Icarus @ 59 # 177

This picture of me was taken by Dan in Barcelona. Early next week I am off to Madrid then Rome, and if I wanted to I could easily slip over to France virtually any time I like. Indeed, when I was a PhD student at the University of Sussex we used to do just that. A couple of us would get on an old bucket of a ferry in Newhaven (just up the road from here) with cheap tickets given away by The Argus. We used to work on the way over - reading each other extracts from our PhDs and discussing what we were doing before having a good lunch in Dieppe. Its easy to take these things for granted, being able to do what we like is one of the luxuries of being a baby boomer. But it would be churlish to forget what happened in the ten years before I was born, that allowed this freedom we now have. My own family, those who survived the war on both my mother and father's side, are slowly leaving us. It doesn't feel a time to regret but to remember and to acknowledge the freedom we now have as a result - throw those curtains wide, one day like this...

Icarus @ 59 # 176

I had some visitors last week, Jess, a PhD student from Byron Bay in Australia and Whit, a friend of Abbi's who had come to stay with us for a couple of weeks so she could see the UK. They both loved the quirkiness of Brighton, The Lanes, the North Laine, the noise, the music and the alternativeness of it all, exactly what I love about it. We had strolled past this shop down into Pavilion Gardens where there was a random, ramshakle steel band playing and we were given free ice cream (I know not why). But what I really like is how a cafe culture has evolved over the past ten years. It isn't the tidy outside tables of a familiar French town but something much more alternative where you can see a Rowlf the Dog busking piano requests in a battered old upright on wheels, vying for playing time alongside a blues player on a battered old National. All the town needs is some sunshine and it awakens. Of course I don't spend all my time in town, like some irresponsible flaneur, I have work to do, papers to write, articles to write, a novel to write but all the same, when I fancy a mosie I can - I am just waiting on a sunny day. 

Icarus @ 59 # 175

I grew up in the shadow of war. Born in 1954, the second world war was not long over, bread was still rationed and I had aunts and uncles who had been there or were still career army men and women and they were part of the narrative of my growing up. James running off underage and ending up in Italy, Nina meeting Bob, Michael meeting his German wife Erica during the tidy up, loads of stories of watching bombers flying over and tracer bullets in the sky, blackout windows, rationing,  and you can imagine what it was like being a child growing up with these stories, especially as they left the horror ones behind. And they merged into other stories of Leerie the lamplighter (because the streetlights were still gas) football matches that lasted a whole Sunday, my Dad going to the pit at the age of 14, my mum working at the brewery and the chemist, dancing on Saturday nights to live bands, real fifties dance bands. They were mostly told on a Saturday when we would gather at my Granny and Papa McKenna's in Dalkeith (Widburn to be precise) eat the never ending soup that was on the stove and play cards - Canadian Rummy. I know not how it ended up as 'Canadian' Rummy, I don't think we knew any Canadians, but that's what I remember playing at home too while listening to the radio on a Sunday. Goodness but we have travelled from then and sometimes its good to remember how we got here. I always liked this tune and although I hate the jingoism that seems to follow Elgar, that is no reason for not hearing it again as I sit in the kitchen, drink in early grey, contemplating another rainy morning, with the cats sitting at the back door, hating the weather as much as me:

Icarus @ 59 # 174

The Vatican and the Trevi Fountain in one day. I don't envy my daughter, Abbi, because I have been there but oh I wish I was there now. She is so lucky, imagine having to do this as part of a Module for your degree. The worst about it too (she says) is they have to eat Italian food (oh lordy, how could they stomach it). But seriously, isn't this what we bring them into the world to do - to see the great things and be in the great places and experience the experiences that come with it all? Oh yay, I say, go for it girl, I was eighteen when I walked in the same square, not much younger than she is now, and I have never forgotten it. Mind you, my mother and father  didn't come to spend five days with me when I moved into Tuscany. I have the resources to do that and I can only thank them for giving me the chance and the spirit and the guts to go. My mother would have loved Rome, I know this, being as she was a great fan of saying 'Viva el Papa...' Catholicism ran deep in her veins and she clung to her rosary beads to the last - but enough of that, this is a happy time and she would have loved these pictures, as do I. I guess its boring for some that these posts occasionally slip into the sentimental, well tough. In my ten minute slot its what I was thinking and that's just that. My mum hated this band so as I am her rebel son its good to play them - and this is a version of one of my fave Bob Dylan songs and Jagger was always good on the mouth harp:

Icarus @ 59 # 173

Its easy to forget that while Edinburgh is a city of learning and the Scottish enlightenment (Athens of the North to us) it is also a very Gothic city (Gothic not Gotham, although some might disagree). But of course some great gothic fiction comes from this great city, The Confessions of a Justified Sinner comes to mind and indeed The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde, because for all its London scenes, it always felt like an Edinburgh book to me - you could take Stevenson out of Scotland but you couldn't take Scotland out of the man, and I feel this about myself. I would like to spend an extended time back in my own home town, not for nostalgia but to re-connect with the art and culture and the people of my youth. Perhaps one day I will rent a house and do just that for the summer (although my memories of warm Scottish summers is definitely a return to a place that doesn't exist - nostalgia, this picture is Edinburgh in May, in the rain and boy was it wet.) No doubt the nay sayers will disagree, though. Now here's a funny one, I googled Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony and this came up - never heard it before, so this is a first for me and serendipity because Edinburgh is, indeed, a rock on the water:

Icarus @ 59 # 172

San Gimignano is one of my favourite places in the entire world and in two weeks time I will be able to take Abbi to see it. She is off to Italy to do her month of Renaissance art and what a treat that will be for her, and we will join her for five days (after all, its only a couple of hours away). And when I drove her to the airport this morning (at 4.30 a.m.) she said when she gets back she would like to visit the National Gallery in London with me, which will be great. Of course, I mentioned we could also consider the Tate and the Tate Modern, she hasn't responded to that yet - one gallery at a time. But its Sunday today and I have plans to play guitar in the garden, tidy my study and generally guddling around as I prepare for the summer. I have a paper to finish for Madrid but it can wait, its the 1st of June and it feels like summer is finally here. Time for some of this, methinks: