tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31379950225746910572024-03-13T01:10:40.995+01:00Charles LambertA place for everything that doesn't fit anywhere elseCharles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.comBlogger1170125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-6717848776768540392013-04-16T19:31:00.002+01:002013-04-17T08:05:31.908+01:00I'm all right, Giacomo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm catching the train to and from Rome three times a week at the moment. The service is much the same as it always was: trains invariably late or simply taken off without notice, carriage doors that don't open or that require Herculean strength to budge, then block halfway or spring back on a suitcase or pushchair, toilets that won't lock, or that no longer have doors, or that have had the toilet bowls ripped out, leaving a ragged hole edged with faeces as the sleepers whip past below. Too many people, too few seats. Unimaginative graffiti inside and out. Windows that have been nailed shut at the service of air conditioning systems that don't work at all or that work too well, or that drip brown liquid onto people's heads. I've been using the train for at least eight months a year for the past eleven years, while promises have been made and unmade and remade, and nothing has changed. It's a disgrace, and a national one; in one of those rare exceptions to the rule that things get worse below Rome, regional trains in the north are as dreadful as they are in the centre and south.</div>
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Except that now people have started to react. They haven't reacted through official channels by complaining to Trenitalia, or the government, or the regional authorities, or, if they have, it's had no result. They haven't blocked the lines - only suicides and snow do that. They haven't taken to their cars in significant numbers. Many of them don't buy tickets, but that's always been the case, and is less a protest than common sense, given that tickets are rarely checked and offenders, when caught, are given the opportunity to simply leave the train, and wait for the next one. They haven't organised themselves into committees, or vigilante corps. They've turned to their sewing machines.</div>
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These days, men and women, young and old, students and factory workers (insofar as one can tell) get on the train, find a seat (if they're lucky), open their bags and take out a piece of cloth, a large scarf, or a section of sheet, usually tailored to fit the seat, with two ear-like pouches to hold it in place. They arrange it over the rest of the seat and then sit down. The first time I saw this I was struck not just by the time that must have gone into the making of what is effectively a prophylactic device, but also by its intentionality. An object like this is the result of experience, long pondered . Someone has taken measurements, found the fabric, cut and sewn, adjusted the final product to fit. Perhaps there are templates available at station bars along the line, those flimsy paper shapes my mother used when making dresses. Perhaps it's just been a question of trial and error. The range of fabrics is enormous, and I wonder if some fashion orthodoxy might lie behind the choices people are making, or if something deeper is at work. Either way, paisley designs exert an intriguing attraction on a lot of big rough men in southern Lazio.</div>
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Now that the novelty of this has worn off, though, what strikes me most is the attitude it reveals. It's as though the only way one can fight against the filthy state of the trains is to protect oneself not from the actual dirt on the floor and in the toilets and on the windows but from one's fellow passengers. The seats themselves are invariably clean, because most people <i>are </i>clean. These home-made, ingenious covers represent a willed isolation from other people - a non-verbal name-calling. What they're saying is: <i>To keep myself clean I have to isolate myself from you.</i> The practice might be connected to the increasingly high proportion of non-Italian passengers on local trains, although I'd like not to think so. But it's what I've come to see as a typically Italian solution in that it leaves the problem - dirty trains - unchanged on anything but an individual level. In this sense, and in this sense alone, Italy has understood the sneering, small-minded, mean-spirited core of Thatcherism: that there is no such thing as society. </div>
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Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-34045085489902029002012-10-03T22:35:00.000+01:002012-10-03T22:35:35.037+01:00South African summer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I spent a couple of weeks this summer in South Africa. If you'd like to read some of my thoughts about the country, click <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/common-sense-impressions-of-south-africa/">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-42371455534643695632011-10-23T11:05:00.000+01:002011-10-23T11:05:31.316+01:00Cakes and literary references<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/s320x320/294641_10150359273727381_826167380_8020067_1633684974_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/s320x320/294641_10150359273727381_826167380_8020067_1633684974_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Today's my birthday and this is the cake that <a href="http://peonymoon.wordpress.com/">Michelle McGrane</a> has made to celebrate it. I'm beyond touched. <br />
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(And if you don't pick up the literary reference, click <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Any-Human-Face-Charles-Lambert/dp/0330512455/ref=tmm_pap_title_0">here</a>. You know the next step.)Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-50750273541576117852011-10-05T08:47:00.000+01:002011-10-05T08:47:26.469+01:00In Context<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.artchive.com/artchive/r/roman/roman_pantheon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="http://www.artchive.com/artchive/r/roman/roman_pantheon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Rob Redman, founder of <a href="http://www.thefictiondesk.com/">The Fiction Desk</a>, has been asked to guest edit this month's blog for <a href="http://www.contexttravel.com/">Context Travel</a>, a 'network of architects, historians, art historians, and other specialists who organize over 300 different walks in 15 cities around the world', including Rome. He's exploring the relationship between travel and literature and he asked me if I'd like to talk about my experiences as an expatriate author. I was delighted. You can see what I said <a href="http://www.contexttravel.com/blog/charles-lambert-a-stranger-in-rome/">here</a>.<br />
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The Pantheon (illustrated left) isn't mentioned in the article and doesn't feature in any of my fiction either. Which is odd, because it's my favourite building.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-38770749577015141092011-10-04T13:47:00.000+01:002011-10-04T13:47:27.739+01:00CSI Perugia (not)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/11_02/BestQualityLL_468x314.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/11_02/BestQualityLL_468x314.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Well, it's all over, for a while at least. Amanda Knox is back in Seattle, Raffaele Sollecito is at his family home near Bari, Rudy Guedé is in jail and Meredith Kercher is dead. The screaming mob outside the courthouse in Perugia yesterday evening will no doubt be looking forward to reading the reasoning behind the appeal court's decision to absolve Amanda and Raffaele of the crime. No, I don't think so either. That isn't, after all, how screaming mobs work. According to Italy's Sky News, 61% of its viewers continue to believe in their guilt, despite the fairly robust dismantling of the original verdict and the so-called evidence, forensic and otherwise, on which it was based. I don't have any particular wisdom to impart on the case, other than to say that no conviction built on such wobbly foundations should be allowed to imprison two young people for most of their adult lives, regardless of their actual guilt or innocence. I know that if I were Amanda or Raffaele and innocent, I would be looking into ways of taking legal action against the shoddy and wholly inadequate work of the people who investigated, or failed to investigate, the crime scene, not only for having deprived me of four years of freedom but also, and primarily, for having made it impossible for me to prove my innocence in a clear-cut and effective manner. I'd find that hard to forgive.<br />
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What's struck me most is the reaction to the verdict here in Italy. I'm talking anecdotally here (and I'd include the Sky News poll in this), but the <i>innocentisti </i>certainly seem to be outnumbered, and significantly so, by the <i>colpevolisti</i>. (And if you can think of a decent translation for these words, I'd be grateful.) The latter fall into several categories. The most populated is the one that thinks Amanda is evil, based on her cartwheel in jail and the the fact that she did some shopping the day after the murder. Oh yes, and unsubstantiated but highly memorable accusations of witchcraft and a general whiff of diabolic sexiness about her that I, frankly, don't seem to be able to pick up on. But it's the second category that interests me most. It's composed of people who smell a rat (the Italian word for them - also untranslatable - is <i>dietrologisti</i>). In this case the rats are various. Some people think they've been acquitted because they're rich (not that surprising in a country where the richest citizen is so blatantly above the law). Others think they're free because Amanda's American and Italy has been trained to adopt a supine position the moment Uncle Sam clicks his fingers (<i>vide</i>, other recent events I can't be fagged to google). Others, curiously, claim that the fact that both defence lawyers have been connected at some point with the PDL (Berlusconi's party) means that the acquittal has some sort of political valency, and is yet another sign of the politicisation of the judicial system. (This is nonsense; apart from anything else, Bongiorno is one of the most notable defectors from the PDL in the past year). What they all have in common is the conviction that the system - any system - is a sham, and that the motives that govern its actions will never be revealed unless we prod and poke about to see what's underneath. It's comforting, I suppose, to imagine that there is a truth, even if it's hidden. The flag on the moon that doesn't move despite all that lunar wind must give someone, somewhere, a reassuring sense that what we see is never what we get. And perhaps this is to be expected in a country where so many murders and acts of terror remain unsolved, so many crime scenes are utterly contaminated through, at best, incompetence and, at worst, intent, and so many convictions are finally overturned, for lack of evidence or sand in the hourglass of legal time. But when we're talking about individual lives, and the possibility of horribly miscarried justice, it's sad that people can't allow for a little more wriggle room in their own convictions, a little more generosity towards two people, who may be rich, and foreign (or southern), and who may be unsympathetic, or cold, or inappropriately energetic, but who do not, for all these qualities, necessarily have blood on their hands.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-90023725713744889252011-09-29T18:16:00.000+01:002011-09-29T18:16:52.080+01:00The memory of water, the power of words<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.a2zbackpain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/The-Secret-of-Treating-Back-Pain-with-Homeopathy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://www.a2zbackpain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/The-Secret-of-Treating-Back-Pain-with-Homeopathy.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>These small white pills are homoeopathic remedies for back-ache. Anyone who follows this blog will know that I'm not a fan of alternative medicines, but this doesn't mean that the various metaphors of homoeopathy aren't as potent as the remedies themselves are ineffective and, in the wrong hands and contexts, <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/01/jeremy_sherr_using_homeopathy_for_aids.php">criminal</a>. Still, I'm not here to talk about homoeopathy in Africa, or talking to plants, or over-priced oatcakes or any other of Prince Charles's contributions to modern thought. I'm here to direct you towards my review of an intriguing new novel, whose central character is a practising homoeopath, and whose procedures, among other things, explore the metaphorical riches of the ideas behind it. Memory, energy, guilt, repression, love. Powerful stuff, and grippingly told. The novel is called <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Sight-Isabelle-Grey/dp/0857383167/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317145886&sr=1-2">Out of Sight</a></i>, its author is Isabelle Grey and my review is <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/out-of-sight-by-isabelle-grey/">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-19863541693733191342011-09-26T11:15:00.001+01:002011-09-26T18:46:02.041+01:00Lists<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RY1CJHx-NUE/Tn-dbRVcjnI/AAAAAAAADm8/sPDj7uDvm3A/s1600/calderoli.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RY1CJHx-NUE/Tn-dbRVcjnI/AAAAAAAADm8/sPDj7uDvm3A/s320/calderoli.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>A couple of days ago a site called <a href="http://listaouting.wordpress.com/">listaouting </a>published the first of a series of promised lists. The list contains the names of ten Italian politicians who have voted consistently in favour of anti-gay legislation, despite being, according to the people who've put the list together, gay themselves. The idea behind the list is that the ten politicians deserve to be outed not as gays, which is nobody's business but theirs, but as hypocrites. It's not a difficult concept to grasp. When a bunch of right-wing politicians here in Italy organised an event called Family Day, with the aim of defending the traditional family (sic) against the destructive and disordered forces of civil unions, a number of journalists published the marital escapades of the event's promoters - most of whom had been divorced at least once, and many of whom were currently living with their partners, unmarried or<i> in sin</i>, as we used to say, in blithe indifference to the rules of the Catholic church to which they all, at least nominally, belonged. They weren't being exposed as divorcees or adulterers but, once again, as hypocrites. Nobody seemed to feel that this offended their human rights. People who say one thing and do another, in that case at least, were seen quite rightly as fair game. No magistrate investigated the publication of their names or suggested that some heinous crime had been committed. Nobody talked about defamation, or presumed that the journalists in question suffered some form of mental illness. Nobody talked about media lynching or the need to protect individual privacy. These men, with their talk of the sanctity of the family and their strings of ex-wives and illegitimate children, were politicians. Being exposed as phonies was one of the risks that went with the job. The church, to which all paid lip-service, didn't seem to mind, after all. So why should they?<br />
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So it's interesting to see how differently people have reacted to the publication of this list. It should be said at once that the list offers names, but no proof, but that's hardly surprising. What would constitute proof of gayness, other than a statement from the person in question or a compromising photograph? (Or a wire-tapped conversation? In the land of tapping, I live in hope.) The former ain't going to happen; the latter is likelier, and would certainly be more fun. So we can ignore the whole business or take the list on trust. Certainly, the reaction of the blogosphere seems to confirm the claims. Maurizio Gasparri, Berlusconi henchman and not the sharpest knife in the box, appears to be known as <i>Culetto d'Oro</i> (Golden Botty!). Roberto Formigoni, governor of Lombardy and leader of the <i>cattolicissimo Comunione e Liberazione</i>, an organisation that has sewn up more tenders for its members than I've had hot dinners, is rumoured to have had a quickie with George Clooney. Lucky Roberto. Gianni Letta, the power behind Berlusconi's throne, if that isn't too dignified a term for it, has had so many face-lifts he makes his boss look rugged. Roberto Calderoli, the charmer in the photograph and Minister for Simplification - something he does whenever he opens his lovely mouth - is the kind of man who keeps wild animals in his garden and wears T-shirts with <i>Viva la Gnocca</i> (Long Live Cunt!) written on them. If further proof is needed, it can, apparently, be provided. Paolo Bonaiuti, Berlusconi's well-oiled spokesman, is also on the list, as is Ferdinando Adornato, who started out as a left-wing intellectual and is now neither left-wing nor intellectual. Then there's Luca Volontè, also <i>cattolicissimo </i>and fetchingly jug-eared, who has stated that 'the founders of modern psychology describe homosexuality as a clinical pathology'. On the grounds that the lady doth protest too much, along with a whiff of the 'no smoke without fire' defence, I rest my case.<br />
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And, in one sense, the fact that they're gay or not is irrelevant. Because what's shocked me about the whole business is not the reaction of the people on the list. They've been lying (or refusing to answer questions deemed embarrassing ) for decades - why on earth should we believe them now? It's the reaction of others that worries me. Mara Carfagna, ex calendar girl and now government minister (and an old favourite of this blog), has talked about a 'defamatory attack'. Defamatory? In whose eyes? It's good to know that Ms Carfagna, whose mandate is to ensure equality of opportunity, considers an 'accusation' of homosexuality to be defaming. She isn't the only one. If I could have a quickie with George Clooney (just saying, Roberto) for all the people - on the left and right of the spectrum - who've talked about unwarranted invasion of privacy and the need to separate the political and the personal, and all this hogwash that's being used to swill away the central point - that the <i>political </i>actions of these men interferes directly and constantly with the <i>private </i>lives of others - well, George and I would be pretty much fucked out by now. Good night, George.<br />
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The worst offenders are, guess who? That's right, Italy's gay organisations. I won't list them here - they aren't worth it - but to hear them talk about the outing of homophobic legislators as though children were being thrown to the lions is the most sickening thing of all. Whose rights are they supposed to be protecting? The rights of men who deprive me of my rights? Of course people have a right not to come out, if they think it might harm them, sad though this is - I'd be the last person, for example, to defend a list of gay footballers (much as I'd like to see it). But that right simply doesn't exist when those same people, for the lowest and most squalid of of motives, use their power to cancel the basic human rights of others. The squirming sanctimonious behaviour of Italy's gay spokespersons as they fall over themselves to defend the hypocrisy of their masters is further proof that Italy remains a profoundly authoritarian country, terrified of raising its voice against the powerful, constantly in search of a crumb from the table, grubbing for scraps of advancement, ultimately <i>behaving itself</i> because it's only through submission to the dominant culture that privileges can be won. It's a lickspittle reaction and the people who represent the public face of gay Italy should be ashamed of themselves.<br />
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There are, thank God, exceptions. For those of you read Italian, here's a <a href="http://ugualiamori.wordpress.com/tag/luca-volonte/">piece by Aldo Busi</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-7577960700434671092011-09-19T10:27:00.000+01:002011-09-19T10:27:25.598+01:00Not an advertisement for Walker's crisps<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://tim-parks.com/wp-content/uploads/tim_parks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://tim-parks.com/wp-content/uploads/tim_parks.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>This is Tim Parks, one of my favourite writers, looking rather like a wiser, crisp-free version of Gary Lineker. You can find out more about him on his own website <a href="http://www.timparks.com/">here</a>. If you'd like to know what I think about him and why he's been an influence on me and on my work, you can click <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/cleaver-by-tim-parks/">here</a>. And if you'd like to know more about the South Tyrol - believe me, there is a reason for this - you can click <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Tyrol">here</a>.<br />
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That should keep you busy for a little while.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-41114980942345375162011-09-11T13:39:00.001+01:002011-09-11T22:10:07.683+01:00A regular subscriber<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-IG641_london_CV_20100423104531.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-IG641_london_CV_20100423104531.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>Every fortnight, from June 2010 to June 2011, a copy of the London Review of Books fell onto the stone floor of my house in Italy. It lay there until the person who fed the cats took it upstairs with the rest of the post and left it on an ever-growing pile on the kitchen table. I was in England. I could have changed my address but I had no idea how long I'd be away from home and it seemed an unnecessary fuss. Besides, I liked the notion that my copies were arriving, as they were intended to do, in my own house, as though their presence, in some odd way, represented me, and my normal life, which had been disrupted. I've been subscribing to the LRB since 1997 and, for the first seven years, my parents would give me, as part of my Christmas present, one of the rather solemn dark blue binders the LRB produces to put them in. I can't remember why this practice stopped and, in one way, I'm sad they did. The librarian in me, the part of me that wishes the binders had a space to write the year on the spine, would have liked to see the years add up in such a formal, discreet and ordered way. Since then, back numbers have been allowed to accumulate on the bottom shelf of a bookcase and have now reached the height of a milking stool. Before my stay in England, I would unwrap my copy as soon as it arrived and look through it quickly, to see what might benefit from being read at once and what might wait, and to admire Peter Campbell's cover illustration, one of the principal and most reliable joys of the review. What's extraordinary about Campbell's work is how, despite its almost infinite variety, it's so obviously his; whether the colours are bold, as they are in the one I've chosen here, or tenuous, whether the image is abstract or figurative, his hand is unmistakeable. One of the reasons I think I will find it very hard to throw away old copies, assuming I ever do, will be the loss of these covers, something no online archive can ever replace.<br />
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Now, as I work through the backlog in chronological order, a year late more or less to the day, I'm enjoying a sort of double vision of the past twelve, indeed, fifteen months. The actual reviews are pretty much untouched by this. After all, it often seems to take the LRB a year, if not longer, to get round to looking at a book (which means I live in the, albeit fading, hope that, one day, one day soon, <i>Any Human Face</i> will be given a page or two - Jeremy Harding, are you there?) My favourite contributors - Diski, Castle, Kermode, Campbell (again) - don't suffer in the least from being read twelve months late. It's the current affairs pieces that are both here and now, and there and then. There and then because the writers are talking about the future and the predictions that articles of this type routinely and necessarily make can now be checked off against events, and found, reassuringly often, to be spot on. But also here and now, because what they have are insights I didn't have, or don't remember having, that continue to inform and deepen my understanding of the present and beyond. It's worrying, but also perversely comforting, to see how often the direst forecasts have already turned out to be true. (I'm thinking Lib Dems and painting oneself into corners here.) To provide a little balance, of course, there are also several assertions about the future made with an assurance that would silence anyone and yet are so totally off-the-wall as things have turned out that their authors must be writhing with embarrassment and wishing what's written could be erased forever. (I won't go into detail here...) And, of course, there are massive gaps (although I may just not have reached the relevant issue). The imminent collapse of the Euro. The Arab spring. But whether what is written turns out to have been accurate or not, there's a lovely sense of eavesdropping on a conversation you've only just missed - if that were possible - or can't quite join, that illusion of depth that tricks of perspective inevitably provide. What I want to do now is slowly, slowly close the gap between then there and here, between then and now, as the year away is slowly absorbed, and made sense of in ways that not even the LRB can finally help with.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-15228880830106070222011-08-20T14:49:00.002+01:002011-08-20T14:57:22.780+01:00Paris - Delhi - Bombay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.centrepompidou.fr/images/oeuvres/M/EXP-PDB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.centrepompidou.fr/images/oeuvres/M/EXP-PDB.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>We went to see the temporary exhibition at the Beaubourg yesterday. It's called <i>Paris - Delhi - Bombay </i>and contains the work of around 50 artists, divided more or less equally between France and India. It's a fascinating exhibition for many reasons, not the least being that it's small enough to deal with in half a day or less and not feel that the crux of it has been lost. India's relationship with France is very different to its relationship with Britain and it would be interesting to see what kind of tensions a similarly themed show might have if Paris were replaced by London (and, for the sake of correctness, Bombay by Mumbai). Here, the tensions of colonialism and its aftermath, which might have darkened, and enlivened, such a show or, for that matter, one that examined the cross-cultured visions of artists in France and, say, Indo-China, are attenuated to the point of invisibility. The mood of the show can sometimes be respectful to the point of discomfort, particularly so in the work of the French artists. The tone is established by a large piece at the entrance, a flag made of sequins that combines the flags of the two countries and is animated by a fan. It shimmers and twinkles and is altogether a thing of great decorative charm, the last thing one might expect from its creator, Orlan, but it's also an acknowledgement that the kind of equality such a melding represents can only be decorative, and a nod <i>de haut en bas </i>from a culture that doesn't do decoration in the same colourful, glittering way.<br />
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This sounds more critical than I intend, because I'm not quite sure exactly what line should have been taken, other than Orlan's, and the show, in one sense, is riddled with doubts about stance and appropriacy. The opening image to this post is of the exhibition's centrepiece, a massive female head by Ravinder Reddy. It's the kind of thing, on a smaller scale, that can be found in Indian villages. This size, it's both Koons-like and not. It's monumental kitsch to us, but that might be because we have no sense of what it might otherwise be if it were small. Kitsch runs through the show in one way or another, with its masters Pierre and Gilles occupying an attractively camp corner with their usual stuff, as though Bollywood were something they'd thought of first (and perhaps it was).<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.francetoday.com/calendar/images/2011/05/325-376.main_p.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.francetoday.com/calendar/images/2011/05/325-376.main_p.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>But there's western kitsch, which is necessarily deliberate at this level of high culture, and perceived kitsch, which may not be. Tejal Shah has a series of elaborately set-up photographs designed to express the dream lives of India's transgender community (and here the word may be appropriate), the <i>hijra</i>; one of them (on the left) is entitled <i>You Too Can Touch the Moon</i>; another has a glamorously undressed <i>hijra </i>lying on a sort of raft, being punted along by a young man naked except for a gilded loincloth complete with impressively large prosthetic penis. It's contrasted with the adjoining installation, also by Shah, which depicts a <i>hijra </i>lying bleeding on the ground after having been beaten up and raped by a urinating policeman. What we can't know, finally, is how much the first image itself establishes a sort of fond, but also cynical and knowing, distance between the dream fantasy and some more genuine and complex freedom, as yet unimaginable, in which prostitution and the violence it appears to provoke are no longer the only option. Another example of what must surely be unintentional kitsch, in my eyes at least, is a large piece by Riyas Komu, composed of eleven pairs of footballer's legs supporting a hollow tube bearing the words God is Great in Arabic. Hmm. It's one of those pieces that does what it says on the tin so blatantly that, once looked at, the work comes to an abrupt end. Which is sad, because the legs themselves are rather splendid.<br />
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Tejal Shah isn't the only person to worry about sex, and it's interesting to see how Indian artists take advantage of this dialogue with France to talk about who and how we fuck, and what the whole business entails. Like Shah, Kader Attia looks at the fate of transgender people in a bracing and often touching video of three transsexuals, in India, France and Algeria, while Sunil Gupta produces a kind of <i>fotoromanzo</i>, as they say in Italy, of an Indian gay man in Paris, who enjoys the freedom to display his relationship with an older man, while betraying him by night in one of Paris's most popular gay saunas, Sun City, itself a kitsch recreation of India and its iconography. There's a lot going on in this work, but also not very much, as though the freedom of the artist to deal with his issues were as unsatisfactory and superficial as the freedom his protagonist enjoys to both live life openly with an (extremely good-looking) lover and then shag all kinds in an ersatz dark room. But maybe, as we say, I'm projecting here.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.kunsthart.org/images/art_international/big/indian-summer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.kunsthart.org/images/art_international/big/indian-summer.jpg" /></a></div>Talking about heterosexuality and the social constraints imposed on women - a major theme of the show - one of my favourite works was that by Atul Dodiya, <i>Devi and the Sink</i> (shown here), which uses quotation and montage to talk about women's lives and the ways in which they are represented and conditioned. The neatly reproduced Leger in the top left-hand corner, where the slab of colour applied to the woman's face is both abstract and a sort of blindfold, is a particularly successful correlative to the central figure, whose ability to speak - or express anything other than bewilderment - has been suddenly removed by the no doubt affectionate attentions of her partner. Horns, it should be noticed, are also forbidden. A darker work by the same artist shows a store-front shutter bearing the image of the goddess Mahalakshami, bearer of prosperity, half rolled up to reveal an image of the suicide of three sisters whose parents were too poor to provide them with a dowry. It's not the most subtle work in the exhibition but that's no bad thing when one of the roles of a show like this is didactic, as the rather textbook-like introduction to the catalogue makes plain, and one of its strengths is the way it finds two contrasting, and antipathetic, pictorial languages to make its point: the brightly coloured icon of the god and the neutral, almost crude depiction of the suicide, like something from a Victorian penny-dreadful.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p7UJKGH_suU/TjbDebx08JI/AAAAAAAAAPk/35ov9z80fxY/s1600/Paris_Delhi_Bombay_05.JPG_effected.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p7UJKGH_suU/TjbDebx08JI/AAAAAAAAAPk/35ov9z80fxY/s320/Paris_Delhi_Bombay_05.JPG_effected.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Two of the works that most impressed me were by women and they confirm my feeling that for sheer edginess and emotional discomfort women artists these days are streets ahead of their male counterparts. (Bourgeois and Messeger are obvious examples.) Anita Dube, who lives and works in New Delhi, takes human bones she has 'found' (as the catalogue chillingly states) and covers them in red velvet, sequins, lace and pearls, transforming them into objects that might be necklaces or household ornaments, musical instruments or fans, except that, of course, they aren't. The ability of art to transform and the limits of that ability are being interrogated here, to unnerving effect. Sheela Gowda is also drawn to red. She has made heart-shaped patties from cow-dung (holy shit...), covered them in vermilion, and strung them up to hang like those strings of embroidered elephants or birds you find in charity shops in the west. Another artist, a man this time, to use red is Sunil Gawde, in a piece called <i>Virtually Untouchable - III</i> (see left), composed of garlands of painted razor-blades. Red is the colour of blood, but it's also the colour worn by Hindu women on their wedding days and I wonder if the catalogue's gloss on this work, that its subject is the assassinations of three members of the Gandhi family, is what the work might actually be saying, or whether it might not have more in common with the other two pieces that use vermilion so effectively. One of the best things about a well-curated exhibition, as this certainly is, is the way disparate materials, in this case bones, cow-dung and razor blades, can be united in conversation.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://toutelaculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/paris-delhi-bombay8-199x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://toutelaculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/paris-delhi-bombay8-199x300.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>There's much more to be said about this show. The take of some of its contributors on consumerism, for example, with works like Krishnaraj Chonat's wall of waste computer products, manufactured in the developing world and dumped back there as soon as they're no longer fit for purpose, which reminded me of one of my favourite works, a wall of battered suitcases by the Italian artist, Fabio Mauri, or the more ambiguous and thought-provoking bazaar of stainless steel kitchen goods, an emporium of cooking utensils of the kind used in every Indian home and a gleaming, highly reflective reminder that what counts is not the pot but what it contains, which is often, as we all know, very little. But my favourite comment on recycling is the work shown here, two vertical panels made of recycled waste and reproducing in hallucinatory detail a part of Mumbai called Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia, and also constructed in its entirety of materials no one else has any use for. The work, entitled <i>Think Left, Think Right, Think Low, Think Tight</i>, is an indictment of the living conditions within the slum, the verticality and narrowness creating a sense of oppression, as the catalogue rightly says. But it's also a massively ingenious and detailed monument to the human ingenuity of what it represents and for something that represents life at the lowest economic level imaginable, the kind of life most of us can't even contemplate, it's a work of extraordinary vitality and, even, optimism in the face of endurance, like those African toys, and coffins, so elaborately fashioned from discarded beer and petrol cans. As such, it goes dramatically beyond its creator's intentions, as good art should.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dlcache.indiatimes.com/imageserve/0bkpgyx6SAeIF/350x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://www.dlcache.indiatimes.com/imageserve/0bkpgyx6SAeIF/350x.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>A final thought. Most of the work that impressed and provoked me was made by Indian artists, perhaps because they were telling me something I didn't know, or didn't know I knew, or didn't know I had the right to know. Perhaps if France's relationship with India had been more conflictual, or explicitly compromised by history, the work produced by its artists would have had more bite to it. As it was, the two artists who seemed to me to have dealt most successfully with the challenge the show offered were Stéphane Calais, who preferred to stay at home and use Indian ink to cover large sheets of paper with flowers and abstract designs on the principle that his 'Orientalism was as mutant as flu' and thus required isolation, and Leandro Erlich (interestingly, an Argentine artist who lives and works between his country of origin and Paris, and is thus neither French nor Indian), who has given us an installation of a typical Parisian bedroom (designed, incidentally, by Jacques Grange, who lives in the apartment that once belonged to Colette), through one window of which can be seen filmed images of a street in Bombay. They're fascinating to watch, as of course they would be; they're elsewhere and their otherness is reinforced by the frame of the window, which is both a limit and an aperture. As metaphors go, Erlich's installation, entitled, almost too neatly, <i>Le Regard</i>, is as apposite as they come.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-31792689981606662892011-07-09T15:23:00.000+01:002011-07-09T15:23:45.427+01:00A roof over one's head<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1MOHF-IzsTc/SSK3yV08k3I/AAAAAAAAA04/up8JbPQ0C0M/s320/tribunale+terracina.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1MOHF-IzsTc/SSK3yV08k3I/AAAAAAAAA04/up8JbPQ0C0M/s320/tribunale+terracina.JPG" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Lovely, isn't it? It's the courthouse of Terracina, a small town on the Italian coast about 70 miles south of Rome. I first saw the building a few years ago, when I was sued for non-payment of an absurdly inflated bill by a structural engineer who ran his business from behind a pull-down shutter. I won that case, paying my lawyer slightly more than the original bill would have been; a Pyrrhic victory, but a victory nonetheless. I was back there again yesterday, dealing with a febrile but tenacious offshoot from the original sequoia-sized sin, committed more than ten years ago, of trying to put a roof on my house . This involved a small but necessary structural addition to the walls of the house, a narrow reinforced strip between wall and roof known as a <i>cordolo </i>that graces nine out of ten of the surrounding buildings. But things happened, as things will, and the top floor of the house was seized and sealed off - in the legal sense - before the new roof could be put on. For eight months we lived with rain, layers of flimsy plastic that lifted off in the slightest wind and almost suffocated a passing widow, a last-ditch attempt to transform 120 square metres of house into a terrace-cum-swimming pool (honestly!) before covering the house with temporary sheets of corrugated black material that, like so many temporary solutions in Italy, remain in place a decade later.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The original crime, that of constructing the <i>cordolo</i>, has long since been expunged by time. The second, that of violating the entirely virtual seals designed to keep the house roofless, should have met the same fate, but has been kept alive by the mendacity of a local policeman (<i>vigile urbano</i>), piqued that I didn't respond to his willingness to accept a bribe, who filed a report suggesting that the temporary roof was a much more recent addition and couldn't therefore benefit from the statute of limitations. So far, so clear? I thought not. The generous option would have been to spare you explanation, but the nature of the story requires a little confusion and the self-doubt and generalised sense of anxiety that confusion can produce. I should say that violating seals (and yes, I'm fully aware of the <i>double entendre</i>) is a penal offence in Italy, punishable by a spell in jail. Another source of anxiety.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">We appealed against this report as soon as it was written, producing two witnesses to testify that the temporary covering had been added well before the date provided by the <i>vigile urbano</i>, who, incidentally, had already been found guilty of corruption in another context. Years passed. The rain continued to fall on an increasingly shabby would-be roof and, in places, the floor below. Heat continued to rise from the house all winter with an extravagance that doesn't bear thinking about. People were born and, alas, died. I was in England when I heard about the first hearing, in March this year. Not from my lawyer; that would be too much to expect from someone who's already earned at least twice what the original roof would have cost, to little effect. One of my two witnesses phoned me in a panic the evening before to say that she'd just received aletter telling her to appear in court and couldn't possibly go to Terracina the following day. I phoned the second witness, who'd not been notified at all. I phoned my lawyer, who said that I shouldn't worry and that the hearing would probably be rescheduled in any case. Was I needed? Apparently not. Which was a relief. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The hearing, as predicted, was rescheduled, but not before the <i>vigile urbano</i> had admitted, on oath, that the date he'd provided had no basis in fact but was simply a presumption on his part. Without this presumption, no crime had been committed within the times recognised by the Italian legal system. I was, to borrow a term used constantly and with similar inaccuracy by Berlusconi, 'innocent'. Unfortunately this wasn't enough to avoid the second hearing yesterday. We arrived at nine o'clock. We left, almost seven hours later, at quarter to four. The inside of the building is as hostile as its exterior, concrete and more concrete; with temperatures in the low 30s, as they were yesterday, and no air conditioning outside the actual courtroom, it's no place to pass the best part of a day. We acquired squatters' rights to a row of four chairs just outside the courtroom, taking it in turns to press our nose against the glass that allowed us to watch, but not hear, the proceedings. We only realised later that we could have gone in and followed each hearing live; we'd assumed, in our ingenuous privacy-respecting way, that the people drifting in and out of the place were connected to the trial, rather than people like me, who were simply obliged to be in the building and within earshot of an eventual summons. And lawyers,of course, distinguishable by a dress code that imposed vertiginously high heels and hemlines for the women, regardless of age, and strangely shrunken jackets in silky materials for the younger men. As though the cast of Ally McBeal had been outfitted by Victoria's Secret. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">We started our wait with a certain optimism. The list of cases to be heard was pinned up on a noticeboard outside the court. Lambert + 1 was scheduled for 10.00. After an hour or so, we understood that the list wasn't simply inaccurate in terms of the time it had allotted to each case. Its order bore not even the slightest resemblance to what was going on. Case No. 17 was given immediate precedence. In Italy, 17 is an unlucky number; on this occasion, it's hard to say whose luck was worst. We gathered scraps of information about the case as people wandered in and out. It involved a man already jailed for attempted murder, an electric saw, a stalked grandmother, a locked cupboard filled with rifles, domestic violence in all its ugliness. More to the point, it involved 36 witnesses, each of whom - it became apparent -would be called to take the chair (there is no box). We watched them wait their turn to be questioned, all 36 of them. One young woman was cross-examined for more than half an hour; a man, who might have been her brother, even longer. People came and went, and came back again. Witnesses conferred outside the courtroom, where the judge, a slim, rather frail-looking woman who couldn't have been much more than thirty, listened and scribbled and sought clarity, and a man in a grey suit copied down, by hand, each single word that was said, because the only record that has legal value in Italy is produced by hand and therefore unalterable. There was much gnashing of teeth and wailing, principally among those whose cases, as the day wore on, were increasingly unlikely to be heard. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">One young man was particularly incensed. He'd been arrested for possession of a single marijuana plant some seven months ago and kept under house arrest ever since. If his case didn't come up, this could easily become a year or longer. He wandered, wild-eyed, around the echoing humid foyer at the building's heart. He was still there when we left; his lawyer had promised him that some deal with the judge had been struck to ensure his case be heard. I hope, for his sake, this was true. We had our brief moment of glory, when our witnesses were asked to stand up to be seen, an act that appears to carry some mysterious inexpressible judicial value, and the judge, who'd eaten a sorry looking sandwich within feet of us only half an hour before, rescheduled the hearing for February 2012, ten years to the month since the seals, which have never existed except on paper, were actually violated. It's a good thing none of us had anything better to do with our time. Except that, of course, we did. We could have worked out a system, for example, that took into account the time a hearing was likely to take on the basis of the number of witnesses called. It wouldn't have been that difficult. Anyone with half a brain could have done it. Perhaps one day, when the ministry of justice is less concerned with rendering the prime minister immune from the judicial system of the country he's been elected to govern, someone will have a go. If they need any help, they only have to ask. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">PS. I don't know when this photograph was taken but the dead tree outside the courthouse is still there. Still dead.</div>Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-74139178638458081492011-06-04T15:31:00.001+01:002011-06-04T15:35:15.158+01:00Secret embroidery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.be-art-website.com/content/images/annette-messager_portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://www.be-art-website.com/content/images/annette-messager_portrait.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
It's been asserted recently - we needn't dwell on by whom - that women's writing can be distinguished from men's after reading a single paragraph. This certainly isn't the case for me, and, as the author of a <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Monsters-Charles-Lambert/dp/0330450379/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241124702&sr=8-1">novel </a>whose first-person narrator is a woman, I hope other readers are equally gender-blind. But there is a case, I think, for suggesting that certain kinds of art are, if not the prerogative, at least the favoured preserve of women, and that seems to me to have to do with the choice of materials. Fabrics, quilts, clothes, media that aren't just humble but pliable, soft to the touch. Oldenburg did his soft sculptures, I know, but they strike me as detumescent rather than enveloping, irremediably male in their anguish about a lost rigidity. Women artists, on the other hand, use softness in a myriad of ways, often as disturbing as the stuff they use is domestic and reassuring. Bourgeois, Messager (pictured), in the UK Lucas and Emin: these woman and others have used the scraps of fabric that surround us, from nurseries and kitchens and wardrobes and turned them into the stuff of dream, and of nightmare. There's a character in Siri Hustvedt's new novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Summer-Without-Men-Siri-Hustvedt/dp/1444710524/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307099318&sr=1-1"><i>The Summer without Men</i></a>, who does something similar. You can read my review of it <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/siri-hustvedt-the-summer-without-men/">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-69652072366612091612011-05-30T10:38:00.000+01:002011-05-30T10:38:33.241+01:00Hangmen and Cities of Happiness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://theasylum.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/photo-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://theasylum.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/photo-1.jpg" width="204" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/images/image-home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/images/image-home.jpg" /></a></div><br />
These are David Mitchell and Enid Blyton. If you'd like to know what links them, click <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/david-mitchell-black-swan-green/">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-76010396984262640752011-05-11T10:52:00.000+01:002011-05-11T10:52:15.888+01:00Identity bracelets...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ice.com/media/common/products/images/B/S/M/5/BSM_013565_b_l-Sterling_Silver_ID_Mens_Bracelet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://www.ice.com/media/common/products/images/B/S/M/5/BSM_013565_b_l-Sterling_Silver_ID_Mens_Bracelet.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>...and the Antipodes. Confused? You needn't be. Just click <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/niall-griffiths-ten-pound-pom/">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-3232780619215450142011-05-09T10:51:00.000+01:002011-05-09T10:51:44.001+01:00We do it for the villa in the Bahamas...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.luxuryretreats.com/villa-pictures/111378/Mediums2/bahamas-lindonvilla-03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://www.luxuryretreats.com/villa-pictures/111378/Mediums2/bahamas-lindonvilla-03.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>...<a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/steve-hely-how-i-became-a-famous-novelist/">obviously</a>...Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-9279450519172750662011-04-26T10:56:00.000+01:002011-04-26T10:56:28.605+01:00Cheat death...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.adrants.com/images/cheat_death.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="http://www.adrants.com/images/cheat_death.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/helen-garner-the-spare-room/">Or not... </a>Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-57858911215481063722011-04-20T16:44:00.000+01:002011-04-20T16:44:05.460+01:00Manners maketh man...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://charleslambert.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/more-family-snaps-026.jpg?w=268&h=300" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://charleslambert.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/more-family-snaps-026.jpg?w=268&h=300" /></a></div><br />
... so where do allotments fit in? Find out <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/kay-sexton-minding-my-peas-and-cucumbers/">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-35694832408933193792011-04-04T09:14:00.000+01:002011-04-04T09:14:51.318+01:00I love you past speech<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://girlgame.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/eros.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://girlgame.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/eros.jpg" width="265" /></a></div><br />
This is Eros, the god of love. If you'd like to know where he hangs out, click <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/amy-bloom-where-the-god-of-love-hangs-out/">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-35679202877880177112011-04-02T15:35:00.000+01:002011-04-02T15:35:14.977+01:00Low Moon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://blogs.sundaymercury.net/weirdscience/assets_c/2010/01/full-moon-2-thumb-450x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://blogs.sundaymercury.net/weirdscience/assets_c/2010/01/full-moon-2-thumb-450x300.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
This is an image of a low moon. If you'd like to know what it has to do with poetry and ghosts, click <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/ghosts-of-a-low-moon-an-interview-with-andrew-oldham/">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-82886918514780208342011-03-04T11:55:00.000+01:002011-03-04T11:55:44.784+01:00Sixty Two<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-3DiGL31a5bM/TXDE8c6UVjI/AAAAAAAADig/JtFKBD82qKI/s1600/scent+of+cinnamon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-3DiGL31a5bM/TXDE8c6UVjI/AAAAAAAADig/JtFKBD82qKI/s320/scent+of+cinnamon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Somebody likes T<i>he Scent of Cinnamon</i> very much indeed. Want to know who? Click <a href="http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/shorts/2011/03/sixty-two.html#">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-74577408701359922742011-02-19T16:38:00.003+01:002011-03-04T23:04:31.313+01:00Evil, the banality of<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mediterraneonline.it/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Massimo-Sensini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.mediterraneonline.it/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Massimo-Sensini.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>Not the most attractive looking man you'll ever see, but there's nothing that distinguishes him from a thousand other petty bureaucrats, the kind of people you see in offices throughout Italy, helping or hindering their fellow citizens, as the case may be. His name is Massimo Sensini and he's the elected (Northern League) mayor of a small town called Fossalta di Piave, 40 miles north of Venice and the place where Ernest Hemingway was injured during the First World War. Among its 4000 inhabitants is a four year old girl of African origin,whose father, after years of working in the local industry, was recently made redundant and is now working in Belgium, sending home what he can to support his wife and four children in Italy. The little girl goes to the local school, called 'Il Flauto Magico'. It's an all-day school and the children have their lunch there, paying a certain amount for the privilege. The little girl's mother asks for help from the local authorities to pay for her daughter's lunches (she's already paying 50 euros a month for the teaching and other services provided). But the council can't help.<br />
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The teachers at the school - there are five of them, all women - decide to forego their own lunch in turns and give it to the girl. Everything's fine until the mayor hears about it from the social services. He summons the school principal, a certain Simonetta Murri, to condemn the 'gross irregularity' of the situation and accuse the teachers, effectively, of stealing council property through their 'misuse' of lunches assigned to them, an act that incurs 'a loss of revenue for the municipality'. The principal agrees. The teachers are told that if they continue to deprive the education system of five lunches a week, they will be disciplined. The little girl now does only half a day at school, going home for lunch and staying there for the afternoon, deprived of 50 percent of an education that she, more than anyone, needs if she is to belong to the country she lives in and to which her father has contributed as a worker and tax-payer in the past.<br />
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Needless to day, according to Sensini and Murri, this has nothing to do with racism. For Sensini, the lunches are part of the teachers' salary and it is illegal to auto-reduce one's salary. For Murri, all children are equal and what would she do if all her pupils wanted free lunches? Has anyone else asked for a free lunch? Well, no, not yet. The speciousness of these arguments is self-evident, but what strikes me most about them is that these two people, insignificant in themselves yet given the kind of responsibility over others that can make lives worth living or not, are behaving in the same way as other people, in other places and at other times, whose small, considered acts of brutality, sustained by an indifferent or conniving structure of power, have led to their fellow citizens being seen as less than human. Food's such a basic need, and the act of offering it such a basic human act, enshrined in all cultures as hospitality. How ironic that notions of law and principle and equality should to be used to rip an offered plate from the small hands of a hungry child.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-38171210965148440262011-02-19T11:26:00.000+01:002011-02-19T11:26:32.915+01:00Dark times, dark tales<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTdk2jrrQWdrpmDkZa0epmeZjb4w1VZD8_-fO18VLY46DXrpJfU" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTdk2jrrQWdrpmDkZa0epmeZjb4w1VZD8_-fO18VLY46DXrpJfU" /></a></div>Fancy something a bit creepy for the weekend? Need some advice? Click <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/hg-wells-the-door-in-the-wall-and-mr-james-canon-alberics-scrap-book/">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-57674957641667545882011-02-15T15:01:00.000+01:002011-02-15T15:01:17.588+01:00words, words, wordle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Want to see what I've been up to recently? Well, here it is.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"></span><br />
<pre id="embed" style="background-color: #eeeeff; font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/3152137/one_folding_world" title="Wordle: one folding world"><img alt="Wordle: one folding world" src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/3152137/one_folding_world" style="border: 1px solid #ddd; padding: 4px;" /></a></pre>Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-78803863865061814802011-02-12T23:41:00.001+01:002011-02-12T23:42:13.769+01:00Ouch!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5N9vRi8T6wN1cK1-D1BiaJjofnnAC_QyCYWBsmwnVVUGytLjLtg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5N9vRi8T6wN1cK1-D1BiaJjofnnAC_QyCYWBsmwnVVUGytLjLtg" /></a></div><br />
If you want to know what this instrument of torture has to do with <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Any-Human-Face-Charles-Lambert/dp/0330512994/ref=pd_sim_b_1">Any Human Face</a>, click <a href="http://writingneuroses.blogspot.com/2011/02/charles-lambert-third-time-of-asking.html">here</a>.Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137995022574691057.post-34900617813826251652011-02-10T10:37:00.001+01:002011-02-10T20:30:18.970+01:00Transformations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5a/Blodeuwedd_and_Gronw.jpeg/180px-Blodeuwedd_and_Gronw.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5a/Blodeuwedd_and_Gronw.jpeg/180px-Blodeuwedd_and_Gronw.jpeg" width="206" /></a></div><br />
Girls made out of flowers, brothers becoming beasts and breeding, David Beckham an object of blind irrational worship. What is the world coming to? Find out <a href="http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/niall-griffiths-the-dreams-of-max-and-ronnie-and-gwyneth-lewis-the-meat-tree/">here</a>.<br />
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And if you want to see some seriously demented whimsy, google for images of Blodeuwedd...Charles Lamberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18074227813367594283noreply@blogger.com0