Black Watch

After dinner Sharon Smith and I drove to the Carriage Works to catch Black Watch performed by the National Theatre of Scotland. It was an excellent piece of theatre; well-acted, cleverly staged, good (but not great) writing. The review in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier in the week described it as “never less than absorbing” which I think is correct. It comes out of that long tradition of Scottish drama that in my life time has included works such as The Cheviot, The Stag And The Black, Black Oil and Jock. It’s not quite in the same class as either of those but it’s very good and, I regret to say, streets ahead of anything I’ve seen here in the last eight years.

Above Loch Broom

On my first solo drive to Ray and Anna’s I fell out of my wheelchair at a rest stop on the Loch Broom road about five miles east of Ullapool. It’s a quiet place where tranquillity can be found quite easily. The immense stretch of water that is Loch Broom, maybe 100 metres below the lay-by, stretches out to the sea. Gorse bushes, hence the loch’s name, pepper the hillside above the road. I pulled the van over for a rest from driving, to empty my urine drainage bag (because a paralysed man must) and to sit, quietly and at peace with myself, looking out over the magnificence of a truly awesome place. After some period, which might have been five minutes or five days, I turned to position my chair on the hoist platform. A front wheel stuck in a small muddy puddle. I pushed the rear wheels, my shoulders set back for extra leverage. Of course all I did was tip backwards out of my chair. I lay on the gravel beneath the line of vision of a driver of a saloon car passing along the road: several did. After about 15 minutes, maybe 20, a Land Rover stopped (presumably to do a double take on what the driver was sure she had seen but was no less sure couldn’t be true). She saw what she saw. I asked her to find another, which she did by flagging down a second car. My good Samaritans picked me up without too much fuss. Back in the wheelchair I checked there was no damage, they waited until I was safely in my driver’s seat then we said our goodbyes. I imagine they had a good ‘you’ll never believe what happened today’ story to tell later. When I reached Anna and Ray’s house, they and Susi were less than overwhelmed by my absentmindedness on the road.

I'm not quite sure why this recollection came to me when it did. But it did so I wrote it down then sent it to a friend, twelve years after the event. (I know it's 12 because the van is 13 years old.)

Picture by Aaron at http://picasaweb.google.com/azzathekiwi/HighlandsTripMonday/photo#5126445219781660098

Happy Bithday Mum

One of the reasons I like The Guardian

The newspaper has just launched a series re-telling Greek Myths. Here's the introduction to Neil McGregor's Foreward on the origins of the Gods:

Creation stories, so central in the religions of the Middle East, play a surprisingly marginal part in Greek myth. The Greeks had nothing to set alongside the resounding "In the beginning" in the book of Genesis, where one eternal God creates the universe out of nothing. For the Greeks there was no single canonical version of creation, but a number of overlapping stories.

Read more here ...

The road from Inverness to Lochinver

It was an uneventful day at work, one that bordered on the tedious. A lengthy e.mail exchange with Spike – word games and lists of likes – passed the time. Spike wrote (in part of her answer to one of my smart arse points) that she likes “lots of other things”. I wrote back, “name 23”, which Spike did, of course, then challenged me to do the same. Number 17 on my list was “the road between Inverness and Lochinver via Ullapool”. Spike wrote back saying, “expand”, so I did:

You cross the bridge at Inverness, Beuly Firth below you, town to the left. From North Kessock to Strathpeffer the countryside is tame, pastoral land. It's pretty to look at but in a cultivated, manicured way. You follow the A835 North West rising to Loch Glascarnoch, which has been dammed. It's rough terrain; isolated mountain country where very few people live. Wind, rain and snow are not uncommon. The road follows the route of a mountain pass, the summit of which leads you to a high road along the north shore of Loch Broom; a long, long sea loch the sight of which leaves one breathless. Ullapool is at the western end of Loch Broom. Turn right. Head north. There's a long steep rise away from the town with astonishing views back along the loch. You keep going, though, because there's plenty more driving to be done.

The countryside beyond Ardmair, as you head north, seems immeasurably older than the area around Loch Broom. Beyond Elphin (which has a very weird café) people and cars become fewer and farther between. A narrow road cuts its way between enormous hills, tough plugs that even glaciers couldn't grind down. One feels wholly insignificant in this place, which is no bad thing. Turn left (north west) at Ledmore. Watch out for deer crossing the road because by now it's dusk. Loch Assynt's black water is on your left, a huge scar-tissue ridge sits on your right. Suilven, one of the most glorious mountains in Scotland, pops up then vanishes as the road twists and turns. Just before Lochinver, turn north again then west along the single-track road to Achmelvich where Ray and Anna have a croft with sheep and rabbits and vegetables, two cows, some ducks, geese and a pig. There's a warm fire, a pot of tea brewing and dinner waiting at a table where friends are happy to share news while a storm rages in from the sea.













Suilven

Lust Caution

We the made our way to the Dendy at Circular Quay where we watched Ang Lee’s new film, Lust Caution. It’s brilliant. We were particularly interested because Susi will be working in Shanghai for large parts of the year ahead. It was also interesting to get some sense of a 20th Century history that was almost entirely unknown to me (the Japanese occupation of mainland China) although I did read John Birmingham’s Fragrant Harbour (about British POW in Hong Kong). The acting was wonderful. Tony Leung was immense. Newcomer Tan Wei was great too but really all the cast were great. It lasted nearly three hours but it didn’t feel like that at all.

Cinderella

Tonight’s show was Rossini’s Cinderella. As always the music was lovely and the singing was delightful. Kamahl was in the audience this evening. He was big here in the seventies, I think. I wouldn’t have known the man if he fell on my lap. Ita Buttrose was in too, so she has renewed her first nights subscription just like us. Ita passes me on the steps each night we’re in the Hall. She has no recollection that we’ve met and no idea of who I am. It’s odd to be so forgettable at times, invisible almost. I think it has something to do with the wheelchair. It could simply be, however, that I’m forgerttable.

Amazing Grace

We watched the movie Amazing Grace. More than 'worthy', it's well-made, well-written and well-acted. Came upon a Wiberforce quote that gives all the explanation necessary for engagement and activism in a world that seems often to be governed by the force of inertia:

"having heard all of this you may choose to look the other way but you can never again say that you did not know".

Small Hours

Small Hours

Alone in the dark.
Drunk, perhaps,
on too much red wine
or the doomed romanticism
of youth just fled
as the realisation of adulthood
sinks into one’s consciousness
to stop me in my tracks
beside a battered old couch
in a small flat
with a large window;
looking out over a bay,
crescent shaped,
reflecting the light of a full moon
dancing on the tiny ripples
of a night tide, ebbing
as the night itself must ebb
in anticipation of the dawn
on a lazy Sunday
when there may time to recover
before the world requires me
to recommence the charade.

(after a song by John Martyn)

The Golden Compass

Susi and I caught The Golden Compass at the George Street Greater Union complex. I’m sorry to say I was thoroughly underwhelmed. I simply wasn’t able to suspend disbelief at any point. Nicole Kidman looked terrific and played menacing very well. The young girl was thoroughly spiky and it’s good to see a female protagonist. Although I’ve not read the novels (I will get round to it) I’d say it’s a fair guess that fond readers must be disappointed by the movie version of what I believe is a very well told tale.

Sigur Ros:Heima

We watched the Sigur Ros DVD that Susi bought for me as a Christmas gift. Disc one of Heima is stunning, totally mesmerising. Iceland is presented in a way that simply requires you to get on a plane to be there, immersed in that surreal, astonishingly beautiful but stark landscape. The band come across as simply the sweetest, humblest likeable bunch of young men you could imagine as they talk about their tour of Iceland, of coming home to a place of refuge and renewal (except they don’t use such terms). And the music leaves me breathless. It’s brilliant, brilliant stuff. Unique.

La Boheme

The opera was delightful. The music was truly sublime. Hye Seoung Kwon sang the role of Mimi beautifully. What a voice she has. The other principals sang very well too (in as much as I’m able to judge). I particularly enjoyed José Carbó singing the painter, Marcello. The contemporary, grundge-style setting of what might be Paddy’s Market here or the old Spittalfields Market in London’s east end worked surprisingly well. All in all it was a good show.

Geoffrey Robinson QC was in the audience with women I took to be his author wife and their daughter. He looked quite the Bohemian lawyer himself in a brightly coloured Joe Bananas-style jacket. Jody Bruin, Director General of the NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs was also there with her partner / husband (I assume, given they were so public) Roger Wilkins, former Head of the Cabinet Office in Bob Carr’s Government. The Governor’s car was there too when we left but I didn’t see her in the hall tonight. Maybe she was at José Carreras, who was singing in the Concert Hall. Of course none of these dignitaries know I’m alive and on the planet, although that’s not quite true.

Geoffrey Robinson almost did an International Day event for us in 2006 but it came to nothing in the end, largely because we couldn’t make the dates work for his summer return to Sydney. Governor Bashir attended the ‘hypothetical’ (coincidentally) at the Christopher Reeve do at Darling Harbour in 2001, so she listened to me debate spinal cord injury with Mrs Reeve, Natasha Stott-Despoja and others for over an hour but when we bump into one another at Opera first-nights she can’t remember who I am from Adam or is maybe simply too polite to interrupt and I kind of think she doesn’t need me bothering her during one of her nights off. And now that I think of it, Jody Bruin attended our launch of the Critical Bridges DVD on educational transition points and people with disability, which we staged on the 5th December 2007 in Sydney. My goodness … I’m almost famous!

Hot New Year's Day in Sydeny

When it became too hot for both of us to stay at Balmoral beach, we fled to the air-conditioned darkness of the Hoyt’s cinema complex at Broadway. We watched Walt Disney’s Enchanted, which delivered everything it promised. It’s as well-made a piece of movie confectionary as you’re ever likely to see. I enjoyed it hugely, although I’m probably not in its intended demographic target group. It worked, of course, because everyone involved played it for real. There was no post-modern, bullshit deconstruction at play. The movie makers simply asked us to suspend disbelief. I did entirely.