deck the halls

a right royal do

As previously discussed, I love the Queen. I think she's a remarkable woman who lives a remarkable life; privileged, public and, I imagine, often very lonely.

Imagine, then, my surprise and delight when I find out that my mum has been nominated by a colleague to be invited to the National Service of Thanksgiving at St. Paul's Cathedral in London for the Queen's diamond Jubilee, and she wanted me to be her plus one!

In fact, there I am, next to the Queen herself:

It was, quite literally, one of the most surreal moments of my life. For a start, never having been in the Cathedral before, St. Paul's was overwhelmingly beautiful. We assumed that, as part of the pleb contingent, we'd be allocated seats that were stuck behind some pillar somewhere, so we got there good and early in the hopes that we might actually get to see what was going on.

Being the youngest member of the congregation by a good couple of decades helpfully meant that even 7.45 was a bit too early for most of the old dears, so we were incredibly lucky to get prime aisle-side seats just before the dome. 

The whole thing was utterly, utterly glorious and surreal. From the household guards with their huge domed helmets draped in white ostrich feathers to the Alice in Wonderland-esque heralds with their Royal Standard tunics, black tights and blue birds on the end of long black sticks, it was altogether well outside of my everyday experience.

Seeing Harry, William and Kate (who, by the way, gave me and Mum a little grin and a nod as she was walking back down the aisle -- probably due mainly to the fact that Mum and I were beaming from ear to ear, unlike seemingly everyone else...) was probably the strangest and most exciting bit. They're so oddly familiar, you've seen their faces so many hundreds of times before in newspapers and on the TV, that seeing them in real life felt truly bizarre. We all, the outsiders, have been privy to so many of their private moments -- weddings, funerals -- that we feel almost as though we know them.

I remember hearing the crowds outside roar with cheering and clapping when they all arrived (as well as chanting 'Long live the Queen, long live the Queen' again and again as she got out of the car -- that bit made me cry. Quite a lot), and feeling so much a part of something, something huge and historic.

There is lots, lots more I could say -- about leaving the Cathedral surrounded by screaming crowds and lights and cameras and film crews; about the lunch reception at the Guild Hall with stairways flanked by soldiers wearing armour, actual armour, and holding muskets and pikes -- but I won't. It sounds like I'm showing off, and I'm not. I'm so completely awestruck by the whole thing that only when I watched it on BBC iPlayer did I really believe that I was there at all.

It was an honour to be there, and I felt completely privileged to be part of it.

in the garden

     

"tell us lots of stories"

Last weekend my brother and his mate came to stay, and we made a couple of trips to a couple of pubs with my friends. Now, anyone that knows us (and, to be honest, some who don't) knows that my family is into telling stories, and that my brother is a remarkably good storyteller.

We all sat round a table in this quirky little pub that I love in Newcastle, watching him as he told endless stories about what it's like to be a 17 year-old in high school -- what it's like being a 17 year-old full stop, something that my friends and myself have to look increasingly far back in time to remember.

My brother isn't a quiet bloke at the best of times, but he really comes alive when he's telling a story -- he tells it with his whole face, his accent, his hands. It's an absolute treat to watch and, needless to say, I was beaming with pride.

Storytelling isn't something that we think about all that much. If someone says 'story', you tend to think of a child's story in a book, or something generally made-up.

This is how Google defines a story:

sto·ry
noun
account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment

 'Real people' -- that's the key. We forget that the day-to-day way we relate to each other is made up almost entirely of stories of one form or another. Often it's as much about the way we tell a story as the story itself. I know first hand -- I might try and tell one of my friends one of my brother's stories, keen that they experience it for themselves, but find that I don't tell it in half as entertaining a way as he can.

The other week a group of mates and I got together and we ended up sharing bits of our life stories with each other. We just went round the circle really, everyone sharing something. I tell you, you could have heard a pin drop whenever anyone was speaking.

The stories themselves were amazing, but no less interesting was the way people told them. Some said a lot, some said only a little; some blushed, some didn't; some punctuated with hand gestures, others kept their eyes down. I don't think anyone would have called it that, but we were storytelling.

My housemate is hosting a girls' youth group in our living room this evening -- I can hear them in there, hooting and shrieking away. My housemate recently came back from a 3 week trip to Australia, she was glowing and brown and bursting with new tales to tell. When her girls arrived this evening, they all piled into the living room, sat down and said:

"How was Australia? Tell us lots of stories!" 

The Bard -- John Martin

I suspect she still is, with those teenaged girls all gathered round, enthralled.

Storytelling used to be much more engrained into culture, far more formalised and recognised for its deep, deep importance. Troubadour. Bard. Minstrel. Poet.

This painting is one of my most favourites. It's by John Martin and is called The Bard. It illustrates a time in Welsh history when Edward I attempted to kill Welsh culture by murdering any bards he could find. Back then, storytelling was a truly crucial part of society -- word of mouth was the only record of life that ordinary people had.

Google it to see it in full size and look at the way the bard is drawn -- he's like a piece of the landscape, clinging to a craggy rock face, muscle-bound and grey-bearded, steeped in history, looking Zeus-like, godlike on the cliff face. So much bigger than the tiny soldiers below -- the proportions of the painting are blown by his bigness, his absurdly huge form. But what a figure! He beams power and force and defiance. Storytelling more powerful, even, than an army.

Storytelling is a huge part of our society still, but often the telling of our own histories rather than the collective. Blogging itself is storytelling. We're all obsessed with telling our stories, chronicling our lives -- Facebook, MySpace, diaries, journals.

Facebook is now encouraging us to create a visual story of our lives, omitting no detail. Personal stories are so laughably readily available to us, so eagerly broadcasted.

We think so little of sharing our stories with literally thousands of people that we often don't realise we're doing it. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing to be so overwhelmingly connected to people, but it is good to know that there are some things that just can't be communicated as well as face-to-face. Watching my brother tell his stories will never, can never, be rivalled by a blog post or status update.

No particular conclusion to this one, just -- tell stories! Revel in them! Write them down! It feels good to know that we're doing just the same as we've been doing since people began.

the best thing

So I've been listening to an album by Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends fairly solidly for the last week -- I'm still not tired of it. I love sea shanties. I really love them.

I understand that they might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think they're bloomin marvellous. Wikipedia defines a sea shanty as follows:

A shanty (also spelled "chantey," "chanty") is a type of work song that was once commonly sung to accompany labour on board large merchant sailing vessels

Basically, they were songs sung by men who spent months at a time on the sea in huge old ships -- crashing through the waves, hauling the anchor and climbing the rigging. Tempting as it is to romanticise the kind of life they might have led, in reality it must have been an exhilarating, gut-wrenching, back-breaking, rollicking, superstition-ridden, stinking and intensely communal way of life.

Yet despite all this, the songs they sang -- passed down over hundreds of years through oral tradition and memory -- speak so candidly of love, loneliness, brotherhood, insobriety, women, work, and hope. I love their simplicity and honesty, and there's something about a group of male voices (often with little or no instrumental accompaniment) that I find irresistible.

As well as all that, I have some very very fond memories of sea shanty weekends in Whitby with my Granny. These weekends were held annually (I'm not sure if they happen still -- I hope they do) and drew dozens of sea shanty groups into the various pubs and taverns of the town for many many performances over the weekend -- some less formal than others.

My Granny and I went together for several years (starting, I think, when I was about 6) and they were very formative experiences for me. I remember the delicious sense of naughtiness as she would take me into a pub full of beer, smoke and old grey-bearded sea dogs to listen to the sea shanties. I'd sit there, utterly enthralled at the bare brazen singing, raw and somehow deeply important.

Whitby, North Yorkshire

The audience sat around me on rickety wooden stools and threadbare armchairs would be roused and join in the exuberant music. Surrounded by the tapping of feet, banging of tables and clapping of hands, I was desperate to learn the words so that I could join in. It's amazing how quickly you can pick them up. Other songs would be more melancholy -- singing of longing after months on the sea -- and the singing would become a general hum hanging over the room, acapella and tipping over some invisible boundary into the profoundly spiritual. I would hold my breath as I saw grown men cry and the atmosphere became electric.

After nights of shanties fit to burst, my Granny and I would wind our way in the dark back to the cottage we were staying in, stopping off at a fish and chip shop for a cone of chips on the way back. Even now, listening to shanties brings a distinct taste of hot vinegary chips to my tongue.

revue de l'artiste

The Artist - 2012, dir. Michel Hazanavicius

I wasn't sure what to expect from this film -- I vaguely knew that it might be a silent film, I'd seen an intriguing trailer for it, but basically thought that any film released in 2012 in black and white and possibly silent must be worth a watch, if only to see if they could pull it off.

Put simply, they did.

It's set in the late 1920s, and the main character is an old-school melodrama film star called George Valentin, who is basking in the heyday of his fame and success. Not giving anything away, time passes and the film industry progresses to the stage of pioneering the first 'talkie' films -- something Valentin thinks will never catch on.

The film as a whole -- while having plenty of genuinely funny moments -- is actually a lot more melancholy than I imagined. It's directed and shot beautifully, and I was surprised at just how little I missed any speech (there were some dialogue subtitles, but mainly you were left to work it out for yourself). It's to the credit of the actors that you just didn't really feel that you needed any dialogue.

I suppose it was out of such necessity that melodrama was born, but for The Artist to be able to distinguish between the over-acting of the movie-within-the-movie and the film itself is impressive. The film itself is subject to the same constraints as the silent films of the twenties, but I wasn't left with the feeling that any of it was unnecessarily over-acted.

I enjoyed the elements of the film that mirror characteristics of the original silents (like the characterisation of the little jack russell side-kick), and in a sense I think those sometimes blurred boundaries were reflected in George Valentin's life -- he expected the same reaction from people in real-life as those in his movies, and was eventually left behind in a world that made him increasingly irrelevant.

Overall, I was left with the urge to watch some of the old originals (my knowledge of them is lacking to say the least), after being given a new appreciation of their artistry.

And that, I suppose, was the point.