February 2008 Archives

Well. Life is a mess of contradictions isn't it? Just when you thought you'd got used to something, wham! Life hits you smack in the face.

So it is with life and so it is with the isolationist.

Now you could be forgiven for thinking that a blog entitled "the isolationist" would contain the self-indulgent ramblings of a single self-obsessed individual who eschews human contact, striving only to express the perfect solipsistic thought. And I'm not here today to contradict you. I'm just saying that rather than one isolationist there are now five. Each individual free to follow their own whims and fancies. And lets face it, if they write more I can get away with writing less, which is better for everyone.

So without further delay the new writers are:

Caroline Child
Thomas Paullier
Clemency Evans
John Shave

I asked them to be guest contributors because they've all got really interesting viewpoints on life and come from very different backgrounds as well as a penchant for wordiness which goes a long way with me. Thomas and Caroline have already written excellent articles about dancing and scuba diving and John and Clemency will be posting their first articles in the next couple of weeks.

Here I am, standing in my trunks on the side of this swimming pool which is no larger than a dozen of feet in diameter. The warm water bubbling at the surface could lead to believe that this is a Jacuzzi of some sort. But it is not. I am approaching the edge and stare hypnotically at the water which I cannot see the bottom. What looks like a tiny pool is actually an impressive tube of water, which disappears in the deepness, like an infinite column of blue fizzy liquid. This is a proper scuba diving training pool, with 15 meters of depth, the equivalent of a 5-storey building. A few minutes before my first dive, a strange feeling of vertigo takes me…

I have been thinking about this moment for the past few days with a mix of excitement and apprehension… And the closer I got to the crucial moment, the more my anxiety grew and I tried to think of an excuse that would postpone the experience. Actually, I do have a little cold these days and diving with a cold is against safety rules. But my instructor accurately assessed that this pretended cold was only as important as a couple of sneezes a day and replied wisely that I’ll be alright… Nice try… However, I’m sorry to insist but I forgot my diving license today, and it is mandatory to have it on you for any dive… you know, in case of accident for the insurance and so forth… I was hoping for a little bollocking followed by something along the lines of ‘sorry sir, the rules are the rules. I’ll let you dive next time when you have all your documentation with you, but we gonna have to cancel your dive today’. Instead, my instructor gave me a sympathetic glance. He went to his office, looked up on the internet and checked on the official website that I indeed had a licence. Then he came back to me and ‘exceptionally’ accepted that I dive without my licence. Damn it! I ran out of ideas, and accepted the fact that today was going to be the day.

I am now all equipped in my diving outfit, which makes me look like some futuristic frog - typical for a Frenchman! Before getting into the water, Christian, my instructor, reminds me the basics: ‘Remember to breath normally, to balance the pressure in your ears while going down, not to do so while going up, to exhale when you go up, to deflate your jacket as you go up'... It seems to me that there are a million things to remember and I am far too busy being nervous to be able to do so…

He jumps… And then I jump…

Wow! I love this weightlessness sensation in the water. After a few seconds at the surface, I deflate my jacket, which makes me go down in the deepness instantaneously. I feel like an astronaut. Christian and I meet at 5 meters of depth where we settle for a while, checking that everything is okay. He asks me to perform a couple of stupid exercises like taking my nozzle off or undoing my goggles and put them back on again… I perform them. No problem. I am actually much more relaxed now. The fact that we need to communicate with our hands is good fun too. From those signs, I imagine us talking like little Indians. You looking. Me going down. You following. If you problem, you telling me. Roger? Roger.

We hover around in the water and decide to carry on our descent along the vertical rope. I am really surprised by how everything is slow and blue and peaceful down here. And the deeper we get, the easier it becomes to go down. Within a few minutes, we are at the very bottom of the pool where we settle and ask each other again if everything is all right. I am happy to be here. Christian makes an applauding mime, which is no proper scuba language sign, but I understand he congratulates me for having made it. I am very proud.

We remain at 15 meters of depth for about quarter of an hour, performing various exercises, before we start moving back up again. I am very concentrated on all the safety measures during that critical phase of the dive. Not that any of it is difficult, but the fact that most incidents turn into major traumas is a good motivator to do them all properly.

As I come out of the water, I am very much aware of my weight and of the surrounding noise. It takes me a while to actually want to talk. Undoing my equipment requires a lot of effort after thirty odd minutes of lightness. Christian debriefs me on the time spent under water. Apart from a couple a minor points, he is fairly positive about this first experience.

I have a big smile on my face. I am pleased that I managed to overcome my anxiety and made this happen without any trouble. Already, I cannot wait for my next dive to occur! The real thing this time, into the wild blue sea. Le Grand Bleu…

Just found this site, looks quite cool. Not a lot of entries for Bristol and thereabouts, though.

Since coming back to Bristol in June last year one of the things that has been most important to me is to start climbing again. It's taken a while - I really only managed to go a handful of times last year - but I think I'm finally starting to get back into the swing of it.

The last time I climbed properly was in 2002-2003 when I first got into it and I did a couple of courses teaching how to climb outdoors safely and was regularly leading 6c's indoors at Undercover Rock at St Werburgh's. 6c is nothing to a real climber but I was quite pleased to be able to do those at the time. Outdoors I only did it "properly" once on a Very Severe, 4c multi-pitch climb in the Avon Gorge. I've published a post from the original incarnation of The Isolationist, dated 29th August 2003, describing that climb; I was quite excited.

When I first picked up climbing again, probably in September or October last year, I went all the way back to top-roping 5a's and struggled a bit with that. That was quite hard but when I went last Friday night I was quite pleased that I felt relatively comfortable leading a tricky 6a climb. At least I'm back in the 6's! I was also doing ok in the bouldering room.

So now my attentions are turning to climbing outdoors again. Time to dust off my trad gear, and hope that the ropes haven't perished and the wallnuts haven't rusted. Only one way to find out!

This was posted on the original Isolationist website way back in 2003 (August 29th) when I was first bitten by the climbing bug.

Another crazy climbing adventure today. We climbed Central Rib on the main walls at the Avon Gorge (VS, 4c).

"Central Rib * 220ft VS. First climbed by B. Page and Miss A. Clark in 1954. Pleasant and popular. "

Very pleasant I imagine, with only a pair of hob-nailed boots for protection. This was first time that I've properly led outdoors, placing gear and relying on it. I'll tell you, it certainly makes you feel alive. The moves weren't technically difficult but I was so scared, particularly when protection got to be a little way beneath me. So scared in fact that I started playing with it a little bit. At one point, I was probably about 150 feet up, and my leg started shaking, really quite badly: I put my hand on a nice secure hold, leg stops shaking, take it off again, leg goes again, off: shaky, on: steady, off: shaky, on: steady. Puny Earthling! So that was fun. It was a multi-pitch climb so I had to figure out how to setup a belay station roughly half-way up the wall, basically on a narrow ledge, to get Ginger up safely, which took forever. But when I finally saw Ginger making the last few moves before joining me I felt this really warm satisfied glow. The kind you get when you've done something important (to you at least). I think we mis-read the guide book a bit for the second pitch because I got up about ten feet and thought there is no way I'm climbing up that and traversed left about ten feet. When I started going up after the traverse I found a section that the guide book had described, back on track, hurray. I'm glad I didn'thave to do that other bit, flashback to images of mountain rescue. I'd never been so glad to see a little crack in rock in all my life as I was today, climbing up towards the two hundred feet mark and suddenly there was nowhere to place protection, the climbing was pretty easy but the last bit of gear was about twenty five feet below me. And that does strange things to your mind: "I know this is safe, it's really unlikely that I'll fall. But if I do, I'm falling at least fifty feet onto a bit of gear that I placed and that may or may not hold."
Add to that the fact that I can't remember what that last bit of gear was rated to withstand. Was it 2KN or 12? That makes a big difference when a sixty-five kilo man drops fifty feet, I can tell you. And remember I was getting on for two hundred feet up at this point. And I'm really quite scared of heights. Fortunately I found a little crack to jam something into. Which was nice. So that was that, 220 feet of pure adrenalin, but man, it was so satisfying reaching the top and then seeing Ginger get up safely too.

I was a bit sceptical about this movie before I watched it; it's all too easy for these films to tip over into cloying mediocrity and leave you clutching at your windpipe desperately trying to yank it free from its corporeal prison and thereby loosing a tremendous life-ending spray on any hapless bystanders, assuming that is they haven't beaten you to the punch. So I was pleasantly surprised to retain some measure of a will to live at the end of Half-Nelson.

In a nutshell the film is about a free-basing, crack-addicted history teacher who is nevertheless able to inspire his pupils with his unique perspective on the subject and quirky didactic style. Which is, frankly, a pretty good starting point for a film like this. And crucially, for me at least, the director (Ryan Fleck) avoids cliché and moralising by leaving it to the viewer's imagination to decide what happens Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling).

As is well understood from anyone having read anything about this film the central story revolves around the relationship between Dan and one of his pupils, Drey (Shareeka Epps), their respective problems and most interestingly how they each handle Drey's discovery of Mr Dunne, how shall I put it, whacked out of his mind on crack in the changing rooms after a basketball game. We're not talking about having had a a bit of a smoke and feeling a bit squiffy, he was in the throes of a fairly serious hit, on the floor trying to keep it together but not really succeeding.

As you might imagine that scene, being pivotal to the film, was very well executed and Ryan Gosling was careful to preserve the teacher/pupil relationship throughout, a feat not easy to carry out whilst maintaining any degree of believability. In fact I'd say that for most of the film this fine line was successfully trodden.

What makes this film interesting for me was the fact that what develops in the story is the relationship between the two main characters, not the characters themselves. This might seem obvious but in most films the story arc of the main protagonist is clear cut and by and large it involves some highs and some lows before tying any loose ends up in a neat little bundle. But we leave this film not knowing how either of the main characters will fair; Dan's drug addiction is still a big problem and as I suspect Drey's nascent career in crime will become.

I like film to reflect life; it's not simple, everyone isn't nice and things rarely end up well. This film is filled with moral ambiguity, what do we think about a teacher being high on coke whilst teaching our kids? What do we think about a teacher forming a strong bond with one of his pupils? (another good thing about this film is that the relationship never comes across as inappropriate). And Dan does some things that few of us would be proud of. But as he says to Drey, "Just because you know this one thing ... one thing doesn't make a man". And that sums it up, we're all good and bad and when we find good friends we should keep them.

Clearly I didn't have much to say about the ferry crossing from Barcelona but Mallorca is without a doubt a beautiful place to find yourself.

Day 3 - 5th May

The sun rose into a clear sky over the beautiful mallorcean skyline of rugged mountains and my mood continued to brighten. The people of Palma were friendly and helpful, indulging my faltering spanish (even though mallorceans speak catalan most assuredly). Since I was last here it's clear that a lot of work has been done to improve the infrastructure of the island. From the taxi driver who drove me from the port to town to the ticket clerk they were all proud of their new subterranean train station, and rightly so. It's an austere minimalist place but relaxing to be in and easy to navigate. Also, I was able to buy a ticket to Sa Pablo, on the other side of the island near Puerto de Pollenca, for less than half the price of reserving my ticket on the train from Perpignan to Barcelona. Mum, who was planning to pick me up from Sa Pablo, was held up finishing off some work so I ended up getting the bus instead - getting the hang this malarky. Everything is easier when the sun is shining.

I met Mum at a cafe where she was having a coffee with one of her ex-pat friends and she proceeded to embarrass and fuss over me. Some things will never change but seeing mum always awakens uncomfortable feelings and memories. So much has gone wrong with our family over the years.

There was a massive thunder storm in the afternoon that put the keibosch on any grand plans I had for sitting on the beach. It was a cracking storm though, with the sound vying with the visuals for top marks in texture and quality; deep and long rumbling booms contesting with sharp crackling forks of lightning goring the ground.

I recently heard this song by Cy Coleman and it reminded me why I love dancing.  There aren’t many places where you can go these days, meet thirty strangers and come away feeling somehow more alive, more present and that you have had another wonderful night.   You go to bed with aching feet and wake up feeling refreshed becuase you've slept the whole night through.  There is no terrible hangover as you have drunk only water all evening. 

It doesn’t really matter the dance, whatever dance evening I go to, I tend to love it.  I love picking up the rhythm in the music: the fast pulse of a Latino beat; the slow curvaceous sounds of a crooner; I love spinning around, skirt twirling, catching a hand before being spun again; hundreds of pairs of feet moving in time.  You don’t know the person you’re dancing with, you might not say anything but a ‘Yes’ and a ‘Thank you’ all evening but it doesn’t matter, indeed verbal conversations sometimes lessen the experience, because you have conversations through dance.  You swiftly get to know who you naturally dance well with; who is energetic and loves to move quickly; who likes the slow dances and will move elegantly and with confidence and who likes to laugh, sing along and enjoy the music.  After a few weeks of dancing regularly, you feel very comfortable in the dance hall as you have danced with or watched most people there.  I also think that human touch is really important and certainly in London, one can too easily go through the whole day with the only human physical contact being a shove on the tube or a business hand shake.

There are of course, as in any society, your share of idiots: the man who is too sensual for comfort (everyone will have different limits on this); the jokester who extends a hand for you to grab and then whisks it away like he’s played a hilarious joke, or the man who’d rather focus on his own balletic gestures than admit he’s dancing in a pair. I am sure there would be a similar list of undesirable qualities in female partners, but someone will have to inform me of these.  But these are the minority, I always come away and feel I have met a wide range of society and a lot of interesting people away from my normal circle of colleagues and friends.

British men all too often seem to have this fear of dancing; they need to be utterly paralytic and surrounded by similarly drunken mates to venture a foot onto the dance floor.  They scoff and smirk at the man who likes dancing while they down another pint of beer.  It’s a shame.  Is this a recent phenomenon?  Dancing seemed more part of the culture in British society certainly in the older generations who seem to know how to do the waltz, the foxtrot and a variety of other dances.  I think an important social interaction has been lost.  Now, we pay money to go into impersonal gyms and sweat in silence with i-pods and television screens as our company, twelve hours indoors working, now in your leisure hour, go indoors again.  There can be a danger of loneliness, and dare I say it, isolation, in our society that dancing helps to combat.

Some might complain this kind of dancing is incredibly sexist or that they don’t like having to follow a set routine or pattern, they are too individual.  Rubbish!  If you get any good, there is tremendous freedom in dance, it’s only for those of us learning the ropes that it’s terribly structured and that helps give you some security when dancing with someone you don’t know.  Sexist, well yes it is I guess; the man leads and the woman follows but to be honest, I don’t give a damn! I like losing myself in the music and not having to worry about what move I should do next.  I have to concentrate to make sure I am following and there is still freedom in the movements. 

Have I persuaded you to get on the dance floor?  If I have, have a look on the web at your nearest Ceroc venue or salsa dance night.  There are usually beginners and intermediate classes followed by ‘freestyle’, you can just go for a one off try, it's usually about eight pounds but that's all you spend.   As Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields wrote,

‘And The Rhythm Of Life is a powerful beat,
Puts a tingle in your fingers and a tingle in your feet,
Rhythm in your bedroom,
Rhythm in the street,
Yes, The Rhythm Of Life is a powerful beat’

 

     

How wonderful to come out of a film feeling happy!  After last week’s viewing of ‘No Country for Old Men’ this is indeed a different feeling.  I can go to bed with a feeling of contentment, a pleasant evening spent laughing; an element of hope.  I won’t have to wake up tomorrow feeling like I’ve come out of a strangely disturbing dream; I won’t have images of spurting carotid arteries popping into my mind throughout the day; nor will I be wondering whether or not the next stranger I have to interact with is a psychopathic killer (incidentally I can’t believe this actor, Javier Bardem, is going to play the main romantic hero in ‘Love in the Times of Cholera’, one of my favourite novels, how am I going to make the switch? Such an inconsiderate choice.)  I must have spent three days chewing over the plot, the images, the feelings.  As much as I left the film feeling miserable, it did allow much thought and discussion.  ‘Definitely Maybe’, did definitely not provide such musings, but I don’t care; it was just what I wanted.  The joy of the rom com: I can see it, enjoy it and forget it!  

‘Definitely Maybe’ was a little quirky in its structure, the interesting framework of a father explaining his pre-marital relationships to his ten year-old daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin from the delightful ‘Little Miss Sunshine’) provided humourous interjections as we are aligned with her in trying to guess who the mother is. Admittedly he does end up telling his daughter some pretty weird stuff (such as her mother’s lesbian affair) which makes you question his parental role… still New York children are pretty mature these days.   Cleverly timed, the Clinton presidential campaign provides an interesting early context with the Lewinsky affair mirroring the main character’s disillusionment with politics and life. 

 The film is charming but ultimately forgettable.  It doesn’t really try to be realistic: it doesn’t dwell on the pain of divorce or separation, and the way stunningly beautiful, amusing and clever women seem incredibly easy to come by may well infuriate single men.  More appealingly to us thirty-somethings, the characters don’t seem to age from 24 to 33.  The main message seems more to be you just end up with the right person at the right time without it being very much in your control.  This film is one for an enjoyable night out; the silver screen can lure you into its world and leave you with a happy sigh and a pleasant sleep, maybe. 

Ever jointed a chicken? It's incredibly satisfying. On so many levels (not the least of which is using a cleaver to chop the carcass up for the stock pot) but knowing that every last scrap of the bird is going to get used makes me feel good. Two nice free range chickens (alas, not organic), which cost about £16 from Taste (purveyors of fine foods, with a particularly good butcher), give up, four massive breasts, four thighs, four drummers and a litre of tasty stock. And in addition to all that you get the livers for making paté. For a house of three people (like what I live in), that £16 goes a long long way, we'll easily get five or six meals out of it not counting soups and risottos with the stock.

So anyway, why am I writing about all that, eh? Well Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall made a television (you remember that old thing?) program called Chicken Out broadcast earlier in January where he compared free range chicken production with battery chicken production because apparently Hugh was (rightly) outraged by the rise of the £2.99 supermarket chicken. Anyway on said show, again apparently because I don't sully myself with television, there were members of the unclean masses interviewed bemoaning the fact that they couldn't afford chicken if it was more expensive than £2.99. These people were the sorts that buy the chicken, microwave the fucker, eat the breasts and toss the rest away. Quite why Hugh bothers wasting his time with these indolent fuckwits I don't know but I suppose there are rather a lot of them. But there's probably not enough time between Eastenders and Coronation Street for anything other than bouts of uncontrolled flatulence, so again I don't know why he bothers.

So in conclusion then, I don't know about you (not being an indolent fuckwit) but quite apart from the moral and economic issues, (such as they are given that for less than 90p per person, per meal you can eat tasty free range chicken) the taste of an anaemic tescos (or sainsbury's, or asda or waitrose or morrisons) chicken is enough to turn you into a vegetarian. And fuck me that's saying something.