Comparisons

Expatriates in other places often ask me in what ways being here is different from being in England. This question is of significance, because I spent five out of six years in England in a market town the size of the Outpost capital, with even fewer things to do and with its main redeeming feature being that it is an hour’s ride from London. Actually, this is a comparison that frequently comes up when I try to rationalise myself into adapting here or when I am trying to convince Jod to try to adapt here.

Yes, the English market town was dreary, yes there was just the one cinema and a single theatre, yes pubs and restaurants cannot sustain you for ever. Yes, the Royal Army bases made the town no better. Small places are more or less the same everywhere, it seems. So, yes, we were trying to get out of there, we were happy to and we never looked back — but for the friends we have there. Yes, the English generalised anti-europeanism and the working classes’ suspiciousness towards anything that is not ‘working class’ are irritating and disastrous in many respects.

But. There we had our bikes and we would walk. There were (scary and overpriced but, usually, functioning) trains to carry us further afield. Our views, ideas, frustrations and whining were seriously discussed, whether in agreement or not. Neighbours would engage into casual talk with us on cats and plants and trips and apples. Generally speaking, people were treating us as people, not (just) weird foreigners. We eventually won some of them to develop true and lasting friendships with. With the others we would exchange invitations to teas and parties and dinners. Here, three years on, we hang out with exactly two Outposters. Nobody (else) is ever available for coffee, parties or dinners, as they have to be with family whenever they have free time.

So much for the idiotic stereotypes about northern Europeans and their supposedly unwelcoming, suspicious and introverted disposition: once won, even if this takes long, northern Europeans are yours forever (I know Scandinavians, the Dutch and Germans are like that, too).

In memoriam William Wilberforce

There are causes worth dedicating your life to. Also, while reading, observe the familiar workings of the Capital. Jod commented he was lucky to live to see his cause justified, unlike others.

I am Gaylord Focker

Here is something that happened to me last November. Jod told me before to post about it here, but I thought it would sound banal. I don't think so anymore.

There is a local publication with a function similar to Pariscope, Time Out, the New Yorker and the similar. This publication is monthly, as not much is going on here, but contains some good journalism. It is also the only publication in the Outpost containing a Gay column. In the said column there was a short comment about 'inferior dialects' of 'peasants and shepherds'. I wrote them an email, praising the publication and suggesting that a column fighting anti-gay prejudice should not propagate prejudice against 'peasants and shepherds' and their fictionally 'inferior dialects', as this is a kind of discrimination based on illusory premisses, exactly like discrimination against gay people. The email went through the editor-in-chief, who forwarded it to the columnist, who replied to me in a slightly aggressive manner. So far so good. I wrote to the editor-in-chief, apologising for the fuss and making my point about discrimination being a devious thing, blah blah.

The editor-in-chief wrote back the following day. They are looking for someone to write the Gay column, the guy currently doing it will go abroad. Do I want to do it? A nom de plume would be acceptable. Thank you, editor-in-chief.

What was his rationale? Loxias reads the Gay column, therefore gay. Loxias sounds articulate, therefore can write it.

I replied. Instead of writing 'oh, well, I am not gay, so I cannot write the column' (remember: discrimination is a devious thing), I wrote that I am not the appropriate person for the job, as "I know as much about gay lifestyle as I do about jet propulsion". I suggested to be offered a column of more general scope, instead. Shortly, I carefully tried a) not to make personal statements and b) not to convey an implication that the suggestion I am gay is miasmatic, successfully I hope.

The editor-in-chief never replied. Jod and my gay friends lament the lost chance to ghost-write the column.

Outpost Capital

Photo taken by the Hyperborean Hunter on the 4th of July 2004, from Landmark.

School news in three parts

Educational news:

Future: In a couple of weeks, part of the school where Jod works will go on an educational outing, under teacher supervision. According to regulations, these are typically half-day events, starting at 9 am. This time the educational outing will be to a cinema. The pupils are going to watch ‘Taxi‘, of Queen Latifah fame.

Present: Today, again at 9 am, the school’s Leader gathered teachers and pupils and publicly blamed the former for not enforcing the school’s uniform policy properly. In the presence of the pupils, he then referred to teachers as ‘little robots’ that perform the duties ‘mechanically and without dedication’. Pupils have been having a ball.

Past: When the Evil Empire ruled the place, officially until 44 years ago (or, in some ways, until last time I checked, i.e. yesterday), they would not let the locals found new schools, in order to curb the growth of nationalism. Which sounds like a wet joke, really.

Narcoleptic

I slept too much today, and yesterday. It makes me feel like sex makes people of certain morals do: relieved, satisfied but very anxious and guilt-ridden. By the way, what is more banal than equating morality to forms of sexual abstentionism? Maybe talking about it.

Ah, that was it: I’m off to bed!

Couleur locale

Cross-referencing

W Boson I had the pleasure to meet last September. He is a true inquiring mind, in the best tradition of Russell and Wittgenstein, a mind of grace and complexity, a gentle and cultivated human being. He also works in the Outpost. He cannot bear the ugliness here, although he thinks places like Athens or New York are beautiful and charming.

Yu is a Russian from Belarus, she has lived in the Outpost for the last five years. She is shocked by the fact that men here seem not to be interested in anything, except (as she put it tonight): hunting, football, cars, money. Not even politics. She went for dinner at an Outposter’s, a doctor, who had never heard of the greenhouse effect. When he was told what it was, the doctor was intrigued as the whole thing did not ring a bell.

Finally, here are some (heavily edited) comments by the Passenger, who has allegedly been to more than 100 countries and territories, after he visited last July. I believe they are excessively harsh, but they convey the spirit of the place, even though in a distorted and overly negative manner:

Here is a word of advice: don’t go. [...] My first two trips there were done in my teenage years and I remember little other than the beach and a few strolls. [...] [The Outpost is] a complete mish-mash without any character. [The capital city,] as close to the twilight zone as you can possibly get, is really quite horrifyingly ugly with almost nothing to see other than going up to [Landmark] and gazing over at the other side. [...] [I]t is difficult to feel for people who are so rude and unfriendly and also so unashamedly fake in their behaviour. [...] I do not mince my words as you can see. Going to the beach resorts, one is shocked as well. This could be [the Evil Empire] if there were not so much sunshine and eating ‘beef and mushroom pie’ just proves how sold out this place is. OK, the sea itself, not touched by human hands, is decent and inviting. The only other redeeming feature were the mountains [...]

I’m sure The Beautiful South have a song for the occasion. I don’t know which.

Freezing

Look at this very interesting book review from the New Yorker. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel is one good book: highly recommended.

Run away, turn away

While in the gym, and for the benefit of the aerobics class right next to the weights, one of the many covers of eighties songs was playing, this one being Bronksi Beat’s Smalltown Boy. I thought of the overt melancholy of the original, the frustration and the sense of asphyxiation it emits. I remembered the dreary landscapes of England, emotional ones and external ones alike.

Then I once more listened closely to the lyrics: I am in Smalltown, as we speak. Which reminded me this: that I am still dreaming of that singular night, when I sneaked to the fourth floor balcony of Birkbeck College in London and saw the city all lit up in the distance and completely serene and then, just two streets away, a lit window — someone living there — and I realised it would not be me.