Dystocia is the name given to the condition experienced when having trouble giving birth. This week I have had trouble coming up with a word of the week. Perhaps it could be said that I have suffered from a touch of etymological dystocia or alternatively that I need to pull my finger out.
Yesterday I had a couple of meetings in London in the morning and was on my way to Green Park to get the tube back to Vicotira when I had the idea that I could take a look at the Damien Hirst exhibition at the White Cube gallery in St James's. I suspected that there might not be a big queue to see the skull at 11.30 on a Monday morning and fortunatley I was correct. Entry is free but you have to have a ticket for a particular time slot; I was able to get my ticket and go in five minutes later.
The security man takes up seven or eight people at a time and you stand in a line in a corridor that reminded me of being at school. You get a little pep talk about leaving your bags on the floor outside and so on. He made me smile by explaining that the room was dark but that the only thing in there was the exhibit itself and not to worry about bumping into anything despite not being able to see your feet. He then mentioned however, that there was a woman in wheelchair already in there.
You have to give Mr Hirst credit for his ability to create icons, I have to say that I found "for the love of god" quite a stunning thing. The sense of theatre plays a part but the head itself is an object of beauty. I was particularly impressed by the view from the back. From the front, it is obviously an inanimate (if painstakingly prepared) object but from the rear there are no features missing that would necessarily lead you to believe that you might not be looking at the back of the head of young person, albeit shaved and covered with diamonds. I did wonder about its provenance, I understand that it is a cast made of platinum but of whom, where was he from, what colour skin did he have, what thoughts occurred in that space?
If I could fiddle with time, I could ask the artist on the bus on the way to school; he was in the year below me and often sat on his own. They didn't offer PR as a subject at that school but it is all art if you ask me. I remember the anticipation and the smell of paint as I queued outside the art room, I wonder what he remembers about those days. No smells at the White Cube but plenty of the other.
West from Rocca Calascio
Abruzzo is quite mountainous. There are those peaks around Grand Sasso in the north, in the Grand Sasso National Park, the other main group is to be found in the Majella National Park more southerly, where San Tommaso, one of a number of places in Italy so-named by pope somebody the something after Henry VIII had martyred Thomas Beckett is to be found. The village is located about a third of the way up Majella, so to get to most other places, you have first to decend a few hundred meters to a town called Scafa where you can join the autostrada if you're going somewhere in a hurry or a main road if you are staying more local or aren't in a rush.
The Mille Miglia (the thousand mile road race, last run fifty years ago) used to pass through here, the drivers having just turned west to cross the country to Rome before turning back north to complete their mad few hours back in Brescia. Gemma's dad used to cycle down from San Tommaso (where cars of any type were rarely seen) to witness those special people hurtling through that town.
Turning left at Scafa leads you along a valley and between two big hills to a town called Popoli. Turn right there and wind back up, higher than San Tommaso and slightly weirdly, find yourself on a massive flat plane. Driving its length will take about half an hour and will lead you to L'Aquila. That road is mainly dead straight and driving along it gives me the feeling that I must have a special, other wordly destination.
This time we decided to check out some of the villages that cling to the hills that surround the plane. One such is Calascio, where an ancient, mostly ruined castle commands views, on a clear day, all the way back to Majella to the south and for a long way in every other direction. We arrived there in our Fiat Idea 1.3 diesel having driven up some roads that were precarious enough to have caused raised voices in the car, despite my crawling along in second gear, the absence of barriers between the edge of the road and the sheer drops being the main problem. Eventually you arrive in a dust bowl of a small car park also occupied by the village bins. From there by foot you climb steeply with expectations of seeing very little activity, the first houses and many of the others too have been abandoned for what looks like a long time. As you climb, through the gaps between those run down homes to your left, the view makes you giddy. 
Looking north from Rocca Calascio
Don't be surprised, when you find a tiny cafe, perched on the cliff, with a quintet (Il Quintetto a fiata della Baronia) playing Hinemith's Kleine Kammermusik opus 24, no. 2. Stoop to enter, order your espresso, retire to a table outside and wonder about how things can sometimes be so extraordinary. Shake off the emotions you have been sitting in and climb the last bit to the castle itself. This is our other-worldly destination, a bridge between the prosaic and the astral.
Looking south from Rocca Calascio (that's Majella topped with snow)
p.s. I thought I had better just check my Mille Miglia facts before publishing this post and have spent a most enjoyable half hour surfing through related sites. At first I was concerned that there was some confusion over the exact route and that Gemma's dad might have been referring to a 16 mile street circuit that used to exist in the Pescara environs but I was pleased to be able to confirm that that infamous race did pass along that exact piece of road. A fact which, for me, really turns the evocativeness knob right up, is that the route of the race actually included the road across that plane. Next time I am there, I can imagine Sterling Moss passing me at 170mph (a speed the cars often reached on the straights in those days) in his cocoon of noise and wind, dirty faced, his eyes piercing those leather rimmed goggles, calculating in a moment the value of the hazard that I represent, before forgetting me forever, vanishing in a vortex of dust.
It turns out that there were a number of routes (click here),used for the race between 1927 and 1957. From 1949 they all passed between Pescara and L'Aquila in one or other direction.
Il Rifugio della Rocca (click here) is where those concerts are held, if you happen to be passing.
In view of my recent trip, this week we travel to Italy to find our word of the week. Boh is a bit rude and means I don't know or I don't care and although I couldn't find it in my dictionary it does appear in the BBC's language website under "cool Italian" click here to hear it pronounced, where it says it is usually accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders. When I first encountered it I was impressed by the level of laziness it conveys.
Che ora e?
What time is it?
Boh!
How the hell should I know!
They fish from these
View of the Marone from 23 Corsa Reale, San Tommaso
Gargano Adriatic
A view from the tower in San Stefano
That's Vieste in Gargano in the distance
A stick
He sat confidently, ready to play. It was the aspect of his day which made it all worth while, every tenth encounter would contain opportunity, and every third of those would be truly satisfying. The beauty was that he had nothing to lose, he was protected, there was the high desk between him and the danger, behind him was a large sign warning people that his company would not tolerate him being abused in any way. The object of the game; make them do things they don't want to.
I approached and placed my case on the weighing scale, and with a smile and a "hi" handed over three passports. He nodded to himself, this could be a good one. It transpired that I had misunderstood something on the website, he wanted thirty quid in excess baggage charges despite our carrying less than our allowance, (our return tickets had come to less than £50 each). We redistrubuted the contents of our bags. He now wanted only 5 quid but he also wanted our booking reference. I have used this carrier many times and in the past my passport (and maybe my credit card) had been enough. Now he wanted me to go to the sales desk to get the code and rejoin the back of the queue. I remained fairly calm, suggesting that I would be prepared to leave my position in the queue if he called security. Gemma was less happy and wanted his name, he refused and so she called him a "scaredy cat". Eventually that issue was resolved. He then announced that he didn't want any more money from us but that "as you have been so uncooperative, we would not like to see you here again".
The end result, as far as I can make out, was that everybody in the queue had experienced a ten minute delay, Ryan Air had made no more money, we had not enjoyed the nicest start to our trip, but "nameless man", after adjusting himself in his seat, running his finger round the inside of his collar and stretching out his lower jaw, was feeling good and ready for the next passenger.
Wereen is an older guy in Gemma's family's village in Italy, a real character, he is always doing nice things for me when I am there. Several times during the stay, I opened the front door to find a bottle of wine there that he had left for us; he makes wine, that is his big thing, and Grappa. Under his house in what they call the cantina over there, or what he calls his office, he has a still as well as various other grape related paraphernalia. Outside the cantina there is a bird cage where a minor bird lives, she will return your “Boun Giorno” with an unsettlingly human voice. Between her cage and the road is a high hedge, Gemma’s mother had become quite angry when, walking down the road last week, she was wolf whistled at a number of times.
Yesterday Wereen came round to the house in the morning to say that he was off to the next village to get his paper, and I suppose to see if I wanted to go too. Gemma’s mum intercepted him at the door telling him that I was busy, which I kind of was; I was writing a letter to Nat West for a lady who had an account there in the 60’s with about £200 in it; she wanted to know how she could retrieve the balance.
Anyway, when I had finished the letter I went after him. He was in his garden, he’d been and come back but thought he might have left his paper at the shop/café because he couldn’t find it. So off we went in his old Fiat Panda through the heat, down the hill across the bridge that Gemma’s granddad built in the 50’s (he was the foreman) and is now occasionally used for bungy jumping or suicides, up the other side into a sleepy village, through some very narrow streets before stopping outside the shop. When we went in we saw that the owner had ordered three copies of Il Centro (Abruzzo's daily) for the day (he showed us his manifest) and that he only had two left, the assumption being that Wereen had left with the other one. A shrug later we went through an archway into a deserted and dark room, the shop keeper followed us through and became barman. Wereen ordered two Sambucca al Centerbas.
Centerba is 70% alcohol and smells like it should be illegal. You can buy it on its own, usually only a splash is added to coffee (after dinner). Sambucca al Centerba has a slight taste of the "hundred herbs" spirit, it is delicious if a bit strong for 9.30 am. I declined, but agreed to have some in my coffee. Wereen had the drink in a measure that I would describe as being about the size of a small glass of wine. When we left there he insisted that he would like to take me to another bar. We drove through a maze of tiny streets arriving at the little square where, in one corner there were five or six mainly older guys sitting outside what looked like a very small shop, some of the men were drinking. It was very hot and bright, despite the early hour, as well as very quiet, it reminded me of a western film set. Everybody knows Wereen and he exchanged banter with some of the guys in French (he and a number of the locals had all gone off to Belgium to work in a coal mine in the 50’s) and the local dialect before we stepped into the cool of the bar. No tables, two slot machines, one not working. He asked for two Sambucca al Centerbas. The lady behind the bar produced the bottle but it only had enough for one (wine glass sized) shot left in it. There was a short debate about whiskies and other Sambuccas before Wereen suggested topping up our glasses with neat Centerba. Our hostess looked shocked at the idea, I couldn't understand everything that was said but I could see that she felt it was important that I knew what I was letting myself in for. Sambucca al Centerba is clear, Centerba is bright green and so were our cocktails. Five minutes later when I left, I knew I had had a drink.
Buon giorno from the Abruzzese town of Chieti, perched high on a hill from where you can see the Adriatic to the east and, in the distance, Grande Sasso ("Big Stone", the tallest mountain in the region to the West).
The sky is clear blue but for a few whisps of cotton wool, unlike the last few days which have seen every conceivable meteorogical phenomenon.
Optimistic, we set out to walk to the hermitage of San Bartolomeo, a cave with an extension, perched on the side of a cliff, not far from here, on Sunday. Half way back a thunder storm intervened and when we reached the car we looked as though we had swam there.
Have been eating particularly well, yesterday's highlight being fried lambs liver, heart and kidneys with onions, I think it was called Contorto d'Agnello, but that could be bollocks. My Italian is not as good as I thought. When asked how I was, despite having made the same mistake previously, I tried to be clever by saying that I was as healthy as a fish, the equivalent to being fit as a fiddle at home. I announced that I was a saint like a peach.
This is very much the younger sibling of La Dolce Vita. Black and White and featuring beautiful well dressed people including Marcello Mastroianni (who featured in that other film) and the amazing looking Claudia Cardinale. This is a film about making a film. Ordinarily that would be reason enough for me to hit the eject button (I site Adaptation Adaptation, as an example of a film about making a film which is clever but leaves me feeling like I've been taken advantage of), but this for me is a mind-blowing piece of art.
I often think about the film I might write. As this film progresses I realise that, if I were able, this could be it.
There is the recurring idea that if you are not part of something, you are against it, you cannot exist satisfactorily without attaching yourself to ideas, principles or causes, without believing in things, "....happiness consists of being able to tell the truth without ever hurting anyone..." so says Guido the confused film-maker.
I notice that I have been enjoying films about people in crises; American Beauty and Citizen Kane (which I will be posting about soon) for example. They are quite theatrical (both the latter films were made by first time directors whose previous experience had been the stage). This surprises me a great deal. If you had told me that I would love a meandering, sometimes surreal wander about the very staged life of film maker experiencing a mid life crisis, I would have told you that it was more likely that DFS's sale had ended. At one point it even plays about with being a musical. As for what attracts me to this so much, I suppose that self recognition seems to be the most likely candidate. I am therefore exposing myself to accusations of being fanciful, but I can pick the elements I aspire to, as well as recognise those facets that I might be less happy about, but that does not diminish my identification with themes, even if I don't exist in the 'A' list stratosphere. Perhaps the whole idea is helped along by some small references such as the fact that it was released in the year I was born and that the leads drive about in a Porsche 356, not to mention the Italian thing.
Imagine being offered the chance to watch a film that was made by a film maker with no script who decided to go ahead and make a film about a film maker asked to make a film with not script and without a plot, about a film maker who has been asked to make a film that has no plot, and there you have it. Despite all of this, I kept wanting to know what was going to happen next.
A mucilage is a secretion or bodily fluid. The word comes from the same origin as the more familiar mucus.
Is that BA's new corporate identity or just some mucilage on the fusilage?
It was Good Friday morning, before seven, I got up (carefully) and decided that some light entertainment was in order. I selected my still celophane-wrapped Midnight Run dvd from the shelf and proceeded to enjoy the next couple of hours. There are some films which are haute cuisine and not the sort of things that one might want to consume too often. Then there is the classic hamburger, pefectly cooked, delicious relish and crispy chips; this is one of those. I have seen it often enough to have become familiar with its foibles which are most easily forgiven, I imagine that I will watch this many more times.
Robert De Niro is honest but hard done by bounty hunter Jack Walsh and the under-rated Charles Grodin plays Jonathan Mardukas, an accountant who has embezzled $15 million dollars from the mob (and given it to charity). It is essentially a road movie as the pair of them are chased across America from New York to L.A. The Grodin character is laconic, well meaning and prone to offering Jack advice about how he should change his life if he is to avoid an early grave. Jack is resigned to a lonely slightly self-ptiying existence; one that might be tempered by the big pay-off he will receive if he delivers "the Duke" to his bail bondsman in L.A. Their relationship is what the film is about and where most of the humour comes from.
It is directed by Martin "Beverley Hills Cop" Brest, but whilst that earlier film was very much of its time, this one seems to have side-stepped such a limitation. The story is comfortably well enough thought-through, not to distract from the set pieces and the interaction between members of the superb cast. Yaphet Koto who you might remember as Mr Big and Kanaga in the only properly funny James Bond film, Live and Let Die is the permanently exasperated FBI Agent Alonzo Mosely, (did you know that Live and Let die was written by the director of Eddie Murphy's first stand up movie, Dilerious)? Dennis Farina, always funny and scary in equal measure (he played Ray Barboni in Get Shorty), is as scary and funny as usual as mob boss Jimmy Serrano.
There are at least a couple of images that reappear in some shape or form in other films; there is a version of De Niro's "I am talking to a dead man" line, which he later uses in Heat and Dennis Farina announces rather prophetically that he is going to smash his telephone into someone's head; we actually have to wait for Get Shorty for him to do that to Gene Hackman's Harry Zimm. John Ashton (one of the LAPD foils for Eddie Murphy in Beverley Hills Cop) reappears here with great affect (as Marvin Dorfler, Jack Walsh's main competition).
This film always makes me laugh out loud, I am waiting like a child wanting his favourite bedtime story for my favourite jokes but, call me a sentimental piece of moist tissue, it also manages to move me a little every time I see it, that's probably the De Niro factor.
As I wended my way through my copy of Alan Bennett's Untold Stories this week I encountered the word "enfilade" which I am reliably informed means either a "volley of gunfire directed along a line from end to end" or a "suite of rooms with doorways in line with each other". In order to help it settle in the word section of my brain, in a place where I have the slightest chance of retrieving it when needed, I have decided that as part of this new and ongoing feature, I will supply (for my own benefit) a sentence incorporating the word of the week.
"An enfilade of piss arced from behind the bush into a noisy puddle beneath the streetlight".