Delayed Trajectory (Fiction & Location)

I've spent much of the weekend at home in Stuttgart, fictioning about Russia, Scotland and Canada. Stuttgart has been my base for over a year and I've yet to complete a work of fiction about the place, which might seem peculiar to you, dear reader. Or maybe not.

In  Moscow, a location with all the things required for a great story (social contrast, danger, uncertainty, mullets, elaborate drinking rituals, corruption, complex sexual politics) people used to say How marvelous, you're in Moscow. You must be writing such a lot. It was true in a sense, but I was writing about Scotland, India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. In Glasgow I wrote about Canada. Also Paris, London, New York. In Stuttgart, I write compulsively about Moscow. My fiction is a delayed image of my totally unplanned trajectory through the world.

Maybe I'll write about Stuttgart after I'm gone. Distance, evidently, is the thing that adds clarity, or perhaps creativity. Or whatever it is that turns ideas and experience into good fiction. It's also possible that living in a new place adds depth to the place before, in the way that you can only appreciate cake if you've first had a Proper Dinner.

Away from Glasgow, I can look back on the dark humour, near-cartoonish violence, deceptively entertaining politics, joie de vivre and deranged weather with clarity and (let us hope) intelligence. When I was one step removed from Atlantic Canada I could finally appreciate the hospitality, fierce intelligence and linguistic marvel of my homeland. I'd like to give all these places a just fictional mirror to gaze into, assuming I'm up to the task. On a more basic creative level, the narrative comes naturally after time.

Having said all that (and being unable to write a blog post without contradicting my main point), when I write about a place I occupied in the past, I tend to work in part from memory and feeling, and in part from observational notes and non-fiction written on site. I've been working on three short stories in parallel this weekend, one which stems from these lines I found in my handwriting on a receipt in a book I started in Zheleznedorozhny and didn't finish:

There's an old woman by the elektrichka feeding wild dogs from her hand, bits of meat wrapped in paper from the butcher, talking to them the way she'd talk to a child. She's wearing one of those identical fur coats all the babushki wear. It's brown and rigid-looking. She looks happy. 

It just seemed so ordinary at the time. And fabulous. But now I know it was neither.  

Mr Farage Goes to Edinburgh, Probably Doesn't Return

Any fool could have told Nigel 'Bawbag' Farage that Edinburgh is not his target market. Well, any fool who knows anything about Scottish politics. In this respect Farage made the same mistake as nearly every political party in Westminster, by remaining blind to the fact that the political climate in Scotland is distinct from the political climate in England.

I'll take a stab in the dark and suggest that neither Farage nor his minders did their research before boarding the Virgin Pendolino, instead making the assumption that Scotland is England-Tories+haggis. That's what happens if the Daily Mail is your only news source, and if you're willing to believe there are 5 million people north of Carlisle who don't understand politics. I suspect Farage also, to his detriment, swallowed the notion that the party with a majority of seats in Holyrood gained the support of so many voters on a single policy of independence and no other policies at all.

A brief chat with absolutely anyone who knows anything would have disproved the former theory, while a glance at Wikipedia (or something, anything) would have disproved the latter. A google search would have revealed that the Scottish majority government's position on immigration, gay marriage, the EU and whatever else Ukip hates is so far from Ukip's position you would need to travel at the speed of sound to get from one to the other. It's not difficult to deduce, on that basis, that the position of most of the Scottish electorate is similar.

As Mike Small points out in his excellent analysis of The Edinburgh Incident, it's redundant to ask why Farage got a hostile welcome in Scotland:

"Instead we should be asking just what has happened to English culture that a party with a loathsome agenda of homophobia, barely masked racism and a litany of other far-right notions has made such headway in the 21st century."

Source: Mike Small, Guardan.co.uk

I was in England and Scotland during the week Ukip won their local election victory. As is increasingly the case when I'm in both of these countries where I have indelible links, I went from thought-provoking political discourse over Glasgow dinner tables to a collective sigh of resignation in Manchester. These post-industrial, creative, traditionally left-wing cities have a great deal in common, including a long history of game-changing political and social activism, so why has one kept the fury while the other has thrown down its sword?

Ukip claiming victory in the current political climate in England is sort of like a travelling salesman arriving in a town where the only three shops have decided to sell nothing but three different brands of mustard, and claiming to have cornered the market on potatoes. Not that Ukip are selling anything so useful as potatoes. Ukip aren't selling anything, except for the sort of lazy rhetoric that allowed the BNP their brief bliss, which depends on a climate of such extreme political apathy and frustration that voters will grab at anyone who appears to know the problem and the solution. Whether voters chose Ukip out of a sincere belief in bigoted rhetoric or as a desperate attempt to make a point is difficult to say, but it's inarguable that in the political desert anything can look like an oasis, even a tree stump like Farage.

Farage says Scots (who disagree with him) are anti-English fascists, which everyone in the universe has pointed out is a bit of a pot-kettle situation. His ludicrous reaction to Thursday's protesters along with his inability to deal with a difficult interview indicate that Farage isn't very good at politics, which I suspect will be his downfall as a politician. Ukip's success depends on scavenging what the Tories have abandoned, just as the BNP's success depended on targeting racists who also happened to be fed up with Labour, rather than engaging with public discourse and gaining lasting support. Ukip aren't politicians, they are what emerges in the absence of politicians. They won't last, is my point.

I'm not disputing the existence of anti-English sentiment in Scotland. It exists and it is indefensible. We're not a perfect society, nor are we more ethical or intelligent than our neighbours to the south. But our rejection of Ukip, like our rejection of the BNP, has little to do with anti-English bigotry. We have better political options in Holyrood than the three disastrous, disconnected parties presiding over Westminster. Farage was chased out of Edinburgh not because Scotland is better than England, but because we still have political choice and discourse, and a notion of a future which could go in more than one direction, and that is why he failed so spectacularly. We will never be satisfied with our politicians, we will call them to question and choose better ones if they fall short of our expectations, but that's how politics works. That's the only way politics works. 

Canadians Don't Go To Space Without Guitars

What happens when you put a Canadian in charge of the International Space Station? It involves a guitar (obviously), pictures of your hometown (because he was passing by your hometown and took a photo for you) (and tweeted it) and educational things based on science things tweeted by schoolkids. This preamble is just an excuse to make the viral video of Commander Chris Hadfield's version of David Bowie's Space Oddity just a bit more viral, because I'm so very proud of our first Canadian ISS Commander. And his moustache.

The Multilingual Gruffalo

It occurred to me last week, while reading the Scots translation of The Gruffalo to my friends' child in Renfrewshire, that I've developed...let's say a tradition...of reading the story in multiple languages which I'm trying to acquire or trying not to lose.

I don't know know how it came about. I suspect it started in a Moscow bookshop in 2010, during a cold winter. I might be making this up, as I have little memory of that winter, apart from drinking too much and trying to summarise my 20s in a useful manner. I do know that reading children's books is a good way to improve language skills, especially if you (like me) prefer to trick yourself into believing that grammar does not exist.

A couple of these are written in languages in which I'm long past the rhyming couplet stage, but nevertheless. Possibly because I read it in Russian (or French?) before I read it in my first language, the original English version is not my favourite. I liked the Scots version, though it brought to mind the difficulty of trying to standardise, or maybe in this case centralise, a language that is so vividly identified by regional variation and has so long been characterised by a disputed (in content and existence) lexicon.

Update, 10 May 2013: If you're interested in the politics of language acquisition, have a look at the thrilling Rosen vs Gove debate. I'm firmly on team Rosen, in that grammar (like all parts of language) is a changing creature that must be taught in the context of real speech, rather than a gift bestowed on the rest of us by the narrow and increasingly less powerful section of the world who use Standard British English.

A Doll's House, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

Nora's unravelling world is crucial to A Doll's House, but the final showdown between Nora and Torvald is the play. That's what I think, so I was pleased with the weight given to the final scene of Bryony Lavery's adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre, conducted first with Nora prone on a couch and Torvald ranting, moving around the stage, claiming his territory, and then the characters negotiating the future face to face across a central table at Nora's direction.

Cush Jumbo's blood-and-guts performance of Nora had a touch of Kathakali about it. It was all about Nora's eyes, and face, changing from naive and ridiculous to indignant to terrified to horrified to grieved, and finally to the conflict of a woman leaving the life someone else constructed for her. Jumbo's still gaze as Torvald reveals himself as a misogynist and a coward is riveting. Her acting brings the play directly, unmistakably into the glaring present. This is something you will recognise, whether or not you've seen this play.

David Sturzaker's Torvald demonstrated a believable combination of ridiculous and sinister, but while I could easily imagine Jumbo's Nora as a modern-day banker's wife, I couldn't place Sturzaker's Torvald in The City. He lacked the social sophistication. The contrast of Nora and Torvald Helmer's pretend life with Christine Lind and Krogstad, equals in their realism, pain and eventual happiness, was effective. The ideas of alienation versus love and romance versus realism were delivered clearly in this production, but not forced on the audience as (sadly, occasionally) in other performances. The changing power position within the Helmers' house, particularly in the final scene, was amplified by the round stage at the Royal Exchange, which was put to good use by Greg Hersov's direction.

Good adaptation, good acting, good stage direction. The only thing I really have to moan about is the coffee. I'd also do something about the complete lack of macarons, for I cannot see A Doll's House without wanting macarons, but I really am nitpicking now.

How to Recommend Books in Glasgow

I was standing at the side of Byres Rd today (with a new vintage scarf in my bag) waiting for a car to zoom toward the curb and transport me to another part of the west end. I was reading Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things for the mbrrrillionth time, the novel that sent me on a journey through Kerala in 2008. A car appeared-not the one I was waiting for-and a woman climbed out with considerable difficulty just as I finished the last page. She wore a pink synthetic jacket, enormous purple sunglasses and carried a cane.

What are you reading hen?  

The God of Small Things. I've read it a few times, it's very good. 

Is it worth reading, aye? I'd like to read that one. 

You can have this copy if you want, I've just finished it. 

No hen, thank you, I've got it on my bookshelf at home waiting for me to get round to it. But I'll read it now you've recommended it. 

Lovely. See you later. 

Goodbye hen, have a good day now.

I related the encounter to N as we drove, and he told me about the most Glaswegian book recommendation he'd ever had, while reading in Kelvingrove Park. A be-tracksuited, be-trainered youth approached him.

Got a light? 

Yeah, here you go. 

What are you reading? 

[whatever N was reading] 

You know what you should read? 

What? 

Voltaire. 

Voltaire? 

Aye, Candide by Voltaire. Real funny book by Voltaire.  

Okay. 

Right, you have a good day. 

And you.

I saw the woman in the pink jacket as I walked to the cafe where I am currently perched. She was in a beer garden, waiting for a play to start. We waved to each other.

Still on the book theme, but not exclusively the Glasgow theme, I had the great honour yesterday evening of being summoned to read a pop-up version of Peter Rabbit to a small lover of books (and world atlases, and Cheburashka). I recalled how frightening a character Mr McGregor is to a tiny reader who identifies with a small rabbit in a waistcoat. The grown-up talk later veered toward the horror in children's stories, the films and books that traumatised us when we were young, and the relevance of books that frighten children away from forests and stepmothers. I wonder...

Sarah Blasko, Stuttgart

I almost missed the lovely Sarah Blasko due to my negligence of local listings, but Karen emailed me on Thursday and informed me we were going to Bix on Saturday night. Thank the heavenly heavens for observant friends.

Blasko on stage is funny, and grittier than recorded Blasko. She has a sweet voice that takes off and takes me to dark places. She had a dedicated audience last night, an enviable black dress and good banter. She repaired my brain after a troublesome week. We heard songs from her new album I Awake, sans Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra who are part of the recorded version. Her website described the album as unsettling, and I agree to the extent that there's an confusion about the lyrics that makes the listener unsure of what's going on but intent on knowing. I'm listening to I Awake as I type,  in the cold light of midday with a mild wine hangover and can confirm I'm unsettled, but in a familiar way. Blasko's music takes me back to some of the women artists I loved in the 90s, like Hope Sandoval, who had a world of grit and intelligence under their nice surface.

Bix is a local jazz club with an intimate performance space and two small bars. The real star of the place is the upstairs waiter. If you've been there, you know who I mean. It's the best small venue I've been to in Stuttgart, with a consistently well-chosen line-up of artists. 

I didn't stump up 10 Euro for a Sarah Blasko teatowel, and I regret it today, but I bought a CD and recalled how long it's been since I bought an actual, physical CD at a gig. I'm sentimental about CDs the way I am about paper books. What bliss, coming home and taking it out of my bag, unwrapping it, putting it on, walking around the flat with a cup of tea reading the lyrics...you know what I mean, right?

Epilogue: Many thanks to the two chivalrous gentlemen at the upstairs bar who sent us champagne because, apparently, they saw us arrive and decided we were fascinatingly un-local.