King of the Ukrainian fiddlers

was, as I have just discovered, a man named Pawlo Humeniuk, a track of whose, “Urkainska weselia w Americzki” appears on the rather wonderful “Stranded in the USA“, released by the German Trikont label (my love of this label and the obscure yet utterly delightful music they release (klezmer, yodelling, Bavarian folk, disaster songs - browse their site to get an idea) cannot be put into words…)

Anyway, this is a collection of songs recorded by (mainly) European immigrants into the US in the early 20th century for the burgeoning ethnic music market - Upton Sinclair’s “Jungle” gives an insight into the world inhabited by these new Americans, and although the pride in Irishness has been subsumed by rampant hedonism, there are still many proud ethnic groups in the US who celebrate their native cultures (and in some cases act as a repository for traditions wiped out in their homelands by war/politics/modernity (delete as appropriate)) - and strangely, the clearest example I can think of at the moment is the first half an hour of “The Deer Hunter“, with an entire traditional (as far as I can tell) Rusyn wedding translated to late-1960’s Pennsylvania.

Anyway, I digress, this CD is, if you are at all interested in some of the more obscure roots of American popular music (beyond the clear blues and Irish folk that can be heard in traditional country music and all its descendants, including rock’n'roll), packed with Klezmer and Central European (both of which have recently had a renaissance amongst the young in London), but also Italian (in the style of the great crooners - and probably an influence on Sinatra et al), Austrian, Swiss, German, but most interestingly, Finnish. Finnish has never appeared to me (in the little of it I have ever seen written, or even less heard spoken) as the most musical of languages, apart of course from Fredi in 1976:

And yet they are musical, and even if understand less than a single word, there is a sense of yearning that the Finnish songs share with the ditties from the other supposedly more passionate and emotional ethnic groups. Gloomy, yes, but passionately gloomy (if such a thing is possible).

Gordon

shoved open the door of the public bar, Ravelston following.
Ravelston persuaded himself that he was fond of pubs, especially
low-class pubs. Pubs are genuinely proletarian. In a pub you can
meet the working class on equal terms–or that’s the theory,
anyway. But in practice Ravelston never went into a pub unless he
was with somebody like Gordon, and he always felt like a fish out
of water when he got there. A foul yet coldish air enveloped them.
It was a filthy, smoky room, low-ceilinged, with a sawdusted floor
and plain deal tables ringed by generations of beer-pots. In one
corner four monstrous women with breasts the size of melons were
sitting drinking porter and talking with bitter intensity about
someone called Mrs Croop. The landlady, a tall grim woman with a
black fringe, looking like the madame of a brothel, stood behind
the bar, her powerful forearms folded, watching a game of darts
which was going on between four labourers and a postman. You had
to duck under the darts as you crossed the room, there was a
moment’s hush and people glanced inquisitively at Ravelston. He
was so obviously a gentleman. They didn’t see his type very often
in the public bar.

George Orwell, Keep the aspidistra flying

Lovecraft

was seemingly a writer who liked the use of the word “antediluvian”. I also like this word. Today the torrential downpours across the UK flooded my workplace - my office was an inch deep (2.5cm for those non-imperialists) in rainwater. I got soaked. And I didn’t have a change of clothes, so my feet were decidedly wrinkly by the time I got home and took my shoes and socks off some 7 hours after getting wet. This is the second time this week I have been covered in water of questionable purity.

On Wednesday my neighbour beneath came up to ask whether there was a leak in the kitchen. “No, I don’t think so.” I replied. “I’ll go and take a look”. Fatal mistake.

Beneath the sink four inlets (two plugholes, a washing machine and a dishwasher) all meet in a kind of Spaghetti Junction of white and grey piping). I hadn’t used the dishwasher or washing machine, so I thought it must be the sink(s). I took everything out of the cupboard - why do the British insist on storing the most random things beneath the kitchen sink (paintbrushes, putty, flower pots…) I saw there was some water marking, but this may have been from previous floods with the previous tenants. Then I saw it, a small drip every couple of seconds. OK, I thought. As I’m here, I’ll undo the pipes, give them a rinse in some hot water and put them back together - tighten the dripping one and we’ll all be happy as Larry. Fatal mistake number 2.

As I began to unscrew the dripping joint, it rose to become a veritable arc of slightly dirty water. Fortunately I had placed a bowl beneath the plumbing, so I continued, logically assuming that as the pressure dropped, so the water would gently drain into the bowl. Fatal error number three.

The pressure did drop, but the brown water now poured everywhere. And as I sought to stem the flow, so random jets would build up and shoot out at all angles between my fingers. So I now have a bowl full of dark brown water, a cupboard covered in drops of dark brown water. And me, covered in drops of dark brown water. Fun.

So, one bowl full of water later, and it stops. I can remove the pipe, take out the festering filth that has built up to cause the blockage, clean it, and put it all back together. Only this last part doesn’t quite work. One of the pipes no longer seems ot fit, and drips as water comes down from the sink. So I unscrew it and take a look. And the seal has gone. Which was most likely part of the problem to begin with. So I head down to the local hardware store (yes, we still have one - no Homebase or B&Q here, thank you), get a seal (or should that be washer) and put it all back together.

And so far it has been OK. Touch wood.

Thanks and apologies to Mikhail Zoshchenko.

Home again

Thoughts on the West of Ireland to follow, once I have done the piles of washing and had a kip. In the meantime, though, a short ditty by Flann O’Brien:

Said a Sassenach back in Dun Laoghaire
“I pay homage to nationalist thaoghaire,
But wherever I drobh
I found signposts that strobh
To make touring in Ireland so draoghaire.”

[...]In vain the frightened Tamoszius

would attempt to speak, to plead the limitations of the flesh; in vain would the puffing and breathless ponas Jokubas insist, in vain would Teta Elzbieta implore. ‘Szalin!‘ Marija would scream. ‘Palauk! isz kelio! What are you paid for, children of hell?’ And so, in sheer terror, the orchestra would strike up again, and Marija would return to her place and take up her task.[...]

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

Soliloquy of the Solipsist

I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon’s celestial onion
Hangs high.

I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look’s leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.

I
When in good humor,
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power
To boycott any color and forbid any flower
To be.

I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it’s quite clear
All you beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.

Sylvia Plath, 1956

Mortality

So my bank think it is necessary for me to take out life insurance before my 30th birthday. They have never contacted me about this before. Do they know something I don’t? Especially as is there is no lump sum at the end of the policy, and they frequently refer to the fact that my dependents will receive a payout if I should die within the first 15 years of the policy.

Is another 15 years really the best I can hope for? If so, that is two thirds of my life over with already. And it means that I was middle-aged at 22 - something that probably won’t come as a surprise to most of you. And I certainly feel it. My back has been bad this week - it went whilst cleaning the kitchen floor. It is almost back to normal now - after 2 days and repeated hot baths it seems to have clicked back.

It caused enormous hilarity for the other residents of Ealing as I hobbled down to the Tube station on Wednesday morning - even the mentally ill Irish woman I pass at precisely 9.52 looked at me with pity, rather than screaming obscenities at me as usual - this was, of course, compounded by the ’snowstorm’ that hit Britain and brought London to a halt once again. I no longer have either the energy or the inclination to rant once again about lack of preparation/Tubes/trains, etc. And it makes no difference - an inch (2.5cm for the European readers) of snow. I will point you back to my Grossman/TFL post, as this explains it all.

Vasilii Grossman versus TFL

“…After Unecha, we travelled in a freight car. The weather was wonderful, but my travel companions said this was bad, and I realised this myself. There were black holes and craters from bombs everywhere along the railway. One could see trees broken by explosions. In the fields there were thousands of peasants, men and women, digging anti-tank ditches.

We watch the sky nervously and decided to jump off the train if the worst came to the worst. It was moving quite slowly. The moment we arrived in Novozybkov there was an air raid. A bomb fell in the station forecourt. This train wasn’t going any further…”

Vasilii Grossman, A Writer At War

“Throughout the day, fallen trees and other debris have caused disruption to most open sections of the Tube network.

Speed restrictions have also been introduced on some open sections of the Tube network for safety reasons.

LU is working with infrastructure companies Tube Lines and Metronet to remove debris from tracks as quickly as possible but inevitably this will result in disruption to services.”

TFL

Enjoying

William Dalrymple - From the Holy Mountain
Brendan Behan - Confessions of an Irish Rebel
Sinead O’Connor - Throw Down Your Arms
Apple - Ipod
Fawlty Towers DVDs

I don’t know why I do what I do.

If I did know, I probably wouldn’t feel the need to do it. All I can say, and I say it with utmost certainty, is that I have felt this need since my earliest adolescence.

The rest of Paul Auster’s acceptance speech for the Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters can be read here. There is hope, after all.