The Fear and Loathing page

That Laugh a Minute Brexit Comedy We've All Been Waiting For!

2017-10-07T09:21:00.001-07:00

(Author's Note: A sub-commenter on one of my snappy observations in the Guardian's BTL boards mentioned that the BBC will not do a Brexit-based comedy because of orders from the Government. Whether that is true or not, I have no idea. However, it did get me to thinking ...)

The ring tone of Pink Floyd's Money told Peter Capaldi it was a call from his Agent. With a small sigh of disappointment as he knew that his morning porridge would soon cool into a hard lump of grey lava rock the veteran actor pushed his chair back from the breakfast table, strode to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a Macallan as he answered with a snarling:

'No, I'm not doing another damned Comic-Con!'

After only the slightest breath of a pause, Rupert 'Big Tiny' Smalls responded in his well-practised, most soothing voice. 'Good morning Peter. No, I'm not calling about a Comic-Con.'

'Well good! If I never have to answer another question about how the eighty-eighth line of series eight, episode eight relates to the plot of series ten, episode four it will be too damned soon. I'm not doing another one ever, ever, ever!!!'

'Did you know that San Diego now pays ten thousand quid an appearance?'

'When is it?'

'July.'

'We can talk. But my answer will be no! I think. Unless you have something else for me.'

Big Tiny thought this might be the moment to try one more time for a once-rejected offer. 'Are you sure you don't want to re-consider the John Lewis opportunity Peter?'

'I am not playing a fucking dustman who falls in love with his new Hoover in a Christmas advert!'

'Would you rather play the Hoover?'

'No!!!' The Scotch burned a hole in Capaldi's throat, a fire so deep that it could only be put out by adding liquid. So he poured himself another one.

Big Tiny continued. 'Well not to worry, that's a definite no then. But look, something else has come across my desk this morning that I think might especially suit you.'

'Did you say space suit?'

'No, I said especially suit.'

'Well alright, I'll listen then.'

'Splendid Peter, splendid! Now then, here's the pitch just as it was presented to me. What is the hottest topic in Britain, one that is on everyone's lips but no one has yet turned into comedy?'

The actor thought and sipped, then grimaced and thought again. A light bulb suddenly switched on and Capaldi made a mental note to call an electrician later as that was a damned strange thing for a light bulb to do all on its own.

'Peter? Are you there?'

'Yeah yeah yeah, aye. Is it, when is Theresa May going to resign? I suppose I could play Corbyn, thin the hair, grow a beard. The kinder, gentler Malcolm Tucker. That would have some appeal I supp -'

'It's not Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May. But close!'

'Close?'

'Very close! Now listen to this title – just the title alone is brilliant! Brexit at Tiffany's!'

A pause. (If this was an actual comedy event the pause would be accompanied by a spit take, but this is Peter Capaldi we're talking about here, not a Lee Mack special.)

'Did you say what I think you just said?'

'Yes!' Big Tiny had been eagerly waiting to sing the following. 'Well I said what about Brexit at Tiffany's?'

'The REM song?'

'What? No. It wasn't REM.'

'Of course it was.'

'No, it was Deep Blue Something.'

'Who in hell are Deep Blue Something?'

Big Tiny slowly answered, 'They're the band that recorded Breakfast at Tiffany's. And they've agreed to a parody version for Brexit at Tiffany's.'

'Oh. And Michael Stipe's good with that is he?'

'Michael Stipe didn't write the song, but look, we're wandering off track here. Can I tell you the set-up of the show? It's a sit-com. Half hour.'

'Yeah well, my porridge has already turned into a hard lump of grey lava rock – (Author's note: Told you so!) – so go right ahead.' Capaldi set the phone to speaker, sat back in an over-stuffed chair after shooing an over-stuffed cat, closed his eyes and listened.

'Now then, picture this. A residential street in a comfortable south coast town. Neighbours who live across the street from one another, sort of like The Good Life from back in the day. The year is 2021. One couple, the Tiffanys, voted remain and now the husband Timmy Tiffany has lost his job in the aerospace industry so they've turned their house into an Air BnB. That allows for amusing guest stars.'

'Amusing eh?'

'Well, maybe Rob Brydon.'

'Mmm. And I'd be Timmy?'

'No Peter, you'd be the across the street neighbour, who voted leave.'

Capaldi opened one eye and considered this. The cat opened both eyes and considered fish. He spoke in a purring voice – meaning the actor spoke although confusion on your part would be understandable – and asked, 'What's the character?'

'Your name would be Ulysses Kipper. Get it?'

'U. Kipper? Ukipper!?!?'

'Yes! You own a small manufacturing concern that makes flags, tea cups decorated with portraits of the Royal Family, and Wenger Out banners flown behind planes wherever Arsenal play.'

Peter Capaldi growled just as The Doctor would growl at a Dalek, 'That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. What network?'

'Well, the BBC can't show it as they'll lose their license fee.'

'ITV?'

'No, Ant and Dec turned it down.'

'C4?'

'Afraid not. They're skint after over-stocking on colourful women's blouses for Noel Fielding. It's Channel 5. But! There's not too much nudity, except when you and Timmy go to the steam baths with your wives which only happens ...' He leafed through the scripts. '... only happens during the opening and closing credits, and of course the Christmas night special. Which will be presented by Caroline Flack. Or Jo Brand. Maybe. Details to be worked out.'

'No.'

'No?'

'No!'

'Oh dear Peter that's a shame as that's quite the only project I have for you right now.'

'Tell me a bit more about that John Lewis advert. Would I get to dance with the Hoover? I always have had half a mind to do Strictly.'

'We can make this happen! Thank you Peter!'

'Do fuck off Rupert.'

'And a lovely day to you too!' Click.

Trump Watch: An American musical with songs by Jim Morrison

2017-10-05T14:04:00.001-07:00

We transplanted Canadians develop quite a perspective on the US, being the Rosencrantz or Guildenstern to the King Claudius to our south. It's all rather like one of those usually cloying, occasionally brilliant novels or films whereby a younger brother or sister goes away for a time then returns to the hometown when a parent dies, finding that elder siblings who were so bright, so dazzling, so admirable in high school have wound up broken souls weaving their way around a coin-operated pool table in a bad bar with piss stains where the carpet used to be. We stare at our brother while our brother tries to focus his eyes and we think or say in a voice so soft the only being that can hear it is God, 'What the hell happened to you?'

That was the subtext of a conversation I had just the other evening with an old friend from the land of maple syrup and hockey pucks, a conversation that ran past the time of breakfast. We had some catching up to do and we damn near caught it all. She had married a good-hearted American musician and moved south; I'd felt the call of the sea and crossed it to Northern Ireland. Neither of us could make any sense of what had happened to the US since the days of our shared infancy when American life was all Beach Boys and Chevrolet, Walter Cronkite and Kennedy liberals. And we shared some music over that long, good night through YouTube links. I wonder if you recognize these lyrics:

This is the end, my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end

Yes? No? Kind of familiar, maybe? Well, as this is a political commentary and not a quiz show I'll just tell you. The song is The End, written by Jim Morrison and recorded by The Doors. Morrison was one of those lucky or unlucky bastards – perspective is everything – who played out a line from a Humphrey Bogart picture called Knock on Any Door. The line, said by John Derek was, 'Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.' The threads of trivia twist into a tangled meta ball of yarn when you recognize that same John Derek later became a director of softcore porn starring his young wife Bo. Yeah. It all ties together but then again so do the clues in a murder plot. Or in this case, it's a suicide note.

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane, all the children are insane

Empires usually die by cancer, not rifle shots or heart attacks. I wonder sometimes when it was exactly that the Egyptians, Greeks, Macedonians or Romans knew that the gig was up; like some Olympic distance runner who starts his sprint too soon, the other runners pass him by, one then two then three and more leaving him to gasp over the line, haunted by what might have been. For they do all crumble. Like yesterday or today's sex symbols, for some goddam reason the world must need its empires for it is never without one, and then it needs to bury them, with or without church music.

For, you know, it's not all about Trump. That is the conclusion my dear old Canadian friend and I came to. Equally, that is why I have been slow to update the Trump Watch columns on this website. When Trump eventually resigns, is impeached, or hell does the Japanese General solution of a sword and a locked library door, it really doesn't matter. Thomas Carlyle and his Great Man theory had a flaw that first-year philosophy students have been knocking pinata-size holes into for a hundred and fifty years. Neither Great Men, or Massively Evil Men appear out of nowhere; they both appear from and disappear into a geist of their times. Trump did not create America, he does not lead America, but oh ... fucked be thy name, he is America. Trump is its product, its brand, its gut-tearing and hip-fattening Coca-Cola, its carbon-burning and pedestrian-killing Fords, its porn-making and women-damning Media, all of those and more all rolled into one incredibly stupid, orange-haired lump of walking fat. But. The Creator shall out-live its creation.

The polite metaphors are octopus tentacles or Hydra heads – chop one off and another one emerges. And yes, either of those work, but I don't think either is quite grisly enough. I see roaches or maggots, piranha or grasshoppers, where the multitude is so great the death of one is inconsequential.

Some saw it way before I did. In student days I got to know a Professor of Ancient History named Tom Miller. I was never in one of Tom's classes; rather we got to know one another over rathskeller beer. This is a good thing. For any readers so young as they are only just embarking on university studies, my advice: You will learn much more in the pub than in the seminar, for where all steps stagger all are on equal footing. But I digress.

Tom said, rather frequently as it was his 'go to' observation that, “We're all on the long backslide into the jungle. To our health and thankfully our approaching death.” Clink clink, glug glug, burp burp and then he'd turn his attention to the most attractive set of breasts at the table. But bear in mind that backslide thing.

I have wanted to believe that America sans Trump might regenerate itself into the America I believed in, that elder high school brother that scored all the touchdowns. But no. But no. But know this, no.

Three brief stories from the last 72 hours alone:

Puerto Rico is drowning and no one gives a fuck. That's not just Trump. That is Congress and States and private individuals, and if brown people drown, well they don't have an NFL franchise so out of sight, out of mind.

Nine million children lost their health care this weekend. The actuarial odds are that at least twenty thousand of them will die before reaching their age of majority. That's not just Trump. That is Congress and States and private individuals, and if children die, well they aren't my children so out of sight, out of mind.

Yet another armed slaughter happened in Las Vegas, just within hours of my beginning this commentary. That too is not just Trump. That is Congress and States and private individuals, and if innocents die, what do I care if they aren't my innocents?

There was always a flaw in the Declaration of Independence and its famous clause of 'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' Happiness for one can mean misery for many. America is about to be absorbed into the asshole of its own selfish greed. The jungle awaits. There is no hope. The empire is over.

Can you picture what will be, so limitless and free
Desperately in need, of some, stranger's hand
In a desperate land?

Be seeing you.

Inside Television 2.0 - Speechless

2016-10-10T08:37:00.001-07:00

Inside Television 2.0

Speechless (ABC, Wednesday 8:30 PM) Sitcom, 30 Minutes.

Creator: Scott Silvestri

Starring:

Minnie Driver (Maya Dimeo)

John Ross Bowie (Jimmy Dimeo)

Cedric Yarbrough (Kenneth)

Micah Fowler (JJ Dimeo)

Mason Cook (Ray Dimeo)

Kyla Kennedy (Dylan Dimeo)

Marin Hinkle (Dr. Miller)

(For twelve years, from 2000-2012 I wrote a weekly television column in Canada called Inside Television. I gave it up for two reasons. One, I moved to Ireland; and two, there just wasn't anything left I needed to write about. However as Marshall McLuhan once noted, when a media form ceases to be dominant as the principal means of communication it is then free to re-invent itself as an art form. Television has become interesting again. And so, I'm back.)

I first realized that my friends either don't know me at all or worse yet know me and secretly hate me around the time they urged me to start watching The Big Bang Theory. 'You'll love it!' they said. 'I'll try it!' I said. So I watched an episode and I laughed, watched another one and laughed just a bit less, then watched a third and thought it was a repeat of the first one. It wasn't. Ah.

Theories of comedy are as dull as recipes for toast, but one thing every decent comedy ever made, even every decent joke ever told has going for it is a certain element of surprise. 'I didn't see that coming' is a bad thing to see when referring to a bank safe falling out of a window onto your car; but it's a very good and funny thing when it's someone else's car that gets squashed. Put in the simplest possible terms, if you see the joke coming it will rarely make you laugh. Without that, one is left at best with just a mildly pleasing contentment, along the lines of stepping into a warm bath that eventually cools and is forgotten within seconds of toweling off.

There is a second factor too, much more difficult to achieve, and one that makes a situation comedy actually worth one's notice. Is the show about something? During the time when I was working in politics as a speechwriter and all-purpose hack my ethos in creating an effective message was a simple paradox: If you want people to take you seriously, make them laugh first. Laughter is a better opener of thought borders and disarming agent of defensive guards than any frontal attack. Comedy is the ultimate Trojan Horse. Painted with big, floppy flowers on its sides. And a unicorn's horn made of candy. 'Oooo let's see what's inside!' Well, what's inside is not Ulysses with a platoon of pissed off Greek soldiers; rather, the contents of this Trojan Horse are a simply written list of ideas presented in gentle form.

That finally leads us to Speechless. This is shrewd and subversive comedy at its very best. The show is based around a common yet hidden fact of modern American life. Depending on definition, somewhere between six and sixteen percent of families have a child with a disability. I'll wager a tall stack of chips that you didn't know the number was that high, even if you are part of such a family. The reason for that misconception (I'd call it ignorance but I'm much too polite for that) is twofold. The disabled, whether children or adults, are socked away in some form of 'protective care' as though they carried some virulent disease, or were made of candy floss that would melt into sticky puddles if exposed to the day. Instead the paraplegic or quadriplegic, the blind or deaf, the amputee or the disfigured are gently moved aside – learn here, live there, and as for work 'Oh well darling you let us worry about that. Here's a paintbrush and some wool. You can make crafts. Won't that be nice?'

The second reason as to why the great encompassing 'we' does not tend to notice the disabled is due to an alarming reluctance of media entertainment to put forward people living with disabilities as prominent characters or stars. It is a chicken and egg proposition I suppose, but can someone explain the evident decision that being around the disabled makes the non-disabled somehow uncomfortable? It has been said so many times that it has become accepted wisdom that if the newsreel cameras of the day had captured images of Franklin Roosevelt rolling about in his wheelchair he would never have been elected President. Really? What if that assumption is wrong?

I grant you that Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder rose to the top echelon of the music industry despite blindness, but then again they did so in the pre-video era. 'Ah!' you say, 'What about Andrea Bocelli?' Well that's nice, although Bocelli is a classical tenor and in a certain way that doesn't really count given that classical music aficionados are rather more educated and philosophical than, you know, Biebermaniacs. And besides, even if I concede the argument of (pardon the unintended pun) visibility to Bocelli, name me a second or third modern recording artist who is disabled? Exactly.

The situation really gets depressing in visual media such as television. Characters with disabilities are few and light-years far between. Geri Jewell appeared on twelve episodes of The Facts of Life as cousin Geri in the midst of that series' run in the 1980s and the actress, who lives with cerebral palsy, also had a twenty-three episode run as Jewel on Deadwood. May I note that the producers and writers of both series could not even be arsed to give her an invented character name, instead dogwhistling the audience that this was really stunt casting and aren't we lovely for doing it?

Oh it gets worse, just hang in there. The Ted Danson sitcom vehicle Becker featured a blind character, Jake, in all 129 of its episodes. One little problem there. Although Alex Désert did a fine acting job in playing Jake, and I never will fault an actor for taking a good-paying job, but Désert isn't actually blind. Presumably if he had been blind the producers would have named his character Alec.

Lastly, before we get back to Speechless, there is Peter Dinkage on Game of Thrones. Now I don't watch Game of Thrones, the whole sword and sorcery thing not really being my bag, however Dinkage is a splendid actor. I first enjoyed his work on the late and much-missed Nip/Tuck in 2006 when he played Marlowe Sawyer. Even in present-day though, given the fantasy world of the Lassiters in GoT, the implied message seems to be that it's acceptable for someone with dwarfism such as Lassiter to fit in a world where everything is weird, because the physically disabled themselves are weird.

And that, dear friends, is why I so love Speechless that it has moved me to start writing about television again. Finally there is one of a handful of current sitcoms (Blunt Talk and You're the Worst being two others) with as much to be said about them as the great novels, plays or biographies that constitute ninety percent of my current writing. The creator of Speechless, Scott Silvestri, cut his teeth as a writer on Mad About You and most notably Friends rising to the role of Executive Producer for the latter series' last three seasons. He was also the creator and showrunner of Joey, but well you know, Clark Gable made Parnell and we all have our carried crosses in our closets.

Silvestri knows how to create a joke and he is expert in the knowledge that the increasingly impatient twenty-first century audience, madly jumping as it does from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram to Snapchat to glance at the TV to Facebook to email to back to the TV to Tweet a reaction to hashtag to TV, demands something fresh in order to grab attantion about once every twenty seconds. No really. You probably disagree, but then again you're some thirteen hundred words into a review so you, you're an exception. Congratulations!

For someone like me who largely gave up on sitcoms several years ago, I initially found the pace of Speechless jarring. Everything was done so quickly, jumping from the home of the Dimeo family, to their children's new high school, and then to the family van while everyone snapped off lines like lively bullfrogs swimming in a pond of coffee that it left me exhausted. And yet ...

Speechless operates on two speeds and at least two levels. There are the lightning-quick gags and punchlines, with the best given to Cedric Yarbrough as Kenneth the aide to Micah Fowler's cerebral palsy-afflicted JJ. As Kenneth is a fully-grown, burly former school custodian, his basic schtick of talking to and as a high school student is a perfect set-up for the comedy of strange sounds coming out of strange mouths. Everyone else gets thro moments too, mind.

Yet amidst all that, and the sight gags emergent from the Dimeo's hoarder-glutted home, there is also a slower and more genuinely witty plot stream. It's really rather like looking out a train window; the trees and buildings nearest to you flash by quickly, but if you notice the distant mountains they move like elegant swans or a slow-moving parade inviting long and reflective gaze. That is what Speechless really gets right; that is what separates it from the messy masses.

For here is the truth of a family with a disabled member: everyone else's existence in some ways is planetary to the disabled person's Sun. In the third episode I viewed last night, JJ's sister Dylan, played by Kyla Kennedy, is a track and field runner at her high school. When the well-meaning Kenneth suggests to her that she runs because she is compensating for the fact that JJ cannot run because of his necessary wheelchair, Dylan is absolutely frozen into self-questioning. 'I thought I ran because it was fun? Do I?' Somewhere in Heaven you can hear Jean-Paul Sartre laughing on a couch next to Simone de Beauvoir.

There is also an existential discussion between John Ross Bowie's Jimmy Dimeo (the latest in the long long list of memorably shrug n' bear it sitcom Dads) and the family's eldest son Ray, played by Mason Cook. Ray is embarrassed by the state of the family's home given their hoarding of (let's call a spade a spade here) trash. Jimmy explains though that although hoarding may seem insane, it is the very definition of sanity. What one person sees as junk is to him something he can truly call his own. Junk is, in effect, his creative outlet. And so needs all of us.

The true center of Speechless though is the mother, Maya Dimeo as played by that wonder of the glamorously disheveled Minnie Driver. Maya is a brilliantly conceived character. She does put one off at first, as when she challenges the school principal Dr. Miller (Marin Hinkle in a deft performance) insisting proper ramps, an aide of Maya's choice and all sorts of other demands before the well-meaning liberal principal can even draw a breath. However, what dawns on the viewer is that Maya is always itching for a fight because every day of JJ's life has been a fight. If her demands seem extraordinary that is because her goal is for her son's life to be ordinary and that requires some heavy lifting.

Micah Fowler himself has cerebral palsy, although in real life Fowler is not altogether speechless. To be frank, it's refreshing that Silvestri made the choice to restrict JJ to the use of a word board with words and letters illuminated by a laser pointer (done quickly so as to not drag the pace). That spares the show of the downfall of so many other teen-based sitcoms wherein the teenage lead is given a series of lines torn from the bourbon-soaked mouth of elderly insult comics direct from a Las Vegas buffet show. Fowler too has marvelously eloquent face whereby he doesn't actually need spoken words to convey his wish to fit in, his own embarrassment when Maya goes a wee bit over-the-top, and of course his slow emergence into adulthood.

Speechless is the best thing I've seen on television in many a year. I thank its creator, its writers and above all its cast for giving me something good to write about. Lastly, well done ABC for airing the show. Who knows? Maybe someday there may actually be another President in a wheelchair.

Be seeing you.

Brandon Flowers - The Desired Effect album review

2015-05-17T06:01:00.002-07:00

Brandon Flowers

The Desired Effect

Hubert O'Hearn

For: Hispanic News Online

Some singers really do mimic their environments. The cynical grumble of the late Lou Reed carried with it the angry idle of a New York taxi stuck in traffic, just as Bono's blend of bombast and melancholy is as Irish as the foam head on a pint of Guinness. The Killers' frontman Brandon Flowers, now with his second studio album released, was born with a scirocco in his throat; that sudden howling of dry air that carries across the western desert plains of Nevada and Utah, Flowers' childhood provenance. Like the wind, Flowers sings powerfully without effort; the wind lifts kites and birds, whereas the voice carries hopes and raises spitits.

Flowers was born in 1984, right at the heart of the last decent period of pop music when that noble, jovial genre became something so cynically manufactured by über-producers and managers that what passes for pop today makes the old Brill Building or Berry Gordon's Motown sound seem like existentialist poetry written by frustrated French intellectuals in terms of individual expression. Thank God for throwbacks.

Flowers must have had a radio playing in his nursery, and if my hunch on that is correct I certainly toast his parents. Thus a song on The Desired Effect like The Way It's Always Been quite literally echoes of U2's The Joshua Tree, equal parts acceptabce and defiance. And then there is the album's best song – although oddly not one of the three singles chosen so far – I Can Change. It took me three listenings while my mind metaphorically was snapping imagined fingers, trying to remember where I had heard its pulsed backing track and soaring soaring female background vocal enhancement. Aha! I finally got it. Flowers and his producer Ariel Rechshaid (Vampire Weekend, HAIM)had taken a sample from The Bronski Beat.

Rechsahaid deserves a lot of kudos for The Desired Effect. Mixing samples and live instruments, each of the album's ten tracks have a clear personality, yet each has a distinctive soundscape built around the goal of presenting Flowers' voice in the best possible setting. Neo-Gospel backups, sharp horn stings, or the softly tinkling piano of Can't Deny My Love (which has been chosen as a single) all exist as a commentary on the singer; a smattering of applause if you will. The masterpiece of production is in I Can Change, whose mix of xylophone and snapping snare drum are the perfect tumbler accompaniment to the song's metaphor of love being a lock that has a perfect combination somewhere.

Thematically, these are largely slightly desperate love songs reminsicent of Morrissey, himself one of Flowers' stated influences. Hence the slightly deperate, 'I can bend, I can break, I can blaze a trail through the driving rain, I can change (slight pause) for you.' Then again, if it weren't for bruised hearts and desperate lovers, the song canon of humanity would boil down to The Alphabet Song and Octopus's Garden. Actually, scratch that. Octopus's Garden is a love song too.

The wonder to me is that Brandon Flowers is a bigger star in the UK than in America, as he is as American a singer-songwriter as Merle Haggard or Woody Guthrie. It is high time America honored a native son. The Desired Effect lives up to its name in creating a rich atmosphere of subtly formed pop-rock. It's enough to make a veteran music writer smile.

Be seeing you.

Inside Television 2.0 - How I Would End Mad Men

2015-05-14T05:50:00.000-07:00

Inside Television 2.0

Column 1

How I Would End Mad Men

By: Hubert O'Hearn

For those of you who don't know already, I wrote a weekly newspaper column called Inside Television from 2000-2012. It was great fun as there is still no greater satisfaction in a writer's life than a steady newspaper gig. You know you're being published, you know someone out there is actually reading your stuff, and there's a place to refine those snappy one-liners you riff out over beer on a late Friday's night.

However, by the end of its run I had become a much less-wealthy Don Draper in that I was tired of the job. Inside Television had become a job rather than a weekly test or challenge. How do you try and top yourself when you're already at the top? That is Don's realization in Mad Men's fourth episode of its final season, The Forecast. Roger Sterling drops ballast and makes Don do the former's homework in putting together a mission statement going forward. Problem is, there is no forward just more of the same; same shows just different commercials.

So Don took a drive and I moved to Ireland.

This Sunday evening the final ever episode of Mad Men will air (I'll be downloading it on Monday) and the question hangs, how will showrunner Matthew Weiner choose to end it? What is the final statement? Weiner's mentor David Chase chose to end The Sopranos with the (in)famous 'cut to black' non-scene, the equivalent of the film breaking in a high school projector back in the day. So that or any equivalent is out, although there had to have been a certain temptation in Weiner to end it the way the broadcasting day (sic) used to end in 1970, the final year of Mad Men and at a time before twenty-four hour stations: play the national anthem and turn off the set.

How's it gonna end/ I dunno

Who knows? That still might be a possible last scene except I rather think not. Nor do I think that the teased finale that has been played for us in the opening credits for seven seasons – Don jumping off a New York skyscraper – is the end either. Robert Morse's Bert Cooper got the big, definite farewell, literally a singing and dancing curtain call and besides, killing off Don is the kind of pat ending beginning writers put on their initial attempts at fiction. When in doubt, kill off the main character.

Finales are a pain in the butt anyway. From Hawkeye Pierce going deranged, to St. Eligius Hospital being the figment of an Autistic boy's imagination, to whatever the hell that was with the cast of Seinfeld landing in jail, nobody likes the last episode. The last episode is the Gordian knot, the sword in the stone, the riddle of the Sphinx and Thor's hammer all wrapped together and twice as mythic: Okay hot-shot writer, show us what you can really do! It's easier and much less painful being canceled.

What I think Weiner will present an anti-finale. Life goes on, except of course for Betty Draper (pouring one out; also, that Season Two clip from Bye-Bye Birdie now reads like foreshadowing). Pete and Trudy Campbell move to Wichita where they'll be happy as clams until Pete realizes that his Old Boy prep school network is about as popular there as Don's New York flash was at that piss-drunk Legion Hall. Peggy Olson will keep on doing what she does, singing loudly at a glass ceiling in the hopes her voice finally makes it crack. And Roger Sterling will just play with his organ (heh) and consider how he'll look with a goatee until the next heart attack checks him out of the Hotel California.

But what about Don? Over the course of the series he's rejected virtually every option: the Westchester suburbanite, Manhattan rogue, California cool, and that simple Midwestern life left him beaten up in a motel room. He can't even really turn within, because who's in Don's soul is Dick Whitman and nobody even knows who that guy is because he effectively died when that Zippo dropped in Korea twenty years earlier.

Yet Don will go on, because the one person Don loves is Don. He's not going to kill himself over existentialist angst – present that idea to him and he'd reject it as a non-seller. No, I think we go back to that Kodak Carousel from the first season, which is also still sitting on a shelf in Don's office. The Carousel turns, pictures slip by, the pain of nostalgia is revisited time after time after time. And one more clue – the only thing Don has succeeded in over this past season is ... he fixed a typewriter.

Last scene: Don in decent hotel room in California with an ocean view. He sits , bottle at hand, at a desk and looks out to the waves. 'Aha! He's going to drown himself like James Mason/Kris Kristofferson in A Star is Born!' Hell no. The camera pans down to a Remington portable typewriter, we see Don's hands thread in a sheet of paper and he writes the title, Mad Men.

He writes his memoirs, and he'll bet Roger Sterling large that Don's book out-sells Roger's book.

Be seeing you.

Bombadil - Hold On

2015-05-12T06:55:00.001-07:00

Bombadil

Hold On (Ramseur Records 2015)

for: Hispanic News Online

There is something to be said for taking the musical equivalent of a gap year; step back, reassess life and (hopefully) rediscover the creative need that drew one into the business in the first place. To name just two shining examples, Joni Mitchell withdrew from the business for two years in the early 1970's and Beth Hart did the same twenty years later. Each came back stronger than before with richer, more complex perspectives reflected in their songwriting.

Bombadil, named for the singer-songwriter in The Hobbit, are coming off their gap years with a new album called Hold On. In its present incarnation, Bombadil has a three-piece lineup: Daniel Michalak (bass and occasional acoustic guitar), Stuart Robinson (keyboards) and James Phillips (drums). For live performances, the band gets along just fine with piano, drums, bass and ukulele. Robinson and Michalak have been playing together for quite some time, having met during a pre-orientation hike at Duke University in 2001.

Bombadil had released three well-received albums between 2006 and 2010 as a four-piece with guitarist Bryan Rahija, who still contributes to their songwriting. However, in 2010 not only did Robinson want to quit, Michalak was losing use of his hands due to extreme neural tension. Topping things off, the band's original drummer John Michalak was accepted into medical school, so that was the end of that.

Except of course it wasn't, which is why we are listening to them now. Songwriters are like poets or for that matter, wrestlers. They never really retire because their art is what they do. Thus Robinson kept writing songs and asked Rahija and Dan Michalak for a hand. Speaking of hands, Michalak's had healed and so he was able to assist in working out the instrumentals. After finding current drummer James Phillips on Craigslist (it pays to advertise, kids), releasing and touring with their first comeback album, 2012's Metrics of Affection, Bombadil took eighteen months to refine their current album, Hold On.

The result is the perfect musical complement to the sipping of hot tea. Don't you dare take that as an insult. Sipping allows, demands even, taking the time to muse and appreciate, to watch the shifting shapes of clouds of steam. Beer shouts but tea thinks aloud.

There have not been many bands in pop or rock history that have chosen the path of quiet songs played with seemingly simple, almost elementary arrangements. The ones who have walked well down that path are significant forces: Van Dyke Parks, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Kinks in their Waterloo Sunset period, or more recently Blur are all milestone artists. Bombadil fits in with this group as neatly as a fourth Wilson brother in a Beach Boys song.

Each song on Hold On has an edge beneath its seemingly smiley surface structure, likely deriving from the Bombadil members having lived a life and realized that clouds temporarily cover the sun even on the best summer days. Thus a song like Framboise, a bilingual love song which at first notice seems to be the daughter of the Beatles' Michelle. Then one pays notice to the lyrics: tu es bourgeoise presque comme une framboise. Hang on a minute! You're as bourgeois as a strawberry?? Nothing like opening up a 'love song' with a disguised insult. Then the narrator pulls it all together with the admittance that, am I patient am I kind or am I wasting time counting out her blessings one by some. Yes indeed, strawberries are lovely unless you're allergic.

Further to this thematic of love amidst the bruises is Love is Simply. This is the most Blur-reminiscent of Hold On's songs, with a Park Life-like lyric of:

love is never

one thing forever

better tend your garden

kick the frost pick the peppers

the ground dries and hardens

winter can’t last forever

Instrumentally, there is also a complexity beneath the simple structures. Forgive Me Darling takes a delightfully unusual risk in having electronic verses but acoustic choruses; thus the repeating portion with which most bands slug away like a shovel at the listener's head is the song's understatement. As well, horns punctuate several songs with the trumpet played by Michael Stipe. (Nice to see the former R.E.M. frontman was able to find work. Yes of course I'm kidding.)

Hold On is a fine album for a summer's rainy day, a pleasant accompaniment to reading or conversation by people who want music that reflects the knowledge of their own long and occasionally broken roads. Lovely.

I S**t You Not: A Declaration of Independence

2015-05-07T05:26:00.003-07:00

I Shit You Not:

A Declaration of Independence

May 7, 2015

Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is wake up in a rotten mood. That was me, two hours ago. There was no particular reason for it; I'd slept well, the sun was shining and Susanna Reid was there on Good Morning Britain, genteelly tugging a form-fitting skirt along her fit-formed thighs. Throw in a cup of coffee and usually I'd be liking and commenting and :)ing away on Facebook, as happy as a cartoon rabbit. This however was not one of those relentlessly cheery mornings, lacking only an ominous organ chord and I suppose black-and-white cinematography to confirm that my inner Hyde was writ all over my hide, as it were.

Susanna Reid - better than coffee

I've learnt to not try and change my natural mood. Bottling the emotions never works well, merely compressing feelings like a basement-made bomb, a psychological aerosol can that will explode as soon as it touches fire. So if my inner nature was determined to be foul, foul I would be. Grr. Bark. Growl.

The question was, Why is my psyche setting me up for negativity? There was clearly going to be a need for me to Pavlov my way to the empty food bowl of rejection rather than acceptance. Indeed, the soul is like a well-prepped schoolteacher, laying out the day's lessons neatly on each student's desk.

The purpose quickly became clear. One of my best friends, a filmmaker in Canada, had messaged me right before I'd gone to bed suggesting that I write an article about Madonna, exploring her career and the reasons why after a thirty-year run of surfing the Big Wave of popular culture she had finally hit the ocean floor, her new album having tanked. My friend meant well, wanting me to write something that would draw heat to my career – Get noticed! Get famous! Get money! Of course I accepted.

(I wonder if I dreamt about this. That would explain why I woke as a monster.)

So there was a fresh message from my friend, glad that I had accepted his advice. It then hit me: I don't want to write this.

Because my MacBook Air had died a week and a half earlier, I had been without any means of writing for nine days. (What I am writing on now is a piece of borrowed crap. You're welcome to contribute to my Gofundme so I can buy something decent. Thank you.) That gives a man time to think, to reassess, have a halftime team talk before running back out onto the field with an adjusted game plan. I had come to a decision I was happy with:

I will only write what I love.

There was a corollary to that:

No more shit.

It's all part of knowing myself really. We all prefer to concentrate and work on those ideas that we love, but I take it to an extreme. If I don't love what I am assigned to write, if it does not emerge from a place of curiosity, amusement and passion, I'll do my damndest to destroy it. First, I'll find dubious reasons to not write a word.

There's a fly in this room. How can I be expected to work under these conditions?
My dog is comfy on my lap. How can I disturb her?
I'm waiting for a fresh angle to come to me. Wherefore art thou, angel of inspiration?

Worst of all, I would start to hate the subject. When Applause Books hired me to write a book, we went back and forth on possible pop culture subjects. Desperate for the contract and the advance money, I accepted their suggestion of a book on Hollywood writer and director Joss Whedon. Because it wasn't 'my idea' I reacted like a petulant, spoilt child and wrote a book unfairly venomous to its subject.

Bringing us back to the present, because Madonna was not someone I felt compelled to write about, I might well do to her what I'd done to Whedon and that would be entirely unfair. Thus, I messaged my friend a thank you for his help, but I won't write the piece.

That will pertain to everything, from now on. When an idea is offered to me, if I don't feel an immediate psychic link to it (not only do I believe in love at first sight, I only believe in love at first sight), or if it does not fit with a concept I already have, not gonna do it. This business of arranging words along horizontal lines is too important to me. I walked away from everything in order to devote my life to writing: left Canada, embraced Ireland, left family, friends, all vestiges of my former self, chipping away at the marble to reveal the sculpture within. I figure I have twenty good years left to write reviews, plays and articles or books when their subject agrees with my larger passions. To take the time needed to write anything else is both a denial of who I am, and honestly not a great result for the readers. To quote that great twentieth century philosopher Popeye the Sailor, 'I am what I am.'

Allons-y!

The Meaning of Trust in a Bad and Ugly Time

2014-08-16T02:13:00.001-07:00

The Meaning of Trust in a Bad and Ugly Time

Hubert O'Hearn

This essay has been prompted by, let's call it Accidental Research. I have long been an admirer of the work written by the American journalist Naomi Wolf. That admiration first began as a result of her work on feminism and the rights of women. Later in her career, she became one of the rare voices in public media (along with Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and too few others) to warn of the rise of the corporate security state with its resultant loss of liberties. In my work as a privately contracted speechwriter on the subject of Human Rights, I happily state that Ms Wolf has unknowingly assisted me many times over the years.

In the last month or so, since the latest war erupted between Israel and Palestine, Naomi Wolf has worked tirelessly and constantly – principally through her Facebook page – to disseminate the latest verifiable information, reflective opinions drawn from around the world, and above all encouraging peaceful and respectful discussion. And so, really for the first time in my life, I started to comment on another journalist's posts. Normally I just observe; however, the encouragement that Wolf has offered to a growing brigade of Citizen Journalists led me to feel that I should be involved.

What has been fascinating and instructive to me is reading the comments made to my own replies.It is very much the feeling of being the rope in a Tug of War as both those 100% supporting the cause of the Palestinians weigh in against those 100% supporting the policies of Israel. Ar its worst, it is a shouting argument fought amongst the deaf; at its best, there is within it a framework for peace.

What?

Yes that's right, a framework for peace. Just as one cannot solve a dispute between friends, or spouses, or children, or labour negotiations for that matter until one knows what each side wants and – even more important than the 'list of demands' – is knowing what the psychological motivation is. What is the switch that has been turned on that has led to war in Gaza, and how can it be turned off?

Here is what I have seen, and read and felt. If two objects were set side by side, with one being a mountain and the other a grain of sand, the mountain would be labeled Fear and the tiny bit of sand called Trust. It is not a reductio ad absurdum to say that the basic problem in Gaza is that one side thinks that the other side wants to kill everyone on the one side. Even if one side said, 'We're going to lay down your arms and we'll never bomb you again,' the other side doesn't believe it. Again, it is like the playground: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

From the Israeli point if view, what I read most frequently is that Hamas cannot be negotiated with. The most extreme view is that this war must continue until Hamas is eliminated, and in normal language, eliminated means dead. No treaty, no agreement Hamas signs can ever, ever be trusted.

On the converse, Israel is, in the eyes of the passionate supporter of the Palestinians, a rogue state bent on soulless destruction of an entrapped people; and a state that has broken UN regulations some 65 times since its founding. Untrustworthy.

It is only fair to the reader at this point to state clearly my own opinion and biases, at the risk of losing a good number of you in the process. I do believe that the Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank have been treated horribly, lacking full freedom of movement, liable to armed inspection of their homes without warrant, and although it is true that Ariel Sharon did dismantle the Israeli settlements in Gaza there was a virtually instantaneous balancing increase in settlements established east of the River Jordan. The Palestinians certainly lack any superpower advocate. Russia supports the ruins of Bashir al-Assad's Syria, yet its interest in Gaza ends with its desire to profit from the 1.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and possible other carbon resources contained beneath what is nominally Gazan territory. The United States is very much Israel's master or servant, depending on one's view; and the EU is ... well who really knows what the EU is?

And so, in my comments on Naomi Wolf's posts I do state clearly that I am in sympathy with the Palestinians. The response is quick and uniform from most pro-Israelis. I am ignorant of a) the Hamas Charter of 1988 which calls for the destruction of Israel; b) various speeches given by Hamas leaders calling for death of Israelis; and c) unsympathetic to the fear Israel has of the rocket bombardment launched from Gaza. I am at least happy to report that except for one person, no one else has accused me of anti-Semitism.

But back and forth the argument goes, with each side as well-stocked with historical incidents, legal opinions, interpretations of laws and political precedents as any debating team that ever argued before the Oxford Union. The flaw however is that debating teams square off before an impartial judge. This situation in the Middle East requires the debaters themselves to achieve a Hegelian dialectic whereby a new synthesis of agreement can be established which will bring peace and understanding to the region. That, as you may have noticed, has not happened yet.

But how can it if there is no trust in the room?

Trust can only be established if one truly understands and accepts the two sides' existence; the reality of two peoples and nations.

From our point of view as observers and would-be peacemakers, here we stand, witnesses to a war unlike any other in human history. For on the one side we have a human population who has faced prejudice, hatred and murderous pogroms like no other. We must always understand that their fear is well-based. The Jews and their latest national incarnation of Israel have a right to distrust, for trust has proven misplaced so many times in the past.

On the other side, we have the Palestinians. These are a people who have never had the protection of a nation-state, nor a colonial power. They too have been subjects and victims to the diplomatic lies of Western nations – both in World War One as well as World War Two – who sought to ally the Palestinians and the greater part of Arabia to their cause, with false promises of nationhood and security.

We cannot amend the past, no matter how virtuous a course that may seem at present. In space, we can live anywhere we choose. In time, we can only live in the present. No matter how much we might like to argue against the Balfour Declaration of 1917, or the actions of the United Nations in 1947, it yet remains that now is now and we cannot change the past. We must deal with the world as it is. We must deal with the facts.

Israel is a fact. Whether or not it should have existed is perhaps a lesson we might learn from. However, it is here and it is determined to be here and it will never voluntarily give up its existence without horrific bloodshed. Similarly, the Palestinian peoples of the West Bank of the River Jordan, and the Palestinian peoples of Gaza along the banks of the Mediterranean – they too are a reality. These narrow kilometres of land are their home. They naturally resist a call to leave their home just as you would resist a land developer's request to leave your family home in order to assist his latest turnpike or shopping mall. If you choose to sell, that is your choice. But you must be allotted that choice.

We cannot solve these problems – this dispute between Israelis and Palestinians about where one land ends and another begins, and where the human right of self-determination begins and ends – here in a few short moments. Dialogue is clouded in memory, and memory is cloaked in fear. In this time of war, it is not Jews fighting Muslims; it is not Muslims fighting Jews; rather, it is fear fighting fear. That is our battle – that is the true battle – it is the battle of trust against fear. Fear. Fear is the enemy. Love – love is the ally.

I know that you may see 'love' as the language of poets and non-serious people; however, I challenge you today to name any great leader who did not have Love as his battle cry. Jesus, Mohammed, Gandhi, King, Mandela – if they were not dedicated to love, they were dedicated to nothing at all.

What needs to be remembered by all those who debate, by all those who counsel in favour of continued bloodshed, and most especially all those who enter a room charged with negotiating peace through diplomacy is this:

No child ever entered this world desiring a war. No child ever entered this room knowing it was Muslim, Jew, Christian, or any other faith. No child was born Israeli, Palestinian, American, or anything other than a human. We are born and feel frightful. We cry. We seek compassion, relief and love leading to security.

It is said that 'those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.' I say to you, 'those who choose to set aside history are those who are free to create a future.'

So I therefore ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to exercise whatever influence you have, whether it be great or small, to encourage these two broken peoples – Israelis and Palestinians alike – to sit down together, without fear. See the reality of humanity, trust in love, and only then will there be true peace. And may – literally – God help us all.

The Broken Rock

2014-05-18T10:21:00.002-07:00

This Broken Rock

This broken rock

Held together by myth and faith

That I cling to as my sanctuary

Against the battering of savage winds

And the rabid mouth of cold Atlantic tides

Borne from the west and whipping free

Breaking free yet not breaking me.

I shall not fail.

Oh, have at me foulest winds

Seek to strip me of my very flesh

Yet still I remain

Even if I have but one finger fully-formed

To raise at you and say:

No more.

I have something

Even nature never knew.

I have something

That will see your power, your might reduced

To nothing.

For naked on this broken rock,

It's crevice-formed broken smiles

Of benevolence or evil glee

You never met one

Quite like me.

For I have the strength of faeries -

Yes!

little, quiet, loving faeries

The ones you omitted from

Your hate-filled whip

And evil glance.

She protects me.

For she, the sun-fed Irish faery

Will lend me strength and whisper comfortable

So I shall rise

and rise

Until I face you.

And then.

I think.

We will both know.

Who wins.

For I have with me the faery power

Whereas you, My Fear,

You have but ...

Wind.

Surf: A Whitman List

2014-05-18T09:14:00.001-07:00

Surf: A Whitman List

Clouds.

The shore.

The rocks beaten on the shore

Ground into sand

By relentless waves.

Space.

The stars.

The stars exploding one by one

Turned to supernova

By expiry of time.

You.

And me.

Our shifting mirror faces

Changing quietly each day

Until one final change.

What.

Belief.

We grab onto ocean rocks

Thinking they are safety nets

But they will turn to sand.

Change.

All change.

Surf the wild ocean

Stay balanced on the waves

Enjoy the trip

And never slip

For the wave you ride is you.

Poems about Books and Ponds

2014-05-18T08:14:00.002-07:00

A VERY SMALL POND

Sat by the sea in Ireland
On a park bench bolted to cement
A bleacher seat
Fixed observation point
Waiting for the game to start

Who's playing today?

Observe: a small pond or large puddle
Definition depends on a combination
Of language skills and imagination

The pond
(I choose pond)
A temporary, repeated filling by high tide
Of an indentation in ash grey rock

Nothing to see here
Except of course everything
To however millions of cell-like animals
Bumping feelers with animal-like cells
To whom the temporary, repeated pond
(Or puddle, if that's your preference)
Is their entire bloody universe

Meanwhile!
Someone marks and exclaims

A star looks out
And observes a small rock or ball
(You know, that definition thing again)

Whether it gives the rock a thought
(It chooses rock, not paper or scissors)
Depends on whether stars think
Or it just waits for the game to start

Play ball!

I TAKE A BREAK FROM READING

I take a break from reading
Because I'm curious to know
Just what it is I'm thinking
About those 90 pages of prose

I've been led along this sea so far
By the writer's lines, maps and sails
Now I prefer the path of drifting bark
Whether it leads to land or pale

What has this book led me to think?
What action has it inspired?
Well you should know (I smile and wink)
You've read the poem that it hot-wired.

Manifesto - In Brand We Trust

2014-02-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

This will be long, so maybe pack a lunch.

I've become a huge admirer of what Russell Brand is up to in terms of exposing the utter failure of our elected governments to serve our interests. There are many others - Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, and other alternative voices - but Russell is funny, has long hair and is a celebrity so we notice him more. His critics always say, 'So Russell, if we don't vote, what are we supposed to do?' And then they smirk into their sleeves and nod to one another and whisper, 'There's no answer to that.'

I suggest there is.

There are two stages to a democratic government. First you vote for them - you hire them - and then like any other employee who works for you or an employer that you work for - somebody gets paid.

Stop paying them.

In Russell We Trust ...

If you go to a restaurant and order a lovely organic meal of sympathetically euthanised chicken and lovely veggies that chose to end their own lives to serve your body's hunger, and if you were instead served a plate full of steaming dog pooh, when the waiter brings you your cheque would you pay it or would you instead say, 'I differ sir! You in your lovely vest with the smartly tied bow tie have not served me euthanised chicken sent to the hereafter with proper hymns being sung and honey garlic dripped over the toasty corpus. Instead you have served me the steaming by-product of a canine companion. I choose to not pay for this!' (Your eloquence may vary)

I suggest that if you are dissatisfied with your government, your employees, you have only one real way of protesting their ill service. You are not allowed to fire them - good luck to you organizing a recall election for that's not allowed by the rules your employees set. No, all you can do is stop paying them.

Don't pay your taxes. Refuse to! You are not paying for what you didn't order.

'Oh', you say, 'but that means I might go to prison.' Yes, you might. But not all of us. Withholding your tax bill of $5,000, or $10,000, or even $50,000 is still a lot less than it will, cost your employees to lock you up. Plus, if we're ALL in there, then it won't be so bad now will it? The government will have to supply us with food, a bed, shelter, health care and some degree of education and recreation ... which is what we wanted them to do in the first place.

We won't be sent to die in Afghanistan because we are common criminals and only free men can be co-opted into an Army and sent to die in a village we couldn't find on a map. Plus we won't be around to earn an income to pay taxes to pay for that war. Everybody wins!

Therefore, if you don't like the way your country is being run, stop paying the people running it to keep running it the way they want and you don't. To hell with voting - that's every four years when the people rise as one and throw the bastards back into office. Taxation is every year and every day. The only thing I think we should demand of our current waiter-politicians serving us plates of dog pooh is that they should immediately start building larger prisons in favourable neighbourhoods. I'd like one with a heated pool and free Wifi, along with conjugal discussions with mutually agreeable companions. I will happily stop paying taxes in return for these simple demands being met.

You don't agree? Well the alternative is beheadings with skulls impaled on pikes at the entrance to our great cities. And we don't want to frighten children. For God's sake...think of the children.

The End.

Bow.

The Rise of the Lagan - Poem

2014-02-07T11:33:00.002-08:00

The Rise of the Lagan

When my mind soars

And rests on that horizon

Between the blue ocean of dreams and the sunset sky

It is lit from within

By the white of the moon

The lagan of loss

The tossed detritus of pain

Yet rises again from that blue ocean

To shine once again

Lit by the white of the moon

And in those hours

I rest in flight like the ocean birds

Adrift above the cliffs of Moher

Cushioned in the breeze of thought

Such restful bliss

Caressed by the light of the moon.

Letter from Ireland: Guess Who's Back?

2014-02-05T12:11:00.003-08:00

Letter from Ireland

March 2014

by:

Hubert O'Hearn

Yes you read that right and no, this is not a nostalgia column or a re-print based on a muddled writer missing a deadline. Instead, like Slim Shady before me I'm singing the lyrics 'Guess who's back?' By the time you read this, the well-traveled Stella and I will be living back in Eire and this time I hope that we have a place with a high enough garden wall that she can't leap over it to go rounding up the local sheep.

Specifically, we are leaving on the Ferry for Northern Ireland as my previously documented wars over my immigration to the Republic of Ireland are still being fought with smouldering cannon fire bursting with grapeshot and email. We will be in Bangor, a lovely town on the Irish Sea where we have been invited to stay with new friends while we look for a place. These friends are named Claudia and David. They take in rescue animals, including six dogs and two chickens saved from a free range farm. I guess I qualify as a rescue Canadian saved from poverty and homelessness.

Beautiful downtown Bangor...

Ah yes, the last twelve months have not been kind to us although to quote Edith Piaf (a just slightly better singer than Eminem), 'Non, je ne regrette rien!' Back in 1989 when I was at death's door from diverticulitis – an exceedingly painful and frightful experience; do avoid it if you can – I realized that God or whatever your favourite name is for the forces of life never piles more onto us that we can take. That time 25 years ago was a physical test of my capacities; this one was a mental test.

Delays in book publication, delays in article payments and then of course my inability to find a new place to rent because I am a writer and therefore a subversive bent on moral deprivation and corruption of innocent youth (damn those landlords for reading my work) broke me financially. Try living in £60 a day bed and breakfast establishments when you're barely making £60 a week. It keeps you nimble and is a great diet plan, I can tell you that for sure.

And yet ... we have overcome. My booky-wook, Random Acts of Love was finally released by iTunes and iBooks, money for articles and reviews is coming in and I should have my biography of Joss Whedon completed shortly. So finally the keyboard of my MacBook is producing more than Facebook updates. I hope you enjoyed the cat memes.

Best of all though, crises teach you to look at them as opportunities. And, as I was begging friends for short-term loans to keep me and Stella afloat and fed, just such an opportunity appeared. A friend in Thunder Bay sent me $150 and told me to not re-pay it, so long as I helped her by editing her children's book.

Wait. I have skills? I can market them? Who the hell knew?

And so a new career was born. While sitting around the lovely youth hostel in Berwick, I developed a service called Help! I Need a Writer! and assembled a team of writers and editors to market to anyone needing an editor, proofreader, or a writer for absolutely any project imaginable. And wouldn't you know, people like this idea and are sending us work. Huh. So now I'm an internet entrepreneur. And why not? I'm not opposed to the idea. If Jeff Bezos can make a living destroying bookstores through his Amazon, I at least can help the gasping for survival authors.

Anyway, just to tie this all together, as I now have a reasonably predictable income I can finally finally go home. Yes, home. Home is not where you were born, home is not necessarily where the heart is; home is where you find happiness. And I was happiest for those beautiful four months in Ireland – the home of green, cheer, good fellowship and of course faeries that appear with the full moon. Hello from me and Woof! from Stella. Be seeing you.

Samantha Owen - excerpt from Dance in Lava: A Memoir

2014-01-22T17:17:00.000-08:00

Chapter ???

Samantha Owen

I know. This will be somewhat confusing for the reader. While at the time of this writing I am not sure which will appear first, this memoir or my novel titled Samantha Owen, this chapter is about Samantha Owen the person and not the novel Samantha Owen. Ah yes, you'll be wanting some explanation. Get yourself a notepad and two or three pens of different coloured ink; maybe a clipboard too. And yes, this will be on the final exam.

Samantha Owen, the lovely 44 year old woman from Wiltshire who I fell in love with, is not her real name. Her real name is – oh wait, I can't tell you that or the whole purpose of giving her a false moniker is totally defeated – her real name I have chosen to keep hidden much to her relief. Although every other fact in this chapter will be absolutely truthful (okay, I'm also changing the names of her family and the incredibly dull city where they live in Scotland), it is best that while you should get to know her, a little disguise is in order. You see, we had a five-month affair that wasn't intended to be an affair at all, it -

Oh hang it! I don't want to give away the whole plot in the second paragraph. If I do, you'll skip past the rest of this chapter and miss all my lovely descriptions of white-hot sex set to a backdrop of Ted Nugent playing Stranglehold. (There, that ought to keep you reading.) Now back to the explanation.

Now then, Samantha Owen the novel is largely based on the life story of Samantha Owen the person, but in the fictional version I take Graham Greene's fine advice; and this one you really do need to jot down as from the day I read it to this, I have never seen or heard a single better idea for creating fiction from truth. Greene wrote, 'Take a scene you have actually lived and change one detail.' If it happened in the kitchen, move it to the parlour. If there were three people present, add a fourth. Change an age, a word, what they ate or drank. Thus the imagination is tickled awake and – lo and behold! - everything starts to change. Add some icing of metaphor and cherries of insight and you are now serving your readers a luscious slice of velvet life.

So, the fictional Samantha Owen is similar in all important ways to this one. Should you read both this version of her life – and my bank account and lifestyle will appreciate your support – you can have great fun comparing notes. But do be aware; a fictional character is often more real than the original model. I can never say with absolute certainty what the living person actually thinks; however if I invent or fictionalize her, then I know everything. And who says novelists have a God complex?

Right then. On with the main event.

If Facebook had never started the Ticker that runs down the right hand side of the Timeline, none of the following would have happened, unless of course it did. We'll never know really, but there was definitely something fated about the meeting of Samantha and me. Just wait until you see what my astrologer and friend Zoe Moon had to say about us.

I don't really know how I first became aware of Samantha. She was one of the first hundred or so people I started to follow on Twitter but where that first comment she made that grabbed my interest to the point of looking up her profile and following her ... neither of us know. My best guess is that after I started following Lydia Cornell (who became my bestie) that would have led to my following Bill Zucker, a strange strange comic writer and musician, and Samantha followed and commented on his tweets. That all is just a logical train of connections though, and since when is anything in my life ever logical?

Regardless, I did look at her profile back in 2010 and Samantha was quite good looking, with sparkling shoe button eyes peering out from black rectangular eyeglasses under a shag bouquet of blonde hair. She had what I learned later after I followed up by friending her on Facebook was an odd habit of holding her fist, back to camera, over her mouth hiding her mouth. Samantha thought her teeth were too big. I eventually convinced her that she has a glorious, beaming smile and I broke her of that fist habit. Score one for the redemptive powers of louche lovers (that would be me).

Other things I knew before that Ticker scrolled past one day in Ireland, quite soon after I had arrived at Toberbeg: Samantha had an Autistic son named Joshua, who I later nicknamed Cubby. She was also a really really talented amateur photographer. And lastly, she was and is a true 'rock chick' with a passion for Pink Floyd, The Who and Oasis.

Now I love Oasis and have done for at least fifteen years now. In fact, I've told several people that when I die I want Champagne Supernova played at my wake. (I may be re-thinking that since becoming sober ... I'll be sure to let you know.) No women I had known in Canada had ever much liked the yobbish Gallagher brothers, although Kimberly took one for the team and gave me the Oasis DVD collection for our last Christmas together ... it is somewhere in storage in Ireland today. That however was the only real involvement Samantha and I had with each other for the first 18 months or so that we 'knew' one another. There were just little shared posts such as:

Me: 'Noel Gallagher has a new album out by his band High Flying Birds. Have you heard it?'
Her: 'Yes, it's great. Thanky!'

Granted, not exactly memorable. I think I may have sent her some odds and ends about Autism too, but if you think I'm going back over two years of countless thousands of Facebook updates to find out, I congratulate your dedication to intensive research and I'm bloody glad it's yours and not mine. Life is too short as it is.

Facebook being the judge of our moods and interests that it is, its programming assesses how we rank our Friends by the number of likes, comments and shares we make on or of their posts. Those we really, really like show up on our home pages; others are consigned to the bullpen. Look at the bottom of your Friends list. Put this book down for a moment and do that. (tum te tum) Right. Now how many of those names did you have to think hard about as to just who the heck is this person anyway? Samantha was somewhere in the middle. I knew who she was, but she did not regularly appear on my news feed. In relation to Johnny Carson's version of The Tonight Show, she was no Bob Hope or David Steinberg; more like a Joan Embery from the San Diego Zoo, an irregular regular.

However, I did notice when Samantha's photo rolled past on the ticker with the partial message of I wish I could see Roger Waters in...

Oh I was so bursting with life and optimism then. I was in Ireland! Writing Big Important Books about Human Rights! I had a girlfriend! I was a music writer! Share the Good Feelings! I clicked on the Ticker box to read Samantha's full comment. The former front man of Pink Floyd was doing once last tour of his epic album The Wall and he would be performing its monstrous stage show that summer in both the Aviva Stadium in Dublin as well as at the new Wembley in London. I commented: That could be arranged.

I thought of two things. One, Waters was an interesting character although quite a prickly interview from what I'd seen and heard of him over the years. That might make him an interesting subject for the Human Rights book as I did not want it to be a dull compilation of laws and court judgements; rather, I wanted to also explore the role of the arts in breeding a spirit of freedom-based rebellion. As well, I needed a photographer to cover these music events with me. So, why not? I could make this young woman's dream come true and isn't that what life is supposed to be all about?

Yes, that was my entire motive. Samantha was good-looking, true, but I wasn't in the market. That first weekend with Claudia had not gone perfectly, yet a little awkwardness was to be expected and I was going to her home for Christmas as well. I don't cheat and I don't do affairs. I just wanted to help Samantha get ahead in her career.

I think it must be something I got from my grandfather, The Chief, as well as my Mom. Always help others any way that you can and accept nothing in return except good feelings. That said, I had noticed that any time I did a random act of kindness, it was given back to me almost ten-fold in good fortune and almost immediately at that. So I guess I really am a selfish bastard. Helping others always helps me.

I explained the basics of my proposal on Samantha's public Facebook then went into the details of it in a direct message – the first of – good grief! I just looked it up – 40,000 direct messages.

(I need to absorb that detail for a moment. 40,000 direct messages was just about exactly 100 a day as we got to know one another, fell in love, rose in anger, fell apart, got back together and finally came to an end. It was virtually a running conversation from dawn until dawn.)

What I suggested was that she could come over to Ireland for the summer concert at the Aviva, of course stay at Toberbeg with myself and Claudia and I'd work on arranging an interview with Waters. Samantha was both thrilled and equally worried about it. She wasn't a professional after all. I was gallant:

A professional is just an amateur who hasn't been paid yet.
You know I just take photos with my Galaxy 3?
No I didn't! Really? Wow, it's incredible what you do with it. So do you want the gig?
You really think I can do it?
Yes. I believe in giving new talent a break and you are very, very talented.

And so it began ...

... I have to smile as I write this, sitting over my morning black coffee in the bistro of the Youth Hostel in Berwock-upon-Tweed. Much of what you've read has been written here, from a small square table next to a window to my left and a plug-in for my laptop drilled into a steel girger behind me. Want some proof? Here is proof:

What makes me smile right now though is realizing that although neither of them will be pleased with this observation, yet it was really Audrey that brought Samantha and I together. God serves up irony the way Texans pour drinks, large and undisguised, with the same intent of enjoying the guests stumbling across the porch and banging into the patio furniture.

The Moonlight Faery and I were on yet another break in our long-distance whatever-it-was relationship. This was either the third or the fourth ending of Facebook friendship, one does lose count after awhile, and this one came after a very brief dispute when I wrongly accused her of liking the book Twilight. Audrey was offended and – poof! - she was gone.

Twilight has been the bane of my existence. No I never read it although I did snicker my way through the first two unintentionally hilarious movies. Plan 9 From Outer Space had the cogent plotting of Hitchcock and the breathtaking visuals or Eisenstein in comparison to the clunky teen vampire toyboy fantasy. However, the only real argument Kimberly and I ever had was over my refusal to join she and Amanda in reading the trilogy of books – I was accused of intellectual snobbery. And then there was the break from Audrey because I thought I had seen Twilight on her list of Likes under books. (It wasn't her, it was one of her daughters) Anyway, damn you Stephenie Meyer.

As has been a constant with Audrey ever since the moment I first came in contact with her, she still fascinated me and I absolutely love writing both to her and about her. So soon after I arrived in Ireland I bought an old-fashioned Christmas Card, wrote her a poem and mailed it to her. I didn't have her actual address, but this was Ireland, Kill is a small village and I figured it would get to her door as indeed it did. Within two or three days, around December 20^th, in my Facebook message list there was no longer a blank expressioned blue female face of Facebook User; instead, Audrey was back again. And so we caught up on my adventures. I asked her if she had plans for New Year's Eve as at that point I was thinking of holding a party at Toberbeg and would she like to come, bring a friend or her son, there's lots of room, Claudia and the kids will be coming and I've asked a photographer from near Glasgow named Samantha if she and her partner Daniel would like to come etcetera and so forth ...

Audrey was going to be in England for Christmas, so it was a no to the party and as I was to discover there was no way for Samantha and Daniel to afford trips to Ireland for parties; and as it turned out there was no party as Claudia and I were soon to end our relationship. For the last, I thank (and I truly do thank) Audrey for her advice.

Claudia lived in a very posh modern enclave of houses a few miles south of Sligo. The streets and cul-de-sacs rose in narrow terraces up a hill, from which there was a most lovely view of the town, the bay...and usually rainclouds churning their way towards me when I took Stella out for a widdle for her and a cigarette for me. I didn't smoke much when I visited Claudia – I've quit enough times to know that smokers really do stink like shit – still, now and then one has a need. And as I have always done while walking Stella, I tote along my mobile to check email and Facebook.

Depressing Realization: Bloody hell, I'm a Facebook addict!

I had driven back up to Sligo on December 23^rd... not getting quite as badly lost this time, so no elderly Irish pedestrians were forced to climb into the Jag's passenger seat and direct me towards the intersection where the road V'd off to Claudia's development. We had taken her children to the cinema – Claudia's 8 year old son and I were all for the new James Bond picture Skyfall, but the women won the day so we went to see The Hobbit. Always defer to the wishes of women, even when one of them is 10. Actually, it was a good movie. As my earlier comments about Twilight may imply, the whole fantasy realm isn't my usual cup of tea – cup of lukewarm used bathwater more like it – however there was a mad sort of Monty Python humour to The Hobbit's first half hour that got me giggling and given the bland state of movies today, give me a giggle or three and you have my thumb raised.

Once back, I took Stella out from the mud room where she had been kept away from Claudia's cat, and off we went for our walkies while the children were being tucked away. We turned up the lane to go and investigate the cows behind the development and I started scrolling through my phone. There were some nice comments on a few photos I had taken of us all, including one from Samantha. Then there was a message from Audrey.

Merry Christmas Hubert. Looks like you are all having fun.
Aubrey! Good to hear from you. Yes, we're having a grand time. Just talking Stella out before bedtime.
You're staying at Claudia's house then?
Yes. I'll head back on St. Stephen's Day to check on the house.
Are her children there?
Yes. They're getting tucked in.
And you're sleeping with Claudia?

Now that had made me feel a bit awkward, I admit. I had known their mother live and in person for barely over a week and I had thought, 'Is this right?' So I had my doubts. Audrey had no doubts whatsoever.

Call me old-fashioned, but do you think that is good? I do not.
I did kind of wonder.
It's none of my business. (pause between messages) People are different these days. (pause between messages) I could not do that.
I see your point Audrey. Yeah, I don't feel quite right about this either.
Well, I leave it up to you. I wish you well.
Thanks for that. Sincerely. You and the chilluns have a beautiful Christmas. Hugs.

I lit a second cigarette while Stella tugged at her long pink leather leash, grumbling that she couldn't run across the street to see what was barking behind a fence. I tugged back at Stella while my discomfort tugged at me too. Smoke curled up from my cigarette mixed with the steam from my exhale and those clouds mixed with fireplace smoke from the houses as sky clouds slid across the moon. Clouds in the air; clouds in my conscience.

Sexual politics and the age of the internet ... no wonder it seems sometimes that half of all the people we know are fighting a confused depression, while the other half just wander around in a false glow of booze, pills or an arrogant 'I just don't give a shit anymore' attitude. That of course is an exaggeration, but just barely an exaggeration.

Yes, of course Audrey had a point and I knew it. It was one thing to sleep with Claudia the week before when the children were at their paternal grandparents for the weekend, but to be in bed with Mummy when they awoke and wanted their usual early morning snuggle while watching the TV hung from the ceiling at the foot of the huge, duvet covered bed? No, there was something wrong here. Kimberly and I had been quite open in our physical affection in front of Amanda and Bradley – we felt it was in fact good to hug and kiss in front of the kids – yet even there Kimberly did not even want me to meet the children until after we had been together a good few months...and she was right. Claudia went to bed early that night. When I retired, it was to the guest room downstairs. The curtain lowered and the lights went dim on our relationship soon afterwards.

In saying all this, please do not interpret it as any condemnation on Claudia. There are two things in this world on which everyone has an expert opinion: how to train your dog and how to raise your kids. And nobody knows a damn thing about it. Anyway, I am happy to report that Claudia eventually did find a nice man and I truly hope she is happy with him. We had a beautiful family Christmas in Sligo and for that I am truly grateful to her.

So as it all turned out, Stella and I spent New Year's Eve alone at Toberbeg. I can't say as I minded that at all. I was still too shy to just show up in a pub for the festivities in Dunlavin, plus one rule I truly do stick to – even then – was to never, ever drink and drive. So instead I drove to the petrol station in Naas, 6 miles or 20 minutes away and filled the trunk of the Jag with firelogs, then stopped at the Tesco in town for crunchy comestibles, a bottle of Gordon's and one of a pink Prosecco sparking wine. Mom had always loved pink champagne and I had a couple of toasts to make at midnight, including one to her urn on top of the beaten up old piano in the corner of the living room.

I had been chatting fairly regularly on-line with both Audrey and Samantha, amongst others. Audrey was sympathetic and hoped that I wasn't feeling lonely (I wasn't at all; I am quite used to keeping my own company) while also teasing me with, 'It's a good thing I hadn't planned on coming to your party with no one there!' Just to clarify that, if the party had happened I would have come up with some kind of guest list from the farmers and such in the area.

Samantha was not surprised that Claudia and I had broken up, although she too was concerned about my feelings. Well, it just hadn't worked because of different energies, so how badly could I feel? Independently reporting, Claudia said almost the exact same thing to Samantha. What was interesting though is that Samantha had suspected something was up from the body language in those photos I had taken – a little body distance, how heads were turned, the lack of loving arms gripping waists. This was my first insight into Samantha's, well, insights.

I got the big purple framed fireplace in the living room lit ... eventually. Although the firelogs from the petrol station were wrapped in plastic, the wrapping served as an excellent seal for containing moisture and if there is one thing to be said in describing Ireland...it is the home of moist. Like clockwork, if I hung the laundry on the line on a brieezy, sunny afternoon by the time I'd get to the Centra store in Dunlavin to pick up the day's supplies – a mere two minute drive – by the time I got back everything would have been re-rinsed by a random rain cloud. Well, it certainly meant I had fresh-scented clothes for those four months.

That fire lit and a meal of lamb chops with Nigella Lawson's recommended roasted potatoes eaten, I laid back on one couch while Stella curled up beneath the coffee table and I resumed my on-line chatting while listening to RTE Radio One playing from the stereo in the dining room.

Those are the Irish nights I most miss and yearn to return to. To gaze into a fire, perhaps write a poem or a few hundred words of fiction, sipping on a colortini and listening to a great radio station. Such nights were everything I had hoped for. RTE played every kind of music I loved late at night – I heard more Leonard Cohen there than I ever heard in Canada. Also Blues, jazz, The Beatles and the occasional Irish lament that made the soul wish it had eyes to cry from. When Stella needed to go out, I'd stand by the wood fence running along the back of the property and look out over the great dark bowl of the farm valley then up to the sky and just – yes – fall in love with each star shining above. Those still moments, with no traffic, no neighbours, just the occasional rustling of a breeze and a wisp of a cloud; they were the silent music that played while I composed most of the Moonlight Faery poems.

I was surprised that Samantha was on-line at all. Did she and Daniel not have parties to go to in Scotland? No, they weren't big for parties, instead just staying home with Joshua and Daniel's invalid mother. 'Well that's nice,' I thought, remembering the New Year's Eves past when I would do the same for my own Mom. Even when I went out to one of the big hotel galas, I always had phoned Mom no later than ten minutes after midnight. No need to worry about that this year, for there she was on top of the piano in her square, brown urn.

I made sure I messaged Audrey at exactly midnight. She too was spending the night home alone with her son – the girls of course had places to go and people to meet. I toasted her from 12 miles away, Happy New Year St. Aubrey! Then we spoke more in depth about Christmas and how Claudia and I had ended things; as T.S. Eliot said, 'not with a bang but with a whimper.'

We talked about the Christmas service at the Cathedral in Sligo; the scent of the frankincense and the sound of the choirs, everything that is beautiful about the Catholic faith when it chooses to display its best displays of love and pure theatre. And Audrey told me I would probably love the Christmas service in the chapel at Trinity College in Dublin as it has a thrilling massed choir. Although neither Audrey or I are what you would call devout Catholics (we do not easily tolerate hypocrisy), that would be a Protestant service, but no matter, I said! I don't think God would particularly care. In my mind, I was already thinking that I would spend that next Christmas exactly there ... and as that thought flowed into a happy little champagne dream of imagining walking into that chapel with Audrey ... you can guess ... for I was indeed falling in love with her all over again.

Samantha was still up at two or three AM on January 1^st. I would find out later that she rarely went to sleep before three. And so I told her all about the wonderful Audrey, my Moonlight Faery and how it was only right that Claudia and I had not worked out for now, now I was free to be with the woman I really loved. Happy New Year.

So that is why I say that it really was Audrey that brought Samantha and I together. I started talking to Samantha about Audrey and so opening up that creaky romantic heart within my chest and how the splinter of ice that had formed within it after Kimberly's aneurysm had finally melted. As the weeks passed, I would preview the poems I wrote for Audrey to Samantha and she in turn would suggest possible meetings for me and my mysterious, almost mythical woman from Kill. And then when Audrey vanished yet again ...

... for she did.

This time it was in early February, just before Valentine's Day and our birthdays. I remember it very well for I had spent two weeks working on a poem for Audrey, before junking the carefully edited version and going back to the original rush of inspiration with just a few minor tweaks altered.

Why do it that way, you wonder? In discussing that poem in particular with my friend the Tea Lady, a wonderful woman in Thunder Bay who was and is very much a spiritual advisor to me, she tut-tutted when I sent her the heavily altered draft that I had lost the emotional inspiration of the original. I was honing a craft rather than expressing a heartfelt art. On reflection, I realized she was correct. To this day, much as I used to do when I was writing hit plays, I do not force words on my characters or the character that is my poetic voice. Although there may be a cleverer, more sparkling, show-off sort of way of expressing a thought, that original soul-whispered idea is always written from a place closest to the Truth and to Love. That in my opinion is true art. A speech or an essay, perhaps a review are the workshops for the craftsman. The poet or creative writer needs to listen to nothing but what the moment of creation dictates.

This is the poem:

Of the Moon

What is it?

I ask you what is it about this full moon rolling slowly

Over the Wicklow hills that suggests a small hours' walk

And leads to me leaning against the wooden planked fence,

Staring across the dark saucer of winter's quiet fields

And there above the tallest western peak -

It's gauze-covered round blank face

Suggesting the shape of clouds around it, below

Ah but I know it -

What the low lunar light illuminates

I know why it draws me

And it is not the moon itself that enthralls me

Although I pretend sometimes that it is

It is the Faery

Singular

There is but one

The Moonlight Faery who dances in the calm, white light

She is my dream yet not my reality

This Faery of fire and passion and grace

That is so near yet so far

That I can hear her voice while not able to touch her hand

Although I reach

I stare at the moon

See the crescent start to form

Indicating another month about to pass.

I am patient.

A Moonlight Faery shall not be rushed.

I hear her laugh.

And I smile.

As it turned out, I didn't send that to Audrey for months because, as I said, she disappeared again. It took me a few months to figure out why and yes, my Moonlight Faery confirmed that I was correct in my speculation. Audrey has the damndest knack of knowing what I'm thinking before the thought has even reached my consciousness, and in this case she knew that I was becoming drawn to Samantha before I realized it.

Still thinking purely professionally I assure you, I was gung ho on achieving predominance as a music writer through my association with American Blues Scene magazine. That was my 'fun writing', a relaxing break from discussing the legacies of Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela and so forth in the Human Rights book. I had become friends with several of the great modern Blues artists over the years and I noticed that there was a terrific Blues Festival coming up that July in Cahors, France. My buddy and my favourite singer in the world Dana Fuchs would be performing there, as well as Devon Allman and the rest of the crew from Royal Southern Brotherhood, plus dozens of other acts. I suggested to Samantha that she should come with me – I found a charming hotel called La Truite Dorée (translated as The Golden trout) a few miles away from the Festival site, rustic with a three star restaurant and as the name implies set beside a narrow river begging to be photographed. Of course I would pay; pick her up in the Jag and away we'd go! Samantha, despite her usual hesitations ('Are you sure I'm good enough?' 'Yes!') agreed.

As I did with every major ... or minor major thing that happened in my life, I messaged Audrey about it. Oh I was crowing like a stud rooster bobbing through the barnyard impressing the newest flock of fresh chickens. Look at how I'm giving Samantha a career! I am Beowulf! I am the ring giver!

Audrey didn't block me right away, but there was no reply. After a few Good Mornings! from me with equal silence from her end, I decided to let her be. This is just speculation on my part, although I'd be willing to wager that I'm right about this, I suspect that Audrey feared that I'd just show up at her front door for Valentine's or her birthday with a bouquet of flowers in hand. When I had joked months before, when I was still in Canada, that I was going to do just that one day that had prompted her second ending of our friendship.

Would I have done that? WOULD I do that? No. If I was writing a novel based on Audrey and me, that would be a great scene and one I enjoyed imagining. But if there is one thing I have learned over my life as a man (Philip Roth – prop.) it is that surprising a woman with grand romantic gestures is more likely a stumbling entrance of bad timing rather than a swooping in and sweeping up of a tearfully grateful love interest. Be aware men, be Very aware!

This intensified the friendship I had formed with Samantha. To be frank, I was embarrassed to tell Lydia or Vicki or the Tea Lady about this latest, shall we say, break in the action. Besides, this had now happened so many times that I was kind of used to it, so no heartbreak, just a temporary retreat while I waited for Audrey's next re-appearance. Still, I did miss her incredibly and told Samantha as much. Thus, while I wrote the latest chapter of the Human Rights book we would chatter back and forth in Facebook messages; not about anything intense, just music or how's work or how's the weather today in Scotland?

When I went the week of February 20^th to London for my planned 'Happy Birthday to Me' theatre week with my friend Alasse Carnessir (the trip described in the chapter Theatre and Curtains) I didn't message Samantha at all. That, I found out later, was when she realized she had feelings for me beyond being her nominal Boss and Mentor. She missed me.

After I returned, I did tell Samantha and pretty much everyone I knew that I was facing a fight against being deported from Ireland. She was shocked and concerned and wanted to know how I was bearing up. I was still cocky and confident back then – surely this was just some bureaucratic kerfuffle that would be rapidly resolved? - yet I was touched that someone I known for such a short time actually cared. She cared. Hmmm, Samantha cared. And ... as I thought of it ... I looked back at the various references she had made to Daniel, not that there were many of those, and they were all rather per forma as though mentioning a flatmate rather than a lover or a partner. Oh i curse my mind, for I started to speculate as to possibilities for that is what my mind does.

March 6^th. About midnight. After chatting on and off that evening, with the usual colortini in one hand and another fire scorching away in the fireplace, I sent Samantha this message:

There's something I want to tell you, but I don't want it to affect our friendship no matter what.
Bash on!
Are you sure?
Yes.
I'm realizing that I have feelings for you. I debated whether or not I should tell you that.

(A pause. I sip. I hold my breath, but only metaphorically. I do however think, 'That was dumb. That was stupid. That was wrong.')

That's okay. I'm flattered.
You're sure it's okay?
Yes! It's okay. Tell me more.

The band started to play and the dancers chose partners and danced.

I asked the Big Question. Was she in love with Daniel?

I do love him, yes. But am I in love with him? No.

There is no need or purpose to go through it all line by line, message by message. A brief and simply written biography of Samantha Owen will tell you all you really need to know.

Samantha grew up in a fairly idyllic setting in pastoral Wiltshire. The family home which her mother still lives in is a sturdy late Georgian construction at the end of a country lane; the kind of home that has a rear garden filled with flowers, pathways and arches; the kind of garden a child can let her imagination run freely in, for it can be anywhere and she can be anyone. She grew up with a half-brother on her mother's side and two parents until the combination of drink and eventually another woman took her father away. In a final act of drink-inspired defiance, Samantha's father shaved off the goatee which her mother loved. I still wear a goatee; Samantha likes to sculpt her men in her father's image, so we all have grown a beard and mustache for her. I've been tempted to shave, but we do become used to things.

It is so simple, so plainly thought with an undergraduate's certitude about the solutions to all life's complexities being right in front of us if only * sigh * over-complicated thinkers would just sweep away all the nonsense and see, that everything about Samantha is a result of that childhood abandonment by her father; a father who she more closely resembles and a father who now goes months and years without the slightest outreach of comment. Of course, one knows that there is never any one explanation for any person's personality – we do not follow the gravitational path of a pinball after it has been smacked in its silver rump by a Bally game flipper. Still, if life is as it so often described, a chain of events then it is undeniably true that those first links are the commencing point of the chain and they cannot be omitted as to their cause of the effects without shattering the whole chain into meaningless chunks of metal and obscured purpose.

From that beginning of Daimlers, Jaguars and a country school with a class size of fifteen or so, a bucolic childhood that so many of you might have traded in your own to have, there is a lesson sadly learnt. Lovely can be boring. School can be boring. Comfort can be boring. So it was that Samantha, never an eager student although she is extremely quick-witted and much smarter than she gives herself credit for, decided to make a Big Change. She got married at age 20 to a broken man.

Samantha had a simmering yet audible resentment any time I expressed my deep and admittedly rose-tinted love of Ireland. She had her reasons, as we follow the chain links to one particularly bent and misshapen as though whacked by the head of a sledgehammer. Her husband's name was Keith and he had served in the SAS during what is too softly described as The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Keith had been spat on, sworn at, been smacked with angrily thrown blotched vegetables and sulphured eggs; spent every off duty hour in as much danger as on duty. There is a theory of quantum physics I deeply ascribe to – the act of observation affects the entity observed. If we view a person or situation with love and hope, it can not only reflect but actually take on those qualities. There is a corollary to that happy hippie belief:

He who is seen with hatred learns to become hate itself.

Keith became a drunk. Hunter S. Thompson once wrote that there are three stages of drunkenness: Strutting drunk, stumbling drunk and crawling drunk. That was a great description, but only a physical description, one seen from a safe distance. He left out the five-coloured display of emotional drunkenness when alcohol is poured through a brain: The Golden Wit, The Bright Green Laughter, The Purple Romantic, The Blue Depressant, and the last and worst non-colour of colours, The Black Anger. Keith lived in the last zone in his drunken state. And he hit Samantha. A lot.

This is where the firework writing is supposed to come in – vivid descriptions of meaty fists, the wild glare of eyes, the sound of a broken tooth, what a tear tastes like when it leaks into the mouth mixed with blood. You know enough. Abuse is pain. Pain is to be shunned, not made poetic.

It took Samantha thirteen years to finally escape from Keith; thirteen years of explaining to colleagues at the veterinary clinic where she worked that those bruises were just because of her clumsiness. 'Silly me! Stumbled again!' You can speculate as I have whether any of then knew the truth. The police did know, however the local Yorkshire constabulary did nothing beyond an overnight drying out of Keith and then I leave it to your undoubtedly correct conclusion as to what he would be like the next night when he was not drunk enough to have forgotten where he slept the night before or who it was who sent him there. Exactly.

She ran to Scotland, to a seaside town called Kirkcaldy. Samantha had met a man on-line named Douglas who offered her shelter. He was older, he grew a goatee, they fell in love, Samantha became pregnant. Those first three things were fine by Douglas; the last was not in his plans. His great failing as told to me was that he would become silent and distant, communicating with his own common-law wife (Samantha has not yet divorced Keith for fear he will know her address) through texting ... while in the same house.

Her next escape was to Daniel, three years before I really met Samantha. Daniel and she also met on-line (are you detecting a common thread to her story, my story, Audrey's story?). To be frank, I have always believed that Samantha had an affair while she was still living with Douglas. There is a little phrase Samantha uses when she feels ... I've never liked the word 'horny' but it is what it is I guess. She says that she fizzes and becomes a Fizz Bomb. Funny little coincidence then that a few months before she left Douglas – she came back 15 minutes late from having coffee with Daniel and there were her suitcases packed and at the front door, a large hint if ever there was one – Daniel commented on her Facebook status, 'Good morning Fizz Bomb.' As I say, surely just a funny little coincidence ...

So there they were, at the time Samantha and I fell in love on-line. They lived and live in a house which obviously I have never seen except through Google Street View, yet I cannot imagine. When I would chastise Samantha for not having a proper breakfast (her eating habits are appalling) she'd say that to get to the kitchen it was a trip down 28 stair steps then another 28 back up. If you can suggest the actual architectural dynamics of that, do let me know. It sounds as though the contractors forgot to put rooms in a second storey.

The city in Scotland where they live I did visit once, over-nighting it at a motel on my journey between Ireland and Berwick. The city is called (by me) Flem, within shouting or perhaps screaming distance of Glasgow. Flem is of historical importance in modern Scotland, having thrice been named the worst place to live in that country that seeks statehood. Well, better a booby prize than no prize at all.

Samantha, Daniel and Joshua all commute. Daniel works in construction, while Samantha still works in a seniors' home in Kirkcaldy where Joshua also attends school. An hour and a half by coach or auto each morning and back again each evening, although Joshua does spend half his time at Douglas' home. Maybe I am being harsh, but such is not a life; it is an existence. What a pity that tatty little porn novel grabbed the phrase shades of grey for its title as that would otherwise have perfectly described the life of Samantha Owen.

No wonder, oh no wonder at all that she was intrigued by the romantic offerings of a low-grade dashing expatriate Canadian writer who soon enough started writing her daily poems and had the most charming deep voice when we started to call each other on a regular basis over Skype. Even Audrey said, when the Moonlight Faery and I were speaking again, 'She should leave Daniel if she is not in love with him. You love each other and she would have a much better life with you.' There was though an inhibiting factor. Daniel had been diagnosed with leukemia – Grade C, the least dangerous – but how would you feel? More to the point of this triangle: How did Samantha feel?

Onwards.

Courtyards and Cathedrals: Letter From England

2014-01-17T12:53:00.000-08:00

Courtyards and Cathedrals

Letter From England:

by Hubert O'Hearn

When I was a pink-cheeked young Masters student studying Education at the University of Windsor my Graduate Assistanceship was tied towards my doing research and marking for a Professor of Architecture. Why? Beats the hell out of me too. The nearest work I had ever accomplished in terms of house building involved a deck of playing cards and a coffee table.

I'm sad and more than a bit mortified that I cannot remember the name of the professor I was attached to. I recall her as being very pleasant, yet we had little contact over the school year. We both realized that I was incapable of adding much to her work, so we just sort of waved pleasantly at one another when we were both at opposite ends of the same hallway in the Fac/Ed building at Windsor – a resuscitated high school under a highway overpass. What it lacked in charm it equally lacked in philosophical stimulation.

However, I did take a couple of things from my year in Windsor, which places me one up on the pickpocket who only took one thing – that being my wallet. I learned that the Finns had long ago worked out that flat roofs are a lousy idea in a snowy climate; and that architecture itself is a fascinating field. With that, were I to re-start my life, there is only one career I would consider ... being a porn star in classy, Merchant-Ivory interpretations of Shakespeare. However when that didn't pan out, I'd look at urban architecture.

It was Ken Greenberg's book Walking Home that really did it for me. Yes, I'd developed a curiosity about architecture in general as a result of Windsor, but Greenberg's analysis of what makes a city livable has changed the way I look at any town or city I live in or visit. I now notice a city's physical dynamic and mentally note how it works or doesn't work. As an example, I stepped out just now for a smoke. (Yes darlings, I still smoke. I am also a known socialist, I've been known to swear in mixed company, and Canada really is the dullest country on Earth. There, I've confessed all my sins in one parentheses.) The hostel I am staying in, as with much of Berwick-upon-Tweed, as with most of the towns and cities I have seen across these British Isles is built around a central courtyard. I assume that was once meant for the accommodation of horses. I'm not sure about that as the horsey pooh-pooh was picked up or more likely paved over decades ago.

Well, a courtyard makes for a neighbourhood within a neighbourhood within a town. This one has park benches and picnic tables, perfect places for meeting neighbours and/or bumming a fag. The latter means, 'asking for a cigarette' you dirty-minded low-life. But the concept works. When I think of Canadian apartment blocks or other such multi-use buildings, I recall sterile, plane-faceted buildings on otherwise dull boulevards where to 'sit outside' means screaming conversation over passing traffic while grabbing hard onto one's seat against a hard winter wind that threatens to land you and your little dog somewhere in Oz.

More so, I was literally struck to a standstill recently by the magnificence architecture can offer the observer. Because I'd just been released from the penitentiary without a penny in my pocket – long story – I found myself wandering through Durham here in England in the wee-est of wee small hours of the morning while a misty rain absolved me of my sins. And there, just as a church's bells chimed five, I emerged from a windy cobblestoned street to be smacked dead in the eyesight by the thousand year old sight of Durham Cathedral.

There had been times in my life when I have questioned the, I thought madness of building these monumental structures, so thick and so tall, without benefit of truck or crane, just muscle and winch raising massive stones up, up, up over 200 feet in height – and on top of a hill! - for what possible indulgence of a bishop's vanity?

No vanity at all. No, anything but vanity. This Cathedral was a testament to modesty, the required modesty of man. We lead our individual lives in the flap of a hummingbird's wings as measured against time, with all our fears, hopes and raised then broken dreams – and we are nothing. We are nothing except our brevity. But beyond us, there is indeed something noble in the combined purpose of the hummingbird's urgent flapping. When we are measured together into a long chain of civilization, we are then someone, something, some collective cache of ideas worth knowing and passing on. That is why this cathedral and the others like it exist. They remind us of that which is greater than ourselves. We live to make permanent structures – either physical or philosophical - greater than than our individual selves.

And so...architecture matters. Our spaces are testament to our love.

Be seeing you.

The Prisoner - My Days in Jail

2014-01-09T06:51:00.002-08:00

(This is a chapter from my upcoming memoir Dance in Lava: A Memoir of a Writer's Year Abroad. I look forward to any feedback in the comments below)

The Prisoner

Life being the carefully arranged set of coincidences and ironies that it is, well beyond the range of the imagination of any video game manufacturer, I see in retrospect that it was inevitable that I would one day become The Prisoner. The Patrick McGoohan series was my favourite of all favourites when I was a boy and yes, even more than Star Trek...

“I am not a number! I am a Free Man!”

“Who is Number One?”

“Be seeing you.”

Ah yes, 'Be seeing you.' Let me take a wild stab at a number and no, not Number 6. I would estimate that over the course of my eighteen years as a journalist I've probably written close to 2000 columns, feature stories, reviews etc. and so forth. Of that 2000 I probably have signed off with Be seeing you in 90% of them. I enjoyed the deconstruction of those three simple words, accompanied as they were in the television series by a hand gesture composed of forming a sort of monocle with the thumb and index finger held to the eye followed by the same hand pointing to the recipient.

Be – existence

Seeing – observation

You – the observed

To exist then is to watch and to understand those within our viewing range. And there is also the creepy-crawly underlying warning that this act of observance is constant, perpetual, on-going and never-ending; this some 40 years before the NSA and GCHQ started to monitor every electronic communication we make. You and I – we observe – yet we are also the observed. We are never allowed to be alone; even when we think we are, we are still the observed experiment on the slide beneath an omnipresent microscope.

(An interesting little irony. I just hit Command-S to save the above in OpenOffice, my favourite writing platform. A warning box popped up saying that, 'This document has been edited by others. If you save it, those changes may be lost. Do you wish to continue?' I'm sure that was just an eccentricity of the new version of OpenOffice I recently installed, but under the circumstance of what I had just written...oh my!)

And so it was that near the end of my stay in England, I too briefly became The Prisoner. Now, I wasn't spirited off after being rendered unconscious by a nerve gas to an antique yet modern Village somewhere in the known yet unknown world. No, it was much more mundane than that; but still, as a three-day period where I observed a strange new way of existence more intensely than I had ever observed anything before ... I understood the world of McGoohan's Number 6.

My money had ran out. That much we had established. What with the quest (seemingly simple yet finally proven impossible) to find a new rental house or flat for Stella and me being blocked at each turn, seven weeks staying at three different Bed and Breakfast houses had made a church mouse seem wealthy as Smaug in comparison to me. Yet, I could see no other option other than to extend my stays at £60 a night, the cheapest I could find, at least until I could move into the YHA Youth Hostel for £10 a night until my new Canadian Passport arrived and I could return to Canada to assist Harald with his plans for an arts centre up the Rideau Valley from Kingston, Ontario.

It is never an easy thing for a man like me who has led for the most part a comfortable upper-middle class existence to admit that one's money has run out, yet I had to. I grant you I could at least truthfully satisfy myself that this was a temporary condition what with the imminent release of Random Acts of Love as well as the book series for Applause Books. I was successful! I just hadn't been paid yet for being successful. That allowed me to ask friends and family for loans, not gifts; investment as I would pay back with interest, not charity. At least I still had that thin red hair of pride to hold onto.

Until it snapped. Snip! There goes the red hair.

It was New Year's Eve. As noted above, I planned to leave the Cobbled Yard Hotel in two days and at that point I still expected the old family business to come through with a loan sufficient to keep me and Stella alive and sheltered until we could fly back at the end of the month. (They didn't come through as it turns out. We'll get to that in the next chapter.) New Year's Eve 2013 – the end of a year that had begun so happily at Toberbeg Lodge in Ireland, toasting Audrey at a distance with champagne at midnight, now ended after an epic romance, victory, defeat and a state of homelessness.

The Cobbled Yard

That December 31^st morning I thought my biggest concern was whether or not I'd be bored that evening. Oh I'd considered going out to one of the pubs nearby on the High Street and enjoying all the shared revelry and laughter; however I had only been sober a relatively short time, so best not to take the risk of that doomful saying, 'I'll just have one – a red wine for my heart ... or maybe a white wine so I don't have purple lips in case of a random kiss at midnight.' No no no no and uh-uh NO! If I had thought it through that far, that indeed was a thought too far. So instead I went to the Co-Op Foods and picked up two sandwiches, a bag of sausage rolls, a bag of cinnamon doughnuts and a bottle of ginger ale. Graham Norton would be having the cast of Monty Python on his New Year's Eve special and that would be celebration enough. Heck, I'd message Audrey at midnight through Facebook and make a joke of it – 'Last year champagne, this year ginger ale. Oh how the mighty have fallen, eh dear friend? Hugs!' Ah such larks Pip, such larks we had planned!

Then, about five PM there came a rather serious sounding knock on the door. I was in Room 4. It's tempting under the circumstances to say I was in Room 6, just to make The Prisoner motif a little more perfect, but I'm afraid that wasn't the case. There are only five rooms in the whole place. I digress.

The owner of The Cobbled Yard, Linda Miller – a very nice person of whom I have nothing but kind words to say – had wondered why I hadn't paid up my stay after my first extension. (I had thought I could move into the hostel for December 27^th, but it was booked solid until January 2^nd) She had phoned Meadow Hills Guest House, where I had stayed until December 21^st, and discovered I still owed money there. Yes, I had partially paid that bill with an agreement to pay out the rest as soon as possible; nonetheless there was still money owing. Linda worried I would 'crash and dash' and I can't say as I blame her one bit. When I worked at the Comfort Inn in Thunder Bay, we would take the same dubious view of evidently dodgy guests. So, she phoned the Berwick Constabulary to investigate. The knock on the door was followed by information that the police were on their way.

Enter a brief interlude of panic.

I sent out a series of identical Facebook messages to three friends who might maybe, possibly, oh let's throw a Hail Mary pass to the end zone!, have enough room on their credit cards to cover a £660 bill – that's just about exactly $1100 in Canadian or American funds. So as not to leave you in suspense, as I found out later no they couldn't. No matter. Hail Mary Passes only have a success rate of about 7% and as we know, credit cards charge at least 17% ... that may be a non sequitir but in the moment my entire life felt like a non sequitir.

In came the police, Sergeant Stephen Crane (did he have to have a literary name?) and Constable Susan Aitken. Stella greeted them warmly and I gave her a snack of kibble to keep her occupied. I sat back in the comfy chair – 'No! Not the comfy chair!' - by the window while the officers stood and asked questions.

Q: Do you have the money at present to pay the outstanding bill?

A: No.

Q: Will you have the money to pay the outstanding bill?

A: I have requested a loan to be placed in my account by Thursday.

Q: Will that money be in place by then?

A: I am quite sure it will be. (Ha! As I later was to discover.) However, I do not know that for absolute fact.

In case you're wondering about my memory, yes I actually do talk that formally in high-stress situations. In all truth, from the moment the police arrived right through to the end of this some 72 hour nightmare, I was in a mental state that I'd describe as a genial, benign calm. What had I learnt from all the crises from the time of Kimberly's aneurysm to this? Worry and fear help Nothing.

Q: We would like to ask you to come to the station house voluntarily. You do not have to and you can have a solicitor provided to you. You may also leave at any time unless you are charged.

A: No, I'd like to come with you. As a matter of fact, I'm actually relieved you're here. (True! I was sick of all this.) I'm more than happy to answer any and all questions. But one question: What happens to Stella?

Stella was able to come along and I want to stress that the constabulary could not have been better to her – God bless the English and their love of dogs. She would be placed in a kennel, the Berwick Animal Rescue Kennel (B.A.R.K.) where she was beautifully taken care of. That, I must tell you, was my greatest relief. Do what you want with me, but please take care of my dearest furry friend and companion.

So, off we went and yes it really is just like Inspector Morse or Prime Suspect. The interview is recorded on disc, two officers are present and the British version of the Miranda Rights are read and agreed to. I refused a solicitor. All I wanted to do was describe the mess I was in, be clear as to my intent and motivations and let both chips fall and shit smack into fans. As you already know the story of book delays, non-payments, the three house and two flat let agreements having fallen apart, I won't repeat it all here.

Charges were laid. Fraud, or to use its ancient term, Bilking.

My only difference of opinion was that I refused the notion put forward by Sergeant Crane, as indeed is his job, that I intended to defraud the Cobbled Yard. Absolutely not. I always had the intention to pay, much the same as Meadow Hills. In my point of view – and I do realize that this may be a bit of wriggle logic worthy of Bill Clinton – what I had done was no more than what I had to do in order to survive and if Christ himself had said that a man who steals food in order to eat is not a thief, then I was no con artist. I despise owing people ... or rather despised. One of the things I learnt over this year was that sometimes one needs help; and just as I have always helped others without ever looking down on them, why should I think that anyone else is less nobly motivated than I am?

Back to New Year's Eve ...

I was placed in a holding cell in Berwick station. There was a blue mat, in size and thickness exactly the same as a gym mat, on a faux marble bench, a toilet hole (it had running water I hasten to add) cut into the same faux marble, a heavy block glass window, one fluorescent light, a CCTV, a call button and a very heavy door with a peephole and a sliding letter box opening. And you think the decorations at your New Year's Eve Party were disappointing?

Again the police were very kind, offering tea, coffee and sandwiches but honestly all I wanted to do was sleep. I suppose by this time it was around 8PM. One thing I would find maddening is that in none of the three cells I was in was there ever a clock. We spend so much of our days being constantly time-aware that to have it removed is honestly a real sense deprivation. My wristwatch though had been seized and bagged along with my wallet, money (this was to prove important), eyeglasses and belt. And yes, me being me, I did look around these cells with the thought, 'If I was McGyver, how would I break out of here?'

Berwick Police Station

The answer? I'm not McGyver. For that matter, I don't even think McGyver is McGyver. (sorry to crush your hopes Selma Bouvier)

One great knack I have developed somewhere, somehow over the years is the ability to fall asleep virtually anywhere, no matter what external or internal distractions may be about. So I pushed one side of the gym mat about two feet up the wall at one end of the marble bench, and after folding that back into a 'make do' sort of pillow, I curled one arm under my head and nodded off ...

Between hourly slidings open of the letter box door opening as a police officer would ask if I'd like tea, coffee or a sandwich (I told you they were incredibly kind), I found myself dreaming of Ireland. I saw myself back again at Toberbeg Lodge, enjoying the rope swing behind the house, looking out at the blue Wicklow mountains as I rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell. Then I was driving again, through those insanely narrow roads, past the fence where my Jaguar had kissed its head lamp farewell, on my way to The Dew Drop Inn in Kill, hoping to see my dearly beloved friend Audrey and tell her all about -

- Constable Aitken opened the letter box and told me there would be a second interview. Ah. So back to the interview room and another CDR loaded in, when I was told that I would be formally charged and moved to a larger facility in Bedlington. I wasn't sure where that was exactly – about 30 miles south of Berwick as it turned out – and I would have a Court appearance in the morning.

On the whole, I looked at this as a good thing. It was a good sort of surprise that there was a Court open for business on New Year's Day ... then again, New Year's Eve was probably one of the peak days for police activity what with having to round up amateur drunks after violent misadventures. I'd actual be curious to know if January 1^st is the peak volume for Court imposed fines worldwide. (You can tell someone's a writer when that person is forever trying to find the Larger Context for everything that happens.)

I have no idea what time I was taken in the police van to Bedlington – no clocks anywhere, remember – but I was cautioned by the jovial driver that I might wish to prop my feet against the metal box opposite me in the back of the van in the event of sharp corners. You see, I was sat on a metal box as well – no seat belt, no cushioning and yes, I was handcuffed.

A Tip! I was told that the most comfortable, or least uncomfortable way of wearing handcuffs is to turn one wrist up and the other down whilst being cuffed and not the 'arms straight out' popularized on TV dramas. Hopefully my earlier tip on making Perfect Steak Sauce is of more use to you than this one.

He was right as it turned out. At a roundabout close to the Bedlington holding cells, I did indeed slide off my white metal box into the channel in the middle of the van floor. I then did a comic impression of a rookie surfer as I attempted to stand and sit whilst handcuffed in a moving vehicle. To be immodest, I doubt if even Charlie Chaplin flopped around to better laugh-inducing effect. What a pity there was no one there to see it, Ho Ho!

I've been wondering where to place an observation and here is as good as any. I saw the same thing everywhere I was over that first 48 hours:

etched into the pale yellow walls of the holding cell in Berwick
into the plasticized glass of the various police vans
in the wooden bench at Bedlington
every wall, wooden chair, bench, every possible surface that could be drawn on, written on or engraved, all the same thing

There is a compulsion for prisoners to write their names. Given that one is certainly not allowed any sharp objects at any time, not even a belt with its protruding clasp, the only possible tool available would be a hardened thumbnail. In retrospect, I wish now I had tested this out as I can only surmise that it must be bloody difficult; digging block letters into a concrete wall. However, I didn't think to do this experiment until just now – and frankly I don't look forward to further opportunities. Yet it fascinated me.

Why, you ask? Well let's think on this for a second or two. Put yourself in a prisoner's position. There you are – You're under arrest! Cue the music from Law & Order, or if you're of a vintage, from Dragnet. Would not your emotional response, after the first freezing hot wash of fear turns to numbness or in my case a heightened sense of memory absorption, be drawn from a selection of shame, embarrassment and defeat? Let's just use shame for now as it will do nicely for the point I want to make.

What is your first instinct when you've done something you view (or your Mom, your spouse, your boss, your friends...) as shameful? Whether you actually follow through on a Nixon-style Watergate cover-up or not, I believe your initial thought is on the lines of, 'Christ! Don't let anyone find out I broke the Ming Vase/buggered the Anderson Account/didn't walk the dog and now there's shit on the floor!' You want to hide both your boobish act, and yourself in the bargain. Yet prisoners choose to memorialize their names. Why?

As a theory and it is just a theory, what I found from chatting with a dozen or so prisoners in our holding rooms as we went through the stages of incarceration like so many ships traversing the locks of the Great Lakes, is that all but me were repeat offenders. I grant you a dozen is not a large sample, however it is a sample. One becomes known as, well, One. Identity is lost behind a prison number or at best a last name. Yes, you are known by your first name to other prisoners, however to the larger system and the world of authority within the walled and razor-wired Known World you now have all the uniqueness of a can of tuna in a warehouse of canned tuna. You are – yes – in the can. The Who even sang about it: 'Eleven hours in a tin can/God there's got to be another way/Who are you?'

Perhaps I am being overly poetic, not that we poets are incapable of acute conclusions, but what I saw and felt was that this compulsive need by prisoners to indelibly mark their experience was a way of making a statement, a shout, a lesser version of the Sphinx as proof that they actually have walked upon the Earth before disappearing into a grey stone other dimension. 'I am not a number! I am a free man!' Yes you are a number, and no you're not free any more. Those repeat offenders knew what was coming and – subconsciously anyway – feel a need to grind a last testament of freedom into the grit of concrete or the brown painted wood of a bench. Virtually all the eccentric uniqueness of individuality are about to be taken away, so let us literally make our mark upon the world while we still can.

Of course, it would be a wretched irony if I dehumanized individuals by lumping them all into a one size fits all theory. The prison system does a good enough job of that on its own. These etched names could equally be an act of defiant rebellion; a means of, if you will, owning the environment in which the prisoner is placed; or perhaps just a simple act of boredom with nothing left to do.

Regardless of the individual motivation, I was still left with a sense of wonderment and indeed no small amount of admiration at these men (I saw no women's names interestingly enough) who felt a need to literally make their mark. A simple act of creation, yet creation is indeed the very essence of humanity.

It's interesting you know; I have so often over the years quoted Samuel Johnson's line that the sight of the gallows or the guillotine 'concentrates the mind wonderfully' but he was damn right. No experience in my life - not love, laughter, death or birth - so concentrated my own mind to the point that reliving that experience vividly is as simple and as accurate as flipping through a photo album ... they're just bloody awful pictures to look at though. Take my word for it - please don't try this at home.

At Bedlington, I was led upstairs to the Court room, once more hand-cuffed. Again I refused a solicitor as honestly I did not want to put anyone about and I just wanted to tell my story and answer any questions honestly. And so I did, from the glassed in dock on the left side of the courtroom, before the three magistrate panel.

The courtyard of Durham Prison

The outcome? I was remanded for sentencing the next day back in Berwick which meant that I was transported to Durham to spend the night in Her Majesty's Prison Durham – a penitentiary. It is a Category B prison (there are four categories of A B C and D, with A being reserved for terrorists, bombers and the like) with a prisoner population of about 1000 males. There used to be women inmates, however the suicide rate was too high, so Prison Durham became all-male in 2006. Perhaps an odd thing to say, yet as I remarked to a Guard, it is actually a quite lovely compound, if you don't mind the low arc of the winter sun being blocked off by 30 foot high stone walls casting shadows of the omnipresent razor wire on the buildings within. Yet, I do find a certain joy in the historical solidity of any 200 year old building. It is nice to know that once upon a time, things were built to last. (Think of that the next time you consider your six month old iPhone 'outmoded and old')

Now, to foreshadow events to come, my belongings which had traveled with me in a clear plastic bag, were turned in, listed and signed for. My black trousers had to be exchanged for grey woolen track suit bottoms – black trousers were what the guards wore and one wouldn't want any cases of mistaken identity. I was assigned a pair of blue jeans as well (when asked for my waist size, I said 34 inches ... I'd estimate the jeans were a 28. Darn you, metric measurements!), a shirt, underwear, blue plastic dishes and a cup, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a bed roll consisting of two green sheets, an orange blanket and one firm, green pillow. My other personal clothing and my black walking shoes I could keep with me. Still no belt however. McGyver you know could build a helicopter out of a belt.

It was in the holding rooms – the locks of the Great Lakes I alluded to earlier – between the various stages of admission where I got to know and chat with my fellow prisoners. As you may have guessed, I had no pen or paper to record those thoughts and conversations, so I put my journalist's brain on Record and went to work remembering Everything.

Henry Higgins was right. There truly is a class distinction based on language and accent. Bearing in mind that I had lived in Ireland, spent significant days in Scotland and Newcastle, and had trained my ear to the unique Scots/English blended accent of Berwick, I nonetheless found most of what the mostly young men around me said to be initially incomprehensible. It is impossible to transcribe unless I use phonetic hieroglyphs that virtually all of you would find unreadable, so let me describe these voices thusly: It was as though all hard consonants were sounded from behind a particularly phlegmy Adam's Apple and all vowels were a variant on the sound 'uh'. Yes, I think that about says it.
That truly is a social demarcation. No one with that accent will ever become an MP, a laureate, a banker, or even a call center agent. To be blunt, even if one of these young male prisoners spent every nominally free hour during their time of incarceration reading the works of Shakespeare, Montesquieu, and Marat-Sade; Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Mein Kampf; the prison writings of Antonio Gramsci, Robert Burns and the Birdman of Alcatraz; Lewis Carroll, A.A. Milne and Maurice Sendak – regardless, if upon release our young parolee attempted to discuss his findings at a literary event he would be shunned as a faker and the silverware counted. Most of the young men had tattoos on their skin; their speech was already marked for life.
They all were terrified of the American prison system. I lost count of the number who tried to comfort me as a 'new guy' by saying that (as I became accustomed to their voices) 'It's not so bad in here mate. Not like them American prisons where you get raped and they got drugs and weapons like.' Yes well, there's a relief!
I met no 'hard men' as it were. The lads were friendly, smiling and in general people you wouldn't mind at all if they sat at the next pub stool beside you. Except of course you would mind once they started drinking. Everyone that told his story to me – and as a journalist, I am damn good at getting people to talk about themselves – had some version of being on the piss then either hitting someone (spouses were, tragically and abhorrently, the most frequent victims), smashing something, or both.
All were repeat offenders except me. You'll soon be introduced to my cell mate Artur and he and I talked about it. Artur shook his head as he spoke in his heavily Polish-accented English, 'They come in here, 10 weeks, 20 weeks, then they out 3 weeks, 4 weeks and back again. They drink, they lose head, they go back to jail.'

A Suggestion: As a Human Rights advocate, I suppose I should be opposed to any form of an identity card. As well, despite my own sobriety, I am broadly in favour of the legalization of anything that brings a smile to the face and a song to the heart. However, I do believe there should be an identity card that must be presented for the purchase of alcohol. If one is convicted of a booze-fueled offence, bye-bye card. Yes, one's friends can always be persuaded to do a run to the Off-License, just as it was when one was under-aged; but still, inconvenience might just deliver a few from repeat incarceration. Anyway, I think it is an idea worth trying.

That metaphor of the Great Lakes locks is a well-chosen one, if I do say so myself. While all the guards, processors and the like were extremely affable – I truly can't over stress just how, well, cheery everyone was all through this difficult time – nonetheless as with any bureaucratic process there was a clear order of procedure to be followed and one was ordered and moved about like a piece on some kind of board game. Snakes & Ladders perhaps, not chess as only the back row figures are allowed backwards movements and trust me, there is no more pawn-like existence than that of a prisoner.

So it was that one's papers are checked and personal goods itemized then off to a holding room (Pawn to Her Majesty's Waiting Area 1). Then the change of clothing and a rather embarrassed check of one's person to make sure nothing was attached to the body. The anal search is just done briefly and visually, not a mining procedure by the latex covered finger of doom; thank you God for your small mercy in dignity. Back to the same holding room. (Down goes the Snake! Wheeee!) Next was the assignment of clothes, kit, bed roll and purchase of tobacco at £4.30 for 25 grams of a basic grade plus a sleeve of papers. A new holding room is pointed out to the prisoner, this one the prison chapel. (Climb the Ladder!) A nursing check is the next stage, where one is asked about any health conditions, prescriptions, allergies and such – 'None, none, none and nothing I can think of.' (Back down the Snake to the Chapel ... which just sounds wrong.) Lastly, one is escorted to one's cell – mine was 323 – and meet the Roomie.

Artur was 46 and a Polish emigré who had lived in a suburb of Newcastle with his wife and two children for a decade. As noted, his English was still quite broken, yet one does not need much of a language facility to drive a lorry. He had been remanded for sentencing on a charge of Domestic Abuse, specifically pushing his wife off the front porch and badly bruising her eye socket. He claimed that it was a mistake and a nefarious one – well, he didn't say nefarious. Instead, he mournfully told me that she had taken up with another man – short, bald, but he had money – and then when she had fallen they decided to rid themselves of Artur.

Call me naive and you'd be right more often than not, but I believed him. Artur is a nice, gentle man and I carry his full name and contact info in my wallet. If I can help him in the future, I will.

We rolled our cigarettes – I had been without for close to 24 hours, although here again who knows what time it actually was? Not even the small TV in the cell had a station that included a time signature. He made tea from his daily ration and we talked.

The cell itself frankly wasn't bad as cells go. It was a pale green tall arch with a side washroom consisting of a sink, toilet and a divided cabinet for our washroom kits. A window looked out on... not much frankly. There was the top of a tree above the shadowed stone walls and the local church bells gonged through its opening. They didn't sound the hour either, or they may have, but I did not notice the pattern until the next night at 2AM. More on that shortly.

I took the top bunk, which was a bit of a nightmare to crawl into; I am a writer and not a gymnast. Not too bad once there however. The arched ceiling was tall enough that I could sit erect without mashing my head into the concrete. Just as well, as there was just one chair – a tubular frame wrapped around a thin wood seat and back, the same as a down-at-heels school. Again, every possible surface was inscribed with names.

Word had spread that 'New Guy' – that would be me – had arrived and there were knocks on the door and torn paper slid underneath with a request for New Guy to please share some tobacco, or tobaccy as they called it. Well sure, why not? The odds were good that I might be released the next day and even if not...it is always important to make friends. Although I had been assured by other prisoners that there weren't the stabbings and other violence of American prisons, I ask you, wouldn't you prefer a little insurance?

The evening meal was nutritionally tragic. A bun with the lowest grade tuna mashed into it, two more slices of bread (I turned those down), a mandarin orange, carton of milk, a juice box, and three packages of sweet biscuits plus the daily ration of tea and sugar. Oh yes, there was also a rock hard, literally frozen puck of what might have been a meat pie. I'm not sure of that as it never thawed to an edible temperature. My spirits had not been broken, why should my teeth? There was not a vegetable to be seen and there was much too much sodium, sugar and gluten to ever be considered healthy. I think it's time Chef Jamie Oliver got on the case of prison nutrition.

At last, after Match of the Day and the replay of Graham Norton's New Year's Eve show, with the Monty Python reunion, it was time to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream ...

Oh I slept hard that night, not even bothering to get out of my clothes or the underwear that I admit was by now giving off a fetid funk of futility. As I drifted off, my last thoughts were of Samantha, Harald, Lawrence and all those Facebook denizens who by now would have known of my arrest and were likely worried about what had happened to me. I hate worrying people. I enjoy worrying about people, but the reverse makes me feel like a burden rather than a minor boon to humanity.

And again I dreamt of Ireland. I dreamt of leaving frozen Canada, seeing the fields of snow replaced outside the airplane window by better white fields of clouds. I vividly recall the part of my dream where I sent a Facebook message to Audrey saying I was on my way and now would she meet me for lunch at the Dew Drop Inn? That was so vivid that when the Guard slid open the door slot in the morning to tell me to be ready for transport in an hour, I started to search in the blanket for my mobile as I was sure I had sent that message and ... oh ... right ... no of course I didn't.

I brushed my teeth and told Artur that if in fact I wasn't back by the evening meal, he was welcome to my remaining tobacco (I chain-smoked three tabs – I had learnt the lingo – first), toothpaste and so forth. Then the entire check-in procedure of the previous day was reversed. My coat and trousers were returned – even my belt! - I suppose they did not want any prisoners accidentally dropping trou in front of the magistrates and the rest of the odds and ends that had arrived with me, including my room key from the Cobbled Yard, I thought was packed in a traveling box that would come in the van with me to the Berwick Court. Another visual search (who smuggles things out of a a penitentiary?), the same first holding room as the day before along with the others off to various Courts, then I was handcuffed and led out to the van. Moo. Baaaa. Neigh.

Given when the sun rose, I estimated we had left about 7:30AM and finally arrived at Berwick about 9AM. The female officer from the Berwick constabulary who accompanied me on the trip was again thoughtful and kind, just like the others. “Would you like some water?” “No thank you, but kind of you to ask!” “Coffee?” “Yes, that would be great. I would love a coffee.” No point in nodding off before the Crown.

This time, when asked, I happily accepted the advice of a Legal Aid solicitor. Although I had considered the possibility of spending a stretch in the penitentiary as something that I would indeed survive, it still was something I wished to avoid if possible. After all, I wanted to pay back my debts and I certainly would have no way of making money from inside a cell. Yes, you've heard of people writing Great Things while in prison, but did any of them ever get published while the authors were still inside? Cervantes had to be released before Don Quixote was printed, Walter Raleigh was executed, and Jean Genet was on the streets again before his work was on the shelves.

I had a great burst of favourable nostalgia when I met my solicitor, Ian O'Rourke. He was the absolute living clone of the finest criminal attorney to ever grace the Courtrooms and black tie dinners of Thunder Bay, one Alfred Petrone. Hawk nosed and thick framed glasses, a thatch of bird's nest for hair and the same habit of lightly sucking on their teeth while thinking, I almost wonder if the late Alfred had perhaps journeyed through North East England on his travels say forty-five years ago or so. I certainly wouldn't put it past him. There is a wonderful story, which I am sure is apocryphal * ahem * that after an assuredly above-board and discrete late night visit to a female – legal business of course! Mais oui! - Alfred's wife Krazy Glued a certain member of his anatomy to his thigh. I think you can guess the details.

It is still so hard to believe that I am actually going back THERE! Granted, not Thunder Bay precisely, but even just Canada on general ... In recounting that tale of the, shall we say, wounded pride of a prominent attorney it reminded me of why I needed to leave my hometown in the first place. There is absolutely no good reason for me to know the story of the sticky situation, yet I do as do hundreds or thousands of others in Thunder Bay and that is because that is the nature of hometowns – the naked gossiping of bored, lifeless people entertained by the embarrassment of others. No, I prefer to define myself and only reveal that which I choose to be revealed only to those I choose to know it ... personal memoir notwithstanding * ahem *.

Ian took down all my details on a legal pad and id an excellent job of persuading the Magistrate panel to give me two weeks to pay off the £660 through a Court pay slip, as well as £85 in prosecution costs. I would be required to stay at the YHA Hostel in Berwick, where I had a reservation made for that day and the next weeks until me new Canadian passport arrived, and finally should I not pay, then the various ports of departure in the UK would be alerted.

Oh it felt good to be a free man again, albeit one deep in debt and still in the shadow of a court order. There was actually a clock in the Berwick station house, so as I was led back to the holding cell pending a fax coming from Durham Prison confirming that I hadn't done anything chargeable the night before – these are the procedures – I could see it was about 11:45AM. So, dear old holding cell One, fluff up the gym mat against the wall and a short nap until me release -

- or a knock and the opening of the letterbox window. The fax had not arrived from Durham, yet of equal importance neither had my wallet with its £80 and my bank card. (The majority of my other belongings were still at the Cobbled Yard where, the police told me, they were being packed up and kept in safe storage pending my release.)

Now this – THIS presented a problem! Without any money, how could I check into the YHA, let alone eat or buy cigarettes? How could I even travel to Durham to get my money without money? My laptop and mobile were at the Cobbled Yard, so it wasn't like I could even alert anyone as to this plight. In addition, there was and is an oddity with British Rail. You cannot buy a rail ticket for someone else and have them pick it up at the station of departure unless that traveler has ij hjis possession the actual credit or debit card used for making the purchase. The long and the short being – I was stuck.

By this point, it was close to 1PM and once again it was the Berwick Police to the rescue. They asked Durham Prison what time their collection point for prisoners' belongings would be open until (3:30PM was the time, with my belongings kept at the Main Gate), notified the kennel that Stella was at, then they provided me with a travel warrant for a one-way train trip to Durham. The next train left at 2:12 and required a change at Newcastle. Gulp!

Durham's Town Square

I made it to the Berwick train station at 2:05, speed walking through the streets on a chilly, grey day. There was no time to stop at the Cobbled Yard to pick up my mobile phone; that could wait until I got back. The only thing I had with me was the only thing that had come back from Durham; a folio containing my personal papers, which I had brought with me to the Berwick Police Station on my arrest as they required some kind of personal I.D. beyond my Canadian driver's licence. And so, me and that one piece of luggage slumped in a train seat and watched the countryside pass by.

After the change at Newcastle, I made it into Durham Station, high atop a hill overlooking the Cathedral, the Castle and the city itself, at about 3PM. I asked directions of a fellow passenger as to the location of the Royal County Marriott Hotel – I had spotted it just down the street from the prison when the van had left that morning. (Asking someone the directions to a prison, particularly when you are unshowered and in rumpled clothing, is a good way of making people run away from you.) I therefore scurried down the road, then a steep flight of steps, a bridge across the River Wear, down more cobblestone streets and finally made it to the blue doors of the Prison at 3:30 exactly.

There was only one person I met through this whole ordeal who was not completely cooperative or helpful and he was the bald, cynical, smirking guard at the prison reception area.

'I'm here to collect my belongings.'

'Sorry mate, the collection point's closed.'

'The Berwick Police called here and they were told you'd let me get my things up to 3:30.'

'Who did you talk to?', he snorted.

'I didn't talk to anyone. The Berwick Police called here.'

'Well it's closed now. It's all locked up until tomorrow at 9:30.'

'Then what am I going to do? You have my money and my bank card and my train ticket was one day.'

'You'll have to come back at 9:30.' You could tell he was enjoying this.

'Fine then ... what time is your waiting room open until?' There were a few soft chairs, as well as a side room and as I've said, I can sleep anywhere.

'It's closed in about an hour.'

'Then I'm supposed to find a park bench in January?'

Shrug.

And so ... what to do? A cold, mist had started to fall and with that in my face I started the climb back up to the train station where I would hang in there as best I could, hoping that it did not close at night. (Spoiler Alert! It closes at night.)

When one gets chilled, stressed, hungry, thirsty and positively craving a cigarette, it is impossible to get warmed up. Realistically, I know that the Durham station had to be kept at a reasonable temperature but I still felt like a head of cabbage stuck in a vegetable crisper. From 4PM until just past midnight, I shuffled back and forth from the waiting room to the washroom; in the latter I would run the tap water as hot as it would get (not very) and soak my hands in it. Even though I didn't have my comb (Durham never did return that) I also soaked my head in the warm water in a feeble attempt at washing my hair and becoming border-line presentable. As I look back on it, thank God they had at least returned my Irish woolen coat. That, my Green Bay Packers sweater and the T-shirt underneath were just enough to keep me warm enough to survive.

Because, when the station started to lock up – I considered hiding in the lift that led up to Platform 2, but I'd been arrested once already and I wasn't looking forward to a second charge being one of illegal trespass – I had to go walking back down into the town. I had eaten, sort of. I remembered how Kimberly's son Bradley used to check all pay phones and vending machines for loose and forgotten change, so I did find two pound coins in one of the train station's phones. That was enough to buy me a bag of Doritos and a Mars bar – Feast! I knew enough about calories and nutrition to know that I had ingested enough calories to keep me alive until morning, but where could I go in this rain, for by now it was a steady drizzle.

There is something beautiful about walking through a completely deserted ancient city, no matter what the circumstances are that lead you there. Cold, wet, aged buildings and steeply winding cobblestone paths are the palette of painters, the paper of poets, and the landscape of existential philosophers all in one. They clear the mind of all thoughts except for the consideration of the streets and buildings themselves. You raise the collar of your coat, eyes peering from above damp cloth and you absorb your life into this city that has seen a hundred generations of lives ... yes ... for you can find beauty anywhere and any time if the time of the land is timeless.

I thought I would head back to the Prison and see if there was a more sympathetic Guard on duty at the main gate. So I crossed the Wear again, feeling slightly dizzy as I always do when walking across a bridge. I have always had a fear of heights, but I have noticed that in the last few years my irrational fear and clammy-handedness at crossing even the widest, most solid bridge has become worse. I find that I cling to railings now like a sloth making his way across a branch.

The main gate of HM Prison Durham

The lack of clocks was now becoming an absurdity and my curiosity at knowing what time it was an obsession with no satisfaction. I looked in every shop window, including banks, real estate firms, travel agents and restaurants – was it my imagination? Didn't all of those have a big circular white clock with black hands and numbers hanging above the counter? Evidently not, for there was not a clock to be found. Finally, I did hear the Westminster-like chimes of a church clock followed by a single BONNNNNGGGG! Ah. One AM. I had been up for approximately 18 hours and I had another eight and a half hours to, er, kill. (8 1/2 ... just like Fellini, except Durham was not Rome and the fountain was falling from the sky)

I made a wrong turn at the Royal County Hotel and walked past Durham University's buildings and residences. There were also several parkades there that I noted. If worst of worst came, at least I would be dry in one of those. There was a police constabulary opposite the University so I went into there. If the Prison reception area was closed, as a gnawing fear inside me said was likely, perhaps I could just park there for the night? After all, I was technically a free, currently law-abiding citizen. At the least, I hoped they could phone the Berwick Police as my other gnawing fear was that as I had not checked into the YHA Hostel as ordered, I certainly did not want anyone thinking I had taken it on the lam.

The station, except for its entranceway, was closed. (Since when do police stations close for the night?) But there was a phone with a sign saying 'Press 3 to talk to an operator.' Well, good enough! The female operator answered:

'Durham Police, how may I assist you?'

'Hi there, may I come in?'

'I'm sorry, we are closed.'

'Ah. Well look, I'm trying to find the Durham Prison and I'm afraid I got a bit lost. Can you direct me?'

She did and after I warmed my hands on the radiator in the foyer, I set out again. The rain had reduced to a mist again, although now the breeze had picked up. I found the prison, walked up the drive to its blue double doors and, as the lack of light inside the windows hinted, it was locked and no there wasn't a door bell. Now what?

There was a nearby church, a Catholic church even, St. Cuthbert's. Although motion sensor lights came on as I walked through its gate and up its path, then more lights as I came to the thick wood door, it too was closed. Oh I know, churches in these sad modern days feel they have to lock up for the night out of fear of theft and vandalism but ... isn't that wrong somehow? What is the point of a church's existence if not to give comfort and shelter to the lone and the fearful?

I checked the various doors of the University buildings. Locked, locked and more locked. I went into a parkade, but that was a flawed fallback position as well. Because of car exhausts, there are cutaway windows throughout these multi-storey buildings and so they really are not of much use for braving the elements. I heard the church chimes ring twice ... it was the church and not the postman. Where the hell do I go? The train station did not re-open until 4:30. I couldn't just walk for another two and a half hours.

I remembered that lovely, warm radiator in the foyer of the police station. Yes, head there. Surely no police officer would charge me with breaking and entering when the outside door was unlocked and God knows these were rather extenuating circumstances! So I slogged up that street again, went into the constabulary, sat down and tried to nod off with my folio as a dim replacement for a pillow.

A police officer did come in through the rear door of the station and when I heard him, I stood up and put on my cheeriest smile. He asked why I was there and I explained, furthermore asking if I might stay inside in their waiting area. No, I couldn't do that (I even asked if there was a cell – a cell would have been as welcome as a suite at this point) because the exits would be locked and should there be a fire, I couldn't get out. Yes, I suppose that did make sense. I was allowed to stay in the foyer and I nodded off again.

I did not hear the second police officer arrive, not until he opened the inner door and said, just like in the movies, 'Hello? What's this about then?' Once more I told the story – Durham – closed – Berwick – property – train – money – and so on. I asked what time it was. It was a quarter past four. Good. By the time I climbed once more back up to the train station, it would be open.

And then ...

Find beauty in the moment. No matter how awful the future may appear as a result of the mishaps of the past, we are always safe in the Now. The only reality is Now; all else is imagination. Live in Now and find beauty in Now.

I made a wrong turn. Instead of walking up the main street rising to the train station, I wound up in winding cobblestoned streets lined with tightly-fitted old Georgian townhouses, dark pubs and uneven sidewalks that had been laid however many centuries before. And then I emerged from the maze and felt a burst of awe and vertigo mixed into one as before me shone the vast edifice of Durham Cathedral.

Durham Cathedral - yes, the Harry Potter movies were shot there

Sure I was over-tired and more than a little stretched emotionally and when you have spent a full day with no company other than the weary desperation of the mind, you are open to exaggerated responses but ... if my knees were still capable of bending, I would have fallen to them. I just stood there in the non-light of a clouded pre-dawn and absorbed this ever so ancient building, begun its construction in 1093, as old as every 'old' building in Canada combined. I beheld the magnificence of man's commitment to God.

There had been times in my life when I had questioned the, I thought madness of building these monumental structures, so thick and so tall, without benefit of truck or crane, just muscle and winch raising massive stones up, up, up over 200 feet in height – and on top of a hill! - for what possible indulgence of a bishop's vanity?

From there I found myself walking through an accidentally open gate into Durham Castle and I walked its well-kept, mown grounds and felt the ghosts of history. What plans of war had been made here; what shy or earthy romance had been confessed and consummated in these rooms? What peace there was inside castle walls in the pre-dawn hours of Durham.

And so I struggled back up the steep steps to the train station, as the church chimes announced the hour as six. No more change in the payphones, but at least that day's copy of the free Metro newspaper to sit and read until just after 8AM. Then once more to the prison – the route now so well known to me. I watched Durham awake to another day of work and I hoped pleasure as I walked through those streets once more. What a beautiful city. What a beautiful city after a hellishly long two days.

The prison was open, my belongings (except my comb) returned. I bought my train ticket for £33, a pack of cigarettes for £6.25 and a bacon toastie with coffee for £3.99. I got on the train to Berwick with £36 in my pocket, not a cent in the bank, no idea how to pay my fine and survive until I got back to Canada.

But I was alive, damn it. And I wouldn't have missed this experience for anything.

A Christmas Day (poem)

2013-12-25T13:23:00.001-08:00

There was a little 'presence' at Church this morning. This is the story...

A Christmas Day

A dawn of wind and clearing skies
Cheeks of pink to match the horizon
Church take turns to sound their chimes
The day inches forward
With ample time for rhymes

At first alone was I
Save for a faithful dog
Who sniffed fresh paths
Through the dry gold grass
That grew as wild as uncombed hair
Along the sea coast
That had seen so much

Old cannons still hunched behind iron grates
Ready to meet any marauding French
Or outraged Scots seeking to re-claim this small harbour
That had changed hands more than shared winter gloves
Fingers cold as the bare stone walls
Formed by masons at the order of The Queen
Before there was a writ a single sonnet
These walls stood

* * *

Walk to the bells
And hear their song
From within the simple church
Where carolers sang with joy
Making the chimes fall silent to listen
To prayers and stories
Laughter and applause
A small community of the grey and the small
Gathered in faith and tradition
No one a stranger in their midst
No one alone except for me

* * *

Until I allowed the joy within
To rise like the tide above the fear
And in that moment I felt her hand
It was the faery sat next to me
And she whispered in this House of a God
'I am here to take care of you'

Oh it seemed mad
My mind at tricks
Yet I had felt her hand
And that voice was real
Were faeries allowed in to a Catholic Mass?
Well this one was
And she made me glad

* * *

So seek you faeries when you feel alone
When the sea seems to stretch to no safe land
Be as your dog and sniff out the path
For there is a beauty within winter grass
You shall find peace
Along your own path
With a faery to guide you
If you sense you've turned wrong.

A Faery by Moonlight: Christmas Story 2013

2013-12-18T11:22:00.001-08:00

A Faery by Moonlight:

Christmas Story 2013

Hubert O'Hearn

Darkness comes early in Northern England in this month of December. It was not even quite four o'clock and already the tiny coloured bulbs on Berwick-upon-Tweed's decorated trees and lampposts were brighter than the remaining light filtering through the low grey haze of clouds. With those clouds, not even that night's full moon would appear as an enlightening companion to assist Hunter on his long walk home.

Or not home exactly; he had to keep reminding himself of that when he would think thoughts like, 'I should be heading home now,' or while in the grocery store, 'Is there anything else I need for home?' One always thinks that way when one has always had a home. This whole homeless situation was still rather new for Hunter and as such his mind had not totally encompassed the adjustments in language that were required.

Not that it was altogether his fault that he had found himself living for five weeks now in a £70 a night Bed and Breakfast that he definitely could not afford. And besides, 'fault' is such a nasty word, some rupture in the Earth's firmament into which cities and civilizations would be swallowed in a rumbling gulp of earthquake; or fault is the tennis ball soaring past the white chalk line and landing in the wrong rectangle of tennis court. Fault is error and horror and blame. Hunter's homelessness was just ... just how things happened to have turned out.

Oh I grant you he was the one who wanted to emigrate to Ireland fifty-three weeks earlier and he was the one who did not triple-check the immigration paperwork and so had to flee the smaller island to the west and land instead by ferry on the larger island to the east, which made him a resident of Jolly Olde England. So therefore one supposes that if there is any of that error and horror and blame it was indeed Hunter's fault. He had chosen his path, surveyed and graded it; now he had to walk it. Well, it still beat blaming anyone else for his misfortune.

In much the same way, there was no one to blame after his first six-month lease expired and he had agreed a let on a lovely house in this wonderful medieval town – until the new bathroom had not been installed by the time of the agreed date. Ah well. And there was no one to blame when the second house, the one with the terraced backyard that led up to the base of the bleached stone walls of the barracks Elizabeth the First had ordered built to protect England from the Scots to the north or the Europeans across the North Sea; no one to blame when the owners decided three days before Hunter was to move in that no, they rather liked it here and decided not to move to Cornwall. Hunter rather liked it here too, so he certainly could not look darkly upon the like-minded.

Now, Hunter did consider a certain apportionment of blame for the most recent individual encountered on this quest for a home for he and his doggy Delilah. (Oh yes, of course when he emigrated Hunter had to bring the dog along. One can never abandon the loyal and the loving.) That was the tall, stooped landlady with the duck-footed gait who showed him two of six – six! Hallelujah! - vacant flats in her building, one of which even had a working fireplace in it just like the one Hunter had loved in his former, glorious stone gate house in Ireland. He had found his new home ... until ... the very odd woman ... stopped suddenly at the base of the stairs and said, 'No, I'm going to turn down your application. You said that you're a writer and that means you'll be around the building most of the day. That would be a threat to the young girls I have coming in as tenants in January. Now if you'd been say, studying accountancy in Berwick, that would be all right.' To which Hunter did not reply, 'If I had been studying accountancy, I would not likely have abandoned Canada in my middle age and followed my dreams to the British Isles, now would I?' No, he did not say that for to do so would have been as pointless as trying to tune the voices in a box of frogs.

And so, nothing. Instead, Hunter's daily ritual was setting the alarm for 7:30 and after two ten minute snooze breaks he would throw on whatever clothes he had pulled from his suitcase the day before and took Delilah up the steep trail to the field behind the Meadow Hill Bed & Breakfast where she performed her morning duties and had a good stretch of her border collie legs. Then it was back to his room – he had a separate outside entrance – feed the dog then go into the main building for his own breakfast at 8:30. The co-owner, Christine, a woman of Dickensian mirth and girth would greet Hunter with a smile and orange juice and say, 'Good morning! Any news?' Sometimes it looked like there would be good news which Hunter happily reported; although as you know by now, it all had been falsely optimistic.

Once back in his room, Hunter would shower and simultaneously rinse out the previous day's socks, underwear and t-shirt, then lay those across the hot radiator to dry. Then it was look at the email, read The Guardian on-line, check in with Samantha, the lovely English woman he had enjoyed a torrid affair with that summer, and then start searching through all the various Properties to Let sites he had joined. There was nothing and here it was nearly Christmas...

'There is nothing and here it is nearly Christmas,' Hunter thought as he sat on the steps of the Town Hall eating a chicken curry pastie and drinking a strong, black coffee bought from the Gregg's Bakery down the steps and to his right. He looked down the high street at the little coloured lights taking over from the expanding darkness, and further down across the ancient archway beamed the cheery blue message SEASON'S GREETINGS FROM THE BERWICK ROTARY CLUB! All around him were the twinklings of eye-fluttering electric faeries. That metaphor did not please him, even though it was his own. He missed believing in faeries, or frankly just believing in anything.

Now that last thought rather annoyed him. Of course he believed! He believed in believing! He even beileved in believing in believing! So Hunter took the last good gulp of black coffee and tossed the cup and the pastie wrapper into the nearest rubbish bin and headed over three streets away to the special little sanctuary he went to whenever he felt weakened or sad.

The Church of Our Lady and St Cuthbert has as bland a facade as one could ever imagine. It stands flat to Ravensdowne Street and is as likely to be a laundry or a bicycle repair facility as a house of God. When he had first come upon it, Hunter wondered if the sheer blandness of its grey stone was perhaps a sort of intentional camouflage. It was a Roman Catholic Church and as students of history know, from time to time in British history, allegiance to the Church of Rome could get you killed. At the time of building, somewhere in the early 1800s, austerity may well have been thought of as a more sustaining virtue than ostentatiousness by the wise men of the diocese.

Nevertheless, if one walks through the arch hanging between the church and the vicarage, what emerges is the doorway to the sacristy to the left, a small and neatly kept park to the right and then following along the red gravel pathway up a few steps and then behind the church is a simple stone grotto sheltering a life-size statue of Our Lady of Lourdes attended by small stone angels. To its right on the ground is a brass plaque commemorating the grotto to the Sisters of Mercy for all their work in the parish. The Sisters of Mercy; the same order and same name that Hunter's fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen had sung of, an Order dedicated to comforting ...

When I left they were sleeping,
I hope you run into them soon.
Don't turn on the light
You can read their address by the moon

Hunter loved Cohen. Although both were poets, they had never met. If they ever did, Hunter would thank him, for it was the now elderly Jewish man from Montreal who first caused the younger Catholic man from Thunder Bay, Ontario to think in terms of images and lyrics, stories of the journeys of the soul told in simple words.

So he sat on the one park bench facing the statue, the church behind him, one plain halogen light illuminating the gentle features of the woman in blue and white robes before him. Hunter rarely came here to think about anything, although when Samantha's common-law husband began cancer treatments, Hunter had come here to pray for that good man's health.

We weren't lovers like that

And besides it would still be all right.

No, he enjoyed this place because this grotto was not a place that demanded concentration; rather it invited release. Thoughts could be freed like the flock of birds Hunter had seen that morning; an entire flock that chose to rise into the sky and, facing into the hard North Sea wind, rested motionless above as though time allowed itself to stop just for them. 'If time could have stopped for me,' Hunter considered as he watched those birds decorating the sunrise, 'I would have asked it to have stopped or at least lingered longer in Ireland.' For that was where he had felt the feeling of home.

The Faery next to him on the park bench placed her hand on his right shoulder and squeezed him lightly through the rough tweed of his charcoal winter coat. Hunter raised his left hand and placed it over where The Faery's hand rested. He continued looking at the statue of Our Lady, imagining its features no longer formed of plaster and paint; instead the softness of skin with life supplying the colours. He knew what The Faery looked like without having to turn.

She was in long, purple and black, silk and chiffon robes with iridescent wings neatly folded beneath the cascade of loose black curls that framed her benevolent violet eyes. Hunter had seen The Faery so many times, though they had never met. And he heard her voice, that soft, quick Irish lilt that had teased and scolded, had made him laugh with tears, and tear his eyes without laughs even though she had never once spoken an audible word.

He felt her say, 'Do you know how William Blake met his wife? She saw him sat on a park bench like this one and she walked up and said, her very first words, “You are the saddest looking man I have ever seen.”'

That made Hunter smile and raise both an eyebrow and a twinkle in the eye below the brow. He said aloud, 'Is that what I am to you? The saddest man you have ever seen?'

She thought, as the full moon had found its way through a gap between clouds and caused The Faery's skin to shine in white mixed in robin's egg. Then she sat straighter and replied, 'Well, you think you are.'

'Really now? No, can't be. There are starving people, men dying in hospital beds, men who have just arrived home to find their houses cleaned out and a note saying, “I've taken the kids, goodbye forever.” No, I'm nowhere near as sad as any of them.'

Now it was The Faery's turn to have the twinkle spark in her eyes. This was craic! 'So you claim to know what they feel like, do you?'

'Of course I do. They're miserable, frightened, at a complete loss as to what comes next. That's not hard to figure out.'

The Faery restrained a smile behind her hand. She said, 'Right now, there is a man standing in the card aisle at Boot's trying to decide which card to buy his wife. How does he feel?'

'How should I know?' Hunter was feeling The Faery's rhetorical snare gathering around his ankles, yet that was fine by him. 'He might be amused, or stressed, or full of romance. He knows but I .... oh damn you're good!' Now he turned to face her.

'You don't really know, now do you?' She was triumphant, yet not gloating (or at least not much).

'You win,' said Hunter, 'The only feelings I know are my own. But does that make me the saddest man on Earth?'

'All who are sad are the saddest. All who are happy are the happiest. All who love are – Love.' The Faery shivered slightly and rubbed her hands against her bare arms. Hunter noticed. 'You must be freezing! Here, let me give you my coat.' He started to pop the dome fasteners until she held out one long, white hand to stop him.

'I like being cold. I've told you many times, I love the cold, the wind, a storm. I make tea and go and sit in my garden swing and enjoy it. Do you remember anything that I tell you?'

Now Hunter was staring straight into her eyes, blue meeting violet, and now it was the statue that was felt yet unseen. There was affection in his tone. 'I remember everything about you, or at least I try to, and I think I do. You were the first friend I had in Ireland, before I even moved there.'

'Do you miss it?'

'I miss you.'

'We never met. How can you possibly miss me?'

Hunter grinned and his dimples stood like book-ends. 'What is the man in the card aisle thinking?' He cocked his index finger and thumb then pointed at The Faery. 'Gotcha! For once.' Her laugh was like a wind chime found in a wild forest.

The wind began to pick up and thin bands of cloud began to cross against the moonlight. The Faery said, 'You know I can only stay as long as the Moonlight allows me to. Why are you here in this grotto, alone in the evening?'

'I've been out walking the streets, hoping to find a For Rent or a For Let sign in a window. I need somewhere to live. That's all I want for Christmas. Home.'

She began to speak quickly. 'You had a home. In Ireland.'

'I know I did. But you know my papers were screwed up and I had to leave.'

'Go home.'

'They won't let me.'

'Come home.'

'Have you gone deaf, I'm not allowed - '

The clouds folded together and drew curtains across the scene of The Moonlight and The Faery. Left in the audience was Hunter in a grey wool coat, turned away from a statue of Our Lady lit by a single halogen lamp. He was staring across an otherwise empty park bench at the red gravel pathway leading to the grotto, his right hand held in a gesture half-beckoning, half-touching nothing but air and memory.

He twisted his body back to where he faced the statue. Soon he would start the long walk back to the Bed and Breakfast. But first, he said aloud a question and a request.

'How? Show me how to get home.'

Merry Christmas

The End.

Letter From England: A Bone to Pick

2013-12-14T13:27:00.001-08:00

Letter From England

By: Hubert O'Hearn

A Bone to Pick

(Hubert is busy doing interviews for his book of poetry, Random Acts of Love. Therefore, the guest writer this month is Stella, Hubert's 4 year old border collie. This is a fine deal for the publisher as unlike the other writers for Thunder Bay Seniors, Stella only wants payment in cookies. All writers for this publication of course receive belly rubs.)

None of this was my idea!

There. I wanted you to know that first. As you know, we border collies are the most intelligent of all the canine species and if you did not know that, well then you certainly aren't a border collie. We are a sensible breed, capable of fun yet diligent in sensibility. Safe to say, but without us the world would be overrun with wild sheep gangs breaking into liquor stores and hanging out at shopping malls making rude whistles at your Mum and your sister. Plus good luck trying to find a wool sweater this winter. Without me and my brethren, your lives would be an endless chain of fear, shuddering in dark corners awaiting Death by Lamb. You're welcome. I'll have a cookie now.

*crunch crunch crunch *

Now then, all this emigration and foreign travel was Hubert's ambition and certainly not mine. I was just an innocent 6 week old puppy enjoying the discovery of cow pats and mud puddles on a farm in Oliver Township when Hubert and the beautiful lady I always remember as Mommy picked me instead of my brother or sister and off I went to live with them. This was a fine time in my life and I tried to repay their kindness by protecting their furniture and rugs with fine layers of freshly shed fur. (A note to humans: You people are utterly awful at expressing gratitude.)

Then after Mommy became sick and had to leave us, we were alone for a long time until on eday doesn't he say to me, 'Guess what Stella?' (I cocked my head in the approved fashion.) 'We're going to live in Ireland and there's lots and lots of sheep there for you to play with!' Oh. Sheep. Whoopty-diddly-doo. You know we like horses! Cows are amusing! Even a cat is ... oh alright, a cat is a scratch without an itch. But to us, sheep = work.

I was given no vote. Instead it was into a packing crate and three flights later, there we were in Ireland. Well, I have to admit, I did love Ireland. The people there were ever so nice, especially the neighbours miles and miles away who asked me in for snacks when I went out exploring and (this is so embarrassing) I couldn't find my way home. Now, before you start snickering, you just try and navigate your way around Ireland sometime. There are no house numbers in the country and road signs are an idle rumour.

And now here we are in England. It's much more my kind of country. For one thing, there are lots and lots and lots of border collies in Northumberland County where we live. I suspect if we properly organized and formed a political party we would be a force; pretty much guaranteed to out-poll the Lib-Dems at the very least. Also, the meat shops here are more than happy to give Hubert bags of bones for free, so I suppose in my case the quaint English phrase is true: I literally am as healthy as a butcher's dog.

I think about Canada sometimes. It did used to be fun chasing tennis balls through the snow and I do miss Amanda and her son Logan who for some reason always wanted to pour Kool-Aid or cereal or juice on my back ... perhaps he thought I wanted a spa treatment? Canada is a nice country. Actually all countries are nice, because all countries have people who love dogs.

That's it for me. Now when you're done reading, use this paper to neatly pick up any accidents my younger relatives might leave behind. But don't ever roll it up and hit them. We don't understand that, we never forget and ... you need us because we love you.

Be seeing you.

Nelson Mandela and the Struggle Against Apartheid

2013-12-05T14:09:00.002-08:00

Nelson Mandela and the Struggle Against Apartheid

An excerpt from Conversations with Myself, by Nelson Mandela; specifically a conversation recorded with Richard Stengel:

STENGEL: I'd like to explain the whole process of how the decision to form MK [Umkhonto we Sizwe] (the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress – Ed.) was made, At the Rivonia Trial you explain it in a general way. You said at the end, the second half of 1960, you and some collwgaues reached the conclusion that violence was going to be inevitable. How did this whole process happen? Did you talk first privately with people and then there was the decision of the Working Committee? Was there a build-up to the decision?

MANDELA: No, what actually happened was I discussed the matter with Comrade Walter [Sisulu]. We discussed it because when Comrade Walter was going overseas, in 1953, I them said to him, 'When you reach the People's Republic of China, you must tell them, as them, that we want to start an armed struggle and get arms,' and then I made that speech in Sophiatown (where Mandela said the time for passive resistance had ended – Ed.). I was pulled up for this but I remained convinced that this was the correct strategy for us. And then when I was underground I then discussed the matter with Comrade Walter and we decided to raise it at a meeting of the Working Committee. We raised the matter but, as I told you, I was dismissed very cheaply, because [Moses] Kotane – the secretary of the Party and of course a member of the Working Committee and the National Executive – his argument was the time had not come for that: 'Because of the severe measures taken by the government you are unable to continue in the old way. The difficulties have paralysed you and you now want to talk a revolutionary language and talk about armed struggle, when in fact there is still room for the old method that we are using if we are imaginative and determined enough. You just want to expose people, you see, to massacres by the enemy. Yiu have not even thought very carefully about this.' So he dismissed me like that and he was quick to speak and everybody supported him. I discussed the matter with Walter afterwards...The opposition was so heavy that Walter did not even dare to say a word. [laughs] But he has always been a very diplomatic chap, you know, but reliable, you know, when you take a decision with hum. Very reliable. And so we reviewed the matter, and he has always been resourceful, and he says, 'No, call him alone; discuss it with him. I'll arrange for him to come and see you' because I was already underground. So Kotane came and we spent the whole day together. This time I was very frank and I said, 'You are doing precisely what the Communist Party in Cuba did – they said the conditions for a revolution had not yet arrived. Following the old methods, you see, which were advocated by Stalin – how a revolutionary situation can be identified, that is, by Lenin and Stalin. Here we have to decide from our own situation. The situation in this country is that it is time for us to consider a revolution, an armed struggle, because people are already forming military units in order to start acts of violence. And if we don't do so, they are going to continue.They haven't got the resources, they haven't got the experience, they haven't got the political machinery to carry out that decision. The only organisation that can do so is the African National Congress which commands the masses of the people. And you must be creative and change your attitude because your attitude really is the attitude of a man who is leading a movement in the old way when we were legal, who is not considering leading now in terms of the illegal conditions under which we are operating.' So I was able to be blunt in order to challenge him, you know ... I was able to challenge him. So he says, 'Well, I'm not going to promise anything, but raise it again.' So I went and raised it and he said, 'Well I'm still not convinced, but let's give him a chance. Let him go and put these ideas to the Executive, with our support.' So we then went down and everyone agreed. We went down to Durban at a meeting of the National Executive of the ANC, Then Chief [Albert Luthuli], Yengwa and others opposed this very strongly. So we knew of course that we were going to get a proposition from the Chief, because he believed in non-violence as a principle, whereas we believed in it as a tactic, although we couldn't say so to court ... To the court, that is [during] the Treason Trial, we said we believe in non-violence as a principle, because if we had said [we believe in it] as a tactic it would give a loophole to the crown, to the state, to say that at any time, when it suited us, we would use violence, and that in fact, that is what we had been doing. So we avoided that, but only for that reason. We have always believed in non-violence as a tactic, Where the conditions demanded that we should depart from non-violence we would do so. So, but we knew that Chief was ... would oppose this, and he opposed it very well, but we persuaded him ...ⁱ

There is much to be admired about Nelson Mandela and his long, victorious struggle to end the apartheid policy in South Africa. That the transition to majority rule with a minimum of the chaos and corruption that rained down the majority of other post-colonial African republics is perhaps an even greater accomplishment than the end of apartheid itself. Mandela's Presidency should not be overshone by the 27 years spent imprisoned on Robben Island.

Yet, a man is a man, a revolutionary a revolutionary; and myth should never overwhelm reality. Granted, Mandela was never quite so cold in public discourse as Mao Zedong who said, 'A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.'ⁱⁱ Or at least, Mandela could not have said any such thing at the time. As the above interview clearly states, the non-violence for which he is so admired was a tactic and not a principle, but that was certainly not anything that one would want the government, courts or police to know. Had the African National Congress (ANC) been open about the formation of its MK paramilitary wing, there is an excellent chance that what we would be discussing here is a hope that apartheid might end in the future, rather than a brief analysis of how it was eliminated essentially upon Mandela and the ANC's victory in the 1994 elections.

It is always a wonder how it is that a regime with absolute power ever chooses to relinquish it. The clearest example may be the successful suffragette movements in the UK and US. Women had no vote (obviously enough), little or no economic power and were minimal – albeit individually powerful – voices in the print media of the early twentieth century. Yet they succeeded in securing equality at the ballot box with the passage of the 19^th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920 and in the UK with first the still-limited Representation of the People Act of 1918 then full equality with men in 1928. In both nations, as well as others around the world, essentially these were lobbying efforts with persuasive powers overcoming resistance.

However, even with the suffragettes there was a certain amount of violent conduct involved. In February 1913, the home of the future Prime Minister David Lloyd George was burnt to the ground by members of the Women's Social and Protective Union; this despite the fact that Lloyd George was a supporter of the women's suffrage movement. Prior to that, on November 18, 1910 (known as Black Friday) 200 women protestors were viciously assaulted and arrested by the police, also resulting in two deaths amongst the protestors. In the United States, a march by 5,000 suffragists in Washington was met by hostile crowds, police indifference, the arrival of the cavalry and 100 women hospitalized.

The point really is that even the most peaceful social changes are not always all that peaceful. Even Mohandas K. Gandhi with his benevolent theory of the use of Satyagraha (roughly translatable as soul-force) was arguably not opposed to roughing it up with the opposition. In much the same way as the women's rights activists essentially invited upon themselves the – obviously reprehensible and unjustified – police and mob brutality through their protest marches, the Gandhi-led campaigns of civil disobedience had predictable results. The British Arm massacred 400 of his followers in 1920, the national strike in India led to two dozen police officers being killed (Gandhi admitted he had blundered) and the Dharasana Satyagraha or Salt March of 1930 resulted in beatings to 320 or more non-violent protestors.ⁱⁱⁱ That Gandhi did not order or even ask his followers to perform violent acts is one thing; to suggest that he would not be aware that civil disobedience would cause massive personal injuries and arrests among those followers is to accuse him of naivete and no one can seriously argue he was that. To paraphrase Mandela, non-violence may have been his principle, but it was also a tactic to invite violence in the hopes of shocking the world.

To segue from Gandhi to Mandela, this highly acidic quote from Christopher Hitchens' 2011 essay, 'The Real Mahatma Gandhi':

And it is not disputable that Gandhi himself regarded his own versions of ahimsa and satyagraha as universally applicable. By 1939, he was announcing that, if adopted by “a single Jew standing up and refusing to bow to Hitler’s decrees,” such methods might suffice to “melt Hitler’s heart.” This may read like mere foolishness, but a personal letter to the Führer in the same year began with the words My friend and went on, ingratiatingly, to ask: “Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success?” Apart from its conceit, this would appear to be suggesting that Hitler, too, might hope to get more of what he wanted by adopting a more herbivorous approach. Gandhi also instructed a Chinese visitor to “shame some Japanese” by passivity in the face of invasion, and found time to lecture a member of the South African National Congress about the vices of Western apparel. “You must not … feel ashamed of carrying an assagai, or of going around with only a tiny clout round your loins.” (One tries to picture Nelson Mandela taking this homespun counsel, which draws upon the most clichéd impression of African dress and tradition.)^iv

As for Mandela and South Africa, although both he and Oliver Tambo (Secretary general of the ANC after Walter Sisulu was banned by the South African government in 1955) certainly had peaceful resistance in the ANC's Program of Action when the National Party removed all voting rights from blacks and the odiously termed 'coloreds', there was also to be found the phrase, 'such other means as may bring about the accomplishment and realization of our aspirations'.^v Presumably that meant something a little more forceful than writing a pleasant letter or two to John Vorster (the Minister of Justice who oversaw Mandela's trial and later South Africa's intransigent, utterly racist Prime Minister).

So if strikes, sit-ins and the support of brave journalists such as Doris Lessing were not going to do the trick, then the anti-apartheid revolution had to turn to violence. Between 1961 and 1963, the MK para-military wing of the ANC carried out 134 attacks against the apartheid regime.^vi Generally these were attacks against such static objects as hydro-electric towers, remote from population bases to ensure that any loss of life was unlikely.

By 1965, with Mandela already in solitary confinement on Robben Island, MK moved to a higher level, with up to 800 members receiving military training at bases in Tanzania, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and China. The principal difficulty these guerrilla trops faced was how to get back into South Africa itself. The neighbouring states of Mozambique and Rhodesia (sic) were not only of no help, they actively tipped off the South African government as to troop movements throughout the 1960s.

The attempt by MK to force military pressure on the South African government cannot in any real sense be deemed a successful one, although it did have one curious outcome. It has always been debatable just how much of an impact international sanctions actually have on any nation's internal politics; however, short of an actual armed intervention, they at least do put some muscle behind any diplomacy performed bu the greater global community. The scholar Alexander Laverty notes the following:

Talk in the 1960s of the use of sanctions to force a policy change were looked at with skepticism based on their predicted effectiveness. In fact one writer believed that only a world wide sanctions movement, coupled with a naval blockade would have the intended effect. For this to happen the UN would have to be willing to send in an invasion force to reinstall stability in the country after it had fallen into disarray following a world-wide boycott. The belief was that if South Africa was able to promote an appearance of stability then the Western powers would not have the resolve or justification for economic sanctions. Proponents of the sanctions movement in the 1960s believed that white South Africans would abandon the National Party in great numbers because many South Africans only supported white supremacy because of the high standard of living that the National Party gave them. This does not recognize that many whites were in fact Nationalists and would prove inflexible to outside pressure.

With the passing of Resolution 418 by the UN Security Council in 1977, international efforts to hurt the apartheid government turned to the form of an arms embargo. This resolution stemmed from the international attention created by the 1976 Soweto movement. This was revolt in a Johannesburg suburb that erupted against the apartheid government over a plan to hold instruction of maths and sciences in public schools in Afrikaans. The South African government in turn began to develop and produce more of their arms in country, but sophisticated systems such as high-performance aircraft, helicopters, and naval vessels were not so easily produced at home. However, self-sufficiency did come in the production of ammunition, military vehicles and communications equipment.^vii

In short, by virtue of limiting sanctions to an armaments used against an unsuccessful guerrilla campaign, the effect was to propagate a homemade armament industry. This in turn has led to South Africa, even since the arrival of the ANC into government, becoming a major arms exporter, with sales reaching above $US 5 billion (in 1990 constant dollar terms) annually during the 1980s' embargo' and cracking US$18 billion by 2008, abeit having subsided since to a level clost to the level of 1980s activity.^viii The biggest buyer, incidentally, was and is the United States. No wonder the US Congress had to override President Ronald Reagan's veto of greater sanctions in 1985. To the latter, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu commented, 'In my view, the Reagan administration's support and collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian. . . . You are either for or against apartheid and not by rhetoric. You are either in favor of evil or you are in favor of good. You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral.'^ix Indeed not; having an under-the-table partner in the apartheid regime willing to supply the various dirty wars of the US made the Reagan Administration (and those preceding and following him) anything but neutral. Being publicly opposed to apartheid was a tactic, not a principle.

Ultimately, the internal pressures in South Africa did cause the National Party government of President F.W. de Klerk to relent, free Mandela and return to one citizen/one vote. De Klerk, as quoted in an article by Ivan Fallon of the UK's The Independent said of his decision (which make no mistake, came as a shock to his own National Party) to end the voting restrictions on the day of Mandela's release:

“For many years I supported the concept of separate states," he says now. "I believed it could bring justice for everyone, including the blacks who would determine their own lives inside their own states. But by the early 1980s I had concluded this would not work and was leading to injustice and that the system had to change. I still believed in 1990 that the independent states had a place, but in the end the ANC had put so much pressure on them that they didn't want to go on. Had we offered Buthelezi a Zululand with Richards Bay harbour, he would have accepted that. But the whites wanted to hang on to as much as they could and were too greedy."

He had, he says, "long come to the realisation that we were involved in a downward spiral of increasing violence and we could not hang on indefinitely. We were involved in an armed struggle where there would be no winners. The key decision I had to take now, for myself, was whether to make a paradigm shift."^x

The lessons of Mandela, of the ANC, of South Africa itself are eloquent to anyone wishing to create a revolution of Human Rights in any country. One must be willing to take whatever route, or more to the point routes, that are necessary for the advance of freedom. To close this chapter, reproduced here are teh concluding paragraphs Mandela's famed Speech from the Dock during the Rivonia Trial at which he was sentenced to those 27 years on Robben island, years spent when for many of them he was allowed one visitor annually. Please note the final five words:

The lack of human dignity experienced by Africans is the direct result of the policy of white supremacy. White supremacy implies black inferiority. Legislation designed to preserve white supremacy entrenches this notion. Menial tasks in South Africa are invariably performed by Africans. When anything has to be carried or cleaned the white man will look around for an African to do it for him, whether the African is employed by him or not. Because of this sort of attitude, whites tend to regard Africans as a separate breed. They do not look upon them as people with families of their own; they do not realize that they have emotions - that they fall in love like white people do; that they want to be with their wives and children like white people want to be with theirs; that they want to earn enough money to support their families properly, to feed and clothe them and send them to school. And what 'house-boy' or 'garden-boy' or laborer can ever hope to do this?

Pass laws, which to the Africans are among the most hated bits of legislation in South Africa, render any African liable to police surveillance at any time. I doubt whether there is a single African male in South Africa who has not at some stage had a brush with the police over his pass. Hundreds and thousands of Africans are thrown into jail each year under pass laws. Even worse than this is the fact that pass laws keep husband and wife apart and lead to the breakdown of family life.

Poverty and the breakdown of family life have secondary effects. Children wander about the streets of the townships because they have no schools to go to, or no money to enable them to go to school, or no parents at home to see that they go to school, because both parents (if there be two) have to work to keep the family alive. This leads to a breakdown in moral standards, to an alarming rise in illegitimacy, and to growing violence which erupts not only politically, but everywhere. Life in the townships is dangerous. There is not a day that goes by without somebody being stabbed or assaulted. And violence is carried out of the townships in the white living areas. People are afraid to walk alone in the streets after dark. Housebreakings and robberies are increasing, despite the fact that the death sentence can now be imposed for such offences. Death sentences cannot cure the festering sore.

Africans want to be paid a living wage. Africans want to perform work which they are capable of doing, and not work which the Government declares them to be capable of. Africans want to be allowed to live where they obtain work, and not be endorsed out of an area because they were not born there. Africans want to be allowed to own land in places where they work, and not to be obliged to live in rented houses which they can never call their own. Africans want to be part of the general population, and not confined to living in their own ghettoes. African men want to have their wives and children to live with them where they work, and not be forced into an unnatural existence in men's hostels. African women want to be with their menfolk and not be left permanently widowed in the Reserves. Africans want to be allowed out after eleven o'clock at night and not to be confined to their rooms like little children. Africans want to be allowed to travel in their own country and to seek work where they want to and not where the Labor Bureau tells them to. Africans want a just share in the whole of South Africa; they want security and a stake in society.

Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy.

But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on color, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs it will not change that policy.

This then is what the ANC is fighting. Their struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live.

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.^xi

iMandela, Nelson (2010) Conversations with Myself. Doubleday Canada pp. 74-78

ii http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm

iii http://www.socialchangenow.ca/mypages/gandhi.htm

ivhttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-real-mahatma-gandhi/308550/

vhttp://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=759

vihttp://www.sahistory.org.za/umkhonto-we-sizwe-mk-and-armed-struggle

vii http://theafricanfile.com/politicshistory/impact-of-economic-and-political-sanctions-on-apartheid/

viii http://www.tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/arms-exports-constant-1990-us-dollar-wb-data.html

ix http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0609-03.htm

xhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/fw-de-klerk-the-day-i-ended-apartheid-1886128.html

xi http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/mandela.htm

Homeless - Letter from England

2013-11-16T08:47:00.003-08:00

Homeless

Letter From England

December 2013

By: Hubert O'Hearn

In some ways, it is a badge of honour and one can travel in pretty elite company. David Letterman, for one, lived out of his red pick-up truck when he first moved to Los Angeles in 1975. Daniel Craig, James Bond himself, had his kip on park benches in London; and if those names aren't illustrious for you, well Benjamin Franklin lived on the streets of Philadelphia until he future wife's family took him in. I could start listing writers, but that list might very well run forever. So, you know, it's not all urine-stained bus shelters and rummaging through the trash.

Ben Franklin ... that old dumpster diver

Currently I find myself between shall we say housing engagements. It has actually been the most fascinating run of luck. I wanted to move into town (Berwick-upon-Tweed if you're interested) for winter anyway, so I allowed the lease to run out on the cottage I had rented three miles or so outside of the downtown. I've quite grown to love this fascinating town, filled as it is with walks, paths and steps running through parks and along the medieval stone walls and battlements. Just two days ago I was taking my dog Stella for a walk, turned a corner and ran right into a cannon. Thankfully neither it nor I were loaded.

Now on to the hilarity. The first house I looked at was absolutely stunning, with a terraced backyard that led up to the base of one of those battlements. Met the owners, we all got along grandly ... then the next day they decided, 'no dog'. Ah. The next house was a fine place, also close to the mouth of the Tweed, except it was undergoing some renovations; specifically the installation of a new bathroom. So when might that be ready?, I asked. 'In about two weeks,' the Estate Agent replied. Well fine and my previous landlord allowed me two weeks grace. Lovely!

Not lovely! The two weeks turned into five and I had to leave. I was next shown another little cottage, one street away from the glorious North Sea beach and again I met the owners. Everything was set; I had even ordered the Wifi in ... until because of family matters, they took the house off the market.

May I highly recommend to you, should you wish to visit lovely Berwick-upon-Tweed, The Castle Bed and Breakfast. That is where Stella and I have been living the past five nights and it looks like it will be longer. The people are friendly, the food is excellent and the hotel bar is beautifully appointed. I'm actually writing this column in one of the bar chairs next to the warming fireplace – and yes I'm just having tea.

The long and the short is, life could be worse and one may as well enjoy it. My dear friend Terri Lynn Fucile, from Thunder Bay's International House of Tea (www.internationalhouseoftea.com) and my life advisor have been discussing it. Our shared opinion is that none of those houses worked out because they were the wrong places to be. The next place will be right; of that I am sure. And when Stella and I finally move in, I'll happily tell you all about it.

Cheers! And of course, be seeing you.

Letter from England: Seriously Funny

2013-10-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

Letter From England

October 2013

By: Hubert O'Hearn

Seriously Funny

I have said the following so many times over the years that I truly cannot remember now if this is one of my sharp-witted observations or one I lifted off of someone else. Well, given that it has been a few decades if this is someone else's line, they're probably dead and so the hell with it; the phrase is mine by means of adoption via the public domain. 'If you want someone to take you seriously, make them laugh.'

It is true you know. While I well recall the late David Brinkley explaining the crashing defeat of Senator Bob Dole to Bill Clinton in the 1996 US Presidential Election because, 'the funniest candidate always loses', when we look back at many of the legendary great minds in our history it is their bon mots we recall first. Winston Churchill for one was the master of the cutting remark. The alliance with the US notwithstanding, Churchill came out with this one, undoubtedly with a sloshing snifter of brandy in one hand and a brandished smoulder of cigar in the other: 'You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.'

Similarly, Groucho Marx was not just an actor who read witty lines types out by a screenwriter. Oh no, that wonderful man with but an elementary school education wielded a rifle disguised as a tongue. This is an observation for which the adjective 'trenchant' was invented: 'Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.'

The Mock the Week regulars

Now are those sarcastic, pessimistic, even angry commentaries on life? You bet your life they are and more power to 'em. I became a fan of Churchill, Groucho, the great Dorothy Parker, H.L. Mencken and Oscar Wilde amongst others because frankly they were they only people I ever heard – through reading mind you – who were both intelligent and funny. God knows I wasn't hearing much of that while growing up.

Some of you may remember that over the last eleven years I lived in Canada, I covered television for, shall we say, another church in this parish. I was regularly let down (and oh I did whine about it) by the plodding and deferential way in which politics in my beloved home country was covered. We were basically allowed a half hour or so of wit a week and so it was that This Hour Has Seven Days begat the Royal Canadian Air Farce begat This Hour Has 22 Minutes begat The Mercer Report and the CRTC looked and said, 'That is good but that will be enough of that.' Whereupon Stephen Harper appeared disguised as snake and fed the CBC a tainted apple disguised as a budget.

I was therefore delighted in the extreme to discover that Britain not only embraces wit, it thrusts it full-force onto the primetime television schedule. In particular, and you can find them all on YouTube, I refer you to Have I Got News For You, Mock the Week, and Russell Howard's Good News. And those are just my favourite three. There is nary a quiz, panel or talk show that does not dig down into the headlines of the day and immediately toss what the shovel finds onto a great bonfire of burning pooh.

It truly does not matter who the subject is: the Prime Minister David Cameron, his coalition partner Nick Clegg, the Mayor of London Boris Johnson is regularly withered; each is treated equally as slightly below equality with the panel of comics or newspaper writers. This is precisely as it should be. One can soberly analyze Cameron's Conservative Party government as one which is following the same austerity path and slavish devotion to Big Capital that is ruining much of the West...and no one will remember a word of it. But calling the Prime Minister a toffee-nosed Eton Old Boy who can't see beyond the shine off his shoes; now that is an image that sticks.

Now, I cannot actually quote too many of the jokes unfortunately. There is one other astonishing or perhaps wondrous thing about British political humourists. They swear like mechanics whi have just dropped large hammers on small toes. I try and stay away from the effing and jeffing wherever possible, yet oh my it does cut to the chase sometime.

And so Peter Mansbridge, I leave it up to you. During your next New Year's chat with Stephen Harper, do ask him, 'How does it feel knowing that when you sit down to play Imagine on your piano that most Canadians are imagining that piano being shoved up youyr dirt chute?' Now that would be a memorable interview.

Be seeing you.

Royal Southern Brotherhood: Review

2013-09-24T00:47:00.002-07:00

ROYAL SOUTHERN BROTHERHOOD

Review: Newcastle, UK September 21, 2013

The Cluny

By: Hubert O'Hearn, UK Correspondent

American Blues Scene

It was when I was stood at the back of a steaming hot Blues pit in Newcastle, England surrounded by furiously scribbling music writers, none of whom were drinking a drop that I truly felt at home. I had moved to the UK six months previous and while I'd been doing interviews and listening to CDs and downloads for review, I had not been to a true Blues gig since...dear God, has it been that long? My my, I truly do not get out enough.

And so, when I noticed via the internet that Devon Allman, Cyril Neville and Mike Zito, collectively known as Royal Southern Brotherhood were kicking off their UK tour just 45 minutes south of me, well there was simply no option. One must attend.

I had first seen RSB at the Thunder Bay Blues Festival in 2011. They were fairly new to it as a band after touring individually for years. The set-up, then and now, was I think unique to Blues or music in general. Both Devon and Mike swapped lead guitar roles and all three shared lead vocals. In its own weird way, RSB is like Blind Faith – stars coming together in the hope that the sum will prove greater than the parts. It is extraordinarily pleasant to say that in this case they do.

Since that set two years ago, RSB have improved by a good 25%. If there is a true frontman, it would be Cyril Neville on percussion and vocals. However, Devon has vastly improved his singing and even more so, the entire unit just gels with the kind of telepathic communication that makes the swap of instrumental and vocals seem natural and seamless.

The room they played, The Cluny, is as pure a Blues Pit as you can find anywhere. There are virtually no seats – maybe 12 in the entire room. This is a place to stand, bop and sweat as the 200 or so did on that Saturday night. The Cluny is set in a lovely parkland setting of rehabilitated warehouses which, it must be said, had me holding one hand over my wallet and resisting making eye contact while walking down a long hill to it from the bus stop. However, it was well worth the journey.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the RSB gig was the finest Blues band performance I have seen in years and many years at that. From talking with the other music writers, DJs and photographers at the event, I gathered that Newcastle audiences were much like those back in Canada – rather reserved and not demonstrative. Nonetheless, by the time RSB hot the encore of Gimme Shelter, the room was writhing, jiving and singing along.

It is good to know that the Blues have an earnest following in the UK. And as for The Cluny and Newcastle in general...I'll be back. Oh my yes, I'll be back.

A Blues for the New World

2013-08-24T13:43:00.001-07:00

A Blues for the New World

David Clayton-Thomas

David Clayton-Thomas is a Canadian Blues legend, having fronted the wildly successful Blood, Sweat and Tears band throughout its heyday. There are still hints of the old BST in this latest release, through the strong brass backing a songs like Second Chance or Calico Girl. On the whole though this is a quieter, even reflective album from the veteran singer.

Clayton-Thomas makes some unusual choices in this album. The fourth track, Common Ground practically has an Ink Spots feel to it complete with a doo wop chorus. This is not a bad thing. The song has an infectious snap to it, enhancing the lyrical struggle of men attempting to understand women. Thematically, Clayton-Thomas takes the stance of the old gunslinger observing the world and passing on the wisdom learnt over a long life. This is best written in the traditionally written Blues song It's All So LA, where he warns the youth seeking stardom about those who say lies like, 'I'm a Hollywood hotshot, this might be your big break.'

'You lobby for the Mob.' Now there's a line for you and it comes near the start of an angry calypso number called Politics. Clayton-Thomas' voice is so comforting in its oaken warmth that the song requires the staccato calypso beat in order to give a sharp point to the lyrics. A similar theme is picked up both on the title track as well as It Ain't Free.

The other highlight of A Blues for the New World is the slow love ballad What If I Told You. This is a real heartbreaker of a number, telling the story of a man fruitlessly in love with a woman for years. He gives it his last big shot in singing to her. A gorgeous number with just the right amount of brass to enhance and not overwhelm it.

In short, a comfortable and provocative album for both long-time fans and new discoverers.