blancmange blanket

Rewind fifty years and London had the kind of air quality you find in Skopje. Another fifty years, replace one set of roadside pyromaniac children with another, Irish or something else, reintroduce stray dogs and the similarities are back. These few days have been a lesson in development and the socio-economic history of cities. While not retracting anything about people being friendly and what have you, I won't be unhappy to leave this city. No wonder you don't see people walking around - more than a couple of weeks here would give you permanent lung damage, not just for the 150% smoking rate; this place will be ripe for respiratory snake oil in a few years' time.

So happily, away is where I am going - this evening, an overnight bus to Istanbul, back on the second of 2007, then to Ohrid and Bitola for a couple of days, followed by a couple of days in Prishtina before going back to Belgrade, Vienna and Bratislava on the tenth.

Ottomania! (I think Orhan Pamuk is a marvellous author, but sadly we won't be able to visit him at home...)


Huggy new year, folks.


Chris

charming, cold and brutal

здраво, friends.

And first, a goodbye, to some of those leaving. But really I just want to show you my kitchen:

in which I now realise there is a poster reading Peace. Got to be on message...

~

In Скопје, the new year celebration is approaching. I had a chat with a man hanging presents in a pine tree on the side of the Водно hill-called-mountain as I walked on up this afternoon. Our communication, a mix of my Slavic and his patience, told me he lived just down the hill, the presents were hung for the children, his and his neighbour's. Had I not got lost on my way back down, perhaps there would be a photo.

The path to the top is marked with redyellowred tricolours, reminiscent of Land and Freedom, which told us so much about ideological purity. Ad or post hoc, this felt an appropriate association, given that the road to the hill is Улица Салвадоре Аљенде (the article in that link yellowed on my wall, way back when, having made a young, idealistic me cry, in incomprehension or Idon'tknowwhat). This not being a proper blog, I failed to mention the death of Pinochet when it came. In spite of this, he did die, and though Jack Straw may always have been fooled into letting him go free, this kind of case creates a classic dilemma for the human rights-based approach- how many people must you torture and vanish from existence to not have personal ill-health defeat the public interest prosecution against you? Perhaps living out life under house arrest is enough of a deterrant for others. Perhaps it can even go some way to satisfying the demands of justice. I'm not convinced, but my progressive nature is clearly reproachable - viz today's question, born of the hillwalk: should such walks, in the Tatras, say, or the Cinqueterre, or anywhere else, which give access to natural beauty, be made wheelchair-friendly? I like hiking, and part of the joy is to have to scramble and feel physically challenged by the land I am crossing. I don't want these paths to be made wheelchair-friendly, but there is a minority rights argument for it. Maybe it would be possible to provide other access for wheelchairs? Does anyone know any wheelchair-hikers? Maybe it's just that everyone has their limits, and my inclusive, minority-sensitive head runs up against my selfish heart at this point? After all, the purist can well argue that the little coloured path-guides undermine the need to navigate yourself to the top, surely an integral part of the experience...


Скопје is a friendly place, full of nice people and horrible buildings. Based on my few hours there, Београд is full of nice buildings and unfriendly people. So it goes. Gordana pretends to like buildings, I pretend to like people. This is us, people, in front of a building, which i realise you can't properly see. But it's just another mosque, looking like my (therefore your) archetypal mosque:

The church of Свети Климент Охридски is not a normal looking church, and deserves a photo:
The inside is much more interesting, but no photos allowed there. Not that I would feel inherently wrong taking photos at a youth club, political party headquarters or butchers' meeting house, and not that I do in churches, it's just harder to negotiate with those whose offence is divinely sanctioned. And anyway, the smell was the most gorgeous thing, all soot, wax and oil, and I couldn't even try to spell it.

Ten years before Chile's nine-eleven, another disaster, this time God's doing, befell another anomalous socialist country, killing thousands of residents of Skopje and destroying its buildings. According to Гордана, the whole place was rebuilt in the concreative image of some architect enamoured by ugliness, though I must say the consistency of the concrete and its variety are impressive. The side of the surviving part of the old railway station has Тито's thank you note to Југославиа and the world, which is a fine use of public space:

Lastly, for now: this being one of those places where Christianity is a massive, lazy, symbolic force in people's lives, they have a big cross. It's up the hill, like a little yellow, bent tour Eiffel:
Don't it make you wanna Џамп?

Pagan festivities

...he's a very naughty boy

__________________________________________________

after practising four hours a day for a week, i shall be doing the same.

Pretty pretty...I know tulips in december have environmental implications. That's all.

Asya and Pavla dig in to Joe's recipe, as tasted through a Chrism.

Chris plus three, sat on his bed. The floor is as good for salsa (and hopefully contact improv) as it looks (id est, quite good.

Badri considers having toasted my mother giving birth to me, which was simultaneously relayed, telefonically.

Dhaling

Eighty-three is a prime number. So is twenty-three. Nineteen hundred and eighty-three is not prime, being thrice six hundred and sixty-one, a pinch shy of triple evil, and more meaningful for it. 'Eighty-three plus twenty-three equals twenty-o-six (or, as it is put in Ersatz Nation, where we are now). The PM is making a last effort to have people say anything good about him in a hundred years' time. I hope he puts himself physically in the middle of a gunfight, and is ignored.

My flirtation with being an expert in Budapest was a fine meeting, I learned a lot and contributed thoughts here and there. It will hopefully lead to some more consultancy work, since people seem generally happy with me (I don't know what it takes to make people happy. I gave up trying to work it out). Also established a reputation for cow-stomachs, managing three deep-fried slabs of calf-calf jelly and a colleague's duck ("You've eaten so less it could still fly"). Made friends with a youth policy expert well into his fifties but distinctly still youthful. One of the world's few successful moustaches.

This is to say, I won't be back in England any time soon. Maybe at the end of March, maybe not. I am missing Christmases this year, but today is Chrismas, which is more me. My first Chrismas morning in a dwelling all on my own. Peaceful, nobody to urge me not to be an hour late for work. I've just noticed that the Lewisham Council logo is encouraging us to make a citizens' monarchy, aka a republic. Have I recommended His Dark Materials recently? Ah, to fall in love across the religious divide. Presently I am reading On Beauty, and am very satisfied. This lady has a fine mind, though I am slightly frustrated, and it's probably my fault, at the feeling that I am definitely being told a story. I don't feel transported out of my position as reader, which happens occasionally.

Thanks to the kind gift of a couple of Walter Mosley's books, I will be kept busy on my twelve-hour coach ride to Istanbul at new year, having fallen irreparably out with the woman taking me in for quinzejours having never met me. An argument over the appropriate place of violent fantasy in political motivation. The pitched battles of division-conquered fools played out in the utopic setting of the Barbican, watched by those rousing their respective rabbles, who share champagne on the thirty-ninth floor - and what a view that is. (Lesson learned: access requires humble confidence.) Had I the patience, I would offer photos. I may bring myself around, after this evening's festivities. This blogue, you see, has become a symbol of my inability to commit; the circle has its arbitrary starting point at my guilt at not giving you enough, and its end where I shy away and dissociate myself from your disappointment. The infinite sides in between are where I can't tickle you into talking.

I'm almost done at Unifem - three more days. Eesh, over so quickly. I am assured that Resident Man is more than enough of a role to keep me here. A TOR is being worked out now, to include flattery, arse-pinching, heavy lifting and being the butt of hairline jokes. Ah, We, the follicles. Another year, another degree or two of brow. I only say these things because they don't matter at all. Thank you for happy wishes, where they have come, and know that despite being a Master of Nothing, I at least have a spoon. A shiny, pink-bowed spoon. To combine themes, someone at UNIFEM clearly got me down to a tee(-shirt) - I have, as well as wine and flowers, a set of beautiful papers and some eenteresting fabric paints. At last, all those t-shirts I always wanted to make, made in all the spare time my poor, unemployed self is going to have. There are worse plces to be unemployed, but I'd still prefer work. Will keep you posted.


This is really good,

he said, raising his fork,

I don't want it to stop


I don't of course know who you are, but if you think I might miss you, I probably do. Enjoy your upcoming moments out of the slavish lifestyle to which we have become accustomed, your crumbs beneath the table of the bureaucratic time imperative, capitalist, worthy, productive, fulfilling or other. Finding ways to fill the days we have had thrust upon us - I recommend feasting and walks in the cold.

Yours reborn again,

Chris

little bits of metal

Hi folks, a bit of advertising here. The Dave is a cunning alter-ego for my friend Rudolph, who is a singer, songwriter and strummer of a guitar. I once wrote something interesting about music and friends, in the context of he and Alex, but we can't remember where. so you will have to trust me.

The Dave has some gigs:

15th December 2006 9.00pm @ PRINCE ALBERT BATTERSEA
85, Albert BridgeRd,Battersea, London, SW114PF

5th of January 2007 08:40 pm @ The Red Room @ The Comedy Pub
7 Oxendon Street,Piccadilly Circus, London, LondonSW1
£5 (withthe attached flyer)

I'd really appriciate people going to the 5th of January gig because if Idon't get 15 people then I won't be offered a second booking.For more information and to hear The Dave's shifting line up of songs visit:http://www.myspace.com/thedaveiscoming

BUT WAIT... STOP THE PRESS: The Middle Class Bastards are going to have there london debut!

18th February 2007 7.30 pm @ Big Note at The Hope
Hope & Anchor 207 Upper St Islington London N1
£4.50 with attached flyer
Again your support would be appriciated for this one. The Bastards have toget 25 people to attend to get a second booking. To check them out/listen to there songs the visit: http://www.myspace.com/themiddleclassbastards or for a none swearing version of them visit: http://www.myspace.com/cdqualitycopy

Hope to see you all at all of these things, probably see some of you atsome. Please forward this email to anybody you think would like to come to these gigs and who lives in london (or even is preparred to travel to londonto see such new and exciting events.)
http://www.myspace.com/goosefat101
http://goosefat101.blogspot.com/



Budapest was very useful and it was good to see Joe again, although now he is Josy. When the annual report submission is made, I will tell you more. Also, I totally caned it in the HIV/AIDS bowling tournament. 450 series, sweet.You'll have to imagine the fist...

Big, Important Things

Okay folks, your hero is off to do BITs in Budapest until Wednesday afternoon, so there won't be much to see here (in great contrast to usually). In my absence, there may be things to read and comment on here, here and there. If you want to see what I'm up to... maybe some background usefulnesses will be available at the youth sections of here and here. But I don't know that for sure. This is an interesting publication.

Budapest looks like this: