The Sun God's Guide to Literary Fame

When Mums Go Bad (2)

2011-11-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

I was shocked the other day to read the details of a child abuse case in Birmingham, here in Britain.

A mother and her former boyfriend have this week both been sentenced to stiff jail terms for angrily scalding her two-year old in a shower after the child wet herself. The mother and the partner - who was at the time a long-serving English magistrate, although of foreign extraction - having applied some initial first-aid, then allowed the child's injuries to go untreated.

The wounds infected and became septicemic. The little girl died after two weeks of what must have been unbelievable suffering.

It's hard even to imagine the mind set of these individuals. How little this child must have meant to them, that they would behave so cruelly.

Wild Rice and Barley Stuffing for Turkey, Goose, or Duck

2011-11-22T13:08:00.000-08:00

More and more of my friends say they have at least some degree of wheat intolerance, and one dear friend who had had cancer last year is most definitely on a wheat-free diet.

To satisfy this group and (my own curiosity) I came up with this recipe for a sophisticated wheat-free stuffing that can be used for any poultry. It's based on a very old Florentine recipe.

As with all rice and grain recipes, to avert the risk of food poisoning, take care to cool the cooked grains quickly, and time things so that these are the same temperature as the fowl when the time comes to stuff the bird.

This quantity should stuff a 10 lb/ 4.5 kg turkey.

NB - wild rice varies... well, wildly as to required cooking times, and may need to be soaked before preparation.

Ingredients:

1 cup barley

1 cup wild rice

2 banana shallots or organic onions, chopped

100 gm/ 4 oz butter

1 large beaten egg

1/2 cup toasted almonds

1/2 cup raisins or sultanas

2 cups or more good stock

Juice and zest of 3 oranges

cinnamon stick: 3 1 in/ 2.5 cm pieces.

6 green cardamon pods

Ground nutmeg (optional)

Ladleful of brandy or whiskey (optional)

4 oz/ 100 gm sliced mushrooms

4 ounces /100 gm chopped cooked chestnuts (optional)

Salt and pepper - to taste

In a cast-iron skillet, melt half the butter. Add the mushrooms and chestnuts if used and saute gently until the mushrooms are cooked. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside to cool.

Heat the stock, orange juice and zest together. Keep hot until ready to use.

In a separate pot, melt the remaining butter.

Combine the wild rice and the barley; add to the melted butter.

Stir over a medium heat until the grains are coated.

Add the cinnamon and cardamon pods and shallots/ onion, saute until the shallot is translucent.

Continuing to stir, add the hot stock mixture one ladleful at a time, stirring as you go until the liquid is absorbed.

Continue to stir every few minutes until the mixture is creamy but not over-wet. The rice should be tender - this may take some time, and you may need to add more stock.

If you cannot taste the cinnamon, add some more, ground, at this point.

Add the beaten egg to the cooled mushroom mixture, beat together well, then stir in the almonds, sultanas and brandy.

Tip the into the stock mixture and stir vigorously until all the ingredients are well combined.

Cool rapidly to the same temperature as the fowl to be stuffed.

Stuff and roast as per the weight of your finished bird.

The Game Is Altered

2011-11-16T11:54:00.000-08:00

Mez Packer is a great friend and her second published novel will be out on February 2nd. That's Groundhog Day in the USA and I am certain that publishers Tindall Street have put this date forward with reality-bending in mind.

As the first one was wonderful - a smart collection of characters, great dialogue and a cracking plot (only the current economic climate can be blamed for various persons failing to find the funds to film it - lots of locations!) - I'm looking forward to this one very much. It centres around online gaming and what happens to one particular gaming geek when his on and offline worlds collide.

As Mez is an Internet "gurine" and lecturer in online studies, I don't suppose anyone who reads it will feel quite the same about the Internet ever again.

Pre-order at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Altered-Mez-Packer/dp/1906994315/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321474138&sr=8-1

Go girl!

Rich Chorizo and Chestnut Stew

2011-11-13T08:08:00.001-08:00

I love travelling in the autumn, and I've had some lovely times in south-central Spain and France. In the upper Dordogne and across Limousin, whole forests of sweet chestnut trees still thrive, and the French and Catalans make the most of them, serving these with all kinds of roasted meats - in particular ducks and geese.

Fresh chestnuts are a pain to prepare and there are, thank God, many alternatives these days to having to score, cook and skin them. The vacuum-packed and tinned ones are great and even the dried ones are perfectly adequate although you must soak these the day before if you want to use them, which adds a bit of time to an otherwise simply delicious meal.

This recipe is a variant from the mountainous Catalan areas north and east of Barcelona. My niece Kyle and I ran into it while we were walking on the south side of the Pyrenees. We're fairly lo-key hikers but we certainly had a wonderful time eating our way across the mountains as well as a number of silly adventures trying to speak Spanish to hill-farmers who couldn't believe we'd found our way there.

I make this with Chorizo. It might even be nicer if confit d'oie or duck breast were added. But as it's amazing just as it is, perhaps that's gilding the lily.

Ingredients:

Leave all the veg apart from the garlic and celery in pieces 1-2 inches/ 2-5 cm

3-4 sticks celery, coarsely chopped

4 large sweet red peppers (Use the long, pointy ones for extra sweetness.)

3 organic onions

6 large cloves sweet garlic - minced (use less if it's very strong)

half lb/ 250 gms mushrooms

8 ounces/ 250 gm (reconstituted weight) sweet chestnuts, left whole

12-oz / 350 gm good Chorizo or similar paprika sausage, sliced into rounds about 1/2 in/ 1 cm thick.

1 tin drained kidney or garbanzo beans (chickpeas) - which one you use will change the recipe!

1 pint/ 1/2 litre water or more to taste

(2 oz brandy - optional)

Good olive oil - a generous amount, probably 2-3 oz/60-80 ml

Preparation

Use a heavy 5 pint/ 3 litre casserole - cast-iron if you can.

Heat the oil over a medium heat until it's fragrant.

Add the onions and stir for a moment, then add the garlic and celery when the onions have just started to relax. Stir the mixture gently so it cooks evenly. When you see it begin to yield add the chorizo and the mushrooms.

Stirring often enough to prevent the mixture sticking, turn the heat to low, and then cover for a minute or two. Stir again and repeat the covering and stirring until you can see the chorizo soften slightly.

(Make sure you've used enough oil so that the vegetables have a nice coat of oil but aren't drowning. Add more at this point if you wish but make sure it's hot before adding the last of the ingredients.)

Add the red peppers and beans; stir to combine. Give it another couple of minutes, then add the chestnuts and brandy if you're using it. After about 5 minutes more you can add the water.

Bring all to a gentle boil; cover; turn down the heat and simmer for 30-40 minutes or until there's a rich, dark gravy. You shouldn't need to reduce it but it won't hurt to do so if you wish.

Serve on couscous, over wild rice, or on split sweet potatoes that have caramelised after slow-roasting.

Perfect Winter-Warmer: Carrot & Sweet Potato Soup with Ginger

2011-11-10T04:20:00.000-08:00

One of the lovely things about Social Media is catching up with old friends - lost but precious people. And one of the odd things about that is - in the process you reclaim bits of yourself.

Three old friends have surfaced recently, and what do they remember about me? My cooking! I'm delighted, and my Dad would be proud: whatever my other achievements he wanted me to be a good hostess... (and to have a decent seat on a horse.)

I don't have patience for long spells in the kitchen, or for things that are fussy, so generally I specialise in things that are quick and nutritious tho "delicious" is always my by-word. In the winter that means soups and stews. Almost makes November bearable.

If you learn the principles of soup-making you can adapt recipes to whatever looks good in the market and whatever your family likes.

Here's a recent recipe:

Carrot & Sweet Potato Soup with Ginger

The sweet potatoes looked great this week - I like the ones with orange flesh. In Britain, where they're imported, these have more flavour than the white-fleshed variety.

You'll need 2 big sweet potatoes - just under 2 lb or a kilo.

1 lb/ 500 gm organic carrots, scraped and sliced

3-4 organic onions, chopped
4 large cloves of sweet garlic, chopped

3-4 oz/ 150-200 gm butter ( I use unsalted)

1 large handful of fresh coriander, roughly chopped. Reserve a little for the garnish.

2 pints/ 1.5 litres of good stock (I use chicken)

Fresh Ginger - how much depends on the quality and your preference. I use about 2 inches of fat, juicy ginger, finely grated. You need more than you think for this recipe - but too much can overwhelm the other flavours. Never mind - you can add an inch to begin with and add more a bit later if the flavour lacks that ginger "zing."

*******************************************************************************************************************************
Use a large cast iron pot if you have it.

Saute the onions in the butter; add the garlic when the onions start to soften. When these are transparent add the carrots, sweet potatoes, ginger and coriander.

Saute gently for 5 minutes, then add the stock. Cook for about 35 minutes or until the carrots have softened.

Liquidize with a stick blender.

Serve with swirl of single cream and out a little chopped coriander on the top.... and lots of fresh, fragrant bread and butter.

How much do we burden the dying?

2011-10-31T04:52:00.000-07:00

One of my dearest friends has been ill with Motor Neurone Disease for some time.

It's a shocking disease, best known via its most famous sufferer, Nobel Prize winner Stephen Hawking whose very long life perhaps misleads people into mis-construing just how difficult and deadly it is for most of those who contract it.

At the end of last week, Maureen's condition took a sudden turn for the worse. Last time I saw her was over a month ago - she was still moving about and able to do some things for herself with - how difficult!! - all her intellectual facilities intact, fully aware how her body was giving up.

She's been incredibly brave but now I think she's fearful. Facing death, I think most of us will be fearful to a greater or lesser extent. Those who aren't must be exceptional, or with minds that are so well-trained - some Buddhist monks can do this, I understand.

I hope Maureen will not feel she must be brave any more. What a burden we place on the dying, to demand that they be brave and not disturb our peace of mind, so that we may continue to hold the illusion that the process is not a frightening one.

How much better would it be to have people around us who accepted our fear, and their own, and stayed with us through it?

Another friend died recently, of cancer, and received hospice care - a quiet place to be where friends and family are welcome and the focus is on support. The Hospice movement is a miracle and the right idea, but why is it only for those who have cancer? Surely a place to die with support would be a blessing for many, not just cancer sufferers.

Of course many people want to die at home. Both my parents did this, they were lucky. Hospitals - full or crises and noise - are not the place one wants to be when one seeks... whatever it is one is able to seek. Resolution, perhaps.

This is something we in Britain could do a lot better.

2011-10-30T03:12:00.000-07:00

Looking at the news today, it's easy to believe this: Amongst the billions of people who now live on this planet, are many who have had to take the souls of the insects and animals whose deaths we have, inadvertently, caused. This is as good an explanation as any to account for the state of the world, and surely explains why the mass of human understanding remains so very slight in the face of all that needs to be done.

A Lesson in Powerlessness: Pitch for the Ian Somerhalder Foundation

2011-10-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

I am came across the charity that bears the name of Ian Somerhalder this afternoon - you know, the gorgeous brother from The Vampire Diaries. One of their initiatives concerns selective animal sterilisation. Here's a story that illustrates this problem:

As some of you may know, I recently spent time in Spain. While I was there a wild, pregnant cat came into the garden and by the next day had given birth under a bush by our back door.

It was start of October and the place is high in the mountains where it gets very cold. I was leaving soon after. There is absolutely no support for animal charities in most of Spain. I did all I could but couldn't enlist help from anyone, everyone I spoke to about it just shrugged, even the vet.

If they survive the winter, those kittens - who did not dare even to come out into the open area to play like kittens can - have been born to a life of hardship, and as soon as the females come into season it will start all over again. If ever one has seen it, it's the cycle the Buddhists call Samsara.

I look at pets here in the UK, in their nice homes, and know they're the lucky ones... and even here the same things happen. It's just a little thing compared to global warming but it sure illustrates how powerless one can be even in the face of little things.

The night before we left, to my relief, the mother had found them all a better den, deep under a wall in the garden,more sheltered and less exposed to temperature extremes. She moved one kitten at a time, and those that were left were very frightened when when she disappeared with their sibling. One of the kittens became distressed and tried to follow her, but in the process got snarled up in a nasty thorn bush and started to scream. My friend and I were having dinner inside, and heard this god-awful screaming, so went outside to see what was up. The terrace was pitch black. We found a flashlight and grasped what the problem was, and my friend reached into the den with his hand and freed the kitten, which stopped the screeching. But the next day, at dawn when we left, all the kittens had been moved but that one.

Did touching her kitten make her abandon it? I'll never know. I've had to accept that, and leave them all to their fate this time. But it hasn't half made me see this sad problem in technicolor - and to want to do something about it.

I write this to make pitch for readers to support their work and the work of the Cats Protection League here in England. Donate; pledge; volunteer.

Old Bitch, revisited.

2011-10-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

BTW, that nasty old girl I swore I'd get last month? She's done it again. What a treacherous old bitch she is. Not to me this time- but to undermine her daughter's confidence.

Repeating things discussed in confidence just to make herself feel superior. Really, it beggars belief.

But, old girl, I have your number, and next time i see you. I'm going to call it...

Is the weather all there is?

2011-10-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

I wrote last month about the weather in the UK , how damnably autumnal it was all August and into September. Then, when's I'd taken off for Spain in disgust, they had a week of Indian summer, that for which I longed so.

Well, as I get older - which I do, every day - I care more and more about the quality of my daily life. I don't want to live anywhere it's miserable, where there is no sun. So how am I to face an old age in the UK?

This needs some serious thinking about. I love Spain, but the bureaucracy and politics here are forces to be feared.

But, as my ol' Daddy used to say, "there're always snakes in Paradise."

Do I want I Paradise green and miserable, or sunny and arid?

Winter Hits Early

2011-09-20T05:57:00.000-07:00

One of the real joys of autumn in England is the possibility of an Indian Summer, that time of warm dry days, blue sky and crisp shadows, punctuated in the evenings by woodsmoke if you're lucky enough to live where I do. To us New Englanders it's achingly familiar and so precious - the lull before the cold becomes a curse. It's a lovely time, even without the blazing colours I knew as a child.

But this year, the storms from across the Atlantic bit deep and early. It's not cold, but there's been lots of wind and day after day of unpredictable unsettled weather that isn't much fun. Today on the road to Marston many hedges and trees had been stripped bare. Of course it's partly down to the drought - we had a dry summer even if it wasn't clement - but one cannot help thinking, "global warming."

Wherever you sit on this debate, there's no denying that this planet periodically throws its dominant species to the ground for no obvious reason despite the theories. What would survive under a mile - yes, a mile, that's what they say - of ice? Because it's not just the warming and flooding that threads through the geological record: it's that the warming is part of a cycle of violent change, floods, heat and ice.

Let's hope that this is just another blip in that cycle, a blink of God's eye as we continue, as a species, to fail to learn that our aggression, greed, and thoughtlessness are as much a curse as the cold when we have the capacity for so much more.

When Mums Go Bad

2011-09-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

I've had it with being nice about this.

You, Madam, have been taking side-ways swipes at me for at least ten years and I am FED UP with it. So far I have played nice despite these numberless provocations. But if you take your frustrations out on me ONE MORE TIME I vow to free myself from the obligation to treat you like a nice old woman and I will expose you for the malign, frustrated and snobbish old hag you really are.

Be warned.

Saura's Garden: A Diary

2011-09-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

Follow @Riveralex on Twitter.

In March 2011, Archives Antonio Saura released the late artist’s only work for children, The New Pinocchio by Christine Nöstlinger, illustrated by the painter and newly translated by Anthea Bell. French, German and Spanish versions are already available. It‘s the Archives’ tenth publication.

Looking south along the Júcar.

28 September, 2010

Cuenca, Spain

I’m doing something wonderful, so I thought I should make a record.

I’m staying in Antonio Saura’s house, in Cuenca, two hours from Madrid, guest of his only surviving daughter, Marina. I’m here on the cusp of an extraordinary story - a tale about excellence, and greed, and what it takes to survive as an artist of international importance.

Little known in England or America, Antonio Saura – brother of Carlos, who directed the Blood Wedding film trilogy in the 1980s - was one of Europe’s foremost modern figurative painters (http://www.antoniosaura.org/). He died in Cuenca in 1998, leaving Marina and her husband Olivier in a ten-year legal battle against the local authority for control of his most precious legacy: his name.

It’s two years since winning the case; Marina’s wounds are healing. As Antonio wished, she’s taken up her position amongst the European elite into which she was born, leaving behind her own acting career, constantly travelling in support of his work. Now that her son has finished his studies in Madrid, she’s moving permanently to Paris.

Yet there’s this house...

Cuenca’s medieval centre is a tongue of limestone at one end of a high plain. The rock snakes south between two river gorges converging at the old town’s southern end, which then give out onto to a broad, fertile valley. The city was once thought unconquerable because of these canyons; only a miracle and, apparently, St. Matthew's help allowed the Castilians to take it from the Moors, who’d carved out a fortress here from stone.

Antonio’s house straddles two 18^th- century fincas near the top of the town. Huge windows face west onto the sculpted cliffs across the Júcar Gorge. The modern city, sprung up since Marina was a child, spills south, into the valley.

Does an artist’s work reflects his life? The case for “yes” could be won right here, where the teenaged Saura spent two summers trapped in a body cast. His personality and work – marked by great restlessness and ravenous private and intellectual appetites – owed much to the confinement.

Antonio’s paintings are gone, scattered into collections across the globe, but something of his life lingers in this house - something very Spanish yet cosmopolitan. In his work, he often used Spanish history and life as reference points, yet insisted upon unfettered political and creative expression. Pursuing this in Franco’s era, Saura made enemies - as late as the 1970’s, local Fascists fire to this house, to which scorched oak beams over the kitchen staircase bear witness.

Today, as the municipality reinvents itself as a centre for the arts, local officials hope to leave such aspects of Cuenca’s past behind. Only time will tell if their differences with Antonio’s legitimate heirs can be airbrushed away as well.

…and The Garden.

My friend has lent me this extraordinary refuge so that I can get on with my book. It’s a great kindness, and I’ve been considering how to repay her.

Until 1992, the garden here occupied two levels. Antonio altered its shape each year, pursuing a minimalist aesthetic and a workspace for larger pieces. But that year he commissioned massive alterations to the house, creating the modern studio that now links the two old houses. He also paved the upper level of the garden so that nothing could distract the eye from the panorama opposite, and to reduce demands on his time. These renovations entirely destroyed the garden’s lower level.

In all the changes to the house dictated by the practical or aesthetic, something was lost. When Marina talks about her childhood, there's longing in her voice. She speaks of a walnut tree, once the garden’s focal point, and playing under it with the two sisters who now lie in Cuenca’s mountaintop graveyard with their father.

I’ve created four lovely gardens over the years. Even with limited time, I think that starting on this one might be effort well spent.

It’s late September. I’ll see what I can do.

Day 1

I made my first visit to the garden today.

Since my arrival, I've been avoiding the ocean of greenery below the terrace. All I've seen are dead and half-dead trees smothered in Mile-a-minute, a straggling fig, and mountains of ivy threaded through with ferocious blackberry canes.

A stone Madonna leans awkwardly in the far corner against a massive millstone.

Marina has warned me about vipers, so I, who walked both sides of the gorge in Fitflops, feel anxious as I pick my way down the stairs, over the ivy, avoiding the windfall figs.

After twenty minutes I flee, covered top to toe in sticker-seeds and nasty microscopic slivers of thistle. I’ll need some serious tools to tackle this, and sensible clothes – gloves, sleeves, and better footwear.

Day 2

It’s been very hot – a lovely autumn day - but too hot for redheads.

So I take the bus to town this morning and buy what I need to tackle the tangle: from the hardware store, a serrated sickle with a balsa-wood handle, an oil-stone for sharpening tools; from the shoe shop, a pair of pink high-tops; and from the “bazaar” – an enormous five and ten - a pair of fetching pink gardening gloves.

Just before lunch I sharpen the tools, then spend the afternoon working on my book. When the sun dips and the garden offers more shade, I head down to work.

After two hours hacking at the thistles in the southwest corner I conclude I must re-think my kit. Every fifteen minutes I stop to pull burrs and seeds out of my hair or – worse – my shoes; the high-tops are no protection at all and the laces are studded with hundreds of minute green stickers that look like lice. These itch, bad enough; but the oat-grass seeds actually hurt and are much harder to dislodge - they work themselves half-way into any fabric they touch.

Likewise, my lovely gloves are a joke.

At six o’clock I head back into town for a pair of heavy leather gauntlets with Velcro closures. After looking in twenty shoe-shops, I also find Cuenca’s only pair of reasonably-priced robust women’s boots that might do for outdoor work.

They’re made in China.

Day 3

The cool morning is perfect for working hard. I leave the thistles for now, and concentrate on the ivy choking the fig and sucking the mortar out of Marina’s walls.

It’s Sunday; the cathedral’s bronze bells echo across the canyon. I wonder if their call is any more rousing than that in Priors Marston, where my book is set around a rural community in comic crisis.

Cuenca’s cathedral is more imposing than St. Leonard’s but far less inviting. There’s space for the paraphernalia of conservative Catholicism but none for a congregation. In one corner there’s a bronze of San Julián, Cuenca’s patron, with a tortured soul cringing at his feet. The unfortunate holds a book by Luther.

Other local chapels seem a better fit. A few kilometres north, up a vertiginous path hacked out of the cliff, stands an hermitage – San Julián again – in a deep pine grove, utterly quiet. When I arrived I spent half a day hiking there along the cliff path on the opposite side of the gorge. I’d like to return.

I set to work. After four hours I’ve fought down the ivy imprisoning the fig, found a walnut tree and a hazel, and located some old grape vines and a clematis lying on the ground with nothing for them to climb. The pile of waste and desiccated blackberry canes at the foot of the steps stands at two meters.

My new kit – with a bandana for my hair - works nicely.

We’re going out to lunch, so I knock off to get dressed.

When I return, my dream of a siesta is dashed – Marie José – the wiry mujer who keeps the house in order - arrives unexpectedly at five. After a spirited discussion in my disgraceful Spanish I think we’ve agreed to work on the garden together.

We work at her pace – feverishly; keeping up is hard. By the time she leaves at eight we’ve cleared about two-thirds of the ground, and all the garden refuse sacks I’ve bought are full of ivy and other waste. Marie José heaves them onto her shoulders two at a time and takes some of these upstairs into the atrium by the front door. I’m impressed.

Before she leaves, she warns me: this isn’t ordinary basura, the bin men will just leave it in the street if we leave too many. One or two a day, yes… that’s safe.

Not much different from home, then.

I’m aching with fatigue when we finish. I take a long hot shower and lots of ibuprofen, then fall into bed.

Day 4

In the middle of the night I wake up, to stare at the garden from the huge windows of our room. A streetlight shines, sulphurous, in the lane beyond the three-metre walls. There’s no moon, but I can see the garden clearly in its glow.

I’m thinking about the site.

The ground is a level rectangle. What’s left of the older planting shows it was once a kitchen garden – grapes, nut-trees, not much stone. The trees, apart from the erratics, were planted formally, in two lines. Nearby I see other gardens like it; one of these has been swanked up with a terrace. The vines remain its centre-piece; vegetables take up a corner near the house.

But such a garden needs attention - that’s not going to happen here - and this soil is poor except where there’s some leaf-mould. The whole area is also very, very dry, particularly at the south end around the thousand-litre LPG tank where Antonio’s builders tipped rubble and lime-spoil. That’s what killed the trees.

The third issue concerns temperament or taste.

I’ve known Marina thirty years. She’s not that keen on ‘nature’. Antonio was a modernist, concerned with people, character, form, and social interaction. Both have chosen life in Europe’s great cities.

This house backs onto an astonishing natural panorama, but nothing invites the landscape into the house. Nature exists beyond its boundaries, behind plate-glass. Central heating keeps the elements at bay.

Many decorative and interesting objects find space in this house, but there’s nothing romantic. Bold and big, yes - or macabre and complex. The lines of the studio and studio rooms are straight and spare. Order and discipline rule.

So a garden that would be far easier to maintain, echoing the natural history of this cliff-side, won’t suit.

I can’t resolve this now, so go back to bed.

In the morning I work on the book. I haven’t seen my emails in days, and head to the Hotel Leonore de Acquitania, to use the Net in their café.

I drink coffee and work until four.

When I return, Mary Jose has cleared the remaining third of the wilderness into the great green plastic bags.

Without my input she’s also annihilated one of the beautiful wildflowers I’d hoped to save. I pray it had already seeded.

I’m sad about the loss; but Marie José has been hard at it while I’ve been drinking coffee. I climb guiltily into my work clothes.

I decided last night that we need a compost-heap to start improving the soil. Marie José looks bewildered as I task her with emptying certain bags into a corner where they can rot down.

The sacks full of ivy and mile-a-minute are different: these must go.

We tackle mile-a-minute on the inner walls and trees. Whatever it touches, dies, and it’s reached the middle of the garden. Sawing off the dead half of an aspen, where the weed had touched just the top-most branch, I wonder - can it poison the host somehow, as well as choking it? Looks likely.

We get a lovely surprise: a variegated bay laurel survives under the walnut tree which leans out madly from under the ivy. A single stalk, but healthy. It’s too soon to move it – no planting plans yet - but to improve its chances we clear away as much of its competition as we can.

I try to free the walnut, too. It’s survived the ivy; planted (or landed) by the west wall, it’s stretched up towards the light as best it can. It’s healthy, but barren. Yes, it’s a young tree - walnuts need thirty years to yield - but the poor conditions can’t help. Weed has taken its top branches.

I think.

Security problems affect many homes here; not long ago, thieves broke in using Antonio’s garden tools, and raided the hotel next door, too. Growth deters villains – it’s harder to get through three meters of ivy than over bare walls. But other plants would offer better protection at less cost to the plants we hope to keep – rugosa roses perhaps, or pyracantha. They’d have to be drought-efficient…

More research.

Mari Jose and I stop at eight. I’ve been up a ladder for two hours, sawing down two of the dead invader trees and cutting and pulling out two-inch-thick vines. We’ve moved another two hundred-weight of waste and the site is now roughly clear.

By the time I go to bed, every inch of my body hurts. And I’m out of ibuprofen.

Day 5

We’ve had a warm, bell-clear autumn, but there are clouds today – cirrocumulus, a front moving in. I don’t know if it’s the work or the changing weather, but I’ve decided: no labour today – I’m in too much pain.

Hobbling or not, I need to find a nursery, to look at plants and decide how to suppress the weeds.

What ever we do to the site now, if we don’t handle these malas hierbas we’ll have wasted our time. We’ve four options: poison, potatoes, plastic, or planting.

I don’t like using poison, and Marina – who uses Klorane shampoo and pure glycerine shower-gel – certainly won’t. Potatoes are useful for clearing ground, but I’m unsur they’ll work in Cuenca – winter brings bitter cold, with torrential and arid periods.

That leaves plastic and planting.

I make enquiries. There’s an enormous garden centre beyond the edge of town. There’s no bus, so I take a taxi.

My Spanish is improving; the taxi-driver and I manage a conversation. He tells me it’s the best place he knows, and that it’s huge. He offers to come back for us; I’m unsure about how long we’ll need, so take his number.

He’s right about the size – three football pitches at least. Indoor and conservatory plants first; outdoor plants and trees; building and pool materials. There’s a fine selection of mature trees, lots of shrubs, a melange of others – but the prices of the building materials and tools are outrageous. BMWs, Mercs and new Fords whiz in and out of the car-park.

We spend forty-five minutes looking around. It helps me with costing things out, and some ideas begin to percolate - but I loathe the place and can’t wait to escape. Jesus takes an hour to get back, and when I pay him I lose my phone in the back of his cab.

I give up for the day, and we go to lunch.

Day 6

I’m watching the sunrise.

Across the Júcar gorge, in the early morning, the sun tips the sierra with gold. Over the next hour, sunlight pours across the whole face of the canyon, over the pines and cliffs. The sky above is a deep blue, fading to pearl as one looks south. It’s often cloudless, with haze softening the view to the distant hills.

In the afternoons, the sun takes over our side of the gorge. At sunset, all the canyon fills with cold violet shadows, but warmth lingers wherever the sun has touched the stone. It feels like we're in a gigantic conch-shell at the ear of God, and I see why the religious impulse flourishes here still.

When we arrived, the sun was setting directly opposite, behind the sierra. Daily, it shifts south; now night falls nearly over the new-town and its tower-blocks, and over the smaller hills at the far side of the flood plain.

Today I’m aware my time here is coming to a close. I want to make the most of it; there’s much to do but it’s important to curb ambition and stay with what’s workable. This means three things: finish the clearing, tie up the plants that need support, and mulch what I can, to help the soil clean itself of seed.

I go down in the morning to progress-check. Far too much m-a-m and ivy remain, and the hazelnut is rotten at the bottom. Tons of bramble must go, too – though we’ll never get rid of it; some is rooted behind the neighbouring wall.

I clear while it’s cool, but the afternoon turns hot. I spend hours over the road hunting for work on the Internet. I secure an interview next Friday for another research contract.

I should be grateful, but my heart sinks at the idea of returning to that life when my work here goes so well.

In the evening, while the sun is still warm I water the red malus and the other thirsty plants. It’s been so very dry.

Day 7

I cut back brush today, thin out the dead and rotten hazel, strip meters of bramble from the northeast corner. I trim back the walnut, too.

Thinking about security, I’m considering piling the dead bramble in the corner, near the walnut. Nobody sane would jump into a big pile of dead bramble; it’s worse than razor-wire. Yet the garden centre has rugosas, which would provide decent protection to better effect. I’ll ring them; I really don’t want to go back.

Stripping out the hazel, I recall all the gardens I’ve worked where hazel grows for no apparent reason. Cutting back all the straight new growth I suddenly understand: hazel poles were used for everything before we imported bamboo. Hazel trees pollard - I know because I’ve tried to get rid of them in Edinburgh. Every single one I cut to a stump sprouted rod-straight growth within a year – in a circle, round the cut.

I decide to use the hazel to make towers for the grapes and the clematis. This seems a happy and appropriate choice. I’ve cut out loads, and it’s easy to work.

As the day ends I make a dowsing rod from a hazel-fork, and dowse the garden, just as my father taught me. Under the north wall there’s something – a spring, or groundwater. That’s why the ivy likes it so much, and why the hazel grew there.

There’s moisture by the walnut, too, so roses might take if they can survive the weeds. Rugosas are tough; it’s worth a try.

Two lovely things: today I found a large, leggy bay laurel – a relative of the other I’d guess – hidden amongst the mass of rotten hazel; I’ll tie it up and see if it will grow straight. Bay makes a lovely tree.

I can’t remember the other lovely thing…. But I will.

Going off to Fundación Antonio Pérez now. At one time he was a helper and apparently a friend to Saura; but when the painter died he was one of the chief architects of the attack on his estate.

Found the Pérez collection enormous and beautifully-displayed in the former Carmelite convent at the top of town. There’s an entire room dedicated to Saura’s graphic work, and lots of other engaging pieces. But Pérez on one hand denies artistic ambitions, yet displays his “found objects” on equal footing with the works of all the professionals in his collection. Odd.

I locate the book Marina’s asked me for, apparently for sale. No-one’s around to take my money.

I can’t get through to the garden centre. I take the bus to town again and find a driver to take me there, wait while I shop, and get me home again. He’s chatty, flirtatious and somewhat irritating.

No white rugosas – apparently there aren’t white ones in Spain. I know this for a lie, but settle for pinks. I’ll discuss it with Antonio’s shade, certain he’ll disapprove. But all rugosas are splendid, spiny, aristocratic and statuesque – very like Saura’s “damas” or his portraits of women like Brigitte Bardot. I hope to talk him round.

I pick up two varieties of rosemary- one normal and the other wonderfully gnarled - and some thyme.

I soak them all thoroughly, for planting out tomorrow.

I give the driver the address of the house. When he hears our destination, he turns animated, wanting to discuss the case and the family.

It will be all over town soon that an English writer is buying plants for Saura’s house. Sorry, Marina, I know you value your privacy – but there were too many for the bus.

Before I go to bed I remember the other lovely thing: the hazel is sprouting new growth where I cut it last week.

Amazing.

Day 8

I wake early and am out working at first light. By lunchtime all the climbing plants are tied into hazel shelters. These aren’t very robust – I’ll be surprised if they survive the winter – but they get the plants off the ground so I can clear around them, weed, and mulch. They do look lovely, at least for the moment.

While I’m tying up one of the vines, I find a bunch of grapes – small, dark, sour. How amazing - even after long neglect, they still bear fruit.

We go back to the restaurant San Jose today; I go to the market and the supermarket too. I shop for our last few days in Spain.

As soon as we’re back I’m off to the industrial estate to see if I can solve the mulch issue. I don’t find the enormous roll of heavy black plastic I want, but choose a few rolls of mulching fabric, all I can carry on the bus. It’s not enough to do the whole garden but it’s better than nothing.

Around sunset, after I water in the new plants, I look over the wall at the abandoned garden of the derelict finca next door. There must be water; I see an apple tree laden with fruit, an enormous bay, white roses – not rugosas, some lovely old round variety – and a rusty grape arbour where tens of bunches hang from a vine as thick as my thigh. Again – even without attention.

Makes you think.

Day 9

Grey today, and warm.

Out at first light again, I prepare the roses for planting, put the herbs in the smaller, sheltered terrace beneath our bedroom windows, and heap up some builder’s rubble and stone. When I read the mulching fabric instructions, I realise I need compost.

Oh, me, another bus trip to the bricolage. I window-shop a while then buy twenty-five litres in a heavy little bale. I borrow one of their wheelie plastic shopping baskets to manage the package.

The wind is rising as I head home; clouds gather to the south. I pull the rest of the hazel spoil into a pile by the back wall, securing it with stakes. No lump hammer – I haven’t been able to find one at the house and won’t spend sixteen euros on one too heavy for me to manage – so I use a stone. The result is hardly a permanent solution, but it helps.

My friend has had a bad day; we stop for lunch and chat. As we talk, a flight of huge birds – perhaps thirty - start circling over the sierra. They’re as large as eagles but hunting together, so I guess they’re vultures – black on top, gold underneath, soaring on the thermals. It’s the sort of sight most people see once or twice in a lifetime.

I think about this later as I work – how lovely this work has been, what pleasure I’ve had encountering all that’s here. It’s strange that I love working like this; as a child I loathed helping outside. Did my parents kill off the joy of gardening at my childhood home – or was there just so very much to do? I understand Marina’s ambivalence about being in Cuenca when every visit means tasks competing for her attention.

After lunch I rake the remaining spoil into composting piles, pulling some around the trees to help trap moisture, clearing as much as possible. I’d hoped to plant the roses but they’re pot-bound, and need soaking overnight. I get a lot cleared before the rain begins and work until it’s torrential.

Thunder and lightning… Rain so hard I can’t see across the canyon.

Looks like our stunning Indian summer is drawing to a close.

Day 9

Cloudy at dawn… another Sunday. There’s a fiesta in town, the crowds echo like a football match or a school sports day. Earlier I think there was an open-air Mass in the canyon. The requisite 21 gun salute/ fireworks/cannon exploded at lunchtime.

Nothing like the mad Vaquilla, thank God. As we arrived, we survived four 23-hour days of that - drunken, noisy crowds and a Festival of Cows – dedicated to St Matthew – that required chasing terrified cattle around the cathedral square.

Today I must finish: plant the roses, tidy the spoil, rake the site one last time, and try to do something with the mulching fabric.

I work steadily from eight-thirty until two, barely noticing the time. It’s cool but pleasant; sometimes there’s sunshine – but I can feel how the season’s changed. It’s now cold, with warm intervals, not warm with cooler periods.

I find a single walnut, from the tree.

All the plants I’ve bought are pot-bound. I’ve soaked them, but the root-balls won’t yield. Some may not survive until they’re properly established; I’m sad about this. I’ll ask Marie José to keep them watered until winter - but without daily care, things are in the lap of the gods.

I pull out the mulching fabric, try it unsuccessfully in several places. I lay a patch behind the hazel, in the corner where the ivy and blackberry grew – some success here. I weigh it down with what stone and rubble I can collect.

There’s a similar problem with the roses, under the walnut. I try to fit the papery, stiff fabric into the corner; then try cutting it in two around the tree-trunk. I plant the roses through its surface, but it’s a dog’s breakfast of a job - frustrating and unsightly.

This stuff is supposed to allow your plants to breath, let moisture through, and inhibit other growth. We’ll see.

There’s nothing to cover its ghastly brown-ness, either – we raked sand over it up above. I dig leaf-mould from under the ivy, and scour the ground for stones.

Eventually I surrender. So three rugosa roses live in Saura’s garden where they may be 1) overwhelmed by mile-a-minute, 2) strangled by ivy, 3) suffer light deprivation because of the walnut tree or 4) die of thirst because of the climate.

Such a thing is gardening.

I spend half an hour making up a temporary barrier of blackberry canes to deter villains. If the roses survive, this won’t be needed; today, this seems a big “if”.

I water everything, and finish for the day.

Day 10

I leave for Madrid at five.

There’s tidying to finish in the house, and I must go back to the Fundación. I walk the ground, inspecting our work, and give the new plants all the water I can. I spend two hours gathering stones and potsherds into piles – an astonishing number and variety, some medieval or older, some modern. I kick myself for missing the Museo Cuenca, where I might have put dates to the finds.

Wild garlic pushes through the lime-strewn soil, all across the site.

There’s a cloudburst.

I go for coffee across the road. Antonio Pérez stands at the bar. When my jacket falls to the floor, he picks it up. I realise he’s watched us since we arrived.

After I return from his Fundación I tour the garden for the last time.

Every minute here has been precious - time spent learning about the house and its land. I’ve hidden away here, so leave without discovering much about Cuenca or its people.. Even what I’ve done, I haven’t necessarily completed; I have regrets.

I never revisited the Hermitage.

Without permanently clearing weed or ivy, without re-thinking all of this garden and its meaning, no-one can prevent the ground reverting to rough. The malas herbias will return before anyone can say “glyphosate.”

All these things are true; yet nobody knows what the future holds.

For the present, ah, that’s another matter. I set my mark upon the ground here, however briefly. Because of my visit, for the present, at Saura’s house, an interesting green space beckons though the vast studio windows.

You don’t always need that big, grand view, it says. Why don’t you come down here for a little while, and spend some time - just to see how things are getting on?

This is the heart of any garden.

Alex Brunel

15.10 2010, Cuenca.

Carrot Cake for Grown-ups

2011-06-08T04:11:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging much of late but I MUST post this wonderful recipe by my dear friend Mal Nash. It took her 6 months to get it right and it's a wonderful result for a sophisticated palate - it's rich but not too sweet.

Here we go:

Mallory Nash’s

(6 months in development!!) Carrot Cake

(Suzan's origin - 6” X 6”)

Ingredients

Lemon Juice – ½ Tbs

Milk – 2oz

Butter – 50gms

Honey – 4oz

Carrots grated – 112.5gms

Raisins – 50gms

Dates chopped – 50gms

Dried Bananas chips chopped – 25gms

Walnuts chopped – 25gms

Eggs – 1

Wholemeal Flour – 50gms

Strong White Plain Flour – 50gms

Baking Soda – 1 tsp

Baking Powder – ½ tsp

Salt – ½ tsp

Cinnamon – ¾ tsp

Making

Add lemon juice to milk and set aside

Melt butter and let cool

Beat egg til frothy

Add honey and melted butter to milk

Add honey and butter to egg – beat well til you see bubbles

Sift flour with baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon

Add sifted flour mix to egg and melted butter and beat for about 1 ½ mins til you can see some air bubbles

Fold in carrots, walnuts, dates, raisins and bananna chips and pour into baking tin

Baking

6” by 6” fairly deep tin – lined and greased

180⁰ C fan oven for 20 mins

Turn down to 165⁰ C and bake another 30 mins

Turn off oven and leave in oven for another 5 mins

After removing from oven leave in baking tin for about 15 mins before removing from tin

Icing

200gms Cream Cheese to 50gms Butter (could use less butter)

Sweeten to taste with a scant ¼ cup Icing Sugar and a scant ¼ tsp vanilla (not sure vanilla really needed and it softens butter/cream cheese mix).

Double this recipe would go in a 9” by 8” tin and might need a bit more time in the oven.

Wikileaks: What It Means to the Web

2010-12-09T14:02:00.000-08:00

9th December 2010:

As I write this, according to the BBC and others, hordes of "hacktivists" associated with an organisation known as Anonymous have spent the last few days attacking the commercial operations of Amazon, Mastercard, Paypal and Visa, with varying degrees of success. The hackers seek retaliation against companies who've withdrawn services from Wikileaks. They believe that the US government pressured companies to stop supplying what the BBC calls "the controversial whistle-blowing website" - thereby obstructing the site's operations and starving it of its audience and its means of financing itself.

Meanwhile, a US Army Private named Bradley Manning, arrested last June, languishes on a secure US Marine Base - accused of being one of Wikileaks' primary sources. And having turned himself in to the London police, Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange sits in a prison cell. On 14th December he'll find out if the UK courts who have refused him bail will allow his extradition to Sweden to face allegations about sexual misconduct, rape, and unlawful coercion.

Over the course of 2010, Wikileaks has released mountains of previously-secret material which make the US Government look bad, and the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq look tragic. Many of these documents are diplomatic cables exposing the personal opinions of their senders - but expressed in language that makes them sound like facts. Exceedingly humiliating to the Americans, these cables have embarrassed a great many of the planet's governments, and shown international diplomacy to be a tissue of obfuscations and lies in which expediency and the defense of national self-interest are the only operational values.

So, what else is new?

War - close up - really is ugly. Diplomacy used to call itself "the great game", to be played out by the sons of privilege against their peers - often over the bodies of their countrymen. Every military in the world hides its plans, hating it when the awful realities behind their operations become exposed.

So what has actually happened here? Merely that some of those with appalling secrets did not or could not keep them. Whatever their motivation in coming forward, or Wikileaks' motivation in presenting their secrets to the public in the name of free speech - the British IT news site The Register asks us to remember that Wikileaks began as a commercial concern, not a political one - our leaders and their armed forces, of all ranks, have been exposed as the flawed human beings they - and we - are. Meanwhile, our right to live as we do - to say what we like, to download whatever we fancy without thought for the complexities, costs or consequences - has also been challenged. "Hacktivists" don't wear white hats, either.

So the Wikileaks affair raises questions about what's right, and demands that we also ask, what's responsible?

Should secrets like those here exposed should be kept? Why, exactly? Should Private Manning be in solitary confinement during these months? And, yes - he's a soldier: was his duty to keep the secrets he encountered, or to tell them? Should Assange be facing - now, so conveniently - allegations about behaviour that previously were dismissed? Or are his enemies right to undermine his credentials as a crusader by attacking his private conduct?

They call this "the information age". The Wikileaks affair raises the questions about who owns information, and who benefits by it. Who controls the Internet? Who is going to choose what information we receive, or tell us what to believe about our world? And finally: is ignorance about what our governments do in our name supportable when, suddenly and more than ever, we find that we are citizens of the world?

Feeding the 5000: Keeping Online Communities Alive

2010-11-23T02:24:00.000-08:00

At The Hyde Group, they've started an online community for residents and staff of this large, widely-geographically-dispersed housing association. It's called the Hyde 5000.

It's working pretty well. In the six months I spent there, membership was steadily increasing to respectable levels - if still some way below the five-thousand members they hope eventually to engage.

But what's the point of having an online community? Is it right for your group? And how does any such community keep things rolling in that will be of interest to its members over time?

To decide the first two of these questions, you need to ask whether there's actually any need for an online community amongst the people you hope to attract to your group. How many are in the group? Does the group have a clear purpose or raison d'etre? Do the people you hope to gather together actually use the Internet, and use it easily? What advantages will online communication have over other ways this group might share experiences and information?

To decide the third issue - how to keep things going - you need to think about two things: content, and functionality.

You read a lot about the importance of content in blogs and websites of all kinds. Advice abounds about the need for "quality content" at all times. Sometimes this advice is really a short-hand for "well-written, literate articles" with decent spelling and proofreading. There's nothing that puts people off a site - or reduces its credibility - faster than spelling and grammatical errors, even in our post-literate age.

But the need for "quality content" goes well beyond this. For a community to thrive, the content needs to be relevant - to relate to some lively issue of immediate concern to visitors - and it needs to be current, or at least frequently-updated. And this is where issues of functionality arise - because if only one or two people are contributing to the site, other members will never feel a sense of ownership about the site, and most will soon get bored.

We've all been members - or avoided being members - of groups or committees where one two or three people do all the work and all the others just bitch about it. Is this actually fun for anyone? Or is this just some kind of therapy or martyr trip for those doing all the work?

The real brilliance of Facebook and other social networking sites lies in understanding that most of us long to be heard, loved and understood. It's the Karaoke principle, applied to online thinking. People don't want to be passive receptacles of websites any more than they want to sit all night watching other people sing when they themselves have a secret yen to be a pop star, And remember - pop stars themselves are no longer gods but - mercilessly visible thanks to 24-hour media coverage - just guys and gals like us.

So the functionality of your site has to allow easy-to-post contributions from anyone involved. That will give a sense of satisfaction, and pride of ownership.

Other point to consider in a design:

How are articles and submissions organised? Is there a 'search' facility with a familiar interface - or will visitors need to trawl through lists of dates for what they want to find? (they won't, you know!!)
Are there easy-to-follow submissions guidelines, so that people wanting to upload and exchange ideas can do so with minimal fuss?
Who is going to "web-master" the site? If there's nobody available to perform this important function - keeping an eye on whether the elements of the site are functioning as they should - things will soon become chaotic, and visitors will feel reluctant to put their time in.
Would an e-mail group or Facebook sub-site - or a Google Blog site, such as this one - do just as well for your group as a dedicated website? For many of us, such a group - which can be organised around any topic that meets basic requirements of the server for decency, copyright and respect - will do just fine. As a bonus it will have the hot functionality that spending zillions of dollars on web development brings.

If a website is going to help a community function better or bring a wider audience to your activities and shared ambitions, it may be just the thing you need. But in making these decisions, please don't ignore the real possibilities that exist within the amazing online communities we have already.

Why I Gave Up on Twitter: Digital Exclusion

2010-11-10T04:20:00.000-08:00

I recently completed a study on 'Digital Exclusion" for a large UK social housing provider.

Over the past few years, whoever has been governing here in the UK has been doing all they can to ensure that EVERYONE has access to the Internet - that they may look to and use the brave new world of broadband.

The hope seems to be that all information, and services of all kinds - government, commercial, utility, you name it - can be shoved online for people to trawl their way through alone without help. In other words, the information and service providers can pretty much automate the process and do away with "customer service staff" who at present must deal with those pesky customers.

Accountants love this idea. The equipment is a capital expense so is tax-efficient - salaries are not. And just as with Twitter - every service provider will be happily stuck on 'broadcast", all the time, without every having to listen or respond to another human being in a real transaction.

In truth, "customer service" has pretty much disappeared since the 1990's. All we have seen in this field, with the rise of expensive switchboard and Net technological provision, is loss - loss of human contact and virtually all opportunity for anyone with a query to communicate with someone who might be able to help.

In my experience - maybe yours too? - the public are spending an awful long time on "hold" and a great many of the websites we're referred to are appalling - complicated, ugly, confusing to look at and difficult to use. And amongst the worst offenders is the UK government itself.

My research showed up something else very interesting: that Digital Exclusion is as much about a difference in values as it is an issue about skills or education. We have a tribe of people here in the UK (And I am sure - elsewhere) who value face-to-face conversation; who like to work with their hands; who can't hold together the long strings of text commands most of us still need to operate our computers. Some of them can't read that well, so big blocks of text are virtually impossible. Most get lost looking at the desktop of their computer screen or a web page: they're baffled by the syntax of what they're seeing.

Many of them don't want to, either. Computer design - almost all technological design in fact - still refers to an Old-White-Guy paradigm. The boxes may be thin and sleek now... but they're still boxes, and to many of the "excluded" the values that these boxes embody are still alien.

There are always extinctions when humans with new technology encounter indigenous tribes whose way of life revolves around other things. The Incas, the Aztecs, the Samurai couldn't stand up against gunpowder and the gattling-gun.

I'm not a romantic; I don't want a return to the stone-age. But I think we have just such a tribe here, and we're in the process of extinguishing them. By insisting that there's only ONE route to the future, we're also contributing to the creation of an underclass, forever excluded by ability, values and/or inclination from access to mainstream opportunities.

Are we so sure we know what we're doing? And what will we have lost when we've accomplished our goal?

Male Infidelity Explained

2009-10-21T03:59:00.000-07:00

Time to get over it, guys.

For years we've been told that the culturally-sanctioned male "need" to have lots of sex with different partners, as often as possible, was some hard-wired superiority gig that entitled men to hop onto whoever caught their eye.

Huge cultural myths have built up around this, such as the belief that men "need" to do this because they "need" to spread their seed as widely as possible. Another belief is that it's a really "Alpha" thing to do - the "right" and the "natural" behaviour for male human beings, and that somehow, they should want to do this... even if they don't.

But evidence is now accruing, from studies both human and primate, that male sexuality is opportunistic - because in Hominid social groups, mating is strictly the province of the most dominant male, and others, to get their chance at all, have to go at it behind his back if they're to avoid getting beaten up.

This puts rather a different slant on the matter, doesn't it?

The truth may be that human males' urge to behave like this relates more to their insecurities, and their relative lack of power within the social hierarchy. Secure, truly Alpha primate males may have other things on their minds - like keeping their edge over their competitors and protecting their empires. And often these males don't need to pursue females - females offer themselves to real Alphas in the blink of an eye, in exchange for protection or status.

Human behaviour is of course rather complex, but let's look at some famous examples of men one might have expected to have been able to keep their trousers on: let's look at some American presidents.

John F. Kennedy, for instance, was surrounded by a bevy of subordinate-status men who procured women for his entertainment, despite being married to Jackie - one of the most Alpha females of her time. The myth is that JFK was hot to trot; but this behaviour may have been due to his need for stress and pain relief - he had chronic back pain - and to the favour-seeking of his "friends" rather than to a strong libido.

Ditto Bill Clinton: of all the women in all the world, why would the world's most powerful man have chosen Monica Lewisnki? It is far more likely that the intern, rather naively, made herself available to a man under too much stress to see the trap.

In other words, being President might not really be the world's greatest job - but it's certainly one of the toughest.

According to an article in Time, researchers Cindy Meston and David Buss from the University of Texas, who interviewed 1000-plus women worldwide for their book Why Women Have Sex, sexual selection is more frequently, and traditionally, the province of the female rather than the male. This implies that men who actively seek out willing females may be acting mainly out of insecurity - something that psychologists have been saying for a very long time about the Don Juans amongst us.

The researchers also say that most women have experienced mate-poaching by other females at least once in their lives - and that mate-poachers have a fascinating run of justifications for their behaviour - revenge being one of the more common.

So, girls, if your partner has been unfaithful, it's time to stop blaming yourself, once and for all. It's far more likely to have occurred because he isn't secure in his place within the male hierarchy, or because the opportunity presented itself and he was under stress - or because of the competitive rage of the female involved.

And guys, if this is your number, it's kind of sad, isn't it?

Atonement and Ted Kennedy

2009-08-27T14:09:00.001-07:00

I read in this morning's Times (over someone's shoulder, on the London train, as you do) that Ted Kennedy died on Tuesday.

Ted didn't start out a great man, he started out as a waster, down the wrong road, a tearaway and playboy. But a grave error in judgement he made one night long ago in Martha's Vineyard changed his life forever.

Despite my anger over the case - somehow it always made me crazy how that woman, Mary Jo Kopekne, died and he just seemed to be powerful enough to get away from it - despite my many years of discomfort with the entire affair, I think it may be true that it was better for us all that he lived to live with his error and became a far more serious and turned round person - perhaps because of it.

The need for atonement is a powerful moral force and a very complex one. "Liberal" used to be a compliment; and I think, Ted Kennedy and his undeniable gravitas helped rescue it from its enemies. I am glad that one of the last things he did was to make a plea to the people to support universal health care in the US.

He'll be missed in Washington and I guess I'll miss him too.

The Road to Real Healthcare Reform in the US

2009-08-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

Arguments about cost control in US health care are fine but a huge, underlying problem with US health care costs as a whole is that US care is excessively dependent on technological approaches to medicine.

These involve buying into huge capital and pharma trends the costs of which rise and rise with every new development and fashion and encourage for-profit companies to capitalise on our human fears. And unfortunately, the benefits of these developments rarely keep pace with their costs.

A market-led debate on costs is not enough. Such an approach allows competition to occur at the level of financial cost alone. Competition like this gives multinational companies the edge in provision... which in the end loses US jobs, and causes stress on American households, which leads to illness etc etc So it's not enough to reform the revenue system: health reform has to occur within a shift in consciousness about what "healthcare" is.

European August

2009-08-14T01:17:00.000-07:00

I've been in Britain so long that I can't bear to do much in August.

Note that I don't say "in Europe" but "in Britain" as it seems the issue of European membership still hasn't been put to bed in the UK despite thirty years' blessings and improvements in the quality of daily life here for most of us, a great many of which can be put down to EU membership.

However: despite the resistance we seem to have gained August. That's a blessing: the Chinese call late summer the fifth season - it is my favourite time of year, ripe, warm, full of the realisation that summer is on the wane and soon it will be dark and cold again. This gives it special poignancy.

Please take time off in August to live and let your life be full, to connect with what's really important. Let the markets rot: they will anyway.

No Distribution for Terry Gilliam

2009-08-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

I really want to understand this.

Terry Gilliam may be one of the finest filmmakers alive, and he's made a film he considers his masterpiece, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.

So, is this true? If so - WHY is there no US distribution for this film??? What does this mean? How can this be?

Gilliam is an artist with true vision, breadth of ability AND recognisable style. His films are dense visual pleasures, full of challenging images and some great performances.

I'd really like to know the answer to this.

Can anyone tell me???

From Thin Air: 10,000 Hours

2009-08-05T00:04:00.000-07:00

It's a perfect August morning, very still.

You rise early, have your cup of Earl Grey.

The sun has been pouring in like slow honey, warming the air of the dining room. You open the back door. The fresh air wraps your ankles. Insects wing swiftly - in their odd, brainless zig-zag - across the gardens, garages and shrubs behind the buff stone tenements of the square. You wonder - flying insects are a rare sight in Edinburgh; where are the birds? And, have I ever seen a swallow here in Scotland?

You realise, finally, that there is much tweeting and twittering, coming and going, at the edge of vision. You can't identify these, or really see them. But you smile: for once these verbs don't concern the computer.

A butter-yellow potentilla reflects the sun gleaming along the stones of the boundary wall.

10,000 hours are needed to hone one's craft and gain any measure of success in this or any profession. How many have you spent writing? Counting is futile; you need to trust that, over the many frustrating years since the day the bottom fell out of your world, you've done your time .

You open the computer. You watch the progress of the sun across the garden for a moment, registering how rare it is, how lost you'll feel only a few months from today when its warmth is just a memory - and a hope.

The computer sings and loads.

A few keystrokes later, a blank page. Now: begin.

Home in Edinburgh

2009-07-28T01:36:00.001-07:00

I'm up in Edinburgh this week, staying at my beautiful flat in Bruntsfield.

A number of things have forced me to spend a great of my time not here in Scotland but in the south - economic forces, really; the travelling was killing me and it's not as if I've got the company jet. Air travel is no longer any kind of a pleasure, particularly if one goes to or from the dreaded Gatwick; security makes it tedious and energy-consuming.

That's why I left home, relocating south for the time being. But it doesn't half pull at my heartstrings to be here. Edinburgh was the first place I knew adult freedom and the first place I wrote and directed plays. That led to a whole life...

It's a magnificent city, nestled in an ancient caldera, amongst extinct volcanic stacks, between moorland and the North Sea, or at least the fiord called the Firth of Forth. If you've never been here you should come.

RIP Walter Cronkite

2009-07-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

Curiously enough, I was thinking about him yesterday.

Or rather, I was thinking about why the business in Afghanistan bothers me so, and what made me a liberal in the days before that word became an insult, discredited by the discreditable Right.

What it comes down to is this: sitting in front of the evening news, as a kid, listening to the items about the war in Vietnam and thinking, there was something really wrong about the "casualty" figures: so many hundred Vietcong and three Americans.

Walter, you taught me to question what I was being fed, NOT to take it at face value. You were the voice of an era, an American with true gravitas who asked questions and did not fear the strong, the weak or the disenfranchised.

Thank you for your dedication and your years of service to the cause of thinking people everywhere.

News from Afghanistan

2009-07-17T04:07:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan is the stone on which the world breaks it foot.

When 9/11 first happened, I recall doing everything I could to get those in power in the States to move with circumspection. I rummaged through my Wellesley and other contacts, sending off email after email urging caution, care, wisdom and forbearance.

Of course I failed miserably in the face of the enormous fear, rage, ego, greed and the overweening desire for revenge which had my home country in thrall.

That Great Britain, too, would have its foundations undermined by this tide of poor judgement was inevitable, once our government had made the decision to follow-the-leader into error. No doubt there are arcane political reasons for this decision but it was an error - an error that continues to cost us dearly in every currency that counts.

Two news items caught my eye today - the first, a report in The Australian News about a large number of murders under investigation by the new US administration. These apparently occurred in Afghanistan in late 2001 under the command of a local warlord who was at that time an ally.

The second was the news in the Guardian that a sixteenth British solider had died in Afghanistan this past fortnight alone.

Knowing what we know about the US and UK economies, how so much of our prosperity depends upon the war machine - that military industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about as he left office almost fifty years ago - neither item really surprises. But what does still shock is the degree to which the previous American administration apparently failed to learn or care the slightest bit about Afghani culture before ploughing in like the damned cavalry to Custer's Last Stand, or how so they could so cynically disregard this most basic tenet of human behaviour: violence begets violence.

Of a country where all happens along clan lines, where even these loyalties are subject to constant fissioning and fusion, how could anyone believe that murdering people's brothers, husbands, sons and daughters could lead to anything but a tsuami of rage and the thirst, unquenchable, for vengeance?

And was the belief that these people somehow counted less than US citizens used to justify this cynical war - a war that will one day prove to have undermined both US and UK economies while lining the pockets of those in power?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25776004-2703,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/17/british-soldier-killed-afghanistan

You Scratch My Back...

2009-07-14T03:22:00.000-07:00

This is how it should work: I write your copy, you sort out the soup in my in-box.

It's little enough to ask... that I shouldn't have to spend my PRECIOUS time disentangling email accounts simply because I've started to do a lot more networking online: Twitter and Facebook in particular.

But no. Without really expecting it or knowing what to do, suddenly I've reached a tipping-point - I can no longer keep up with who's following me, or at least I no longer have the energy or will to do so. ... somewhere around the 500 mark.

And now that I've let the world into my FB account I haven't the faintest idea how to make that work for me either; and that makes the whole thing feel worse and just a little bit hopeless.

OK: NOW: look for ways to manage this crisis, online OR figure it out.... whatever happened to "writer" as my career choice? I might as well give up and just put "geek."

1 hour later: found Inner Circle for Facebook, a friends management system that does EXACTLY what you want. Thanks 2 Angela Randall http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/10/inner-circle/

Hello, California... Reflections on a Time Zone

2009-07-12T00:19:00.000-07:00

It's so strange, sitting here Twittering with people with whom I'm eight hours out of sync...

They're all getting back from the bar, cut, or half-so - or at least a bit high - and I'm just having the day's first cup of tea. There have been some good exchanges but it is a little bizarre.... isn't it?

It's not that I haven't faced this issue before - my architect niece Kyle lives in San Francisco and finding a time to call when we both have time and are relaxed enough to chat is tricky.

It's very interesting how much better Twitter and Facebook are than the telephone for doing this. Why should that be?

Another conversation with Dr Mal

2009-07-09T01:59:00.000-07:00

In my attempt to live life like the great Graham Greene - whose Heart of the Matter I so loathed as a teenager that I trashed it in an exam - I'm writing in the morning, then doing something else in the afternoon.

Yesterday's adventure consisted of hanging out with my great pal, Dr Mal, a Gestalt psychotherapist practising in Stratford upon Avon, where we both live. We trained together at the English Gestalt Institute; I gave up my practice after ten years because I'm never in one place long enough to give my patients steady attention and I needed to return to writing. Mallory kept practising.

After Mal tried on her thirty-seventh pair of jeans, we stopped for coffee at Costa. As we sat there we discussed again the work of Norberto Keppe, whose book, Origin of Illness, I touched on yesterday.

Today we explored how the topic of envy has affected our own, very solid friendship.

"There are two things I never say to you. I hold back. I almost punish you with it... I know something, but I'm not going to let you have it."

"Well, what?"

"First, that sometimes when we talk about something, you get very aggressive about your expertise, you speak about things with such force that I end up feeling there's no room for disagreement or discussion."

"So you get angry at that?"

"Yes, I do. I end up wanting to kick you! So I do... metaphorically speaking. You talk as if your life depended on people believing you; but frankly it doesn't do you any favours. I just withhold my opinion, so we don't get to a creative place with the discussion, find new ground. You say, 'THE reason for this is.." - not 'I wonder if part of the reason is?' or 'One of the reasons might be...'. I'm shut out."

"That's bad."

"And then if I challenge you, you defend, become arrogant - and sometimes very cold and hurtful."

My first instinct - of course! - was to defend and justify my position, to talk about my twenty-plus years in the boardroom, giving presentations to the sceptical; but in the spirit of Dr Keppe, I decided to listen - let feedback from this excellent, loving friend inform my response.

"Yes, I know I do that." I was uncomfortable, but stayed with it.

"What's happening for you when you do that?"

I considered this for a moment. "I think I am trying to shut things down... and it might be because of my envy."

"What do you mean?"

"Something about my relationship to power. "

"In what way?"

"I'm always envious of your expertise, your security, the solidity in your life. Especially at the moment, when mine is in such flux. The more powerless I feel, the more forcefully I feel I need to defend my choices and my opinions."

"But then you don't get the benefit of what anybody else is saying."

"No,I don't."

I thought about that for a moment - about all the chances I'd missed in my life to get good advice from someone, feedback, another opinion, help with problems and challenges.

It was sobering.

"What was the second thing?"

She smiled.

"Can't remember."

The Nature of Genius: Elizabeth GIlbert on TED & Norberto Keppe on Envy

2009-07-08T03:58:00.000-07:00

Like many writers, I've been plagued at times by my resistance to doing what I need - and usually, want - to do most: putting down what occurs to me IN WRITING. In other words, doing my job.

I have rationalised this at times, and fought it at others, all ways to hell and back. But despite my struggle I've never ended up with any strategy for dealing with the elusive nature of my own creative process, and this has certainly interfered over time with my output, its quality, and my visibility in the world. My best intention has always to work like Graham Greene - get up, every day, at five, work til lunch in the South of France, and knock off to have adventures (and lunch) for the rest of the day... then start all over again the next day.

(I have tried this, with some success; but perhaps the absence of the South of France in my daily life has undermined my efforts, I don't know...)

In my search for a real answer, I've recently encountered two very helpful ideas. The issue, as I see it, and my good friend Dr. Mallory Nash and I have today discussed, concerns the issue of envy in our lives, which Dr Norberto Keppe, an eminent Brazilian psychoanalyst, says forces us to undermine our success - because our envy makes what is to our good hateful to us - we disregard the people, actions, relationships and advice we need to allow ourselves to flourish... while avoiding our awareness of what we feel and know.

That this bottling-up causes illness, mental and physical as well is the theme of a great book, Keppe's Origin of Illness.

The second is the wonderful and liberating idea discussed by Elizabeth Gilbert in her talk on the subject, that our belief that success is ours to have, because genius resides in ourselves, is a Renaissance construct. That we can usefully discard it if we recognise that brilliance, that "genius" we think is ours, is a gift - rare and possibly divine in origin - which occasionally visits but which we'll find perhaps IF WE JUST DO OUR JOB frees us from the weight of believing that we must always sparkle, top what we have done before, be ever brilliant, because if the genius doesn't come, it's not our fault.

Somehow these two ideas - somehow complementary ideas, somehow opposite - have provided great comfort to me lately, as I seek to get my stuff out in the world where people can see it and hopefully use it in their own seeking for health, wholeness, and creative endeavour.

Here are the URLs:

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Illness-Psychological-Physical-Social/dp/0966430220/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247052634&sr=8-1

Pulling my hair out.

2009-07-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

Google Analytics and me.

Not a good combination, at least tonight...

Cannot make heads or tails out of this because I DON"T WANT TO. Nobody's fault, but do I really need to spend so much time on this stuff?

O! For rescue. Cheap rescue... sounds like something that WILL go wrong somehow.

G'night...

Money into Light... Making Movies the Internet Way

2009-07-06T02:45:00.000-07:00

It's a persistent problem, I'm afraid...

In 1985, John Boorman published Money into Light, a diary of the struggles he faced in trying to make The Emerald Forest. Despite, by modern standards, minimal special effects and using his family as the cast, Boorman's production was repeatedly brought to its knees over a filming period woefully extended by the difficulties he faced in raising the cash to do it.

Let's "shoot" forward to 2000: Terry Gilliam is trying to murder Don Quixote. I'm not trying to say that Gilliam isn't an eccentric visionary but it's patently clear that if the finance had been available, he might have been able to finish the film before the lovely Jean Rochfort's back gave out from the strain. It's 2009 now and the project is only now reviving.

These men are industry insiders, each with a respectable track-record i.e. their films have an audience and will likely make at least some money. Neither has made just the bang-boom blockbusters the studios so love, but interesting and good and arguably, occasional great movies. So if THEY can't raise the funds to underwrite projects, what chance do new filmmakers have - or those who wish to enter the industry from another sector?

Enter the internet age and the idea that a lot of little investors can be called upon to make a small investment in a project for the joy of watching it unfold. Volume finance is also not new: it's what makes money for Coke or Kimberly Clark - all those sheets of toilet paper add up to a lot of cash. And when I was working in advertising, all those years ago, guess who it was that sent me round the world to do project?

It wasn't Mercedes Benz.

It's a great idea and I'm behind it. And I'm very pleased at the company I keep. Check it out: www.buyacredit.com/Home

The Devil and Michael Jackson

2009-07-04T06:07:00.000-07:00

IT MAYBE LAST WEEK'S NEWS but I find myself still thinking about the life and death of Michael Jackson.

Not only did I find myself spending virtually a whole day listening to,watching and downloading some of his video'd performances, but I've spent a suprising amount of other time pondering his life and the nature of his genius.

This morning my psychotherapist mate Mal and I spent a couple of hours discussing this: to what extent was Jackson the master of his own destiny, how many of the shrewd, far-sighted business decisions he made - such as buying the Beatles back catalogue, or wresting his own from Sony - were his own idea vs the actions of a smart executive who's surrounded himself with the best people he can.

What emerged eventually was surprising, for the two of us eventually found ourselves discussing Jackson not in terms of great musicians or show-biz personalities like Elvis, Sinatra, Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash, but in relation to people who were both mad and at the centre of great economic or even political empires - Robert Maxwell, Hearst, Hitler, Pol Pot. People who understood power, and whose personal visions and eccentricities others carried out into reality - often with terrifying consequences.

I don't in any away attribute "evil" to Michael Jackson; clearly that is not the case. But because of the masterful way in which he used the machine he was at first just a cog in, we may never really understand what was real and what was unreal about him, or where the lines between show business, character and madness lay. For instance: at what point did Jackson's body begin to refuse to do what he want it to? Clearly in some ways the later surgeries were desperate attempts to deal with flash and bone that would not heal; but at what point did he decide that he should look like an anime' figure? Was that decision the cause of a problem, or its effect?

And how could anyone, at fifty, to whom being top was so important, surpass the performances he'd given as a younger man? Looking at the dance footage from those previous times, the physical wear and tear that extreme dance and its related injuries leave on great dancers like Nureyev, we have to ask whether the prospect of physical failure at the enormous task he'd undertaken was one of main the things that killed him. Or even...

Speculation is delicious, but really quite useless. Such boundaries as these - between "reality", history, fact, and fiction - are artificial, anyway - and one thing Jackson certainly understood better than anyone was the importance of leaving us ever-wanting more.

If any of the gossip surrounding his estate - such as the existence of a large catalogue of unpublished songs - Jackson't influence on the world will outlive him by many many years. Not only because of his prodigious talent as a performer but also because of his insight into tinsel heart of the business he grew up in and conquered - the circus that is the Empire of Pop - was he its king.

Waiting for Stephen Fry

2009-07-03T04:00:00.000-07:00

One of the strangest aspects of online life is this sense of false intimacy we get from it. I guess it's a kind of human need, this need for connection, which one gets JUST ENOUGH OF through tweets or other exchanges to feel one actually is having a conversation - when most of the time, the truth is, it's a fragment at best.

For instance: I've just "tweeted" Stephen Fry, after seeing on my Twitter page that he'd just landed in Russia and was waiting to "deplane". Even though I knew it was actually quite rude of me I couldn't quite stop myself from tweeting back, to take the mickey out of the term... when I know perfectly well 1) that I don't know him AT ALL, so what am I doing attacking what he says? and 2) "deplane" is a nasty verb but many do use it with a sort of post-modern twist.

The illusion that one can fire a reply off to somebody one "knows" is held up by the way the conversation stream is managed and constructed. Stephen doesn't see my reply, because as far as I know he isn't following me, but I still get the thrill of having what appears to be an exchange with a star.

Attention span deficit is the disorder of the moment, in theory - but what if this is an adaptation, not a disorder at all? An adaptation to screen-living and relating, which requires rapid responding to disparate fragments of what's available in the environment.

Maybe these are the true children of the digital and TV ages, who - when brought into conventional settings - have no skills that match up. All they know how to do is press the remote....

So - I'm sorry, Stephen, will you forgive me? Or is is more likely that by now you too are on to something new and more interesting...

To the Mountain Top

2009-07-02T03:50:00.001-07:00

Some interesting activity begins, via whatever the hell it is I'm doing, as if what I do in secret could or would be able to affect reality one tiny iota.

But that's the joke: I sent a collection of poems to Templa/iota for their annual pome-fest and didn't win anything (foolish of them, wasn't it?) but the editor has picked up my Facebook page, and through his I've connected to two other very interesting writers, George Wallace, who wrote this

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=206618070623&ref=nf

and another, Charles Johnson, with his machine-gun poking plain style "prose"

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=100671910457&ref=mf

Lovely writing.

Into the fire

2009-07-01T04:24:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm going to get off the fence now and head straight into the fire.

I have two creative projects afoot and too many people to look after. So that's six, three "to's". No wonder I feel a little overwhelmed. There's a wee chappie with a sign saying "hurry-up" in my head.

But I can prioritise. In fact, have: Mez's screenplay, if I get to do it, comes first in terms of WANT to do so most likely will come first in terms of DO, does that make sense? But if it won't bring in cash I have to be sanguine and add something in to pay the bills.

Time is the greatest gift. Time when one is healthy and happy. Good God, how lucky I am...

2009-06-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

People seem to be rooting for me to do things. Issy most of all, and Mez too, and Mal and Maureen. And Christine. And Allwood. And others.

But I tonight am rooting most of all for my dear friend Stan who's joined the legion of the unwell lately.

2009-06-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Jeez, I think I'm a little crazy at present. So many of the people close to me have been so ill, I've been trying to bear them on my shoulders.

My friends, I may let you down, but I will do my best not to.

And I'll try to remember that Life is also Comedy...

2009-03-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

Tildall St press have published Mez Packer's brilliant little novel set in Coventry in the UK in the early 1980's. It's a "caper piece" in form but it's way more than that in intention and excution.

I'm passionate about it and think it could make a first rate film or TV mini series. I'm more pleased about this novel than I have been about anybody-I-know's creative work for years and years... it's good and I want to help get it out where people can have the pleasure of reading it/seeing it/being moved by it.

There are plenty who won't be of course, but hey, who cares.