Parga 2.

After an early beer, 2 Blue Bar cocktails, 3 ouzos, 2 retzinas and a brandy on my side Mothermouse and me talk about masculinity. Masculinity is bull headedness. Women name call it that like it’s a failing but that’s what it is. Some men are quiet and go about it in secret and others it’s just written on them. Some have it knocked out of them and avoid snapping a twig and others have it knocked into them and knock down a forest. A few talk about their feelings in a feminine sort of way which is pleasing to females, at least at first, but make no mistake, men are bull headed whatever the covering. It runs like root sap up into our branches. It seems to me our brains have far less room for controversy. We don’t have the capacity to flurry through conflicting confusions like women. A stick is a stick and its use is dependant on the situation. Faced with a confusion of feelings my brain blinks to a white spot like when you turn off the TV. Thread thoughts in a neat line like meat on a kebab skewer and I’m fine. But it’s a terrible misconception that men don’t have feelings. We do, we just don’t do it with confusion that needs talking about. We have a feeling and that’s it and talk about something else. Like music; you hear it till the song is over. But then it must be frustrating, like being with someone listening to their iPod with the only clue as to the song being how they tap their foot. We must work on it.

Parga 1.

Parga is on the Greek west coast opposite Corfu. It is its own little state within the country, a bit like the Vatican only with a Mayor instead of the Holy Pontiff, and like Catholicism it changes slowly. In fact the only upheaval in these numerically choppy times was more due to rain. Stefanos whose character and taverna dominate Parga life had a winter collapse. The two balconies of his taverna that shelved from the scrubby cliffs a hundred feet above Voltos bay collapsed in the winter rains onto the rocks below. His new tabled shelves are wider and stronger but still perilous. Stefanos’s restaurant is the best fish restaurant in Parga because Stefanos is a fisherman first, a cavalier second and a restaurateur third. His dry leather glove of a hand that welcomed me was testament to daily salt and ropes. Costas had moved from his usual beach bar due to a fall out, and Michael, whose bar was always a little too aloof to be profitable, is moving back to Canada with wife and winter baby. Elli who tends the sun loungers next to the stream that shyly slots the sand is as ever Elli. Five feet and nothing more with her purposeful feminine shape tends family rather than tourists, playing with babies and bringing everyone up to date with Parga news since their last visit. Mothermouse and Elli loved each other from their first conversation. These are mostly about her dealings with the pontiff, her female account of God and the workings of Parga being a constant thorn in his side. If Elli has ever been untrue to her heart and mind it’s a well kept secret. Catholics take note. An uncomfortable woman is worth a hundred clerics. So Parga where we sleep in and out of the sun bundles up our unwanted cares and posts them along its golden trail to the setting sun one more time. 

Big Brother is Dead.

I’ve just left BB to die in peace. Unnoticed by the majority its attempt to rekindle our capacity to prey has come to an end. That’s a strange thought. Other than Nasty Nick, who has spent the last ten years trying to live down his alliterative tabloid title gained from mistakenly believing BB was a game show one was supposed to try to win, all the other contestants have gladly exposed their warts and personality in the hope of lucrative post-game contracts. More importantly 99% loved and gained a great deal from the experience of rubbing against other people 24/7 without the intrusion of all our modern communicative gadgets and being able to share their ups and downs with a faceless, non judgmental voice when things got too much. This, strangely enough, is as close as we get these days to being a fly on the wall of a monastery. The only difference being God speaks with a Geordie accent. What we have been lasciviously watching these past ten years has been the progress of novice monks and monkesses towards gaining sufficient self-awareness to create a community. OK some couldn’t manage it but as each series progressed one could see the community immerging in honesty and friendship with periodic help from the ‘confessional’ diary room. In the same way that no one would have guessed a film about singing nuns would become one of the most popular films ever BB has turned out to be the monastery epic of modern television. So if you don’t want to miss out stick one of those little key ring torches on a wall opposite a comfy chair when everyone’s out and talk to it for a while. It doesn’t matter whether you think it’s God or Big Brother, just let it all out and you’ll feel much better. Me and Mothermouse have even talked to the torch once or twice with one of us being the voice of BB. Far better than Relate and much cheaper too. But then we’ve both trained as therapists, which helps. Off on holiday. By :)

Koran Burning.

All I’ve heard the entire day in the news is some US pastor is going to burn some Korans for 9/11. This has got up the noses of some Mosies. Oh and a Sikh is suing an airport for the unbearable shame of making him take his turban off to see if there’s a bomb in it. Well if I was on his flight I’d want to know. No, God must have a pretty good sense of humour to not smite these jokers down in their socks for being so stupid in God’s name. Surely if anyone joins a religion just to feel hard done to by people of other religions they should have their application form whipped away from them in the blink a smote. God would appear and suggest, “Sorry fella you’re not ready, best go join a Hell’s Angels gang; they do angry belligerence better than me.” But I will fight for my belief in you to my last breath! “Get lost retard. No, better still, Smite.” Poof. Argh! It seems we’ll always take the easy option and wear a silly hat, read ‘our’ book, prey for stuff, say the right words and blame others for being wrong. It should be that easy! So the Mosies are incensed by the, er Pasties, and the Sikhies with the Bomb sniffers. Well this week the Pope is coming to the UK where there are more Catholic factions than you can shake a stick at. God help him. Remember God is ineffable, God isn’t in words, God’s not a writer, all Gods book have been ghost written by humans.

Being in neutral.

Tonight I was assistant fire keeper at a sweat because Mothermouse has a bad elbow. A sweat, an American Indian custom, is like a church service held in a blacked out sauna. Hot, sweaty and pitch black one attempts to fill one’s awareness of all things past and present, give away one’s hindrances and pray for oneself and others. Glowing rocks from the fire, which I was assistantly keeping, are delivered into a pit in the sweat and watered to spread the heat. It was a fine late summer evening and a very pleasant experience. As fire keeper one should assume a neutral frame of being to assist the ceremony. I do neutral well. This juxtaposition of ceremony and neutrality reminds me of my conversations with another wise old friend; an agreement between us that one should not, or at least avoid as far as possible, holding beliefs of any sort. Not just religious beliefs but beliefs of who one is, who or how other people are, what will happen, what has happened etc etc, right down to the simplest day to day assumptions we make without thinking. Finding oneself stripped of all these cognitive shortcuts requires far more awareness of what actually IS happening around one. Boring repetition becomes continuing freshness. Of course one retains a transient knowledge of probabilities, but that’s all it is, transient. What IS happening is the constant, vibrant re-writer of it. I have a sense of throwing away a thousand filing cabinets full of data that has become redundant and, in the space left empty, having a huge room to dance around in. It’s an exchange I find extremely liberating. So I’m perhaps confusing to those who are into the ceremony. I conform and honour them but somehow I am the ceremony I’m really interested in. So many thanks to Pete, Steve and Carol, the fire, trees and setting sun for a lovely evening.

Heidi Plug’s Big Tits.

Just passed a Heat magazine on the fridge. On the cover is a stick thin model with massive boobies as in, “No darling these are not mummies tities they are mummies boobies” as I heard a mom teach her five year old son. Well these breasts would feed triplets if they hadn’t been plastically enlarged. I feel I aught to tell young women wishing for plastic enhancement that ‘men are stupid’. If we had a choice we would plump for a marrow in the trousers requiring a triple D codpiece. I base this assertion on the majority of motorcycles on the Isle of Man, namely 1000cc monsters capable of devouring your license on a trip to Tescos. Most would top 50mph with a sneeze. And they weigh tons. If the bike test required you to lift your bike back upright from 45 degrees no one would pass. No, men may lust for bigness but if we get it we can’t cope with it. We may walk around with the pride of owning a GSX1000R in our eye but come to park it on a slope and we need the help of several weight lifters. And when we proudly drive off under an admiring gaze we lurch forward, realise we’ve left the disc lock on and keel over trapping a leg under the thing thus requiring the weight lifters again. This has been my personal experience anyway. So ladies it’s not that ample size isn’t appreciated it’s that we become daunted by it and can’t really cope. We’re more likely to think it’s huge fun to play them like bongos, go bilabilabila between them or play 'pat-a-cake pat-a-cake bakers man' with them, which I don’t think is the full on sensual experience you’re looking for. So Ms Plug I’d go for a nice 660 SZR rather than an R1 Yamaha. They may be super sporty but not many guys can get the best out of them.

The Manx GP.

Just back from three days at the Manx GP on the Isle of Mann. Sunny, camping, crack, (‘talk’ in case your imagination has the better of you) bacon butties in the morning with crisps, coke and chocolate the rest of the day. The TT and the MGP races are a textbook anachronism. Started in 1911 they consist of 4 or 6 laps of a 37.5 mile circuit around the island, including a ‘mountain’ of modest proportions. Old pictures show riders in shoes and trousers leaving plumes of dust from dirt roads and smoking like chimneys as soon as they finish. Considering the tracks and machinery 40mph average speed was heroic. Forward 99 years and the roads are tarmac but still country lanes between stone walls, earth banks and trees, through several villages and two towns. And the bikes have changed out of all recognition, from a Brough Superior, top speed 70mph, to a Honda Fireblade’s 200mph. Average speeds have increase from 40 to 130mph. In fact the only thing that hasn’t appreciably changed is the human being; we’re still blood and bones in a skin. The course has a hundred marshalling points, each equipped with medical stuff, stretcher, radio, flags and at least five volunteer marshals. There are at least six motorcycle paramedics each capable of at least a hundred mph lap time, and two helicopters. The time from a rider falling off to arriving in hospital is less than ten minutes. During practice and racing riders cover around 150,000 miles at speeds up to 200mph. All this on roads around 25 feet wide between walls and trees. All this is not a sensible pursuit. Though I’ve been a keen motorcyclist for some 50 years and raced off road this has gone beyond heroism; it has become a severe test of lack of imagination. But I love it apart from the price that’s paid for the slightest mistake. My heart goes out to the three vans that will go home with a person missing. So what do you do with an anachronism that kills people? I don’t know.