Back Again

Now sitting in the Costa Coffee opposite the Arcades in Ashton. Snow falling not so gently outside, as it was the last time I sat here, in December 2009. We're off to visit Mum in what used to be Ashton General Hospital, when I was a lad, and is now Tameside General. The hospital has a terrible reputation locally but looked fine to us when we went yesterday to see her.

Unfortunately Mum didn't look so great, a lot more frail than this time last year. But still here and at this point in time indomitably so. Everything changes but some some things don't.

Hurrying On

We're now engaged in our usual dynamic, last-minute flurry of various sorts of activity intended to get us safely on-board our flight to Manchester with all we need to survive a month in that most unsunny city.

Somehow I managed to finish the two books I've been reading this week so I can take a couple of fresh ones with me. It was a particular relief to complete Blood Meridian. Obviously a great, great novel - McCarthy seems to invent a completely new style, a rhetoric all of his own that evokes in astonishing detail an entirely fallen world - but one so grimly shocking that I'd honestly hesitate to recommend it to anyone of faint heart. As far as I can tell the violence is everything and the writer is saying that this is our true condition. And the problem is that as long as you are reading the novel you know it's true.

The novel was heavy-going in another, different way, just to make life that bit more difficult. It's so well written, with a kind of brilliant density, that I found myself on almost every page slowing down to savour just how good the writing was. Quite often I'd read the same paragraph two or three times as if checking if what I'd read was really so powerful, so right - and it was. But when you're keen to finish a book simply to meet artificial deadlines of your own, this quality was not quite what I was looking for.

Fortunately Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness proved to be well-written in quite a different way - in a style that seemed designed to enable easy, effortless, reading. Lots of good ideas, as usual, but not quite the same verve as his best stuff. A touch formulaic - but he invented the formula, and it's a good one, so forgivable.

And now it simply remains for me to choose one or two tomes to ease me through the cramped hours ahead. No more McCarthy for now though.

From Experience

I'm fairly sure that somebody somewhere would assume it a reasonable proposition that taking a bunch of kids round the Singapore Zoo from the late morning onwards, and then moving on to the Night Safari, would be a good way to render them exhausted so they go to sleep as soon as they reach home. Take it from me, it doesn't work - as the noise surrounding me testifies. But it is highly, exhaustingly, enjoyable.

Service

It's been remarkable to witness the ways in which this small country has changed in the last twenty years or so. I was reminded of this yesterday when Noi and I went down to the Ministry of Manpower to get our renewed passes - the cards that enable us to actually live here at all. It took all of five minutes to pick up the passes and we were treated like guests at some rather swank hotel. All our queries were answered patiently and in detail. Twenty years ago the process involved a long, long wait and trying to talk to people who would never make eye-contact and mumbled unintelligible instructions about proceeding to other desks in unfamiliar locations. Mind you, I'm not sure that those applying for the somewhat less highly-regarded Work Permit get the same stellar treatment. It would be nice to think they do though.

Then it was off to Sentosa, with the troops. Years ago the only way across was on a ferry (oh, and the cable car, which still runs, I think.) Now there's all sorts of ways on to the island, and we picked the speedy monorail, having decided to travel down by bus due to the lack of kid-room in the car. The island was unrecognisable, at least the bit we were on. We spent a fun-packed afternoon in the new Univeral Studios theme park (if that's what they call it.) Expensive but scoring high on the keeping-the-troops-occupied front.

Unfortunately Noi got ill on one of the rides with a nasty bout of motion sickness. (The Revenge of the Mummy, ironically.) Fortunately we were attended to by extremely helpful staff who gave every appearance of being genuinely concerned and ready to spend a lot of time making sure all was well.

This place sometimes gets a bit of flak for poor customer service. Not from me - well not yesterday, at least.

In Flight

Squad strength standing temporarily at six, but Fifi is only temporary as her school has demands upon her this holiday. (So much for family bonding.)

We kept the troops if not happy at least occupied on bicycles and in-line skates at East Coast Park this afternoon. I'd hoped to find some time to read, but there were too many distractions. At least it didn't rain.

Yesterday we took the younger ones among our company to Jurong Bird Park, this being before Sabrina and Aiman made it over from KL. The Bird Park remains a reliable sure fire winner. We managed a couple of the bird shows in the afternoon and got to feed some cheerfully belligerent lorys. (Is that the plural?) I'm more than a bit doubtful of the business of keeping animals in captivity and wheeling them out for our entertainment, but this is a place that looks like it's really trying to educate and the keepers give every appearance of deeply caring for their various charges. And I must admit that any reservations one might have about the park tend to evaporate when one of their superb birds of prey sees fit to swoop within centimetres of one's head: ferociously beautiful!

Difference

Sabrina says to Mak Ndak that the Korean barbecue in Singapore is different from the one in Kuala Lumpur.

The missus replies, Lain padang, lain berlallang. (Which I translate as, Different field, different grasshopper.)

Now there's Inscrutable Malay wisdom for you.

At Rest

Just back from a quick trip to Melaka to pick up some houseguests. We're privileged to have three nieces with us this evening, with the promise of augmentation of squad strength by a further two youngsters tomorrow. Enjoyed a birthday party for the youngest (at least for now) of our many nephews last night with two big cakes, amongst other goodies.

Then it was off to the bedroom for me to shut myself off from the joyous noise of all and sundry. I intended to make progress in Blood Meridian (or Alain de Botton's book on architecture) but it didn't happen. It was only nine o'clock yet, as is so often the case when I'm in Mak's house, I just couldn't stay awake.

I settled on Blood Meridian since I'm finding myself completely gripped by the novel, even if under a degree of protest against its unsettling content. I lay down, ready to knock back a chapter or three, and read the brilliant paragraph I'd reached concerning the Comanchees attacking a crazy Yankee raiding party. Then I realised I was drowsing. So I read the paragraph again, with increased appreciation, and found myself yet again zonked out. Then another read, with the realisation that McCarthy is so good you really can read bits over and over without worrying about making progress. And that was it. Next thing I know it's gone midnight and I need to officially go to bed.

Wonderfully restful. Wish I could bottle it.

Red In Tooth And Claw

When I wrote those few words about violence and its place in art yesterday I'd somehow, mysteriously, forgotten that just a couple of hours earlier I'd been watching one of the most extraordinarily violent series ever made for television. The Jungle episode of Planet Earth had stunningly visceral images of fungi erupting from ant inards to extremely unpleasant effect upon the poor ants who'd ingested them, and chimp warfare culminating in chimp cannibalism, to name but two examples of Mother Nature at her less than nurturing work.

Yet none of this was disturbing in the way Raging Bull and Blood Meridian manage to be. (Though, now I really think of it, the bit with the chimps munching on bits of the dead youngster they'd manage to kill had a curious air of the morally transgressive about it. All too human.) The violence of animals can have about it a strange, terrible, beauty.

And I suppose there are echoes of this in human violence. We ignore our evolutionary heritage at our peril. Something the Greeks knew - in fact, all the great civilisations.

Violent Ends

Odd coincidence - I started reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian the other day and it got me thinking, in a somewhat troubled fashion, about violence and its depiction in art. And then today I caught the back end of the wonderful Raging Bull, a reminder that it is possible to make utterly compelling films within the Hollywood system (if you happen to be Martin Scorsese, that is.)

I'm not keen on violence, in real life or in art. But I'm no James Joyce in this regard. (The great man's detestation and fear of any manifestation of physical violence leaves its traces everywhere in his work, most notably the Cyclops episode in Ulysses.) I'm capable of a fair degree of aggression myself and can do a mean Robert De Niro impersonation. And an action-packed movie used to be able to set the old pulse racing. But basically I regard flight as superior to fight, and I close my eyes during the gory bits.

So why is it I can't stop myself from watching De Niro's Jake La Motta destroy everything around him and within him? And why does it seem so important to acknowledge his capacity to do so? And why is it somehow entertaining?

As I said, I find myself somewhat troubled, and that's about as far as I can get with this at the moment.

To Be A Pilgrim

Hari Raya Haji; Eid Al Adha; 10 Zulhijjah, 1431

I find the ubiquitous journey metaphor rather tiresome. I am not, unfortunately, on a journey towards excellence, despite often being told I am.

But I am on another journey, and the great pilgrimage is the perfect metaphor for it. And one day I hope to give the metaphor substance. God willing.

At this point in the journey I am, like so many pilgrims, lost. And to be lost is hard. But sometimes necessary.