Thursday 20 September 2012

London Diary #Three

The glorious summer was coming to an end. The pink and purple was beginning to look inappropriate and tacky despite sparking memories of high enthusiasm. As he walked down the north bank of the Thames he looked up and saw a red bus roll across Blackfriars Bridge.

He is on his way to Alexandria and it is taking a long time for the Thames path is busy; people flowing over and around him, the throng comes and passes and more turn up in front and he wonders how they could be so many. Clouds are taking over the blue sky, unremarked upon, and he bumps into one he knows, in the throng: ‘Off to work in Acton -acting!’ she says. ‘Don’t know really, just heard about it and here I am … not long, off to Paris on Tuesday!’

The river next to him draws his eyes as it presses against the stone and steel of its barriers. It swells and threatens to one day take back this city to earth and rubble as which it arose from these depths. It heaves up to him and sinks back down speaking of hot horror and animal ferocity.

He left London for Berlin one weekend. A city that stands as both the great demonic head of the Fearsome Fourth Reich, home of jingoing pockets, as well as the scrappy self-deprecating but vicious underdog with peeling graffiti splattered across war torn buildings, mispuzzled and bright. Here punks strut around and have a tendency to pose like paintings, grimacing sulkily. Bubbling with a tame danger, lazing in the sun, he sits in the city and looks at the words liebe luxus anarchie scratched into the door frame next to his head.

Not the rush and corporate of London; not the grandeur and intimidation of business and doing but being, allowing old fashioned trains to glide into large glass stations - functional and clean, practical. Looking like those on the south of the river – proud, cold and ordered.

Where is the whip of shining polished boot, the big boys and Bollinger-scented breath? Here, are the rich embraced tight and the foreign welcomed frantically? In this city do Royals not build palaces but shimmy down them?

Alexandria is leaving her apartment soon to a house in Kent. She will be commuting in from then onwards. Her mother bought the apartment in 1948. ‘Nothing lasts. Now what awaits is a sad, slow decline to a grumbling unimportance in the future’ she had said.

‘It began with a great show, and is secured with one …’ …fizzing and bubbling, like the final frantic gurgling whirl before the plug; the last bright lights flicker.

‘Maybe she is just tired; it was only ever an accident of water and time; lucky daylight hours and thankfully a safe enough distance from them with their vicious tendencies!’

#stagetaken and deflation creeps over and seeps in, thickly. Outside the O2 arena officials stand to guard nothing; railings passing back and forth, splitting up empty air. Everything is still, very big, looking clumsy and flaccid without the crowds.

He walks on. He is ready to learn something tonight. He feels like a little boy. He is not wearing his tie so his waistcoat and shirt are getting squashed in his rucksack. He smiled as his hood blows out behind him, like Zorro’s cape. He walks along the river with a spring; the wind ruffles his hair and he tilts back, his belly protruding forward, his palms open.

He’s come to Westminster Bridge now and looks out over the ships and the towers and the domes, theatres and temples, Open unto the fields, and to the sky …

It is still beautiful here and feels yet more so when Alexandria opens the door to him, jabbering, hysterically on the phone – ‘well she keeps spreading doom and misery and after a while I just want her to get on with her life and allow me to’ – he is ushered in and pushed up against the wall his nose pressed against the rugs and canvases that harbour a strong childhood excitement.

He walks into the kitchen while she loudly clatters behind him. The kitchen ceiling a bright white and the walls a swirling, vibrant orange. The counters around the edge are cluttered with pots and glass containers of nuts and seeds, spelt pasta and quinoa. There is a cut open loaf of rye bread on the side, with a bowl of fruit – grapes, bananas, apples, pomegranate and others he didn’t recognise flowing over and out of the bowl.

Walking down a step to the sitting room which lay the other side of one of the counters he can see Alexandria in another room through a thin, indigo veil, surrounded by islands of bright pillows sitting upon the deep blue rug. The twin of that blue rug he stood on now, next to a fireplace in which crystals, pebbles and candles were dotted about the grate, a stone Ganesh at the front in the centre.  

Hazy in the light, he could smell a strong incense candle that Alexandria had lit. The light curls of smoke drifted towards him, stinging his nose and moistening his eyes, eventually causing him to let out a little ahtishoo!

Around this room he looked at the throws with the elephants in embroidery and the magnificent skyline of cities of the Orient. Here he had dreamt of winding steps, exotic markets, wide streets, great white houses, dancing chimney sweeps, empty mansions and that lovely sooty air.

Alexandria was out of site now. He walked over to the window and looked out over the gardens of the next door houses and beyond that the rubbish bins, a small lane, more houses and then the tips of the trees that lined the park.

He waited and dreamed and eventually he turned back to the house where in a great, magnificent mirror that stood on the wall opposite he saw himself amidst the skyline of the city.

Bertie Digby Alexander
Liverpool 2012














London Diary #Two


On the first weekend of the Olympics he found himself next to his sister, drinking local ale in an empty village pub somewhere in the hinterlands beyond the Great Metropolis. She picked at peanuts while her eyes rested on the rowing on the television; the eyes of the young snuffling barman were darting from them to the television and back again.

The day before he had been at a Farmers Market, the two of them scuttling in and out of the blooming crowds to fawn over Italian pasta and sorrel from Cambridgeshire, Kids Company helium balloons attached to their wastes. It was hot and the smell of tomatoes strong; dogs scuttled about the tottering legs of stilt-walkers and at one point he was certain he saw Judi Dench gliding through the crowd.

Here the city hums loud like a machine or a slumbering beast but that morning, walking the dogs in Bishop’s Park, it was quiet. The water is sleepy and when the tide is out birds with twig legs and big beaks stand in a line on the soggy mud marshes as if queuing for morning croissants and coffee. When the tide is high there are swans and one morning he spun round as he followed what appeared to be a cormorant into the water. But nothing came up so he turned and kept walking.

The day after the Opening Ceremony the park was packed with people setting up to watch the first day on a big screen. That uneasy excitement was bubbling over.

We Salute Sir Wiggo ...Go Mo Go! Run Jess, Run! Eyes and lenses focus in a new found blusterous patriotism, bright and shameless and ready to snap at dismissive smirks of condescension or superior derision.

As the crowds arrived and the streets became quiet the warnings from the Mayor, Supporter in Chief, were replaced with unheeded calls for those savages up North to come down to sunny Boris Island and taste a bit of Olympics.

At the coffee stall a beautiful lady and a jogger struck up conversation with the grumbling grizzly; the jogger was red in the face and the satchel strap around his waist dug into his side pulling his t-shirt up and revealing a pale pink wedge of flesh.

‘So much for the traffic warnings. Like living in a Ghost City!’

‘What did you expect? It’s a drop in the ocean.’

‘Not the chaos they were predicting …’

‘It’s worse in the West End apparently - Ghost City.’

‘Fucking Boris …’

He felt like he was expected to either concur similarly or offer an interesting retort. He did neither and stared at the filter.

To and from work he principally walks past yacking Yummy-Mummies from the States and Arab lads crying out in thick cockney – bright teeth and jabbering lips and chins. Quiet loners like himself pass – puffing red and serious; their faces fiercely looking out over the road and for a second into his. Everyone is very loud or very quiet. Husky voices from the Home Counties pipe up to surprise. Most cry that gentrification is on its way, some that is has already left, po-faced.

In the shops the keepers chat to him and often on the underground someone will step back to let him pass. Not what he had been warned of up North. ‘No one speaks in London!’ They had said. ‘Everyone in their own world – rushing around. It’s like a warren; packed tight together but no-one knows nobody!’

Worse is also said; mainly from those who would take inspiration from the story of Boudicca with her flaming hair razing the new Roman settlement of London to the ground. That doesn’t look like my England!  

Sitting in a theatre beer garden he felt out of place in his suit as he drank surrounded by actors and directors and an ‘up-and-coming producer.’ Ford Maddox Ford wrote that your profession makes the London you live in and he thought of the man in red chinos who he passes each morning on his phone, making deals and walking oblivious to all in front and before.

Similarly on the Uxbridge Road he slips up and down unregarded while they salute each other, and shake hands, laugh, gripe and sing together. He would like to think that they show his acceptance by not acknowledging his return but really they are unaware of the initial arrival.  

It is not villages that London is made up of but little personal pods in which Londoners feed and sleep and travel in and the taint of the pod colours their perception and the curve warps their vision and the seams and strappings blind them to the love and work being done elsewhere in the city.

‘You’, he says to himself, the Standard on his lap, ‘can never know anything about London; all you ever know about is yourself in London.’ Elusive in its multi-faceted nature fostering that slipping feeling. There is no Bronx, or banlieue, no need for compartmentalisation as anything can exist gently unnoticed and if ferocious home heroes run down from the North the flame will burn in Tottenham and it will flame in Ealing.

The night it had all began he got a quiet tube on the District Line to Tower Hill thinking that this is the most excited London he is ever going to see. Sirens could be heard all about and policeman lined the streets; warm, hazy feeling of a storm approaching as the humming grew louder than ever before and hot mouths exhaled over the roads.

It grizzles and shrieks, rumbles, leaps and through the cross of figures a girl in a flowering, layered dress and a white sleeveless shirt, open, spinning ungainly, her arms outstretched. The image flickered at him through the evening and, circling out from the whirling of a carnival vortex in hot frenzy. 

 The snivelling barman poured them some more peanuts and looking up at the celebrating champions said, tentatively, ‘Must be mad up there.’

‘Ghost City.’  

Bertie Digby Alexander
Liverpool 2012


London Diary #One

They aren’t there yet and the Great Road rumbles grey on towards a single house in the distance and a figure waving madly amongst aromatic scent and brightly coloured pillows. 

It isn’t yet here but a whooshing cry and the tunnel is filled as out of a black mouth a great dirty serpentine tongue slips. A little hub of smart-suit-bright-ties stumbles on with him; silent, serious, calm, he despised them, before he realised that he too was wearing a smart suit and bright tie and beginning to hate them a little less and like himself a little less he stuck his nose into his Metro and sneezed.

One hot hand was grasping at the sweating pole leaving a grimy stain on his palm while the other held the pages closer to his dripping nose.

At Baker Street they moved fast. He dropped the paper on to a bench and picked up another on the next line.

David Cameron was to be holidaying in Catalonia.

He was beginning to enjoy the silly Metro whereas he was finding the Standard a nuisance, whining and whimpering each day for a conclusion to the ‘aviation crisis’ and expressing shock at the little effect its own forum had.

‘The Standard isn’t about London; the Standard is about the Standard’ he thought to himself.

The other day, with a thrill and a thumping heart, in Fulham, he thought he was looking at Nick Clegg passing leaflets through doors, like in Love Actually. On second glance he thought it might be Jeremy Hunt. But it wasn’t either, just another well-fed, pointlessly good looking smart-suit-bright-tie. The man simply looked like he should be in government, though he was quite far away. He was reminded of Notting Hill and thought that he still hasn’t yet been to the blue door; or the market for that matter. Indeed, he’s not completely sure he’s been to Notting Hill.

He had been to Trafalgar Square though. His heart beat loudly when he walked into it and he looked at the waving flags blowing strong in the wind and saw how the lions looked yet more magnificent for the children scrambling over their noble noses. Nelson’s column stretched proud above him and he saw characters everywhere, even where there were none.

He was now pulling out from Piccadilly Circus. A grim couple looking just like us have just got on and pull out little devices and say ‘tickets and passes please!’ He jumps out with them at Leicester Square. They get on the next carriage. He looks for the exit before realising this is Leicester Square. A booming voice begins to thunder overhead warning of travel disruptions to come.

Hot breath over flushed faces drags hair back along with it. Tinkling and warbling silences with the whoosh of the wind enveloping ears and wrapping shuffling bodies. Outside his station he had found a little independent coffee stall. The man tending the stall is grizzly and abrupt and when he goes to reach for what he thought was his coffee he is accosted with a fierce ‘Does that look like a Tall Filter Drip?’

On the second day, he didn’t want to order another Tall Filter Drip for it had been tepid by the time the coffee had dropped. He also hated it when people said to him ‘The usual?’  But if he didn’t order it again he feared that the grumbling barista would think he objected to the wait. So he ordered the Tall Filter Drip. 
 
After that the grizzly would grumble to him ‘The usual?’ and not wanting to aggravate he assented, and waited, his shoulders hunched against the wind.

He was able to take the Jubilee Line to work- panting like an excitable child or dog as it tingles into each station – and avoid the sinister Northern Line with its sombre creaking tones and the woman’s voice at Belsize Park sounding as if she had just come from announcing the death of Edward VII.

‘We weren’t really excited about London at all,’ the Canadian said to him, watching him pick up the dog poo. ‘But you know we thought, we’re travellers, so we should probably look around, as we were flying here. Y’know, the history.

‘My grandmother’s corpse is also here.’

Forty years younger than Christ; blooded heads at Traitors Gate, vampyric clerks skulking about Lincoln Field Inns and in the domed gloom of Baker Street station frightened faces fly frantically down the steps to the sound of the air raid under the black figures ‘1911’.  He sees shadowed characters scuttling down narrow, cobbled alleyways, as he gets lost attempting to find the pub, trampling over little girls. He peers into the dark expecting to see ashen cherubic features skipping towards him – ‘one for the evening guv’nor?’ He avoided the park.

‘Yes, as you should have,’ they said to him in the pub. ‘Just this month a man was stabbed in there and another had his arm chopped off with an axe – just walking along he was, and then they just grabbed his arm and – whoosh!’

He had told them about the people who lived above him.

‘O yes I have that where I am. Can hear everything from her charging her iPhone to her bum sliding along the bottom of the bath. I have stopped making a fuss though, ever since I stormed out once, raging about the rumble outside, only to find the ol' boy from upstairs being taken away on a stretcher.’

This makes him feel better; he sips again and ignores suppressed dreams of gardens.

At midnight they were ushered off and he sloshed home in the rain that had been there all month. Miserable wet faces appeared in the crowd out of the black. Maybe it’s the effect of the city, he thinks. A friend had warned him of this.

‘It has been worse up North,’ he commented.

‘They are miserable anyway,’ the friend responded. ‘Just for being up North.’

Then, quite suddenly, the sun came.




Bertie Digby Alexander

Liverpool 2012


Thursday 9 August 2012

Sage Advice


Watching sagely on as I flustered over packing for university, all-knowing and self-satisfied post-graduates would tell me: ‘Make sure to get involved in the societies- don’t miss out on anything!’ I would reply jubilantly in the affirmative – as I imagine most do - as I squashed the last of the drying up cloths, course texts and porridge oats into my suitcase. ‘And take a crate of beer for the first night.’

This enthusiasm for the extra-curricular often endures to the Freshers Fair where newly arrivals liberally deploy their free hand (the other clutching at an array of posters, flyers and other paraphernalia) to exultantly scrawl down their email address on sign up sheets waved under their nose in the labyrinth of stalls and balloons.  

Yet the balloons will slowly deflate and the weekly emails from the Planting and Farming Society are soon left neglected in the inbox. The urge to simply drink cheap beer and jump into bars and beds with strangers is strong and when finally – perhaps during the second bate of Freshers’ flew – the whim to follow up on those societies returns, the work load has piled up and the time appears to not be there.

With some statistics saying that as many as 80% of students are now acquiring a 2.1 or above, it is important for students not to let those emails fester but ensure that they get involved in the various spheres of university life so to lay the foundations for what they hope to achieve post-graduation.  Most students spend less than 1000 days at university so it is vital to get involved as early on as possible by going to those daunting welcome events.

I had a friend in Freshers Week who dragged me along to mumble away awkwardly to older students with him at the launch party of the university magazine. During the course of the evening my friend introduced himself to one of the editors and at her suggestion, found himself the next day marching along with a protest in the city against cuts to the NHS. He wrote an article on it, they liked it, it got published, he wrote more and eventually found himself in his third year as Assistant Editor of the magazine.

The experience he gained from his role as an editor will prove invaluable when pursuing a job in the media and it all began by simply forcing himself to attend that party of strangers. Opportunities can arise from anything if we look for them at university - a place which is about nothing if not meeting new people and trying new things, learning from experience and being prepared to tread water before we can swim.

Looking towards any career there is always something worth doing in preparation for that line of work besides your course. For example putting on a social will allow you to develop your organisation and creativity required in Event Management and Corporate Entertainment; setting up your own project or society will test your resourcefulness and business acumen; joining the Debating Society will improve not only your public speaking but the way you present your thoughts and lines of arguments in conducting interviews, presentations or lessons. 

I would recommend any student taking the lead on at least one project or event in the course of their degree. Holding ultimate responsibility will test your strength and fathoms will be learnt from the struggle and sweat to push your vision passionately through all obstacles and no matter what the outcome. It creates an appreciation of other leaders and makes that person a more valued and comprehensive team player.  

So much can be done at university that it is not only worthwhile for the enjoyment and satisfaction gained in the moment, but also in kick-starting a student’s prospects for the future. To ensure that university prepares them for the future, I would recommend viewing it not as the final stop before the real world, but a part of that real world already.

And take a crate of beer for the first night.
Bertie Digby Alexander
London 2012

Thursday 14 June 2012

A World of Two Brothers

Anton Freeman differs from his brother Vincent in a variety of ways; he is immune to mental disorders and has a healthier heart; while Anton enjoys a strong athletic stamina Vincent is myopic and weak; Anton has great aspirations while Vincent has a life expectancy of only 30.2 years. Vincent has been born naturally while Anton was born through genetic selection.


The Freeman brothers are characters from Andrew Niccol’s 1997 film Gattaca, set in ‘the-not-too-distant future’ where only foetuses exhibiting the best of their parental traits are born. With the news that scientists from the University of Washington in Seattle have managed to map the genome sequence of a foetus at 18 weeks old, it would seem that the ‘not-too-distant future’ is appearing on the horizon.

Using DNA from the saliva of the father and a blood sample of the mother, Dr Jay Shendure and his team managed to differentiate the free flowing 10% of the foetus’ DNA from that of the mother’s in her bloodstream. This allowed the team to predict with 98% accuracy the foetus’s susceptibility to over 3000 Mendelian disorders such as Huntingtons disease and Cystic Fibrosis. Societies across the globe are said to have between three and five years to discuss to what extent (if at all) regulate such testing before it is available for public use.

Today, roughly 1% of babies are born with a Mendelian disorder and this figure is seen to be increasing due to the rising age at which women give birth. Such a breakthrough has the potential to alleviate a great deal of emotional and physical discomfort or distress for both child and parent. The ability to offer parents the choice of terminating a foetus with a strong likelihood of spending a life in debilitated by such a disorder is likened by some to Pasteur’s breakthrough against smallpox in the 19th century. A government attempting to limit such medical advancement offering parents such a choice would undoubtedly attract resistance.

However there is currently strong opposition from religious and conservative groups to Dr Shendure’s work due to fear that it will lead to a steep rise in abortions. Josephine Quintavalle from the UK-based Pro-Life Alliance told The Daily Telegraph, ‘one always hopes, vainly, that in utero testing will be for the benefit of the unborn child’ but ‘it is difficult to imagine that this new test will not lead to more abortions’. Figures appear to support Quintavalle’s concerns, LifeSiteNews.com reporting that 90% of foetus that have been valued with Downs syndrome (currently able to be identified through pre-natal testing) were terminated.
 
A further concern is that relatively minor or intellectual impairments will qualify in some parents’ minds as grounds for abortion. The New York Times quotes Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the centre for Genetics and Society, a public interest group in Berkeley, saying that ‘some scenarios are extremely troubling’ as such tests leads to questions on ‘who deserves to be born’. It is here that we enter upon the world of Gattaca. People are concerned that Dr Shendure’s work will lead to the horror of cosmetically motivated termination in attempts to ensure crystal blue eyes, physical prowess and the avoidance of that undesirable family nose.

As always, money enters the debate. The cost of the screening today has been estimated at between $20 000 to $50 000. Though by the time this screening is offered to the public it is likely to be lower, the cost is likely to still be out of reach for many families, leading many to fear it will create a further divide between rich and poor, where the former will have not only more indulged and better educated children, but children with better looks, stronger limbs, healthier hearts and bigger brains. Furthermore, one can look to an uncomfortable image of future international relations where more religious or less affluent states do not utilise the technology while others rejoice amongst genetically superior citizens.

Dr Shendure announced that ‘this is not science fiction anymore’ and one must be careful not to get carried away in imaginary worlds akin to those of HG Wells. However, it is equally important not to underestimate the strong consequences of Dr Shendure’s research may lead to. The dawn of artificial selection as opposed to natural selection will lead to many cries of humanity ‘playing God’. Whether or not this is a just claim, even a rational mind will be able to look ahead and envisage the dawn of a world where medical research strives not to make people better but to make better people.

Bertie Digby Alexander
London 2012
Originally published on - www.rcm.org.uk

Wednesday 4 April 2012

Encouraging the Sceptics

The Gospel of Matthew opens the New Testament with words not nearly as memorable as those at the start of Genesis. One would not expect every Christian to know these words, though one would expect them to be aware that it is Matthew that comes in the beginning.

However according to a recent survey by Richard Dawkins 65% of the UK’s self-labelled Christians were unable to name the first book of the New Testament. Even more incredibly 48% stated that they ‘do not have strong religious beliefs’ at all.

Dawkins terms these people ‘Cultural Christians’; those who do not believe in or practice Christianity but still have an affinity towards a religion that they cannot escape. These people have affection for the village church, will sing raucously along to ‘All things Bright and Beautiful’ and could probably rattle of a few lines of the ‘Lord’s Prayer’. But this as far as their religion goes.

Today it is seen as more controversial to be a person of faith than not, with books such as The Chronicles of Narnia no longer written but instead Philip Pullman’s atheistic His Dark Materials and The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Religion appears to be very firmly on the back foot, the Church of England alone having seen church attendance decline by just under 200 000 over the last decade. However in his new book Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton proclaims that religion is too important to be left to believers. One doesn’t have to join the ranks of the militant neo-Atheists to be a non-believer, but does one have to believe to find the worth in faith? And in terms of university life, what do the faith societies offer the sceptical student?

Over the course of a few weeks I attended an assortment of events put on by the faith societies at the University of Liverpool. These events were well organised but despite the heavy promotion there was often a lack of attendees there who weren’t a member of that society. This meant that occasionally I felt like a lost lamb (or black sheep) who had stumbled into the wrong room and been mistaken for part of the choir. At one of the Islam Society’s (ISOC) events there were a few stray students who peered in but kept their feet firmly out, admitting that that they were daunted to venture any further.

An ignorance of a religion can lead to a feeling of intimidation of that religion. In her talk for ISOC’s Awareness Week, Lauren Booth, former journalist and sister-in-law to Tony Blair, described her gradual conversion to Islam and the consternation it caused many of those who knew her. Her conservative Catholic mother had appeared surprisingly calm over the phone, and only when she saw Booth wearing the hijab did she exclaim ‘Muslim! I thought you said Budhism!’

Booth emphasised the importance of educating people about the realities of different religions, supporting what these faith societies are doing. I found an intellectual gratification at these events devoid of the moralizing aggression of a street preacher or the heavy drones of a Religious Education lesson.

One of the weekly workshops put on by the university’s National Hindu Students Forum (NHSF) discussed the common preconceptions of Hinduism; the meaning behind the supposed multiple gods, and their relationship with the cow, for instance. I came to see how each conclusion made was a personal one, contingent on that individual’s relationship with Hinduism.

‘What one person may like may be the complete opposite of another person’s opinion,’ the Vice President Trusha Kothari was to say to me. ‘Hinduism accepts the basic differences in every person in taste, temperament and capacity.’

I found a similar lack of rules and regulations at the Christian Union (CU) events. I spoke with Andy Taylor, a former member of the CU who emphasised the importance of the society cutting back to the heart of Christianity. ‘If it’s not about Jesus, it’s not worth it,’ he repeatedly said.

Andy went on to say that the CU brought up ‘life’s big questions’. Though this may be the case, more often than not I found that these questions weren’t answered. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It has been said that trying to explain religion in practical terms would be like launching a scientific investigation into literature. I may never understand what made some of the Sisters cry as Lauren Booth described the first time she felt Allah’s presence in a mosque, or the feeling of the girl who told me, unabashed and beaming of her conversion to Christianity from a life of drugs, anger and rebellion. The lack of answers doesn’t detract from the worth of the questions.

Whether it’s a debate on those questions, learning Bollywood dance or attending one of the charity projects that these societies arrange, there is much a student of ‘no faith’ can find in engaging with these societies. Trusha was effusive in her encouragement for all to join in with the Hindu festivals: ‘From exploding fireworks together on Diwali or smearing colour on each other in Holi, our festivals have religious stories behind them, but the morals are universal; whether it be the triumph of good over evil, or starting a new year afresh!’

In his book De Botton goes on to argue that religion is the ‘most successful educational and intellectual movements the planet has ever witnessed.’ Whether or not this is the case there is certainly a value in the faith societies for students not of that faith even it if is simply the pleasure of learning and meeting strangers. University is about nothing if not about that.

Bertie Digby Alexander
London 2012

Originally published in Ellipsis Issue 5 Spring 2012 -  http://ellipsisliverpool.blogspot.co.uk/



Student 200636787

Any account of a day in the life of a student has to begin with a hangover. I would feel that I was exposing the truth behind a much loved myth if I was to write otherwise – even if the student in question had had an early night after an evening of tea and a couple of episodes of The Wire.

After stumbling through the remnants of last night’s fancy dress costume, Student 200636787 makes it to the bathroom to scrub the handlebar moustache off his face and cleanse his hair of silly string.

Showered and refreshed he leaves Room 54B to catch his morning lecture. On the way out he passes a comatosed Flatmate 54J sitting on the kitchen counter with a half-eaten bowl of crunchy-nut cornflakes floating limply in warm milk. Sadly, no time to chat.

His bank account isn’t healthy so he is unable to pick up breakfast at either Quick Chef (where the vegetarian sausages provide the best recorded argument on why to give up meat) or Cuthbert’s (where the heart-shaped biscuits that arrive with his coffee never fail to lift his mood.)

After the lecture the crowd disperses with a heavy stream heading towards the Sydney Jones Library. 200636787 finds the library horribly distracting with everyone working so hard so will walk instead to the Plaza Café next to the Metropolitan Cathedral; sterile and home to all OAPs in Merseyside, but with little chance of being disturbed.

At 2PM, 200636787 has a committee meeting so scuttles off to the Guild Courtyard – not nearly as romantic as it sounds. He sits here for an hour nodding along and trying to say something sensible before heading back to his flat.

Back there Flatmate 54J is now singing along to Oasis full blast – 200636787 hurries into his room before Flatmate 54K is out and screaming for the music to be turned down. Here he dwells over Sir Orfeo for the rest of the afternoon highlighting a few lines and writing the odd note.

That evening he attempts to find the Harold Wilson Room (or was it the Macausland Lounge?) in search of his rehearsal with the Theatre Society (LUDS). He finds neither and spends the next hour and a half skulking around dusty staircases and dingy underground passages.

Eventually he ends up in the Saro Wiwa bar and waits for fellow thespians to arrive before the shutters come down. Once they are down, if they’re feeling grand, it’s to the Philharmonic for a pint of ale; if they are looking for a fine blend of class and kookiness, they will probably end up in either Santo Chupitos or Mello Mello (-or if they are not, Walkabout and Baa Bar are more appropriate.)

Or maybe he leaves his wallet and the student cliché on top of Sir Orfeo, and simply settles down to The Wire and mug of green tea.
Bertie Digby Alexander
London 2011


Originally published on http://liverpoolstudentmedia.com/

Student Demolition 10/11/10

On the 10th of November 2010, 52 000 students and lecturers united in a common cause marched through London protesting against the cuts to Higher Education. Amongst the throng were 10 coach loads of students from Liverpool, up since 5am, no longer bleary eyed and yawning but singing and shouting and determined to have their collective voice heard.

Placards in hand, we had joined the back of the march at Trafalgar Square and in minutes were sandwiched between protesters from all around as more joined us every second. The sheer size of the protest took us all by surprise and we were quickly hyped up with the hysteria, screaming into the air with the rest, ‘No Ifs! No Buts! No Education Cuts!’

The cuts we were marching against will result in some universities having to raise tuition fees up to as high as the stratospheric figure of £9000 per year. It is thought that even this increase will not be enough to plug the whole axed open by the 40% reduction in government funding leading to some Humanities courses to be cut from certain institutions altogether. Such dark prospects had invigorated students across the country; peaceful passion and exuberant energy on show as we paraded past Downing Street. The signs and banners to be seen were brilliant, ranging from the wonderful, ‘Tuition fees = £9, 000. Student debt = £40, 000. The look on Nick Clegg’s face when he loses Sheffield Hallam = priceless’ to the blunt, ‘Clegg is a c***!’

Indeed it was the Liberal Democrat leader who was receiving the brunt of the abuse from the crowd, many of whom had voted for his party due to his pledge to abolish student fees. One memorable sign declared him, ‘The second worse Nick in politics.’ He was receiving a bashing inside Westminster as well as Harriet Harman likened him to a naïve first-year: ‘You’re at freshers’ week. You meet up with a dodgy bloke and you do things you regret.’

Police had deployed many of their officers outside the Liberal Democrat offices, with only five to guard the Conservative Headquarters, Millbank, which left it vulnerable to the 200 wayward protesters who infamously invaded the building early in the afternoon. Once inside these hotheads smashed windows, lit bonfires in the courtyard and occupied the roof, from where one launched a fire extinguisher down to the crowd below. This fringe group saw it as civil war; one insurgent shouted at us as we passed to turn around and help him ‘take back Millbank!’ and a text message sent from the roof declared, ‘This is only the beginning . . !’

The riots resulted in ten people in hospital and thirty five arrests. NUS president Aaron Porter rightly condemned the actions of this ‘minority of idiots’ as ‘despicable’, our own Student President Josh Wright echoing these remarks.

These people sabotaged the positive impact the march could have had, one columnist writing the next day, ‘The public will have little sympathy for students who plea poverty but can afford to bunk off their studies, pop up to London and beat up policemen.’ All we can hope for is that the majority of the public will see past the aggressive few and look to the peaceful masses. Some of our group from Liverpool were shocked and flattered when one Liberal Democrat MP stopped them on the street to shake their hands and apologise for going back on their promise on student fees. Walking through Westminster at dusk, cars were now flowing once more and all that remained to be seen of the march were a few discarded pickets, collapsed and lifeless on the pavement. But this is not to say that the march was at all in vain.

52 000 is a big number. Though marches often fail to force governments to retract their policies, they often force them to think twice before planning similar future proposals. Demolition 10/11 can be seen as the beginning of a ripple of resilient response as others affected by the cuts take to the streets and show that they are not prepared to be stifled, or give up hope for the future.

Bertie Digby Alexander
Liverpool 2010


Originally published in Ellipsis Issue 2 Spring 2011 - http://ellipsisliverpool.blogspot.co.uk/

In Praise of a Lonely Planet-less Trip

Greece was the furthest I had ventured from home before, and then it was a four day Classics trip with my school, full of clipboards, roll calls and hats sporting the school logo. Therefore the prospect of flying on my own across the globe and spending six weeks in the little town of Luang Prabang in Northern Laos was both daunting and exciting.

Laos is a beautiful country, completely landlocked by China, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Consisting of predominantly mountains and thick forest, the country has a variety of beautiful towns, the best known being Pakse in the south, and Luang Prabang in the north. The latter is the second biggest in Laos, and although hasn’t yet been graced by a McDonalds or Starbucks, is the most popular tourist destination in the country.

Pocketed between the Nam Kan and the Mekong River, Luang Prabang is a perfect meeting of cultures; though peppered with ornate, golden Buddhist temples, lasting tributes to the Land of a Million Elephants (Lan Xang Kingdom – from the 14th-18th century), it still shows the effect of its colonisation (ending in 1949), with numerous cafes and bistros lining the streets under arching French balconies. 

My uncle had lived out there for twenty years and the plan was that I would work in his hotel, at reception and on the bar. This was a wonderful chance for me to immerse myself in the town’s life and mix with the wonderfully, friendly locals. From the monks clad in their orange robes to the little old lady who sold me dragon-fruit in the morning, I received wide smiles and chirpy Lao-chatter (on their part) wherever I went.

This welcoming national character could be seen in the locals my uncle employed at the hotel, who were to show me the ‘real’ Luang Prabang, the side that is so often missed. I would feast on the barbeques in the cramped alleyways behind temples; play badminton in the red dusk on the crumbling school playgrounds and drink in their bars and nightclubs.

Their willingness for me to get involved was evident from the outset when, in my first week, I was invited to two engagement parties and a wedding. More nuptials than I’d ever been to in my life. At these events food was forced upon me from every side, bits of which I would tentatively place into my mouth, not knowing – before, during or after – whether it was fish, fruit or desert. The staple food in Laos is ‘sticky-rice’, which you can roll into a ball in your hand and eat with sauce or maybe a piece of dried seaweed. This I got used to, though the raw egg and clotted ox blood was a challenge to adapt to.

At the parties, it was the dance floor that was the real snake pit. What I assumed was free-style dancing was in fact a very précised routine involving specific twists and turns depending on the song playing. My embarrassed partner would blush and bow their head in shame as I grinded across the tent in complete cultural-naivety and after one too many bottles of BeerLao.

My memory of Luang Prabang that stands out above all others was the night my co-barman Onn, took me through the mountains circling the town, to the home village of his girlfriend. We were going to what he called, her ‘Initiation Ceremony’. It turned out to be not nearly as sinister as it sounded. She was leaving the province to become a teacher and this was to be her goodbye party. On the back of Onn’s scooter, we chugged up and down the tracks snailing over the yawning blue mountains for about 40 minutes until reaching the little village, consisting of a small collection of wooden huts where faint candle glow and low murmurs of voices escaped the walls to us below.

I remember walking into the biggest hut and being greeted by thirty dark and beautiful faces staring at me with an intensity that I had never and have never since experienced, none of them having ever seen a ‘falang’ (foreigner) before. They weren’t smiling at me but their faces were welcoming; perhaps more through their eyes than their expression. There was no sense of awkwardness or threat whatsoever.

Sitting down on the rugs Onn handed me a glass of dark brown liquid which I gulped down. I had assumed it was a type of tea, and asking him what it was made from he told me that it was just water, and thoughts of dysentery and early flights home crept into my head.

There was food going round and also a large vat, the size of a bedside table with four bamboo stalks sticking out the top. It was a local whiskey made of rice and drunk warm. Onn and myself were the last to receive it and telling me that it was rude to leave any, we got sucking for the next 20 minutes, by the end of which I lay back on the floor and began to fall asleep.

When looking back on this night it’s hard to rationalise the nervy thoughts I’d been having on the flight over to Bangkok. Save for my uncle and the guests at the hotel, I barely spoken to another westerner in the six weeks I was there and this is what made the time so special. I got to know the locals, homes and families and have a peak beyond the Western bars and tourist ‘must-see’s’.

I would now always urge anyone strapping on their walking boots and backpack not to whip through as many locations as they can but to spend time in one place. There is always more to see – I could have lived in Luang Prabang for a year and still missed things – and it was always more interesting when you peak beyond the Lonely Planet to what’s really there. I was lucky in that I had a contact in the town, but even without one, the inner life of a place is always accessible, if you’re willing to look that little bit harder for it.

I remember a couple of ladies from Florida checking in and asking whether they should try and tick off their itinerary the sunset trip up the Mekong or the tuk-tuk  ride to the Weaving Village. To their shock I told them I wouldn’t know as I had done neither.

‘But honey, you’ve been here for a month! Don’t you want to get to know the real Laos?’ I didn’t reply to this but smiled and showed them to their room.
Bertie Digby Alexander
Liverpool 2010


Originally published in Ellipsis Issue 2 Spring 2011 - http://ellipsisliverpool.blogspot.co.uk/