We gotta get out of this place...

It was 1965. The Animals.

We gotta get out of this place
If it's the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
'Cause girl, there's a better life for me and you

These are the words which became the theme song of the Vietnam War and are burnt into my brain.

Every time I get away for a break, note - not a positive thing like a “make” but a break, a destruction of something that works I resolve it’ll be the first of many. Never is. 

This one’s hardly a summer holiday. We’ve already had one of those but as I recall – a rather fuzzy memory -  I had Covid and spent most of the time asleep. No, this is a retreat to a quiet apartment overlooking a nature reserve and a stream.

In Canterbury for glorious choral music, Elizabethan architecture, lazy lunches and bison. Virtually extinct in Europe and pretty well unknown in Britain these creatures, the heaviest living wild land animals, are like powerful demolition machines. In a rewilding experiment  at Wilder Blean in Kent they are turning jungles into parks. And a baby bison has just been born so things are looking up.

And everyone else seems at it too. Good friends have just returned from a brilliant trip to and around India. It’s strange that when I was there a few years ago it seemed somehow familiar as though I’d lived there in a previous existence. It smelt wonderful and mysterious and was exciting in a way China, although fascinating too, somehow wasn’t. Poetry as opposed to prose.

And our daughter, son in law and grandchildren are in New York doing what we all do in the most thrilling city in the world. Walking. Walking. Walking. Walking through diversity. Chinatown. Harlem. The Financial District. Brownstone buildings. Central Park. The High Line. The Staten Ferry. Broadway diners where resting artists are now waitresses who suddenly burst into song. The biggest burgers ever. Whale sized Lobsters. And Walking. Walking. Walking.

What we missed through the drab days of lockdown was travel, experiences and change. In those same as, same as days of imprisonment that sixth sense of discovery and change was turned off which was tragic because ultimately it’s that sense which we need and which turns us on when we get weary.

So we are getting away because there’s a better life than Brighton great as Brighton is. But right now it feels like this dirty old part of the city where the sun refused to shine. Living in Brighton is like a never ending dish of scampi. Delicious but occasionally I need steak or – can this be me – tofu. 

I’m looking forward to rediscovering deep sleep and getting rid of mental cobwebs. I’m also looking forward to learning a few new things – I don’t know what yet but when I find out I’ll be sure to tell you.

Have a great week. Have fun. Plan your next adventure.

PRUDERY, RUDERY AND GETTING THINGS RIGHT

I was somewhat surprised to be given a copy of the best writings of Henry Miller by a neighbour. Why me? Miller was the literary infant terrible of the 1950s and ‘60s. His description of sex makes “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” sound like Enid Blyton (‘Five Off for a Jolly Bonk’.) They are very rude indeed but rather sad too. His ability to have relationships as opposed to frequent and impulsive shags seems limited. Yet when he writes about Greece (especially Mycenae) or flying or food or having his car serviced (prosaic but riveting) this man is literary giant. When he gets obsessed with parts of the body his sense of humanity and humour goes. 

                   
June (his second wife) and Henry Miller

And that’s because there’s not much joy in his sex. Sophocles said it first and was then quoted by Plato, Socrates and others ending with Russell Brand…“The male libido is like being chained to a maniac”… yeah, that’s Horrid Henry. Not just horrid but a bit boring too.

It was peculiar reading this high-class porn whilst MPs were being denounced for playing ‘handsy’ or
worse. I hope none of them gets caught with a copy. That would not be funny.

Unlike Caitlin Moran who’s very funny but also rather rude. Her recent book is called “Moranifesto” which “sets the world to rights”. The substance isn’t rude at all but the fucking language often is. She uses the “f” word not so much for effect as for emphatic punctuation and to show she’s one of us.

Caitlin is a genius. I use the word circumspectly. She understands manners and why they matter so much (there aren’t many good manners in politics) and despite her rebelliousness she belongs in kinder, more literary times than these. Unsurprisingly her style in influenced by writers like Dorothy
Parker and H.L. Mencken. She’s an almost Dickensian figure in her exuberance and in being larger-than-life when she says things like: “Why do people keep on talking about the sweet fragrance of women? We smell. Me? I smell of soup … onion soup.”

Things that need sorting out she says are as diverse as include cystitis, bacon (ugh?) and social media. How about this for a bullseye of observation?  “The internet is like a drunken toddler.” 

She thinks many things are wrong but that there are some things blindingly right. Like having joy in life, being kind to ourselves and to others and in not taking ourselves too seriously. How lucky we are, she says, to have friends, family, to be going out together, drinking wine (lots of it) and laughing. Never get angry. Being angry shows you’re scared. Try being polite instead.

I wish she’d met Henry. She’d have soon been put that gloomy old libertine in his place. And she’d have made him laugh too. And they might have focused on improving joy, good humour and manners in the world, Henry in his tsunami style, Caitlin by wit and insight. What a team.

                             

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

What the Leveson hearing should be mentioning is not just the hacking which is very naughty but the pall of gloom journalists have been trained to exude as this is criminal. Like Death Eaters they are none of them capable of raising a smile or a flicker of joy. But isn’t joy for chic flicks or romantic novels? Did any of the great military commanders of history feel joy? Isn’t rage, ambition and determination what matters? Would Churchill have talked about joy? (Actually yes.) That simple little word most brilliantly distinguishes the truly human from the oppressed or cynical. When Juliet says “I joy in thee” in Romeo and Juliet she reaches a higher plane by far than love or fancy; a simple unfettered emotion of unconditional delight. CS Lewis’ Autobiography of his early years is called “Surprised by Joy” which vividly describes the emotions of children on their voyages of discovery. Joy is what’s missing in most jobs, most cities, most countries and most people. Without joy we shall never find the capacity to create and unite. Our joy in living should be like the emotions unleashed by the feel-good movies of the 80’s and 90’s (Pretty Woman, Four Weddings and so on). Joy like oil keeps human machinery working. I was talking to Jason Brooks, an Associate of Leaders Quest, who identified China’s need to discover joy as well as success. Joy would engage their souls not just their minds. I heard this on Radio 4 on Saturday. Jo Wilding created something called Circus2Iraq and took her troupe of clowns to occupied Iraq to bring joy to children. A similar group has gone now to Palestine and Beirut. Her book is called “Don’t Shoot the Clowns”.

That is active joy, an inspirational strategy to change (for a while) the way people see and think about things. They made play of it which was apparently a let-down but who needs a play when the real thing is so great? My own joy was in hearing the story. Initiatives like Carmel McConnel’s Magic Breakfast (providing breakfast at schools for children in poverty), The Big Lunch - getting communities to get together and have lunches of friendship and joy and the Clowns in the Middle East are creative ways of promoting the legitimacy of unalloyed joy. A lot of reasons to be cheerful. www.colourfulthinkers.com