Saturday 3 May 2014

Vague Magazine 2014 - The New Forest - a walk in the park...





I grew up in a park. Regent’s Park. A smaller version of Hyde Park that has provided the weary people of London with a beautiful green place to go for a spot of fresh air, a walk among trees, and for the more energetic, a game of rugger on the fields between the lake and the Zoo since it was opened to the hoi polloi in 1835.

That’s what parks do. It’s what they’re about. What they’ve always been about, ever since Julius Caesar bequeathed his private gardens to the people of Rome to “walk abroad and recreate” themselves. The very word “park” for a great many people means ‘playground’.

And so it is for the many who flock to the New Forest National Park every summer. Indeed, many treat it much the same as any other park they might visit of a weekend. Residents bracing themselves for the onslaught are told that tourism brings “much needed revenue” to the area. Hordes descend on Forest fords, paddling, eating ice-cream, throwing soiled nappies in the bracken, and parking on any unprotected verge, but where all the dosh they deposit actually lands up is hard to gauge. Apart from a few pubs and caravan sites raking it in when the Forest is in season (so to speak), I haven’t noticed my council tax bill getting any lower - or employment opportunities in the area getting any better because of it.

Some organisations seem to do well, though. Possibly the most noticeable feature of the open arms policy for tourism in the New Forest are the large competitive cycling events that run year round. Most notorious of these is the New Forest “Wiggle” - a giggly name for an aggressive, “ride” in which literally thousands of cyclists pay upwards of £30 each to event organisers to descend on Forest roads in large groups, defying anyone to overtake, and literally annexing vast swathes of the place for days at a time. It’s effectively a weekend curfew for residents, many of whom opt to hide in their houses rather than risk venturing out for anything other than an emergency.

Nobody minds anything... as long as there’s not too much of it. Despite the occasional protest along event routes, locals are not quite at the pitchforks and torches stage as yet, but these massive events have begun to test local patience and it’s not hard to see why. There is an appreciable difference between the weekend family on push-bikes enjoying a much-needed lungfull of green air, and swarms of riders, heads down on £thousands worth of performance bikes playing Bradley Wiggins, and seemingly more interested in getting around a course in record time than admiring their surroundings.

Of course, one of the main reasons the Forest looks so nice and inviting to them as they pedal about in their lycra, is thanks to the ancient system of Commoning - turning out ponies and other stock on the commons to graze. This keeps the whole thing looking trim and pretty. Thing is though, those pretty ponies all belong to somebody, and that somebody has to round them up every now and again to check them over, check their health, and judge whether or not they’re going to make it safely through the winter – otherwise we could have some very tourist unfriendly sights like emaciated, elderly animals shivering and dying by the roadside. Little wonder then that local people were disgusted – and furious - when it emerged that one of these vital roundups (drifts) was actually cancelled last year...to make way for a cycle event. Hardly surprising then, that many are now calling for an end to these races altogether.  

Of course, the cycle clubs are anxious to refute that any of these events are races, calling them instead “rides” or “wiggles” or “sportives”. Whatever organisers may claim though, it seems clear that many of the participants have other ideas. Having read some of the comments on their Facebook pages in which they enthuse about how they achieved their “best time ever” on some ‘ride’ or other, I am minded of Michael Palin in the Monty Python parrot sketch, eyes shifting left and right as he tries to convince customer John Cleese that in spite of the fact the bird is clearly dead and nailed to its perch, it’s merely “resting”.

A little humility would probably go a long way to ameliorate tensions. In all too many cases, the attitude of those who misuse the Forest tends to be one of bewildered entitlement when challenged. The woman caught throwing nappies into the undergrowth, and hurling stones at a pony who had wandered too near her family’s picnic - rejoined that the animal “shouldn’t be here”. The family turning what was left of meagre winter grazing into a massive spirograph with their mountain bike tyres simply pleaded that “nobody told” them not to. The couple with the large dog snapping at the pregnant mare on the road by the High Corner Inn “didn’t know” they should keep it on a lead and under control.

“We didn’t know”, “Nobody told us”, “nobody said...”

One is forced to wonder if, had the New Forest been designated a National Wildlife Conservation Area instead of a National ‘Park’, people might have more of an idea of the actual importance of the place, and rather more of a handle on how to handle themselves – and their dogs – when visiting.

It seems pretty clear then that education is what’s needed, and education at grass roots level. Education that reminds us all that to enjoy places like the New Forest is not a right, it’s a privilege, and with privilege comes responsibility. It is incumbent upon those who profit by, and promote tourism to the New Forest to ensure that the visitors they encourage arrive armed with a certain amount of knowledge, and that knowledge needs to be imparted and implanted in our city schools. Leaflets in Forest pubs and at information points in car parks can only do so much. By the time people get here, in many cases, it’s already too late.

Yes, I grew up in London; I lived in a park and went to school in a wood - St John’s Wood, but thanks to my schooling, by the time I first visited the countryside, I already knew the Country Code.

It’s time to put it back on the National Curriculum.

E. A. Wyndham Blake © 2014
Posted by Emma Blake at 13:55
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Vague Magazine 2013 - It's all good...



Emma Blake dares say...
Saturday, 22 June 2013
It’s all over for David Dinsmore. Come Monday, he’ll be the new Editor of The Daily Tits (aka The Sun), and as he has gone into print to say: “"there's no better job in journalism" I guess the only way from there for him is down. 
I’d like to think that if I were a journalist, I would be aiming a little higher, something along the lines of a Robert Fisk, or Anne Leslie, but then again, it seems that at least these days, what most people believe to be aiming “high” is highly relative. 





Way back in the 1990s when I was a “sassy and risk-taking” chick jazz singer on the London ‘scene’, and politicians were all still people who were older than me, I received a call from a piano player who was looking for someone to do a duo gig with him at some restaurant up in Hampstead.
“What’s the money?” Was my first question.
“£70. Plus they’ll feed us” he said.
“Lemme check my diary and get back to you.” I said.
I then called around my musician friends to ask about this guy. I’d never heard of him, so I needed to know if he was any good; could he read, could he keep time – that sort of thing. Nobody had heard of him however, and couldn’t give me any kind of a steer as to what to expect. Finally, I called my usual bass player and he exploded into laughter on the other end of the ‘phone. 
“Ha ha! He’s TERRIBLE!” He chuckled. 
“Oh God...” I began.
“Take the gig, Em...” he carried on, “you’ll be ok. He knows a few chords and you’re good enough to busk it to keep it together, but just don’t look at him when you’re singing or you’ll wet yourself.”
“Why?” I asked, desperate.
“I’m not going to tell you. Best you find out for yourself, but just remember, I warned you...”
And with that, he left me to call the guy back to confirm. 
I confirmed.
I showed up professionally early to the gig in my little black Mini Mayfair with my charts (music) and my mic stand and my honed professional manner. He was already in a state. Nerves. Panic. Fumbling with the leads on the back of his keyboard, dropping stuff. I waited until he was completely ready before plugging my mic in to his amp to soundcheck in the last three minutes before we were actually due to hit. 
Halfway through the first number, I couldn’t resist a peek to see what was going on behind me when he took his solo. He was like Animal at the drum kit on The Muppets. Flailing, hammering, sweating, gurning. He looked like he was giving birth to a wasps’ nest. It was a sight to behold. Sometimes the lower lip was almost touching the keys, I was fairly sure he went cross-eyed at one point. The point though, was that the impression he gave to the audience was that playing the piano was the most difficult thing in the entire world.

Meanwhile, I was up at the mic giving the impression that singing complex rhythms, stretching phrasing, improvising, and providing hook after hook for this lunatic to keep to the beat was the easiest thing in the world.

I have never been so exhausted in my life. It was an ordeal. Singing percussively and snapping my fingers and beating my bangles on the mic stand in such a way that this berk could keep up and sound halfway listenable had all but wrung me out, but all the while, my smooth jazzness and my smug jazz grin never wavered. Not once. Brought up in a theatrical family, to let the audience “see the wheels going ‘round” in a performance was akin to drowning kittens down the bog. Anathema. Unspeakable. No matter what is going on, you present a professional front to the audience.

When it was all over, I staggered to the bar for a bucket of Merlot.


To my annoyance,  I watched as members of the audience lined up to congratulate HIM on his “amazing” performance and offered to buy him drinks. Not one of the bastards offered one to me.

It was a salient lesson. That night, I learned that very few people out there seem to be able to tell the difference between good, mediocre, and downright appalling. It seems the fact that anyone can get up on stage and do anything at ALL seems to please most people to the point of pant-wetting amazement.

I learned too, that if you strive for perfection, if you work to be the best you can be, if you practice and rehearse and try stuff and reject stuff before you present it, be sure you understand you’re doing it for yourself alone. If anyone notices, that’s nice, but essentially, the only person it’s going to matter to... is you.


If however, you're one of the rare and wonderful people who does notice, and delight in it when someone has gone to the bother of learning their craft in the service of your entertainment, no need for a fanfare, or even a song and dance; just buy ‘em a drink.





Posted by Emma Blake at 13:45

Vague Magazine 2011 - Antitaurino



Tuesday, 2 August 2011
'Antitaurinos' in Lima 
With a family man killed by a tormented bull goaded to madness at a fiesta near Valencia last week, perhaps it is time for Spain to wake up and smell the blood.

When I was a feature writer on an ex-pat rag in Spain in 2007, I was disgusted when our editor gave over the centre spread to a colleague for a flatulent article in defence of bull fighting. John Davies, the then ‘sports’ writer, expressed the sneering ‘regret’ that squeamish Brits were missing out on the full Spanish experience if they failed to embrace it as part of the ‘culture’.

Somewhat karmically, the paper went bust two weeks later.

Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero’s recent woeful decision to give Bull Fighting official status as an ‘artistic discipline and cultural product’ may have come as a shock but not really that much of a surprise. With the bull fighting ban now enforced in Catalunya, and having first-hand knowledge of Spanish politics having lived in the country myself, one has to suspect this had rather more to do with point scoring against the Catalans than any real interest in an outdated and controversial bloodsport. As bullrings close down, and television coverage of corridas gets pulled due to falling viewing figures, feeble defence of this vicious nonsense has become almost a cultural relic in itself. Yet out the arguments still trot - like the crudely stitched up horses of the Picadors, but with far less nobility. I have read incredulously of ‘brave bulls’ earning ‘glorious’ deaths, and wondered how it is possible in this day and age for anyone using such ridiculously anthropomorphic language to expect their argument be taken seriously in any sort of rational debate.

Bravery and/or cowardice are human traits; the preposterous ‘transference’ demonstrated by attributing such qualities to animals should surely be greeted with derision, not given column room; yet my former colleague earnestly claimed in his 2007 article that “fighting bulls are born on a strict pedigree of ‘proven courage’ for six years before they go into the ring. Any sign of ‘cowardice’ in that six years and they will be dispatched to the slaughterhouse. The prospect before them is a place on the butcher’s block or a hot-blooded death in the Plaza de Toros.”

Gosh.

So what does this actually mean? That in demonstrating either ‘courage’ or ‘cowardice’ (at least in the swivel-eyed opinion of the humans who control their lives) they somehow earn the right to choose their own fate? How frightfully decent. However, one has to ask just how, exactly, this generous ‘deal’ is conveyed to these creatures? And how may they be seen either to consent or not? Via contract? And how might that be worded, we wonder? “Choose one: a) run away from the homicidal maniac brandishing a sharp instrument trying to hurt you, or b) charge at him and earn the right to be stabbed to death in front of a cheering crowd...”

Assuming our ‘brave’ bull plumps for option B, he then enters into six years of ‘training’, during which time he is made to believe he is playing some sort of game and so gets used to the flapping cape and running around a ring...er...thing. At the end of this, he is packed into a truck and taken to the arena, where the game turns decidedly sour and he is rewarded with a confusing and distressing death. Commencing with metal lances being plunged (and twisted) between his shoulder-blades by the mounted Picadors to weaken him as he enters the ring, the ‘game’ continues with three or four banderillas being thrust into his already profusely bleeding back, until, dazed and staggering, he is finally put out of his misery with a sword or dagger, severing his spinal cord. It is thus that it would appear bovine ‘bravery’ is established – i.e., by how long agonised, confused and deranged animals can keep on charging.

This would also seem to have a bearing on how potent the bull’s gonads are going to be when they are chopped off and served up for the matador’s dinner, the notion being that eating the testicles of a strong animal will confer certain macho powers on the raving delusional sitting with the plate in front of them.

Last time I looked in the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of sadism was still ‘a form of perversion marked by a love of cruelty’. How else can one describe the practise of goading and tormenting a living, sentient creature to its death? I totally dispute that it’s any kind of a fair fight. The bull is knobbled as soon as he enters the ring by not only the methods outlined above, but bulls have also been found to have had vaseline rubbed in their eyes to blur their vision. Real level playing field that. What bravery. What entertainment. QuĂ© ‘especta-culo’ (look it up).

I had to laugh when I read of the pro-bullfighting lobby in Spain jeering at horrified Brits by saying ‘The English come to the corrida to cry for the bull, then go home and beat their children.’ With marches in the streets against the ever mushrooming problem of domestic violence in Spain, that would seem rather like the pot calling the kettle black. Just as I do not believe that in order to love England one has to embrace foxhunting (still illegal by the way - despite the sycophantic coverage given to Boxing Day meets by sympathetic rags), neither will I accept that one must swallow savagery and ritualised bloodshed in order to fully appreciate Spain. In fact, I frankly wonder at the sort of English, and other foreign nationals who choose to make their homes there who are apparently so desperate to be seen as assimilated they believe they have to suck-up to it.

I find it depressing that to so many, any expression of concern or sympathy for the pain and suffering of animals is cause for derision. The legendary King Arthur is supposed to have said that ‘violence is not strength, and compassion is not weakness’.

Myth or reality, the sentiment is irrefutable.

© Emma Blake 2011
http://img2.blogblog.com/img/icon18_edit_allbkg.gifPosted by Emma Blake at 22:54

Vague Magazine 2011 - Dalai Lama



Emma Blake dares say...
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
The Dalai Lama - too much too young

"The compassion we feel normally is biased and mixed with attachment. Genuine compassion flows towards all living beings, particularly your enemies. If I try to develop compassion towards my enemy, it may not benefit him directly, he may not even be aware of it. But it will immediately benefit me by calming my mind. On the other hand, if I dwell on how awful everything is, I immediately lose my peace of mind." The Dalai Lama

No wonder Tibet still lives under the rule of Beijing. Heaven forbid that dwelling on the awful goings on in the world and the vile deeds of others should make anyone lose their peace of mind.

Look, I know he no longer lives in the Potala Palace, but if you're in love with words and looking for a title for a piece, alliteration is a great temptation. The Dalai Lama has unleashed a good few quotable quotes in his time, but Mohandas K. Gandhi he is not. Lhamo Dondrub/Tenzin Gyatso was chosen as a baby to be groomed for the post he occupies and his word is not infallible on all matters of spirituality, or the right way to live. Compassion flowing to all living beings? That would be good. This, after all, is the spiritual head of a philosophy that has non-violence at its core, yet who is well known to tuck into meat on State occasions with gusto, citing a bout of ill health some time ago as his reason. With a host of world and religious leaders on his rolodex, it seems we are to believe he couldn't find a nutritionist to help him find any protein alternatives that do not involve violent death and dismemberment of sentient beings for his plate. 


Still, that is a matter for his own conscience, and I will say no more about it, but I will continue to say that sitting on a Himalayan mountain radiating compassion is a luxury simply not afforded to all who have to live down in the dirt day to day. 

Personally, I would prefer to live a life of action and protest. Knowing that I am doing something positive to stop everything being awful gives me peace of mind. 

Posted by Emma Blake at 14:00
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