From The Morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent November 2003]

We’d almost missed a whole festival. The Edinburgh Film Fest is a short one, two weeks in length and packed to the brim with screenings. Almost every single screening is followed by a question and answer session with the director or star or both. It’s astonishing. And I managed to get to one film. Just barely.

Thursday 21 August we went, to Potestad, a film about Argentinian political disappearances in the 1970s, or more thematically, about the way making compromise in the face of corruption leads to loss and despair. It was a fascinating film. I think my favourite thing about it was the use of the main actor, Eduardo Pavlóvsky, throughout, despite the fact that much of the film takes place in flashback to when he was a young man. It works surprisingly well, much better than you’d expect if I just described scenes of an old man wearing a rugby jersey and running downfield with his young teammates. The film was based on a stage play, written and performed by Pavlóvsky, but you’d need to look harder than I did to see where that has limited things. Stunning. I wish we could have stayed for more of the director’s discussion afterwards, but no, we had to race across town for a very important show…

…the arrival of Lucy! Yes indeed, we were finally to enjoy guests taking advantage of the floorspace to see the festival. Lucy bounced off the train, tilting her head side to side as she does and grinning hugely as she also does, and proceeded to be a wonderful guest indeed.

The next day her other half John materialised, and that evening I joined the group to make a quartet ready to enjoy some great entertainment. By this stage of the fest word of mouth had been getting around, and tonight was a double-helping of good word. First up was ‘Ladies & Gents’, a grimy
Glasgow-set underworld thriller performed in a public toilet. They split the audience in half, and one half headed into the dimly lit Ladies, the other half was led into the Gents. Both groups, each about 20-strong, were carefully placed against the walls of the bathrooms and told not to move even a step… and then the music started playing, and the show was on. A nasty, bitter piece tasting of revenge and murder, you watched events unfold in your bathroom, occasionally hearing loud noises from the other one. And then, at the end of the scene, reeling from what you’ve just seen, you’re herded back outside again, past the other set, and into the other bathroom. Then you see the other side of the story, and only when you’ve seen both sides through does it all fall into place.

Beautiful. And it gains immense style points for being performed in a public loo.

Buzzing from that odd, but good, experience, we wandered the evening for a while and gravitated towards our other word-of-mouth special selection: Kiwi geniuses Jermaine and Brett, Flight of the Conchords. I’d relented my point of view that I could see them anytime in Wellington – they were setting the fest on fire and it seemed foolish to miss out on supporting my countrymen at the same time as having a sure ticket to the folked-up land of funny. As it happened, moments before Cal bought the ticket the Perrier nominations were announced, with Conchords included, and the price for tickets jumped by
half; but it made for a hell of a sold-out show.

And yes, they were good. They were as good as anything over here. They deserved that nomination, and the kudos it has brought them. (I didn’t see eventual winner Dmitri Martin, but if the reviews were accurate then that man deserved to win. His set sounded insanely good.) See these guys when
they come your way. To do so is wise.

Saturday 23 August – the final weekend of the fringe festival! Flyer hawkers were in a frenzy handing out paper to anyone in range, the bars were full of jaded semi-conscious comedians, the running jokes of the festival were well-established (Aaron Barschak). Lucy and John picked the show, and they picked a doozy. It was called The Return, by a small Australian company, and it was set on a late-night train ride from Perth to Fremantle. Basic plot: two yobs alone in a train car. Vulnerable young woman gets on and sits down. Go. Crikey, I don’t think I’ve been nearer the edge of my seat for years – the tension was incredible, and the humour when it came would have been funny even if it wasn’t a relief. Another victim of theatrical-plot syndrome, but as I’ve said before, it comes with the territory. Hell, it was brilliant. I think it ranks as the highlight of my entire festival. Outstanding.

Late night funny stuff to follow. We checked out Dwight Slade, an American comedian who was friends with Bill Hicks (if you know who he is, you’ll understand). Sadly, he never quite got the crowd working – his humour wasn’t the political viciousness that Hicks-hungry punters were hoping for, and while he certainly didn’t bomb, the show didn’t explode either. Not bad, not bad.

Criminy! Sunday 24 August! Only one show – the comedic stylings of John Oliver, getting talked up as the new Ben Elton. It was good stuff, with a very funny bit at the end about anti-war protests that recruited a bunch of other comedians playing the same venue as placard-carrying cameo artists, with a line or two each.

Unfortunately for Oliver, seeing as it was the last night of the show, the comedians decided to completely sabotage this sequence. They substituted all manner of nonsense for the scripted lines and the bit culminated in hugely popular comedian Daniel Kitson dancing around the stage grinning for a while in a spectacular coup-de-grace that Oliver handled with admirable aplomb.

Great fun, really, and a nice way to end the festival.

John and Lucy jetted away the next day (I shan’t clutter up the email telling you about them, but it’s worth pointing out they’re Very Nice People) and Cal and I hunkered back into normal life, after a fashion. The
International Festival was still going on and a few late Fringe events were still occurring, but most of the crowds were gone and the furious pace was letting up. I was looking forward to a final Fringe event: Spearhead were playing on Thursday August 28. Spearhead and frontman Michael Franti are a San Francisco socially conscious music outfit that just happens to make the best damn sounds I’ve ever heard. My favourite band, I’ve only seen them twice since they formed in 1994. I was really looking forward to time number 3. Their gig was the first thing I booked for the fest. I’d been ready for a month.

Naturally I got sick.

Brad and Willy went in mine and Cal’s stead, and I have heard from them and other acquaintances that it was a damn good show. I heard “best gig I have ever experienced” more than once. And I feel damn good that some good came from my tickets. Yeah.

Saturday night was the grand finale. August 30 and the fireworks display over the castle. It’s renowned by fireworks nuts throughout the world. It deserves its reputation. A little over a year ago I sent a morgue-at-large email that spoke excitedly of the fireworks at the Thames Festival in London. Here in Edinburgh I met their grander, snazzier, bigger older brother.

And I felt fine.

—-

Here endeth the account of Edinburgh Festival 2003.

Enjoy your early November!

~`morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent November 2003]

Okay, the secret explanation for our busy first fest weekend: all tickets were 2 for 1. The deal carried on until the end of Monday. So after work on Monday I zipped into town and checked out the next on the list: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, a New Zealand production about NZ poet/prophet James K Baxter. It was an accomplished piece, marred by the inexperience of some of the actors on display – a large-cast production, it had to cut corners to tour this far.   Still, an impressive and moving experience, appreciated by its respectably-sized audiences.

Then we grabbed some dinner and crossed town to see Camarilla. This was a politically-charged thriller/drama by a hot young Aussie playwright. It starts with a bomb going off in central London. Injured in the blast is the daughter of a prominent radical academic. The shockwaves of that explosion rush through the family, straining relationships and forcing decisions. An interesting, thrilling piece that engaged with the new post-9/11 world; the ending was a bit too pat, maybe, but that’s par for the course in a one hour drama.

There’s a lot of one-hour drama over here. I always had the impression in New Zealand that one hour was too slight for a serious dramatic piece – I have been well and truly proved wrong.

A few days of rest and the town went mad. Edinburgh’s packed with visitors during festival, throngs on every pavement. The Royal Mile, in the old town sloping down from the castle, is filled with colourfully dressed characters handing out leaflets for their shows, with street performers, with sightseers, with those in the long long queue for the box office… (this was the very first year they’ve tried internet booking, and the site fell over after about a week from the huge demand. They’re really quite backward over here, everyone.)

On Friday Cal and I were wandering near the Student Union building, Teviot, and were offered free tickets to a show by Irish comedian David O’Doherty. Despite our worrying experiences with the alleged Cream of Irish Comedy we signed on, and got an interesting show – mostly consisting of O’Doherty sitting with a keyboard on his lap playing and singing amusing ditties about how miserable and crap he was. Not bad at all, actually, and at that price how can you go wrong? We zipped out at curtain and ran down a few streets to get to our next destination in time: Don Q, a dramatisation of Don Quixote. This was a hell of a show, with the three cast members performing a large number of roles with great authority. It was funny, and very clever, but ultimately it dragged a bit too much for my taste – I suspect it stuck too close to its subject matter. In any case, it was jolly good fun and certainly not time wasted.

The next morning Cal and I rose bright and early to get to a morning show: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. This was a youth drama club show, I think, with a cast of about twelve teens. And it was great. The jokes were terribly cheesy and it didn’t really have anything much to do with any previous version of Baron Munchausen, but it kept me vastly entertained as the scene shifted in short order from england to the moon to the desert and more. Two highlights: firstly the utterly inspired song, the only one in the show, ‘Where is my camel?’ that was stuck in my head for weeks after (“She’s got two humps on her back, and she knows the desert like the back of her hoof, now she’s gone forever, can somebody tell me – where is my camel?”). Secondly, the Queen of the Babies.

The Queen was an 8-month old baby. Two attendants carry on her (suitably regally draped) high chair and then proceed to wait on her as another character engages her in conversation – talking to her, and improvising appropriate responses to whatever she does in response.

Man, that baby loved being on stage. She shook that rattle like crazy and grinned like anything. But even you clucky types can’t possibly appreciate how extraordinary it is to see an infant on stage. It was deeply, deeply startling.

(I want to note, while I’m talking about babies, that the smiling baby face in the sun that giggles at the Teletubbies is one of the most potent images I have ever seen. There’s something about babies, man. We’re hard wired to pay them attention. Freaky.)

(Hello to all the mums and fathers-to-be, or -have-been for that matter…)

Sunday we had a midday date at the theatre for ‘Twelve Angry Men’. The classic jury-room drama was being performed in one of the more prestigious venues. It was getting a lot of attention for casting 11 comedians in the very serious roles – the only non-comedian in the show was in the only vaguely comedic part. And it was great. The staging, the performances, everything was excellent, especially mad comedian Bill Bailey as a hard-nosed conservative. (Bill Bailey for Doctor Who!)

But drama was to come. It was stuffy-hot in the theatre, and a young woman was overcome. She left her row and was walking down the steps to the exit to the foyer, which was alongside stage right. But as she walked down she sped up, faster and faster, and collapsed forward at speed, cracking her head hard against the front of the stage.

Everything stopped.

Another moment of profound strangeness – the performers all gazing horror-struck at this woman. It was as if all the characters in a movie suddenly stared at the audience.

Then things swung into motion. ‘Is there a Doctor in the house?’ one actor cried, and there was. Everything stopped, we waited, and it turned out she was okay, only bruised. She was carried out after fifteen minutes of careful attention, and the performers gathered themselves, and the Doctor retook his seat to applause, and the house lights darkened and the show went on.

Magic.

After 12 Angry Men we went down to the Meadows, a huge green space criss-crossed with tree-lined walking lanes. It was full of large tents showcasing acts from throughout the festival, and it was all free! The sun was brilliant and we wandered around for ages. We saw out the day’s free shows watching Aussie guitar comedy trio Gud viciously and profanely abuse the old people in the front rows of their tent,, and it was pretty damn funny to be honest. Kiwis, heck them out next time they cross the Tasman.

But it wasn’t over yet! We were just getting warmed up!

Tuesday 12 August and we made it to my one and only Book Festival event (Cal went to many more, as she wasn’t working at the time – lucky girl). Alastair Macintosh & Roger Levett talked about their new books, about ecology and social responsibility. It was pretty exciting stuff. The question/answer bits were good, although I was rendered grumpy by someone who insisted on arguing that global warming hasn’t been proven yet, which is a rant for another time.*

Then we chilled out for a wee bit. On Sunday we jumped back in the game. This time we were in line for San Diego, one of the star attractions of the ‘proper’ festival, the new play by Scottish prodigy David Greig (who?). Starring NZ’s adopted son Billy Boyd, no less. It played three nights, we saw it on opening night, and it was mesmerizing – dream-logic, shifting symbols back and forth across a stage littered with suitcases, linking (or not linking) eight or nine different plotlines of people finding and losing parental connection in Scotland, London and San Diego… I loved it, but the reviewers mostly hated it. It was one of the true polarising events of the festival, and I was pleased to come down on the positive side. It didn’t
change my life or anything, but it was a damn good show.

Tuesday 19th August. The month was slipping by and no mistake! We were determined to get more out of the festival… Murder at the Savoy was our next stop, a lighthearted light opera about a murder in an opera company, featuring Roderick what owns the house in which we live and directed by Fiona what also owns the house in which we live. It was a relief to find that this was really quite delightful!

Almost at the end… one more weekend to go, plus a few straggler events… not far now…

…but that can wait.

~`morgue

* Okay, a rant for this time. Basically, my logic goes like this: if global warming isn’t happening but we act like it is, then some corporations get messed up. If global warming is happening but we act like it isn’t, then the whole world gets messed up. I know which I value more. Arguing over the finer points of the proof is a complete blind alley. Rant rant rant…

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent November 2003]

Three months of very severe busy. Here’s some short-form updates:
* we did the festival
* we had many visitors, including Lucy and John, Kirsten, Leon and Matt E
* I supervised the steady expansion of a bookshop-based roleplaying club
* I scored a freelance web content development contract for really quite stupid money
* Cal got a big exciting job
* we travelled through England
* lots and lots of other stuff

I’ve been just about bouncing off the walls this past week, desperate to get some time to catch up on all the things I need to catch up on, including this. And now the time has arrived – Matt has been kicked ou^H^H^H sadly left us, and I can stay late at work and tap out this email. Smoove.

I believe I promised a Festival report. Here goes.

—–

FEST

The Edinburgh Festival is, as we like to say back home, world famous in New Zealand. It’s a big deal if a Kiwi act makes it to the festival, and even bigger if they actually do well. I was waiting for the Festival from the moment I decided to stick around in Edinburgh, determined to see every damn thing I could manage.

It’s actually a bunch of festivals all running simultaneously. Wellingtonians, imagine the Jazz Festival, the Film Festival, the Festival of the Arts and the Fringe all at once and you’re getting the idea. The bulk of the fest is the Fringe – which operates according to the ‘you bring it, we’ll list it’ system of welcoming all comers.

The real competition in the Fringe is for venues. The big venues, such as the Gilded Balloon and the Assembly Rooms, are able to pick and choose the best of the best, and they release their own Festival brochures featuring their own acts. Their reputations are sound indeed. A lot of other people come to the Festival with shows to put on, and every conceivable venue is used. There were something like 200 different venues for the Festival. The competition means the venues cost a fair chunk of cash, and that comes through in the ticket prices – the Festival this year was filled with lamentations for the lost days of yore when tickets were £3 and innovative risky shows weren’t put off coming by the cost of the venue. This led to a rival festival down the road in the cheaper confines of Leith, a ‘people’s festival’ where the tickets weren’t extortionate and the bars weren’t full of pissed London-based comedians. An interesting situation and you can probably tell I’m about to start ranting about my point of view on it all, but I know you’re not bloody interested in that lot, so I’ll skip to the good stuff.

On Weds July 30 Caroline and I had a pre-Festival warm-up with ‘Jeremy Hardy vs the Israeli Army’, a documentary following a London-based comedian who went to Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement. Harrowing stuff, and the filmmaker was on hand to talk about the film afterwards. It was a good document of the ISM’s people and processes, which served as a good counterpoint to some of the hysterical propaganda that circulated about them following the deaths of ISM activists Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall. Sobering, but enlightening and ultimately a rewarding experience.

It was to be a very political Festival. Many performances were commenting on the Middle East situation, almost without exception being very critical of the Bush administration and the UK’s role in what is seen over here as ‘Bush’s war’. Perhaps the strangest outcome was the infamous Comedy Terrorist, Aaron Barschak, desperately trying to wring a show out of the time he crashed a royal birthday party dressed as Osama. (Now *that* frenzy was something to be seen.) He was ignored by audiences, although every outlet reviewed the show, and the consensus was ‘terrible, you have to feel sorry for him’. It was an odd direction for the often-scornful media to throw some sympathy.

I didn’t go and see Aaron Barschak. I relate this story here simply because the 2003 festival will be remembered for him; and because one of the newspaper profiles revealed his co-conspirator, the Colonel Tom Parker to his Elvis: none other than New Zealand’s own “comedy genius”, Brendhan Lovegrove. (I apologise if anyone reading this is a friend of Brendhan, or a fan, but seriously, the guy never gave me anything other than vague bodily discomfort.) So there’s a Kiwi connection you won’t read about on http://www.nzedge.com/!!

Anyway. Politics out of the way, we kicked off our Festival with the very funny Wicker Woman on July 31, which I picked because I love ‘The Wicker Man’ and, well, why not give it a shot? It turned out to be a fortuitous selection, as these reviews make clear: http://www.population3.co.uk/reviews.shtml. A damn good show, although it never did hit it big.

You might wonder how it is that a show like this, with such excellent reviews, could fail to succeed? Simply put, the competition is intense. There is so much happening so fast that it’s hard for cream to rise to the
top. But Population 3 will not be forgotten – sometimes it takes a year or two to build up the word of mouth. Case in point: Flight of the Conchords.

Kiwiland’s folktastic duo were the underground rumble at last year’s fringe, the show the comedians wanted to see. This year, they came in with no publicity machine, a show they’d cobbled together at the last minute, and a good rep with the right people. I knew they were out there, but I wasn’t interested in seeing them. I can see those guys anytime back home. Any time.

Instead we welcomed August with ‘Homage to Louis’ from the Jazz and Blues Fest. The venue wasn’t what I was hoping for – it had all the ambience of an old folk’s home, and the audience was mostly grey. But quite frankly I didn’t care. It was a great show, covering Louis Armstrong’s whole career, with a lot of emphasis on some of his wilder early material. I’ve never seen any appeal in tribute acts, but this one worked for me, even the lead singer doing his best Satchmo scratchy voice for the vocals. Brilliant stuff.

We followed with a bit of stand-up, the Cream of Irish Comedy. Cue joke about how the cream has curdled, or whatever. I have never seen a comedian die as thoroughly as the last guy here did. Yikes. NOT FUNNY.

Sunday. We zoomed into town in time for Dark Earth, one of the big events of the theatre programme, a shadowy portrayal of Glasgow urbanites coming across a family scrabbling a living in the Scottish borders. I liked it a lot, although the ending crossed over into an unappealing hysteria (theatre seems to do this a lot – it has its big emotional scream-and-shout finales without really justifying the emotions on display). It’s been criticised for being too allegorical, or for cramming too much social commentary in, but that didn’t bother me in the slightest. I got a lot out of it.

We spilled out into the daylight and rounded the corner in time to enjoy the Cavalcade that was the proper opening of the festival. Float after float after float, most of them advertising some show or other, all led by the massed ranks of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo’s marching bands. Phenomenal fun.

Then back around the corner to catch some physical theatre from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. It was called The Human Show, and after watching it we scored free tickets to Joe: The Infinite Universe immediately following. Physical theatre’s not my thing and my appreciation for dance doesn’t go much beyond the level of ‘hey, that’s cool’, but it was a nice afternoon’s entertainment.   I enjoyed Joe a lot. I’m not even gonna try and describe it. There were bodies, they moved, there was lighting, there was sound, there was a science lecture.

Then we cannoned across-town to the Underbelly for The Mighty Dread, a piece of hip-hop theatre about a south London rapper who can’t be emotionally honest to his girl and loses her – and then challenges Love itself to a verbal showdown. That was the hook that grabbed me – verbal sparring with an anthro’d Love sounded wild, and since it hadn’t been too long ago that 8 Mile had mainstreamed battle rhyming I was counting on some good stuff. It turned out I liked pretty much everything *except* the battle – after an hour of build up it amounted to three brief stanzas: ‘love sucks’/’no it doesn’t, chill out’/’oh, okay then’ which was a sad anticlimax. I’d wanted a roaring swirling philosophical debate cat-and-mouse wordwar and I just didn’t get it. Still, they’re a young company and I enjoyed the show, so I’m not going to bitch any longer. At least they had some non-white faces on stage, anyway.

The night was to end with Live Ghost Hunt, a mock-doc ‘let’s find some ghosts in this very building’ piece of broad comedy. It was nice and occasionally innovative but quite mild, really – I think it would have worked better with a pint or two fizzing up my brain. Still, made me jump when they sprang the ghost on us, which was at least part of the point.

And that was that. We trundled off home, collapsed and slept. It was the end of Sunday 3 August.   Only 25 more days of festival!

MORE TO COME…
———

I have about 2 weeks until our next visitor turns up, so I’ll try and be disciplined and get all caught up by then…

Wish me luck!

Morgan

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent September 2003]

It’s been a crazy and enlightening year.

Thanks to everyone who’s read these emails.

Thanks to everyone I’ve met.

Thanks to everyone waiting for me back home.

Life is sweet.

~`morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent September 2003]

Most of you will probably have heard about ‘flash mobbing’, where crowds of people suddenly gather to perform a pointless act and then disperse.

This is not one of those. This is a FlashMorgue.

This Thursday, September 11, marks the one year anniversary of my departure from New Zealand. To celebrate/commiserate, I hereby summon all my friends and family currently in Wellington, New Zealand to a FlashMorgue.

The FlashMorgue will take place on the north side of the pedestrian crossing on Courtenay Place, the one down the Embassy end. Specifically, it will take place in the view of the webcam here:
http://citylink.co.nz/services/webcam/courtenay/

The FlashMorgue will take place on Thursday evening. Please gather at the FlashMorgue site at 7.56pm precisely.

Greet your fellow FlashMorguers with good cheer and hearty wellwishing. (Singing is entirely appropriate but not compulsory.)

Somewhere between 7.59 and 8.03pm, the webcam will update, recording an image of the FlashMorgue for posterity.

At 8.06pm, please disperse. Or, alternatively, go to a drinking salon of your collective choice, I’m in Scotland so I don’t particularly mind either way and even if I did there’s not much I could do about it.

I encourage all Wellingtonians to attend this FlashMorgue, and all non-Wellingtonians to attend virtually. (In the UK, for example, you’ll want to refresh the link above about 9.05am on Thursday.)

Have fun, and most importantly, be safe.

NOTE:
I will organise a reward for anyone who comes in one of the following costumes:
* a spooky cow
* a bemused moose
* a pigphone
* a Jon Ball

Additionally, the spirits of the east and west inform me that anyone attending who is waving a flag of any description at the precise moment the camera shoots will experience good luck for the remainder of the week. So wave those flags, superstitious folk!

———

I have a big email about the festival coming, but I haven’t written it yet. In the meantime, I will relate to you the following brief story. Today in the work café as I was ordering a panini (cheese and mushroom), a girl stopped me and asked, are you from New Zealand? To which I replied, Kate? Kate Druce?

We were both a bit surprised at our feat of memory, because the last time we saw each other was in about 1989. And we weren’t even friends then – we only ever met a couple of times. (Through the kid’s journo pages of the Evening Post, as it happens. Mum, you may dig through your archives now and find an exact date.)

Of course, this being a “New Zealanders all know each other” story, I expect that many of you will also know Kate Druce. If you do, please reply. I’m curious to see whether the law will prove true.

—-

The sun is shining and I am a happy morgue. Peace, love!

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent August 2003]

STOCKHOLM

One month ago, Caroline and I got on a bus, then we got on a train, then we got on a plane, and in a few hours we were in Stockholm.

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to being able to do that. This is one of the reasons New Zealanders travel – from New Zealand, it’s a huge effort to get pretty much anywhere except Australia. Over this side of the world, it’s as simple as logging on to the net and seeing where cheap flights are going and just going there.

As it was a cheap flight, ‘Stockholm’ really meant ‘Skavsta, one hour twenty minutes by bus south of Stockholm’. We landed in a small airport in a forest as dusk was coming on. It was not like any other forest I’ve been in. The trees were hulking and sleepy, and swallows looped above us catching insects.

(Okay, I don’t know if they were swallows. I don’t know from birds. But ‘swallow’ plus ‘loop’ makes you think of ‘swoop’ and that’s also what they were doing. Poetic license, y’see.)

We piled on the bus and rolled on out. The scenery was great – forested banks of hillside, sky-catching lakes, clear blue sky deepening into darkness. It was a young and delicate landscape, a teenager blossoming into adulthood compared to the grumpy ancient mariner of Scotland. Not nearly so
young as Aotearoa New Zealand, of course; my home country’s hills and coasts seem only half-made, fresh from the womb.

It was still light, barely, as we came into Stockholm itself. The city is fascinating, spread out over islands and peninsulae linked by bridges, beautiful. Intriguing, also, because the islands and curves of the harbour put a strange shape to the city, preserve it from singularity. Each curving shoreline of each island instead offers its own individual Stockholm, giving way to the others gracefully as you walk along. We walked everywhere. That first night we walked from the new town across the central island Gamla Stan, the old town. It isn’t a large island – a brisk walk from one side to the other would be an easy five minutes – but it was within these shores that Stockholm grew and was bounded for centuries.

We were staying in an old police station, converted to a hotel a few decades back, on Sodermalm, the southern island which is apparently the hotbed of alternative student culture. I didn’t see much of that to speak of, but it was a nice neighbourhood. It’s a great city to wander at night, so peaceful and safe. Close to midnight we wandered through some parks and women were sitting alone under lamps reading novels. It’s that kind of place. The pace never got near to hectic while we were there. Cyclists were the biggest threat and often the fastest thing around, and there were huge numbers of them. Cal noticed the odd sight of ‘bike cemeteries’, corners of public spaces were cycles were left never to be collected. The ones on the outside looked fine – but away in the centre, at the wall, they were little more than rust skeletons.

A wrecked vehicle is also at the centre of Stockholm’s highlight: the Vasa Museum. (“Whoa, nice transition, morgue!” “That’s why you’re the DJ and I’m the rapper. Word is bond.”) In 1628 the warship Vasa sailed from Stockholm. It didn’t make it very far – a few minutes after launch it keeled over and sank. The Vasa was lost under the waves, not too much further away than a particularly good stone’s throw. And, in time, it was forgotten.

Except by obsessive history buffs and salvage experts. One of these found it and funded an ambition campaign to lift it. It emerged from the water in 1961, and stands now in a museum constructed to hold it. And it’s *astonishing*.

It’s a huge 17th century warship in a room. It’s mounted upright and moodily lit and you can do everything short of walk on board. It’s very well-preserved because the low salt content in the water means the worms that devour the wood of other wrecks can’t survive in this harbour. It has been restored where necessary with great sensitivity, clearly indicating which bits of wood are new restoration and which bits are original (answer: the new-looking ones are new, the old-looking ones aren’t). There are full-size reproductions of much of the carvings painted up in the same gaudy colours of the original, right next to the originals in place on the ship, long-since bleached of colour. There are hundreds of explanatory points. There’s so much information you could drown in it. It’s an amazingly successful museum. It does everything a museum should do and does it with great style.

And it just so happens that this excellent museum houses perhaps the most rawly impressive historical artefact that will ever be discovered.

It’s a winning combination. If you’re nautically inclined, it’s worth the trip just for this.

Stockholm is not just a ship in a museum, of course, but that’s all I’m going to tell you about. (Okay, also a brief plug for the city’s comic library, located in a high-profile city-centre building – Bryan Talbot original art exhibition!) It’s a pretty cool place. It’s very much a city, though. If you love visiting cities this will suit you well, if you hate them this won’t convert you.   However, it’s a small city, with lots of parks and water, and that suits me just fine.

Also, there were lots of mooses, so myself and Miss Moose felt quite at home. (No real mooses, sadly. But then, neither myself nor Miss Moose are real mooses either.)

Last word: if you end up in an underground pizza joint in the Sodermalm where no-one speaks English, get out while you can. The grumpy staff and dire food just ain’t the kinda dining experience you want.

Peace, love and mooses

~`morgan moose

(Dean: we *tried* to find local food, but failed – I still don’t know what local food *is* in Stockholm.)

(Erik: thanks for your email! If we’d had more prep time I would have warned you that we were coming, even though you probably would have been nowhere near Stockholm at the time. You’re most welcome to come over to Edinburgh any time! And I haven’t forgotten the photo…)

(All: read this blog: http://www.stonesoup.co.nz/chinashop/)

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent August 2003]

EDINBURGH

I see the city through new eyes as Caroline discovers it. It’s beautiful, that old town skyline across Princes St like nothing else on earth. The Museum of Edinburgh has some good maps and models of what the town was once like, and suddenly it snaps into place, the way the old structure of the town lies beneath the new, the simple logic of two parallel streets, one leading up to the castle, one to the market below the castle, and a loch on the other side. It’s a logic that’s still working itself out, an invisible strata woven through a city’s life. Edinburgh’s beating heart is the Castle and the old town beside it, and the new town and other expansions are simply branches reaching out for more sun. Everyone who lives in Edinburgh understands this, and everyone who visits senses it on some level. Part of understanding Edinburgh is seeing how the past silently manifests in the present – it’s no wonder Edinburgh’s famed for its ghosts.

The two best spooky tours in the city are the Mary Kings Close and the City of the Dead. (This is their reputation, anyway – I haven’t been on any others.) Mary Kings Close is an old street that once ran down from the High Street, up towards the Castle, down the hillside to the Loch. The bottom two thirds were demolished at various times, but the top third was built over the top of and remains to this day – an entire street in the cellar of one of Edinburgh’s largest buildings. The tour winds you down into the dark, through reconstructions of the living conditions of Edinburgh’s citizens and featured oddities that have given this Close its sinister reputation – plague-troubled, site of a celebrated murder, and site of at least three significant ghost stories. But it’s walking up the Close at the end of the tour that has the most impact, laundry hung plaintively between the narrow buildings, steep and slippery stone underfoot, and a heavy stone darkness above like a night that has forgotten how to dawn, a street unchanged, an alley that is the opposite of modernity. Then out on to the spine of the city, the Castle waiting just beyond, and the feeling that the city knows its past, even if those who walk across it don’t.

City of the Dead is less worried about imparting knowledge and more about sharing an experience. It’s the only night tour that takes in Greyfriar’s Kirkyard, where Edinburgh has buried tens of thousands of its dead in unmarked graves, where the seeds of the Civil War were sown by signatories to the National Covenant, where a little dog became famous for its loyalty to its dead master.   Greyfriar’s Kirkyard has another claim to renown as well, as the site of one of the better documented hauntings you’re ever going to come across.

The story goes that in 1998 the mausoleum of “Bloody” MacKenzie, vicious persecutor of the Covenanters, was desecrated by a homeless man; since then the kirkyard has been a site of strange supernatural activity, most notably in the Covenanter’s Prison, a long aisle of mausoleums concealed behind the Kirk. Here, in the Black Mausoleum, hundreds of tour parties have experienced inexplicable occurrences, being pinched or pushed or breathed on or even collapsing unconscious.

Sounded cool to me.

The guide led us on a somewhat elaborate route around the Old Town, down narrow wynds and along the cowgate, cheerily telling of the tortures and atrocities in the city’s medieval past. Then into the Kirkyard itself, dark and only a little bit spooky (I had come here to sit in the sun and eat sandwiches many times, so I suppose my defences were strengthened). We heard of those who had died and been buried here, or indeed those who had graverobbed.

Finally, past the Mackenzie tomb and into the Covenanter’s Prison and, finally, the ominous Black Mausoleum…

I don’t believe in ghosts. However, I also don’t *not* believe in ghosts. I’ve heard about, and even experienced, enough strange stuff to at least have an open mind.

But that doesn’t even matter, because visiting the Black Mausoleum didn’t have anything to do with whether or not I thought ghosts were a real phenomenon. Really, I just wanted to have a bit of a scare. I like watching scary movies and I particularly like it when they scare me.

We’re herded into the Black Mausoleum. It’s basically a big stone chamber, featureless. I end up right at the back. Right in the corner at the back. It’s a bit cold. And dark – it’s dark. The only light comes from the
entrance – from the tour leader in the doorway. He has us all packed in and he starts to explain about poltergeists, how they work, what it feels like when you’re in a cold spot… he keeps things moving, but there’s a lot to get through, and I’m stuck in there at the back in the darkness, the wall is right behind me… and I’m reminded by one of the testimonies I’d read before coming, from the guy who was standing right at the back when he heard scratching on the stone right behind him…

The infamous Todman Street flat was haunted, of course, and not just by the ghost of decades of parties. At least, that was its reputation. Sometimes, when I’d walk up the stairs late at night, the place where the ghost was supposed to appear, I’d be chilled, and I’d hurry up to my room as fast as I could. Because it’s fun to be spooked.

When I signed Cal and I up for the tour, I wanted the same kind of spooky. And I got it. In spades. Stuck at the back, in the dark… my legs kept feeling extremely cold, which is how a supernatural ‘cold spot’ starts, so I hopped from one to the other and tried not to look over my shoulder…

I had spent all day hoping that someone would faint (over 100 have done so on the tour so far), that scratches would be found on someone’s arms, that *something* weird would happen in the Black Mausoleum. But when I was in there at midnight, stuck at the back in the corner, I feel no shame in
telling you I was desperately hoping the opposite. I was spooked. And that’s the name of the game.

It’s a good piece of fun. The guys taking the tour know how to work human suggestibility to their advantage and are good at drawing out moments to set your nerves on edge – but don’t worry, they’re not in the business of giving heart attacks and they crack a lot of jokes to break the tension. The
nerves end up on edge anyway, because the place has a reputation, and maybe all those faintings and scratches aren’t just co-incidences or accidental self-hypnosis or hysteria… maybe…

Curious ghosthunters can read more at http://www.blackhart.uk.com/cod_old/eyewitness.html

NOSTALGIALICIOUS

Before leaving Edinburgh for London to pick up Cal, I hooked up briefly with Maryanne Garry, a Psychology professor from my student days who was in town for a conference with students in tow. In one of those typical every-Kiwi-is-only-two-degrees from-any-other-Kiwi things, friend Alastair was in town and catching up with one of his friends who was one of Maryanne’s students and in town with her. Anyway, I turned up and we caught up. I got to update her on the whereabouts of many of her ‘98 class, some of whom are reading this. (You know who you are. How could you forget?) And all was sweetness and light and utterly nostalgialicious. Snappy.

Take care everyone.
morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent August 2003]

LONDON

Sun in blue sky, a lonely admiral. Isle of Dogs, dead hot. Sitting on grass in a park watching the Thames, top arc of the eye of London imperceptibly shifting in the distance, Caroline appears before my eyes for the first time in ten months. It really does feel like no time was lost.

On Tottenham Court Road is snappy hotel the Grafton, Edwardian apparently, forced windows open to fight back the heat. Walkable to everywhere. Two days walking London, no buses, no tube, sewing streets and sights together as we go. Nothing sorts out your geography of a city like walking it, not even buses. (Of course, bus and tube everywhere on the last two days – we’re not stupid.)

Hard bustle of Oxford Street. That beautiful curve of Regent St, my personal symbol of London. Eros and McDonald’s billboards in Piccadilly Circus.   Settled moments in Leicester Square. Cleopatra’s Needle beside a mucky, thrilling Thames. Covent Garden bursting with music and shade. Westminster, St Pauls, Fleet Street, Soho, Trafalgar Square.

The Brit Museum, my second time, still didn’t manage more than a fraction of it. A show – The Madness of George Dubya, Kubrick’s Strangelove reworked into musical contemporary satire. Ride the Eye, surprised to find it underwhelming, an uncommon sentiment it seems but there you go. Drinking in a London pub, 11pm closing time and homeward stagger, traditional.

Catch up with many wonderful Londonites. Big party out at Frank and Sam’s, backyard barbecue no less. Regent’s Park, James Park, Russell Square, Embankment Gardens, other greens. The Diana hubcap. Tower Hill and the shortest Jack the Ripper tour ever. Dinner in Brick Lane, new heartthrob locale for the BritLit scene, where eager and sincere young men fiercely pimp their eating establishment, throwing in free drinks and discounts to tempt you inside.

Wander the shoulders-back grid of Bloomsbury, absorbing the scene, randomly stumble into an enormous book traders fair full of squinting hobbyists evaluating first editions.   Later trip to Spitalfield’s market, the market is empty except for a rather good organic café. The Tate Modern, as full of stunning work as the last time I was there, enormous black Pinocchio riff outside.

London. Absolute magic.

(I bored all the Londoners with my muttering on about it, not to mention Cal who heard it about eight thousand times, but I’m going to say it again – the congestion charge in central London has reduced traffic on the streets to about a third of what it was. It’s amazing the change – it’s like a totally different city. It’s easy to cross the road, the buses rattle along at a healthy pace instead of being just the sitting-down version of walking, noise is down to a healthy shout, the air is cleaner, and the pressure isn’t so intense. It’s a happier place. Give that man what done this a Knighthood already.)

———

JUDITH

I don’t exactly know what to say about this but it’d feel false to leave it out. This was never really a travel journal so much as a bunch of rants about what is on my mind. I’m just going to type and see what comes out.

My friend Judith O’Sullivan died on Wednesday of cancer. She was at home in Upper Hutt with family.

On my third day in London, back in September, I spent a wonderful day wandering Greenwich with Elizabeth and Roland (who were, you will recall, my exceedingly kind and generous hosts). As we walked I received a phone call from Judith, to make contact, welcome me to London, and invite me to a party that very evening. I was pleased she rang, because it gave me a chance to tell Elizabeth and Roland one of my favourite stories.

In New Zealand there’s a film festival each year devoted to showing unusual, non-mainstream cinema from around the globe. One year on the bill was the infamous live-action manga ‘The Story of Ricky’, a martial arts flick so stupid, ridiculous and disgustingly extreme that it attained instant classic status among odd-movie aficionados around the world. I went with a small group of people including my friend Billy, who brought along his old friend Judith who I’d never met before. Not only did Judith enjoy the film, but at its conclusion, she ran out into the street and stood there in the rain, stopping traffic, doing kung-fu kicks.

Naturally, we all fell instantly in love with her. (Except Billy, who was used to it.)

I love that story. (That’s the short version, but the longer one just has more description in it.)   It’s just so… random and cool. It’s actually important to me, I’ve told it so many times it’s become something of a symbol to me. Symbolic of what exactly I’m not sure. I’m not even sure any more how much of it is true. Not that that matters, because the spirit of it is absolutely right, as all who knew Judith would agree. She was mad in the best possible sense.

She ended up in Auckland and we didn’t see each other often (although she did turn up at one of those infamous Todman Street parties) but we did stay in sporadic touch, even after she moved to London. Really, I was only a minor figure in her life, and she was only a minor figure in mine, but she was a friend. More importantly, she was an incredibly good friend to Billy, who is still pretty much the other me. It’s deeply strange that she is gone.

I didn’t go to the party that day in September. Can’t even remember why not, some lame excuse whose details I’ve forgotten. I figured I’d drop in on her at the Bodyworks exhibition before I left to Rome. Didn’t manage that either – disorganised and short of time. And by the time I got back to London the cancer had been diagnosed and she’d gone back to New Zealand.

Billy, and everyone else close to Judith, I don’t really know what to say. All the usual sentiments I guess, sincerely meant. Peace, and love.

(Don’t get too gloomy, all you readers, that’s the last thing she’d want. Just think how cool it would be to see a girl stopping traffic doing kung fu in the middle of the road in the rain. And however cool you think it’d be – trust me, it was way, way cooler than that.)

———

Take care out there everyone.

~`morgan

What I’m reading:
The Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

Just finished:
The Atrocity Exhibition by JG Ballard
Amaryllis Night and Day by Russell Hoban