Category Archives: Culture

October 29, 2011 · 11:40 am

St PAUL’S, PIGEONS AND WAS JESUS A SOCIALIST?

No wonder Giles Fraser, the departing Cannon Chancellor of St Pauls has become a bit of a hero, in the face of the Church, as very much the establishment, invoking Health and Safety to defeat the voice of the unwashed crowd. ‘I can imagine Jesus being born in the Camp’ he said, invoking the age-old debate of whether Christ was or would have been a Socialist, that in an English tradition has proud antecedents that go back to the Civil War Diggers and Levellers. So, was he?

It is marvellous how many wealthy friends invoke that old saw about Rendering unto Caesar. Namely Christ was about another place, whether within or up there, and we can get on with all our greed and self-interest, and worry about Camels and Eyes of Needles later. On the other hand, one who did recently, and a Catholic, reminded me of the Priest in Rome last year who, at Christmas Time furiously ushered an old beggar woman from his porch opposite the Trevi Fountain, into the lashing rain, because she seemed to be upsetting the smart tourists.

Didn’t Christ drive the Money Lenders out of the Temple and wasn’t that Kingdom of Heaven, within or above, about the love of mankind? Even if that wasn’t a revolutionary fire, you can hardly imagine him siding with the Corporation of London. He may not have excluded the redemption seeking Tax Collector, but surely the point was the redemption, not the 49% pay rise! A Nigerian SuperPreacher on Unreported World last night, peddling Sunglasses and Prosperity, also a huge tradition in American Evangelism, would not agree either. He tried to claim that Jesus, that Carpenter’s son, had an accountant! Get thee behind me… But since this did all begin in New York, we wonder if American visitors and tourists realise that Socialism is not the dirty word here that it still is in America, though that is changing. It’s roots reach into the National Health Service, the Fabian traditions of the 19th Century, the Library and Schools movments, and the Enlightenments of Robert Owen. They also stretch into the report on Tuberculosis in Wales which the Phoenix Ark Founder’s Grandfather wrote, that influenced the Beveridge Report.

Not that the blitz spirit seeking Occupy London protestors would necessarily align themselves with the Church at all, and probably woke up to the sudden media coup, as the argument began. If God Moves in Mysterious Ways, perhaps he sent the Devil down in a dream to inspire the authorities to close their doors, so the Cameras would turn and actually hear what the protestors are saying. But since we publish Children’s Books and one, Michelangelo’s Mouse, involves St Francis, perhaps it’s best to remember not just people, but London’s other great tourist draw, pigeons, and quote from the Shermann Brother’s haunting song from Mary Poppins. Though its melancholy might only encourage those invested in the natural, enormous and increasing disparities of Capitalism, with their trickle down patronage and reluctant hand outs.

Early each day to the steps of Saint Paul’s
The little old bird woman comes.
In her own special way to the people she calls,
“Come, buy my bags full of crumbs.
Come feed the little birds, show them you care
And you’ll be glad if you do.
Their young ones are hungry,
Their nests are so bare;
All it takes is tuppence from you.”
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag,
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.

1 Comment

Filed under Community, Culture, London

Tagged as , , , , ,

October 29, 2011 · 10:43 am

DERREN BROWN’S REMOTE CONTROL!

After the brilliance of the first in the hypnotist Derren Brown’s new series ‘The Experiments’, he rather shot himself in the foot with Remote Control. Under the guise of a new Game Show he got the audience, wearing white face masks to make them anonymous and part of the snarling crowd, to vote on whether a victim should experience nice or nasty events, in a filmed evening, using actors around him he did not know about. It is perfectly true they voted to take him straight down the nasty path, to the point of losing his job, having his TV smashed, being arrested and then kidnapped. That led to a staged escape and a car accident, although by then the victim had been supplanted by an actor, so it was just shock effect.

But firstly it was little surprise, since in the studio setting, and with continuous encouragement from Brown, they were constantly given permission to push the ‘drama’. You imagine too that they assumed that in the long run the victim would be protected from real harm, as in fact he was. But more importantly, just like the TV evangelist programme, when a theatre was filmed at a different angle to look fuller than it was, there were moments when the either-or votes may have gone in favour of the bad over good turn of events, but you were not told by how much, unless it was 80% for the bad right at the start. 60-40 was not so terrible for the human race, at one point, especially when being encouraged.

It was all rather distasteful in the end, however shocking it was a producer invaded his house and was encouraged to smash his TV with a base-ball bat. It was the show itself that set up the pretence he had lost his job. It taught us nothing new about crowd behaviour, human cruelty, or manipulation and indeed Brown is making a deal of money out of it. He has great talent, but is best when he pushes the envelope with more serious programmes like the one on ‘The Assassin’ and links to real cases like Robert Kennedy. Not only did this audience feel under Remote Control though, but the wider audience too, and for the sake of what TV is constantly about, entertainment. The medium is the message!

22 Comments

Filed under Culture, Science

Tagged as , , ,

October 25, 2011 · 4:22 pm

HURTING WITH THE HURT LOCKER

We think The Hurt Locker not only deserved its six Oscars, but is one of the best war films ever made. Sparse, with the excitement of a thriller, but often replacing big noise and big feeling music with ambient sound, its documentary style is wonderfully un-manipulative. There are no Rides of the Valkerie, no aching violins, as young men are shredded in slow motion, by deliciously explosive gunfire. But the tension is agonising, at times, and the pity of war clear too, along with its excitement and meaning, as we follow the exploits of a bomb disposal unit in Iraq.

Here nastiness goes on on both sides, not mined with a shovel, but glanced at as almost normal in war, but its effect in showing the horror of war too is just as real. The moment a body bomb steps into the scene, you are revolted by what is possible, but the reversal of that later, exposing the fog of war, is done quite brilliantly. At every turn it avoids cliché, or the obvious. Through that, and participating so intimately in the first hand action, you are almost completely on the US soldiers’ sides, as men bonded in action naturally become. They are the flawed heroes and their humanity and vulnerability is underlined throughout.

Ralph Fiennes’s brief appearance as a mercenary is suitably understated, in a desert fight that is agonising and utterly convincing, but the acting stars go straight to Jeremy Renner. The Hurt Locker becomes not only his bomb suit, of course only there to keep a body together under impact, but the diffused devices he keeps under his army bed too, the triggers to what might have been. What he has to live with and survive daily. There comes the revelation of the other hurt in the background, a marriage and a kid back home. Another kind of ‘real life’. The film’s tension, humanity and understatement was perhaps tripped up by the Stepford Wives element at the end, because it is implicit, but it does not matter, and in the calendar countdown throughout, you begin to realise that men like that, hooked on such extremes, only really have one place to go. As for Katherine Bigelow, who won best Director, the first time a woman has, perhaps it takes an intelligent woman to tell us the truth of war and men. Remember though, like so much good work, it was based on a novel.

Leave a comment

Filed under Culture, Stories

Tagged as , , , ,

October 24, 2011 · 1:35 pm

ANONYMOUS, EDUCATION AND THE PLAYER’S BLOG!

We haven’t seen Anonymous yet, the ‘Shakespeare was a fraud’ Roland Emmerich movie. But it was very interesting speaking to James Shapiro recently, the American Shakespeare academic. He appeared on stage with Emmerich in New york to argue the merits of the almost completely discredited Edward Devere theory, that emerged in the twenties, about Shakespeare really being the Earl of Oxford. Perhaps the strongest argument was that Devere was called ‘The Spear Shaker’ at court but, as Shapiro and many others say, no serious academic credits the Devere theory at all, the man was named as a writer during his lifetime and his work does not scratch the Bard.

It is interesting how the ‘lovie’ establishment has divided, with such a brilliant cast in Emmeric’s movie, including Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi. On the other side, the old fashioned Shakespeare and Stratford side, apparently come the likes of Ian Mckellan and Simon Russell Beale. It seems odd that the likes of Rylance, admitting the plays sometimes had joint authorship, should not believe such a man could have been a ‘common man’. Indeed, it seems rather crucial to contemporary arguments about Free Schools in Britain, like Toby Young’s. We think genius can come from anywhere, and Stratford’s free school was probably a very good one, not to mention the fact the Ardens were of a fairly grand Catholic lineage. Not only that, but Shakespeare emerged precisely at a time when the Players were being patronised by and mingled directly at Court. It is a vital part of Shakespeare’s story, as is the linguistic explosion, in an age that saw writers process to the grave of Edmund Spencer to throw in their quills, while the Players were the newspapers of their time, or perhaps bloggers is better! Nowadays we lionize film-makers not writers, and at that, in this case and in the name of the lad from Stratford, we shake our spears crudely!

Shapiro’s argument, and it seems American Academics care more than we seem to in the UK, is very much about education. He is indignant that Anonymous is being taught as ‘truth’ in US Schools, complete with study aids. We share that indignation, and one also about the likely truth of history, and the presentation of Queen Elizabeth as being DeVere’s incestuous mother. ‘It’s only a movie’ countered Emmeric in that debate, but when you are dealing with possible history and Shakespeare it isn’t good enough. You have to apply some discipline of fact and possibility. First there is that schooling and background debate, Shapiro worries is treated with the laxity of the Creationism argument in American schools, fact versus faith, secondly there is historical accuracy, thirdly a mind like Shakespeare’s. One, working on a novel here, we think breathes the world of Stratford, the forest of Arden in As You Like It, as it does London and the opening world, including the New World. Above all though, the plays are completely forged in the crucible of the working, living theatre, it is their prevailing metaphor, not written by some nob from the wings. Perhaps it picks up a point in a book called The Closing of The American Mind, which suggested everyone nowadays picks up Socrate’s saw that he ‘knew nothing’, but at High School and Grad level, rather than a lifetime’s struggle for insight and knowledge. Then only the Scriptwriter and the money source for Anonymous is American.

You MUST go an see Anonymous, some critics cry, loving the famous Emmerich production values, and calling to the fact the Bard plays with history and truth all the time. Well yes, but the contempt for the players themselves, and their kind of heroism, seems hugely off-putting, especially in the excerpts, making Shakespeare so revolting that they distort any possible argument against Devere. You want him to ‘win’. Of course Shakespeare played with historical truth for his own theatrical purposes, his own extraordinary but changing visions, but then to so play fast and loose with a real man, above all a mind, and an extraordinary theatrical and cultural moment too, seems just not good enough. It is a work, whether it wins an audience here or not, for our age of Anxiety and Conspiracy, though Emmerich is certainly an interesting man and film-maker. The last thing it is is true, or even historical, unless you like the values of Titus Andronicus, perhaps, when the Bard was trying to put bums on seats, with his stories ‘baked in a pie’. Though Shapiro suggests the Emmerich camp are fantatic believers in their ’cause’. The problem, as Shapiro points out, is that twenty years ago it would have been laughed out of ‘court’, and now perhaps no-one cares at all. What is more likely though, in our age of democratised images, Conspiracies and huge anxiety, where fantasy and fact have become so confused, partly because of the camera and movies, to fuel all that, than the sloppiness of thought and research that means the ones who dominate our culture cannot be trusted with a true genius at all? It is important where that genius came from, how it grew and what it represents for an age. On the other hand, perhaps we’ll go and see it, even if controversy is what sells, and one merit is the interest in Shakespeare! In the meantime, wondering about the conspiracy of how and why films get made, we will by-line this blog Yours Anonymous.

Leave a comment

Filed under America and the UK, Culture, Education

Tagged as , , ,

October 23, 2011 · 9:06 pm

BRING BACK SPOOKS

Phoenix Ark Press have it on indisputable authority that members of the serving Foreign Office, and probably the Intelligence Services, are not allowed to watch Spooks. Pity, because not only is it fun, despite some silly, very melodramatic bits, but with a real finger on the pulse. It began as a very creaky series and got better and better, tempting in Simon Russell Beale, although Peter Firth is the star – humane, intelligent and well acted – but now it’s over. With a human ending, on betrayal, love, the tragedy of lies, Double Dealing and redemption denied. Last minute stuff, to the wire and worthy of the Production Company Kudos. No, start a public blog to bring back Spooks, and let 5, 6 and the FO watch it too! It’s only human.

Ps with the lines ‘Cal, cal, give me the synopsis’ and the witty answer ‘bad people want to kill us’, don’t worry too much, they seem to have set it up for a full return, the Spooks!

Leave a comment

Filed under Culture

Tagged as

October 22, 2011 · 9:10 am

PAUSING THE EXPERIMENTS

Before we go over the top about Derren Brown’s ‘The Experiments’ and the last blog, perhaps a pause about the purpose and potential trickery of TV. Of course the viewer did not know about potential complicity and had to take Brown’s commentary as Gospel. Then there is editing. It worked against him in his programme about Faith Healers, when, for the purpose of a big or startling result, a US theatre was filmed at an angle to suggest an audience was far larger than it was. That is not to attack what he was saying, or revealing under hidden camera, simply the pressure for showmanship and the big story. We are all programme literate enough for that always to work against programme makers, which means that even through the lens of the camera we have an advanced capacity to sense what is real.

What was so impressive about ‘The Assassin’ was the clinical way it was approached, with subtitles explaining what was potentially happening to the subject. The use of a lie detector test too, and infra-red imaging to show the physical reality, over the mental, as subjects immersed themselves in freezing water, as Brown tried to choose his best candidate. You would have to be paranoid or a very big conspiracy theorist to believe the lot was faked for the camera. So it does underscore the possible reality of famous movies like The Manchurian Candidate or the Bourne series. But does that say anything very startling about society? We know that we are manipulated all the time, from adverts, to the positioning of products in supermarkets, advised by psychology experts, to control patterns of shopping. Newspaper proprietors know enough about the power of the press to affect politics. We know enough about history to know that crowds, individuals, whoever, can be manipulated by propaganda, made to believe virtually anything, and to act in terrible ways. Indeed, it is the power of belief that can become so frightening.

But it is that startling idea that you can so control the unconscious, to act so out of a normal pattern, and then make the subject completely forget it again too. Perhaps Brown’s point is that under the surface, ‘normality’ is a questionable thing anyway, the savage beast that lurks below the fronts of civilisation. Then, of course, there is the equally important phenomenon of the brain, its power to alter its own reality, or certainly perception of external reality, and how isolating that can be. Brown is also a great exploder of fakes, but we would love to know what he thinks about things like telepathy, premonition and also Jung’s idea of the Universal Unconscious.

Leave a comment

Filed under Culture, Science

Tagged as ,

September 11, 2011 · 1:35 pm

9/11

A post dedicated to Dinah, in Texas, because we may be grumpy, but we don’t forget friends.

After so much re-examination and seeing the photos of survivors and the fallen at 9/11 in the Sunday Times Magazine, Phoenix Ark Press want to remember the people inside, and the lives touched and harmed in so many unseen ways. We pray some other moron doesn’t try and ‘commemorate’ today with more horror and fear. Sometimes war is necessary too, the fight against evil or for freedom, but nothing is an absolute and be careful where the rage is directed and how. One of the most moving things about the 7/7 attacks in London was just the silence of Londoners, in Parliament Square, on balconies across the city, just standing side by side, to resist together. The way the War on Terror has been operated, and used as a catch all too, to mask the real movements of money and power, has many deep flaws and generates much fear. It is the principles of freedom you stand by that truly matter, not the force you use or the rules you break, and even the Arab Spring suggests one man’s terrorist is often another man’s freedom fighter. Fear itself is one of the first things you have to fight inside yourself too, because it has a natural escalation and is corrosive.

Did the philospher Francis Fukayama make a grave mistake when he wrote his thesis on The End of History though, believing in the final triumph of the Nation State and Liberal Democracy? We seem to have been in shock ever since. The world, like history, never stops turning, but those liberal values are right and must be defended. With the proviso that we understand we are on a completely interconnected planet, man, animal and biospheres, and must all wake up to it. No freedoms without responsibilities, no rights without awareness, no power without connection, and as little as possible – ‘them’ and ‘us’. To commemorate 9/11 too then, with a full knowledge of how sad and terrible it was, some other events in History, on 11th September. If you look at those ‘Today in History’ websites it is interesting how many of them are American, and so of course see the world from that perspective. So many things have happened and are happening all the time, and actually, in a dating perspective, time zones have shifted too, especially with the arrival of The Gregorian calendar, so those dates, at least the further back you get, are not exactly right either, but it makes you think. Like that song from the Flaming Lips though, that Phoenix have blogged before, today of all days, perhaps we also need a love song for the human and the beauty of nature too. There’s a power and a burning love and light in all of us if we find the courage to reconnect, and do not swallow the dark, the loneliness and the hurt.

THE FLAMING LIPS
One, two, three, four –
Do You Realize – that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize – we’re floating in space –
Do You Realize – that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize – that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes – let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun don’-go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

2010 Pastor Terry Jones announces that the Dove Outreach Center will not burn the Koran, ‘not now, not ever’
2010 The Medal of Honor is awarded for the first time since the Vietnam War; U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta in Afghanistan
2001 19 Islamist terrorists hijack four commercial jets, killing nearly 3,000 in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania
1995 Soyuz TM-22, lands
1992 Hurricane Iniki hits Kauai Hawaii; 3 die and 8,000 injured
1991 14 die in a Continental Express commuter plane crash near Houston
1988 1/3 of population argues for Estonia autonomy
1988 Sports Aid – jogging to feed the world
1987 Shoot out at Jean-Bertrand Aristides’ church in Haiti, 12 die
1986 President Mubarak receives Israeli premier Peres
1986 U.S. performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1986 Dow Jones Industrial Avg suffered biggest 1-day decline ever, plummeting 86.61 points to 1,792.89. 237.57 million shares traded
1983 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Semipalitinsk, Eastern Kazakhstan U.S.S.R.
1980 Chile adopts its constitution
1973 Chile’s President, Salvador Allende, deposed in a military coup
1969 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Semipalitinsk, Eastern Kazakhstan U.S.S.R.
1967 French president De Gaulle visits Poland
1967 Indian/Chinese border fights
1967 U.S. Surveyor 5 makes 1st chemical analysis of lunar material
1966 France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island
1965 Beatles’ “Help!,” album goes #1 and stays #1 for 9 weeks
1961 Bob Dylan’s 1st New York performance
1959 Congress passes a bill authorizing food stamps for poor Americans
1958 Great Britain performs atmospheric nuclear test at Christmas Island
1952 West German Chancellor Adenauer signs a reparation pact for Jews
1951 Stravinsky’s opera “Rake’s Progress,” premieres in Venice
1951 Florence Chadwick becomes 1st woman to swim English Channel from England to France. It takes 16 hours and 19 minutes
1946 1st mobile long-distance car-to-car telephone conversation
1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt and Churchill meet in Canada at 2nd Quebec Conference
1944 U.S. 5th pantzer division is 1st to enter nazi-Germany
1943 Allied arm forces conquerors Salerno
1943 Jewish ghettos of Minsk and Lida Belorussia liquidated
1943 Last German Q/pirate ship sinks near Easter Island
1943 U.S. and Australian troops join in Salamaua, New Guinea
1942 Transport nr 31 departs with French Jews to nazi-Germany
1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt orders any Axis ship found in American waters be shot on sight
1941 Charles Lindbergh, charges “British, Jewish and Roosevelt administration” are trying to get U.S. into WW II
1940 Hitler begins operation-Sealion (invasion England)
1939 Iraq and Saudi Arabia declare war on nazi-Germany
1930 Stomboli volcano (Sicily) throws 2-ton basaltic rocks 2 miles
1926 Spain leaves League of Nation due to Germany joining
1923 ZR-1 (biggest active dirigible) flies over New York’s tallest skyscraper, Woolworth Tower
1922 British mandate of Palestine begins
1919 U.S. Marines invade Honduras
1914 T Handy publishes “St. Louis Blues”
1909 Max Wolf rediscovers Halley’s comet
1900 President Kruger crosses border with Mozambique
1881 Triple landslides bury Elm, Switzerland
1831 Charles Darwin meets with Captain Fitzroy at Plymouth
1773 Benjamin Franklin writes “There never was a good war or bad peace”
1741 Queen Maria Theresa addresses Hungarian Parliament
1714 French and Spanish troops under duke of Berwick occupy Barcelona
1709 Battle at Malplaquet: England/Austria/Dutch Great Alliance beat France
1697 Battle at Zenta: Prince Eugen van Savoye beats Turkish superior power
1649 Massacre of Drogheda-Cromwell kills 3,000 royalists
1645 Thomas Fairfax’ New Model-army occupies Bristol
1557 Catholic and Lutheran theology debated in Worm
1297 Battle at Stirling Bridge, Scottish rebel Wm Wallace beats English
813 Charles the Great crowns Louis I emperor

The image of the WTC is a public domain photo from Wikepedia

Leave a comment

Filed under Community, Culture, Environment, New York, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , ,

September 5, 2011 · 8:14 pm

THE 9/11 MOSQUE

The documentary on the 9/11 mosque was rather sad. Firstly the anti camp, begun in a blogging campaign, fully using and enjoying the media hunger for story, it seemed to me, and talking about a ‘Victory Mosque’, and how Islam has always built on places of Jihad, and their conquest of ‘our’ holy sites. There is obviously a strain in unreformed Islam that has produced appalling militancy and extremism, and that needs to be talked about – isn’t it inevitable when you hold to Sharia Law? – but if we are talking about an ancient ‘clash of civilisations’ that those voices want to stress, try studying the history of the Crusades. One of its great lessons is the Christian Crusaders, armed with their own concept of Holy War, were astoundingly brutal and a lot more tolerance came out of Islam, at different times, not least allowing Christian and Jew to live and worship as ‘people of the book’, taxed of course! Look back in history and you can find many justifications for your argument, but try living in the now and the future. History is not a ‘fact’, it is a way of deepening, civilising and creating a living culture but their point, I suppose, is they enjoy that clash of civilisations.

One of those antis also mentioned another clash of civilisations, capitalism versus communism, and it is perhaps the key to modern American side-based thinking. But then you got the half polish New Yorker who is trying to establish it, two blocks from Ground Zero, saying ‘I’m naard (Not) a humanitarian, I’m a capitalist’, clearly seeking a meaning and community though, and comparing himself, as a property developer, to a ‘shark, used to gobbling up the seals’. So suddenly having to deal with something far more sensitive, was clearly a shock. In fact, though there is a lot commendable in protecting those innocent and frightened Muslims in New York who went underground, he did seem rather naive, and insensitive to the families of all those people who died, and others. Though I am not sure about the blogger’s comment ‘we’re all the families of nine eleven, they just took the hit for us.’His first Imam sponsor though was apparently talking about an ‘interfaith’ centre anyway, not a mosque, while another moderate Imam stressed that his own concept of Islam meant ‘peace‘ and demanded respect for other’s wishes and pain, so it was an insult to put it there. One of the best was the American father of one of the victims, saying something loudly about freedom and responsibility. ‘We know you have the right, but sometimes a hero is made by not exercising that right.‘ The fact is the guy’s personality did him very little favours and why not establish the right, on private property, as Obama supported, in a country that crucially defends the freedom of worship for all, but still take it somewhere else. If that is hard, in New York, seek help for it, and don’t worry about others who try to gloat.

1 Comment

Filed under Culture, Education, New York

Tagged as , ,

September 1, 2011 · 12:01 pm

Making a Serious Splash

Pheeeeeew. Did you see Daryl Hannah being cuffed and arrested outside The WhiteHouse? Who wouldn’t be in love with her for Splash, or Priss in Blade Runner, but now I know she’s an environmental campaigner too, my heart’s quite gone! I’d better grow fins and swim the Pond.

It was only topped by the smile on the New Zealand scientist’s face, trying to save Orcas on a documentary, when they managed to release a Humpback from a tangled rope, and it powered away, snorting water and sunlight. Then watching her and others trying to refloat a pod of beached Pilot whales, and fighting back their tears. The evidence of pollution in the water, getting into the sealife chain was awful and depressing, but we are a very strange and sometimes rather moving species.

Leave a comment

Filed under Culture, Environment, Science

Tagged as , , ,

September 1, 2011 · 9:05 am

HOPPETTY COMES TO TEACH A DRAGON HOW TO FLY!

Phoenix Ark are delighted to publish another story, for parents to read aloud with kids, from PolliPigglePuggar, by David Clement-Davies

THE TALE OF HOPPETTY THE GRASSHOPPER

Once upon a day the sun was shining with all its might, just as it loves to do. The misty skies were quivering with the turning spring and great billows of itching gadflies rode the morning air, in clouds of glittering wings. They only had a day. In the shining meadow the long grass was rich and juicy, thick as little pencils, while among the fattly firming stalks of luscious green, casting their shadows everywhere, a new-born Grasshopper, tiny as a nail, fresh as a dew drop, popped up his little head and looked about in wonder.

Wow. His little Grasshop-eyes were huge, and the fine antennae fingers on his head shook with interest, and a mighty question too, that Hoppetty couldn’t wait to ask. ‘Oh please,‘ he cried, to all his brothers and sisters, flashing through the stalks above and darting everywhere, ‘can you tell me how I do that too? How to reach the sky.‘

‘Too young, Hoppetty,’ snapped a brother scornfully, and with a gigantic spring, launching himself straight over a Dandelion, like a fly. ‘Too weak, Hoppetty,’ winked a sister, flicking like a weightless dart, to the very top of the highest flower, ‘Go and ask our parents, silly Hoppetty.’

So the little Grasshopper turned and walked on his little legs over the earth to his mum and dad. But they were busy making meadow music with their strong back legs, a kind of cerricketting, side by side, and talking of all the dangers in the meadow too, to even notice their tiny offspring’s question. Poor little Hoppety bowed his head and nearly cried.

“Oh why does nobody show me anything at all?” he wailed.

But then Hoppetty’s brave little heart rallied and he decided to ask the other creatures what he wanted to know. The creatures in the meadow.
So off the big-eyed Grasshopper set, through the long grasses, up the meadow, step by step. At first Hoppetty was very frightened and rather slow, creeping through the stalks, like a forest of giant trees looming around him, tipping forwards too, always looking down, because Grasshopper’s legs at the back are bigger than the front. But at last he came on a yellow backed-Bumblebee, who he heard first, hovering over a buttercup and sticking pollen to her legs, like magic dust. Her face was shining like the sun, as Hoppetty looked up, and nectar dripped from her lips.

‘Please, Mrs BumbleBee,’ said Hoppetty nervously, feeling very small indeed, ‘Can you tell me how to touch the sky, just like you? Like the gadflies, and all my brothers and sisters too? I’m Hoppetty the Grasshopper.” ‘Fly in the sky, My Dear?” buzzed the busy bumblebee, though not unkindly, ‘Dear me no, Hoppetty, you haven’t any wings.’ With that the heavy laden bee took to the air again, abuzzing and afuzzing, but called out kindly too, ‘Up there, Hoppetty, below that tree, try the Caterpillar. They know a thing or two.‘

So off the bright green Grasshopper set again, a little less nervously this time, and there, on the edge of a leaf, hanging down from a low trailing branch, Hoppetty saw a jet black Caterpillar, furry as a spider, acurling and awhirling, aworming and asquirming and eating his home. ‘Please, Mr Caterpillar,’ cried Hoppetty, ‘Can you tell me how to fly?” ‘Not me,‘ answered the Caterpillar, chewing on his leaf, ‘I haven’t changed just yet. But when I eat enough, and spin myself a silk cocoon, then I’ll be a butterfly myself. All sun and air and breeze. I’m planning to take off.”

The little Grasshopper looked jealous and then monumentally sad. He sighed. ‘Besides,‘ said the Caterpiller, smacking his delicate lips, “Grasshoppers don’t fly, silly, they hop. They hop, skip and they jump. Suddenly.” “Oh yes,” said Hoppetty, “I forgot.” “But Try up there,” said the Caterpillar, beginning to spin the finest thread around itself, “Up the meadow, by those stones. Snail knows a thing or two.”

So Hoppetty walked on, faster now, and found Snail, like a homeless slug, lying beside her shell, trying to eat some earth. “Please,” said Hoppetty, “I want to launch myself, but I don’t know how to Hop.” “Mmmmm, beats me,” said the snail, “I haven’t any legs. I’m earth bound. Though I know your reach should always be bigger than your grasp. But tell you what, up there, by the old Kitchen Garden wall, lives the wisest creature in all the world. The Tortoise. Go ask him, Hoppetty, he knows everything.” So that’s exactly what brave Hoppetty did. He was going much faster now, even stepping over little stones, and less frightened of all the things around him, although Hoppetty stopped dead when he saw a dark green grass snake lift its head and flick its tongue, looking for a snack, just like him.

But the bright sun shone in the snake’s dim black eyes and he slithered coldly away, and Hoppetty went on, faster still, seeing a great brown wall of human bricks and stones, far in the distance, rising like a flat mountain before him. It was huge and it made him gulp and feel sick. It seemed to take for ever to even get near it, but there, in the earth , at the edge of the Kitchen garden Wall Hoppetty found the Tortoise. Or Hoppetty found his stoney shell, since tortoise was inside, contemplating things.

Now Hoppetty stepped up sharply, to the dark little hole where a head should have been and called out loudly. “Hello, Tortoise,” he cried, “I’m Hoppetty, and I’ve come to ask you how to hop.” It took an age before anything happened, but then, very slowly, a wrinkled head came out, blinking and sniffing the coming summer air. ‘To Hop?” said the Tortoise slowly, in a deeply ringing voice, “Well how should I know, little fool, I’m the slowest thing in all the world. I hardly ever move.” “But the cleverest,” said the bright eyed Grasshopper quickly, “Everyone knows that!”

“Mmmmm,” said the Tortoise, flattered and chewing on his ancient lips, “Mmmm.” His voice was as deep and ringing as an old stone well. “Well, I tell you what, Hoppetty, I’ll make you a bargain.” “Bargain?” piped the little Grasshopper. “Oh yes,” said the Tortoise, “nothing in life is quite for free. And I’m hungry, and this grave question of yours needs real food for thought.”

Hoppetty was pushing himself up on his back legs, his brave antennae quivering faster then ever before, as he wondered just what food for thought was. He waited and he waited and at last Tortoise spoke again. “So go and find me something delicious,” said the Tortoise, “And I might just tell you what you need to know.” “Some thing?” said Hoppetty, very smartly, “Well, I know Mrs Bee likes Pollen, and the Caterpillar loves his leaf, the Snail likes earth and snakes are simply silly. What shall I get you though?” Now the Tortoise looked at Hoppetty straight, and looked, and some strange new light came into his dark, slow eyes.”Cabbage,” he whispered suddenly, although not very fast, “I like my cabbage, Hoppetty, and it’s the only answer to your question too, I’m sure of it. So bring me a fresh new cabbage leaf, Hoppetty, and I will show you exactly how to hop, higher than anything else.” “Where,” said the Grasshopper, wonderingly, ready to run as fast as ever he could, “IN THERE,” answered the Tortoise ominously, turning his slow head, “Beyond the Kitchen Garden Wall.”

Now Hoppetty set off immediately, his heart filled with hope, but soon his spirit had sunk like the biggest stone, in the deepest pool, for though the little Grasshopper went around and around the wall, there simply was no way in at all. The Garden wall just was too high to climb, and the wooden door, when he found it, was blocked below with stones to stop the slugs getting in. It was impossible. The poor Grasshopper’s bursting heart was breaking, because if Hoppetty didn’t get Tortoise his Cabbage, he would never know the secret at all.

But then the sun came out again, and suddenly the little Grasshopper had a brilliant idea. So he jumped onto a stalk of grass, and sprang onto another, then up to a leaf, and now the top of the wall was not so high at all, he closed his eyes, and pushed and pushed and pushed and launched himself up and out. Hoppetty found himself sailing over, straight onto the finest cabbage leaf in all the Kitchen Garden. Hoppetty set to work, and now, eating a little himself, but cutting the best bit for his friend the Tortoise, so eager now to get the answer that his heart was doing somersaults, he turned and sprang, straight back over the wall again.

“I’ve got it,” cried Hoppetty proudly, landing like a gadfly right before his friend, “Your special cabbage. So please, Tortoise, now can you tell me just how to…OH!” As the great old Tortoise lowered his kind, wise head and smiled, pulling the delicious cabbage into his old mouth, Hoppety’s little heart took wing and soared. “HOP,” he cried delightedly, “But I hopped, and I popped and I dropped, and then I hopped again, all on my own, into the Garden and out again, over the wall and away. Hooray.” So off grateful Hoppetty went, thanking his friend, as the Tortoise chewed his most delicious leaf, ahopping and apopping, aspringing and asinging, the summer filling his brave little heart, Hoppetty, Hoppetty, Hoppetty, all the way home. Now he jumps quite the highest of all the grasshoppers in all the meadow, ever, does Hoppetty the brave.

David Clement-Davies 2011. All Rights Reserved.

1 Comment

Filed under Childrens Books, Culture, Stories