Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Cymru - 'r 'n fawr bau a Cara

And I have no idea if that's correct, because I used an online translation tool, and we all know how reliable they are. I hope it says "Wales - the big country that I love". For a tiny country Wales is immense. Mountains and lakes and open land give it a grandeur far exceeding its physical size.

Just got back from Snowdonia. We stayed in a little lodge on the banks of Llyn Gwynant, in the shadow of Snowdon and the other mountains. Another place of almost supernatural beauty. We did our normal round of walking, this time almost exclusively with dogs on leads, which added a new dimension to climbing mountains. This was necessary because of the sheep which roam everywhere. Martin thinks we should put the dogs in a pen with a ewe and a ram. A farmer told him that five minutes trying not to be gored by a ram would put them off chasing sheep for a lifetime. The sheep are mountaineers - who'd have thought it with those clumsy feet? We climbed Snowdon on Thursday. Martin and I with the dogs on leads, the children, 8 and 9, and my 74 year old mother. It was hard, but so worth it! The views at every stage of the climb were beyond description, and when we got near the summit and I looked out over Wales, it was too much and I burst into tears. I think the only beauty I ever cried over before was that of my sleeping children. Only slightly marring the triumph of our arrival at the summit was the fact that I looked to my left and saw a rather smug sheep, curled up on a little outcrop, gloating over the fact that he'd been there for bloody hours before I arrived. My mother went down in the mountain railway but we elected to walk. It took us eight hours to go up and down. The dogs were knackered, I was knackered, Martin was relatively knackered but the children could have done it all over again. They have badges to take back to school saying "I climbed Snowdon the hard way!" and maps of the Miner's Path which we took up, and the Pyg Track which we took down.

We also walked for hours to get to an immense stretch of breathtaking beach on Anglesey. We got there at half past four in the afternoon in August at the height of the season and there was barely a soul about. The children took off their clothes and jumped waves, collected oyster shells and generally larked about while the dogs ran around like things demented and we adults walked and walked. Stunning.

Those were my two highlights of the holiday. Mum and I went to see the village of Portmeirion, which is a weird place. It has a sort of theme park feel. After the glories of Snowdon and Anglesey it seemed curiously sterile and ill-at-ease in its surroundings; a paeon to architectural 'beauty' as conceived by Clough Williams-Ellis between 1926 and 1978. His idea of beauty is mediterranean, all pastel colours which are ill-suited to Welsh weather. All the paint is running because of the rain. Strange place. Mum was disapponted because she remembers it fondly from many years ago. It was also one of those places where you feel mugged; it charges quite a high admission fee, and then every building you go into is a shop where prices range from high to exorbitant.

But the holiday was wonderful. Wales is a wonderland practically on our doorstep, and Martin and I are seriously thinking about stretching our finances and buying a second home there which we can let out for much of the year to cover costs, and pay for some allocated time as our countryside bolt-hole. Probably just a pipe-dream, but there's nothing wrong with those, is there?

Monday, August 14, 2006

Christianity, left, right and centre.

One of the differences between us Brits and our cousins across the pond which intrigues me the most is our attitude to religion.

Now any discussion of such matters is bound to rely heavily on sweeping generalisations, and for that I apologise straightaway.

Britain has been for decades a profoundly secular country. Churches are, on the whole, not well-attended and the congregations, particularly in the Church of England, are ageing dramatically. There are exceptions, of course, and perhaps there is a growth in what some might describe as the 'happy clappy' churches. And it is the fringe, and more radical church groups which attract the young. And Islam. Perhaps it is because the young like moral certainties and feel comforted by them. When you are young you easily perceive injustices and need answers. Perhaps one's tolerance for uncertainty grows as you age.

The National Statistics Focus on Religion reports that:
"The 2001 Census identified 8.6 million people in Great Britain who said they had no religion. Christianity is the main religion, with 41 million people. Muslims were the largest non-Christian religious group – 1.6 million – and their profile shows a young, tightly clustered, but often disadvantaged, community." Add to this the age distribution of the nation across religious lines:
"Muslims have the youngest age profile of all the religious groups in Great Britain. About a third of Muslims (34 per cent) were under 16 years of age in 2001, as were a quarter (25 per cent) of Sikhs and a fifth (21 per cent) of Hindus. There are very few older people in these groups – less than one in ten were aged 65 years or over. The Jewish and Christian groups have the oldest age profiles with one in five aged 65 years or over (22 per cent and 19 per cent respectively)." I would suggest that in percentage terms not many Christians practise their religion here, whereas a large percentage of Moslems do. Many of those 41 millions 'Christians' probably enter church less than five times a year if that. Many professed Christians in this country use the church for hatches, matches and dispatches; ie christenings, weddings and funerals.

In latter years I would include myself in that statistic. I come from a long line of profoundly religious people on my mother's side. My grandfather was a Congregationalist minister, as were both my maternal great-grandfathers and one of my great-great-grandfathers. He was a coalminer before he studied for the ministry, partly, if legend is correct, out of devotion, but partly because it was the only way someone like him could gain an education. (As an aside, both my daughter and I have the same family second name Kyria, which comes from his studies - it is the feminine of Kyrie - Lord. His daughter was given this name when she was born during the period of his studies.) My mother is very active in the church, and very knowledgeable. My father was agnostic. I tried very hard to be a believer, and it was only a few years ago that I admitted to myself that I really couldn't claim faith. I envy those with faith, and I admire them. I have friends and relatives whose lives are testament to goodness, calm and faith. I just can't find it in me. Not long before my father died we discussed this and discovered that we both feel the same. My children go to a Catholic school because I very much want them to grow up in that environment and I don't feel equipped to deal with that part of their education.

Anyway, I digress massively. This wasn't supposed to be about me. The Prince of Wales has long held the title "Defender of the Faith". There has been some debate recently as to whether this is appropriate in a country whose population hold so many faiths. And in any case should our future Sovereign have any religious role in such a secular nation as ours? One suggestion is that the Prince of Wales should be renamed "Defender of Faiths" and he is said to like this compromise.

No one in this country can go around citing God as an influence. No one wears his religion on his sleeve and if he does so he is viewed with profound suspicion. When Blair mentioned praying for guidance as to what to do in the current situation in the Middle East it was in the news for days. It was talked about in the same way that Nancy Reagan's consultations of a psychic were talked about. Pray, by all means, but don't talk about it - that's the British way. So all the religious cant trotted out in American politics seems to us to be very distasteful. And, in the current situation, particularly unwise. Religion is a hot potato these days and must be handled very, very carefully.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

The threats

I know I should have got around to doing so earlier, but I'm going to talk about the pandemonium in British airports and its knock-on effect across the pond.

Did you notice what the British authorities did? They did POLICE WORK, and ARRESTED PEOPLE, thus PREVENTING attacks. They did so without declaiming about "Islamo-fadscists" or mentioning Hezbollah. No one felt the need to draw all the ends togteher into a neat little parcel so that all the sharpened axes were tidily deposited in the same bucket. Did you notice that Blair didn't put on a flight jacket and start a war? Do we think this might be because we've actually, in this country, been fighting a war on terrorism for the last forty years? Bush may only have cottoned onto the whole terrorism thing since 9/11, but many of us in Europe and South America are well-used to its effects on our daily lives. We had the IRA, Spain had (and has) ETA, Germany had the Baader-Meinhof gang, Peru has the Shining Path to name but a few. The ground has shifted, the aggressor varies, but the end is the same. Here, as a nation, we accept the facts that a) we don't have bins in railway stations or on the Underground, because historically that was the preferred hiding place for bombs in the IRA era, b) we've always had more stringent security checks in airports, c) people who work in sensitive occupations in times of heightened threat ought to check under their cars for bombs, d) We may not like it, but in danger areas (aeroplanes, tube, large public events), we regard a particular group with more suspicion than we know we should. It's not good, but there it is.

However, at least no one ever suggested dropping bombs on Dublin because there were terrorists there. Or maybe they did, but wiser counsel prevailed and it never happened. Bush's posturing is the scariest thing about what's happening at the moment, because it is so unbelievably dangerous and utterly counter-productive to whatever he's trying to achieve, assuming he is trying to achieve an end to terrorism, which at times seems incredible. Every bomb dropped by America, Britain or Israel creates another few suicide bombers. As I said a few days ago, brace yourself.

I heard an American commentator saying that they had done some research and it turned out that the majority of suicide bombers were not acting because of their religion, but because of Western foreign policy in the Middle East! He said this as if it was something surprising; in fact as if it was a great revelation. It wasn't. Any thinking person could have told you that months ago! Dear God. The reason things are getting worse is the war-mongering idiot in the White House and Blair, who as a clever man really should know better than to get star-struck and pander to the big boys. I don't actually believe that Bush and Blair are on some kind of quasi-religious quest against Islam, but I can oh so easily see how it would look that way to nervous Moslems who watch as Bush publishes his mainly-Moslem list of countries on whom to wage war, and starts conflicts on purely spurious grounds. There was, arguably some basis for claiming that Afghanistan was harbouring Bin Laden and Al Qu'aeda, but Iraq? The most secular country in the Middle East under Saddam Hussein? Come on! The tragedy is that it seems as if, if the US had stayed in Afghanistan and carried on searching that difficult mountainous region they would have caught up with Bin Laden and perhaps, just perhaps, some of this appalling tragedy would have been avoided. But instead we have been set on the path to destruction. I could have predicted that Bush would somehow manage to use this thwarted attack to his own ends and bingo. He said 'Hezbollah'. You can see the wheels in his tiny mind whirring. "Maybe I can divert some of the flak we're getting about supporting Israel... Let's think..." Depressing, depressing, depressing.

Please, people, next time we're given a choice as to wh should lead us, can we NOT choose the telegenic, charismatic fools over heavyweights?

Friday, August 11, 2006

In praise of men

Right, I'm going to come out on this one. I think men are great. I love men. I think they can intelligent, thoughtful, strong, mature, funny, and emotional. Just like women. I think women are great too, but I think men are just as great. I think we all have the capacity to be great given the right encouragement, the right support, the right role-models and if we are TOLD and SHOWN that it is possible.

Ah. And there's the problem in a nutshell. Women, and more specifically girls, are encouraged at every turn, presented with positive gender images in the media, the arts and the public eye, told that they have the right to think they're great. A housewife in an advertisement is superwoman, working women are executives, we use skincare products "because we're worth it". Because most primary teachers are female, and early education has been feminised, by which I mean what children are expected to do in school will be more easily achieved by girls (sitting still and listening for extended periods of time being just the beginning), girls get a bit of a headstart and, in the main, grow up KNOWING that they are more likely to do well at school than boys. Girls are proud of their gender, more confident of their place in the world (paradoxically in a way, but that's another story...) and expected to do well in life.

Boys, on the other hand, see men demonised or demeaned in the media. There are currently two adverts running on British TV where a bride abandons her groom at the altar, and we're supposed to cheer at her independent spirit. Would we applaud if it was the man in this position? The answer is no, although the question is academic, because using a man to show that a relationship with a car is more fulfilling than a relationship with a spouse would not be countenanced in today's society. Sexism, in this case, only goes one way. Men in the media, particularly in advertising, are patsies, softies, boy-men. The only model of male attractiveness is androgyny. The only thing men are presented doing is drinking, clubbing, trying to get laid, having a laugh. Or doing menial work. In other words, being big kids. I noticed with a shock a new Honda advert featuring a sort of Milk Tray man, complete with aviators, moustache and (probably) body hair, bouncing along in a racing boat to the song "To dream the Impossible Dream". It was, of course, ironic. My shock came from realising that we NEVER see men like that presented any more. I'm not a big one for body hair, but nor do I think it is disgusting and laughable, which is the commonly received wisdom among women. Could that be because it is too male? I would ask you to consider the film of Scooby Doo, where Fred, the clever leader of the cartoon original, can no longer be represented as such. No, now he's only norminally the leader, but in reality he is just vain and conceited and has cheated the clever, and female, Velma, who is the real brains and leadership behind the team. When he tries actually to lead he lands the team in trouble. Appropriate role models for boys are few and far between. They tend to be sportsmen, particularly footballers who fall (or are pushed) from grace, with alarming and depressing regularity.

Educationally, when boys fail to shine, or fall behind girls, parents are told "Well, he's a boy...". Even the male teachers say it! This mantra has been repeated so often that everyone now accepts it, rather than putting their backs up and saying "So what?" Boys are expected to underachieve compared to their sisters and it's remarked upon, but no connection is made with the social stereotype that is forced upon them from every possible direction. I can't be the only one who thinks that this has some dreadful Dr Who reversed 1950s feel about it. It's not healthy, not in any way, not for men and not for women.

Groups of boys are eyed with suspicion, even if they're behaving themselves. They are used to this, although they are hurt by it. And if I have learned anything from my education studies it is this - children live up or down to expectations.

I am married to a man who is not like me. He doesn't care about his hair. He doesn't take care of his skin. He doesn't drink the same drinks as I do, or always eat the same food. He reads different books and watches different TV programmes. Until last month he had never owned a pair of sandals in his adult life. He can change plugs and put up shelves (and I'm not very good at either, although I have done both), likes cars and reads car magazines, and enjoys a trip out into the countryside with the dogs, a packed lunch and a couple of beers. He likes the company of other men. He is not, and has never been androgynous. In other words, in media terms he's a dinosaur. In reality, he's a very nice man.

I also have a son. My son is lucky because he has a father at home and he has already at the age of eight had one year being taught by a male teacher. But while my daughter's expectations for herself are big, he doesn't have the same confidence. I watch him watching all this rubbish and I tell him it's rubbish and invite him to consider the reasons for these representations. But it's very invidious, this constant drip-drip of mockery.

Both my children hold doors open for adults, particularly women, and stand up for them on public transport. While people think this is charming when my daughter does it, my son is regarded with curiosity and something approaching disapproval. In shops my daughter can handle objects she is considering buying, whereas shopkeepers will remove things from my son's hand with a reprimand, because obviously he is expected either to drop or steal them. I leave shops when this happens.

I hear that there are so many more women studying medecine these days than men that there is great concern about the future, when a proportion of female doctors will want to take breaks to have a family, and there will not be enough men to take up the slack. This will probably be duplicated in many areas of work. Is this why Gordon Brown, our Chancellor, is so keen to make sure that mothers know that they are more or less expected to work, rather than stay at home and take care of their children?

What makes me so mad about all this is that it is so easy to solve. Stop putting men down. Stop putting boys down. Strive for equality. For women to succeed it is not necessary, or helpful for men to fail. We need to cooperate or it won't work.

It's no fun without pictures

Okay - I have no idea why I can't post photos here. I even managed it once before eons ago.

I've twice uploaded the photos I wanted to post from Mull, hit the 'done' button, and then... can't figure out what to do next.

Sorry - normal service will be resumed soon.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Small Successes

Thanks to all my lovely reviewers over at American Zoetrope, my script is in the Top 3, as published today. Yes, "Dance with Me" marks my first top 3 entry in that category, although "Dance Away" was a Top 3 in the Short Scripts section a long, long time ago.

Trouble is that I have no idea how to capitalise on successes like this. When I recently sent a script in response to a request from a well-known BBC producer interested in films, I mentioned the script I'm working on in my letter. He rang back when he got my letter to say although he wasn't interested in the script I sent him, he would like to talk about the other one I mentioned. That was several weeks ago and I haven't rung back.

I'm always missing opportunities through wilful neglect. A few years ago I was invited to submit a treatment and sample episode for an early evening animation series to the BBC. They were looking for three writers to groom up. It's not necessarily my thing, and I wasn't chosen, but on the strength of my submission I was told that I should ring the Head of Animation at the Beeb to discuss other ideas. I never rang. It was only when I told someone about this and saw the look on her face that I realised the enormity of my omission.

My writing history is littered with instances like this where I have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. I struggle to analyse why I do this, but I really must stop. One thing I'm aware of is that I'm not good on the phone. I've never been one who chats endlessly on the phone - it's a half-medium, sterile, and I just don't like it. I love email because you can frame words carefully, and I like one-to-one meetings because communication is about a great deal more than words; I'm a good reader of body language and I get on with people very well face to face.

So there we are. Ever the nearly woman. Any ideas on how to progress things are always welcome!

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Hebridean Summer

I've just come back from the Isle of Mull, where the family spent a wonderful two weeks relaxing, enjoying the countryside, watching the wildlife, and enjoying peace and tranquillity and lots of books. I'm so relaxed I can barely stand.

Every morning I got up and made myself a cup of tea before everyone else got up, as I do practically every day of my life. Then I stood at the window looking out at the robins and blackbirds who came to harvest the wild strawberries from the plants growing out of the old wall behind. Then I'd open the front door and the dogs would hurtle out after the bunnies who showed them a white flash of tail as they scarpered confidently into the bushes. Gave all of them a good run. We breakfasted on black pudding from Stornoway and eggs before going out on our big walks on the island.

In addition to the wild strawberries and the brambles, there were also wild raspberries all over the island; I've never seen them before but in some areas the air was heavy with the scent. There are apparently over 5000 species of flora on the Isle and certainly everywhere we went the wild flowers were extraordinary, with dozens of species coexisting in carpets on the clifftop, or by the lochside or on the forest floor. In the local park a short walk in one direction took you to the water's edge and sailing boats, and in the other to a loch with yellow and white waterlilies. Wildflowers gladden my heart, so I was very happy.

Martin's thing is birds, so he was in heaven. The big two he wanted to see were a sea eagle and a golden eagle. Birdwatching with two dogs and, sometimes, two noisy kids is something of a challenge but by the last day he'd seen both. We also saw oystercatchers, scaups, curlews, herons and assorted ducks and geese which we don't normally see at home. [Although, as an aside, my daughter and I went to walk our dogs yesterday on the local Forestry Commission land and passed a rather confused cormorant fluttering helplessly, trying to fly off the road. We called the RSPB to rescue it. With two large dogs in tow we couldn't do much. But I've never been up so close - out of water it's an extraordinarily clumsy looking bird, like a heron with short legs...]

We also watched basking grey seals, over a dozen of them, slug-like on a rock off the coast. The kids thought they looked like grey bananas, heads and tails up-turned in the sun. On one occasion we saw a mother and her pup playing briefly and joyfully in the water until she'd had enough and started to make for the shore. You could almost hear the pup calling "Oh, Mum!" before reluctantly trailing her back to the rock. We also saw common seals playing in the tide. Martin saw, on one of his all-day treks, a stag posing for him on a crag. He came back very rosy-cheeked that day!

One day we went over to the holy island of Iona, where St Columba founded a monastery back in (I think) the 14th century. The Abbey is only 19th century, but there are the remains of Columba's old nunnery there, and the whole place is deeply moving, somehow, respectful and solemn. Everything in these islands is utterly unspoilt, so on Iona there is one restaurant and one shop by the ferry terminal (it's only a foot passenger ferry because there's only about a couple of miles of road on Iona.) It adds to the air of tranquillity.

I also spent a couple of hours at Duart Castle, the ancient seat of the macLeans of Duart. The current incumbent, Lachlan Maclean, is the latest Clan Chief, there are many photos around of him and his happy, upper-crust family. However nothing can take away from the fact that this is a dismal old 14th century castle with walls advisedly built 4.9metres thick to keep out the wind as well as the invaders. The dungeons feature dummies of the escapees from the rout of the Spanish Armada by Elizabeth I's fleet in 1588. These men, mercenaries mainly, ill-advisedly sought refuge in this most royalist of homes. They were allowed to stay as long as they promised to act as paid assassins for the macLeans, knocking off their enemies all over Scotland and England. The dungeons were grim. damp, dank and dark, ridden with rats. But even in the main house and castle there were only slits in the wall for the archers to use but apart from that no light came in. Even the stairs are built for combat; constructed in such a way that one right-handed swordsman could fight off his enemies as he went down them. Now the wind whistles, even in August, through the enlarged and ill-fitting windows, and one thinks of how dreadful it must have been in those olden days. But how much worse for the crofters in their little two-roomed cottages, when the laird could put them out or move them on without a reason, and obviously did.

We spent days on the coast at Langamull, a small sandy bay, where the children collected jellyfish and gathered them into a rockpool which was designated a jellyfish sanctuary. They were small and colourful. My children informed me that the red ones were the stingers. Apparently "Everyone knows that." Daughter and Pup competed for the crabs, she to collect the shells and he to eat them all whole.

Along a mile or so was Calgary bay, after which, apparently, the Canadian city is named. It's a beautiful sandy bay. Even when the carpark was full, the beach seemed almost deserted.

I have to mention food. It was terrific. There was a time when Scotland had a reputation for disgusting food. But what we had was amazing. I've mentioned black pudding, which I think is a great culinary treat - grilled for breakfast, or accompanying scallops and pea puree as a really special supper. The kids learned to love it, and they are converts to haggis, the ultimate Scottish delicacy "chieftain o' the pudding race" as Burns put it. We had haggis three times, with neeps and tatties (that's swede and potato to you) and whisky cream, all washed with a dram of the local Scotch. Well, the kids missed out on that bit. And then the dogs feasted on the sheep's stomach casing. The scallops were bought from a tiny shed which was the local fish processing plant. We went in at 6pm to find one man shucking scallops solemnly in the corner. There was fish and chip van on the harbour called "The Fish and Chip Van", which proudly displayed a "Les Routiers" sign. I've never seen that but it was deserved - fantastic fish and chips. They also offered haggis and chips and scallops and chips. All in all - Wonderful!

There's too much to say to cover it fully, but suffice to say, we haven't had enough and I think it's very safe to say that we'll be back.