De-bearded

First published in Column 8, on the 15th Sept 1993.  

Fooled into thinking I was good-looking - even handsome - by photographs more than a quarter of a century old, my wife and family had long nagged me to shave off my beard. I resisted the conspiracy to tame this full-blooded feature of masculinity.

However, while my wife was away overseas, I decided (quite unaffected by outside pressures), to see if she would know me at the airport if I met her beardless.

The weekend before she came home, I took scissors, along with a borrowed razor, (fully intending to return to my hairy state within a week), and shaving cream. Breathing deep into my diaphragm, I proceeded to dispense with the facial hair.

Excitement welled up as I embarked on a voyage of rediscovery. I hacked away with the scissors: a reasonable-looking character emerged. Hmm, not too bad.

Then I completed the job. And all those movies where someone's face changes before your eyes - usually for the worse - came back to haunt me.

The youth of the 25 year-old photos was gone. Double-chinned, a bejowelled, bothered and bewildered stranger appeared, like Rip Van Winkle after his lengthy slumber.

I could never confront the world like this. The beard must resume its groundcover as soon as I'd faced my wife.

Sunday morning at church. Every reaction possible. People recognizing me instantly - and laughing! Complementary people: my smile now seen in its fullest glory. Uncomplementary people - like myself - who couldn't wait for my face to go into hiding again. People who knew me but thought I'd changed my hairstyle. And those who didn't know me at all...!

"Mr Crowl," one bearded friend said, "I feel betrayed."

Subsequent meetings with friends and acquaintances convince me that people recognize other people in very individual ways. What else would account for such varied reactions?

On Monday, a shopkeeper and a librarian, people who know me only as a walking beard, recognized me without difficulty. Others recognized the glasses and squeezed-up eyes, but didn't register the loss of the lower part of my face. I feel like someone in those children's books where the top halves of the faces can be matched up with all manner of lower halves.

People say I look twenty years younger. This is odd, since they used to say before that I never looked my age. I must have plummeted back into adolescence. (Some say I look older. Good grief!)

As soon as I move away from my normal context, many people totally fail to recognize me. Anonymous, I melt into the crowd. I'm the victim of beardist remarks, from both men and women, as people's deep anti-beard emotions come out of the closet. All this on top of skin irritations, nicks, rashes, and the sting of aftershave.

Tuesday, my wife returned to Dunedin. At the airport, she screamed, laughed and cried - but avoided hysteria. I've been bearded for 22 years; longer than we've been married.

"I hate it!" she said, which was a relief - so do I. But that was her first reaction. Later she began to enjoy the smoothness of the face - and the smell of the aftershave. It was like having a new husband - at least in part.

I told her I've got plenty of smooth bits on my body that don't need to be razored - the palms of my hands, for instance, or the backs of my ears. If necessary, I can always douse these with aftershave.

The photo above is, at present, a remembrance of things past. Don't despair, fellow bearded ones: negotiations currently underway are hopeful of my naked face returning to its former glory.

Barbered

First published in Column 8 on the 29^th July, 1992

Some weeks are better than others for making you feel old – well, older, anyway.

This week I went to a barber for the first time in eighteen years, the very barber to whom I used to go when I was a callow youth. He’d lost more hair than I had, which was a sort of consolation – and shifted premises – but little else of the familiar going-to-the-barber routine had changed.

There was still the partnering of tobacco with male tonsure – even in these enlightened days you don’t see tobacco in the ladies’ hairdressers. There was the scent of men’s hair spray. There was the feeling of being like a bed being made as the cloth was swept around me and tucked in at the edges.

There were the large mirrors reflecting a blurred shape that to me looked much the same before and after. And as always, however careful the barber is, there was the rest-of-the-day-awareness inside your singlet of having been barbered.

The same old art of casual conversation was still practiced, an art for which I had no talent in my youth. Since I didn’t know anything about the ‘important’ topics of the day – rugby, politics and rugby, I used to think nothing I had to say could possibly be of interest to a relative stranger, and kept my mouth more closed than open.

This may have been frustrating for the barber, though I guess it would be more frustrating for a dentist. Why do dentists seem to expect just as much conversation from you as barbers? Maybe their meal times are like ours…

After some years of attempting to increase the intellectual level of what passes for conversation at our meal tables each night – ‘pass the salt; he’s flicking rice everywhere, Mum; she touched me; he’s taken all the butter’ – I know now that conversation can be made from any coming together of a couple of minds.

In fact, after the experience of our mealtimes, it was quite stimulating to sit in the barber’s chair and gradually work towards finding some mutual topics of interest.

I’m always more than pleasantly surprised to find that eventually a few snippets of thought (even amongst snipping of hair) will assemble themselves into a conversation. Often some unsuspected mutual ground, as there was in tis case, will once again surprise you as how small the world really is.

Having my hair cut was no longer the ordeal it used to be. (I might even get to like it, and go and find a barber every time I’ve had enough of ‘Is this green stuff really a vegetable?’)

(By the way, in case you suspect, because I haven’t been to a barber for eighteen years, that my hair grows remarkably slowly, and I’m due for a paragraph in the Guinness Book of Records, let me assure you it sprouts at the pace common to all personkind. My home-barber – the one I acquired at marriage – decided she needed a break.)

When you think about it, in my 18 years away from things tonsorial I’d actually gained hair (unlike the barber). Eighteen years ago I had no beard to trim. Intuitively, unlike some male friends of mine, I hadn’t tried to grow one until there was actually something to cover the chin.

My family has pleaded with me for some time now to cut off my beard, their excuse being that they’ve never seen me without it. But in this winter I’d be daft to take off any more hair.

I’ve already made a mental note never to venture near a barber’s during the frosty season, even if I end up looking like Albert Einstein after he’d discovered his relatives.

Mike as Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew -
no beard but an 'orrible wig instead. 
The boy playing Digory is Josh Chignell. 

 The ‘blurred shape’ I refer to was me, unable to see what the barber had done due to my shortsightedness; glasses were always removed while having a haircut even though the barber would invariably ask what I thought of the cut.

I’ve had a second family barber/hairdresser for around thirty years – my eldest daughter, who was trained as a hairdresser. She and my wife take turns, as it were, to cut my hair.

I did take my beard off in Sept 1993, to surprise my wife who’d been in the UK visiting her family. And again, twelve years later (to the month) in order to play Uncle Andrew in an adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, by C S Lewis (see photo above). In both case it was grown again pretty smartly.

Hair and there

 First published in Column 8 on the 14^th October, 1992

 Some articles in newspapers are published to fill an inconvenient gap. But how in the first place some of these reprints get past even the busiest of sub-editors is a mystery.

One northern newspaper recently printed a piece reporting US studies on beards, eyes and faces. The author began with the fatuous statement – I suppose he had to start somehow – that ‘since at least Aristotle’ we’ve been speculating that faces reveal the inner man. Wow…

First, from a study made by a psychologist, Michael Wogalter, we’re told three things about the wearing of beards. (1) They make men seem older. Well, the Victorians knew this, and grew them for exactly that reason. (2) Bearded men are less attractive. Who says? Attractiveness depends very much on the style of beard, and the country of the face’s origin, and the fashion of the day. (3) Bearded men are less sociable than their clean-cut counterparts. Fortunately Mr Wogalter has the tact to say that none of these are facts, only possibilities.

However, he assumes from this that beards are viewed unfavourably, though on the basis of those three points I can’t see why. There’s nothing wrong with appearing older. (In fact, in spite of my beard, most people think I’m younger than I am!)

Attractiveness is very variable: when beards were ‘in’ a couple of decades ago, women still married men in the same numbers as in the short back and sides era. Many of my contemporaries’ wedding photographs show the males with long straggly beards and hair down to the shoulders.

‘Hair is the most salient feature of the face,’ says Mr Wogalter, ‘therefore it must have a big impact on people’s perception.’ The only time I find a beard makes a big impact on me is when a man uses it as a tablecloth and leaves his food fluffling around in it.

Other researchers, who remain nameless, suggest beards were worn by our ancestors to intimidate the members of the opposite tribe – who presumably also wore beards, and also wanted to appear intimidating. Love-all. However, these studies also say the aforementioned beards attracted the females, which flatly contradicts all Mr Wolgater’s findings.

Now we come to lack of hair. Using computer generated mug-shots, Mr Wogalter finds that balding men are perceived as smarter, and a little older – considered a failing in bearded men. I’d say balding men are always perceived as older; that’s one of the reasons so many of them wear toupees, or go for hair-growing tonics.

As for being perceived as smarter, I find that hard to believe. Look at your average television formula thriller or comedy: Who’s the baddie? The bald-headed man. How come, if he’s so smart, he always winds up in the cart?

A certain Caroline Keating of Colgate (University, that is), sees a pattern in all this, we’re told. What the ‘all’ is, or what the pattern is, we’re not told. But she does have a theory. (The fact that it’s about as bright a theory as the one that says ‘mankind stood up straight in order to prevent too much sun from shining on his back,’ is neither here nor there.)

Her theory is that males evolved the receding hairline to attract mates. In Ms Keating of Colgate’s eyes baldness isn’t seen as oldness, but is commanding, authoritative.

Now the writer introduces some other studies. In these, people with large eyes are on one hand seen as warm and honest – but on the other as naïve and submissive.

Ms Keating of Colgate takes these paradoxical pieces of research and assumes that women like males who are dominating and powerful-looking, not naïve and submissive.

I can’t win. Since my glasses make my eyes appear smaller than they are, and I’m bearded, these studies imply I must be cold, dishonest, old, bright, bossy, antisocial and unattractive.

And yet my wife loves me.

Portrait of a bearded man by Jeremy Lipkin

Since this was written, of course, beards have become the norm. Not the larger bushy kind so much, but hair on the face in some form is so commonplace as to be barely noticeable.

Mr Wogalter gets some rather rough handling in this column. He can be found on the Net, as far as I can see, usually involved in some way in studies that other people have done.

Caroline Keating is also fairly visible and is an ‘expert at interpreting social psychological phenomena.’  She focuses on charisma, and social dominance.

While I was looking for information on Wogalter and Keating I found the names of two writers attached to a research paper: Heather Flowe and Ebbe B Ebbesen. A nice combination!

Supporting the Movember cause

Expect to see lots of facial hair on the faces of men who normally go facially bald. (Sorry, clean-shaven.)

Why? It's Movember, the month when there's a big focus on that horrible killer of men: prostate cancer. Apparently those who join in the Movember cause are only allowed to grow moustaches (or mustaches, as our North American friends put it). No beards, and no goatees. And you're not allowed to start in advance of November the 1st. The moustache has to gradually make its appearance from November the 1st onwards.

I won't be joining the men who are growing moustaches, of course, since I'm a permanent beard/moustache wearer. The only couple of times I've taken this facial hair off was when I surprised my wife after she'd been overseas, and when I performed in the play, The Magician's Nephew, back in the early part of this century. I don't look good without a beard, and so I'm sorry, it won't be coming off.

On the other hand, to show that I'm not without sympathy to the Movember cause, I'm offering my book, Diary of a Prostate Wimp, at half-price on Smashwords for this month. If you order it on that site (it's available for a variety of ebook devices, including Kindle) all you need to do is add in the coupon number - VB48P - when you're ordering, and you'll get the discount.

Why should men read Prostate Wimp? Firstly because most men will face some sort of prostate issue at some point in their lives. The majority won't get prostate cancer, thankfully, but they still have to deal with some difficulties in an area that men prefer to keep private.

The book helps men understand what the prostate does and what happens to it normally as men get older - it's very common for it to enlarge. This may not cause any problem at all; it may affect urination; it may have other side effects. Better to be forewarned about what may happen.

And it helps men to be better informed when they go to the doctor as these problems start to occur. Doctors aren't always as open and frank about prostates as they might be. Knowing what sorts of questions to ask is useful.

Remembering Nuns

First published in Column 8, date unknown, but some time in the 1990s.

 In the memory course I did a while ago I was supposed to learn how to remember where I'd put things years before, and how to recognize faces from the distant past. 

One face eludes me. Try as I might, I can't remember the face of the teacher, (a nun), who tied me to my desk with a belt because my childish exuberance was somewhat over the top! 

On the other hand, during a recent visit to a convent, (for a friend's Jubilee), I was amazed at the phenomenal memories nuns appear to have, particularly those who claimed they'd taught me at primary school, forty years ago.

 (None of the sisters took responsibility for tying me to the desk, however, and my memory failed to recognize any face that connected to my "traumatic" experience.) 

I don't think these ladies have done a memory course - it just seems to come naturally. If I was a teacher, I'd find pupils' faces blurring into one big Mr Blobby after a few years. 

For instance, the sister who greeted us at the door instantly knew me, and said she'd taught me. As usual I had to ask who she was, and still remembered her not at all. 

Perhaps it's because when I was a lad all the nuns wore long, black, person-enclosing garments that hid them almost entirely from view. The only identifiable parts were the hands and the face. 

I'm not good at remembering hands at the best of times - and faces that used to be tightly framed in black change out of all sight when viewed in ordinary everyday gear. 

But not all the nuns at the afternoon tea were unremembered. One I met again had had the misfortune to follow in the footsteps of my favourite music-teaching nun of all time, the one I adored, and for whom I actually wept when she said she was being transferred. 

This other lady, whose qualities and abilities, while different, were no doubt as excellent, suffered badly by comparison, through no fault of her own. 

Naturally, she remembered more about the past than I did. (Do they keep dossiers?)

She spoke of my poor practice record and the strain it had on my mother's nerves, as well as my embarrassment at bringing her flowers (perhaps as a peace offering). I apparently came half an hour early to escape the unwanted attention of my mates. 

I remember none of this - surely I used to practice perfectly? 

Embarrassed about bringing flowers? Never.

Later, as I was sitting down balancing my cup of tea in one hand and in the other one of those soft, fluffy cakes filled with mock cream and smattered with icing sugar, (the sort that sticks to your beard and can't be wiped off because you don't have a third hand), I was approached by a six foot vision from the past. Someone I could never forget. 

This nun, holding a tray in her hands and encouraging everyone to eat more cakes, turned out to be my first and favourite music-teacher of all time. And she was the only nun that day who didn't instantly recognise me.

(She soon made it clear that this was hardly surprising: when I was seven, I didn't have a beard.) Her delight was even greater than mine, and she greeted me with the warmth of someone to whom everyone is a long-standing friend.

She was as full of beans as ever, words high-tailing it off her tongue as though she had so much to say the day would be over before she'd finished. And she still had an enthusiasm for life that hasn't changed in forty years.

It's curious how we so easily forget the names and faces of some people who leave an unpleasant mark on our memories. This sister, however, had made music a delight to her pupils, opening up a world formerly unexplored. More than that, she filled life with laughter. How could anyone forget her?

John Michael Talbot

Back in the days when I used to run the Christian bookshop, one of the top-selling artists at one point was John Michael Talbot.   He sang simple, straightforward songs he'd written himself, accompanying himself on a guitar.   Most of the albums had subtle background music - and sometimes choirs - adding to the mix.   In fact, I remember one person saying that without these, the music wasn't all that remarkable.   I think that's a bit of an overstatement.   Certainly the additional music made a huge difference in emotional content to the basic simple songs, but not every song had these big background accompaniments, and the tracks that were done in a simple way were often highly effective. 

Like so many artists at that time, Talbot kind of went off the boil in terms of sales, and I haven't thought much about him in recent years.   I'd got the impression that he was a priest or monk, but in fact he's neither.  He joined the secular Franciscan order, but was never a monk.  The entry in Wikipedia tells us that he's now married to a former nun, and that he founded a integrated monastic community of celibates, married people and families called the Brothers and Sisters of Charity. 

In spite of my not hearing much about him, he's never stopped producing albums and has been doing big tours around the US for a number of years.   In the video below he talks about moving into a much smaller scale ministry, one that emphasises simplicity, and which is much more like a road tour without all the hype and paraphernalia; something with an element of serendipity in it, by the sound of things.

The other thing that's noticeably different is the long flowing white beard.   I remember him as having a short beard in the old days, but this gives him the look of a Patriarch.   Interestingly enough, on the video, he sounds like a young man still.  

Abridging your own book

The novel I'm supposed to review for the local newspaper turns out to be - to me - dull and not inviting to read. I've read fifty pages, and seem no further ahead than I was at the start. I won't say what the book is, because someone else may find it more to their liking than me.

So last night, when it came to going in the bath and wanting something to read, I dug around on my bookshelves and picked up That Hideous Strength by C S Lewis. I've read it twice before, but quite some time ago. Once way back when I was in my thirties, I think, or maybe even earlier, when I was still in London. And once again since at some point. The general story has stuck in my head, but little of the detail.

It turned out that the print in the Pan edition I've got has 'shrunk' over the years, making it rather hard to read. I'm having to use magnifying glasses over my ordinary glasses at present just to read the newspaper, and the computer and the music. It's surprising how many things have become just that much more difficult to read clearly in the last few years.

There’s a note in this Pan edition that says Lewis himself had abridged the original some five or six years after the first edition came out. He writes in a Preface: In reducing the original story to a length suitable for this edition, I believe I have altered nothing but the tempo and the manner. I myself prefer the more leisurely pace - I would not wish even War and Peace or The Faerie Queen any shorter - but some critics may well think this abridgement is also an improvement. 

Lewis was plainly loathe to do to abridge his story, nevertheless this second version reads so well you wouldn't think of it as being edited down, unlike the Reader's Digest abridged versions, for example, which often cut out huge swathes of material, and wound up with books less than half the length of the original.

So, with the print being very small in the Pan edition I thought I’d get a copy on Kindle.

I found a combined edition of all three of Lewis' ‘Space’ trilogy, and bought it. It was only when I compared it to the version I'd started reading that I found extra material in the first paragraph, and more beyond. It turned out to be Lewis' original version, and all sorts of additional material appears in it. His abridged version is very well done; what is missing from the later edition is often writing that adds to the characters in some way, or the general detail. Comparing the two editions would be a good exercise for any writer: Lewis shows how much can be deleted from a text without loss. The tempo is certainly quickened; we're not held up by interesting little sidepaths that add to characterization. But these sidepaths remain interesting. They're not excess.

Out of interest, I thought I'd compare a little of the opening of chapter two in the abridged version with the original. The abridged is first.

"This is a blow!" said Curry.
"Something from the N.O.?" said Busby. He and Lord Feverstone and Mark were all drinking sherry before dining with Curry. N.O., which stood for Non Olet, was the nickname of Charles Place, the Warden of Bracton.
"Yes, blast him," said Curry. "Wishes to see me on a most important matter after dinner."
"That means," said the Bursar, "that Jewel and Co. have been getting at him and want to find some way of going back on the whole business."
"Jewel! Good God!" said Busby, burying his left hand in his beard.

The original is much more expansive. Note the detail in the first paragraph alone, and the extensive background on Place, who's only a minor character, and the additional dialogue later in this extract. 

“This is a blow!” said Curry, standing in front of the fireplace in his magnificent rooms which overlooked Newton. They were the best set in College.
“Something from N.O.?” said James Busby. He and Lord Feverstone and Mark were all drinking sherry before dining with Curry. N.O., which stood for Non Olet, was the nickname of Charles Place, the Warden of Bracton. His election to this post, some fifteen years before, had been one of the earliest triumphs of the Progressive Element. By dint of saying that the College needed “new blood” and must be shaken out of its “academic grooves” they had succeeded in bringing in an elderly civil servant who had certainly never been contaminated by academic weaknesses since he left his rather obscure Cambridge college in the previous century, but who had written a monumental report on National Sanitation. The subject had, if anything, rather recommended him to the Progressive Element. They regarded it as a slap in the face for the dilettanti and Die-hards, who replied by christening their new warden Non Olet. But gradually even Place’s supporters had adopted the name. For Place had not answered their expectations, having turned out to be a dyspeptic with a taste for philately, whose voice was so seldom heard that some of the junior Fellows did not know what it sounded like.
“Yes, blast him,” said Curry. “Wishes to see me on a most important matter as soon as I can conveniently call on him after dinner.”
“That means,” said the Bursar, “that Jewel and Co. have been getting at him and want to find some way of going back on the whole business.”
“I don’t give a damn for that,” said Curry. “How can you go back on a resolution? It isn’t that. But it’s enough to muck up the whole evening.”
“Only your evening,” said Feverstone. “Don’t forget to leave out that very special brandy of yours before you go.”
“Jewel! Good God!” said Busby, burying his left hand in his beard.

Certainly a great example of how to edit your own work and do an excellent job of it!

Men's Group - Movie

Back in 2009 I wrote on one of the other blogs I was then contributing to about an Australian movie called Men's Group.  
I hadn't been able to see it at that point, although there was a brief trailer available online, but it was getting rave reviews wherever it was shown - which, unfortunately, wasn't in as many places as it should have been.

However, it's now available on DVD, and I caught up with it last night.  In spite of the group hug that they're having in the picture in the poster, this isn't a movie about men getting soft with each other or even communicating very well with each other (I don't think they actually hug at any point in the movie itself).  It's about Paul, a facilitator who offers a small group of men the chance to come together weekly and talk, in his own home.  (His wife and family always spend Tuesday nights with his wife's sister - wisely.)  Five men attend regularly, even though all of them admit at times that they don't quite know why they're there.  A sixth participant comes for one highly emotional evening in the middle of the movie.

The men are: Alex, who doesn't think there's anything wrong with him, and can't see why his son doesn't fall into line; Freddy, who's separated from his wife and little daughter and is desperate for things to be right in his marriage again; Lucas, a dour, good-looking man who barely contributes, but whose private life (which we, the audience, are party to) is aggressive and violent; Moses, a man who wears a beany and a long black beard, both of which enable him to hide to a great extent; and Cecil, the oldest member, who gives away very little and seems okay on the surface.

Of course all of them give away a great deal more than they intend. The audience knows more about them - but not much more - and sees them in a slightly different light to Paul, whose relationship with them is restricted to the Tuesday nights.

There is some resolution in the story - one man manages to make headway in his life - but the rest are still either struggling, or unable to move, or perhaps on the cusp of change when the movie ends.  However, the filmmakers wisely haven't allowed their characters to have easy ways out, and we're left wondering how some of them will fare.

The film is intensely emotional, and will leave viewers - male and female - with many thoughts and responses.  Men definitely need to see it, but women do too - and their reactions will be different.   Christian viewers may want to ask about forgiveness and change in regard to the men in the story, but these guys haven't got to that point yet; the need for some level of self-understanding has to come before they can think of turning their lives around completely.

This is a brilliant movie that deserves a very wide audience, including those who wouldn't normally go to see it.

Made in Dagenham

We watched Made in Dagenham last night (thankfully, they didn't go all clever and call it Maid in Dagenham, which must have been a temptation, I'm sure.)   Even though it's based on a real-life event, a strike by the women workers at Ford's car factory in Dagenham, the story arc is as traditional as a thousand other movies that involve someone who doesn't think they've got much going for them deciding to stand up for their rights (Mr Deeds Goes to Washington, to name just one famous example).   So you know that once Sally Hawkins (playing Rita O'Grady - the real O'Grady appears in the film clips during the credits) gets her mettle up, it'll be click/click/click and all the nasty blokes holding the women back will go toppling like ninepins.  You know that there'll be a scene where her husband finally breaks down from being tolerant and gets mad, and then has to be told he has no reason to get mad, and that he's not a saint, and that a few scenes later he'll be apologising for being a twat and will be backing her to the hilt.  You know that one of the women will try to use the situation for her own ends, and will be brought back into the fold.  And you know that it'll all end happily ever after (this isn't Italian neo-realist moviemaking, after all).

If I sound cynical, it's only because there is a degree of predictability in the movie, and there were times when you wish the filmmakers had given the thing a bit more edge.   Seeing the real-life participants in those final clips, you wonder what they thought of what had been done to their story, which is treated fairly light-heartedly throughout (even given the situation, and a suicide late in the piece).   Having to strip down to your underwear in the factory because it was so hot in the summertime, or putting up umbrellas in the winter because of the leaking roof has a certain humour, but the reality would have been much less pleasant.  And that horrible moment (it happens two or three times) when there's a loud switching-on noise, and all the sewing machines suddenly come to life and expect the women to get on, like it or not, is something that's just accepted.  The feeling of being chained to those sewing-machines is never explored.  Perhaps there's a different movie - a neo-realist one - waiting to be made.  In the meantime, we have The Full Monty version (which also had a suicide, as I recall, but still managed to remain a comedy) and on its own merits this is an enjoyable movie.  After all, every one of us likes to see the underdog biting the heels of the bullies and overlords (including, here, Richard Schiff as Ford's American pit bull terrier - sans his usual beard, and with a wig covering his normal baldness).  The fact that those nasty overlords can be really vicious is only hinted at.  The winners here - we know it all along - are the 187 women who went on strike.  (The only time they don't win - at least initially - is in relation to a bullying school teacher played by Andrew Lincoln; he has one scene and leaves the otherwise garrulous Sally Hawkins speechless.)

Hawkins isn't my favourite actress.  There's no doubt she has bundles of talent, and uses her oddly-shaped face to considerable advantage.   However, when I twigged where I'd seen her before, as Poppy in Mike Leigh's Happy-go-Lucky, and remembered how we nearly went mad watching the manic performance she gave there, it was hard to see her objectively in this movie.  Some of Poppy's endless twitches, giggles and wriggles appear in this role too, though they're toned down considerably.  This is a problem when an actor appears in a role that you dislike; it can be hard to see them clearly in any other part.  Danny de Vito is a case in point, for me; I don't know what film it was that I first saw him in, but it put me off him almost completely - plus the fact that he does tend to play obnoxious little men.  And yet when he appeared briefly in an interview recently (he'd been voicing the Spanish version of The Lorax), he came across as a genuine, humble man, one who's been married happily to his wife of many years.  A complete opposite to the (often venal) characters he usually plays.   When I think about what I've just said, my comments are further undercut by the part Bob Hoskins plays in Made in Dagenham: he's another actor who's played some roles that have set my teeth on edge; here he's just wonderful.  Redeems himself!  LOL.

There's a wonderful moment towards the end of the movie, when Miranda Richardson, playing the inimitable Barbara Castle (no mean promoter of women's rights herself) comments to Hawkins about the dress she's wearing, which the latter admits she has to return from on loan when she gets back.   Richardson mentions the 'label' - it's been commented on a couple of times before in the movie - and Hawkins says about Richardson's dress: Isn't that a C&A? C&A is the equivalent of Marks and Spencer's: good, solid workaday clothing, but hardly fashionable.  Richardson says it is: she gets all her clothes from there.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to DC shoes.  The only connection here is that they're an item of clothing.  I wondered when I first saw the name whether they were shoes that you wore if you were travelling to Washington DC, or were the kind of thing politicians would favour when trotting through the Capitol Building.  In fact the DC stands for Droors Clothing, a label that's no longer in existence, I'm told.

As you can see from the picture, you'd have to be a fairly unconventional US politician to wear these around the Senate, though they might be comfortable enough.

When I first began this blog, I used it mostly to publish quotations from books and articles that I'd enjoyed for various reasons. Over the years the blog took other turns, but today I'd like to return somewhat to its roots, and give a quotation from a book by G K Chesterton. 

I've had this book on my shelves for decades, and only recently realised I'd never read it - it helps to have a clean-out of your books so that you can see what you've actually got. 

The book is George Bernard Shaw, and while it's not a biography in the usual sense, it does give a great overview of Shaw, why he was who he was, and why he wrote the way he did. Most of Shaw's plays (except, interestingly enough, Pygmalion, on which My Fair Lady was based) are given some sort of review. 

At one point, in the chapter entitled, The Dramatist, Chesterton discusses Candida, a play which presents one of Shaw's 'great reversals': when Candida finds herself having to decide between two men she chooses to stay 'with the strong man because he is the weak man.'

Chesterton proceeds into one of his delightful riffs on this point, relating the statement to marriage as a whole:

The truth is that in this place Bernard Shaw comes within an inch of expressing something that is not properly expressed anywhere else; the idea of marriage. Marriage is not a mere chain upon love as the anarchists[Pg 122] say; nor is it a mere crown upon love as the sentimentalists say. Marriage is a fact, an actual human relation like that of motherhood which has certain human habits and loyalties, except in a few monstrous cases where it is turned to torture by special insanity and sin. A marriage is neither an ecstasy nor a slavery; it is a commonwealth; it is a separate working and fighting thing like a nation. Kings and diplomatists talk of "forming alliances" when they make weddings; but indeed every wedding is primarily an alliance. The family is a fact even when it is not an agreeable fact, and a man is part of his wife even when he wishes he wasn't. The twain are one flesh—yes, even when they are not one spirit. Man is duplex. Man is a quadruped.

Of this ancient and essential relation there are certain emotional results, which are subtle, like all the growths of nature. And one of them is the attitude of the wife to the husband, whom she regards at once as the strongest and most helpless of human figures. She regards him in some strange fashion at once as a warrior who must make his way and as an infant who is sure to lose his way. The man has emotions which exactly correspond; sometimes looking down at his wife and sometimes[Pg 123] up at her; for marriage is like a splendid game of see-saw. Whatever else it is, it is not comradeship. This living, ancestral bond (not of love or fear, but strictly of marriage) has been twice expressed splendidly in literature. The man's incurable sense of the mother in his lawful wife was uttered by Browning in one of his two or three truly shattering lines of genius, when he makes the execrable Guido fall back finally upon the fact of marriage and the wife whom he has trodden like mire:

"Christ! Maria! God,

Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"

And the woman's witness to the same fact has been best expressed by Bernard Shaw in this great scene where she remains with the great stalwart successful public man because he is really too little to run alone.

G B Shaw in his young days, 
before his beard grew long and white. 

Catch up with this movie when it's released

A week or so ago we were invited by the Automobile Association to put our names in the hat for tickets to go and see a movie called X+Y. We received a couple of free tickets late last week, and though we knew nothing about the movie, went along to the preview showing.

What a pleasant surprise! It's the story of a boy who has some level of autism which shows itself in an inability to relate well socially while also being able to do maths exceptionally well - to the degree that he's invited to enter for the Maths Olympiad.

There's a good deal more to it than that, but I won't spoil your surprise by telling you how it plays out. Just take it from me it's well worth going to see.

Asa Butterfield, who was The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, is superb as Nathan, the main character. (His younger self is equally well-played by Edward Baker-Close.) He manages to wend his way through the minefield that playing an autistic boy can be, and remain believable. It's not assumed in the movie that you have to be autistic to be good at maths, of course, which is one particular plus, and equally it's assumed that people who are considered autistic in some degree vary enormously.

The somewhat eccentric actress Sally Hawkins plays Nathan's mother, and though she doesn't avoid all of her quirky approaches to acting, she's good in the role, and brings character to a part that could have been maudlin. (We last saw her in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, which is possibly one of the most annoying movies we've ever seen, mostly because of the character Hawkins plays in it!)

Rafe Spall is Nathan's teacher (he has multiple sclerosis, to boot). Spall is also an actor who brings a lot of bells and whistles to his acting; indeed one awkward scene between Hawkins and Spall in this movie could quite easily have come from a Mike Leigh film. Spall is excellent, however, in spite of being saddled with an illness that doesn't seem to develop too rapidly over the course of the film's several years. He has a bunch of great lines, and delivers them wonderfully.

Eddie Marsan, hiding his somewhat odd features behind a beard, is another slightly off-the-wall character, playing the man in charge of the British team involved in the Olympiad.

There are some great performances amongst the maths whizzes, but the stand-out one comes from Alex Lawther, who's torn between the fact that his family 'require' him to be a genius, see him as 'unique' because of his autistic aspect, and obviously expect him to love something it turns out he doesn't particularly care about.

I'm sure there'll be some who carp at yet another movie about autism that only presents part of the picture, but for all that this is a wonderfully human story, and very satisfying.

Changing photo

I've changed the photo over to the side, but I'm wondering if it doesn't make me look more disreputable rather than less. Need a hair cut and beard trim, I think.

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog front this week: it's been fairly busy in other areas, such as rehearsing for the play, so sitting down to type posts hasn't been getting high priority. Plus I've been slightly side-tracked by Facebook, which I apparently joined some time ago but had forgotten about. Anyway, I've added a few friends, mostly rellies and people from church (who seem to be on it in droves) and a couple of my singing friends: Brent Read and Claire Barton. Also came across Nathan Reilly, who used to be in our church, but whom I first got to know when he was involved in the Opera Alive group. He's a great stage performer, sings and dances and is going to be in CATS up in Hamilton sometime soon, playing Rum Tum Tugger.
As I was saying to him, I find CATS an odd piece: no plot, virtually no story, just a host of characters who pop in and out at random, do their bit and then vanish for a while, or become part of the general ensemble. Surprisingly enough it's effective when performed, but you rather wonder why Lloyd Webber didn't look to bring a storyline into it.

On the reasons for beards

Robert Capon, in his book, The Offering of Uncles, gives seventeen reasons why he has a beard. (Chapter 7)

(Simple) : I like it.
(Taciturn); I just do.
(Sheepish): Lots of men have beards.
(Rude): None of your business.
(Cowardly): Oh! Don’t you like it?
(Confident): It is manly.
(Overconfident): It keeps women away.
(Practical, in respectu causae efficientis): Because I don’t shave.
(Agnostic): I don’t know; I stopped shaving and it grew.
(Theological, but cautious): You will have to ask God.
(Practical, propter incommoditatem rasurarum): I was tired of cutting myself every morning.
(Devout): It is a gift of God.
(Practical, pro bono prolis): I look more paternal with one.
(Meditative): It would be ungrateful to die without having seen it.
(Practical, sed propter vanitatem): It hides my weak chin.
(Theological, propter causam finalem): God meant man to have one.
(Practical, ad placendam uxorem): It tickles my wife.

Some rough translations:
in respectu causae efficientis: in the cause of efficiency.
propter incommoditatem rasurarum: on account of the scratching.
pro bono prolis: for the good of the children.
sed propter vanitatem: on account of my vanity.
propter causam finalem: using God as the final excuse.
ad placendam uxurem: to please my wife.


And a Crowl quote:
Life should be a combination of order and chaos. Too much of either is unhealthy.

Going nuts

I guess I should have known what check nuts were, but I thought I'd better check up online just to make sure I wasn't on the wrong track.  According to one dictionary they're a secondary nut, screwing down upon the primary nut to secure it or a nut which is screwed up tightly against another nut on the same bolt or screw, in order to prevent accidental unscrewing of the first nut.

I think that's probably a good description of some marriages: the secondary nut secures the primary nut (I don't say which person is which), or else one nut is screwed up tightly against the other nut to prevent accidental unscrewing.  Accidental unscrewing of a person is to be avoided at all costs.  I've come close to accidental unscrewing at times, and have been saved from it by the other nut.  When I use the word nut I mean it in the most complementary sense, of course.  

But in regard to nuts in general, apart from its normal use to signify those hard things we eat and which can sometimes crack our teeth, nuts is used as a way of saying - that's stupid, dopey, how-the-heck-did-you-ever-come-up-with-that-idea?  It can also mean what is virtually the opposite: being nuts about something, extremely enthusiastic, in other words.  

And nuts turns up in one of those innumerable (and untranslateable) English expressions that can mean pretty much whatever you like: elephant’s adenoids, cat’s miaow, ant’s pants, tiger’s spots, bullfrog’s beard, elephant’s instep, caterpillar’s kimono, turtle’s neck, duck’s quack, duck’s nuts, monkey’s eyebrows, gnat’s elbows, oyster’s earrings, snake’s hips, kipper’s knickers, elephant’s manicure, clam’s garter, eel’s ankle, leopard’s stripes, tadpole’s teddies, sardine’s whiskers, canary’s tusks, pig’s wings, cuckoo’s chin, and butterfly’s book. I'm indebted to Michael Quinion's wonderful website, World Wide Worlds (how's that for alliteration) for that list. (It's a site well worth visiting, if you're a word enthusiast, that is, if you're nuts about words.)

Still on the usage of nuts, here's a delightful line from Kim Fabricius, that theological doodler: How did Jesus overcome Satan in the wilderness? By proof-texting a proof-texter. That always drives them nuts.
  
And one other paragraph, from the poet Charles Simic:  When my mother was very old and in a nursing home, she surprised me one day toward the end of her life by asking me if I still wrote poetry. When I blurted out that I still do, she stared at me with incomprehension. I had to repeat what I said, till she sighed and shook her head, probably thinking to herself this son of mine has always been a little nuts. Now that I’m in my seventies, I’m asked that question now and then by people who don’t know me well. Many of them, I suspect, hope to hear me say that I’ve come my senses and given up that foolish passion of my youth and are visibly surprised to hear me confess that I haven’t yet. They seem to think there is something downright unwholesome and even shocking about it, as if I were dating a high school girl, at my age, and going with her roller-skating that night.


 

The Kite Runner and My Wedding

Picked up a couple of movies on DVD from the Library this last week.  One was the New Zealand made, My Wedding and other secrets, and the other was The Kite Runner.  An interesting pair.  The NZ film knows exactly its limitations, and works to present a world that's very ordinary, down-to-earth and in no way more excessive than the reality - apart, perhaps, from the humour.  The other movie is big budget, filmed in some amazing locations, with hundreds of extras and plenty of CGI.  For all that, it remains a very human film, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  Well, enjoyed may not be quite the right word; it terms of filmmaking it was enjoyable, in terms of content it was often heart-breaking and sometimes extremely grim.   Kite Runner, for all its big budget, isn't a big story in the sense of being a huge adventure.  The main characters are fairly ordinary, and none of the faces on the screen are particularly familiar.  It's primarily about family and how relationships fare in the midst of crises.  Khalid Abdalla, as the adult Amir, turns from being a young man who knows he's done an extremely cowardly act as a child, to being someone who can forgive himself because he finally acts bravely enough to overcome not only his own demons but some brutal men who see no hypocrisy in abusing children on one hand while stoning adulterous women on the other.  His childhood friend and also the son of his father's servant - he turns out to be his step-brother as well - has inner strength, but no power.    Well, no power in the sense of position or authority.  He certainly has resilience and integrity.

I had thought the story was based on the author's life, but it's actually fiction, which gives it a more effective resolution than a 'true' story might have done.  There are some very nasty moments in the movie; curiously, but perhaps typically, there's been more angst from Afghanistan about the rape of the servant boy by some bullies than about the stoning of the woman by much nastier bullies.  Life under the Soviet invaders has some brutal moments (during one of these, Amir's father shows what moral integrity and guts he has) but the Taliban regime is a worse one to be under: for example, something that seems almost farcical - the beard police - is actually vicious and murderous.

My Wedding is based on the director's life.  The film has its origins in a student documentary Chinese New Zealander Roseanne Liang made; this focused on her secret marriage to a white New Zealander, brought about by Liang's concerns that her family wouldn't accept the marriage.  The feature film, in general, takes a much more light-hearted look at the same material, fictionalizes some of it, gives it dramatic structure, and offers two first-class roles for the two leading characters.  Michelle Ang plays the movie version of Liang (who directed), and Matt Whelan plays her husband.  He's gangly and very tall; she's petite, and a ball of fire.  Both of these actors are so good in their roles, it's almost a disappointment to see the real life couple in one of the extras on the DVD.

The film has everything going for it: a good cast which includes two popular and very experienced Hong Kong actors, Kenneth Tsang and Pei-pei Cheng (she was Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The other actors are relatively unfamiliar but uniformly good (only Simon London as the poncy student co-producer of the documentary seemed not quite attuned to the movie's mood).

My Wedding is one of those wonderful small-scale comedies New Zealand seems at last to be producing without making its audience cringe (Secondhand Wedding was another). Highly recommended.

I don’t want to!

First published in Column 8 on the 17^th November, 1993

Having avoided writing about politics during the election run-up (apart from my recommendation of MMP, a piece of advice most voters in my electorate signally ignored), I still don’t want to write about politics. Politics, and politicians, we’ve had quite enough of.

And I don’t want to write about dinosaurs, even though I allowed myself to be persuaded to visit the mechanical monsters at the museum. The mechanics and the marketing – and the sound effects – were marvellous, but I don’t want to write about dinosaurs. They’ve had enough media attention to last several billion years.

And I don’t want to write about unemployment, even though the French contemplate cutting back everyone’s hours and wages in order to give unemployed people jobs, and even though the English politicians are finally admitting that there is a correlation between crime and unemployment, a fact that our politicians have so far been unable to perceive. Blast, I’m writing about politicians. They’re insidious, and creep in wherever you don’t want them.

I don’t want to write about employment either, even though some gentleman with the memorable name of Mex Bouzaid has managed to create employment in Queenstown – yes folks, the word was ‘create.’ He seems to be beating the Employment Service at their own game.

And I don’t want to write about recycling either, even though we’re told we don’t do enough of it, and when we do, we have to pay to get rid of it, and when we’ve got rid of it no one wants it.

I don’t want to write about the fact that the community is constantly blamed for not recycling enough, when no local authority wants to set up anything that will actually use what we recycle.

And I don’t want to write about the arguments over whether cloth nappies or disposable nappies are better for the environment, because that would be writing about the environment, and I don’t want to write about that either.

I don’t want to write about whether it’s better to use more trees to make disposable nappies that can’t really be disposed of, or whether it’s better to use more water to wash away the poo and the chemicals that clean the poo out of the cloth nappies. I just don’t want to write about such Karitane-yellow matters.

And I certainly don’t want to write about crime and the way criminals make more money out of ACC than non-criminals – because I don’t want to write about ACC either: that would mean I’d have to write about politicians, and as I said…

Nor do I want to write about people being attacked for no more reason that that the exist, because as soon as I start writing about crime I’d be writing about unemployment and politicians – see what happens?

And I don’t want to write about Suffragette Year because it’s politically (!) incorrect for a man to write about women. We mere males cannot possibly understand the complexities of what it is to be female.

I’m looking forward to All Male Year, and suggest we start aside our dollars now to fund it, because I doubt if there’ll be any government subsidies going.

And I don’t want to write about sex, or Aids, or condoms or abortion or homosexuality, because then I’d be moralising, and since the present trend of the world is to believe that morals and feelings and doing your own thing are all pretty much the same, I’d probably be wasting my time.

And I most definitely don’t want to write about film stars, because they get constant attention, while nobodies live and die – and get maybe a centimetre of news space.

And I most definitely don’t want to write about myself. When I write about matters on which I have opinions - my wife says that means opinionated – the world ignores it.

On the other hand, when I write about my beard, or buying clothes, or bringing up kids, everyone and her sister comments on it.

Anyway, is there anything interesting about me which I haven’t already written?

Courtesy of A Great Dream Language School

Karitane-yellow was a joke name in our house for the poo on a nappy, which we saw a good deal of over several years of having five children.