Film

On Friday, I walked into the city centre to be at the lunchtime screening of "Wild Horse Nine" in The Showroom - my favourite  local cinema. Starring John Malcovich and Sam Rockwell and directed by Martin McDonagh,  it is a dark comedy with a political edge set in Chile in 1973.  Many people do not realise that the most westerly part of Chile is Easter Island - 2330 miles across the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Malcovich plays the part of Chris and Rockwell plays the part of Lee. They are CIA agents involved in the pending overthrow of Salvador Allende's democratically elected left wing government. They have been planted in Chile for many months. For some reason - it is never explained why - their boss sends them to Easter Island.

It was this factor that drew me to the film because I spent a happy week on Easter Island seventeen years ago - an experience that meant the world to me. Surely the film's use of Easter Island as a backdrop would bring back some special memories.

And that did happen. There were some great shots but in a sense being on Easter Island was quite incidental with regard to the plot. Chris even refuses to use the word "moai" to describe the iconic stone figures, opting to call them "big heads" instead. We don't really tap into the mystery or the history of Easter Island - well that's not the purpose of "Wild Horse Nine" anyway.

Wild horses do appear in the film and have a fairly significant role to play in the drama. It put me in mind of the day I was inside the crater of Rano Raraku  - an extinct, low-lying volcano with an open side. There's a small lake there now. As I was photographing two unfinished moai statues, I heard the thundering of hooves behind me and a herd of twenty or so brown horses arrived at the lake to drink. It was a thrilling moment.

Getting back to the film, although there were some pleasing features and moments, I ultimately found it quite irritating. It moves along at a laconic pace and it contains some rather gratuitous killing. 

I like most films to be believable so wondered how Chris (Malcovich) was able to have three changes of clothes when he boarded the LAN plane at Santiago with just a small suitcase. And magically, he had another case containing a rifle. How did he get that on the plane? And how come phone lines home were so clear and reliable? After all, it was meant to be 1973!

A lot of suspension of disbelief was required but that was not the fault of the two lead actors. They played their given parts well. There was even a cameo role for the legendary singer-songwriter Tom Waits, Chris's grumpy brother Jim, who resides in a very lonesome cabin in Arizona. Chris phones him from the island to tell him about his terminal cancer diagnosis.

I know that some film critics have raved about "Wild Horse Nine" but not for me I'm afraid. Too light, slow and silly in spite of the awesome setting... Easter Island or as descendants of the original inhabitants still prefer to call it - Rapa Nui.

Leaves

Every leaf that falls in autumn is a little different from its neighbour. They each have their own story to tell - like the lines revealed on an open palm.

Over the last week, the tree friendly southern suburbs of Sheffield have been carpeted with leaves and sometimes you walk ankle deep along the pavements, listening to the leaves' crinkly soundtrack. The air has been still but yet there are nooks and crannies, corners and gateways where the autumn dead have drifted.

Yesterday, I raked and swept up a great pile of leaves in our garden then I decanted them into an old dustbin where they can gradually rot down for a year or so ready to enrich the soil. A virtuous circle perhaps.

"Leaves" is a word used more than its synonym - "departs" and on Thursday our decorators left after a two week stint of meticulous work - preparing, sanding, undercoating, coating and recoating. They have done a great job of our hallway, staircase and landing. Although five different young men and one woman contributed to the team effort, it was mostly down to Josh. He was with us every day from eight till four. Such a pleasant young man and a real grafter. When he left for the last time, we gave him a "thank you" card with some money in it

This is the very first time we have ever employed any decorators. Over the past forty five years we did it all ourselves. This has been a real treat in spite of the eye-watering price. 

Next will be new flooring and that might not be down till after Christmas. Maybe then I will share two or three photos of the refreshed area.

Another use of the word "leaves" relates to books. Every page is a new leaf. After the  decorators had gone, I turned the last leaves of a short novel  called "Seascraper" by Benjamin Wood.  

It had me enraptured - the style, the simplicity and a sense of otherworldliness. I won't say too much about it in case there's someone out there who intends to get it - like voracious reader Kelly in Arkansas for example.

But what I will say is that the main character is a young man who ekes out a living on a wide beach in north western England. He is a "shanker". He pulls his unnamed horse through shallows at low tide. Behind the horse is a net with a scraping implement - its simple purpose being to harvest shrimps. Some low tides are good but others are abysmal. 

Here's a short extract to give you a flavour:-

“The closer they get to Broughton, the more the sand dunes bunch together on the collar of the road. He'd wander out here as a lad, carefree, and tumble down the slopes for hours with kids from other towns he'd never see again. Back then, he wouldn't give much thought to smashed-up bottles that were dumped there, or the damage he could do an ankle treading in a burrow. He's forgotten that simplicity, that joy. It's true what Mr Acheson is saying about the world and all its noise, but most folk seem to carry on undaunted, just like children gaily sliding down a sand dune. When did he stop sliding for fear of broken glass and bloody knees?”

Reading this lovely little book was a like sipping a glass of good quality merlot. If you will excuse the maritime allusion, it warmed the cockles of my heart.

Origin

This is the second in a series of blogposts that explain the origins of the unusual names of several stations on the London Underground railway system. The first in the series was published a mere fourteen years ago when the author of this blog considered Shepherd's Bush. Today, we are thinking about Canary Wharf. Who knows - it might be another fourteen years till we reach the third selected station. I bet you can't wait. Just to warn you - the author will then be eighty seven years old and may be even more doolally.

Before people got used to money, there was something called bartering. You didn’t need money. You could just exchange things with your neighbour. You might have admired your neighbour’s bantam chicken so you’d say “I’d like to have that little chicken” and your neighbour might say, “Okay you can have that bantam for a sack of turnips.” Then you might say “No way Jose! Half a sack of turnips and it’s a deal but not a full sack. Turnips are hard to grow.” And then you might shake hands and the deal would be done with no money involved.

People swapped puppies for kittens and kittens for puppies. When they weren’t working, eating or sleeping they’d be bartering. Once a miller called Mr Russell Square or Square the Miller traded his own daughter’s hand in marriage just to get a carpenter to fix the sails of his windmill and for bags of flour he regularly received sausages, candles, juicy lamb chops and farm crates filled with green cabbages. You didn’t need money.

As years passed, bartering became all the more intense. Some things were great for bartering with and other things were almost useless. You couldn’t get much for a bucket of horse manure but you could get plenty for a brand new wooden chair or a straw-filled fabric snake to stop icy draughts from slipping in under your door. They were all the rage.

Peacock feathers and genuine fox fur scarves became highly prized by fashionable women while men developed a liking for clay pipes filled with dried tobacco leaves. You had to offer plenty to get such things in exchange.

In those days, very few ships came up the River Thames to London. England imported as few goods as it exported. We didn’t need things from anywhere else. We could manage thank you very much but gradually that state of affairs began to change.

Tempting and previously unseen items began to appear. Ivory from Africa. Peppercorns from India. Sandalwood from Asia Minor. Small carvings of leprechauns from Ireland. To acquire these things using historical bartering methods became a real challenge.

In 1641, a Spanish sailboat named “Margaret of Austria” slid west along the Thames, using the power of the high tide to reach wooden jetties east of the city of London. It had become a popular place to unload cargoes. That shoreline, upon a bend in the great river, had seen many things coming and going in preceding decades but nothing like what had been loaded into the hold of “Margaret of Austria” a few weeks before.

There were over a hundred portable bamboo cages and inside each one  small yellow birds from faraway. The din they made was sweet but cacophonous.

“What are they?” asked Huggins as he stacked the cages on the jetty.

“Birds,” replied Dalton.

Huggins whacked him playfully. “Idiot! What kind o' birds? I amn’t seen none like these 'afore. They’s yellow as buttercups.”

“One o' them dago sailors sez they picked 'em up from Spanish islands off the coast of Africa. He sez they’re called The Canaries.”

“Canaries?” echoes Huggins who thought that Dalton was referring to the birds and not the islands.

Anyway. That night, one of those canaries just happened to finish up in Huggins’s tiny house where he lived with his wife Griselda and their nine children - Andrew, Boadicea, Charles, Dave, Elizabeth, Frederick, Gwendoline, Henry and Imelda. Mr and Mrs Huggins planned to complete the alphabet in the next twelve years.

The children were fascinated with the canary. They clapped their hands and yelped with joy to see the little bird hopping about and singing more sweetly than a robin. However, the Huggins family’s possession of the pet bird did not last long. The vicar of their parish, Reverend Biggs heard about the incarcerated bird and decided to barter with Huggins to secure it. He imagined it sitting in a gilded cage in his parlour, twittering away. It would be the talk of clergy throughout the region.

Huggins agreed to exchange the little yellow bird for a suckling pig called Sheila.

This was just the start of the canary trade. People who dwelt by The River Thames went wild for the exotic birds. They became more popular than opium or brandy. To be somebody you really had to have a canary.

As a result, more and more ships arrived at the now expanding port on that same bend of The River Thames east of London, carrying vast cargoes of canaries. The wharfside was filled with their avian music. They waited there, stacked in their bamboo cages ready to be transported hither and thither by horse and cart or barge. Canarymania was rife and there was money to be made. The age of bartering was almost over as the seventeenth century reached out to meet the eighteenth.

And it was those bargemen and carters of long ago who gave the port its name.

As they sat in their favoured east London taverns supping ale and literally chewing the fat, they spoke about their work days – where they had been and what they had done. To distinguish the canary landing point at Wapping from other piers and jetties on the river, they began to refer to it as “Canary Pier” and later “Canary Wharf”. It is the second name that stuck and is still used to this day even though the rampant canary trade of yore dissipated long ago.

Applause

Applause is due to the ordinary working people of America who turned up in their millions yesterday to change the political tide. They passed judgement on Trump and his gang and the divisiveness they have wrought - including starting an unnecessary war that threatens peace and economic stability around the world.

Of course, the increasingly senile president accepts no responsibility for this electoral battering. He has even claimed that if his name had been on the ballot papers instead of the nominees he endorsed, the defeat would not have happened.

But deception and dodging responsibility is part of his DNA. The other night I tuned in to a video that examined his academic career at Fordham University in New York (1964-1966) and The Wharton Business School at The University of Pennsylvania (1966-1968).

Although Trump has often boasted of his academic prowess and high achievement, it seems more than likely that he made it all up or at least exaggerated everything. He left virtually no mark in the two universities' records and former students who should have been his classmates simply cannot remember him being there. His transfer to Wharton was a very dodgy affair with his father calling in favours to get him in.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. 

Anyway - back to yesterday. As I am sure you already knew, The Democrats did better than  expected - convincingly winning back both houses. Some great Democrats have emerged through the process including James Talarico in Texas and surely a true presidential candidate in the form of Jon Ossoff  from Georgia.

This morning I had tears in my eyes as I watched Amy Klobuchar's acceptance speech upon becoming the new Governor of Minnesota. I believe that, like Jon Ossoff, she also has the potential to go on to be the next Democrat president. She emanates intelligence, humanity, honesty and doggedness. Four qualities that Trump has never possessed.

Prior to the elections, Rep. Ilhan Omar from Minnesota was victimised by Trump's agents. They surrounded her humble Washington D.C. home at six o'clock in the morning before searching it thoroughly - taking away laptops and phones and private papers. It was a blatant attempt to discredit and shake her. So far no evidence of any wrongdoing has surfaced. Yesterday her victory at the polls in Minneapolis was resounding - winning 76.5% of the votes cast in District 5. I think that this is what Americans might call giving Trump "the bird" (English: two fingers).

And so yes - applause to Democrat voters  who turned out en masse in every state yesterday and won the day. But now the battle begins to make a better America - to make the great ocean liner of nationhood shift its course, to see beyond the Trump years and re-establish fundamental political values and aspirations that chime both with ordinary Americans and the free world beyond its shores.

Karl

 

I guess most foreigners who are visiting this blog will not have heard of Karl Bushby. He is fifty seven years old and has just come home after twenty eight years away and guess what? He is a Hull City supporter - just like me.

But where has Karl been?

It was back in 1998 that he set off from Punta Arenas in Chile, planning to walk back to Hull without using any trains, planes, motor vehicles or ships. He wanted to walk the whole way and guessed it would take a long time but perhaps not twenty eight years!

Karl Bushby with The Beast

His marriage had broken up and he was no longer cocooned by army life. He had some mental health issues too. The walk would be a kind of therapy.

Along the way, he temporarily settled in both Colombia and China after falling for two women. And he had various visa problems that held him up for many months - mostly connected with his travels through both Russia and China.

All of his worldly belongings were in the trolley that he pushed. He called it "The Beast". And please don't think that he entirely cast off the world that we occupy because for the last decade or so he had a laptop with internet access and a smartphone. Karl is no mug. He knew he needed to attract funds if his ambition was ever to be achieved. Once or twice he flew away from the point he had reached, returning much later to the same spot before continuing.

Crossing the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia was a big challenge. He had to wait until the sea was iced over to get across. And to get back to England from France last month, he simply swam across The English Channel (French: La Manche) without any special training. Easy peasy.

He arrived back in Hull yesterday to a hero's welcome and embraced his mother. I hope to see him at Hull City's next home game against Brighton and Hove Albion and I will applaud him with the rest. A slogan often attached to Hull City is "Dare to Dream" and Karl Bushby certainly did that. Welcome home Karl!

Karl in his new Hull City shirt

Adelaide

What do you know about Adelaide, South Australia? Until deciding to create this blogpost, I knew almost nothing apart from the fact that the blogger Elsie "River" lives there. I also knew that the city had been named after Queen Adelaide who married King William IV in 1818. She had previously been a German princess, born Adelheid of Saxe-Meiningen in 1792.

Okay let me give you some key facts about Adelaide - just the low hanging fruit of my googling. First of all, the city should be called Tarndanya which was a name that indigenous peoples had used for millennia to describe the location. It means "male red kangaroo rock" after a particular stone outcrop that disappeared forever as the first European settlement grew.

St Peter's Anglican Cathedral

Adelaide is Australia's fifth largest city. Its metropolitan area has a population of 1,469,163 so if you removed Elsie River it would be 1,469,162. Adelaide is known for its food and wine industries, its coastline and hills, and defence and manufacturing industries. The city "consistently ranked within the top-ten most liveable cities globally for much of the 21st century".

North Terrace in the centre of Adelaide

The population density is around 1,100 people per square mile compared with Greater London - 15,000 per square mile or New York City - 29,300 people per square mile. 

The Luxe Cafe and Bakery on Sheffield Street. The city also 

contains a Yorkshire Street and two Hull Streets.

Adelaide really only came into being in the 1840s. It was a well-planned city that employed a logical grid system for its central area which was deliberately ringed with green spaces. Unlike Sydney, Melbourne or Hobart it had no connection with historical penal servitude. In fact, the city's optimistic founding fathers thought that it would be so law-abiding that a prison would be unnecessary. Several prominent churches were built from local stone in the nineteenth century, including St. Peter's Cathedral. Even today, Adelaide is sometimes known as "The City of Churches".

Typical homes in the Aberfoyle Park district

Ethnically, Adelaide has a fairly diverse community with immigrants from China, Vietnam, India and Germany amongst others but the core population identifies its ethnic origins as English (36%) and Australian (29%). Only 1.6% of the population is "Australian Aboriginal". No longer do they gather serenely at that male red kangaroo rock, in dreams of the natural world they inhabited for fifty millennia, little changing, at peace with their environment. Now there are cars, sirens and trucks carrying their payloads to retail parks while aeroplanes rise and fall like huge birds of prey over at the international airport.

The top picture is from Google Images but the other five pictures of Adelaide and its environs were randomly snipped from Google Streetview as I cruised around enjoying the comfort of my computer chair.

Angas Inlet between Torrens Island and Garden Island

Brincliffe

On Friday, I walked through nearby Brincliffe Edge Woods and took several pictures. I was again hoping to capture something of the essence of  autumn in this northerly corner of England. The image shown above is the best of the bunch. I think it is rather like a painting but I wish that along that canopied track a figure had been approaching wearing a bright red jacket like the solitary woman who passed me by just a few minutes earlier. That would have really "made" the composition.

It's only ten days since I shared an image of Brincliffe Edge Road, and here we are again as autumn strides a little further towards wintertime. I love that road and though you cannot see this, the woods tumble down to the right. There are several tracks there and even a concealed encampment where three homeless people live. I would never snitch on them. It's not a bad location to choose and we all need somewhere to live - even those without money, hope or good fortune.

Looping round through Chelsea Park I then strode along Chelsea Road to the modern apartment blocks that occupy the site of a former stone quarry. It is also where "Baldwin's Omega" restaurant used to be. I saw a polished metal door sign and noticed how it was reflecting autumn trees so I  snapped this picture...

And when my little neighbourhood walk was over I had a light lunch before keeping my appointment with Richard Hines and his wife Jackie. At eighty years old he is not in the best of health and is pretty much housebound.

Befriending him has been the absolute highlight of my year. Talking with the man who inspired "A Kestrel for a Knave" or "Kes" as it is usually known has been a genuine privilege. Every time I have seen him our conversation has flowed so naturally and happily and it was the same on Friday - two and half hours of rabbiting on, putting the world to rights and sharing memories.  I don't mind saying that these meetings have enriched me. As Richard said, "We have a lot in common."