From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace

What an amazing success story the Edinburgh Fringe is.

1947 was the start of the Edinburgh Festival proper. Eight acts (six Scottish & 2 English) gatecrashed and made a fringe. This year 1,800 shows with 16,100 performers.

I took the 0718 train from Cardross through Glasgow to Waverley Station in Edinburgh @ 0850. On the journey I read “The Rooms” by Declan Lynch, an Irish novel about alcoholics.

I walked up the hill towards Edinburgh Castle. Streets deserted except for a few cleaners. Lovely sunshine. I took photographs remembering that I’d last been in Edinburgh during festival time about four years ago when son number 2 (SN2) performed at the fringe of the fringe.

This time SN2 was with Year Out Drama Company. A show called “Story Shakespeare: The Tempest”. 1000 start for a 50 minute show. (If you overrun, the venue fines the company for every 30 seconds.)

There was a queue. Perhaps they were all parents, fellow players and close supporters. Maybe a few people had come for other reasons. But I felt heartened that there should be a queue because there must be nothing worse than performing to a empty theatre without the warmth of bodies.

I now know the story of Prospero and Miranda, Ariel and Caliban, Ferninand and some others whose names I foget. This was my second Tempest. About 1979 I went to see the Royal Shakespeare Company performance at Stratford upon Avon. That was an awful disappointment. Ariel was like a thug rather than the blythe spirit I’d imagined when I did the play at school. It was all very boring and I was glad to get out into the Cotswold countryside and escape from that sort of culture.

This fringe show was much better, mainly Shakespeare cut down with some new songs and dialogue to maintain momentum.

I haven’t time now to write detailed description of the show.

SN2’s girlfriend was also performing, as Prospero… a part she shared with a bloke. I met her parents for a coffee afterwards.

Then SN2 and I went wandering. The streets were full. Lots of people trying to attract you to their show. Street performers, musicians and clowns. Amiable police mingling. We had brunch, a pint and early dinner during the day.

We went to “Bloggers - Real Internet Diaries” by Connected Theatre. I’ll write about this later.

I’m (almost) in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival and for work in Perth later this week.

Flew out of Cork this morning, through the old terminal which grows tattier and tattier. The new Arrivals Terminal is fine. I like the wood. Glass, metal & wood. I must describe it in a more detailed manner when I am not so tired.

I’m sitting up in bed with laptop on knee, hoping I won’t drop off to sleep and drop it on the floor.

My first show is at 1000. I’ll have to take a 0718 train into Glasgow and another on to Waverley Station in Edinburgh.

But I’ll be able to report on some of the Festival and I have an exclusive interview with the leading man in the production.

… after my last post…

This came to me:

“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order; this lukewarmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it.”

*** Machiavelli ***

I would like to thank Dave Gurteen for the quote. He sends out interesting quotes every few days.

If I was facing a prison sentence, I’d turn to a life of crime.

Prisons are inherently awful. Dreadful places that polite society avoids talking about. Last year Sir Ian Blair delivered a major speech, the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, to UK polite society. He appealed to leaders of upper middle class Britain to become more interested in the police. Rather than treating it as an unmentionable realm, an unfortunate necessity, a bulwark against uncivilized bruts who would rob, ravage or savage you, he asked for the finest brains and educated citizens to show interest and give commitment to its improvement.

Mountjoy kills:

When I heard that one inmate of Mountjoy Prison had been murdered by another in front of others, and that people were being kept in cells with six others, I remembered that I once earned my living as a researcher of Irish prison conditions.

The conditions in Irish prisons are so bad that no one talks about them for long. It would be like discussing the insides of someone’s bowel. Everyone has one but noone wants to hear about it. People can just about stand the smell of their own. But no one wants to know what it’s like inside the prisons.

People are paid to keep that quiet.

In the last week there have been photographs of prisoners sitting round on chairs in a “holding” cell. [I think a holding cell is a cell where you stay until you are dispersed.]

There has been a little mention of the variety of mental illnesses housed together in close quarters sharing a toilet that didn’t flush.

There are no votes in prisons.

No politician is going to win electoral advantage by advocating improved prison conditions. Most people don’t want to think about such an issue. They want the problem dealt with by someone, and they would prefer not invite that someone to dinner.

There may be votes in “Lock them up for longer in even worse conditions…”

Today the Irish Prison Officers trade union said that prison conditions are worse now than for 30 years. And there are plans to build more prisons.

If I was a prisoner, I would become a better criminal.

Probably. I’d probably already be illiterate. I’d probably be mentally ill and used to abuse. The time in prison would give me increased knowledge of a reference group to whom I would aspire to belong for the rest of my life.

No one would care, except the small number of people in my social circle. Most of them would be employed as criminals, or partners of criminals.

Polite society would be full of pickings, but I’d probably not mind who I stole from, or to whom I sold drugs or who I was employed to maim or bump off. If I was in prison I would be outside society. I’d definitely go back in again, soon after I got out.

Because no one would give me a proper job. I wouldn’t have the self-control to get up every morning at a fixed time and report for duty in the business world.

Prisons work:

They house people who polite society would rather not have on the streets.

They provide a focus for revenge: they hurt us, now we’ll make them suffer…

They provide a place of work for certain types of people who might not fit in in other jobs.

They give politicians an arena within which they can vie with each other .

They increase crime.

Develop criminal skills.

Improve gang networking.

Give investment opportunities to property developers.

Polite society knows all this.

There is multiple research which suggests that prison makes the problem of crime worse.

Criminal justice is an inherently messy business. It will never be easy. There will always be people who are unfit for polite society and are more likely to succeed in the criminal world.

I would like to see the following revolution:

(1) an end to all prison sentences of less than two years

(2) a massive development of non-custodial sentences, beyond anything practised in any country I know, together with a huge expansion of emotional and educational therapy

(3) an absolute ban on any cell sharing in prison

(4) compulsory education for all prisoners, including extended sentences for those who need additional emotional and educational support.

The current system corrupts everyone.

It is totally short-sighted. Unfortunately prisoners are released and re-join society. The real question is “what are they fit for when they come out?”

It’s easier not to talk about this. Probably ruin a good dinner party. Let’s just hope that it’s not our house that’s robbed, my car that’s stolen, my daughter that’s adicted, my face that smashed up…

For someone brought up on Winnie the Pooh, it’s strange I don’t like honey.

That’s putting it mildly. I was going to start “I hate honey…”

Jams, marmalades, honeys and syrups - which everyone else seems to love - have never appealed to me and I have avoided them. A few years ago I found an exception. Clotted cream scones go well with raspberry jam. And I have eaten sponge cake filled with jam, provided there has been a large amount of whipped cream to absorb the flavour of the sweet fruit.

Why should someone, who has a normal obsession with chocolate (in other words, binges and abstains and binges…), dislike honey?

My younger brother (YB1) got stung all over by the bees kept by Uncle James in two hives in our garden. He had to go to hospital. That was about 48 years ago. But, as I didn’t like my siblings in those days, that should have made me well disposed to honey, shouldn’t it?

Golden syrup on bread, that was a Wednesday evening tea in our house. I practised fasting on those days.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing about honey is that it seems to have played a vital part in my recovery.

Yesterday, I had no will to live. I might even have had a will to die. Certainly there was nothing to live for. The body and blood, the mentality and the mind, the bones and the tones - all - were for disappearing. I came back to Cork after the match [Cork beat Waterford in the All-Ireland Hurling semi-final.) and I felt like going to bed for ever.

In such a state, there was no harm in drinking anything the Wiffe made. (She must have been desperate to get rid of this moping man.) Even if it was a honey and lemon concoction. Only this was not ordinary honey…

This was Manuka Honey from New Zealand “gathered from the heart of untouched native forest and wild field areas…“. It has a “special anti-bacterial activity called Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) not found in any other honey…” [quotes from the jar]

According to Wikipedia:

Manuka is the Māori name used in New Zealand, and tea tree is a common name used in Australia and to a lesser extent also in New Zealand.

The wood is tough and hard, and was often used for tool handles. Manuka sawdust imparts a delicious flavour when used in smoking meats and fish. Manuka honey, produced when honeybees gather the nectar from its flowers, is distinctively flavoured, darker and richer in taste than clover honey, has high antibacterial potency and is widely available in New Zealand.
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptospermum_scoparium”

This is the one that saved my life. Actually it would be more accurate to say: this is the one that re-birthed me. Two cups, with cloves, lemon juice and hot water, were followed by a night of deep sleep and a wakening of recovering spirit.

Nothing I did yesterday, or maybe for the last four days, counts.

I ask all the relevant authorities to set aside all my transgressions, and forgive. I may have been nasty but now I am born again of honey.

In case any reader intends to rush out and buy some of this magical stuff, one warning. The little 454 gram jar cost me 20.99 euros. For that much I’ve been able to resume life as a calm, optimistic and challenged person.

The last time I had therapy it cost a lot more than that.

For four days now I have been depleted and undermined by a cold.

It was a joyful weekend, for others. I struggled through it.

A streaming nose, a throat made of cut glass and a chest packed with stuff I couldn’t get rid of…

I hope my misery didn’t spoil anyone’s day.

The Christening of Faye,
Monks of Glenstal celebrating mass
with incense and operatic drama
followed by cups of tea and cream cakes,
The Mother’s 80th birthday photograph,
surrounded by about 30 family in Limerick,
a visit to Lahinch,
back to Limerick,
saying goodbye to the Americans (sister and family who live there)
returning to Cork.

[This is not meant to be a poem.]

I’m still miserable, delighted that I don’t have to go out to work.

My organising Sister (OS1) is putting together a book for our mother (M1).

It’ll be made up of memories and wishes from the mother’s children, grandchildren, grandnephews, grandnieces, grand-daughters (and sons)-in-law, and it’ll be grand…

I procrastinated, and thought a bit more about what I’d write. Then I procrastinated some more and brooded about what I could get away with saying - that wouldn’t be all cliche.

Then I missed the deadline, and got a final extension in the form of an ansaphone message.

By the time I’d got that, the deadline was past. So I gave up, and wrote something that I knew wouldn’t see the light of day. I couldn’t finish that. I kept crossing out words. This morning I couldn’t read my own crossings-out.

The “Wireless G Notebook Network Card” collapsed.

The laptop refused to recognise it.

I phoned customer service at Belkin. Spoke to Jay in the customer service callcentre in Bangalore. He said that Ireland must be a beautiful country. I said the Wiffe had been to Bangalore, and I knew it was the centre of Indian IT intelligence. Jay was extraordinarily patient with me while I searched for my house phone number. He took me through the process of uninstalling and re-installing the Belkin. Twice.

There was no recognition; there was no internet connection.

No Broadband, no Underpants.

Screwed. Until he told me I could connect the laptop directly into the “Router”.

Then Grace woke, and I had to go out with her to deliver a “Server” (small job I had hanging over me) to part of the younger Brother’s (YB1) family business. More time passing…

When we got back home, it was time to feed her. There was another message saying that the other Sister (OS2) had been given a last deadline of 1200 today. At 1203, I phoned OS1 and she said I could read it to her over the phone.

I read it over quickly and asked her whether it made sense? She’s a proper artist and a diplomat. “Just have another look at it and finish it off…”

More time passing…

I did go back to the drawing board and chizzled some more.

As soon as I could get Grace fed - with pasta & pesto and sweetcorn and cheese and banana and grapes… - I nappy-changed and rushed to write.

This is what I wrote:

“Dear Mum

If I simply say you’re the best mum I’ve ever had
You will know I’m in touch with previous lives.

for hours and hours, so I would learn and yearn
to be my own person, as is your way.”

I phoned OS1 and she said we take American Express (”That’ll do nicely… thank you“)

I think this episode proves that, when it comes to M1, I’m still a child.

I wonder what the others have written?