On the other hand, brother-in-law John seems to be making a good recovery from his knee op. He went outside for the first time since he was under the knife the other day, he informed me with the kind of enthusiasm that shows he's on the mend. It would be a relief to hear some of the same from Mum.

And me? I've been off the medication (for my sciatica) for a week or so and it's not been too difficult to deal with the pain. I'll be seeing the doc on Friday afternoon and I'm hoping he lays off prescribing the pills for a while. Apart from the fact I'm not keen on becoming dependent on medicines generally, it's been suggested that my puffy cheeks (people think I've put on weight when I'm the lightest I've been since my late teens) may be a side effect of something I've been ingesting. Mind you, I think it could simply be that my face is collapsing due to old age.

Quite A Party

It was years ago, reading Stephen King's The Shining, that I first came across the story of the Donner Party. King was pretty sparing on the details, assuming his (American) readers would be familiar with the reference I suppose, but I gathered the story related to some fairly nauseating cannibalism in the snow out West, as it were. At the time I thought of finding out a bit more but never quite got round to it. Nowadays I'd probably nip to Wikipedia to satisfy my curiosity.

Anyway I finally got round to familiarising myself with the tale, but not through the Internet. No, I've been reading a very interesting narrative poem, a book-length piece, bit of an epic really, by one George Keithley, of whom I've never heard before. I think it was written around 1972, as that's when the copyright was recorded, and it came out in paperback in 1989 - title: The Donner Party. I got it through amazon.com, basically at a time a couple of years back when I was interested in modern narrative poems - there are more out there than you might think - and I've been very much enjoying it (reading it in tandem with the Garibaldi book of which I'm now onto the last 100 pages.)

The only thing is that I've been puzzling over the form Keithley uses and the principles underlying his verse. Okay, I'll come clean - I'm not quite sure exactly why this is poetry; it sometimes reads like prose for long stretches - and while this doesn't alter my enjoyment (it's a good story, well told) I'm intrigued as to what the writer thought he was up to, and whether I'm missing something. The poem is divided into three sections which are subdivided into books, or chapters, I guess, of unequal length, each one of these beginning and ending with a four-line stanza (I suppose you'd call it) with the rest of the chapter being made up of three-line stanzas. There doesn't seem to be any obvious common metre, though most lines seem to break down into three or two stresses with uneven numbers of unstressed syllables in between. Until yesterday I would also have said there wasn't any rhyme, but then poised at the beginning of the third and final section, with the grimness of the narrative gathering apace, I suddenly realised there were an awful lot of occasional rhymes dotted around the ends of lines, though in no obvious pattern, and even more (an awfuller lot, mayhap) of half rhymes. I was a bit embarrassed not to have been aware of this before and started to check earlier bits to see if this had been done consistently earlier. I'm still not sure it had. Unfortunately the checking sort of messed up the forward momentum of my reading and I'm beginning to wish I'd not noticed the rhymes at all and just got the story.

So now I'm trying to get back into the flow of the poem and thinking I might just re-read it straightaway with closer attention to issues of prosody, which actually will be no chore as it's such a fine piece and worth doing justice to.

Rayaing

What is it about getting dressed up, enjoying the good company of various fine people and eating immoderate amounts of their excellent nosh, that is so thoroughly exhausting? We only went to four houses yesterday and got home by nine o'clock but I took to my bed almost immediately and felt pretty much pooped all day today.

Time Starved

It's one of those days when I'm feeling extremely pushed for time. This morning's marking has not gone well. I hit a series of weak scripts, all requiring undue attention to try and help students who seem to have neglected all sensible advice so far. If you've never had the experience, let me tell you that marking eight pages largely consisting of an attempt to bluff the examiner, through vague generalities couched in an even vaguer approximation of the English language, that the candidate has some knowledge of the texts in question, when they don't, is extremely time-consuming.

And at one o'clock or thereabouts we're off, in the splendid company of Rozita and Fuad and the girls, visiting various households in the course of what the missus terms jalan raya. We will undoubtedly eat and drink too much because there's little else to do - but we'll have a good time doing so. I'm told that we'll be back by ten o'clock, but I'll be happy if we manage this. No wonder all the Muslims here look exhausted post-Ramadhan!

In the meantime, I'm off to suffer through one more script. (It's a thick one, in more ways than one.)

Getting Your Fingers Dirty

I've washed my hands something like ten times today, and I'm talking about a proper thorough soaping, not just a quick run under the tap. This is not a sign of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, at least I hope it's not. It's entirely due to the appalling quality of newsprint, or whatever it is, that causes one's fingers to get thoroughly grimy when perusing any edition of The Straits Times or other SPH newspapers.

It's been particularly noticeable today as I've dragged out the reading of the paper, which I normally attempt to get through in one sitting, basically because of this problem, for much of the day as I've been marking exam scripts and regularly take breaks between scripts by picking up the paper to find out what's going on in the world. Whenever I go back to England I'm reminded of just how much a feature of the local press this is as I can merrily read all the papers over there without smudging a single digit and it invariably takes me by surprise since I'm so used to the messiness created by The Straits Times et al.

The other way in which the local paper differs considerably physically from English varieties is in terms of sheer size. English papers are fairly thin affairs (except for the bulky Sunday versions with all their supplements and magazines) compared to the incredibly thick four-part version of The Straits Times that comes out on Saturday, and I'm not counting the Life supplement that accompanies it. However, this is not on account of the Singapore paper containing a lot more news or features. No, essentially it's down to the massive amount of advertising therein which sometimes results in it being difficult to spot any actual news for several pages.

Anyway, having finished my marking for the day I'm off to read the fourth section of today's paper, which features some fairly interesting looking articles about progress in China, it being the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic thereof next Thursday. One good thing about the local press is that, on a good day at least, reasonable interest is taken in what's going on in the rest of the world and that can make dirtying the old fingers reasonably worthwhile.

Two Voices

It's been a bit frustrating that I've hardly been able to find time to really get to listen to the stash of CDs I bought a couple of weeks back - marking the Year 6 Prelim papers has not been of assistance in this respect. But I managed last night to get a good listen to the White Album, of which I am now the proud possessor for the first time in my life. I can't really explain why I've never bought it. It was one of those albums that someone else always had and played (at university, I mean) and I never felt that desperate to listen to it full time, as it were, despite enjoying most of it. I realised last night that I really didn't 'know' it as well as I thought I did. Yes, the famous stuff I knew, but I was genuinely surprised at how slow the album version of Revolution is, for example, compared to the single version which I know well, almost as if it had quite disappeared from my consciousness. Similarly listening to Helter Skelter I kept noticing the differences from U2's live version (on Rattle & Hum) the original has become so displaced over time by Bono & Co's (excellent) take on the piece. And the more obscure material kept taking me by surprise, almost as if I'd never been exposed to it before (a rather pleasant experience, in its way, like re-reading a novel when you've completely forgotten everything about it.)

I was also leafing through Mark Lewishon's interesting, if anoraky, account of all the Beatles's recording sessions, The Beatles Recording Sessions (nifty title, eh?) with particular reference to the White Album and was reminded of how obsessive John Lennon was about altering/distorting his voice on the later albums. Nearly every album from Revolver onwards (maybe before, not too sure) has him having his vocals processed through some form of technology or other. There's a nice story, and picture, of him singing Revolution flat on his back on the studio floor just to see, or hear, what it does to his voice. What is so extraordinary about this is that the guy had such a wonderful voice - in my not-so-humble opinion the greatest male voice of the last century. Why he chose to sort of hide it is beyond me.

In fact, I think it's Bono somewhere who refers to Lennon having the voice of an angel, and he got that absolutely right. (Being no slouch on the vocal front himself, I'd suggest this is a judgment worth trusting.) I thought the reference came somewhere on Rattle & Hum in association with the great Lennon sort-of-tribute God Part II, but I just tried to look it up and couldn't find anything. Anyway, if I'm making it up I don't mind claiming the observation for myself.

It also occurs to me, while I'm attempting some originality, that so far the greatest voice of this century has to be Dylan's - I mean the extraordinary raddled version we hear on the last three supreme albums - and that too has a fair claim to an angelic lineage - but this time one of the more disreputable angels, the type the Almighty sends to do his dirty work, possibly one of the fallen. But utterly wonderful in its otherness.

Of Men And Moustaches

The fellow above is not some long-lost member of my family but King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy. (I 'borrowed' the picture from those nice people at Wikipedia, so apologies for any infringement of copyright.) And he's there for a reason.

One of the many fine features of Christopher Hibbert's biography Garibaldi And His Enemies is its excellent portraits of various bit-players in Garibaldi's fascinating life, amongst whom the monarch above features prominently enough to emerge as a bit of a star in himself. Apart from anything else (and there's a lot of that, including, unexpectedly, an appetite for sexual experience voracious enough to rival that of old Giuseppe himself) he was possessed of a fabulous moustache, to which, quite frankly, the portrait above fails to do justice. Hibbert memorably describes it in the following terms: …an immense moustache which swept up towards his little, grey eyes in a ferociously intimidating crescent. However, transcending the poetry of that is an extraordinary picture of said 'tache, well it's of the man himself but it's hard to get past the fabulous facial hair, on page 64 of the book (if you can get hold of it), which stunned me into silent admiration when I first saw it. What Mum would describe as a moustache and a half. The thing is simply an epic in itself.

Which made me wonder, what was it like to live behind that kind of growth? I mean so many of these nineteenth century chaps did so, after all. There's a friend of Garibaldi called Stefan Turr sporting an almost equally impressive moustache with an even better beard on page 180, for example. And why did they go out of style? It's like the disappearance of hats - inexplicable and sad. The world is a drabber place without its Victor Emmanuels. Probably safer though.

Which reminds me of Roald Dahl's odd obsession with beards. Remember The Twits, anyone?

Action Man

Somewhat surprised at the extent to which I am enjoying Christopher Hibbert's biography Garibaldi And His Enemies. In truth I thought of reading it as a bit of a duty. It was one of those books I picked up (with a couple of Burgess's novels) cheaply at work last year. It concerned such an off-beat subject, about whom I know next to nothing, that I felt it was worth it at the price (just a couple of bucks.) I seem to remember something about Garibaldi in Conrad's Nostromo, I think, that made me think I really should find out a bit about him and Hibbert's book is perfect for doing so. Apart from anything else it's clear and engaging on the complexities of Italian politics of the period - a major achievement in itself.

It turns out that Garibaldi was one of those incredibly brave chaps without much of a brain. It's kind of relaxing to read about someone so fundamentally different from myself. Not that I'm claiming much in the way of brainpower - rather I'm thinking of my distinct lack of physical courage. Garibaldi had it in bucketfuls as Hibbert makes clear in what turn out to be rather gripping pages.

The other striking thing about the guy is that he was so modern in a number of ways, but most of all in his conscious manipulation of the cult of celebrity that emerged around him. He really cultivated and used a definite image of himself in an almost instinctive manner to become, as is pointed out in the preface, the most famous man of his time. How many of us, after all, have had our very own biscuit named after us? The curious thing is, I suppose, the extent to which his reputation has fallen since. Maybe that's simply the fate of all celebrities eventually.

In Retrospect

Some shots above of a very jolly Hari Raya taken in Melaka.

Back safely at the Mansion we're now beginning to re-establish our pre-Ramadhan routines. And, of course, after counting down the days to the end of the fast we're now missing the experience - well, I am, and I suspect Noi is as well. I suppose it's the intensity of it all that makes it so special. Somehow, despite the tiredness, you feel more alive.

Today I enjoyed a cup of tea in the SAC at work for the first time in quite a while, and it felt a little odd. The good thing was my heightened awareness of what a privilege it is to be able to enjoy such a thing at all. That's one of the powerful things about fasting - it serves to heighten ordinary experience to make you realise how extraordinary it really is; a kind of reality check.

It also reminds you of the fact that your identity is not a fixed thing - you can re-make yourself if you have enough desire. A lesson in re-programming, I suppose.

Sort Of Victorious

Last night's Manchester derby led to yet more grey hairs, despite United's eventual victory. Oddly enough I'd been discussing with Fuad in the morning, on the way back from the mosque, the possibility of Bellamy causing a few problems, so his efforts in the second half didn't exactly come as a surprise, though Ferdinand's presentation of a gift-wrapped opportunity did. And what exactly was Foster up to for the first City goal? I hate to say I could see it coming, but I could see it coming.

The fact that we had to view the game surrounded by the usual contingent of highly vocal Arsenal supporters here in Melaka (and to think we even applauded the Arsenal performance of the night before!) added to the jangling nerves. Rachid alone creates enough noise in his outbursts to make concentration on the details of the game impossible.

But justice was served eventually - face it, we tore them apart in the second half. At least I can relax a little when I watch the replay.