Marley

A full length documentary film is currently playing in British cinemas - all about the life of the legendary Jamaican music maker - Robert Nesta Marley (1945-1981). It's simply called "Marley". Yesterday I received a pirate copy and watched it on the big screen in the social club. Two and a half hours long, it was an intense watch.

You see the little shed in the impoverished inland hill parish of St Ann where Marley grew up with his mother, Cedella. Some time in 1944 she was impregnated by an English plantation overseer - Norval Marley who was considerably older than  Cedella. He died when Bob was just ten years old. That Bob was therefore of mixed race made him uncertain of natural allegiance. Perhaps he was of the world as much as he was of Jamaica.

Largely through interviews with Marley's musical associates and family members, the documentary follows his life to Trenchtown - the vibrant shanty district of Kingston. There he develops his musical and songwriting talents as well as embracing the Rastafarian religion with its somewhat bizarre focus upon Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. This diminutive and politically dubious figure even visited Jamaica in 1966 - greeted at the airport by many thousands of Rastafari and ordinary Jamaicans who literally mobbed his plane - such was the excitement and adulation.

Smoking ganja was not purely recreational. The notion was that it allowed Rastafari a closer connection with Jah - their God. Bob Marley smoked a lot of it but he also loved to play football at every opportunity.He was also sexually active - siring eleven children by seven different mothers. One day after a football game, his big toe hurt like hell and when he got it checked out he discovered he had a melanoma. This was to be the beginning of a four year journey to death but in the meantime he created most his finest music - playing huge concerts across the world including his triumphant "Uprising" shows at Madison Square Gardens.

From such humble origins, Bob Marley came to touch the world. It wasn't just about his music. There was something special about him - perhaps something spiritual. He seemed to embody the quest and the hope that is in all of us. Whereas so many ephemeral musical artistes have been obscured and forgotten by the passing of years, Bob Marley endures. I wish I'd seen him in concert:-

"Swelled"

It was December 1965 when Paul Frederic Simon and Arthur Ira Garfunkel recorded "April Come She Will" for their "Sounds of Silence" album. Hell, that's forty seven years ago. Another song was recorded at the same time - "Homeward Bound" which recalls Paul Simon's folk performances in small British venues during the early nineteen sixties. The legend is that he was inspired to write it at Widnes station near Liverpool as he waited to "get home" both to his then girlfriend Kathy in Essex and to his native New York City. Simon once described those years as "the best time of my life".

April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;
May, she will stay,
Resting in my arms again

June, she´ll change her tune,
In restless walks she´ll prowl the night;
July, she will fly
And give no warning to her flight.

August, die she must,
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold;
September I´ll remember.
A love once new has now grown old.

Checking out the BBC Weather site, I see that it's raining in England now. An Atlantic depression has swept in to deluge the entire country with the wet stuff. So much for the drought they've been having over there! No, the streams will certainly be "ripe and swelled with rain" now. I'd have probably been hammering away at my computer keyboard in the study watching drops of rain "weave their weary paths and die" on the windowpane.

Instead I'm just off snorkelling in the bay. The social club jukebox is now playing Rupert Holmes's  "If You Like Pina Coladas"... Well I do, but I'd rather not write about that song. So I'll leave you with the simple genius of Paul Simon:-

History

As esteemed regular visitors to this humble blog are well aware, from time to time I like to post photographs I have snapped myself. And following on from yesterday's St George's Day post, as I swam twenty more lengths of the social club pool this afternoon, my mind drifted back to two little walking expeditions I undertook  in the Sheffield area before emigrating to Blogland. The two photographs I have chosen speak of England's rich history and both are of unsung buildings that you will probably have never heard of. Such is our history.

This building is in Old Whittington which is a suburb of  Chesterfield - the north Derbyshire market town. It's called Revolution House but was once a pub called "The Cock and Pygnot". Here some time in 1688 three influential noblemen met to plot the overthrow of the Catholic king - James II. They included the Earl of Devonshire and the Earl of Danby. They are seen as the architects of England's "Glorious Revolution" in which the threat of a Catholic takeover with all that that might have entailed was resisted:-

Revolution House, Old Whittington

And here's Upper Padley Chapel, close to the village of Grindleford. This stalwart building was part of the Padley Manor complex which predated the Norman invasion. Again, echoing that ancient tension between Catholicism and Protestantism, it was in this building in 1588 that three Catholic priests were found hiding - having been given sanctuary by the lord of the manor -Sir Thomas Fitzherbert. They were duly hung, drawn and quartered. Labelled the Padley Martyrs, a Catholic pilgrimage is still made to the chapel on July 12th each year:-

Padley Chapel, Upper Padley

And that's just two unsung historical sites in the Sheffield area. It makes you think - what the hell was all that religious strife really about? Was it to do with the manner in which one should worship the Christian God or was it more about economic power and the ownership of land? That tension coloured much of English history in the middle ages and beyond and perhaps the vestiges of it still remain. I mean, why do English cities still accommodate Catholic state schools when Protestant children's schools are open to everyone - whatever their faith?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm heading for the forest with my catapult to shoot a few parrots. They're delicious when plucked and then barbecued.

England

May I wish all readers and accidental visitors to this blog a Very Happy St George's Day! Today is England's national day though bizarrely its people will pretty much be going about their normal daily lives. It's not a national holiday. Some cleverdick commentators and politically correct whingers have in the past implied that declarations of English patriotism and pride in the national flag are somehow inherently  racist and those of us who have felt inclined to sing our nation's praises have had to be more than a little wary.

I find all of that maddening. In America, patriotism is more visible and of course July 4th is a national holiday with family parties, sports events and fireworks. Throughout the year you will see the stars and stripes fluttering from flagpoles on some of the remotest properties.

Of course, I'm Yorkshire Pudding - not English Pudding - but even so I do feel a kinship with most of the fifty million people who inhabit that ancient kingdom and yes - even Lancastrians, even Londoners. We have much to celebrate and to be proud about for our beautiful little country has achieved so much and spawned so many talented people in a wide range of fields from art to science and from exploration to invention. If I began to list them all, this blogpost would be longer than an Andrex toilet roll.

Then there are all the unsung heroes - the Chartists, the coal miners, the Ban the Bomb demonstrators, the lost soldiers from anonymous streets, the suffragettes, the helpful neighbours and the animal rescuers. We should also be proud of their stories for they are the true bones of English society, the hidden foundations.

Of any nation, if you were so inclined, you could dredge up a list of negatives designed to prick the bubble of patriotism but it's always easy to knock, to deride. Harder to stand up and sing your nation's praises. Though I am far away sipping juice from a fresh young coconut by a turquoise bay, I am still proud of  my motherland, my England. Let's raise a coconut to St George, the slayer of dragons. Happy St George's Day Everyone!

Islands

In the social club there's a state-of-the-art pub jukebox with access to over quarter of a million songs. Flicking through the index, I found this 1971 song by King Crimson. It's a song that has often echoed in my mind and somehow it seems to reflect the far distant and peaceful mood of Blogland. I was still humming it as I sauntered along the coastal path, under silver moonlight and the silhouettes of palm fronds back to my new home where Henry the peafowl stirred in the shadows:-

Earth, stream and tree encircled by sea
Waves sweep the sand from my island.
My sunsets fade.
Field and glade wait only for rain
Grain after grain love erodes my
High weathered walls which fend off the tide
Cradle the wind
to my island.

Gaunt granite climbs where gulls wheel and glide
Mournfully glide o'er my island.
My dawn bride's veil, damp and pale,
Dissolves in the sun.
Love's web is spun - cats prowl, mice run
Wreathe snatch-hand briars where owls know my eyes
Violet skies
Touch my island,
Touch me.

Beneath the wind turned wave
Infinite peace
Islands join hands
'Neath heaven's sea.

Dark harbour quays like fingers of stone
Hungrily reach from my island.
Clutch sailor's words - pearls and gourds
Are strewn on my shore.
Equal in love, bound in circles.
Earth, stream and tree return to the sea
Waves sweep sand from my island,
from me.


YouTube video clip by Vesmar who is the maintenance engineer at our wind farm and a thoroughly nice chap. The young lady who agreed to star in the filming is Chit who had been specially selected to be Arctic Fox's housekeeper...

Mistake

After all of that effort, risking our lives on the open sea, it turns out that the woman living alone on Pulau Bada Island is not in fact the elusive Katherine de Chevalle at all. She's in fact a marine biologist from the University of California gathering data for her PhD thesis on the sex life of leatherback turtles. She's called Carrie Liebowicz from Dayton, Ohio. 

Carrie's living in  a large tent in the coconut plantation back from the beach. She kindly made a nice meal of rice and fried turtle eggs for me, Thuza and Maung before we set off back for Blogland. I feel so stupid. I could have sworn I'd located Katherine's island but the old Burmese fisherman clearly needs his stupid eyes testing.

Thank God the old lifeboat got us safely back to Blogland. It was almost dark when we tied up at the wharf. Back in the social club I ordered a large brandy and checked to see if there were any comments after my last blogpost - "Found". There was this puzzling comment from Earl Gray of Trelawnyd:- "YP please do me a favour   - WRITE A BOOK ON A SIMILAR SUBJECT". 

What the...?

Instead I retired to my new home where I am gathering quite a collection of animal friends. Well, no other bloggers made it here! I have acquired several Burmese chickens - mostly avian flu rescue hens from an egg farm on the outskirts of Rangoon. And there's a bantam cockerel called Clegg who crows like the devil every morning then spends the rest of the day following Dave, the other cockerel, as he struts around the compound. Doris the bean goose has become friendly with Henry the peafowl and Hilda the scaly-breasted partridge spends most of her time squawking under my wooden verandah with a long-billed partridge called Stan. But at the end of the day there's nothing I appreciate more than a slithery hug on my bamboo rocking chair from Brenda the Burmese python. She's so affectionate. And as I rocked, I wondered where Katherine could be...

Dinnertime for Brenda the Burmese Python

Found

I have no idea the name of this island, but if you have found it, I am delighted! I will wait in excited anticipation on the beach all day today, although my nose has already peeled once despite my palm-frond hat. By the way, I have discovered I am not alone! A turtle came to my beach yesterday! He was good company for a couple of hours. I have noticed I've started talking to myself, but that's understandable I guess.

I've been drinking a bit of seawater, not too much, and found a bit of plastic flotsam that makes a little water underneath that I can lick off, if I put it over a hole with fresh vegetation in it. 

Looking forward to being rescued!  -  Katherine de Chevalle (Thursday Aprl 19th)

So we set off at dawn. The sea was like a millpond. The outboard motor puttered like a little motorbike as we sliced through the water. Maung and Thuza were with me and we'd brought plenty of water, a couple of jerry cans of extra fuel, fruit and a first aid kit. 

Heat hung heavy over the Andaman Sea causing sky and water to merge in a haze. We saw tiny rocky islets and I smiled to see one particular tiny island because it was just like those desert islands you see in cartoons - a miniscule beach and one lonesome palm tree. Thuza and Maung sang an old Burmese fishing song and a flying fish flashed like a silver bullet over the old inflatable.

Finally, the island of Pulau Bada emerged from the heat haze. We slowed the outboard motor and drifted in to the first sandy bay we saw then we dragged the ancient RNLI craft up towards the palm trees. Katherine was nowhere to be seen but we saw footprints in the sand - just like "Robinson Crusoe" and we followed them round past the rocky headland to a second beach. And there she was just floating in those crystal clear waters:-