Month: June 2009

[June 21]

On 17th of June 1940, the British navy suffered perhaps its greatest tragedy, the sinking of the troop ship the Lancastria in the Loire estuary at Saint Nazaire. So great was the loss of life – between 2000 and 4000, depending on account – that Churchill felt that release of the news would be detrimental to morale. Newspapers were forbidden to print the story. Survivors were not allowed to tell their loved ones. Victims were reported simply as ‘missing in action’.


The story broke in the New York newspapers on 26th July 1940, and soon after back in the UK. However, full details of the events leading up to the bombing are protected under the Official Secrets Act and is not due to be released until 2040. It is thought by some that the decision to the seal the records for a century was to hide the mistakes made by the British Government that exacerbated the tragedy – the intentional ignoring of the passenger load limit, the delay in embarkation because of a lack of timely escort that gave the Germans time to locate and bomb the ship.

My Grandfather was on the HMS Highlander, one of the destroyers that was tasked with giving protection to the Lancastria as it journeyed back to Great Britain under Operation Arial. After it was bombed by the Luftwaffe, my Grandfather spent hours with everyone else pulling troops from the oily murky water. More often than not, what survivors wanted, when they were rescued, was the simple pleasure of a cigarette. Sometimes they had swallowed or breathed in too much fuel, and died soon after – they were sewn up into weighted hammocks, and slipped back into the water.

The annual memorial for the Lancastria tragedy at the St Katherine Cree Church in Leadenhall Street, London, was on 21st June 2009. I was honoured to accompany my Grandfather to it, with all his medals shined. My Grandfather is fast-approaching 97, clearly the eldest of the ‘survivors’ at the service. He was congratulated and charmed by many, including the wonderful Jackie Duggan who was the French interpreter for the making of Christophe Francois’s ‘Lancastria – The story of a secret sinking‘. Most of the people in the congregation were in their late 70s and 80s. I realized with a slight jolt that they were children of those that were there. A child who was five years old in 1940 would be 76 now. Soon there may not be anyone left that was there. I’ve got a number of pictures on my camera that I need to upload, which I will do some time in the next few days. Meanwhile, here is one of my Grandfather talking to Jackie Duggan, and two pictures of the Gherkin that was just round the corner from the church.

[June 19th]

I’m packed into my teeny firefox rucksack, we go to a ‘breakfast’ lecture at Fact with artist Bernie Lubell and writer/Marey biographer Marta Braun with coffee and croissants.

It was a delight to rediscover Étienne-Jules Marey, that crazy scientific genius who invented the precursors to the machine that goes “bing” in the hospital. Oh ok, a bit more than that. He invented all of these amazing ways to record and help understand processes of breathing, and circulation, translate movement into sound and marks on a roll of paper – the precursor for the heart monitor and the seismograph. He managed to record the mechanics of flight in birds, and supported intellectually and financially early research into human flight. He invented interesting and fabulous ways of capturing movement on a series of photographs, with inadvertently starting the animated curio and then movie industry. His services to art (the futurists, and Dada) and computer animation (motion capture for realistic movement) are numerous and astounding.

Bernie Lubell was recreating some of the apparatus of Marey – whose original work was precision hand-tooled in brass and copper and rubber – with rough sawn pieces of wood, elastic bands, string and wire. Lubell makes work to interact with, that requires strangers in the gallery to cooperate in various ways to get things to work.

Bernie Lubell is not interested in preciseness. He is not interested in humans as perfect machines. He believes that it is more truthful to think of them as IMperpfect machines. Things go wrong all the time. Its a wonder that we are walking around at all, that we got this far, seeing that there are so many design flaws! He says that he feels its important to have his contraptions in this state. Maintain them at the point just before breaking.

Lubell made it so that people need to cooperate, sometimes even unintentionally, to get things to work. The Theory of Entanglement requires the sofa in the cafe to be sat upon before the two people pedalling madly in the foyer can knit anything. There is something quite lovely about artwork that is not just to look at, or interact with, but something positive, outside, connected with other people.

My little mind is ticking now, how can I make that happen? What can I do? Not sure yet.

I make my train back to Cambridge, with a change at Ely. Its pleasant enough. I wish there was more room for feets, not all of us want to play footsie with strangers under the table. I muse a little, thinking that it could have been intentional, some engineer artist manufacturing interaction, chance meetings, entanglements. Perhaps romances have started this way, what starts of as innocent shifting of feet in a confined space turns to explorative playfulness, and then intimacy between strangers on a train.

Freaky Flicks at the Arts Picture House Bar, with the Man from Uranus presenting, was fun and silly. We watched actual factual public health films from 1950s USA warning high-school kids about the dangers of drugs.

[June 18th]

The hat factory is one of the few ones left in Great Britain. Try & Lilly make special order uniform caps and hats for police, military, marching bands, catering workers, and is run by a friend of my brother’s girlfriend. It was quite lovely to see the complexity and the construction close-up.

I was full of praise and delight for this very colourful patchwork tweed walking hat, a traditional Irish treatment, which I was informed (with a slight derogatory sneer) ‘only American tourists wear’.

I might be being a little oversensitive here, but I realize yet again that most people I meet here believe I am American and have a tendency to make some unfair cultural extrapolations. I feel I have to explain myself, when there really is no need. I have that same creeping unease that I had fresh off of a plane from the USA going to a new school in the UK. Awareness of a distrust that many English people have of anything American. Its just assumed that all Americans are tasteless, unsubtle, crass, loud. That slight sneer that I liked something that only tasteless American tourists like. The thing is, I love that Americans can express their love and excitement, openly. I really like how (amongst the people I know at least) difference is celebrated, foreignness is romantic and cool and desirable.

Let us pray (in a non-religious way).
Oh Universe, may I always and forever remain openly enthusiastic about things.
May I never feel that taste and propriety overrides communication of enjoyment.
May English people also discover the joy of public expression of appreciation.

Ahhhhhhhh thennnnnnnn

If ya didn’t know, Liverpool is full of public art. It’s had an art Biennial since 1999, and many of the public art pieces are left in place on permanent display, and become part of the city landscape. Some odd little injections of surreality, disrupting somnambulic life. One particularly striking one is ‘Turning the Place Over’ by Richard Wilson (not the actor, the sculptor…), all very Gordon Matta-Clarkish. Amazing.

Another is the superlambanana. Now I never saw the ‘original’ one, that was designed by Taro Chiezo and and made by a local artist, and installed for the transpennine exhibition. Apparently it’s a cross between a lamb and a banana, both common cargo for ships coming in to dock in Liverpool, and thus combined becomes a symbol of the dangers of genetic engineering. Or something. There’s even some live footage of it in captivity!

The superlambanana has become a super popular symbol of Liverpool, and there are replicas everywhere. It is a repeatable and riffable motif like the pigs in Seattle. I came across this mini one, outside of a bar, just after admiration of the suitcases on Hope Street, on the way to the theatre.

We went to see a likable existential comedy called ‘Clunk’ by The Suitcase Ensemble at the Unity Theatre. The characters are performing a series of nonsensical tasks because of tradition, remembrance, and fear of change and the Outside World. It was really funny and sweet, and quite profound. Watch out for it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a city near you in the coming year!

[June 18th]

Brightish and earlyish, we travel across Toxteth to the allotment. Biking is not such a pleasure today. I can hear my muscles creak inside my skin. My brother seems as zippy as ever, and is rather impatient with me. We go past “Dingle Mount’, ‘Dingle Close’. I cast hopefully around for ‘dingle dell’. levity temporarily replaces perception of pain.

The allotments are like a tiny township. The sheds are small squat houses with fences and gates and tiny paths off the mud track road. Julian and Becca’s patch is verdant and productive. Raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries are all doing well, but blackcurrants most of all.

I am tasked with judging the ripeness of the broad beans. I have no idea how to judge the ripeness of broad beans. Its probably been several decades since I’ve even had them – prepared, pod-less. The pods jut from the stem at odd angles. I pick a larger one off, and split it down the seam with my thumbnail. The tiny beans are nestled in their soft spongy bed, I feel like I am committing infanticide, its such a transgression to pull them so violently from their cocoon.

I eat one of the beans. It is sweet, and has an odd flavour that I cannot quite identify. I eat the rest of the beans in the pod, pick another few pods, and put them in my container. I don’t feel confident in my ripeness judging abilities at all. I open another pod, just to make sure, and pop another bean in my mouth. I know what the flavour is! Soap! Its like when you wash up a cup without rinsing and then you make tea in it…It’s still tea, you want tea, it’s nice tea, but there is soap in it. After the taste of tea, the sweet creaminess of the milk, there is a tang, a bitterness at the back of the throat. I decide not to eat any more raw broad beans.

We collect an odd and tiny bounty. But its exciting – I am a Random Farmer. Lettuce, gooseberries, blackcurrant, to put with the three beans in my container. We zoom back home, past the many Dingles, thankfully more downhill than the other way.

I’ve just come back from a few days with my brother, and regretting not blogging while I was there – every day was a blog-worthy day. Unfortunately, no regular, reliable internet connection. and no time. I was busy Doing Stuff. So let me backtrack and tell you alll about it

Day 1 – arrival in Liverpool, rhubarb was made for this recipe

Day 2 – ghost town, rain rain rain, Tate Gallery in 20 mins, the unexpected 23 mile cycle ride

Day 3 – allotment and the joy of home grown, hat factory, mini superlambanana, existentialist comedy

Day 4 – Art reducing Life to mechanical functions, croissants, uncomfortable train journey, and Freaky Flicks!

yep, a waste to cram in one blog post so let me s-t-r-e-t-c-h it out a bit…