Scream

This famous painting, "The Scream", was created by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893. Actually it is one of a series of very similar pictures that Munch made - all called "The Scream". It has come to act as a metaphor for modern living in which a stressed out individual screams out at the world around him - a world which threatens both to ignore and to crush him.

Back in 2004, when I paid the princely sum of £34 for a Ryanair return flight to Oslo, not only did I want to see Ibsen's hometown, I also wanted to walk by the still waters of the Oslo Fiord, see Viglen's famous sculpture park, Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki Museum, the Viking Ships Museum and the Munch Art Museum. That summer the most famous version of "The Scream" was stolen so that when I got to the art museum on Oslo's quiet inner ring road, there was just a space where the original should have been. Fortunately it was retrieved in 2006

From what sort of inventive mind did this disturbing picture surface? Munch came from a creative middle class family. His father was obsessive about religion to such an extent that the painter once said that he had inherited "the seeds of madness" from his father. One summer night, it seems that Munch took a walk along a wooden promenade on the Oslo Fjord. Trying to explain the inspiration he felt that evening, he said:-

I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature.

At the Munch Museum I bought a poster-print advertising an exhibition of Munch's work in 1997. The central image is naturally of "The Scream". I had that print framed and it now adorns a wall in our living room. I like the way the paint strokes flow. I like the slightly alien appearance of the central character and I notice very clearly his lonely anxiety - as if the world has become too much for him - so much so that those fluent brush strokes seem to represent his inner turmoil. It is, in my view, a painting that was ahead of its time - drawn from the dark obscurity of Norwegian winters and from the sort of social repression that Ibsen explored with language.

Edvard Munch at 29

Folkfiende

Lucy Cohu and Antony Sher in "An Enemy of the People"

Sheffield has two great theatres. There's the Victorian splendour of The Lyceum with its traditional proscenium arch and balconies and there's the concrete nineteen sixties' Crucible with its big thrust stage. That building also accommodates a more intimate studio theatre. The Crucible, famous for the World Snooker Finals which are held there every spring, has been closed in recent months for refurbishment. The first major production after the makeover has been Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People", reworded by Christopher Hampton.

I took a semester long course on Ibsen at university and when I visited Norway six years ago, I made sure that I included his hometown of Skien in my itinerary. The country house he bought during a time of bankruptcy is situated a couple of miles north of the town. It overlooks a shallow green and peaceful valley with apple trees in its garden. The citizens of Skien thought enough of their most famous son to erect a statue in his memory and the house is now a seasonal museum.

Skien in Norway with Ibsen's statue in the centre.

Written in 1882, "An Enemy of The People" focuses upon Dr Tomas Stockmann. In The Crucible production his part was played quite brilliantly by Sir Antony Sher. Stockmann is a man against the world but motivated by selfless intentions. He has discovered that the town's water supplies have been polluted by local industries and is especially concerned about the new spa baths that are expected to bring in hundreds of tourists and boost the town's ailing economy. But because of greedy self-interests, nobody in authority will listen and he is ostracised by his community. At the very end of the play, in painful isolation he says "...the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."

It's not only the environmental reference that gives this play its modern relevance. There's also the issue of how thinking individuals operate within established social structures. Rocking the boat, even for eminently justifiable reasons, is frequently viewed with outright hostility. Stockmann speaks out against the "majority" and claims that fools are perpetually in control. These fools break his windows with small stones which he gathers in a heap.

I hadn't been to see any live theatre in quite a while and I must say that I did enjoy this production. With Antony Sher at the helm, it was as if the rest of the cast upped their game. However, I thought Lucy Cohu as Mrs Stockmann was too young for the role - she looked little older than her daughter Pietra and should have been a more careworn, matriarchal presence upon the stage.

Regarding the theatre's makeover, it seemed essentially the same as before - just spruced up. I was puzzled as to why it has been pretty much closed for a year and how even after that year and an expenditure of £15m the finishing touches "to do" list still has a way to go.

Seatbelts

Jimmy Saville - legendary British DJ - promoting seatbelt sense.

Up until 1983, wearing seatbelts in cars had simply been advisable in the UK but in that year it became mandatory. I passed my driving test without the protection of a seatbelt and began driving cars regularly in the late seventies. My first car didn't even have seatbelts and the next couple of cars were temperamental starters so I was often lifting the bonnet (hood) first thing on wet or wintry mornings - I needed to be in and out of those blasted cars and a seatbelt would have been a painful hindrance so I never bothered.

I watched the famous Jimmy Saville ads of the early eighties - "Clunk! Click! Every trip!" but when 1983 came I was an entrenched non-wearer. Subconsciously, I think I always set off still expecting my car to stall and to have to get out and fiddle under the bonnet. Obviously and logically, the wearing of seatbelts is eminently sensible. So many lives have been saved since the law became more insistent about them. However, non-wearing had become part of my psyche and most days I would set off having failed to clunk and click. First Shirley and then our kids would remind me to get my seatbelt on and I tried, really tried but I just couldn't establish the habit.

Then one bright August morning in 1999, when I was travelling into school to undertake yet more hours of unpaid and unrecognised holiday work, the law finally caught up with me. A police motorcyclist spotted me in the Crookesmoor suburb of Sheffield and chased after me. He himself was of course not wearing a seatbelt. I believe I was given a fixed penalty fine of £30. You would have thought that this would have taught me a lesson and for a while I really did try harder to remember my seatbelt but it was not until we bought our Vauxhall Astra in 2006 that my seatbelt donning became quite habitual. And this is simply because the car whines at me and flashes a red signal on the dashboard whenever I forget. I am like one of Pavlov's dogs.

On Saturday, Shirley and I were thundering up the East Coast railway line to Doncaster at speeds well over 120mph. Neither of us were wearing seatbelts and nor were any of our fellow passengers. Recently, I jumped in a taxi at Hunter's Bar roundabout. The driver wasn't wearing a seatbelt and I didn't have to wear one in the rear of the cab - a strange legal exemption. Police, fire brigade and ambulance personnel don't have to wear them nor do delivery drivers. Riding on buses to and from the city centre you don't have to wear seatbelts - there aren't even any fitted. Cyclists and motorcyclists don't wear seatbelts. Car drivers are legally obliged to stop themselves from flying through windscreens like action heroes but it is okay for motorcyclists to head butt trees or slide on their leathers to untimely deaths at lamp-posts.

Here are some interesting facts. For every 100 million vehicle kilometres travelled in the UK there will be 121 deaths or serious injuries to motorcyclists compared with 2.6 deaths or serious injuries to car users. In 2004, 4008 motorcyclists died on roads in the USA. Such statistics suggest that motorcycles should simply be outlawed. Even though I struggled to become an instinctive seatbelt user, I know that wearing them makes complete sense. But if governments are going to use laws to protect us from ourselves then they should be more consistent - ban motorbikes, ban hang-gliding, ban cigarettes and ensure that seatbelts are fitted on all trains and buses. And that's just for starters.

Wired

Wired? Insulated? Excluded? I have even invented a new word - "techluded" with a definition that might run something like this "to be removed from everyday life through addiction to technological aids (e.g. mobile phone, digital music player, laptop)". It's not logical I know but I can't help bristling about certain aspects of the "digital revolution" to which we are all meant to subscribe like unthinking moonies. Let me elucidate with some examples from the last twenty four hours.

I am on a London bus riding from Golders Green station to Euston because the Northern Line on the tube system is closed for engineering works. A Russian student from Kings College plonks herself next to me and for the next forty five minutes, as we move sluggishly from traffic jam to traffic jam, she gabbles on in Russian to two or three different friends. On and on it went. Samovars and Pushkin, Siberian suitors and Crimean crimes. Somebody sharing my personal space but with her mind elsewhere - not caring a fig for her fellow passengers and probably oblivious to the unnaturalness of her mobile communication. She's grown up with it.

Near Hampstead Heath I notice Saturday joggers all wearing their obligatory white ear wires. Are they jogging to the beat of banality - Take That, JLS, Girls Aloud? Who knows?

Music is social - for sharing. Looking up my carriage on the 20.05 train back to Doncaster, I count sixteen people with tiny earphones in their lugholes privately absorbing their chosen tracks inside their own little dream worlds - voluntarily stepping away from everyday reality as if in a trance. It's always other people's music - never music they have made themselves. There are half a dozen tapping away at laptops. One might imagine important business deals but as I return from the lavatory, I see they're mostly on entertainment or news sites and one is playing solitaire. They are all wearing headphones. Doubly cut off.

There are bleeps from text messages sent or received and phone calls to friends and families. The railway carriage of 2010 is a much different place from the carriage of 2000. Just ten years and we find all this technological ease and absorption - I-phones, MP3 players, laptops, internet access even in transit. Instinctively I have partly excluded myself from this cult and see it with a mixture of curiosity and horror. Making this blog and being internet-savvy, I don't think of myself as a technophobe at all but this tendency for people to enter their own little technologically supported worlds - even in public - is one that makes me shudder. It's almost as if the real world doesn't matter any more. Woh oh woh indeed.

Walkin' about with a head full of music
Cassette in my pocket and I'm gonna use it-stereo
-out on the street you know-woh oh woh... Cliff Richard "Wired for Sound"

Fashion

From Peru to You...

Wanna be snug but stylish? The fashion hit of the moment with bloggers all over the world is the Peruvian Alpaca Herder's Hat. You'll be square if you're seen out and about without one! This stylish head garment comes in a range of designs - all hand-woven in the foothills of the Andes. The Peruvian Alpaca Herder's hat has already been a massive hit with a range of celebrities and fashion trendsetters but in the blogging community it is fast becoming an essential fashion accessory. Here's what a selection of leading bloggers said:-

"I can only blog when I 'm wearing my Peruvian hat. It seems to give me inspiration. Mine is beige with white stripes and has some stylised alpacas on the earflaps. There's also a big beige bobble on the top" - Daphne "My Dad's A Communist"

"Here in Georgia, all eyes look my way when I walk into the local Wendy's or Denny's wearing my Peruvian mountain hat. Other customers smile broadly when they see me. The pink, green and chocolate stripes are exquisite and when it's cold I simply tie the earflaps under my chin." - Robert "Rhymes With Plague"

"I dispute that these hats are Peruvian at all. I always thought they were from Wales. I was wearing mine long before Peru was even invented. It's in Welsh colours with a big green dragon on the back and a knitted yellow daffodil in place of a bobble." - Jenny "Demob Happy Teacher"

"Up here on Westray in the Orkney Isles, I have two Peruvian Alpaca Herder's hats. There's the bristly pink pig-coloured one I wear when mucking out my pigs and there's the old gold and black one I wear for special nights out with the missus. She overknitted the word WOLV across the rim. There wasn't enough room for the "E" and "S" ". - Malc "The Edge of Nowhere"

JOIN THE IN-CROWD

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Legendary blogger Brad the Gorilla

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Balance

Once upon a time in the Kingdom of Heaven, God went missing for six days. Eventually, Geoffrey the archangel found him on the seventh day resting. He enquired of God,"Where have you been?"

God pointed downwards through the clouds. "Look Geoffrey, look what I've made" said God. Archangel Geoffrey looked puzzled and said, "What is it?"

"It's a planet," replied God, " and I've put LIFE on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's going to be a great place of harmony and balance."

"Balance?" inquired Geoffrey, still confused.

God explained, pointing down to different parts of the Earth, "For example, North America will be a place of great opportunity and wealth while South America is going to be poor; the Middle East over there will be a hot spot and Russia will be a cold spot. Over there I've placed a continent of white people and over there is a continent of black people."

God continued, pointing to the different countries. "This one will be extremely hot and arid while this one will be very cold and covered in ice."

The Archangel, impressed by God's work, then pointed to another particularly beautiful area of land and asked, "What's that?"

"Ah," said God. "That's Yorkshire, the most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful, generous people, seven great cities, moorland, seascapes, rich arable land. It is the home of the world's finest artists, musicians, cricketers, footballers, writers, thinkers, explorers and politicians. The people from Yorkshire shall be modest, intelligent and humorous and they're going to be found travelling the world. They'll be extremely sociable, hard-working and high-achieving, and they will be known throughout the world as speakers of truth."

Geoffrey gasped in wonder and admiration but then proclaimed, "What about balance God, you said there will be BALANCE!"

God smiled and replied very wisely, "Wait till you see what I've done next door in Lancashire!"

Fenland

At Wicken Fen

Living here, it is easy to forget that England has so much variety, so much beauty, so much history, so much evidence of our forefathers' ingenuity.

Shirley and I decided to have a weekend break in an area of England we hardly know - the fenland north of Cambridge. Here the rich peaty soil is as black as coal. The mainly flat landscape is criss-crossed with dykes and ditches that were first dug by hand in medieval times to drain what was once a waterlogged marshy world. Above those marshes, occasional clay and gravelly hillocks rose - perhaps only a few feet higher than the surrounding marshes but it was here that ancient fenland settlements grew like islands. One such island was The Isle of Eels where the tiny city of Ely is situated. In medieval times eels were incredibly plentiful in the area and they were an important source of both food and wealth. It is said that each stone of the magnificent Ely Cathedral was paid for in eels.

Ely Cathedral began as a simple Saxon church in AD 673, founded by Saint or Queen Ethelreda. So when the Normans arrived, there had already been an important place of worship in Ely for four hundred years. They set about constructing a vast abbey and monastic complex. That job took over a hundred years to complete and then in the fourteenth century, reflecting East Anglia's economic power, further additions were made including the unique "Octagon" in the centre of the cathedral with its lantern tower that rises 43 metres above the ground.

Above - Ely's "lantern" - internal and external views.

For me one fascinating aspect of medieval church construction concerns the origins of the stones that were used. Around Ely there is no stone at all. The limestone that was selected had to be brought along ancient waterways by barge from quarries over fifty miles away. Imagine that! Hewing huge blocks, dragging them onto carts, taking them to primitive wooden wharves to manoeuvre on to wooden barges that were powered by sails or horses and then days later dragging those same blocks from the Great Ouse wharf at Ely before hauling them up to the cathedral site. Voyage after voyage. The audacity of it! And what was driving them? The power of Christian belief or some sort of economic might that had to declare its presence?

On Friday night we had an amazing curry in the Sylhet curry house on Market Street, drank several beers on Saturday night and on Sunday morning we headed south to Wicken Fen - a National Trust property. Wicken is both a bird sanctuary and a piece of the original fenland landscape with sedge meadows, an original wind-driven pump, reed beds and watery channels. Agriculture has never mastered these unique acres.

Studying the map, I see Thetford, Downham Market, Kings Lynn, Saffron Walden, March, Chatteris - all Fenland or East Anglian towns we have never seen. This was once the cradle of England's economic power - especially as the wool trade burgeoned in the fourteenth century. I think we will be back some day soon...