Obsessed with Foucault?

So there I was the other night, at my Creative Writing class at Shipley College, happily scribbling away. Our task was to write a piece of description inspired by a picture of a fairground.  I find writing description really hard, in fact totally impossible until I create a character who’ s eyes I can describe a scene through, but I was quite enjoying myself when I had a thought. I was describing the fairground as a heterotopia, a space of otherness and seperateness. And then I had another thought. Oh God, I’m becoming obsessed with Foucault!

The lights, flashing and dancing. The pop music blaring, beats competing for attention. Teenage girls link arms and run, shrieking. They’ve no money to spend on rides or candyfloss, but just to be here, out after dark, is exciting.

The fair isn’t real life, normal rules don’t apply. And wearing short skirts that make their dad’s mutter under their breath, and after the bottle of rosè that Abigail ‘borrowed’ from the wine rack, they’re out for a good time. They dance – with each other, not boys – to the chart toppers that the big wheel’s speakers pump out, disco-loud. It’s the fair! Anything could happen, it’s like a huge party, and no-one cares that they’re only (just) fifteen. Grass turns to mud beneath their feet, Faye’s new converse are spoilt, but they don’t even feel the rain. They’re out in the dark, and don’t have a curfew – who, in their (increasingly wet) shoes, would care about rain?

Everyone’s out tonight. Their little town, where nothing even happens and people spend Friday nights with a takeaway curry and ‘Live at the Apollo’, has come alive tonight, this one weekend when people brave the weather and venture out. It’s magic. It doesn’t feel quite real.

They see their geography teacher, Mr Jones, which is embarrassing, and they hide behind a candyfloss stand. Worse still, Molly’s hairdresser Tracey is with him – with her hand in the back pocket of Mr Jones’s jeans! The girls giggle and clutch each other, still too young and self obsessed to even consider that a teacher (especially a geography teacher) might have a right to a love life. Mr Jones waves. They scream and giggle, Abigail waves back. Tracey, glint in her eye, takes Mr Jones by the shoulders and kisses him. The girls stare – then run.

Anyone for the ghost train? They’ve spent their pocket money on nail varnish and magazines on the way home from school, and dads are unreasonably strict about advance payments. They wonder if Abigail’s mum will notice the absence of a second bottle.

Molly’s older brother here – she doesn’t want to talk to him, but the others do. Why else did they get dressed up, if not for the 6^th Form boys? Ross buys them a candy dummy each, which they suck, trying to look provocative. Trying to be grown up. But it’s getting on for eleven, and the families have all gone home, and the people who are left as not so fun, more sinister. Lone men eye young legs, the girls tug at the hems of their skirts. It’s getting cold, and those legs have goosebumps. When Ross offers them a lift home (he’s got his own car!), back to the slumber party they’ve got planned at Molly’s, it’s so inviting to think of their pyjamas and pizza, and the beloved One Tree Hill dvds. Warm sleeping bags – and maybe more wine, if Molly’s dad is happy to turn a blind eye.

They leave the mud and clutter, the rubbish piling up underfoot, the excitement now turning stale, and head for home.

A short history?

Is it possible to write a short history of England? Isn't history, by its very nature, really quite long? Or, is it possible to write a short history of England, and for it to be any good?

Simon Jenkins, in reaction against the disconnected history we learn at school, which seems to imply that Henry VIII was followed by Hitler with very little in between, was challenged by his publisher to write a History of England in 55,000 words. Which might sound a lot, but that’s only five and a half undergraduate dissertations, which really isn’t much at all.

At Ilkley Literature Festival on Friday, Jenkins did a very interesting 45 minute talk on his book, a whistle stop tour of English history from 410 and the departure of the Romans, when Jenkins believes England (as opposed to Britain) was really born, to the current coalition government. Before I start to criticise, I must say that I truly believe that there is a real place for simply telling the story of history, for people to know their country’s background and how we came to be where we are today. There’s also great fun in the traditional tales of heroes and villains, good kings and bad kings, Alfred burning the cakes and James hiding up the Oak Tree.

BUT. All history is interpreted by the historian. English history is made up of infinite, related, vastly different stories. And when one man stands up and says ‘this is how it was’, that is very misleading, and quite frankly, not true. Jenkins did, in the question and answer session at the end, acknowledge that when trying to tell such a huge story (or as I see it, collection of interwoven stories) in such a ridiculously short space of time, it is going to become generalised and uncritical. So why do we try and do it? I would argue that there are two types of history, popular and academic. Popular history often still implies that their version of history is ‘how it really was’, while academic history is constantly justifying its conclusions, comparing differing interpretations, and accepting that even primary sources written at the same time about the same event can tell us very different things. The best history writing (or television, or museum exhibition) integrates the two, taking the most academic scholarship into account whilst giving clear, interesting, fun information about the past. And most importantly, it acknowledges that everything we know now about the past is interpreted through both the sources we use and our own modern eyes.

As some comedian (who’s name escapes me) said on the telly last night, all archaeologists really know about the past is that it was full of skeletons who lived underground. The rest is made up. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but he’s got the right idea!

Once Upon A Time...

In a land far far away, there lived a beautiful princess. She had a huge palace full of glittering chandeliers, and servants to fulfil her every wish. Who wouldn’t want to be just like her?

Well me, for one. The tale of Marie Antoinette, her lavish lifestyle, her playing at being a milkmaid, and her ultimate downfall at the hands of revolutionary mob has always fascinated me, ever since reading her story in a Blue Peter annual from about 1972, with pictures of Valerie Singleton at the Petit Trianon dressed as the princess. So, when the chance came to take a detour on a family holiday to visit the Palace of Versailles, I was pretty excited.

We got lost on the way, couldn’t find a car park, and then queued for an hour and a half to get in, but that didn’t diminish the awe I felt at simply being there, standing in front of the ornate gilt gates of the palace, trying to imagine away the crowds, and replace the cars with carriages and the staff with Swiss Guards. And I must admit, even having studied the French Revolution at University, and read a biography (and seen the film) of Marie Antoinette, I found it hard to ignore the constant camera flashes and tourists (I say this like I wasn’t a tourist myself!) elbowing one another aside for the best view. My dad and sister, with no more than a passing interest in history, saw nothing more than a series of rooms full of fancy furniture and old paintings, and were keen to get outside to the fountains and gardens.  

There was one room, though, where I really felt the enormity of past events, and the importance of this place for French, and indeed world, history. In Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber, the audio guide described how the mob stormed the gates, and entered the palace. Marie’s guards, in the room adjoining her bed chamber, fled in fear of the revolutionary Parisians and left the Queen to their mercy. Her huge four poster bed stood before me, as lavish as anyone could wish for, but none of her fine furnishings or loyal (ish) servants could save her now. She fled, through a small door, wallpapered to look like part of the wall. This was the end of her privileged life as Queen of France, and looking at the little, unassuming door that saved her, at least for a little while, it was suddenly easy to picture the Japanese and American tourists (there seemed to be very few European visitors) as the angry mob, baying for blood – or just a good facebook photo – and to imagine her fear as she and her ladies in waiting escaped, not knowing what would happen next.

Marie Antoinette is often seen as a silly girl, too rich and spoilt for her own good. Her (supposed) comment of ‘let them eat cake’ has been used to prove how out of touch she was with the reality of life for many Frenchmen. But this remark had been attributed to many French figures before Marie, to the same effect, and was simply symbolic propaganda against the young queen. She is also ridiculed for her building of a perfectly picturesque hamlet, complete with duck pond, where she could escape from the hustle and bustle of court life and pretend, for a while, to be a simple woman living in the countryside (albeit without any of the hard work involved in a real country life).  After a day of being surrounded by people, of being funnelled through the King’s and Queen’s Apartments in the Palace and standing in really very long queues, the sense of relief and peace when we reached Marie Antoinette’s estates was immense. The beauty of the village she had built, although clearly designed, was much more to my, and my family’s, taste than the Palace itself, and if I had a bottomless purse and had to live a life where courtiers watched my every move, from mealtimes to bedtimes, I think I would build myself a quiet little haven a lot like this one.

So, I don’t think Marie Antoinette was all bad, although obviously she wasn’t perfect either. I think that the Palace of Versailles could be better managed, maybe with a pre-booking system or, even, with a ban on photography in the Palace (the flashes can’t do the centuries old paintings and furnishings any good anyway), to make the visitor feel less stressed and provide a little more breathing space. But in amongst a very busy day there were real moments of beauty, and of connection with the past.

Poetry Rocks!

Sorry, terrible pun I know, but I couldn’t resist. On Friday night at King’s Hall, Ilkley, Simon Armitage read his Stanza Stones poems for the first time, and very good they are too! These six short poems, all on the theme of water in its many forms and inspired by the local landscape, have been carved into rocks in the countryside for people to stumble upon. The locations were revealed on Friday, and are as follows:

Snow -Pule Hill Quarry, Marsden

Rain – Cows Mouth Quarry, Littleborough

Mist – Nab Hill, Oxenhope

Dew – Rivock Edge, Riddlesden

Puddle – Causey Paving, Ilkley Moor

Beck – Backstone Beck, Ilkley Moor.

I think that this whole project is a great idea, following in the footsteps of the prehistoric cup and ring stones on Ilkley Moor, and more recently the intriguing and romantic eighteenth and nineteenth century graffiti carved into many stones on the moors in the area. For the carvers of the mysterious cup and ring stones, the moor and the landscape was a sacred place, and for many today, ramblers and climbers, painters and poets, it still is, although many wouldn’t express it in that way. But it is a scared place, a place where many people who wouldn’t set foot in a church go to think, to contemplate, to take a little time out of the hectic mundane everyday and to marvel at the beauty and awesomeness of the land, something so much bigger, older, more powerful than ourselves. And I think that coming across one of Armitage’s poems whilst wandering in the great outdoors, would only enhance that experience, and perhaps lift the spirits on a rainy day or describe something that you have always known about the beauty of snow or mist, but have never quite been able to, or even tried to, put into words. I do understand that for some this is a desecration, vandalism, human intervention in a place that is made special by precisely the absence of man, but I think that as the poems age and weather, become encrusted with lichen and moss, they will become part of their environment. And perhaps over time the poet and the mason, the man who wrote the words and the woman who carved the stone, will be forgotten, and the Stanza Stones will, in many many years, be as mysterious and magical as the prehistoric carvings are to us today. They will show that the twenty first century was not all about industry, pollution, population explosion and urban living, but be a monument to those of us that love the land and the country and still believe in the power and magic of nature.