An Actor's Finger.

The world gets sillier and sillier, more and more stupid. We drown in a veritable tsunami of trivia. “Actor Simon Russell Beale had to leave the stage during Wednesday's performance of Timon of Athens at London's National Theatre after falling and dislocating his finger. The star slipped during an intense scene in the second half of the play.” Whoa! Golly gosh! Oh, my word! This is headline news? This is going to set the world on fire? The soldiers in Afghanistan are going to be more worried about Mister Beale’s finger than they are about the Taliban? The Jihadists and terrorists are going to give up their murderous ways? The Japanese and Chinese are going to stop squabbling for a while over those little Pacific islands? The Israelis and Palestinians are going to come to some kind of accord. Fighting in Syria will come to a stop? The mega-rich will suddenly develop a social conscience and start being philanthropic? Politicians will become honest? Mexican drug gangs will stop knocking each other off at the rate of knots? In fact the supply of drugs will dry up altogether. Loggers will stop destroying the world’s remaining rain forests? Poachers will stop the slaughter of wild life, especially endangered species?  The problem of the world’s overpopulation will be solved and the Pope will come to his senses and agree contraception is a good thing? Fundamentalists and Creationists and flat earthers will suddenly see the light of day. Mitt will include a message of sympathy in a campaign speech; try to say it in Spanish and taste toes yet again. None of these things are as important as an actor breaking his finger on stage and his understudy having to go on after only five weeks rehearsal Po po po, poor fellow as a Greek would say. Ninety-nine percent of the world’s population hasn’t a clue as to who Mr. Beale is anyway. 

Speaking to the BBC, the understudy described the numbing moment he realised he had to take over from the play's star. "The audience gave me a tremendous welcome and I just got straight into it," he said.
Some of those who watched the play praised the cast's performance on Twitter.
"Just saw Timon @NationalTheatre - pertinent and excellent - Simon Russell Beale and Paul Dodds both cracking (and all the rest too)," wrote Bleeding Heart Films.
"Saw Simon Russell Beale break his finger on stage," added actress Kate Bancroft. "Well done to Paul Dodds for taking over in Act 4!"
God save us! It’s no wonder it’s called Twitter.
Beale resumed his role as Timon on Thursday night. "He had his fingers splinted at the hospital. It was his right hand so he has had to slightly amend his performance,"
Well well well, this is where I bite my cheek to stop from laughing. Who would ever have thought of something so dramatic actually happening in a theatre?

God's messages

I’m back on the religious bit once more so, if you’re fed up with it,  not again I hear you say, now is the time to cop out, switch off, retire, retreat, go make a cup of tea because there is something to be said, not just about one of them, but all three major religions.

Let’s start with Islam. The whole of the Middle East and further afield is evidently a mass of rioting faithful because evidently they believe a short rather bad amateur film seen on the internet and purportedly about the life of the prophet is insulting to Islam. The film was evidently made by some Coptic Christians based in America, which is a wonderful excuse for the hate America mobs (as if they needed an excuse) to create merry mayhem and indeed, at least one American diplomat has died. The film was evidently sponsored by that well-known fundamentalist Christian idiot the Rev. Jones who once nearly caused world war three by threatening to burn copies of the Koran. The Egyptian government has issued warrants for the arrest of all those involved and obviously is hoping America will extradite them in which case they will be tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. So what is new? We hear that the Coptic Christians in Egypt are apt to have a very bad time of it but to make this film seems to me a lesson in abject folly.

So, as the Rev. Jones is behind it, what other nasty shenanigans have bigoted American fundamentalists been up to?

Well, in Cameroon a man is (or has been) sentenced to three years in prison for sending a note to another man saying I love you. Uganda extends the penalty for homosexuality to life. They have dropped the death penalty clause, realising I suppose that if carried out this would put them beyond the pale. In fact, South Africa apart, it would seem that to be gay in any other African country is to risk everything in life worth living for, including love. Now we know that Africans are conservative and traditionalists but what is behind all this? Well, surprise, surprise, but no surprise really, it seems those fundamentalist so-called Christians are at it again, swarming into Africa and preaching hatred as is their wont. As they have been fighting a losing battle with the acceptance of gays in more civilised parts of the world (Russia excluded) they obviously feel Africa is a new frontier where they stand a better chance of having their God’s message received and acted on.

And finally to Judaism.

With hoodies covering their faces and cans of spray paint in hand, they may look like average teenage vandals out for a night of mayhem. But on the streets of Arab East Jerusalem, some young Jewish people are up to more than just graffiti. They are part of what has become known as "price-tag gangs" and they are risking their safety to send a very political message. Price-tagging is the term they use for a range of acts, from vandalism to arson attacks and religious desecration. They carry out these crimes as an act of revenge. Primarily, they are warning their own government that there is a price to pay for any attempt to give what they believe is Jewish land to the Palestinians as part of the fragile peace process. The price-tag gangs come from the hilltops of the West Bank, Arab territory that has been occupied by Israel since the war of 1967.

Israeli homes built on occupied land are illegal according to international law but Israel regards the West Bank as territory whose final status is yet to be determined and has built 120 settlements here - around 300,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem.
But there are also 100 small outposts scattered on strategic hilltops some of which are illegal under Israeli law because they are built on private Palestinian land. For the hilltop youth - price tagging is their calling card and they have sworn to sacrifice all to prevent this land being given to the Palestinians.  Moriah Goldberg is one of them. The 20-year-old was captured on CCTV in February in a Palestinian village. She slashed open sacks of building materials, cars were sprayed with graffiti saying "revenge" and insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Moriah, who is under house arrest in the ultra nationalist Israeli settlement of Tapuach, in the West Bank, did not deny her actions.
"A 'price tag' means that when the government of Israel decides to evict a settlement, an outpost, even the smallest wooden shack in the land of Israel - it has a price. Maybe it will make them think twice before they do it again." The Israeli government's move to label some of the price-taggers' behaviour as acts of terrorism does not faze her.
But where, you ask, does religion actually come into this? Well, heed well the words of Miss Moriah Goldberg because they are what every religious fanatic of whatever persuasion spouts. "Faithless Jews who don't fear God can call me a terrorist if they want. I don't care what they say about me. I only care what God thinks. I act for him and him alone."
Wow! A latter day Mosesette! How did God tell her what he wants? Did he text her? Did he send her an e-mail? Did she hear his voice come down from the clouds? Did he whisper in her ear? Did she have a vision? How did God communicate his wishes to her and above all why did he choose Miss Goldberg?
Amid the price-tagging and tension over Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, peace talks with the Palestinians are frozen. Regardless of what happens to the peace process the government knows it has to tackle the enemy within before Jewish militancy in the name of God yet spirals out of control. You can do and say anything if you know he is on your side.

Memories

This is not meant to be maudlin or morbid or an indulgence in sentimentality. Think of it rather as a meditation. After my Blog about Merrill’s deterioration we received a number of sympathetic messages amongst which was one from our friend Ray Bluett in Tasmania. When his own dog died he tells us, evidently his vet quoted an old comforting saying by an anonymous writer the last line of which is “we walked together for a little while,” and, reading it, I couldn’t help but feel that sentiment summons up so succinctly the beginning and ending, the all of our existence. I read somewhere once that when you reach the ripe old age of seventy or more (probably more as we seem to be living longer and longer – some of us that is) if you have six friends remaining from forty years ago consider yourself lucky. Well I must be lucky as I can think of at least ten still with us, still walking together, but how many many are no longer with us. They walked their while with us and are gone: family, relations, friends, old lovers, pets no longer with us, some unfortunately dying very young.  All we have are the memories of the time we walked together. Of course it is not only those who have died; some friends just disappear into the blue and one can’t help wondering why. Maybe it’s just the natural way of things, everything eventually coming to its inevitable end. Even a relationship that lasts for say fifty or sixty years or more is but a nanosecond in the great scheme of things.

My mother, apart from the occasional aria like “Softly Awakes My heart” from “Samson and Delilah” loved to sing those sentimental old Victorian ballads that I remember to this day. Such a one is “I’ll walk beside you.”

I'll walk beside you through the world today
While dreams and songs and flowers bless your way
I'll look into your eyes and hold your hand
I'll walk beside you through the golden land.

I'll walk beside you through the world tonight
Beneath the starry skies ablaze with light
Within your soul love's tender words I'll hide
I'll walk beside you through the eventide.

I'll walk beside you through the passing years
through days of cloud and sunshine, joys and tears
And when the great call comes, the sunset gleams
I'll walk beside you to the land of dreams.

Another was…

Once in the dear dead days beyond recall

When on the world the mists began to fall,

Out of the dreams that rose in happy throng

Lo to our hearts love sung an old sweet song

And in the dusk where fell the firelight gleam,

Softly it wove itself into our dream.

Just a song at when the lights are low,

And the flick’ ring shadows,

Softly come and go,

Though the heart be weary,

Sad the day and long

Still to us at twilight comes love’s old song,

Comes love’s old sweet song.

Our dad’s party piece whenever he was asked to sing was “Somewhere a voice is calling.”

They might have been Victorian but they have still been sung by modern artistes including Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and I guess when my time comes people will hear my voice calling and remember I walked beside them for a little while.

Mermaids

It never ceases to amaze as to just how gullible humans can be and I am not referring here to all the religious claptrap that’s been bandied about for generations but on a more simple level, the April Fool kind of caper. Remember how many years ago Orson Welles radio programme “War of the Worlds” from the H.G.Wells story created such widespread panic in the United States. Well Aliens are forever on people’s minds and in the news and maybe one day some will actually come to light. There is a hilarious quirky Tim Burton film made in 1996 called “Mars Attack” starring Jack Nicholson, Glen Close, Pierce Brosnan among others in which the seemingly indestructible Martians are finally defeated by very loud terrible pop noise. I wonder if anyone was taken in by that one. Hopefully not it I great fun ands so bizarre.

I remember an April fool’s joke many years ago put out by the BBC showing spaghetti growing on trees and for one fleeting second I think I wondered about it so who knows how many people were taken in by it?

But what started this off was a news item from America (where else?) concerning mermaids.

There is no evidence that mermaids exist, a US government scientific agency has said.

Fantastic news. The National Ocean Service a division of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) made the unusual declaration in response to public inquiries following a TV show on the mythical creatures. It is thought some viewers may have mistaken the programme for a documentary. “No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found,” the service wrote in an online post. Aquatic humanoids huh?

Images and tales of mermaids - half-human, half-fish - appear in mythology and art from across the world and through history, from Homer's Odyssey to the oral lore of the Australian aboriginals. The article was written from publicly available sources because “we don't have a mermaid science programme”, National Ocean Service spokeswoman Carol Kavanagh said, adding that at least two people had written to the agency asking about the creatures.
The inquiries followed the broadcast of “Mermaids, The Body Found,” on the Discovery Channel's Animal Planet network. The Discovery Channel has acknowledged the programme was a work of fiction but its wink-and-nod format apparently led some viewers to believe it was a science education show.
But in fact believe it or not, mermaids have existed. At the University of Lincoln, staff and students have been examining the mummy of what is known as the Buxton mermaid. Her hair is human and the tail is definitely fish.

Anita Hollinshead, a conservation and restoration masters student, came across the mermaid while working at the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.

“We think that it came from the mid-19th Century,” she said. “She may have come from Japan or the Far East. A lot of these kinds of mermaid came from that area and were made by fishermen and they sold them to supplement their income as sort of fake mermaids. Sometimes people bought them thinking they were the real thing. They were very popular side-show attractions, particularly in London in the mid-19th Century.” X-ray examinations have shown the mermaid's upper body is built upon a wooden and wire structure. There is evidently also a merman but how do you tell the difference? Is he really equipped with the necessary? A question I can’t answer.

 

 

Merrill

It’s quite amazing what communications come to one via the internet. What for example do you make of this?

Headed ‘To Mr. Glyn Jones a request for two hand written autographs.’

Dear Mr. Jones,
Will You be kind enough to make a precious gift of 2 hand-written ( not
printed ) autographs ( one for ALEXANDER and one another for my brother
VLADIMIR )? We shall be glad to receive Your original autographs sometime.
Thank You very much in advance ! We shall feel highly honoured.
We wish You all the good lucks and all the best always and everywhere ! Let
the successes and the joy of life accompany You in all Your deeds !
Sincerely,
ALEXANDER and VLADIMIR STOLYAROV,
ROSA LUXEMBURG ST. 50-11,
71112 BERDYANSK,
UKRAINE.

Well, apart from the not so good English, the address is genuine and the request is genuine but the whole thing, according to the research Douglas has done, is evidently some sort of scam. Note the signatures need to be hand written, not printed. Reminds me of Bond’s shaken not stirred. We can’t really fathom out how it is supposed to work. Presumably money is involved somewhere down the line but what possible use can my signature be in the Ukraine? Evidently anyone who has a website is fair game, even someone as unimportant as me. I, being flattered by the request, might have responded but naturally the communication was immediately deleted. I still do get the occasional fan letter from Doctor Who fans wanting an autograph but these are usually accompanied by a photograph they’ve taken off the telly and sometimes even include  postage stamps which aren’t much use from Greece but a nice thought.

Getting old, coming to the end, is no joke. Our lovely Merrill, she who wrote the Christmas letters and who over twelve years has given us so much pleasure, is now completely incapacitated. Her legs are simply useless and she cannot stand up on her own let alone walk. She has to be carried everywhere, and held up even to eat her dinner or shit and piss. I say it like that, shit and piss, because I hate poncey words like “evacuate her bowels” Her back legs went first but now it is all four and it has happened so fast. It breaks my heart to see her lying wherever she is put down, she must be so frustrated because she is as alert as ever. If she were a human she would be bed ridden but a bed ridden patient could at least have books or the telly or something to keep them amused. We are making as much fuss of her as we can but, looking at her watching us, one cannot help but wonder what is going on in that little canine brain. Does she know she is reaching the end? Can she sense it somehow? Or is she just frustrated at being so completely incapacitated?

A friend suggest steroids might help but when she was taken to the vet (Merrill that is not the friend) he dismissed that idea, not because it wasn’t a good suggestion but because of side effects on the liver and kidneys. In fact he took tests and the liver showed a marked tendency towards problems so he suggested half a Depon a day which is what she has though she hates taking it even in food.

Now we have to ask ourselves, is she in pain? We don’t believe so. Does she have any quality of life? Well at the moment we think maybe she still has although her condition must be similar to locked-in syndrome and I fear soon, if nature doesn’t get there first, we will have to make that decision we would rather put off forever.

More alive than dead

A fascinating story on the news: a woman in India who has for twenty-four years fought to prove she is alive. Asharfi Devi was declared dead in 1988.  She was married at the age of 12, became a mother at 19, was deserted by her husband at 23 and was declared dead at the age of 40.

Now 64, her efforts to prove she is still alive finally paid off  when a village council in May of this year ruled that she was indeed alive.
Asharfi Devi's parents married her to a local farmer, Ram Janam Singh, of Barun village in Rohtas district of the northern state of Bihar in 1960. In rural India, weddings are almost never registered and Asharfi Devi doesn't have any documents to prove her marriage, but she vaguely recalls that she was around 12 when she married. What she remembers well though is her delight at being dressed in the bright red bridal sari and the loud Hindi film songs blaring from a loudspeaker perched atop a tree trunk outside her parents' thatched house.
Her happiness, however, was short-lived. Soon after her wedding, she discovered that she was her husband's second wife - Ram Janam Singh was a widower whose first wife had died sometime before his second marriage. At 19, Asharfi Devi became the mother of a baby girl. But, by now, she says, her husband had started abusing her physically and mentally.” Four years after my daughter was born, my husband deserted us so we went to live with my parents," she says. As time passed, Asharfi Devi married off her daughter Bimla Devi to a vegetable vendor, Anil Kumar Singh, while living at her parent's house. Her father and brother paid for the wedding.

Asharfi Devi says her husband declared her dead to prevent any claim on his property Her world fell apart when she found out that he had procured a fake certificate of her death from the Sasaram district municipal council and also taken another wife - his third. The death certificate was issued on 30 December 1988.

"At the age of 40 I was declared dead, officially," says a distraught Asharfi Devi. She then began her long fight to prove that she was alive. She approached the police, the politicians and even the courts. "I knocked on every door, from police to the court, but no-one could prove officially that I was alive, despite being convinced that I was alive. I was crestfallen," she says. To continue her battle to prove that she was alive, she moved in with her daughter and son-in-law into a hut in the village, barely half a kilometre from her husband's home. She says she was threatened by her husband and his new wife.

She now lives with her daughter and son-in-law

"He was transferring all his property in the name of his third wife after proving me officially dead," Asharfi Devi says. "He even had me sent to jail after implicating me in a false theft case in 1993-94," she says.

In desperation, she filed a petition before the village council last year, claiming that she was alive.
For eight months, the council examined all the evidence and in May, it invited Asharfi Devi, her husband and family members, villagers, local police, administration officials and journalists for the judgement day.
"After examining all the facts and evidences, the village council delivered justice to Asharfi Devi by proclaiming that she was alive," The order has brought her some relief: "Now I have papers to prove my existence. I am not dead."
But Asharfi Devi's husband, Ram Janam Singh, continues to deny her existence.
"Asharfi Devi died in 1988," he says. "I don't know why this woman is claiming to be my wife. Ask her, what can I say?"

China

In a previous Blog I wrote about the worry eighty percent of British mothers have about the future of their offspring and, coincidentally, later in the book reviews in The Sunday Times culture section I read about – “A society in trauma.” That was the headline.

And it isn’t about Greece or the UK or any other European country it’s about – China! It’s all very well wealthy Chinese buying up property overseas and indulging in toys like executive jets, how is it really with the country? Well, according to “The End Of The Chinese Dream – Why Chinese fear the future” by Gerard Lemos obviously all is not well and I hope the reviewer Frank Dikotter won’t mind my quoting him in part.

“Invited to lecture at a university in Chongqing between 2006 and 2010 Gerard Lemos obtained permission to erect “wish trees” in several neighbourhoods in Chongqing and Beijing. He then sampled the cards people attached to the branches, gaining access to the innermost concerns of hundreds of displaced farmers and factory workers. Rather than finding the industrious and increasingly prosperous workforce that is so often shown on state television. Lemos discovered a traumatised society in which most people are left to fend for themselves. Millions of poor farmers, forced to leave the countryside, face the prospect of unemployment, the absence of basic healthcare and lack of any state pension. Many of the elderly are financially dependent on their children. But China (like everywhere else I suppose) is an aging society and the one-child policy places a huge burden on the single children who have to provide for their relatives. Education is compulsory but not free. It can absorb one third of a family’s income as local officials discover ever more ways of gouging money from parents, ranging from fees to cover building repairs to stipends for teachers in public schools.

In the cities a university education is the highest ambition, but even here despair is the norm. Up to a third of graduates (about 2 million young people each year) cannot find a job. So desperate are they for work that when a local government in Shandong advertised for people willing to shovel excrement, five graduates were chosen out of 400 applicants.

Of 191 nations listed by the World Health organisation in an equality report in 2000 China was 188. Regular health scandals too, from contaminated milk to eggs with poisoned yolks have undermined people’s confidence in the food they eat.

As much of the world seems starry-eyed when it comes to the apparently inevitable “rise of China” Lemos shows that the country’s ordinary people are deeply pessimistic.”

We come up against that selfsame problem I keep on about, the ever increasing population that is going to increase ever faster. It’s like a snowball rolling down the mountain; it gets larger and larger and is impossible to stop. What is the answer? Who knows?