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imomusOne of the great things about being adult is that you can, by and large, shape your own experiences, shirking the things that irk you and trying to live in a world of things you love. As a kid you can't do that. But sometimes circumstances conspire to stop you doing it as an adult too.
Let's take an example. Say I was sent -- against my will -- to a snobby British private school whose tradition was to force every boy to play rugby twice a week. Picture me, a frail, dreaming creature unable to bear the cold Scottish weather, longing only to closet myself up in my boarding school's Senior Common Room with the latest record by faggy glam stars like Lou Reed and David Bowie, being forced to stand around in a field with 21 other boys, knowing that if anyone passed me the awkwardly-shaped ball I'd get half of them jumping on me and thumping me half to death. Imagine me knowing that in the changing room afterwards there'd be a series of arcane rites known as "the operation" in which the thicker, more sadistic boys picked on the thinner, gentler ones, teasing them with jets of cold water and flicking ties and towels.
Then imagine me, a person of left-leaning political views, being forced to live through a seemingly-endless series of rightward swings that, from 1980 on, chip away endlessly at the Keynesian social provision I believe in, replacing it with a vicious and spiteful form of Social Darwinism -- the equivalent of the rich flicking endlessy and gloatingly at the poor with ties and towels in life's changing room.
Now imagine these two factors -- rugby and rightist politics -- being brought together in one nightmare day. Today, in fact. The day from hell.
A little later today I will take a train to Dover and a boat to France. I'm going to Paris because my dear friends Gilles (Toog) and Flo are getting married. They're the loveliest couple I know, people who met when they were eight years old, willowy, cool, quirky aesthetes who draw, film and make music almost compulsively, and live in two interlocking apartments on the Rue des Martyrs in Pigalle. I'll read a passage from Genesis at their wedding, then on Sunday morning we'll shoot a film: a tribute to Fassbinder's Effi Briest with Joseph and Alton, a mixed-race gay couple from Alabama who commission their favourite artists to make serenades to their relationship.
But my trip to Paris has been problematized by two things. First, France's fucking horrible rightist new president Sarkozy has decided that the state pensions enjoyed by train drivers -- probably inadequate as it is -- are "a relic of the past" and must be "reformed" away. The drivers decided on industrial action, and from 8pm Wednesday to 8pm Thursday there were almost no trains or metro services in France. Today, the BBC tells us, strike misery in France drags on.
This co-incides with the final of the Rugby World Cup, being held in Paris on Saturday. 60,000 English rugby fans are traveling to Paris, some of them paying up to £4000 for tickets to see the savage bullying rituals that blighted my childhood enacted on a field.
Now, I planned to take the Eurostar to Paris, either on Thursday or Friday. That turned out to be impossible. On Thursday the strike stopped Eurostars from running, and the company told me there would be no refunds if I didn't reach my destination. On Friday the Eurostar was booked up and tickets, even if they had been available, would have been over £200. The story was the same in the air: Ryanair had no flights at all between London and Paris, Easyjet had them at £200. So I bought a ticket for the ferry. Just £12 for the boat, £20 to get to Dover, and then whatever it costs to get the train from Calais to Paris (if I can find one -- the news is that the strikes are continuing to cause "severe disruption" on French rail services today, and with the huge influx of rugby fans seats are going to be subject to competitive scrums).
So today I'm going to waste the whole day traveling to Paris the snail-paced way we did it back in the days before the Channel Tunnel opened, or cheap budget airlines arrived. It might as well be bareback donkey riding. Actually, that would be vastly preferable: I wouldn't have to share one heaving, vomiting boat with 60,000 English rugby fans dressed up in plushy hats, draped in the St George flag, all tanked up on lager and shouting "Aye aye captain!" and "Aaaaarrrrrrrr!" at me because I wear a funny, funny eyepatch. And I wouldn't then have to contend with shrugging, passive-aggressive French railway officials passing on their legitimate sense of victimization to these nightmare passengers via a series of strikes and cancellations.
Fuck. Today will be a very personal kind of public hell. The light at the end of the tunnel is that -- possibly, possibly -- I'll end the day in the company of my two best friends and my girlfriend.
Let's take an example. Say I was sent -- against my will -- to a snobby British private school whose tradition was to force every boy to play rugby twice a week. Picture me, a frail, dreaming creature unable to bear the cold Scottish weather, longing only to closet myself up in my boarding school's Senior Common Room with the latest record by faggy glam stars like Lou Reed and David Bowie, being forced to stand around in a field with 21 other boys, knowing that if anyone passed me the awkwardly-shaped ball I'd get half of them jumping on me and thumping me half to death. Imagine me knowing that in the changing room afterwards there'd be a series of arcane rites known as "the operation" in which the thicker, more sadistic boys picked on the thinner, gentler ones, teasing them with jets of cold water and flicking ties and towels.
Then imagine me, a person of left-leaning political views, being forced to live through a seemingly-endless series of rightward swings that, from 1980 on, chip away endlessly at the Keynesian social provision I believe in, replacing it with a vicious and spiteful form of Social Darwinism -- the equivalent of the rich flicking endlessy and gloatingly at the poor with ties and towels in life's changing room.
Now imagine these two factors -- rugby and rightist politics -- being brought together in one nightmare day. Today, in fact. The day from hell.
A little later today I will take a train to Dover and a boat to France. I'm going to Paris because my dear friends Gilles (Toog) and Flo are getting married. They're the loveliest couple I know, people who met when they were eight years old, willowy, cool, quirky aesthetes who draw, film and make music almost compulsively, and live in two interlocking apartments on the Rue des Martyrs in Pigalle. I'll read a passage from Genesis at their wedding, then on Sunday morning we'll shoot a film: a tribute to Fassbinder's Effi Briest with Joseph and Alton, a mixed-race gay couple from Alabama who commission their favourite artists to make serenades to their relationship.
But my trip to Paris has been problematized by two things. First, France's fucking horrible rightist new president Sarkozy has decided that the state pensions enjoyed by train drivers -- probably inadequate as it is -- are "a relic of the past" and must be "reformed" away. The drivers decided on industrial action, and from 8pm Wednesday to 8pm Thursday there were almost no trains or metro services in France. Today, the BBC tells us, strike misery in France drags on.
This co-incides with the final of the Rugby World Cup, being held in Paris on Saturday. 60,000 English rugby fans are traveling to Paris, some of them paying up to £4000 for tickets to see the savage bullying rituals that blighted my childhood enacted on a field.
Now, I planned to take the Eurostar to Paris, either on Thursday or Friday. That turned out to be impossible. On Thursday the strike stopped Eurostars from running, and the company told me there would be no refunds if I didn't reach my destination. On Friday the Eurostar was booked up and tickets, even if they had been available, would have been over £200. The story was the same in the air: Ryanair had no flights at all between London and Paris, Easyjet had them at £200. So I bought a ticket for the ferry. Just £12 for the boat, £20 to get to Dover, and then whatever it costs to get the train from Calais to Paris (if I can find one -- the news is that the strikes are continuing to cause "severe disruption" on French rail services today, and with the huge influx of rugby fans seats are going to be subject to competitive scrums).
So today I'm going to waste the whole day traveling to Paris the snail-paced way we did it back in the days before the Channel Tunnel opened, or cheap budget airlines arrived. It might as well be bareback donkey riding. Actually, that would be vastly preferable: I wouldn't have to share one heaving, vomiting boat with 60,000 English rugby fans dressed up in plushy hats, draped in the St George flag, all tanked up on lager and shouting "Aye aye captain!" and "Aaaaarrrrrrrr!" at me because I wear a funny, funny eyepatch. And I wouldn't then have to contend with shrugging, passive-aggressive French railway officials passing on their legitimate sense of victimization to these nightmare passengers via a series of strikes and cancellations.
Fuck. Today will be a very personal kind of public hell. The light at the end of the tunnel is that -- possibly, possibly -- I'll end the day in the company of my two best friends and my girlfriend.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 06:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 08:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 05:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 05:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-20 01:31 am (UTC)Just ask american football player Matthew Barney about it!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-20 01:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 07:14 am (UTC)This post reminded me of the one you wrote a while back which quoted an analysis connecting personality to body type. I am built heavy and solid and when I lose enough weight to be slender I appear sickly and deranged. I can't stand hot climates, and I could probably pick you up and carry you on my shoulders with minimal (physical) discomfort all round. And yet I was just as miserable at school, and I totally dig your distaste for the common people...
I am certain that if I had been born with Bradford Cox's (http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/binary/aeae/cover2-1_52_bradford.jpg) frame I would be a gentle aesthete right now, instead of the burly-sardonic wage laborer that I'm becoming. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be pale and interesting with a body like this?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 07:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 08:17 am (UTC)And c'mon, an oots icon? You, and I, are fooling nobody.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 10:23 am (UTC)...
break the mold!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 07:18 am (UTC)Cheers,
Jay
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 07:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 07:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 10:17 am (UTC)I suppose it's a small comfort that (a) French train drivers still have the ability and the will to strike, and (b) they can probably count on some public support, unlike the British Postal workers, who've been criticised from all sides by other workers, trained to think of themselves as consumers first and foremost, who believe the quick arrival of their Amazon packages are more important than things like working rights and job security.
conrail america
Date: 2007-10-19 04:39 pm (UTC)I hope however your conceptual outlook on the importance of cardiac fitness has changed.
We'd all hate to loose our MOMUS at Large.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 09:38 am (UTC)Greetings from NW6
Date: 2007-10-19 09:46 am (UTC)Great to spend time with you yesterday; went home exhausted after our perambulations and woke in the small hours to discover the strike was continuing; more specifically they went into the heavy industrial nature of the work done by the strikers, who are given pensions at 50 to compensate for their broken backs. Sarko wants to rescind this - luckily the French do not take the same attitude to strikers as the current crop of commuting Thatcherbabies here who whinge about how inconvenient it all is. "Mummy, they're ruining my commute!"
As for the rugger-buggers, AAAAAARGH. x
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 10:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 10:27 am (UTC)(I am mad at the people who voted for this guy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrik_Reinfeldt))
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 10:52 am (UTC)Wikipedia: "John Fredrik Reinfeldt (born August 4, 1965, in Österhaninge) is the current Prime Minister of Sweden and leader of the liberal conservative Moderate Party"
...What?
The "Liberal Conservative Moderate" party? That's pretty funny. And people complain that theres no difference between the parties in Britain!
I really hope that the fact all the over-simplified labels like "liberal" and "conversative" have now pretty much disapeared from mainstream politics means people will have to start researching who they're their voting for, and consequently start taking an interest in the issues behind the policies.
I was my at my grandmothers house a few days ago, it was her birthday. I don't know how politics came up, but she came out with the usual anti-immigration nonsense you'd expect from the typical middle-englander.
I explained to her that actually, Britian's birthrate has been falling steadly and that without immigration it would cause huge economic problems as the elderly population are living longer.
I also explained to her that over 60% of all NHS nurses are from abroad; without them the NHS would fall apart.
politics is so horribly depressing, not so much because of the politicians, but because it exposes the wide-spread ignorance of the general public.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 03:29 pm (UTC)Much to my chagrin, have to admit that I agree wholeheartedly with you on this one.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 07:11 pm (UTC)Oh, yeah, there where many ministers who have been through scandals. The first culture minister of Reinfeldts government hadn't paid her TV tax for 11 years!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 10:38 am (UTC)Could you not have taken a detour through Holland?
It must feel like war out there. Big hugs.
Anyway this gives me a chance to post a pic I thought may appeal to the librarian in you. Its St George's School for Girls Edinburgh.
http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_PCV_M/0_post_card_views_marshall_keene_st_georges_library.htm
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 11:16 am (UTC)Brilliant!
Date: 2007-10-19 11:56 am (UTC)I'm riffing on your pain, dude.
Sam
Re: Brilliant!
Date: 2007-10-19 12:18 pm (UTC)*pets Dieux du Stade calendar*
Date: 2007-10-19 01:25 pm (UTC)Re: *pets Dieux du Stade calendar*
Date: 2007-10-20 04:46 am (UTC)Re: *pets Dieux du Stade calendar*
Date: 2007-10-20 08:46 am (UTC)here's to your eyepatch
Date: 2007-10-19 01:50 pm (UTC)With you all the way
Date: 2007-10-19 05:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 05:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 06:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-20 07:43 am (UTC)Meanwhile, it took Hisae 3 hours to get from Orly to Pigalle because of the traffic chaos. Still no RER running.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 11:48 pm (UTC)If I found out that this was happening to my brother, there would be hell to pay. He's already way too pretty (http://i24.tinypic.com/2aj6d87.jpg), and a fan of yours and Morrissey's. Should I be afraid?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-20 06:04 am (UTC)Pirate jokes! ha ha ha. And more substantive comment.
Date: 2007-11-11 09:34 pm (UTC)As far as your observation about the difference between Chirac and Sarkozy: bingo. One can be a cultural conservative--- in the sense of respecting the past, and honoring the continuity of the human condition---without having "conservative" politics. When I rail against "presentism," I am often confused for the wrong kind of conservative.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-31 10:05 pm (UTC)