Hazel – Five Years On

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Peter Moore
Waking Up To Change by Sean McGrath

Waking Up To Change by Sean McGrath

This is a piece written for the Scottish charity Hazel’s Footprints, a charitable trust set up in memory of Hazel Scott Aiton, a friend who died five years ago today.

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In the middle of a warm afternoon in July 2005, I walked into one of the charity shops that line Ludlow’s jumbled Tudor high street, and emerged ten minutes later having spent £5 on a cheerful-looking toy monkey. It was a few days before I was due to fly to Tanzania, where I was due to meet a group of 25 (ish) trembling adventurers at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. The mountain was one of the very first, and most significant, goals for the newly forged Hazel’s Footprints Trust – and the monkey was going to go up with us.

The monkey was soon christened Boris. We carried him with us wherever we went and he became the star attraction for the knots of Chaga children who danced about us as we relaxed, acclimatising in the foothills. Within a week he had been transported like a relay baton to Uhuru Peak, the highest point in Africa, and three or four months later – at a charity ball in Scotland – he became the subject of a furious bidding war and was eventually sold for the staggering sum of £600.

Boris’ victorious (albeit slightly poorer) new owners were Bill and Joan Scott Aiton, Hazel’s parents. They had taken to the stuffed animal so much that they had decided to make him the Trust’s official mascot.

Boris’ meteoric rise to stardom from the shelves of Cancer Research was spectacular. He followed his assent of Kilimanjaro with a trip to Everest base camp; he was carried on sponsored walks and around marathons. In 2006, we were re-united with him once again, as we fastened him tightly to the roof rack of our mini before we set of on the Mongol Rally – a charity touring event which took us a third of the way around the world.

The point of this rather silly vignette is to explain that with Hazel’s Footprints Trust, you should always expect the improbable. The Trust is now five years old and it has evolved in so many ways that were never imagined when its founders sat down for the first time around the long dining table in the kitchen at Legerwood Farm.

The idea for Hazel’s Footprints Trust emerged in the weeks that followed Hazel’s tragic death. I still have a card from Bill and Joan which indicated that they were planning some sort of ‘fund’ aimed at helping ‘those causes that Hazel held so dear.’

Within a few months this ‘fund’ had become a trust. And in its first year there was the Kilimanjaro climb, the enormously successful charity auction, Hazel’s gap year diary was published and the first despatch of Footprinters (Ben Britton, Emma McGonigle and Michelle Davidson for the record) were funded as they set out for Nepal, China and Thailand, to a mixture of educational and charity posts.

The following year the number of Footprinters rose to 15. These Footprinters were drawn from people all over the country who were travelling overseas to work on a diverse range of projects from India to Guyana, Thailand to Haiti. Meanwhile, in far less exotic locations, volunteers were running the Great North Run, the London Marathon, climbing mountains, baking cakes, running raffles and doing just about everything in between – all helping to raise money for the Trust.

While the operations centre still remained in the downstairs office at Legerwood Farm, the Trust grew in all directions – fuelled by Hazel’s close family and supported by a vast network of her school and university friends.

The energy of the young HFT was reflective of Hazel herself. I remember meeting her for the first time, squashed in an overcrowded courtyard outside a horribly busy bar that was nestled somewhere in the winding alleys behind Saddler Street on the Durham bailey. It was the first in a series of pre-Kilimanjaro social events that we had lined up in the weeks before we left for Heathrow.

Trying to be friendly I offered her a drink, and marched off through a forest of elbows, upturned shirt collars and swaying rugby players in search of an orange juice (her) and a bottle of beer (me). It was an exhausting journey and the return trip took around 20 infuriating minutes. When I returned to the court yard, clutching the two drinks as if they were hand grenades, Hazel was already surrounded by ten or so other people half way through a loud conversation about mountains. She lowered those blue eyes at me and called out in a strange accent that I hadn’t quite deciphered:

‘Ah! There you are. Where the hell have you been all this time?’

I soon discovered that her impatience wasn’t personal, but it was characteristic. She explained that the following morning, before we were even hauling ourselves delicately out of bed, she would be rowing in the River Wear. It was the perfect introduction to the girl who was always busy.

Our friendship quickly found its feet, aided by the fact that she soon struck up an amorous relationship with my housemate. Over the next year – throughout the term times – I saw her daily, as she darted from one side of the city to the other, constantly entangled in an endless procession of rowing stints, play rehearsals, charity events, magazine articles and the odd niggling philosophy essay.

But in between these outbursts of frenzied activity, there were glimpses of Hazel’s quieter side. She was a letter writer, a reader and a note-taker – always posing nagging questions or ready with some inspiring or introspective quote. For months she bothered me to read Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (I’ve tried many times and I’ve never quite got it) – explaining over and over again that it was wondrous, deep and revealing.

And all the while she had an amazing capacity to keep in contact with just about everyone. After our Kilimanjaro climb, I remember being slumped cheerfully in the wicker chair of a beachside restaurant in Zanzibar, staring out at the Indian Ocean while chewing kingfish and supping of Safari beers when Hazel strode in. She announced angrily that she was fed up with her Hotmail email service as it only allowed you to send email to thirty five contacts at a time.

‘Thirty five?’ we asked, as if she had just announced that she was from the moon.

She then sat down, and proceeded to count on her finger a list of ‘at least forty people’ with whom she was in constant contact, leaving us all suddenly feeling guilty that we had barely yet managed a single email home. It was the mark of someone engaged with life in an extraordinary way, and by a quirk of fate, these forty people comprised the bulk of the team that returned to Kilimanjaro in her memory two years later.

One of the greatest achievements of Hazel’s Footprints Trust is that it manages to echo this unique personality. Just like Hazel the Trust is outgoing and open, ambitious and worldly, energetic and quietly philosophical. The website is dotted with some of the many quotations that Hazel recorded during her life, perhaps the most poignant of which is the ancient Chinese proverb:

‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’

Five years ago, Hazel’s family took the first step by establishing this Trust in her name. Half a decade on they can only be proud and comforted by what followed. The Trust has sent volunteers to all corners of the globe, they have supported the Otjikondo Village School Foundation in Namibia and they have now established a successful outpost in London – bringing Scottish culture to the ignorant in the form of Burns’ Night Suppers and an annual Highland fling.

I can’t imagine that we’ll ever meet anyone quite like Hazel again. She was unique. But through the Trust her ideals and her personality live on – transcending all of the old boundaries of space and time. And it’s nice to think that whatever mountain we’re climbing, whichever rally we are struggling to complete, in whatever corner of the globe that we might be trying to herd schoolchildren along – that there is a little bit of her in us all.

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image credit: seanmcgrath

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First Impressions of Madrid

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Peter Moore
Madrid by Balakov

Madrid by Balakov

Two kisses. A hug, Welcome to Spain

I arrived in Madrid sometime in the afternoon of 17 November 2004. The date is easily remembered as it was the day of a drab Spanish victory over the English in the Bernabéu. I filtered through the passport control point where a stern-eyed man in a coffee coloured shirt glanced disinterestedly at me. Then I made my way out into the belly of Barajas Airport where my friend Beatriz was waiting. She was wearing enormous sunglasses and tapping a cigarette. Two kisses. A hug, Welcome to Spain.

What do I wish that I had known then? I was a 21 year old Englishman, gliding directionless through life with little conception of Spanish culture and no ability at all with the language. I had no more reason to go to Spain that I would have had to go to France, Germany, Italy or anywhere else. But as Spain has probably drawn you in, it drew me in too. It was the promise of a good, uncluttered life: the food, the parties, the climate, the passion and that seductive but entirely unreasonable attitude to almost everything which can only be termed ‘Latin’.

New arrivals should be very careful to dismiss stereotypes. Plenty of idiotic idealisms exist about Spain and here is the perfect place to refute some of them.

Firstly, not everyone in Spain is talkative (although even the quieter people do seem to enjoy an argument); only a very slender percentage will attend a bullfight more than once or twice in their lifetime; few people in the cities will ever find the necessary 25 minutes for a siesta, and finally – contrary to what we are told in childhood – the Spanish are very hardworking, although it is true that they are not always efficient.

The Spanish are far better humoured than people in the UK, who tend to be much more sarcastic and henpecked. Unlike British people, you will rarely find a Spaniard who is disinterested in what you have to tell them and you will hardly ever find someone who is short of advice or an opinion. In Spain there will always be someone to help you out when everything goes horribly wrong, yet, on the same score, they might not understand the craving that a northern European sometimes has to be left alone.

Especially in the cities, Spaniards take an inside out approach to their homes. From the outside they are drab, uninspiring concrete things, many of them covered with childish graffiti, but within the walls these apartments can be ornate, fashionable and expensive. Whatever the look, a Spaniard’s home is always spotless. I once read that the country uses more litres of bleach per head than any other country in the world.

By any measure, the Spanish are not a sentimental people. It is almost impossible to find an antique shop in Madrid and – as a rule – old things are generally thrown away instead of preserved.

A further characteristic, which perhaps they share with Italians, is that they drive their cars impatiently and at ridiculous speed from one point to another, only to get out of them and walk so slowly along the streets that you might think that they had suffered some sort of injury. Surely a more balanced approach to each of these activities would result in a much more comfortable existence for everybody.

These are some generalised impressions of Spain. It’s a kind, happy country that everyone should visit at least once in their lifetime and that some people are lucky enough to live in.

Like anywhere it could be maddening, but when I was angry I always remembered a snippet of wisdom passed down to me by a well-travelled friend. He said that at first you’ll love everything about a place; then you’ll grow to hate everything about it. At length you’ll realise that some things are good and some things are bad, and that’s when you know that you’ve settled.

So, here’s to the Spanish! The world is a much better place for them.

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image credit: balakov

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The Great Literary Sprint

Posted on July 20, 2009 by Peter Moore
"We love you forever" MJ by yopse

"We love you forever" MJ by yopse

10,000 words in 48 hours? The race to publish the first posthumous Jackson biography was relentless.

‘The perceived complexity of a task will expand to fill the time that you allot it.’ So goes Cecil Parkinson’s famous dictum. It’s a wise statement that explains why it can take Telefonica up to three weeks to install a telephone line and also excuses, a some extent, my inability to hand a piece of writing to an editor before deadline day.

But in short bursts and with enough rewards on offer, we humans are capable of staggering bursts of productivity. Whether it is that deadline day rush, the frantic tidying of a house or that 25 minute sprint from one end of Madrid to the other, we’ve all had our moments. But I can’t imagine any that compare with the literary achievements of a number of crazed authors in a few weeks last summer.

They were primed by the sudden death of Michael Jackson. The King of Pop, amid final rehearsals for his comeback tour at the O2 Arena in London, collapsed at his home in Holmby Hills at midday on 25 June and was pronounced dead two hours later at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Within a day, authors were meeting publishers and agents, plotting frenzied bids to become to the first to celebrate Jackson’s life with a posthumous biography.

On 26 June, John Blake, a publisher based in London, was approached by Emily Herbert, an author who was desperate to do a book on Jackson. By midday he had commissioned ‘Michael Jackson: King of Pop 1958 – 2009’ and secured around 30,000 pre-orders. Blake’s biggest competitor was HarperCollins who had already drawn up plans for ‘Michael Jackson – Legend, Hero, Icon: A Tribute to the King of Pop’ a rather clumsily sounding title that was to be completed by the author James Aldis.

For HarperCollins’ plans to come together, Aldis was expected to produce around 10,000 words of copy in 48 hours, while the picture editors were given just three days to select 250 images. The HarperCollins publisher for non-fiction, Carole Tomkinson, described the timetable as the tightest in the history of the company. By 13 July she was holding a completed copy of the book triumphantly in her hand.

‘We’re really proud of it,’ she said. ‘To be competitive we have to be able to move quickly. In a way we reacted like a magazine or a newspaper, putting together something beautiful and enduring – at speed.’

It’s a curious story which raises various questions. Is it distasteful to see the publishing industry so keen to exploit the death of a celebrity so quickly? And while the industry might be under assault from the Internet, shouldn’t the genre of biography be more careful not to risk its reputation for reasoned thought by carting out a book in less time than it takes to walk the Camino de Santiago? But then maybe we shouldn’t consider these books as anything to do with biography at all. Perhaps they form a new genre of trash literature that is just masquerading as something more sophisticated.

I imagine that in Spain, where efficiency is hardly the most prized component of the national skill set, that this sudden splurge of Jacko biographies will seem even more puzzling than it does to those in the UK. And, on this account, I’d say they have reason. English speaking countries in the western world seem to be transfixed with new information. All the emphasis in on breaking news, hurried tribute albums and rushed biographies, each of which appeals to a sense of anxiousness or false desire for fresh information that can never be quenched. It’s a feature of modern life, and a distinctive part of the capitalist machine which doesn’t always rewards those which do things best, but always rewards those who do things first.

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Hemingway and Spain

Posted on July 15, 2009 by Peter Moore
Palacio Real de Madrid by Alreza

Palacio Real de Madrid by Alreza

For Whom the Bell Tolls to Death in the Afternoon, Spain was the setting for some of Ernest Hemingway’s finest writing. Here’s a snapshot of the writer’s association with Spain – one of the last good countries.

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Ernest Hemingway, thick-set and accompanied by the first of his four wives, first arrived in Spain in the early 1920s. It was an effortless match: a talented writer with an eye for detail, a gift for narrative and a romantic draw to culture with Spain – the last of the good countries.

This was Hemingway’s description. To him Spain was the last of the old countries that had not cannibalised itself for material gain or risked its life in the name of expansionism. It hadn’t yet been devastated by war or scarred by the ugly marks of industrialism. True, it was a poor country and had forfeited its position at the helm of global politics, but in the cities and the pueblos he found what he craved: ritual, culture, passion and life.

From the start Hemingway and Spain were an ideal match. Early twentieth century Spain was a dogged, affectionate, expressive, masculine and occasionally brutal society and it suited both his outlook and his taste. As a key member of the Lost Generation, it became something of a spiritual home. It was in Spain that he set many of his great works, For Whom the Bell Tolls perhaps being the best example.

His writing style was sparse and precise and his approach to prose was simple: he aimed to put down on paper what he felt and saw in the very best and simplest way. The results were novels, short stories and essays, full of pithy descriptions of towns and cities and vivid recollections social occasions. He wrote of the fiestas in Pamplona, about Cuban fishermen and, in one of his most brilliant short stories, he wrote of the painful death of a failed writer, dreaming of the snow of Kilimanjaro.

Of Madrid he wrote:

‘Madrid is a mountain city with a mountain climate. It has the high cloudless Spanish sky that makes the Italian sky seem sentimental and it has the air that is actively pleasurable to breathe… If it had nothing else than the Prado it would be worth spending a month in every spring, if you have the money to spend a month in any European capital. But when you can have the Prado and the bullfight season at the same time with El Escorial not two hours to the north and Toledo to the south, a fine road to Avila and a fine road to Segovia, which is no distance from La Granja, it makes you feel badly, all questions of immortality aside, to know that you will die and never see it again.’

Above all perhaps, Hemingway will be remembered for his affection for bullfighting – a passion that was recorded best in his cool, analytical classic, Death in the Afternoon. Hemingway revered bullfighters, to him their combination of technique, grace and savage brutality was a seductive and powerful cocktail that only Spain could deliver. For years he found it irresistible and frequently he would join in, testing his courage alongside other amateur matadors, squaring up in the morning sessions to immature bulls with padded horns.

This enthusiasm for Spanish culture only boosted his reputation. In Pamplona his statue is displayed next to the bull ring, scores of pueblos contain a Calle de Hemingway and more generally – testament to the regard in which he is held and perhaps due to a generally inability to properly pronounce his surname – he is known as ‘Ernesto’.

Of course, it’s hardly possible to complete an article on Hemingway without mentioning the enormous number of bars in which he is supposed to have enjoyed a drink. Indeed, one of my favourite touristic oddities in the centre of Madrid is a bar a short distance from Plaza Mayor which is adorned with a sign that claims: ‘Hemingway never ate here’.

And behind this snippet of Spanish humour is a revealing admission: that even where Hemingway was not, he remains the main story. That even half century after his suicide he is relevant. If Hemingway is nothing more in the collective conscience than a bearded philanderer who worked his way with equal speed through women and books, then he should be. For, whatever you make of his politics, there is something admirable about him. He was a traveller who engaged with Spain in an extraordinary way – and he was a writer with a sharp and open mind who did his utmost to understand it.

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image credid: alreza

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Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Peter Moore
Harry Potter by Snappybex

Harry Potter by Snappybex

Good films, getting better…

Anyone able to cast their minds back to the year 2001 can only be impressed by the development of the Harry Potter franchise. Subsequent viewings of Christopher Columbus’ Harry Potter and Philosopher’s Stone reveal the first film to be shallow and uninspiring, starved of the intricacy of plot and depth of meaning and texture required to create a gripping fantasy film. In the end it was saved by a remarkably good Quidditch scene, the colourful variety of Rowling’s characters and the portentous debut of the obviously talented Rupert Grint.

In the eight years since, the Harry Potter franchise has improved quickly. Gone is Christopher Columbus’ Hogwarts – airy, cheerful and innocent: filled up to its high stone ceilings with grinning children, roasted turkeys and mischievous staircases. This vision has been dismantled piece by piece, firstly by the director Alfonso Cuarón and then by Mike Newell and David Yates. The pace of storytelling has quickened as the plot has grown increasingly black, the directors preferring to rely more on imagery than exposition. The more recent of the Potter films displaying more and more good examples of filmmaking – with the mood suggested less by babbling children and more by the tearful stain glass portraits and the howling winds outside.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is the darkest film the franchise will produce. Now beginning his sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry knows that his enemy Voldemort has returned. More and more loyal wizards are defecting, motivated by fear and by greed. His death eaters, a rumour suggests, have even infiltrated Hogwarts itself. Following the execution of Cedric Diggory and the death of Sirius Black, in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, another of Harry’s friends will die as another chunk of J.K. Rowling’s wonderful plot is exposed.

There is something of the feeling of a pantomime about the release of a new Harry Potter film. They give you the opportunity to see all of your favourite actors in one sitting – for me that’s Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter and Robbie Coltrane. This time they are joined by Jim Broadbent and – perhaps more interestingly – by Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, the newest member of the Fiennes film dynasty, who, at the age of ten, plays the young Lord Voldemort.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is a sad, dark film laced, as usual, with a soaring elfish soundtrack and moments of awkwardly adolescent humour. It should well be worth an evening of your time.

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image credit: snappybex

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Bruno

Posted on June 28, 2009 by Peter Moore
Pink pumps, toes, tattoos, and fishnets parade in sidewalk fashion show by Sparkieg

Pink pumps, toes, tattoos, and fishnets parade in sidewalk fashion show by Sparkieg

Sacha Baron Cohen and the shock doctrine

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Aristotle had it right when he claimed that the secret to humour was surprise. And, with that in mind, I can’t quite remember a more surprising cinematic moment than when Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Borat introduced the Running of the Jew.

He stood still and serious in a grey suit by the side of a dusty street as a hundred angry Kazaks chased a hideous effigy, jeered along by the crowd of excitable spectators. Cohen, who could only get away with such a ridiculous snippet of comedy as he is Jewish himself, had added a twenty first century twist to Aristotle’s theory: the one thing that is better than surprise is shock.

Three years on his latest release, Bruno, is set to shock us all into laughter once again. Bruno, gay, deluded, idealistic and flamboyant is an Austrian fashion reporter abroad in the US – the perfect setting for Cohen’s comedy – a continent where he can ruthlessly expose ignorance and laugh at prejudice.

Following the criticism levelled at Borat – for being provocative, insensitive and graphic – there is little to suggest that Cohen has moderated his style this time around. Amongst other things, Bruno contains a pygmy sex scene, a pair of dancing genitalia and a continuous roll of Hitler jokes that suggests it might just cause as much of a stir as Borat, a film that was banned in every Arabic country with the exception of Lebanon.

Baron Cohen’s comedy stems from his impeccable timing and his ability to draw humour from familiar social settings. In Bruno he appears at a fashion show, he drinks beers with a group of American hunters – who he likens to the cast members of Sex in the City – and he appears on a lifestyle programme with an adopted child, where he manages to convince an indignant and outraged audience that he has swapped in return for an iPod.

There is no shock-comedy to rival that of Baron Cohen but it is hardly surprising that whilst his latest film is being labelled an ironic triumph by some, he has already alienated members of the American gay community and has been accused of clumsy and unhelpful stereotyping by many of Austria’s leading commentators.

It’s like November 2006 all over again.

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image credit: sparkieg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparkieg/541548058/

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