The fences are down and no wire will fix them
Corner posts, strained too far, sway in pits
Someone has run through the wheat
Which wilts snapped and broken along futile paths
Someone left the gate open, its hinges
Squeaking, useless, in that lost dry wind
Blowing from beyond the fringes
Sucking the life from the dirt and dung
She picks up rusted barbs, flakes sharp in one hand
The other is raised to protect her eyes
There is no horizon today, just a swirl
Of dust blanking out tomorrow’s skies
We cannot travel. But we can read about travel. I wrote this piece, about a week Mum and I spent horse-riding in Romania, in 2017 but never submitted it. The experience was a challenge to capture; it was like riding through a medieval fairy tale, with summer fields and forests that stretched forever through the Carpathians and rural Transylvania, all discovered from the saddle. (All except Bucharest, of course.) Thus, the story is a bit rough around the edges but this seems as good a time as any to share it.
Cow slalom was not on the itinerary. Bear-watching, yes. Cantering on horseback through the Carpathian foothills, absolutely. Braving shots of pălincă, the beloved Romanian firewater, well, of course. But skirting free-roaming cattle on the open road, where motor vehicles still share the bitumen with horses and carts, is unexpected.
So is the sight of our guide sprinting up the gravel verge, having cajoled the driver into pulling over so she can film this slice of modern-yet-medieval Central Europe. If the cattle are surprised to see a smartphone-wielding Frenchwoman hot on their heels, they don’t show it, barely breaking stride as they meander home, bells tinkling in the dusk.
The bovine parade is a twice-daily ritual in the Transylvanian highlands. There are almost no fences around the fields. Just infinite open spaces and rolling hills, dense oak, fir and beech forests and crumbling hamlets, fortified Saxon churches and, higher up the imposing mountains, busy ski resorts. “It’s paradise for cows,” says our driver.
This is the Romania we have come to explore in a week-long, well-organised itinerary of horse-riding, history, culture and gourmet food.
Bucharest is our point of arrival, but we soon leave the faded, troubled, contradictory beauty of the capital behind to drive three hours north, and what seems like centuries back in time, to Șinca Nouă (its population of 1800 is spread through the surrounding hills). It’s late summer, arching blue skies overhead and bronzed cornfields flanking the road. I’m nervous. Our tour is tailored for experienced riders and I’m hoping my rusty skills will be up to steep climbs and forest gallops. I’m also concerned about my bottom coping with four-hour stints in the saddle. The promise of a horse-free day to visit Sighișoara (birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula) and 12th-century village Viscri and their UNESCO World Heritage-listed treasures is soothing.
I stop fretting, however, as soon we turn into Equus Silvania, our base for the first four days. The equestrian centre nestles in a river valley, enclosures for pigs, ducks and geese to one side of the driveway, an organic vegetable garden tumbling down the slope behind the three-storey wood-and-brick guesthouse. My nostrils fill with smells of hay, fresh air and horse. We are met by manager Bree, a 26-year-old live wire from, improbably, Port Macquarie. She furnishes us with local sparkling wine, bruschetta of homegrown tomatoes and wild mushrooms, and a rundown of the week.
Our party of three – me, my mum and a friendly English woman called Nicola – have booked through specialist equestrian travel company Cheval & Châteaux. Its founder (the aforementioned French native), Anne-France Launay, fell in love with Romania enough to extend her Loire Valley-based business here in May 2017. We are the first group to experience her Best of Transylvania tour.
Yes, it’s a niche market, but horse-riding, for all its bum-numbing potential, has many advantages as a mode of transport: it’s a good sightseeing speed; mud, streams and fallen logs pose little obstacle; you can see over garden walls and reach up to pluck a perfectly ripe plum from an overhanging bough. It’s also possible to move quietly enough to observe wildlife – these parts are home to brown bears, wolves, lynx, roe deer, eagles and buzzards – or at least spot their evidence.
On our first ride, Bree points out fresh bear tracks – with pad and claw marks clearly visible in the smooth clay – and droppings so brilliantly purple with digested berries as to warrant their own Pantone shade.
I soon find myself reaching for words such as glade, dappled, loamy, meadow, mysterious, pristine and ancient to describe this landscape, the southern end of a mountain system that stretches 1500 kilometres in a backwards L shape through Romania up to Poland. At regular points in our rides, the terrain falls away from high ridges in undulations of variegated green as far as the eye can see. As the horses regain their breath after a climb, we lose ours at the sheer lack of humanity. Then, just when we feel alone (bar the odd herd of cattle or sheep), a natural-gas plant or motorcycle tour drops us back into the 21st century.
In the early evening, after a wander through the five-hectare Equus property, including seeing mares and foals and squeaky pink piglets, we haul ourselves into a wooden cart behind the shiny bay rump of a Romanian carthorse for a mountaintop sundowner. We are told later that the red tassels on his bridle are to ward off evil spirits. At the top of a panting, lurching ride, I thank the driver with my only Romanian phrase, mulțumesc, and he kindly smiles despite my mangled pronunciation.
Late afternoon the following day introduces locals of a different kind. After a gorge hike in Piatra Craiului National Park, we drive into the forest to be met by an escort of two rangers, then continue another 20 minutes on foot into the fairy-tale forest. The terrain rises vertical on either side of the road, and as we cross the plank bridge and climb makeshift steps to the stilted hide, it feels very vulnerable to be human in this wilderness. Three brown bears are already tucking into mounds of muesli and scattered apples in the clearing beyond our viewing window. Over the next two hours, we observe 11 (of a park population of about 40, according to a ranger), from a four-month-old cub that hangs back close to its mother to a 12-year-old male, as well as four jittery foxes and several erratic bats. “That’s your sighting of Dracula,” says our driver.
The spectre of Vlad is inescapable, unsurprisingly, haunting fridge magnets, tea towels and T-shirts as well as the history books with his bloodthirsty legend. We skip nearby Bran Castle, which inspired the Dracula myth and by which Vlad passed – burning the city outskirts and massacring Saxons according to our driver – although it’s the country’s most popular tourist attraction. Instead, we head to Sighișoara, Europe’s only inhabited citadel. Hiking up steep cobbled streets, I rue the absence of horse.
In Viscri, about 40 kilometres away, many of the pastel-coloured houses along the gravelled main road bear small blue plaques showing when they were restored. Each seems to have a bench out the front where locals can sit, wait for the cows and watch the tourists go by. It’s the oldest Saxon village in Transylvania. The road is unsealed and leads uphill, past a well whose water is so rich in iron it tastes like blood, to the magnificent UNESCO-listed fortified church. From the tower, the fields stretch in all directions. After lunch, as we drive through farmland, our guide talks about the country’s layered Saxon, Hungarian, German and Turkish history, glancing through the brutal privations of life under Ceausescu to the modern independent nation.
Just as Equus Silvania is starting to feel like home – albeit one with porcine squabbles piercing the early hours – we transfer to Foundation Conservation Carpathia’s 500-hectare farm and biodiversity project in the tiny Saxon village of Cobor. Our ride to the property starts amid farmland, near Halmeag village, to cut the 50-kilometre journey to a manageable four hours. My mount, Asaad, a compact purebred Arabian, whose nickname of “The Professor” is due to his mature years, is a measured firecracker with a swinging, willing walk and the impressive fitness to handle extended canters along broad ridges and up forested trails.
We trek mostly in single file. Our pace is faster than many guided rides, with smart trots and, at Bree’s twirling hand signal, long canters. “A bit faster?” she calls at the beginning of an inviting stretch, and Asaad changes gears beneath me as I relax my grip on the reins and nudge his sides, his neck and stride lengthening into a gallop. I lean forward, weight balanced over his shoulders, and watch the trail unfold between his pricked grey ears. My nerves have vanished in a rush of exhilaration. This is freedom, the beat of hooves in my ears, sunshine on my back. Paradise, even.
Photo: Cheval et Châteaux
Photo: still from My Brilliant Career
Working from home can be a lonely affair. I’ve been doing it on and off for a while, but I hadn’t realised just how much I’d missed a sprawling magazine office until I walked back into one. It was like coming home.
Covid-19 has put paid to that, and I’m back to remote (when I’m working at all, that is). And I’m now properly and actively missing the office. It’s not just that work gives connection and structure to my life, which it does. I’m self-disciplined at home and my phone has seven video-call apps on it, so that alone doesn’t explain my attachment to open plan and a shared fridge. I believe the workplace makes us better, happier, more productive people.
Maybe I’m swimming against the tide here. This week Stylist’s cover gleefully proclaimed, “No more 9 to 5, Dolly.” Working from home has been a growing reality, even preference, since well before the novel coronavirus forced us all to kit out any available corner with flat-pack desks and ergonomic chairs.
(Actually, I was too late off the mark here. My order was cancelled and I’m balancing tech on my chic-but-petite mid-century dining table. Natch.)
Maybe it’s cabin fever. I don’t think so. Here’s what I miss about the office:
Yes, really. Over the years, I’ve run to work, walked, caught the bus, the Metro, the Tube, shared rides, been jammed elbow to armpit in the RER under Paris and cycled. (I’ve never had a car so never had to face rush-hour traffic.) In all cases, the commute is a useful shift between personal and professional headspace. In France, I spent three hours on transport three days a week and I enjoyed the stroll to the station, the reading time, music, the free newspapers, eavesdropping. Public transport demands tolerance, flexibility and manners, all good life skills. In London, I catch the bus, which is slow but I’m not tired of watching this new city roll by. In Sydney, I ran, work gear stuffed into a backpack, or rode my bike. It’s thinking time, incidental exercise, decompression and vitamin D all wrapped into one planet-friendly, practical use of time.
Put creative, switched-on people in a high-stress environment (like a newspaper office) and you get humour, some of it pretty black. I miss the shared cachet of stories built up over time. I miss the chance to use an in-joke, or a raised eyebrow, to call bullshit. Laughing is bonding. The Harvard Business Review also noted the importance of laughter at work. “So much of our wellbeing, and by extension what makes us productive, is predicated on physical proximity, that the removal of that proximity for any period of time can be severely damaging.” In isolation, explained J Stewart Black, we lose the opportunity to laugh. The 2009 study cited in the article found people laugh on average 18 times a day, usually in spontaneous social situations, and increasing towards evening. The HBV went on: “In fact, the overall health benefits of laughter and the neuro-chemicals involved include improved immune functioning, stress relief, increased tolerance for pain, improved cardiovascular health, reduced anxiety, sense of safety, and improved mood. Laughter is also associated with higher motivation and productivity at work.” We don’t laugh nearly as much in iso. Although I did snort at this.
Roaming around different departments is a bonus of being a cog in a large machine. Yes, social and email are great for casting your net but nothing beats face-to-face time in working out who to ask what. In addition to sticking your nose into a manager’s office to get a quick answer to a pressing question, there’s the gym, the canteen, union meetings, Christmas parties, after-work drinks, the lift, the stairway, the kitchen, the loos, training and, well, the list goes on. Trust and recognition take time to accumulate, and like so many wormholes from one dimension to another, connections can be unexpected. That person you see doing bench presses in the gym every Wednesday might be the one to ask about a tricky HR matter. No need for an awkward cold email to introduce yourself.
The London magazine office where I freelanced when I first got here was awash in snacks, which is a perk of being in a place where PR agencies send stuff. Not all snacks are good – like the Christmas-dinner-flavoured ice-cream samples that came round last December – but the novelty of trying new products is always fun.
The business-English school where I taught in Paris turned out to be an essential refuge as I found my feet. It was also a foil against teaching, which a lonely pastime in itself. Our staff room was filled with a friendly, international, polyglot bunch, thanks to an intuitive, astute hiring manager, and we generally got along well. My fellow teachers came from wildly varied backgrounds and circumstances; they shared their lesson plans when I was a total newbie, lent a sympathetic ear when my relationship fell apart, answered endless questions about bureaucracy, and provided a buffer as I navigated French professional life. As Anglophones, we liked a pint after work (the French don’t socialise much with workmates), and these nights out formed the basis of cherished friendships. You can’t do this over Zoom.
This morning I watched a 20-something’s TED talk about remote working and the advantages of “location independence”, which he described as living somewhere with a low cost of living (Thailand, for example) while earning First World-level wages (San Francisco). This all sounds glamorous. From my own nomad-ish perspective, the reality of paperwork, housing, social isolation, etc is less appealing. He says freelancing means you can “choose your jobs and choose your clients”. Ah, the utopia of coding. Sam Kern also thinks remote working will create a better world.
I beg to differ.
Shared workspace underpins our social contract massively. It allows us to form relationships and alliances with people we might never otherwise cross paths with; we support and get support in real time; colleagues can ease work stresses with a cup of tea, a sympathetic look, a hug. I’m talking about the office but all workplaces are a huge part of societal fabric, and a buffer against people disappearing into the echo chambers of social media. If we want a more inclusive society, I don’t see how separating workplaces into discrete domiciles can achieve that.
I understand that for some, WFH can mean more time with kids or spouse, more control over working hours, perhaps, and always being on time for dinner. This is no small thing. But not everyone has that.
These days, I find a routine is essential for sanity. When I clock off, I turn off the computer, unroll my Pilates mat, and practise my leg circles. The afternoon sun in my kitchen, with the sky turning from blue to orange to deep Rousseau marine to black, is also a helpful marker. I just miss logging out at the office, daydreaming on the bus, and turning the key in the lock, where home is just that.
Tonight I was supposed to be at a music festival. It’s a beautiful evening, just approaching golden hour as I write. It would have been a perfect day – wandering between stages at East London’s Victoria Park, catching random sets, drinking beer under huge trees, queuing for the loos, trying to find a decent T-shirt, doing the usual festival stuff. But like everything that requires an audience at the moment, All Points East was cancelled.
I’m not coping very well with lockdown. And knowing that live music – not just festivals but tiny grassroots local shows, too – will be among the last things to return after Covid-19 drags its long, mournful tail over the horizon is weighing heavily on my heart.
It’s a First World problem, I know, when so much more is being lost, when greater things are at stake than a night out with loud music, sploshy plastic cups, pretending you can hear what your friend is saying, and wrestling with ringing ears and public transport at the end of it all. We punters forgoing a concert or two is minor in the scheme of things.
But it’s not.
It’s not just about our entertainment. A string of systems and people, not just artists but promoters, agents, venue, bar staff, tech support, sound engineers, roadies, ticketing and so on goes into putting on a show. And the knock-on effect as the lockdown continues – through merchandise, recording studios, record companies – is hard for this layperson to contemplate. The music industry pumps an annual £5.2b into the UK economy, according to IQ magazine.
Sadly, the inescapable fact is that enjoying a gig is among the riskier pursuits we can undertake while the novel coronavirus lurks among us, with neither vaccine nor treatment coming soon. Enclosed spaces where lots of people share air and swap respiratory droplets over several hours while shouting over music or singing along to a favourite tune are top of the list of infectious environments. And no one could call a rock show an essential service.
But it is.
At its essence, music is a bonding force. A live show is a physical, intellectual, sensory and emotional experience. The best gigs are euphoric, and even the worst are a chance to let off steam. There’s always something to love, even if the band are having a bad night or are simply not your cup of tea. “What I experience in these big arenas is the power of gathering. We’re sharing experiences,” says Michelle Obama in the Netflix special Becoming. She’s talking about a book tour, but the statement holds true for any mass event, be it a football match or a Madonna concert. We come together. Into something greater than the sum of our parts. Lockdown has reduced us to fragments.
The other day I was watching a clip of Johnny Marr on stage with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds doing Champagne Supernova, and the crowd nearly took the roof off the O2 Academy. It was both wonderful and hard to watch because who knows when such a thing will next be possible. And who can look at crowds of people crushed into a venue without thinking about virus transmission?
This is breaking my heart.
I’ve become more of a live fan as I’ve gotten older, although based on my fervour as a teenager, that hardly seems possible. My first rock concert was Phil Collins at the Perth Entertainment Centre, I went with a friend and it was the most exciting night of my life. I wrote about it extensively in my diary, down to drawing a seating plan and recording as much of the set list as I could remember. I loved, then as now, everything about the process, from the struggle to buy tickets to getting to the venue, finding your seat, and waiting for that magic moment when the lights go down and they appear. The thrill never fades.
Live music reminds me of who I am. More than that, it reinforces that I’m the same as the other head-bobbers, foot-tappers, beer-spillers around me.
There’s a unmistakable frisson that goes through the body at a favourite riff – it gets into a part of the brain so few things reach, and sets off electrical storms. It’s inadequate to say that I lose myself in a song, such is the melting of my boundaries. Impossible to articulate how it feels to have my body connect with the contours of sound, the rhythm, how it feels to look around as a show is peaking and realise everyone feels the same. There’s nothing like it. Pinning it to the page is like dancing about architecture, as the saying goes.
The UK has been on lockdown since 23 March and social-distancing rules dictate that anything needing an audience is cancelled or postponed. No small gigs, no festivals, nothing until at least September, with festivals and large events unlikely until late 2021. And even that seems optimistic from where we stand at the moment. A couple of weeks ago a BBC article described 2020 as a “write-off” for gigs and festivals. There is movement in other not-so-distant countries – Spain, Belgium, Serbia, Moscow. We’ll watch nervously, enviously, and see what these events do to the case numbers.
I understand, too, that my perception of the risk of a gig is very different to that of a 20-year-old. It’s a confidence issue, also – after the 2015 attacks in Paris, every time I walked into a venue, I made sure I knew where the exits were, scrutinised security, pushed flashes of footage of bodies being dragged from the Bataclan forcibly to the back of my mind. That night pulled the rug out from under my feet. This pandemic has, too, in a slower but no less shocking way, and I’m sure the next time I go to a show I’ll be hoping the person next to me isn’t infected.
But the urge to return is strong despite the misgivings.
Ways to approximate what we’re missing have been swirling around – drive-in gigs, bike-in gigs, Zoom gigs for small audiences, virtual festivals, DJ sets, streaming shows from kitchens, bells-and-whistles-but-no-audience shows from venues, fractional-capacity concerts. And these are encouraging and offer ways we, as punters, can support the industry across the abyss, in addition to buying music and merch, rolling tickets over. Some of these new formats will stick and transform accessibility to artists we can’t afford to see, can’t travel to see, can’t get a ticket for. None of them will replace the real thing but the energy to innovate and keep the show on the road is inspiring.
I’m still a cliché gig goer – I sing, dance, shake my hair, sing the wrong words. I can do this in front of a screen in my lounge, but it’s not the same thing as craning to see Madonna stride on stage at Adelaide Oval – we were so far back but it didn’t matter, it was her, there, right there; pressing up against the rails as Faithless blast out God Is a DJ at a festival in Shanghai; singing along to Throw Your Arms Around Me at a Hunters & Collectors farewell gig at a rugby league club on Sydney’s northern beaches.
I’d like to say I’ve evolved but, well, the grown-up who nearly exploded when Duran Duran – all five of them – appeared on stage in 2008 was the same person who, as the teenager, had their pretty-boy faces plastered all over her bedroom.
Last year I made a list of the 200-odd acts I’ve seen live, and the exercise took me deep into pockets of my memory. I told my friend K about it. “Oh, yes, I remember,” she said of a particular night. “Hoodoo Gurus supported.” They did. I’d forgotten, and as I rarely associate my elegant Parisian friend with sweaty pub rock, it reminded me of a side her that had tucked itself away. That’s right, she was there, we did that together. We’ve been friends for more than 30 years – and there are so many shows woven into that history, from George Michael in 1989 to Depeche Mode in 2018.
In the dark, engulfed in music that curls your toes, time stands still. It really does.
Paris turned out to be a magnificent live-music city. It gave me a chance to catch acts I’d missed the first time around. And seeing Bryan Ferry, Suede, Noel Gallagher, Johnny Marr, OMD and Jesus and Mary Chain was like a continuation of “our” history. I’m so happy they’re still making music, touring new albums and challenging the idea that pop is only for the young. As Johnny Marr said to me when I fan-girled all over him at a book signing, “We’re still here, aren’t we? We’re still doing it.”
And we will do again.
Both social distancing and PPE are hard to reconcile with the live experience, which is all about hundreds or thousands of sweaty fans coming together, and swaying as one. And until a vaccine or treatment or testing or stringent effective hygiene actions can be put in place, it’s hard to see how our shows will come back.
But they will.
So, all you performers, venue operators, promoters, bar staff, techs, managers, roadies, merch sellers, music press who’ve lost gig ads, all of you, please hang in there. Because we, the great singing, drinking, sweating, screaming, foot-tapping, head-nodding hordes, are thinking of you and waiting to come back. We’ll still be here, tickets in hand, when this is all over, in whatever form we are allowed to commune in the name of live music.
The thrill never fades.
Human contact is in short supply. The basics are covered – food, shelter, movies – but weeks into lockdown, my psyche is a little frayed.
I’m making up for the shortfall of coffee chats and hugs, of course: watching too much Covid-19 news, flinching at each siren outside, bingeing YouTube, feeling grateful for Netflix and Spotify (and the NHS), working a bit, trying to read books, trying to write, reading too much Covid-19 news and not writing enough, making curry from a jar, eating peanut butter from the jar, doing Pilates and yoga, disinfecting my groceries, worrying that I’m infected, and drinking wine. It’s up and down. I’ve discovered a decent Spanish red at my local organic shop. (I go organic to avoid the queues at the regular supermarket and because I know Harvest has tofu, which is important since iso has turned me back into a quasi vegetarian.)
My people “contact” comes from daily walks. Abney Park, not too far from my place, feels far away in both space and time. It’s more like a forest Grimm might have dreamed up than a restrained London green space. Given it’s a cemetery, that shouldn’t be surprising. I like it because it’s romantic, leafy, and a bit morbid. I’m not alone in doing this. Early spring has brought forth carpets of bluebells and lit the horse chestnuts with bracts of pink and white. My phone is filling up with pictures of flowers.
I’m working from home, although it’s sporadic. No kids, so I’m not home-schooling. And I’m not dressing up or making TikTok videos or taking pictures of myself – unless you count selfies in a homemade bandana mask. And I’m definitely not watching Tiger King. I’ve been getting into movies about issues: death row, PND, cancer, IVF. I was a latecomer to Cheer, and devoured it partly because it’s uplifting – but also because when those lithe young athletes talked about sore muscles and clicking joints, it made my own creaky hips seem less a function of age and more one of being active.
I’m grateful for anything that takes my mind off coronavirus and pandemics generally (ebola, anyone?) – such as air quality and how people around the world are posting pictures of clear skies and reporting that they can see stars and distant mountain ranges.
That’s much more heartening than the shocking UK death rate and the dire economic situation. Improved air quality is the upside of the screeching financial halt. Last month, the BBC reported that levels of both nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter were way down due to less road traffic and factory activity, and seemed likely to continue to fall as the lockdown continues. The graph of levels of small particulate matter in 10 UK cities, including London, Cardiff and Manchester, showed significant drops. Another graph, though, for nitrogen dioxide showed a rise for York and Belfast – which the article said could be due to data density. Ozone has jumped in London. This stuff is confusing, but if I look out my windows – I have more than one – it’s brighter.
The article said, “In an unexpected way, the coronavirus situation offers something of a policy experiment to test realistic targets for clean air in the coming decade.”
“It’s positively alpine,” screamed a Guardian headline at the beginning of this month. The photos of Delhi, and other mega cities, were rendered even more stark by the website’s neat slide-across technology that allowed comparison between smog-choked and clear-sky vistas. The BBC said that London’s air-pollution levels had fallen so dramatically since the lockdown began on 23 March that machines were signalling possible faults with the readings.
Is this mismanaged misery a golden opportunity – one with a massive social, economic, loss-of-life cost – to find out what would be possible in the future if we made sacrifices for the good of air quality? It’s grimly ironic that a respiratory disease is providing this chance.
My mum, a font of pragmatic wisdom and a lover of the natural world, suggested it might be Mother Nature’s counter punch.
Eyewitness reports (ie, me, going out to run when my hips allow) suggest that the air is clearer, as if someone had applied window cleaner to your eyeballs (don’t do this). The park smells like wet earth and leaves, not exhaust. It’s beautiful.
Migrating birds are flying closer to Beirut. Goats are taking over Welsh villages and lions are snoozing in the middle of safari park roads.
My friend J says he can smell plants on the air in Paris. And the other night I looked out my kitchen window and I could see the stars, triumphantly bright in the night sky, over London.
Our family was one of the first on the block to get a VHS player – I think it was in 1979. My dad was a sales manager for a big Japanese electronics company and one day he brought home this amazing box that played tapes on the television. A cassette player with pictures. I remember its controls were levers rather than buttons, and it ejected from the top. This was long before movie rental libraries existed, so the joy of our video player, for us kids at least, was recording shows and watching them over and over again.
We taped umpteen episodes of The Goodies. I can recite swathes of dialogue to this day and am so very sad that the world lost Tim Brooke-Taylor to wretched coronavirus on the weekend. The String Song, Funky Gibbon, “Ecky-Thump“, Timita’s political campaign, Black-and-White Beauty, the episode that mashed up Watership Down with A Clockwork Orange… My brothers and I thought these were hilarious (because they are comedy gold) and would eventually wear down the tapes with repeated viewings. At that time, being young and, living in Western Australia, far away from UK politics, I didn’t understand the social satire that ran through all TBT, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden’s work. It was the slapstick and absurdity that made me laugh. Still does. People don’t change that much.
We also had hours of Countdown, Fawlty Towers and Rock Follies (which I adored for the music and the clothes, and remain frustrated that it’s not available anywhere these days).
This treasure trove was kept on heavy black tapes, mostly labelled, not always accurately. The supply of three-hour blanks was finite, however, and we overwrote a lot. Sometimes this was planned, sometimes it happened by accident or carelessness. The idea of being able to watch a program on demand was still decades away, so if something came on that absolutely had to be kept, you often didn’t have time to make a good decision. You just grabbed the first tape that you laid your hands on, shoved it into the machine and hit record.
This is how one of the biggest run-ins with my dad that I remember from my childhood came about. I was desperate to record a David Bowie special. I think it was on Rock Arena but I might have that wrong. Anyway, I taped over a Sky concert that my dad was particularly fond of. It caused a major incident, and I’m still not sure he’s totally forgiven me. I could say that I love Sky, mostly thanks to a documentary that was also in high rotation at our place around the time called Animal Olympians, which put the brooding Westway instrumental over slow-motion footage of gazelles fleeing a cheetah. But as an adult I understand this is small comfort when the thing you most want to watch in your downtime has vanished. I know because the Bowie programme suffered a similar fate a while later.
My habit of watching and re-watching films and television shows ad nauseam can probably be traced to this VHS player. These days I indulge it through YouTube and the miracle of streaming. I guess it’s the dopamine hit and the comfort of the familiar.
The Bowie doco popped into my mind this morning because I’ve been watching a lot of music documentaries during the lockdown, about Duran Duran, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Oasis, Blur and most recently Suede. The interviews with Brett Anderson and Mat Osman from the band reminded me of sentiments Bowie had often expressed. Like him, they talked about wanting to escape from ordinary suburban life. It’s a sentiment I’ve long understood. The escape is not necessarily from your circumstances, but rather into a world of possibilities, glamour and distant horizons.
Music has always represented that for me. And a love of music, as well as my other favourite escape – reading – is something my dad and I have in common. He’s not a huge fan of my taste in pop stars – he once called Duran Duran “eggs” when Simon Le Bon and co were poncing about on Countdown, while my bedroom was festooned with their posters. Swoon.
We were allowed to watch Countdown every week, even the Saturday repeats, and I fell in love with Bowie when I first saw him sing “Heroes” in 1977. In that long-lost special, Bowie talked about the microphone series he and producer Tony Visconti used to create the expansive sound on “Heroes”. When I visited Hansa Studio on a trip to Berlin a couple of years ago, the tour guide played it in the ballroom where it was recorded, and I cried with every part of my seven-year-old self at that reverberating vocal. The last time I went home, Dad asked me if I’d ever seen Bowie in concert – I have, in Sydney during the A Reality Tour – and we agreed that it was pretty wonderful thing to have witnessed.
Anyway, in some strange way, I think that VHS player, and the British comedies that were a constant on Australian television in the 1970s and ’80s have led to my new life in London. Before the lockdown, I had a blissful afternoon riding around the West End on the top deck of a red bus blasting my favourite English bands through my earbuds and feeling like my path had brought me where I was supposed to be.
Whether it was Kitten Kong climbing the Post Office Tower in the opening credits of The Goodies or Britpop that planted the seed, I feel all roads have somehow converged in London. The not-so-small matter of needing to connect with my English roots is probably a discussion for another day. Of course, in these strange times, it would be robotic not to miss home, and I do. But for now, despite covid-19’s devastating effects on life here, I get a thrill from watching those red buses circulate outside my window, and knowing my heroes have lived, worked and created not so far away.
RIP, Tim Brooke-Taylor, and thank you for hours and hours and hours of laughs.
How is it that a world obsessed with viral videos and Twitter followers has struggled to grasp the concept of exponential growth in the context of Covid-19? I don’t understand. Nor do I get the initial denial of the seriousness of this particular coronavirus, given that it’s a SARS virus – and vastly more contagious than the one that sent the world into panic nearly 20 years ago. Or maybe the answer is in the question. While social media, endless banal influencers with their hauls of fast fashion, and Netflix binges ate up our data allowances, a real threat was allowed to languish in the realm of science fiction. Now we’re all locked up and preoccupied with Zoom parties, Tik Tok and Tiger King.
For a long time, it felt like the overall reaction was surprise. How did this happen? How did something that caused chaos in China end up here, affecting our lives, taking our livelihoods? Even now, it still feels like we collectively expect to wake up from the nightmare at any minute. Perhaps that’s just me. I saw a report that said Japan has been going about life as normal but now seems about to kick off like the rest of us. Or did I hear that wrong? Aircraft carriers with afflicted sailors, politicians in self-isolation, porn sites donating medical fetish gear to hospitals. It’s quite surreal, especially with projected death-toll figures finally emerging. I’ve been watching the BBC, MSNBC and assorted other sources with face averted, like I did during Hereditary until Toni Collette’s piercing scream sent me packing towards the exit. I had to sit down beside Canal St Martin for half an hour to calm down that night. A homeless man asked me if I was all right. This moment in time feels like that one.
I do know that regular life seems distant and fragile. So, I have been thinking about trees and time. On a grey weekend before I began social distancing, I went with a friend to the Among the Trees exhibition at the Southbank Centre. It’s closed now, of course. One of the pieces was a photo of a 12,000-year-old tree in Japan – I didn’t note the artist – and another an image by Rachel Sussman of the top of an ancient baobab forest in South Africa that was reportedly destroyed to build a road. It was a fascinating show. I was thinking about it as I ran through the local cemetery, which is also an arboretum and nature reserve, with plaques here and there pointing out trees of interest. Some trees had burned to the ground about 40 years ago but continue to live, their habit twisting around their scars. Yes, that’s a metaphor.
In the park, my arena for connecting with the outside world, the trees’ new leaves are dangling like delicate green hankies from their branches. The seasons move along. Spring is going about its business largely without us. Soon it will be summer. The air seems more and more pristine in the early hours. This morning, the grass was white with hoar frost (one of my favourite words, taught to me by my grandmother). The gates are opening a little earlier as the days get longer.
It seems like our situation stretches into the infinite. I can’t even imagine how the hours, days, weeks must feel for medical workers. To help them, our patience is needed to sit tight and content ourselves with our perennial distractions. And remember that in the scheme of things, for the greater good, we can do this for a few months.
Most days, I have pigeons on my windowsill. I’m not sure what they think of the scenes they see when they look into my kitchen. I have an arched window, a bit like the one on Play School, on the top floor of a converted Victorian terrace, and there’s a wide ledge outside. It’s a perfect perch is every respect.
This morning, an inquisitive pigeon with nothing better to do would have seen a woman staring intently at a screen wearing a puffin hat. The other day, that same woman was dancing about wildly to tinny sounds emanating from decades past via a laptop that she had nearly superglued to the kitchen bench the previous night. The pigeon wouldn’t have known that, of course. I can’t imagine how pigeons understand music. Or superglue, for that matter. Cockatoos seem to enjoy getting down to a fat beat if the online videos are to be believed. Pigeons probably have other things to occupy their time.
I’m practising social distancing, like the conscientious Londoner that I am. Yes, I’m a Londoner now – I left Paris last year – although perhaps in these strange times it doesn’t make that much difference. We are all in lockdown, whether you’re in Paris, Madrid, Milan or Manchester. I’m in north London.
I envy the birds their freedom. I hope they’re enjoying cleaner air up there above the city’s parks and rooftops. The buses are still circulating, mostly empty, and the traffic is reduced. I’m heartened by how much less CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere.
It seems an opportune time to restart this dormant blog. Many of my usual activities are unchanged, my perspective is evolving; it’s helpful to focus on the present and be glad of natural light, central heating and a decent stash of toilet paper. Writing helps with gratitude, and somehow it slows time, much like meditation, when you think about the progression of a thought, word by word.
I’m running, writing, dancing – just in a much-restricted landscape. I’ve taken up Pilates to fix a long-standing back issue, as well as the knee and hip pain that were my come-uppance for ignoring the root back problem for too long. Turns out stretching is useful, and might have saved me from months of recuperation. Regardless, I am where I am, and able to do sit-ups for the first time in my life. I’m practising gratitude. I know I’ve said that, but it bears repeating. I’m grateful for friends and family both nearby and at the end of various bits of technology. I’m grateful to anyone who has read this far.
So, what is London like at the moment? I can only give the view through my tiny lens. It’s subdued. It’s also gloriously sunny, with clear blue skies and a gentle breeze shaking the tender leaves. The magnolias and daffodils are out. The mornings are sunlit. I’m lucky to get both morning and afternoon sunshine in my flat. The sirens seem louder but perhaps that’s just anxious vigilance in action.
In the park, early in the morning, a steady stream of joggers cross to the other side of paths to avoid close contact with each other. This is new. They weren’t bothering so much with that until Boris Johnson issued the government’s stricter guidelines last night. Some people smile. We navigate each other with friendly suspicion. I say hello to people’s dogs and stop to take photos of the light.
On Sunday, a van was circulating through my neighbourhood, instructing the population to stay indoors in several languages and giving a hotline number. I tried to note it down but kept missing the first couple of digits, so I don’t know who had decided to take community safety into their own hands. It seemed to be effective in chasing a few people back behind doors.
People are still walking in the street, the little local grocers are still open. The supermarket admits only older people and those with mobility issues or other disabilities for the first hour of trading. The rest of us wait outside. I say us because I tried to do a small shop yesterday morning before giving up and taking my custom to the kosher market around the corner. A few of the people coming out of the supermarket, which is a big, variety-type branch with electrical goods and such as well as food and booze, said not to bother, that there was nothing in there. I didn’t hang around to go in, but I definitely saw some things on the shelves, so I suspect “nothing” might have referred to in-demand lines such as pasta, toilet paper, cleaning products, potatoes and onions. But I don’t know. I was able to buy excellent sourdough, made in the East End, from a café yesterday morning.
The guy operating the checkout where I eventually (almost) filled my list told me the corner deli had face masks and deodorant (very important), so I went next door and got both. The service was calm and friendly. You could be forgiven for thinking nothing whatsoever untoward was going on. Except that people kept coming into the deli to buy face masks.
I know about as much about what’s going on in the rest of London as anyone reading The Guardian or following the BBC online. At this time, flight would be a useful skill. Imagine what you’d learn gazing into people’s windows.
In France books are cultural objects rather than products, so stepping into a bookshop can be more like visiting an art gallery. Or a parallel universe where ideas reign and wormholes abound.
The cliché is Shakespeare and Co, on the Left Bank, with teetering aisles, resident cat, squeaky stairway, and starring roles in such movies as Before Sunset. I once went for an interview there, to work in their rare books section, simply for the chance to meet Sylvia Whitman, the owner and daughter of founder George. I didn’t get the job but the experience was like being in a Vanity Fair feature, and totally worth it for the conversation and the behind-the-scenes glimpse.
That corner of wordy loveliness, however, is an exception among the hundreds of librairies (a borrowing library is a bibliothèque) in the city. Its inventory is English-only for a start. Most are more Spartan, usually dominated by central tables of new releases and staff favourites laid flat. The fact that much literary fiction is published with a text-based, image-free cover reinforces the message that reading is serious business.
How the city can support so many bookshops (a 2014 figure cited in Le Figaro estimated more than 750) at a time when print seems to be in a death spiral is a thing of wonder, for sure. But it’s less of a mystery when you consider that, due to that aforementioned “cultural object” thing, the €2.7-billion French publishing market is regulated and protected with fixed prices, tax breaks and subsidies. And despite the e-rosion of traditional publishing due to digital, the sector remains buoyant, rising about four per cent in 2016 (although The Bookseller attributed a large part of this growth to school curriculum reform).
Here in the 20th arrondissement, it’s admittedly slim pickings for the Anglophone bibliophile but if you treat the exercise more like museum hopping than shopping, it’s a rewarding investment of time. Especially if you’re a fan of the graphic novel, a form that’s hugely popular in France, or children’s books, which are affordable works of art (and a great way to learn the language). If you speak French, formidable, it’s simply a lovely neighbourhood experience. Well-attended workshops, talks, readings and literary walks plonk you right in the middle of your own literary universe. Here are four addresses to check out.
Le Comptoir des Mots
Two steps from Place Gambetta, this place is friendly, neat and always has tempting notices in the window for readings and such. I find it difficult to resist and usually walk out with something, even if it’s just a pocket paperback (the last purchase was Baise-Moi by Virginie Despentes). 239 rue des Pyrénées
Le Monte-en-l’Air (pictured)
Let hours vanish into a vortex of design, photography, architecture and art at this niche store and gallery, where fanzines are as revered as the classics. It’s tucked in a cobbled courtyard just below rue de Ménilmontant, with a few chairs and tables outside to enjoy a coffee or something chilled from the fridge. 2 rue de la Mare
Le Merle Moqueur
Described by Le Figaro as the most child-friendly bookshop in Paris, Le Merle Moqueur has large skylit, open spaces that are even more so since a renovation. In addition to a great kids’ section (and kids’ books in France are truly things of beauty), it also has comprehensive travel, design, food and culture sections. Plus games, cards and wrapping paper. The events menu of walks, talks and launches includes a philosophy evening where proposed topics include “Does pleasure have a value?”, “How is love different to friendship?” and (my favourite) “Is something funny if nobody laughs?” 51 rue de Bagnolet
L’Atelier
Three bookstores under one umbrella, L’Atelier spreads across the top of the little square at Jourdain, in the shadow of the church and next to a couple of beautiful florists. The separate addresses accommodate adult titles (literary fiction, crime, essays), kids’ and culinary books, and the arts (graphic novels, cinema, photography, etc) and tourism. If you fancy hearing a discussion (in French) about mystic fallout from space travel or the history of football, this is your place. The second-hand tables out the front are worth a rummage. 2 bis rue du Jourdain
Sitting in a café in Montparnasse, in the shadow of that hideous tower with the roller rink on the roof, with waiters wearing cheap boaters advertising the new-vintage Beaujolais, I feel part of the scenery. Scarf, coffee, laptop, check.
Pushed up against the doors of a packed métro carriage, I’m just another body in a city crowded with beings, schmooshed shoulder to shoulder in a tunnel, buried in a book that is itself partially buried in the backpack of the bloke next to me. My arm is thrust through a gap to grip the back of a seat, so I’m not flung, when the driver stamps on the breaks, into the lap of the person sitting on the fold-down seat. I’m glaring at the person sitting on the fold-down seat.
Running through the park, I blend in – another body in motion in a stream of black Lycra.
I’ve gone native. On the outside.
On the inside, expat life remains as perplexing as ever, and I often wonder if it is sustainable. I’m not a joiner, I’m happy enough in my own company, but I’m not sure I’m cut out for life as a perpetual outsider, either. As anyone who has stood on the edge of the school playground dressed identically to everyone else knows, looking as if you belong does not always translate to feeling part of the gang.
This week, an article about the trials of expat life has got me thinking. Among my many, many misconceptions about what life in France would be like was the idea that the feelings of being an outsider, lost, adrift from a previous cherished life, friends and family, would diminish with time. In fact, the opposite is true. Five years after arriving in Paris, I float through this limestone fairy tale untethered as ever.
Yes, many aspects are now as familiar as my apartment, or moving in that direction, at least. I have jobs. I have my favourite hangouts (not in Montparnasse, although it’s a perfectly charming quartier). I have good friends. Language is easier. Navigation. Etiquette. Dress codes. Annual rhythms such as the mass summer departure from Paris and its corollary, rentrée. Yet the troubling irony persists: the deeper your knowledge of the unknown, the more profound the alienation.
It’s a bit like learning a language, or swing dancing, anything with a degree of complexity. I was complaining (again) about my lack of French progress to a buddy recently. She gently pointed out that we continue to move our own goalposts, placing them ever just out of reach. The objectives change. I used to dream of executing a simple exchange without saying bonjour when I meant merci. Now I want to feel at ease in a group conversation. The more you know, the more you understand the enormity what you don’t know. And, in the case of language and culture, there is a creeping realization that you might never achieve mastery.
This raises the question: how long can I stand being an outsider? Must I adjust my thinking about belonging? Can I go full Schrodinger on the situation and be simultaneously both in Paris and somewhere else entirely? Is this, in fact, the key?
I spend a lot of time on social media. Not as much as I would if I had a smartphone, but hours daily nevertheless, many of which are taken up following news from Australia, what my friends are up to, what the newspapers are saying, Rachel Maddow. The usual stuff.
Now, social media is a curious variable in the expat-adjustment equation, it seems to me. It’s useful for finding out what’s on, places you might meet people who share your interests, language exchanges. Pretty much any blog or newspaper article that addresses expat life suggests meet-ups, and the like, as a way to settle in.
But social media adds a complication to the bubble. Thanks to a stream of news and messages on Facebook, I can maintain one foot in my old life. Multiple outlets like Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest would surely only magnify the problem. I can’t imagine being without it, but I do wonder if this split attention is prolonging my settling-in period. It has allowed me to ignore real-world loneliness by burying myself in television from home and the UK and indulging in the FB gossip mill. On low days, faced with a choice between sitting alone in a café, even one where I’m recognized and greeted warmly, or watching just one more episode of The Katering Show or Have I Got News for You, it’s easy to trump for the latter.
Now, in my defense and in a protest-too-much attempt to dilute the impression that I ungratefully lead a hermetically sealed life, I must point out that I often undertake my freelance work in a café, surrounded by the buzz of human activity. I do the things the articles advise: running group, swing-dancing classes, repeated appearances in the same place to develop familiarities with other habitués. I’m tackling French. I’m avidly inhaling the culture.
And I’m not complaining. Although I wish I knew how to get through this better, I’d never have forgone the experience. My life goals have long including living in another country, learning a language, becoming a fiction writer. Check.
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