WHAT MAKES A MAN A MAN - Part 4 - Beneath The Rambo Lies Bambi

Three years on, its 1976, its the Leeds Polytechnic Graphic Design Department's Christmas Party.  A few weeks before, on the 6th December the Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The UK Tour had finally found a city that would allow them to play, and the venue was Leeds Polytechnic. This photo shows my appearance as already morphing from heavy progressive music fan to punk. The trousers are the same pink flared jeans worn in the last photo, now paired with a red rugby shirt, a Rupert Bear style waistcoat picked up from a Jumble Sale, updated with a flourish of safety pins, chains and badges. This hesitant, carefully modulated affinity with punk's rebellious creative freedom, looks today like the faux dressing up that it was.

Because of childhood bullying I tended to shy away from any overt displays of aggression, whether in cloths or behaviour. Risk averse, I lacked self- defense skills, unsure how to assert myself.  I didn't want to turn myself into a fist magnet. Still discovering who I was, there wasn't much yet to assert? I'd left the parental home for the first time the year before for an Arts Foundation Course in Hull. In my memory the defining characteristic of that period were emerging internal conflicts, the boy/man in late teenage getting to grips with managing himself and adult life in general. Frustrated to discover I was an introvert. Why couldn't I be effortlessly extrovert and turn it on like a tap?  I mistook success as residing in an outgoing ebullient personality. I started doing research, absorbing Nietzsche, reading about psychology in books and magazines. R D Laing got very close attention, scouring The Divided Self and Self & Other, looking for clues to why I was like I was. I seemed to believe something was either missing or innately wrong with me.

In Leeds a new lifestyle, more representative of me and my interests, was forming. For the first time I was surrounded by more like minded 'Arty' friends. Adopting, however mildly, a few street punk tropes placed a tentative toe into another way of being me. Underneath I remained the rather mild mannered chap I was before, but with punkish trimmings thrilling around the edges. I wanted to be a firmer, stronger individual. Punk offered a way to outwardly display that. Perhaps this would keep the thugs at bay.

Look into the soft moons of my eyes, there is no attitude problem to be read there, just the open iris of vulnerability. I'm 19, with a young man's body, slim, a wee bit of tummy fat, not particularly fit, you'd be hard put to find anything resembling bulk or muscle mass. But then this is the seventies, and my type of male body was common place, almost the default for the majority of wiry young lads. Developing vein bulging muscles and a firm ribbed washboard of abs was then thought to be weird, baffling behaviour. Only vain self obsessed people would do such a thing to themselves. Muscle men were novelty acts on TV variety shows twitching their biceps in time to 'Wheels Cha Cha' whilst sprayed in silver metallic paint. It was all a bit gross. Well ripped men inhabited super hero comics or if you knew of them, the gay drawings of Tom of Finland. But most men in my Lincolnshire village drank far too much beer to be anything other than chubby hunks, with flabby love handles.

The well sculpted body form, is not a new thing, but in recent years its started to produce an unhealthy preoccupation in younger men. Teenage boys, much younger than I was in this photo, are now obtaining and using body enhancing steroids. The pressures on them to look a particular way are immense. Visual provocations and reminders bombard them. Every male film star looks like they were carved out of stone by the divine hands of gods. These days we understand the link between the way women are portrayed in the media, expectations of who and what they're meant to be like. This body fascism has broadened to incorporate men, with the rise of this pumped up hyper male. That it is raising no huge concern, is that its happening to men. Men are supposed to not be weak, to be physically strong and overtly express their power through their physique, so this is just business as usual, isn't it? But improved physical health is not being matched by improved mental health. So 25% of people with body dysmorphia are male, hospital admissions for men with eating disorders have doubled in the last eight years, not to mention the escalating mental heath and suicide crisis in men?

Dwayne Johnson

You are a young lad living in a country backwater, average looking, average in the intelligence and charm department. How will you succeed in relationships, in the world, in a career, with life? Perhaps emulating Dwayne Johnson or any other Hollywood chunk of tanned muscle, might mean you feel better, more confident about yourself. Not everyone inherits the looks of a suave dashing man. Yet even an ugly looking brute with a broken nose can obtain a hot body. Go on, get fit, be healthy, take back control of your destiny, forget the face or personality let your body be the babe magnet. Its not hard to spot guys who are addicted to the gym. They are built like leather sofas with a pea sized head, shaved smooth perched on top.

So men tend to massively overcompensate, using their external bodily appearance, their flesh and muscle as mental armour. The same sad masculine story, build a body impregnable to break ins, so no one discovers that beneath the Rambo lies Bambi, characterised by a lack of confidence, weak self knowledge and arrested emotional development. There are many many ways to live a healthy fulfilled life, being built like Hercules is not necessarily at the top of the list.

Heracles

Fetishistic obsession with the perfect male body in the West has its origins in the Ancient Greek world of Gods, sculpture and Homer. The archetypal image we have of the warrior hero has a direct lineage traceable from Hector and Achilles through to modern day 'ninja' street fighters. The supremely fit man, toned into a perfect form representing the outward manifestation of a superior mind with the strength of purpose held within. Well, at least that's the myth and presumption. It is also the root of 20th century Aryan notions of the Nazi's and Soviet images of revolutionary workers in Russia.

Armour once taken off, is a clanking, cold, hard shell, a void echoing from within. Men appear to feel safer when soldered up in a restrictive metallic casing, whether literally or as a metaphor for physique. Tattoos are a decorative addition to contemporary body armour, displaying the allegiances and insignia of urban tribes. Its a war paint permanently drawn on the skin, shielding you from evil, protecting in the midst of clashes over territory in our towns and cities.

Poster image of Hitler wearing armour

Masculine armour, though usually physically manifested, does have its mental and spiritual correlates. The words we chose to use can be armour. The beliefs we hold can be armour. The politics we espouse can be armour. Our public persona can be armour. The things we own, our possessions can be armour.  Some people use their spouses as armour. Anything can be used as a means of protection, of displaying strength. Projecting an unyielding hardness is a masculine addiction. We demand it of our politicians, whether male or female. Our leaders, like our country, must be strong, stable and well defended. Pull up the drawbridge, prevent invasive foreigners from getting in. Men are like nations, islands unto themselves. You wear armour if you're feeling vulnerable. Armour protects, but does so by cutting you off from the outside world. Armour isolates. When wearing armour you're always alone.

Soviet Poster

By 1976 I know I'm gay, but have not yet come out. Still faking being straight, I think I'm hiding in plain sight, that no one sees this side of me, which was doubtful actually. An art college is probably 'the' place to find yourself regularly in the company of a galaxy of oddballs and queens of all shapes, sizes and outrage. There was Big Joe, well over six and a half foot tall, a massive hulk built like a concrete wall, wearing day glo hot pants, makeup, necklaces, earrings, a shoulder bag akimbo, a voice loud and proudly effeminate. Simultaneously both provocative and a warning. I found people like him inspiring. they gave me confidence that being out as gay would not be just OK, but fun too. That it was possible to be honest and open about who I was, started here. Though I was still a few years away from coming out to friends, and over a decade from telling my family. So the momentum was slow in building.

Though 1976 was nine years after being actively gay had been decriminalised, it was still far from straightforward being an out gay man. Big Joe was attacked by a gang, he gave them what for, being mentally brave and unbowed, but he was nevertheless physically bruised. In Quentin Crisp's book The Naked Civil Servant published in 1968 and made into a TV film in 1975, he describes his life as an out gay man many decades before gay relations were legalised.  Defiantly himself, despite the oppression of his time, Crisp was to become a major hero for me. Though, strangely, he could never quite bring himself to consider his homosexuality as being normal. Nevertheless he became something brilliantly arch. Defiantly individualistic, he declared everyone could do as he had done, to be true to yourself but larger than life. Crisp was critical of 'camp' because it had become a series of behavioural cliches, an affectation adopted in order to identify yourself as part of 'the oppressed group'.

" I would not wish to be shunted into a siding. The trouble with gay reservations is they breed a terrible conformity. They claim to be a place where people can be themselves but very often that involves the most boring form of camp which has nothing to do with individual style and everything to do with a fear of 'breaking ranks". *

Quentin Crisp in his youth

For Crisp developing individuality in your way of being, was to find 'your style'. This 'style'  blossomed out of self-understanding and required courage to live out who you really are. Regardless of whether you are gay or straight, being who you really are builds an inner strength more resilient than any outwardly constructed form of defensive armour. However, on the journey to self-knowledge, for a gay man, affecting camp has its role to play because it makes the invisible visible. There were times in the 1980's when I cranked up a camp appearance simply because it made it easier if people knew what I was without needing to be told.

I don't have any photos of myself during this 1980's phase of wearing jewellery. Acquaintances who knew me at that time, referred to me as 'Flamboyant Steve' The single pierced earlobe was becoming quite common place among men, but I decided to have both ears done. Overtime I progressed from wearing pairs of colourful studs, pink triangles, zigzag snakes, silver lizards, jade drops, to earrings closer to candelabras or tubular bells, dangling and swinging like wind chimes from my lobes. Along with a hand full of rings, this was jewellery as public power statement. My clothes didn't particularly partake in this flamboyance, they remained straightforwardly generic. Unconsciously what I seemed to be trying to communicate was that I was an ordinary guy, who also happened to be gay. Let's not sweat over the details.

There were moments of panic, when I did feel far too exposed. I worked in an art shop, in a multi-cultural district of North London, where no one was detrimental about how anyone dressed. I did tone it down when I visited my family. A few years later I become uncomfortable with anything that felt like an affectation. Did this baroque appearance really represent anything that was true about me?  The earrings gradually reverted back to just studs, A decade later I wasn't wearing earrings at all. For a while jewellery had been this outward expression, a way of advertising my sexuality, my chosen form of theatrical peacock display. Gay armour, like any armour, performs this dual function as visual statement and voodoo protection.

I came out to my parents, and though they always remained appreciative and loving, they didn't talk any further with me about my life as a gay man for ten years, until I brought the matter up. They just found the whole subject too disconcerting, and may be I did too, because I hadn't talked about it either. Most gay men hold some bitterness, hidden in their being. Its the hiding, the pretending, the fear of not feeling accepted for who you naturally feel yourself to be, this is inherently difficult existentially. It can't help but dent your self view, your joie de vivre in some way. Gay banter, the bitchy cattiness towards others, though a cliche, becomes a resource that gay men call upon to fight back. It can be cruel, unkind, saying what ought to be unsayable, exposing human flaws and fallibility, to hurt, despise and ridicule. Though its frequently funny and pointed, it emerges from essentially a soured place in the heart. But you do have to laugh through the hurt, don't you?

When I became a Buddhist the negativity embedded in my speech, became an area I had to really work on. I was too prone to letting rip with the witty spur of the moment put down. By then my life had had a few stalled, a few aborted, attempts at taking a different career path and then the closing of a failing business. For ten to fifteen years following 1976 I'd wandered down a more self exploratory but often quite punishing path, of which a degree of bitterness and spite were consequences. Words became a defensive armour, to stop people coming too close and perhaps perceiving how internally fractured, at that time, I could sometimes feel myself to be.

CARROT CAKE REVIEW 20 - A Slab Of Oddly Proportioned Baroque

Castle Howard, Yorkshire.

Its a glorious Winter's sunny day, we are at Castle Howard. The air is crisp, its bright, the colours and shadows are sharp. After a ramble around the landscaped estate grounds with its follies and bridges going absolutely nowhere in particular, we queued for much a needed lunch. The logistics and layout of The Courtyard Cafe leaves much to be desired, it is not a joy for anyone. It is as if whoever designed it wilfully ignored the most outstanding flaws in their own floor plan.

No matter how busy the cafe is you will have to queue to be seated. Those who are incoming queue inside the entrance way where the outgoing are also trying to do their best to exit. Because the cafe's toilets are outside in the courtyard, people are understandably forever quickly nipping out for a pee or a poo, then back in again. All this accompanied by politely embarrassed side shuffling and 'sorry, can I just get by'. Folk, all very like us, who after a grand morning pretending to promenade, end up behaving like standing figures in an automaton mechanical clock, moving stiffly in - then out - then in, the same door. In the Summer, when the waiting staff also have to come in and out to serve tables outside, the situation must be totally exasperating. The staff cope kindly and stoically with a situation not of their making.

Our lunch was a fine but simple fair, but also unremarkable, so I can't put my finger now on quite what it was. Something vaguely in the region of Jacket Potato Beans & Cheese, perhaps. It seemed to be all over rather quickly, as my gaze quickly wandered covetously over to the lovelies on the baroque cake stands. I spotted what looked suspiciously like a carrot cake, so I sent Hubby out on an advance recky for confirmation. Yes it was. As you can see from the photo I uncharacteristically started eating the cake before I'd taken the traditional pristine 'cake on arrival' photo. Which I guess must say something, if only that I was overcome by the volition of a gluttonous impulse.

The outstanding flaws of this cake were mostly in its visual appearance. Whoever divided this cake horizontally made a complete mess of it. I mean just look at it, have you ever seen a cake with such an uneven horizontal division? The bottom looks like its a recently installed damp course.

However,if one was to put that to one side, the texture was good. Its colour did perhaps veer a little too near to pale ginger, rather than a rusty sienna. Just saying! You got a strong whiff of spice infused carrot when it was placed before you. So, Oh, my hopes were then somewhat perked, if not arisen. This was looking really very promising, with a handsome suggestion of fruit and nuts scattered across its rough cut flanks.

A moderately sized piece of cake, the texture held together well once it slid onto your palate. You had time to savour this before it broke down through mastication into stomach ready cake slurry. The balance of its ingredients was well measured. The proportions of its ingredients were nobly considered, but not over-imposing. Though it wasn't stunningly carroty in its flavour, it was certainly not an absent whim. This cake had some characteristic weighty heft to it, whilst remaining quietly airy. The frosting was aiming to affect a rugged and rustic look, unfortunately it had the demeanour of a bit of badly mixed plaster, but it did taste fine, not too sweet nor artificial.

It was, all things considered, a very pleasant cake to eat. Straddling a broad flavour spectrum with ease whilst settling nowhere strongly. Not as spectacularly palladian-baroque as Castle Howard itself, but I'll say again, a nicely balanced cake.



CARROT CAKE SCORE - 6/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY 35 - The BoJo Gag Reflex

The muted low key BoJo lasted all of four days. The mood of the daily government briefings changed once you had a pantomime horse gallivanting in the middle of the two stooges. It was as if someone flicked a switch and Boris was back on full Kerfuffle & Bluster setting. What has become painfully obvious, and I do mean toe curlingly painful, is what an abysmally poor communicator he is. The lack of clarity and concision in his every utterance is outstanding. If parts of the general public remain confused about what 'social distancing' and 'voluntary isolation' actually mean, then look no further than our babbling brook of a PM.

He is incapable of constructing a simple straightforward sentence presenting the necessary bare facts, without prefacing them with a gabbled recounting of every single government initiative so far. There should be a public health warning - 'Please be aware, you are about to have several kilos of candy floss rammed down your oesophagus, resisting your gag reflex could prove difficult'.  He is not what you want at a time of national crisis, but he is what we've been given.

A few weeks ago during the floods everyone was asking 'Where's Boris?.. is he in hiding?'. Now we see him everyday we know why they kept him away from the spot light...because he hogs it. There were times when I've found myself praying for a big hook to come in from one side and drag him away from the microphones. I end up shouting at the TV , starting with- 'Just tell us what we need to know' quickly progressing to Oh 'Shut UP! Shut UP!! Shut UP!!!

Whitty & Vallance continue to be the unruffled deliverers of disquieting information, with patience, kindness and precision. They have now been joined in my small pantheon of 'Thank God They Are Here' heroes by Rishi Sunak, our newly esteemed Chancellor, His presence is reassuring because he's a very clearheaded steady communicator and he sounds like he genuinely cares what happens to everyone. Plus he is trying to get to grips with organising help, surrounded by the chaos that is BoJo and a steadily worsening situation. Setting up a whole new way to administer support for the entire countries economy in a matter of days. Yes, it is all a bit of a mess timing wise, but then what do we expect, the lead in times have been non existent. This virus did not exist on many peoples radar three months ago.

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Meanwhile, in the land of Cottonwood Home, we have decided, with regret, to mothball the shop whilst the pandemic rages. Deep cleaning the shop and stocktaking on Sunday before we close. Each day has been quiet, getting quieter and our daily take has correspondingly nose dived. We also started to question being open for business, not just because financially its become pants, but because it invites people to come into a shop with us that's not advisable health wise, leaving all of us open to infection. A part of me is heartbroken to have to do this. It feels like we are abandoning a fledgling bird that may not survive our being away. 

It looks like we will get a grant from the government to partially support us, which eases the financial uncertainty a little. Had the year progressed as we'd hoped, by the end of Summer we assumed it would be obvious whether the business had grown sufficiently to make continuing for another year worth a try. This is not going to happen then, even in our wildest dreams. Our landlord has halved our rent for the next three months, this and the grant pushes that moment of decision to some indefinite time ahead. Leaving the future of our business longer term with a question mark hovering over it. Whatever the circumstances are when that particular presenting moment does arrives I'm sure will almost take the decision for us. So I'm not going to put on my worry head about that now. Lets survive the pandemic first.

Running the shop and making for the shop takes up all our energy and time, so keeping our website up to date and marketing it has fallen by the wayside. One benefit of being forced to stay home will be to get on with photographing new stock etc. Having a bricks and mortar shop has refocused the nature of the things that we make, and the website needs to reflect that change. At the moment we're continuing to make new things but at some point that will cease, if only because we can't buy the materials we need as everywhere will have shut down.

Looking at the empty ransacked shelves in our supermarkets, of a country not yet in lock down, and comparing them with the full shelves in Italian supermarkets, a country that is in lock down, is dispiriting. It really reflects on how in the UK the sense of community and consideration for the needs of others has just crumbled in this crisis to be replaced by a knee jerk self-serving greedy grabby individualism. Seeing what's happened is horrifying. It is truly shameful.

I'm still reading through the book of commentaries on three chapters from Dogen's Shobogenzo. I have got stuck on the middle one, Shoaku Makusa or Refraining from Evil.  Densely allusive in the way its written, it is an exploration of the concepts of good and evil and what we are really to refrain from. I'm currently on my third re-reading through of the commentary, and though I've become much clearer about the general thrust, I'm still getting the feeling that something important in what he's trying to communicate is still eluding me, as though its merely a whisker away from my grasp. But its a big whisker!

For light reading, and I say that with all the irony I can muster, as the book is over 800 pages long and a heft tome, I've just begun to read Hilary Mantel's The Mirror & the Light, the third part of her historical trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. Though I'm barely 80 pages in. it is already a joy to read, so fluidly composed, perceptively written and revealing. Even though you know how history says it ends, you're still willing to take the long journey despite the inevitability of its conclusion

" To rely on the other is to be always unsettled" 

The Suttanipata

Pretty much your standard Dharma alert. Not to emotionally over invest in people, things, environments and events in being reliable. These things may appear to be stable or present the illusion that they will always be there, but that can be unsettled in an instant, like by the emergence of an invisible virus. Be wise and stay safe.

SHERINGHAM DIARY 34 - The Epidemiological War For Catholic Supremacy

First it was the hand sanitizer, then the loo rolls, then the pasta, then the bread, then the cans of soup, I think the picture is now clear what most reassures a nation in crisis, and what its going to be doing for the next few months.  Sanitize -  Eat Slop - Shit - Wipe Bum - Sanitize

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The gobby guy in the pub who after a few beers would regal you with 'you know what I think is wrong with this country......' and serve up in slurred broken sentences a potpourri of half masticated ideas and paranoid conspiracy, has now found the perfect vehicle for 'the truth that no one wants to hear' - social media. In the pub you'd just move away to the snug, on social media its harder to avoid them. For even the nutters have become media savvy, packaging their 'truth' in seemingly orthodox presentations. They've found once you have photo shop its not that hard to project an image of expertise. If you could actually hear them struggling through self intoxication to remain coherent you wouldn't give them the time of day.

Thank goodness for the real life experts who appear to know what they're talking about. The well informed blow away myths and misunderstandings with clearly expressed facts, also explaining the underlying basis for their judgements. This is not just refreshing, its reassuring. The briefings from that curiously Dickensian triumvirate of Whitty, Boris & Vallance are now becoming something of a daily joy. There is always Boris being Boris, trying not to make a joke about the graph looking like a sombrero, but it just slipped out anyway blowing his bid for statesmanlike leadership with one quip. For we all know never to trust a word that comes from his lips, even when he's trying his best to stick to the frank truth of the matter.

Whiity is not a natty dresser. The hair looks like an unruly wisp of fluff, the tie always slightly askew thin and malformed, the white shirt has seen one too many spin washes to sparkle anymore and the suit attended funerals on its own in the 1980's. All of which makes Sir Patrick Vallance seem like the suave level headed posh prefect who people instantly fell in love with and swooned over, simply because his handsome dress sense is matched by his intellect, and he doesn't make your toes curl. However, facts don't need to be well dressed, but just well presented. These are boffins after all.

Andy Burnham, health minister during the swine flu outbreak, said recently that he soon realised that in a crisis a politician up front regurgitating facts and figures to the general public would not be believed and their motives maligned, that it was best to hand the mike over to experts who everyone would be prepared to really listen to and act upon what they say. I think Boris should just get his unsightly bulk out of the way pronto, so the Whitty & Vallance double act can truly flourish.

Whilst Whitty & Vallance have been the quintessential calm measured and unruffled English experts, there is a whole other world of armchair experts in the wings shouting abuse at them. Everyone who as a child had once held a stethoscope shouting - wrong, pathetic, misjudged, they need to be more decisive, they're completely missing the point etc etc. The general public find themselves also standing confused in the middle of an unedifying holy war between the experts themselves for who will be proved right in the end, for they shall inherit praise and be worshipped in all future crises. For when the epidemiological war is over who will be left as the one truly catholic and supreme epidemiological leader ?

Experts have egos just like the rest of us, ones that needs pampering, and epidemiologists are no exception to this. It must be rare for an epidemiologist to find themselves having a media moment, where everyone's knocking on their door. Now, at last, they can finally be heard. There has certainly been a lot of them 'getting things off their chests'. What in essence is the epidemiological war ? - its not a dispute over what should be done, but when it should be done. Its a disagreement over timing.

But then, as we now know, the country is in a bit of a fear-filled panic at the moment, and that impulse needs calming and that energy diverted into more altruistic directions. We all have our anxious concerns, mine is for the future of our business Cottonwood Home. But its never good to act from a position of panic, when we're running around like a headless chicken we rarely do the best, correct or most sensible thing. In a time of uncertainty we crave security, even when their is none to be had. Whilst the whole world gradually closes itself down, we don't know for how long we will have to endure this - will it be weeks, months or more? What will be left of our previous way of life once its all over? This too cannot be known - right now.

Remember, the present abides in the place of the present... it has a past and it has a future. Although it has a past and a future, the past and the future are cut off from it.

Eihei Dogen - from the Genjo Koan

I'm on my way to bed. Just a brief stop over in the bathroom to do my teeth. Spread the toothpaste on the brush. Begin that distinctive circular shuttering movement. As I vigorously brush the foam across my teeth there's a slight background flavour to the toothpaste  What is that? Its a bit medical, is it TCP? Its reminds me of germolene. Perhaps the tops off the germolene in my wash bag, I'll check afterwards. I carry on brushing right to completion. Then my gaze settles on the  toothpaste tube resting on the windowsill before me it looked very like and indeed was.... a tube of germolene.  It was slightly greasy but still, not a bad clean.

SHERINGHAM DIARY 33 - Stormbringer & the Quest For The Demon Sword

North Norfolk got off comparatively lightly with the 'stormzy'. Our petite back patio, bore the brunt of flailing in a continuous gale. Bits blew off, a fence departed from its frame, a decorative garden mirror flew into raised bedding and broke. When Storm Ciara was predicted I moved our bins from their raised area to prevent them cascading off it. They stayed off for an entire month. When I put them back it still felt a bit presumptive. Still when the children ask me what I did during the dreadful storms of 2020 I can say proudly, I brought the bins down.

If people visit Sheringham at this time of year, its at weekends. When the forecast is so bad, understandably no one comes. They say there was a 7.8% drop in retail footfall in February, well that means most of North Norfolk had donned gilets and were cowering in their bungalows. With every storm wrecking gale of rain passing through each weekend, our most profitable days vanished. We've almost forgotten what a good days takings can feel like.

It was hard staying confident, our Buddhist practice has been put through its paces. Nevertheless, it can slowly wear you down. Finding yourself emotionally zonked at the end of the day, simply from the effort of staying present and positive. We've focused on product making to distract us from the lack of human interaction. These items are starting to be fed into the shop now we're entering March. Easter is still a month away, the official beginning of the tourist season. We've increased our opening days from three to five. Trade doesn't really justify it yet, though we're ready for it whenever it does.

Just when the imminent arrival of Spring offered up hope of more fruitful times, along comes the 'demon sword' of a virus pandemic. This could either have a deleterious affect on summer trade, or bring a boost from people not taking holidays abroad. We have a larger percentage of elderly people here. Imagine if half your local population self isolate and never venture out for weeks. Apparently what people seem concerned most about is not running out of food, but toilet paper to wipe their butts. 

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No cases in Norfolk as yet

TV bombards us with updates about the relative lethal consequences of the 'demon sword'. This tends to 'alarm the elderly' with oracles of their looming demise - Its now come a lot closer than you think, my dear'. I tend to view this quizzically. Should I apply this to myself?  What makes one elderly anyway? Of course this doesn't apply to me yet, I am a few years shy of 65, thank you. I can, however, read the early portents whilst I amble blithely toward the neatly cut grassy lawns of being 'elderly'.

I almost daily encounter fresh locations for a bodily ache, the arthritis in my hands is gradually turning them into claws with feeble grip, plus my recall of words, information or names are travelling a little further away from being at the tip of my tongue than before. When I find myself feeling less than charitable towards a pensioner fumbling for change in a shop, or whilst weaving in and out of the phalanxes of zimmer frames on the narrow pavements of Sheringham High Street, I warn myself,- 'one day you'll be doing that, you'll be struggling simply to get about, you'll be getting flustered and out of breath just opening your wallet'.

Perhaps marrying a husband whose younger than yourself, will help knock a few years imaginatively off the age tally. I don't feel in my being that I'm getting older, I guess no-one does, yet the body says no, nonetheless. I notice myself gazing vaguely in the general direction of my face and body in the mirror. I look, but not really look, if you know what I mean. The external experience of my body changes regardless of however youthful I might feel the person living inside of it is.  My skin develops increasing spatters of liver spots; the flesh around my neck moves inexorably towards resembling a wrinkled, sagging testicle, my body mass has settled for being squarely chunky over trim and slim.

All this is meant to be edifying for a Buddhist to fully acknowledge their impermanence. To calmly observe the sea of ones mortality advancing ever higher up the beach til inevitably it hits the sea wall and dissipates. This doesn't prevent it from also feeling sad, in a manky sort of way.

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So, just when we all need a little bit of cheering up. the Sheringham Scira Viking Festival arrives, huzzah!. Its only eight years old, but grows more popular with every year, already the second largest such event in the country. However, if there are only two, then, as a statistic this is less impressive. The programmed events over half-term mainly focus on 'the children', with sword, helmet and shield making workshops. Teaching them the social benefits of a well executed decapitation with a sword, this is educationally good, no doubt. The axe throwing, mock fights and stalls selling period authentic cow horns and other things to vaguely Norse accessorise your home, keep 'the adult children' fulfilled in their desire to keep shopping. It culminates, as any charade must, with a torchlit procession dragging a fake viking long boat through town to be incinerated on the beach.

We went along to the boat burning, just to say we'd been.. once. This is Sheringham, so the first thing that hits you is - the ridiculously over amplified music. This time it was a continuous portentous drone with horns and drums interjecting over the top. Loud enough to make your brain vibrate or explode in a fit of hand tremors. Someone put 'Viking music' into the Spotify search engine and this was the longest piece they could find. It just went on and on and on, constantly sounding like it might just be about to reach a dramatic crescendo...... but never did.  Apparently this drone could, and did, go on all day.

It was high tide, so the 'fake boat' was squeezed well up beach by the sea wall. Viewed from the Esplanade where we were, it was hard to see much more than an odd bit of flailing rigging and a wisp of black smoke. In a stiff cold gale I was surprised they could get it lit at all. But after piling loads of pallets into it, throwing in some petrol, then flaming torches, whoosh, up it went. Was it impressive? Not particularly. Was it moving? Nope. Did it make you long for the simpler times of your Scandinavian ancestors? It made me long for a bag of chips.

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This 'boat burning' prompted reflections on the emptying out of communal rituals, the general trivialising of significance. Things become just a little night amusement like this one, devoid of local cultural meaning or resonance. Sheringham has a Viking Festival simply because a local artist convinced The Sheringham Festival Committee it was a good idea, based on the town's name being originally Scandivanian for Scira's hamlet. These two slim facts justifying it's entire existence. No profound connection, local lineage, long held folklore or background tradition. Everything has been literally stolen piece by piece from somewhere else....from someone else's culture.

Its like spending a week in a Viking theme park. Yes, I guess it could be fun, but it can't escape from also being spectacle for spectacles sake. With no overarching purpose, ritual associations or mythic depths to touch, it has, spiritually speaking, zilch to offer. Perhaps building a giant standing man out of crab and lobster crates and burning them with last years Carnival Queen buried inside it, might have a bit more punch. Lets have a Wicker Man Weekend, with a Christopher |Lee lookalike competition and transform Sheringham into an isolated insular Scottish Island community. It wont be that hard.

*******************

I'm killing time in Norwich before my Zen group, walking in the general direction of The Forum Library across the market. A young woman approaches, she is perky and personable in a scarf and winter coat, her head leaning slightly to one side in that mixture of beseeching coyness and fake friendly eyed enquiry.
'Are you from round here?'
'I live in North Norfolk'
'How long have you lived there?' 
'Two Years or so'
This is already getting too chatty and familiar for my liking. I'm nervous. What's this about ? Where am I being led by this conversation? I'm envisaging a public poll, questionnaire or request to support climate change or a homeless charity. I wish she'd just get to whatever the point of sale of this street intervention is, so I can respond 'Not - today -interested - now - never - clear off' and move on.
'Have you got a few minutes to spare?'
Oh here we go
'Well I do have to be somewhere soon'
(which is the polite English way of saying clearly and loudly - No I Do Not!!! )
Not picking up on the subliminal passive / aggressive undertow of my reluctance, she shouts very brightly
'Just follow me'
and facing away from me she runs like the clappers across the road away and towards the Victoria Arcade. I seize my opportunity, walking briskly in the opposite direction.
In my mind I'm thinking -
'Was that some sort of Situationist performance art project or bizarre behavioural psychology test.........that I've now failed'
.