A wolf among wolves

and not as a man among men?

- Bonny ‘Prince’ Billy

I have just finished reading Hans Fallada’s Wolf Among Wolves – definitely a close contender for book of the year, 2010. It bears no relation to the song quoted above, but I like them both.

Originally published in Nazi Germany in 1937, the book has been out of print in English for 70 years. It tells the story of Wolfgang Pagel, a former soldier, and a number of other characters, as they try to live with dignity in the ethical and economic morass of Weimar Germany. The book starts in July 1923, when inflation is so bad people are paid twice a day, as new prices are set in the morning and at lunch time. Currency is almost worthless; as soon as you get any, it needs to be spent immediately, on anything, before its value disappears entirely.

Pagel is living with a girlfriend, a prostitute he picked up one night who never went home. She loves him, but he is lost in the moral wilderness and spends his nights at Berlin casinos, trying to win enough to live on. Over almost 800 pages, the characters are lead through a number of experiences that test them utterly. What makes the book astounding is the attention to detail, the realism and the character development: there are no minor characters. The narrative burns like a slow fuse until a climatic putsch attempt brings the character’s personal crises to a head.

There is no salvation for the characters, except for what the manage to salvage for themselves from the wreckage that surrounds them.

I have read reviews that say the book is boring, slow moving, and that nothing really happens. Indeed, the first half of the book covers just 24 hours, in extreme detail. I confess that I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the book as much if I hadn’t read it over a few days on a Scottish island with no mobile reception or television. The book moves at a pace we are no longer accustomed to – we have become used to instant narrative and just-in-time action. But the effect of understanding the characters, their motivation and the milieu intimately make the experience of reading the book so much more immersive than anything I have read in a long time.

By giving us an intimate picture of conditions in the Weimar Republic, it becomes easy to understand the environment that gave birth the Nazism, and in particular the resentment bred by the Treaty of Versailles, the French occupation of the Ruhr and the punitive attempts by the Allied powers to destroy the German economy.

The bigger story, though, is Hans Fallada. He’s a writer of the calibre of Thomas Mann, but I hadn’t heard of him till this year, and I don’t think he’s well knownin the English-speaking world. He lived a varied and troubled life: at 18, he killed a friend in a dual which was also a suicide pact, and narrowly avoided  a prison sentence. He endured years of drink and drug addictions, prison and institutionalisation. All this gave him a unique insight into the underbelly of German society between the wars, and he captures it beautifully.

Clearly, some enlightened soul in the publishing industry decided it was time to reacquaint the English speaking world with Fallada, and went about it systematically.

First, Alone in Berlin was republished and widely distributed – it’s available at Waterstones and WH Smith on various multibuy offers. It’s an excellent book – plotted like a thriller, it’s based on the true story of one ordinary working class couple’s resistance to the Nazis. This Guardian article calls it a ‘miracle’, and it is an astounding book. It is also probably the most interesting and accessible for an English-speaking audience, so it’s an ideal entry point. If I hadn’t seen the book on 3 for 2 offer at Waterstones, I wouldn’t have know of it’s existance.

The publisher, Melville House, have also released attractive editions of two other books, which I will read shortly. Little Man, What Now? was his breakthrough portrait of ordinary people crushed by circumstances beyond their control, and The Drinker was written secretly while Fallada was locked up in an asylum, smuggled out and published after his death.

I was brought up in public libraries and came to fetishise books as remarkable artefacts. This was destroyed for me when I worked as a book seller for a while, and saw publishers heavily promoting profitable rubbish while quality literature received no support. Even more heartbreaking was having to destroy books which couldn’t be sold: having to stand and tear up hundreds of books that couldn’t be sold was soul destroying – I wasn’t even allowed to take them home, as this would have been theft.

The promotion of Fallada restores my faith in the publishing industry to some extent. Despite the fact that books are commodities that are sold for profit, there are clearly still people in the industry who love literature. 

Plenty of people who hate the mediocrity bred by reality TV like the X Factor nonetheless had reservations about the RATM campaign: both acts are signed to Sony, so in the end its the record company that gets rich. Shouldn’t we champion an underground artist on an independent label? More to the point, why a song from almost 20 years ago?

These are valid points, but for me it’s a question of political tactics. In any campaign, you need to go for the best position you can possibly win, even if it is not your ideal result. Personally, I would have been very pleased if A Las Barricadas or The Internationale made it to number one, with the whole country singing it from the smouldering ruins of the banks. However, we are were we are.

This is a mistake the Left makes too often – expending energy on unwinable campaigns because a refusal to compromise is ‘selling out’. Half a victory is better than total defeat, and people learn and are encouraged by victory.

For me, the victory is a cultural and aesthetic one, a mass refusal to allow media giants to force feed us mediocrity for profit. It’s not a rage against the machine so much as a cry for authenticity in a cultural landscape that is cannibalising itself. It’s a victory for a song sung with passion, anger and truth against cynically manufactured mediocrity.

Also, it’s recycling – taking a perfectly good old song and reusing it!

A Las Barricadas is, unfortunately, highly unlikely to win Christmas No. 1. However, RATM did, because enough people were mobilised to buy it. It’s a small victory, and it’s encouraging and hopefully symbolic of a bit of resistance from people.

The world is in crisis and there is no solution within capitalism. I hope this song is prescient.

I hope the new year ushers in a decade of “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me”.

It’s time for a fight back.

I’ve just been to see the film Doomsday. It’s absolute rubbish – what happens when you give a good B-movie director too big a budget: all sense of irony goes. Neil Marshall also directed Dog Soldiers and The Descent, which I quite enjoyed, but this is derivative nonsense.

I went to see it because it’s set in a post-apocalyptic Glasgow, and filmed on location in the Highlands of, er, Cape Town.

In 2008, the Reaper virus breaks out in Glasgow. Scotland is quarantined, and cut off from England. The people are left to die. Thirty years later, there’s another outbreak of the virus in London, and a team is sent north of the border to look for a cure.

Lo and behold, they come across a city filled with characters trapped in a Mad Max nightmare world – cannibal punks listening to 80s music and barbecuing their enemies (I don’t understand why they didn’t dip them in batter and deep fry them). They didn’t all die from the Reaper virus, and the survivors are vicious.

The film could have been a Labour Party propaganda piece about what Scotland would be like after independence. In fact, it bears a strong resemblance to Labour’s campaign before last year’s Scottish election. Labour worked hard to create the impression that post-independence there would be razor wire keeping starving Scots out of England while the country collapsed – maybe production was delayed and they decided to release the film now to recoup some of the expense.

I’m not the only person to notice this:

Some think the film is an insight into England’s latent view of Scotland. ‘I think it is a subliminal thought they have in England: in the dark recesses of their minds they believe that if Scotland is ever separated from London then we will be cut off from the rest of the world for good,’ said SNP Westminster MP Angus MacNeil, who represents Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Western Isles).

‘They think we’ll build our own Hadrian’s Wall and keep everyone out – which is of course nonsense. At 80p a brick it will simply be too expensive.

I’m waiting for a zombie film about New Labour, the undead party that keeps shuffling forward, feeding on the living.

Who’ll put it out of its misery?

I’ve just been to see the film Doomsday. It’s absolute rubbish – what happens when you give a good B-movie director too big a budget: all sense of irony goes. Neil Marshall also directed Dog Soldiers and The Descent, which I quite enjoyed, but this is derivative nonsense.

I went to see it because it’s set in a post-apocalyptic Glasgow, and filmed on location in the Highlands of, er, Cape Town.

In 2008, the Reaper virus breaks out in Glasgow. Scotland is quarantined, and cut off from England. The people are left to die. Thirty years later, there’s another outbreak of the virus in London, and a team is sent north of the border to look for a cure.

Lo and behold, they come across a city filled with characters trapped in a Mad Max nightmare world – cannibal punks listening to 80s music and barbecuing their enemies (I don’t understand why they didn’t dip them in batter and deep fry them). They didn’t all die from the Reaper virus, and the survivors are vicious.

The film could have been a Labour Party propaganda piece about what Scotland would be like after independence. In fact, it bears a strong resemblance to Labour’s campaign before last year’s Scottish election. Labour worked hard to create the impression that post-independence there would be razor wire keeping starving Scots out of England while the country collapsed – maybe production was delayed and they decided to release the film now to recoup some of the expense.

I’m not the only person to notice this:

Some think the film is an insight into England’s latent view of Scotland. ‘I think it is a subliminal thought they have in England: in the dark recesses of their minds they believe that if Scotland is ever separated from London then we will be cut off from the rest of the world for good,’ said SNP Westminster MP Angus MacNeil, who represents Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Western Isles).

‘They think we’ll build our own Hadrian’s Wall and keep everyone out – which is of course nonsense. At 80p a brick it will simply be too expensive.

I’m waiting for a zombie film about New Labour, the undead party that keeps shuffling forward, feeding on the living.

Who’ll put it out of its misery?

I thought it was boring.

I have been watching the reviews for this one. Every single decent source has given it five stars, called it perfect, masterful, epic. Here’s The Guardian, in a typical piece of hyperbole:

“This is a dark, uncompromising film, thrillingly original and distinctive, with a visionary passion. It is a movie against which all directors, and all moviegoers, will want to measure themselves. Paul Thomas Anderson is doing something new with cinema, and you can hardly ask for more than that.”

Did you get that?

“It is a movie against which all directors, and all moviegoers, will want to measure themselves”.

Did we watch the same film? If so, I am clearly a failure at moviegoing. It’s only February, and I’ve seen a number of better films this year, in this order: In the Valley of Elah, No Country for Old Men and Lust, Caution. Hell, I even enjoyed My Blueberry Nights and Juno more than this, although they are slighter films.

The film is epic. But ‘epic’ isn’t another word for ‘good’. It’s another word for ‘long’.

Long, tedious and up itself. Legends of the Fall was epic too, remember.

The themes in There will be Blood are grand, and deserving of cinematic treatment: the beginning of capitalism in America, its birth in lies, sweat and desperation, how it was sanctified by a corrupt and grasping religion, its enduring psychosis and need to sustain itself with violence.

It’s an evil system, personified in the life and lusts of the main character, Daniel Plainview. His quest for wealth and power stems not from any desire to do good, to create something useful, or provide for a family. It is born of hate, resentment and the need to dominate lesser men. Plainview both needs and resents the sanctifying power of the Church, represented by the insanely shamanic figure of the ‘false prophet’ Eli Sunday, who is able to frame the exploitation of the land in Biblical language.

These points are well made. But the film doesn’t engage. It shows, indeed lectures and harangues, but doesn’t grab us by the balls and make us care one way or another about the characters. It’s brilliantly acted, but so what?

I couldn’t wait to get out of the cinema.

I thought it was boring.

I have been watching the reviews for this one. Every single decent source has given it five stars, called it perfect, masterful, epic. Here’s The Guardian, in a typical piece of hyperbole:

“This is a dark, uncompromising film, thrillingly original and distinctive, with a visionary passion. It is a movie against which all directors, and all moviegoers, will want to measure themselves. Paul Thomas Anderson is doing something new with cinema, and you can hardly ask for more than that.”

Did you get that?

“It is a movie against which all directors, and all moviegoers, will want to measure themselves”.

Did we watch the same film? If so, I am clearly a failure at moviegoing. It’s only February, and I’ve seen a number of better films this year, in this order: In the Valley of Elah, No Country for Old Men and Lust, Caution. Hell, I even enjoyed My Blueberry Nights and Juno more than this, although they are slighter films.

The film is epic. But ‘epic’ isn’t another word for ‘good’. It’s another word for ‘long’.

Long, tedious and up itself. Legends of the Fall was epic too, remember.

The themes in There will be Blood are grand, and deserving of cinematic treatment: the beginning of capitalism in America, its birth in lies, sweat and desperation, how it was sanctified by a corrupt and grasping religion, its enduring psychosis and need to sustain itself with violence.

It’s an evil system, personified in the life and lusts of the main character, Daniel Plainview. His quest for wealth and power stems not from any desire to do good, to create something useful, or provide for a family. It is born of hate, resentment and the need to dominate lesser men. Plainview both needs and resents the sanctifying power of the Church, represented by the insanely shamanic figure of the ‘false prophet’ Eli Sunday, who is able to frame the exploitation of the land in Biblical language.

These points are well made. But the film doesn’t engage. It shows, indeed lectures and harangues, but doesn’t grab us by the balls and make us care one way or another about the characters. It’s brilliantly acted, but so what?

I couldn’t wait to get out of the cinema.

Here’s the Sunday Herald:

Women’s groups have accused the Glasgow Film Theatre of undermining’ their work on sexual exploitation and urged the independent cinema to scrap its screening of the Quentin Tarantino “torture porn” film Death Proof planned for tomorrow.

The acclaimed director will answer questions from the audience after the screening of his post-modern homage to 1960s and 1970s exploitation movies, Death Proof. Written and directed by Tarantino, this latest film focuses on a stuntman, played by Kurt Russell, who hunts down and sexually exploits various “voluptuous” women that he follows in his “death proof” car.

The Scottish Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation (SCASE), Scottish Women’s Aid, and the actress and comedienne, Elaine C Smith, a trustee of the anti-domestic violence charity, Zero Tolerance, are supporting a protest outside the theatre, organised by the Scottish Women Against Pornography group (SWAP).

SWAP co-ordinator, Catherine Harper, said the decision to screen the 18 certificate film damaged the GFT’s reputation with anti-violence campaigners, especially after screening sympathetic productions such as Lilya 4-Ever, a moving film about a 15-year-old Estonian girl lured into sex trafficking.

The GFT is a small, independent cinema in Glasgow, which is apparently one of Tarantino’s favourite cinemas. It struggles to compete with corporate megaliths like Cineworld, which has an 18-screen skyscraper down the road. If Tarantino offers to do a presentation, who are they to turn him down because a bunch of feminists will be pissed off? They need all the help they can get.

Presumably, the women’s groups haven’t seen the film, since it was only released yesterday. Here’s what they have to say about it:

“…it’s unacceptable that the theatre, of all organisations, want us to enjoy women being stalked, preyed on, stalked, tortured and murdered. This kind of violent, sadistic, women-hating content creates and continues to reinforce a society which sees rape and violence as normal and legitimate.”

Do they even know what the film’s about?

I saw it in Germany a few weeks ago. It’s an ironic look at 70s exploitation films.

Yes, it is about a serial killer who stalks and murders beautiful women, and a male establishment that doesn’t take it seriously. But (SPOILER NOTE) it’s also about a proto-feminist fightback by a group of women who refuse to be victims, take the killer on, and end up killing him.(/SPOILER NOTE)

If we suspend our ironic sensibilities and take an unsophisticated view of the film, the enjoyment we get is the enjoyment of a revenge fantasy, the same way we cheered for Phoolan Devi in Bandit Queen when she attacked her rapists.

What’s the problem?

It’s a mediocre film by a talented director who’s lost his way. And for the record, I don’t really like violence in films (unless it’s about Nazis being killed), and I don’t like torture films.

The women’s groups also attack the GMB union for ‘legitimising’ the sex industry by organising sex workers. This is shear hypocrisy: the sex workers organised themselves, and then approached the GMB for membership. Isn’t that feminism in action? They have chosen to work in the sex industry, and chosen to do something about their terms and conditions by unionising.

It also pisses me off when interest groups think they ‘own’ institutions. The GFT has shown films before that the feminists like – like the brilliant Lilya 4-ever – so they seem to think they can expect to see only films that they approve of.

(The same thing happens in South Africa with the Mail & Guardian newspaper, which the Left thinks it owns – anything critical of the Left is seen as a betrayal).

In fact, there’s a whole lot of sexual hypocrisy out there. Today’s Scotsman – a conservative paper – has a lead article in its women’s supplement about a new shop selling organic sex toys in Edinburgh, for the modern woman concerned about pesticides in her vibrator. There’s nothing in the article (which I can’t find online) that suggests there is anything unusual or even risque about buying organic vibrators, which is a good thing.

But why are women’s sexual fantasies considered empowering, while male sexuality is portrayed as sleazy or exploitative? I haven’t seen any Scotsman articles advising the discerning gentleman on which fake rubber vagina, or porn DVD, to buy, have you? Vibrators objectify a certain part of the male anatomy just as much as porn objectifies women. Why is one OK and the other not?

A lot of porn is really distasteful. That’s because people have been sexually repressed at least since the start of Christianity, so we have 2000 years of sexual issues to work out. The sex industry is often disturbing – but that’s more to do with power relations than the sex itself. A greater openness is what we need, not making people feel guilty for their desires, and not forcing sex work into back alleys where it will be controlled by gangsters.

I am sick of this boys against girls bullshit. We’re all complex individuals, and all of us have a weird mix of desires that we should feel free to explore.

Anyway, by way of an antidote to the prudes, Louise has an excellent take on pro-sex feminism here.

“Amnesia always sets in after freedom. People fight for freedom and then they forget and oppress their own people.”

Well said, that man.

Masekela, who wrote the score for Truth in Translation, currently being performed at the Edinburgh Festival, was an outspoken critic of the apartheid regime.

According to the article,

Masekela accused the ANC and opposition parties of bringing an end to all-white rule only by conniving in a “business deal” that had entrenched the power of the elite, but left the bulk of the population in poverty. “We ended up with less than 2 per cent of the economy, less than 5 per cent of the land. We are a free but poor people,” he said.

He’s completely right. The government sold us out on a massive scale, and we can’t let them off the hook. They used the new South Africa to make themselves and their friends very rich very quickly, and they used the race card to fend of criticism.

“The problem isn’t us”, they said. “It’s untransformed whites”.

Untransformed whites exist, but they’re not really a problem, as they have no political power, decreasing financial power, and everyone thinks they’re idiots.

The problem is a regime of corrupt kleptocrats who think South Africa is their personal trough to feed at. It’s like Fanon predicted: the post-colonial elite discovers it rather likes the lifestyle the colonialists used to lead. Racial apartheid has been replaced by class apartheid – with strong racial correspondences – and exploitation is as rife as ever.

The Left has been to reticent about criticising the government, because it’s seen as vulnerable to attack from the Right. This needs to stop. The government has become the enemy of transformation, and needs to be attacked ruthlessy from the Left until it starts to deliver on its mandate.

No more excuses.

“Amnesia always sets in after freedom. People fight for freedom and then they forget and oppress their own people.”

Well said, that man.

Masekela, who wrote the score for Truth in Translation, currently being performed at the Edinburgh Festival, was an outspoken critic of the apartheid regime.

According to the article,

Masekela accused the ANC and opposition parties of bringing an end to all-white rule only by conniving in a “business deal” that had entrenched the power of the elite, but left the bulk of the population in poverty. “We ended up with less than 2 per cent of the economy, less than 5 per cent of the land. We are a free but poor people,” he said.

He’s completely right. The government sold us out on a massive scale, and we can’t let them off the hook. They used the new South Africa to make themselves and their friends very rich very quickly, and they used the race card to fend of criticism.

“The problem isn’t us”, they said. “It’s untransformed whites”.

Untransformed whites exist, but they’re not really a problem, as they have no political power, decreasing financial power, and everyone thinks they’re idiots.

The problem is a regime of corrupt kleptocrats who think South Africa is their personal trough to feed at. It’s like Fanon predicted: the post-colonial elite discovers it rather likes the lifestyle the colonialists used to lead. Racial apartheid has been replaced by class apartheid – with strong racial correspondences – and exploitation is as rife as ever.

The Left has been to reticent about criticising the government, because it’s seen as vulnerable to attack from the Right. This needs to stop. The government has become the enemy of transformation, and needs to be attacked ruthlessy from the Left until it starts to deliver on its mandate.

No more excuses.

It’s 50 years since Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel On the Road was published. This article in The Guardian looks at the enduring legacy of the book, and whether it still has any relevance to today’s young people:

“When I was a teenager, though, On the Road was the bible for any aspiring bohemian, a book that was passed on from one generation to the next almost as a talismanic text. I was given a battered copy by an older friend and, even before I read it, knew that it carried within its pages some deep, abiding truth about youth, freedom and self-determination. On the Road instilled in me a belief that, in order to find oneself, one had to throw caution to the wind and travel long distances with no real goal and very little money.”

I first read On the Road when I was in high school, in 1992. It’s one of the books that changed me, that gave me a faith in the road, both literally and metaphorically.

At the time I was living in Somerset East, a small town in the Eastern Karoo – South Africa’s outback. The book inspired me to pack my army surplus sleeping bag and hit the road with my thumb in the air, often without any money.

Initially I took fairly short trips – to the Grahamstown arts festival, to Port Elizabeth and East London, Jeffrey’s Bay and Port Alfred.

But in time the journeys grew longer, and more ambitious: I hitched 800km to see No Friends of Harry play at the Playground in Cape Town – they were supported by Live Jimmy Presley and The Outsiders for that gig.

I slept on Strand beach the first night, and found places to crash the next few nights with people I met at the ‘Grounds and at the Attic in Voortrekker Road.

A girlfriend and I onced hitched to J Bay to buy a backpack full of weed from the Rastas who lived on the beach – I had taken an order at the school hostel. Hitching back, our first lift was on the back of a farm truck. We opened a kaartjie and shared a smoke with the labourers, then lay back on grain sacks and watched the sun setting over the fields. I was filled with the sense of everything being right with the world – a sense I struggle to hold onto in more settled times.

I hitched through the Transkei to Durban, into the Free State and on to Jo’burg. I made it as far north as Louis Trichardt.

This was a formative time for me, and for our country. The ANC had been unbanned and we were preparing for the first democratic elections. It gave me an opportunity to get to know my country, and my people, in all their ragged glory.

The people who picked me up were all working class, mostly truck drivers, or people driving for a living – returning rental cars, servicing equipment on farms, and so on.

In all my years of hitching, I never once got a ride from a middle class person – all those BMWs and Golfs just shot past me, while the beat up old skorogoros would invariably find room for one more traveller. I got lifts from black, white and every other race, both men and women, and no one ever hassled me.

I slept on beaches, at the side of the road, in trucks and in people’s homes. They fed me, too: vetkoek and chakalaka, peanut butter sandwiches and soya mince curry, washed down with giant mugs of sweet tea and coffee, or quarts of Black Label.

It was this that cemented my class solidarity, more than anything else. Working class people realise life is tough, we all struggle, and we all need a bit of help from time to time. Picking up some one when you’re going in the same direction helps you both.

For people with more money, there’s the atomisation brought on by having enough: we’re all supposed pay our own way, and we won’t go out of our way to help anyone else, or expect anyone to do us any favours.

A lot of what I saw shocked me, such as the habit many South Africans have of making a long trip more pleasant by driving with a six pack of beers on their laps. I once got a ride from an off duty cop who drank 14 50ml minatures of gin in a drive from Louis Trichardt to Pretoria, travelling at an average speed of 160km an hour.

I smoked weed in bottle necks with truck drivers while they negotiated mountain passes: “You look like a roeker, my bra. Why don’t you make us a stop?” Maybe that’s why there’s so many truck accidents.

Despite all the warnings, nothing bad ever happened to me, apart from being hungry and cold. I lived to tell the tale. This is how I got to know South Africa, and to deprogramme myself from the limitations of my small town, religious upbringing.

Later, hitchhiking became a ritual for me, a ceremonial relinquishing of control, something I would do consciously – allow the road to strip me bare so I could see clearly. After a bad break up, or when I needed a bit of clarity, I’d throw myself at the mercy of the road.

But what’s become of those dreams of freedom? With age has come a desire for a little comfort and security, and a realisation that I am not bullet proof. And something has been lost in the process. But I hope that I carry the wisdom of the road with me.

All of life is a journey, and our attempts to control it are an illusion. When we reach a crossroads, we can choose a path – I recommend the one less travelled by – but we don’t have a map, and don’t know what’s coming around the bend.

Sometimes you get a lift instantly. Other times, it looks like you’ll be at the side of the road for eternity. Use this time to look at the scenary, think, and perfect your technique of throwing stones at tin cans.

Some rides are fast, smooth and comfortable, and get you to your destination in style – eerste klas. Other rides are slow and uncomfortable – but better than no ride at all.

Instead of living in a state of perpetual anxiety over the fear that something terrible is going to happen, like most of the population of the developed world, it would service us well to release our illusions of control and enjoy the ride.

The destination becomes the reason for travelling, but the journey is everything – the conversations, the encounters, and the stars over the Karoo.

Once a truck driver I was riding with left the highway at 3am and rode for some distance along a sand road into the Karoo bush, somewhere near Colesberg. I didn’t know what he was up to. He stopped the truck in a clearing, made a fire, put some tea in a billy and got a telescope out of his luggage.

There was no moon, and it was a chill winter’s night. The Karoo stars throbbed overhead, giving a sense of vertigo with their intensity, the feeling that you could fall off the edge of the Earth and into the endless sky pulsing with light.

We had a smoke while he set up the telescope to see the rings of Saturn. “Now look at that”, he said.

He might have had only a primary school education, but he knew beauty when he saw it.

Life is the same. Everything passes. The ride you’re on now – or the roadside you’re standing by, watching the traffic shoot past – is where you are.

Just be there.