Her songs and spells

And an attempt by me when I couldn’t find the words...

I’d asked a friend for something to put up on my fridge and the line she gave me was a play on the expression ‘to play or keep your cards close to your chest’ or not to tell others what you are intending to do. The image she created was of a card player holding her cards close to her chest, but holding them face out. Of someone guarded and secretive, yet bold and open.

But I couldn’t find any words to do with cards so I chose songs and spells instead – something revealing, something compelling. And something to suggest her contradictions – her many selves, the rarest of which being the most expressive and inspired, and perhaps the best...

Gently walk

A bit of fridge magnet poetry to capture something of a day’s rambling – and scrambling – over the mountain.

The poetry is by my fellow rambler that day.

You can read about our day here: http://daydreamdraggingfeet.blogspot.com/2012/02/rambling-over-mountain.html

Planting wishes

I bought this for my niece who has grown beans and helped plant herbs and bulbs, and picked tomatoes – and, having recently moved into her new home, will soon have a garden to grow.

It’s a handmade greeting card which when planted grows into a bunch of mixed herbs. The card is made from waste paper and embedded with seeds, and the design is printed with water-based ink.

It’s made by a local company called Growing Paper and you can see a range of their other paper products at http://www.growingpaper.co.za.

She can plant it with all my wishes that it’ll soon grow into a thriving pot full of basil, wild rocket and thyme.

My Mecca

Far, far south – and far away from everywhere – this ‘Mecca’ was built by Helen Martins in the tiny village of Nieu Bethesda in the dusty Karoo.

It has little to do with Makkah, the holiest city in Islam, a place she’d never visited. But it has everything to do with my own ‘Mecca’ which isn’t a place at all...

In 1945, ‘Miss Helen’ began building her ‘Mecca’, transforming her home using cement and wire, pieces of glass and plastic, and finely crushed glass which she used to coat the brightly painted walls and ceilings. Later, with the help of assistants, she built over 300 sculptures in her garden of owls and camels, and other animals and figures, almost all facing east.

I can only imagine how laughably crude and strange – and maybe even a little nightmarish – her fantastic creations must have seemed to the conservative Christian villagers, inspired as the sculptures and murals were by the Bible but also by the poetry of Omar Khayyam and the work of William Blake.

Under Apartheid, her collaboration and friendship with her assistants, especially Koos Malgas, a farm labourer from the so-called ‘coloured’ community, only added to her own Afrikaner community’s disapproval and mistrust.

Although the reclusive ‘Miss Helen’ had little to do with the villagers, once a year she would invite them into her home, every mural and all the mirrors and brightly coloured windows illuminated by dozens of lanterns and candles.

However, in 1976, at the age of 78 she took her life. No one knows for sure why she did it. Her home, known as ‘The Owl House’, fell into disrepair but in 1996 became a museum and national monument, and is now visited by the curious and appreciative from around the world.

As a teen, I was deeply moved by Athol Fugard’s play The Road to Mecca which is based on the life of Helen Martins and had been drawn to ‘The Owl House’. But, finally getting to visit years later as a student teacher with a group of teens, it wasn’t so much the place that inspired me after all – it was the imagination, determination and hope of the untrained artist behind it.

And, of course, the hours and hours of creative activity which transformed her home and garden into this unique ‘Mecca’...

You can read more about Helen Martins and 'The Owl House' on Wikipedia. And about The Road to Mecca at http://litmed.med.nyu.edu. And if you'd like to find about more about Nieu Bethesda: http://www.nieu-bethesda.com.

Glimpses

I used to think my work wasn't pleasing enough – that it would never be chosen to go up on display in the foyer at school – and it often wasn't. And once, when we had a visitor to the school, it ended up in the darkest corner of the room – behind the art room door! (However, since figure drawing only ever involved fully-clothed models and any nudity – or semi-nudity – in our art works was frowned upon, I can only smile at the memory and appreciate that it was put up at all).

Well, there's no nudity here – just some glimpses of the kinds of things I found beautiful, startling, powerful and, I hoped, just a little bit defiant when I was growing up.

Adieu

My favourite teacher, when I was at school, was my art teacher.

I don’t know if she would remember me, so many years later, but I haven’t forgotten her.

She only taught me for two years, when I was one of her ‘leetle leetle Std 6s’ and then one of her ‘leetle’ bigger Std 7s (in Grades 8 and 9), but the interest she took in me and my work made all the difference, especially at a time when my own interest in my school work was flagging.

She seemed to delight in each of us, her artists, in our mischief as much as our imaginations. And I think we, at a rather rigid and old-fashioned girls’ school, appreciated her impishness and wonder as much as her artistic and teaching abilities...

This was her farewell to us...

As a teacher now myself, I’ve since found out how hard it can be to say goodbye to students – but also how much easier it is to stay in touch.

We may have gone our separate ways, but I like to think that we may still meet up again, my past students and I, somewhere in the world – in the UAE perhaps, or Bahrain, Turkey, Pakistan, the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Japan... That our farewell was more an au revoir than an adieu...

So...

Till we meet again...

Later...

Drawing games

I taught my niece this game when she was very little. She’s eleven now and she still loves it – she gets everyone drawing, especially when she sleeps over during the holidays. 

Take a piece of paper and fold it in half, then in half again. The first person to draw draws the head and neck, the second person draws the upper body down to the waist, the third draws the hips and thighs, and the last draws the calves and feet. Each person folds back their drawing so that the next person doesn’t see it and at the end someone – in our family always the youngest! – unfolds the piece of paper to see what kind of crazy creature’s been created.

I love that she can still have so much fun – despite all the TV shows and computer games competing for her attention – with a scrap piece of paper and coloured pencils...

Ludicrous

Today is Nelson Mandela’s 94^th birthday.

Twenty-four years ago, 72 000 people attended a concert at Wembley in London to celebrate Mandela’s 70^th birthday. I wonder how many of the thousands of people at the concert, or watching it at home, would have imagined – or dared to hope – that Tata Madiba, as he is affectionately known to so many South Africans, would still be the father of a democratic South Africa well into his nineties. And that his birthday would have become an annual international day (known as Mandela Day) on which to honour his commitment to justice and equality in South Africa.

As a teen in South Africa, I could only read about the concert in Number One, one of my favourite music magazines. However, as Mandela was banned and imprisoned, I wasn’t allowed to see any pictures of him. How ludicrous that I could read about him but not see him – and that someone actually had to black out his face in every copy that was sold in South Africa..!

You have to laugh... and appreciate just how far we’ve come...

Well, at 25 pounds a ticket, the concert raised 3 million pounds for children’s charities in South Africa.

On Mandela Day, we're all urged to give 67 minutes of our time to a charity or to someone in our local community – to take a small step towards improving the lives of others, and arguably our own.

“It always seems impossible,” Mandela once said, “until it’s done.”

What a gift and an inspiration he has been, not only to South Africans, but to so many people around the world.

You can read more about the activities that took place this Mandela Day at: http://www.mandeladay.com

Camera obscura

While in Grahamstown, I took some of my family to the Observatory Museum. Its Victorian camera obscura is the only one of its type in the southern hemisphere and one of only two in the world (the other being in Edinburgh).

A camera obscura is an optical device which predates the camera. The name originates in Latin and refers to a darkened room: camera means “vaulted chamber or room” and obscura means “dark”.

The museum was originally a nineteenth century jeweller’s shop and family home. The original owner and designer of this unusual building, Henry Carter Galpin, was a successful watchmaker and jeweller who constructed the camera obscura in 1882. He was interested in natural history, music, mechanics, astronomy and optics. The museum also includes a Meridian Room where Galpin could ascertain the precise time of local noon (14 minutes behind South African standard time) and a Telescope Room which contains the telescope which was originally installed in the rooftop observatory.

We climbed up a long and very narrow spiral staircase in the highest tower to reach the camera obscura. It works through a system of lenses and a mirror in a revolving turret in its roof and projects a panorama of the city onto a concave viewing surface in the darkened observation room beneath.

It’s fascinating and our guide was knowledgeable and friendly (though the building itself looks in need of maintenance).

This photograph of the image in the camera obscura is not as clear as the image itself. And had it been a sunnier day the image would have been even sharper.

Once locals would set their watches by the time on the clock tower but the clock is no longer working and these days each clock face seems to show a different time..!

You can find out more about the Observatory Museum at http://www.grahamstown.co.za and on Wikipedia.

Back in Bathurst Street

I can’t remember the last time I was in Grahamstown but I went back last week – just for a day – a very cold and windy day..!

But I got a photo of the same view of Bathurst Street that I sketched as an art student years ago.

It was so familiar but of course it’s changed. The building on the corner had been damaged in a fire and had to be restored, and (looking back at my sketch) I noticed the lamp post is gone. And I don’t think that red letterbox was there before – I didn’t include it in my sketch anyway.


But Birch's, the outfitters I'd sat outside sketching, was still there, selling menswear, school uniforms and university robes (for the last 148 years!).

And it was great to see that row of buildings on Bathurst Street still looking clean and bright, and in pretty good condition. And to go back...

Bathurst Street

Birch's

You can see my sketch here: http://daydreamdraggingfeet.blogspot.com/2012/05/down-bathurst-street.html

Just a t-shirt away

When I lived in Japan I collected a whole bunch of t-shirts with Japanese-English printed on them. 

I especially love the ones that are grammatically correct but have little – or no – meaning at all. And the spelling mistakes are quite endearing.

Wearing these shirts and hoodies reminds me that Japan is sometimes just a t-shirt away...

Larger than life

Ben Okri won the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Famished Road in 1991.

Looking back at the shortlist for that year, I was surprised to discover another of my favourite novels of the Nineties on the list of novels that never made it to the shortlist: Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia.

But I loved Ben Okri’s story of Azaro, the “spirit child”. Reviewing the novel in the Sunday Times, Angela Carter said: “Azaro’s scary, awesome, hallucinated childhood is a piece of sustained invention that turns out to be glorious...” At around 500 pages, it seems to be a novel readers love or hate – are captivated and can’t put it down or remain unmoved and simply can’t get through it.

The “famished road” of the title is metaphorical and suggests an African nation’s imminent independence and the chaotic and often destructive social, political and technological changes already underway.

It has been diversely characterised as postmodern, post-colonial and magical realist – a label Okri has always rejected. He has said that he draws on realism and philosophy, and traditional African storytelling and beliefs.

These are from a series of illustrations of characters from the novel. I wanted to capture something of their startling and unsettling power, as well as how vividly they came across to me reading the novel.

The first two characters are quite minor. They’re the king’s bodyguards. The king of the spirit world is described as “a great cat with a red beard and eyes of greenish sapphire”. The dashiki  (one of the names for the loose shirt or robe men traditionally wear in West African countries) and kufi (one of the names for the round cap) that the men wear are not very accurate and many of the fabrics are actually far more detailed and beautiful than I’ve imagined. Like many of my sketches at the time, and perhaps suitable to a “fantasy” novel, these weren’t done in a realistic, but in a naive style.

And this is Madame Koto and the boxer who Azaro’s dad takes on. The very heavy and larger than life Madame Koto almost makes the boxer appear skinny. The local bar owner, Madame Koto introduces electricity to the community. She is generous but vain, powerful and increasingly corrupt.

You can read more about Ben Okri's writing at: http://literature.britishcouncil.org and http://www.thenewcanon.com (and on Wikipedia). Or you can pick up the novel...

So arb

arb (ärb)

adj.

South African English Slang
1. Based on or subject to personal whims, impulses or caprice: “That was such an arb thing to say.”

2. Having little or no application or relevance

3. Having no specific purpose or objective
v. arbed, arbing, arbs
1. To wander about aimlessly: “I just arbed around the mall all day.”

[From Standard English arbitrary]

A friend recently reminded me that before everything was “totally random”, it was “so arb”. I’d forgotten how often we used the word “arb” as teens and university students.

So Nineties, I thought, and so local. I hadn’t thought that it might be South African English slang – or, perhaps more specifically, “White South African English” slang. But I spotted the word in a post on a local blog dating back to 2005 so I guess it’s still arbing around Cape Town with young urban middle class English-speaking South Africans – of all colours in post-Apartheid South Africa.

With a little help from: http://brainwavez-watman.blogspot.com and http://www.thefreedictionary.com 

Matryoshka

I bought this matryoshka or Russian nested doll at a market in Abu Dhabi. These sets of wooden dolls were first carved in Russia in the nineteenth century and the creator was apparently inspired by a Japanese doll, perhaps a daruma. (Though I don’t know who made this particular doll or where it was made.)

Typically the outer doll is a Russian woman in traditional peasant dress but here she is an Arab woman in an abaya – I think this abaya is meant to suggest a traditional burqa worn by older married women (and those in rural areas) in the UAE (and also in Qatar and Oman, and by Arabs in southern Iran). But I don’t think an older and more conservatively dressed woman would wear her abaya open like that – though she may have something as garishly bright and patterned on underneath, who knows..?

Living in the Middle East, I was often surprised at the range of abayas (and other kinds of outer garments that women and girls there wear to cover themselves) and how colourful and intricately patterned they can be.

Perhaps that’s why I like the colours of these – that and the flash of what lies underneath..!

You can find out more about matryoshka and hijab on Wikipedia.

Down Bathurst Street

Catching up with another old friend last night got me thinking of places I haven’t been back to in years...

I made this sketch at the top of High Street, looking down Bathurst Street. I was sitting outside an awfully old-fashioned outfitters that used to be there – and perhaps still is – when an elderly lady stopped on her way in to scold me, very politely but quite insistently, for sitting out there in the cold. I assured her that although it was chilly I was warm enough and went back to my sketch but a short while later she was back – with an armful of flattened cardboard boxes that she’d requested from the outfitters. I could only smile and obligingly sat down on them to keep from catching my death of a cold.

If my sketch itself looks a little worse for wear it’s because I stopped to lie in the sun on the grass near the Drostdy Arch on my way home, only to have to leap for my drawing board as the sprinklers were turned on..!

Travelling on words

I recently pulled out a whole bunch of letters and cards and postcards – all from one of my closest and oldest friends. We met when we were eighteen and in first year at university, and we've been writing to each other ever since – though letters have become emails and text messages, and even these are a little outdated already. But we’ll still sometimes send handwritten cards and postcards – hers in bold, rounded letters and sometimes very jumbled spelling, and mine in smaller, rather wonky – and at times pretty illegible – letters and slightly breathless punctuation – somewhat like this paragraph..!

Since we've almost always lived far apart (we were only at the same university for two years), these letters and cards and postcards have had to travel across the country or around the world to reach us.

But the ones that caught my eye which I picked from the pile were those she sent when she was studying towards her masters. I think they mean even more to me now because I’m just beginning my own research and struggling to set a routine and stick to deadlines – just as she had.

Here in South Africa, she had received little support and supervision but she’d applied for a Fulbright and, over a year later, was sitting in class at Emory in Atlanta, Georgia. It was so exciting – and such a leap for her! But it was also very demanding and difficult because she’d gone on her own and her husband could only fly out once to visit her.

These are from some of her letters and postcards that she sent from the US. I travel there on her words because I’ve yet to go myself...

8 January 2003

We went off to New Orleans which was quite strange, a tourist town with a French feel that’s been accentuated. Everything’s very “shabby chic”, if you know what I mean, with that old time grubby feel, lots of old buildings or at least the facades of them, all “broekie laced” out, with cast-iron winding staircases and pots of bright posies, slap bang in the middle of a city with looming buildings in the distance. Then we went off to Florida, to Mexico Beach, and rented a hotel room on the beach, with waves breaking outside our front door. The landscape in the US South is pretty dull, lots of strip malls with tons of chain food branches. You could drive for miles and feel as if you’re in the same place, the land is vast and flat, but Florida’s lovely in a “calm”, “cool dude” kind of way. The weather was fantastic and the sea was blue blue with little lapping waves and because it was Christmas time it was completely deserted.

January 2003

I just want this thesis to “come to life” and leave – go off on its merry way – soon... and very soon I’ll be leaving! I’m starting to miss home again. I’m still in two minds about home and what there is there for me, but here I feel no connection. I do feel very lucky though to be given the chance – at least... I only wish that it didn’t still all feel so alien. At Emory everything’s bright, new, expensive and shiny. I couldn’t believe that the place is actually quite old (built in the 1800s). It’s a lovely campus though, very leafy with little reading spots all over the place. I’m going to enjoy the last couple of months here ...

(On a postcard included with the letter) This is a view of Emory village – I liked it because it reminded me of “Northern Exposure” – I don’t think that I’ll be moving over to Alaska or anywhere snowy and cold... The weather here’s been wonderful – I’ve preferred winter to summer, it’s cold but the sky’s the most amazing blue.

I went to my first “blockbuster” exhibition. Some works (Impressionist mainly) from the Musee D’Orsay in Paris. I was so amazed – about twenty people gathered in front of a work and just “stood” there transfixed – then they shuffled off to the next one. It was amazing and it was packed, everybody staring at Monet’s “Flags”, Degas’s “Bather”. The exhibition itself wasn’t that incredible but Americans went to see/experience something French... They had mimes and an “orel” player, hmm... Quite something. Oh and they had croissants and giant choc-chip cookies just to add an American flavour!

12 March 2003

I’m crazy busy again which is good since I only have a couple of months left in this place and I have my thesis to finish. The support I’ve been getting here is SO incredible, I sometimes think that they want me to finish even more than I want to myself. I REALLY need that right now, it’s been such an undertaking: this MA. At this moment it feels as if they’re pulling me out of who I used to be. I in turn have to pull the thesis out. It’s all a bit like having multiple births, and equally exhausting. Geez, after this, kiddies are going to be a breeze... I shouldn’t say that though, you know fate.

26 April 2003

 I brought a pile of your postcards here to remind me of my sunny kitchen and the dreams I had of Tate Modern. I’m off to New York soon and I’m really looking forward to that. I’m planning to go to DC from there, probably only for a day though, really just want to see the Smithsonian. I’m off to LA for my internship and at this moment I really just want to get out of this place altogether and far away from all the insanity. I’ve really felt as if I’ve had to slave away for the money I got and I guess that being in a war-crazy country doesn’t help either.

12 May 2003

I’m off soon to UCLA and the Fowler – it’s almost all over. Can’t wait to be back home but I’m realizing that I’ll probably miss all this hyper-stimulation and the cheap books and super-fast internet access etc... At the moment I’m frantic again, finishing off chapters and packing and watching too many technicolour Hindi movies. They’re fantastic and I’m completely hooked, only problem is that they’re 3 hours long! Sigh!

19 May 2003

Was completely overwhelmed by the Met. Spent the entire day there and still didn’t see everything. Which I’m reconciled with. The Met is awesome, too much, impossible to absorb it all. But I’ve seen many wonderful works that don’t translate well in print or slide. All those landscape paintings we studied I finally saw, a Turner hung next to a Constable. I still love Turner. There was a great Manet and Velasquez exhibition at the Met, a “blockbuster” where people greedily gobble work. Even saw wonderful Goyas. I’m lucky to be staying in Greenwich Village which itself is quite an experience.

4 June 2003

LA is great, the nicest city in the US I’ve been to so far, and the internship is going well. I’m at the Fowler, UCLA’s museum. They have a very successful community outreach programme and I’m here to learn about that and to learn about funding – how they manage to get so much money for really great projects. I thought of you when I went through the Mexican popular art exhibition. I’m sure you know those giant, bright candlestick holders they make out of clay? The exhibition was great... All the buildings on campus (all of the old ones) are Spanish inspired. And it’s lovely to feel close to Mexico. I didn’t get to it and this is probably as close as I’ll get for a while. Oh! The Mexican exhibition. Somebody did this wonderful “Like Water for Chocolate” ” tree of life”. They even had Gertrudis on her horse with the moustachioed, sombreroed Zapatista! You’d have loved it.

A Japanese iris

I painted this, and a few more irises, while out with friends at a small winery in Niigata, Japan – yes, the Japanese make wine too. (And enjoy drinking it, as my friend Ikue would agree.)

We’d spent more time over lunch and lingering at the gift shop than sketching or painting, but it was a good day out. And the resident cat just loved all the attention, coming over to see what we were all painting and sitting in my lap as I sat on the grass with my sketchbook.

Thought I’d read up a bit on irises and discovered that, despite the name originating in Greek mythology (Iris is associated with the rainbow and messenger of the gods) and all the hybridizing and selection, horticulturalists have not been able to breed a pure red (bearded) iris. Most irises are therefore shades of purple and blue or yellow or white.

That little bit of yellow seems to suggest that it’s one of the bearded irises so perhaps not a Japanese iris after all, but an iris in Japan nevertheless.

Ikue painting the garden

Nuria and friend

Gardens

As the rain pelted down today and the wind gusted up, I stood at the window with my mug of coffee and thought I’d finally have to accept that winter was on its way. But when the rain and wind died down, the birds piped up and the squirrels dashed between the puddles under the trees.

And the garden was dripping and fresh.

Last summer I went a few times to one of my favourite places in Cape Town: the Company’s Garden. The garden was established in 1652 by Dutch settlers to provide fresh produce for the Dutch spice-trading ships en route to South Asia. It originally comprised a number of rectangular fields and open irrigation furrows but grew into a well-known botanical garden.

There are many landmarks around the Company’s Garden, including the Houses of Parliament and Tuynhuys (‘Garden House’ in Dutch and the president’s Cape Town office), the Slave Lodge, St George’s Cathedral and the South African National Gallery (SANG).

It’s lovely just to wander through the garden and along the central walkway, the Avenue. It always seems to be green and shady. There’s much to see, including a rose garden, an aviary and a fish pond. The Garden Tea Room has become a favourite with tour groups but, on a summery day, there are still plenty of locals on every bench and lawn, and great people-watching. And there are always lots of birds and very inquisitive – and cheeky! – squirrels...

Egyptian Geese near the SANG

Mark O’Donovan’s interactive mixed media sculpture ‘Man Running from Lion’ (1997/2005?) 

outside the SANG (You turn a wheel near the base to make the figures move)

The South African National Gallery (SANG)

More about the SANG: http://www.iziko.org.za/museums/south-african-national-gallery

And about the Slave Lodge: http://www.iziko.org.za/museums/slave-lodge

Rewind

There’ve been a whole bunch of Eighties bands and singers in South Africa this summer – Rick Astley, ABC, Howard Jones, Go West, Nik Kershaw, Marc Almond, Midge Ure, Sting – even the Village People (who’ve been around since the Seventies!) joined this ‘rewind’ to that decade.

I think some of these guys are getting a bit long in the tooth to still be playing their old hits – again and again...

But I do still love a lot of the music from the Seventies and Eighties because I grew up to it.

I recently pulled out some of the first cassette tapes I’d bought – only to find, of course, I had nothing to play them on.

So I thought I’d look on YouTube for one of my favourite bands – and videos – from the Eighties. 

It’s dated and cheesy but I guess it’s just the kind of thing an 11 year old would dream of...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

A little vampire

This little vampire was created by one of my students who was a whiteboard whizz and crazy about manga and anime.

She created a few of these chibi over the three years I taught in the Middle East – at break or at the end of the day, crowded round by a group of younger girls, oohing and aahing their approval.

This little vampire stayed up for weeks and weeks as I was under strict instruction from my form not to erase it. One of my quietest students, always doodling during lessons herself, took it upon herself to personally guard our classroom chibi against any colouring in or scribbles, checking at the end of each day and carefully erasing any mischief-making.

Much later, after I’d left the school, I thought I’d give her something in return. I’d never drawn any manga and wouldn’t have known where to begin but I thought I’d have a go, using her characters to guide me, just for fun. So this is my attempt.

And I had such fun with it that weekend, my niece (who was nine at the time) and I sitting drawing characters for hours together. Who knew what a doodle would lead to?

(And, since all that doodling has lead to my whiteboard whizz studying multimedia design this year, I look forward to seeing what else it leads to...)

A travelling book

Today I set a book on a journey.

All I had to do was register it over at BookCrossing (http://www.bookcrossing.com/), label it and leave it somewhere for someone to pick up and read – and share with the next person. And maybe, just maybe, someone will report back on the website and I’ll get to follow the adventure.

The book I chose was ‘Tennyson’s Gift’ by Lynne Truss. It’s a farce that throws together some well- and lesser-known Victorians – the poet Lord Alfred Tennyson, the writer Lewis Carroll, the painter G. F. Watts and the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron amongst others – on the Isle of Wight one rollicking summer. I thought it was fun and funny, a book to stretch out in the sun with...

Choosing just where to leave it (on a sunny bench up on campus) took some deciding and checking on the website I was delighted to see how many books have already been left at spots all around Cape Town – including Lion’s Head, Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak. Now I wish I’d thought of that..!

I’ll have to choose a good title next time I go climbing... ‘Wuthering Heights’ maybe?

Taking off

Growing up, my brother and I both had BMX Raleigh Burners. They came out in the early Eighties and were bright and tough – they may be old school now but they were the latest and so popular back then!

We didn’t race or know any tricks but my brother had a go and set up a few stunts in our back garden. My favourite was a ramp at the side of our Portapool. We didn’t have a big garden but would pedal as fast as we could from the front garden to the pool at the back – up and fly off the top of the ramp – and, for just a moment, seem to hang in the air, before dropping and hitting the water, and slowly, slowly – so we pedalled all the more furiously, pushing against the weight of the water – sinking to the bottom. Then we’d pull our bikes out and race back to the far side of the garden to do it all over again...

And it was all the more fun because it was summer so we’d get back from after-school sport and take off still in our P.T. shorts and t-shirts, laughing all the way back in our clingy clothes.

Here’s a photo of my cousin Roz, and my brother Rich and I on our BMXs. We were visiting my cousins on holiday.

This year my brother has been hard at work building a house for his family. And this week my cousin and her three year old daughter are flying out to Malaysia to set up home with her husband there. She’s lived in the UK for – what? fifteen years now? – so this move is very exciting and, I think, a little scary.

But, I also think, so many of the best and most fun adventurers simply start out with a bike...

Give a girl a bicycle and she can go anywhere. Or believe she can – and that’s a start and what counts.

Through another lens

These photographs were taken at the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) in Paris. It was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and completed in 1987 – which makes this year its 25^th anniversary.

Established by the French government in collaboration with eighteen countries in the Arab League, it showcases the culture and heritage of the Arab world, as well as promotes research and co-operation, especially in science and technology, with France. It includes a museum, library and auditorium.

Its south facade is a metallic screen of geometric motifs. These motifs consist of thousands of apertures or light-sensitive mechanical devices which open and close, regulating the amount of light entering the building. They act as a brise soleil (or sun shading device) by controlling the amount of light entering the building and create an effect reminiscent of the mashrabiyya (latticework, usually carved out of wood, which encloses balconies or covers windows) of traditional Islamic architecture. (A pity that this system seems to no longer actually be working – but it’s still very beautiful.)

The institute is now focusing on both Islamic and pre-Islamic heritage to highlight diversity in the region.

This year I’m embarking on some research into Islamic education so perhaps it was serendipitous that I came across these old photos because I’m hoping that my reading and research will be like another lens through which I can view my own world as well as others.

Inside the Institut du Monde Arabe

Paris through one of the apertures

If your French is better than mine, you can read more at: http://www.imarabe.org/ (Or on Wikipedia.)