OUR PENNILESS WRITE

Another rush to the train and sweat is pouring down my back as I enter the hot, cramped carriage. Carriage three, they really do make you feel like third class right from the off; before you even get on you have to walk another fifteen carriages down the platform to reach your third class open sleeper.

The train stops and young men stand on the tracks smoking and spitting, their sweaters, jackets and jeans along with their short haircuts make them look Scottish. Babushkas with bags of cherries and people with huge amounts of different cuddly toys tied to them walk up and down the tracks next to the train. They walk around the smoking men, each one of the men seemingly taking in turn to talk on their mobile phone.

The blonde pregnant Russian girl, her husband and mother all changed out of their train clothes (generally for the Russians, tracksuits) into smart attire and left at the last station, a small town near Perm. I got off the train at Perm and almost immediately was seized upon by a tall toothless man who was selling food and drinks to passengers. He wore a dirty black woolly hat and equally dirty black coat, he spoke surprisingly good English, he told me about British history and that Britain is made up of sixty countries and islands. He was particularly interested in the Royal Wedding and had recently read ‘Ivanhoe’ by Walter Scott.

I am reading Bill Bryson’s book ‘Down Under’, it is very entertaining. He is travelling on the Indian Pacific railway in Australia, a railway I have taken myself, which runs straight across Australia from Sydney to Perth. He says:

“There is something wonderfully lulling about being stuck for a long spell on a train. It was like being give a preview of what it will be like to be in your eighties. All those things eighty year-olds appear to enjoy, staring vacantly out of the windows, dozing in a chair, boring the pants off anyone foolish enough to sit beside them – took on a special treasured meaning for me. This was the life!”

For twenty-four hours now the landscape has been unchanging, long spindly twigs of trees, snow in parts and frozen ponds, brown grass, brown earth, a brown land defrosting after a long deep freeze. Regularly obscured by monolithic soviet coal carriages or oil tanker carriages, old wooden shacks, the occasional empty concrete building with no glass in the windows, rusting containers, everything is downtrodden and old.

The middle aged Russian woman who was across from me got off, I helped her with her extraordinary amount of luggage. I tried my feeble Russian with her as she left, she spoke to me in Russian all day yesterday, me just smiling and nodding, even laughing when seemed appropriate, which was not often, she had a very serious way of talking. No sooner is she off than the Turkish men, barefooted, sit with their feet on the seat noisily slurping black tea from small plastic water cups. Putting your feet on train seats is a big faux pas on this train, and I expect the Provonista to scold them.

I pass villages with wooden houses with corrugated iron roofs, most brown and aged, but many colourfully painted in blues, yellow and greens,with painted patterns on the thick window frames, like poorly constructed Alpine lodges. Huge oil painted skies tower over the landscape, the background to an epic painting of a Napoleonic battle on these huge plains.

Still we pass wooden shed like buildings with thick grey smoke coming from their chimneys and cut logs staked up next to them.

I play cards and chat to the Turkish men, there are many more than I thought! I have warmed to their non-Russian ways, only one of them speaks English so everything I say is translated and in turn I am given the translation from any number of commentators. They are travelling to Omsk I think, I showed them a map of the Trans-Siberian route which they took great interest in, but I think some of them thought it was a map of the world so there was much confusion.

The Samovar is a great boon, tea, coffee, noodles, porridge, all of which I am eating from my old chipped enamel camping cup with a steel Chinese spoon I stole from the drawer in The Napoleon Hostel in Moscow. I could just imagine this back home, fifty-four people constantly carrying boiling cups of water thorough a rather wobbly railway carriage, health and safety nightmare!

The final allotment visit of the year took me to Belfast – a very early rise to travel across the water, and a visit that would turn out to be the most rewarding in terms of diverse allotment sites, and indeed allotment folk.

Armed with wellingtons and uncountable layers of clothing, I was met with plot owner G, a lady whose passion for all things cultivation was clear from the outset. I was kindly driven to her own plot first, on a curious triangle plot of land, unknown to many in the city and by far one of the smallest sites I have visited to date. Sandwiched between two railway tracks on a slightly awkward slope, the plots sat, some loudly and some almost invisible, against the surrounding housing estates and local neighbourhood. ‘It isn’t the prettiest of sites’ was the first comment, which Lady G felt the need to point out. In fact it was pretty much an unused piece of land that through local community support, finally seemed to find some purpose. The site had been up and running for some years now but it was still very much a work in progress. With changing allotment officers, and plot owners coming and going, some transforming and some simply ignoring plots, the site still had a long journey to reach ‘allotment perfection’. But then again who wants a perfectly presented site, when there is so much personality and character to be discovered on individual plots and the varying work people are prepared to do on it.

It must be said that Lady G’s plot was an ingenious example of landscape architecture; stylish recycled raised beds, a draining water system to tackle that tricky slope, and a completely systematic approach to planting her various crops.

Keen to show me the larger sites situated in Belfast – I was then taken to two extremely different but intriguing allotments. Firstly, an allotment site which had been created at the back of a national trust site, just on the outskirts of the city. Complete with national trust cottage, a small farm area and mulled wine and baking on the go in the Kitchen, there was a whole host of local families and young couples working together as a community to develop what was a essentially an old cattle field, into a glorious and well organised site. It was here that I met Lady G’s friends, a fellow ‘supper club’ couple. The Supper Club was an idea started by a few local friends in the city, all of which happened to be young lesbian partners and all of which enjoyed hosting ‘come dine with me’ style evening gatherings. The food, of course, came from the cultivated crops on the couples’ sites, and Lady G’s friend giggled to me, ‘that you just aren’t a proper lesbian couple around here unless you have a supper club and your own allotment plot with your partner. It really is quite trendy now’.

On a tight schedule, we had to move on and unfortunately missed out on the mulled wine, but it was worth the journey to the third and most unusually sited allotment I had been to date. It is times likes this that meeting people like Lady G is such a blessing – as I feel my allotment adventure never would have taken me to this site without her. Hidden at the very ends of an old and overwhelmingly large NHS mental health hospital grounds, I arrived at my last allotment adventure of the year. A local volunteer group had been given some unused land within the grounds of a mainly empty hospital site for the purposes of cultivation. What had been created was incredible; a sea of neat and heavily occupied allotment plots, flourishing with crops and flora despite its winter season. Through sheer determination, dedication and teamwork within one full season, this empty area of marshy land had become a fully operational site. Each plot had, as many do, their own accessories or individual trademarks ranging from a small dolls house and amusing DIY scarecrow to impressive manure systems and decorated raised beds and flower pots. I met with two fantastic women, who could not emphasise the sense of wellbeing and community spirit they felt when on site, and it was clear to see why. As a culminating allotment visit, I felt thoroughly satisfied by what I had seen.

It is officially time to get my name on a waiting list…

To know one’s life
Has been misspent
Before it can begin

To house one’s love
Where sadness lives
And so too, all one’s sins

To think of nought
Is thought misplaced
Spellbound and paralysed

To wish that lust
Unthinkable
Could simply be reprised

To hold your gaze
Once filled my heart
Now derelict and grey

To seek your hand
Through swirling sands
Met only with dismay

To break this curse
Like mirrors, reformed
Placed face up in your hand

To spend my days
In her shadow – alone
A welcome reprimand

Six am, dawn breaks in Moscow, the moon still smiles through the rising blue sky and mustard horizon of the coming sun. My first impression of Moscow was not great, it was cold, the wind here cuts like a frozen razor-blade. I had my foolishly big pack and I walked from the other end of the city to get to the hostel and thanks to the Lonely Planet’s inability to accurately plot points on a map, I ended up thinking I was lost and walking all the way round the block the wrong way, not as easy as it sounds when you are carrying over twenty kilogrammes of bags and your hands are like frozen pork chops. It was cold and overcast all day and a disinterest hung over the city. Saint Basil’s and the Kremlin looked unimpressive against the bland grey cloud. In the evening the cloud moved and a golden light came through my hostel window. I put on my coat and walked down to Red Square with a sense of anticipation. I looked up from the big grey cobbles that cover the square and saw Saint Basil’s in all it’s magnificence, the multi-coloured pumpkin domes bulging and glowing in the evening light.

In my mind’s eye I saw from below the coffee table again, its underside constructed for ultimate-fold and transportability. Atop this table, opposite from where I hid, stood a woman wrapped in a scarf and covered from breast to toe in a black jump suit. She whistled a tune that, by way of my open-plan apartment’s acoustics, rang true through the room. The women held her arms aloft balancing core-weight against one table leg that appeared shorter than the others - she swayed from one foot to the other on the balls of her feet, and the table followed suit in time with her song.

I was sat amongst my objects on the half of the open plan space that housed my studio endeavors - ever since I invited the women in I had begun to construct a hide out for myself amongst paintings: by now she was so coveted by her song her eyes were blind against her senses, and I could move unseen and unheard gradually gaining on her - closer and closer still and then upon her.

I needed the coffee table, I had inspected its underbelly and had planned a painting using its alterior surface as a ground for decided incisions, cuttings, and pastings - I had the oils mixed and ready, emulsified with turpentine and bees wax.

I would only get so close before interrupting her flow. I had to carefully plan my moves, one after the other, to increment this sound and build upon her display. She had to fall in the opposite direction towards the window for the table, pushed by her dexterous mishap, to carefully roll on to my side of the space. One foot wrong on my part and she would fall the wrong way.

I got as far as the staircase in the middle of the room and had to stop. She stared right in to my eyes as her whistle reached a higher tone, as if to pierce through me.

Of late I have been collecting the feathers that float through the window at the eastern end of my open plan living space. The feathers seem to be from pigeons that habituate their movements in flight by dipping under the bridge across from my window frame and landing reversely within the suspensions and metal constructions that hold it together. Its as it the pigeons sacrifice one part of their wing span in order to be given permission to ‘land’ or to ‘rest’. I often watch from the interior side of the window as the birds, encased in silhouette against a background of light, grace the last inches of sky and then join the black mass of the bridge and its hinges - then, slowly but surely, a feather falls and gains drifting momentum towards the vacuum that is my open plan flat. The feathers enter and fall lightly to the floor - from there I pick them up and take them to the stair case. 



The stair case, as I am sure you will know by now, makes up the centre and dividing space of my studio-cum-living arrangement. Apart from the occasional obvious spell of a line between where I work and where I sleep, the flat is currently in disarray - and the feathers add nothing to what should be a goal in clarity for me to define what is work and what is not. My old sofa now exists on the studio side as a sculpture, a broken function that folds in orange display with wooden feet jutting out from the top rather than the bottom. The coffee table also now exists on the brink of my studio space, on its side. It just needs one last push over on to its back and it will be ready for painterly affect.



I have four feathers in my hand and as I approach the stair case I trip over the cable for a light fitting, a four meter line of black wire affixed to the ceiling. The fitting comes loose as a result of my momentum, and the energy from my forward steps transfers like a pendulum making my body top heavy. As I fall head first to the ground my hands involuntarily follow my arms and spread out in a wing-like fashion, the four feathers again reach the air. My nose hits the ground with tremendous force. The feathers float with a slight sweat taken from my hand, which affects their gravitational balance. The interior conditioning of dust momentarily contorts their time in the middle of the room. I turn over on to my back and watch them above - they create a perfect circle in slow motion, a perfect mobile with no attachments and no armatures.

There is a gust of wind and it is as if the vacuum of my interior habitation flicks a switch, the pressure in the room reverses and in one fell swoop the air is sucked out of the window - the feathers follow this gulf stream and rush for the outside. I lose them in one blink on an eye.

The riverfront of St. Petersburg has a wind straight from a Siberian winter. The wide River Neva flows like a great choppy sea under grand bridges, past the Winter Palace and Russia’s imperial past. My ears burn from the cold. Wandering around, I realise where my awkward sense of familiarity comes from; the city reminds me of Amsterdam. Not necessarily in looks, but in the canals taking wide arcs through the city. I realise this because I am lost, or at least finding it difficult to get my bearings, and I found this in the first city I ever went backpacking to, Amsterdam. St. Petersburg really does have the air of a grand European city, of Paris or Rome; the dirt and the splendour and the ashtrays in cafés.

I make my way to the Zoom Café, finding it after some effort to circumvent the roadworks going on around me. This is roadworks Russian style, digging up the entire street, quite literally. There are no safety barriers and sand covers the narrow space between the buildings and the work site, full of large deep holes and huge concrete pipes. I watch a group of glamorous young ladies teetering across the street as the pointed heels of their high leather boots sink into the sand. The Zoom Café is a very pleasant place in a kind of cellar with vaulted ceilings full of fashionable young students, smoking as they eat.

She had to go outside. Indoors she felt the entire day roll up behind her like a scroll and ahead there lay only more of the same, only in the dark. The hangover was hard earned, the headache well deserved. Punishment was what she needed. Whatever was left of the sunlight was going to hit her, and now. Sitting in an electric blue fold up chair from Tesco (a gift from a friend a few years ago, she never went there herself), she wished she was wearing fewer clothes. Wait - a breeze - now she wasn’t. Then the breeze stopped, so she was once more. No - After a few seconds of vacillation she decided that it would be easier to accept that only the decent parts of her wobbly body would get the full benefit of the sun. It was so low now that soon she’d be looking for a cardi anyway, and since that entailed movement and activity, it simply didn’t bear contemplation.

On the grass (and here one stipulates grass, not lawn, as the description of this scrubby patch as anything such would be immoral) to her right sat a large glass of disgusting white wine. It was made even less appealing by the certain knowledge that she would indeed drink it in its entirety, grimacing at every mouthful if need be in order to assert to herself that whilst she may be imbibing a substandard product (wine product - they actually have that in the States, not over here though, how very vile!), she was at least aware of the fact and could proceed with the warming knowledge of her high level of discernment. This made her feel superior, not withstanding the inferiority of the libation. How many unfortunates would sip unawares! Not she. No such bliss for the informed.

The unromantic reality of the situation could easily be subsumed by the larger concept of “sitting in the garden with a glass of wine”, so weighed in the balance, the fulfillment of an act which largely matches the concept is weightier than the alternative of doing nothing, and merely contemplating the concept. This, she mused, would also account for the tolerance of years of bad sex. But in this she did digress. The garden was a mess. Her mother would hate her. The garden could wait. Her mother would find something else to hate her for.

That she should willfully persist in the act of drinking an unpleasant substance should direct any observer’s attention to the possibility that this woman may simply be indolent, too lazy to take the merest action to rectify her situation. She noted that any observer, however inattentive, would not need much more than a cursory glance at her surroundings to conclude that indolence may well be one of her attributes. “Allow me,” she would say at this point, “to rise to my defense and posit an alternative view; my apparently misguided persistence points to my far more admirable personal traits of humility and empathy. For who am I to insist on anything finer than that which I have; and surely any who find themselves in a position of lack would view with complete disdain a woman who, although not wealthy herself, would discard a perfectly potable beverage on the basis of arguably shallow perceptions of quality. Why, would not a stock maternal figure appear within the majority of minds, urging us to think of the starving Africans who would be glad to have our surplus, and compelling us therefore to knock that alcohol back?”

At this point she became overcome with loathing and a wish to slap herself for using the very real plight of starving refugees to construct some jocular turn of phrase for her own amusement. Thereafter, by a wave of bilious nausea. Having become so disgusted by her own overestimation of her meagre wit, she had no choice but to drink the remainder of the offensive wine as penance. Her guilt grew still more as she was forced to acknowledge that the self-inflicted punishment was no more than the action she would have otherwise taken; her only option to assuage the guilt was to remove any trace of pleasure in the act and attack the basis of her sense of superiority: to make herself thoroughly enjoy that nasty wine.

Having realised that the shadow of the house had encroached as far as her radiantly white right leg, she moved to the one-metre-square patch of sunlight left remaining on the scrub, leaving the now empty glass out of reach. At least it could no longer haunt her with reminders of her own selfish nature (she really was sorry about the Somalian refugees) and the mingled memories of bad sex and bad wine, and most tragically, both at the same time.

She started to wonder if some quantity of a thing, albeit of low quality, could be better than none of that thing at all. Of course, large amounts of that high-quality version of that hypothetical thing do not exist for most of us. It didn’t exist for her at least. Is it due to whether the item is a luxury or a staple? The starving Somalis (sorry) need water, but dirty water can kill just the same as having none can, though in different ways. So was her wine a luxury or a staple, and is bad but regular sex better than none at all? (She made a note to slap herself later.)

Obviously, she wouldn’t die without the wine, although she didn’t particularly want to attempt an experiment. As for the other… well, she suppose she was still alive. But if those were non-essential items - and of this non-essentiality she was still not entirely convinced, but she had committed to hearing her hypothesis out - then surely quality is an arbitrary value assigned in the individual instance.

Therefore there could be no such thing as bad wine, neither bad sex; merely different types or experiences thereof. Consequently, in order to further disprove the inference of laziness to her person, to salvage any claims to piety and prove the gratitude for the circumstances of her life which allowed her to sit haughtily in a free folding chair from Tesco in a half metre square of sunlight within a dismal garden in rural England (instead of trekking across the Kenyan border), she had no choice but to immediately pour herself another glass of disgusting wine. For as disgusting, disappointing or merely different it was, it was almost within reach.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shall return.
-Bible (Old Testament)
Genesis 3:19.

There is something basic, earthy about bread, don’t you think? It is vital for our survival. It is universal. It comes from land and it is indispensable in culture; the way we produce it, shape it and use it, with its meaning and symbolic connotations to land, dirt, landscape and locality. All cultures have it and handle it differently. The ancient wheat silo of known Europe was once savagely taken by the Romans just because of its vast fields from which bread came; bread is land, land is the people.

My maternal grandmother used to bake bread every Sunday in a tiled stove 150 years old. Her ancestors baked bread in it and passed the knowledge of bread baking on to her. It didn’t start with the dough, it began with the land.

“Land is precious, one day your mother will inherit all the fields. You will have food after I am gone.”

The fields were in my family for generations; ploughed, cut, harvested, rearranged, healed, fathered, loved. Every season was different; with its colours, smells, shapes and textures. The refreshing air in the mornings, the dew that one could breath in and collect on the top of their shoes; just enough to feel the slight sting of the morning on one’s toe tips. The loving preparations for moulding the landscape always began before the morning mass. The patch of dirt was waiting to get ploughed and where the plow cut through the skin of earth, there the sower will put seeds; he will father the earth and make it in its own image.

“First you need flour.”

The room was dark and the only light during the day came from a small window, so the door had to be open, letting the cool air in. One could smell the mouldiness of the 150 year old house. The flour in the strainer, whose edges were made of straw, snowed down the precious dust until the table was covered with a white pile. In the middle came a hole, in it came an egg, salt, water and yeast. The kneading began as a sticky wet unpleasant action of repetitive movements until the dough was smooth and willing.

The ploughing was quick. The business of cutting the earth open was a repetitive action of going back and forth opening the ground and making it compliant. The sower came with a bag and walking up and down and making the same movements, he planted the grain that would rise. Other fields were planted with different vegetation. They made colourful patches in a quilt blanket; buckwheat, barley, millet, corn, wheat, and oilseed rape knitted the landscape.

“It will be corn bread today. Or would you like barley?” They have completely different tastes, colour and appearance. “Well… I would like your mixed bread. It smells so nice when it’s done.” The dough was laid in a slavjača; a straw basket in the kitchen close to the tiled stove, and we waited for the dough to rise and be worked on again.

The rain begot the seeds in earth’s womb and they slowly began to rise from the ground. Time has an essential role in the fathering of the land; it cannot be hurried, delayed or stopped. The grain grows at its own pace and with it the design of the landscape.

“It has been one hour now, let’s see if the dough is ready.” Sliding the shroud back, the yellowish ball revealed itself.

“It needs some more time.”

“How do you know that it is ready?”

“It is like the grain. We see it grow and take on new forms. The colour tells you when it is ripe. Colour tells all things.”

She then took the basket and went to the table. She took the dough out and the smell of salty yeast filled the room. The dough was put on a thin layer of flour. Her hands were white from the flour balm that kept them from sticking to the ball. Patiently her hands were (trans)forming the ball, taking it apart and putting it together again until it became a loaf.

The grain was golden, the corn started to lose its milkyness and it was time to go to the fields and steal the neighbour’s corn, make a fire and grill it. It was harvest time. The harvester came and like a hairdresser skinned the land of hair; the land was bald again. The harvester left marks, an irrefutable design on the land. The tattoo was there for all to see; this land has been worked, it has produced and it will be worked again.

The grain is stored in a hayrack awaiting its turn at the mill. The straws are carefully selected and put away for weaving baskets. When the mill is free the grain turns to flour, slowly appearing kilogram after kilogram; sliding like an hour of sand from the upper chamber through the grinding teeth to the flower bag. Some of the grain is kept for next season; the circle is complete.

The tiled stove opened its huge mouth and revealed its burning bowels. With a wooden stick she pushed away the glowing pieces of burnt wood and placed the loaf directly on the solid hot tongue. After some time the hot room was filled with the smell of bread. She took the loaf out and the alluring smell invited us to have a bite. “Not yet!” The bread was waiting for the last touch, just like the corn was waiting for the mill. She sprayed water on the crust to make it crunchier. The smell became even stronger.

“It doesn’t have the right colour yet?”

“No. It has to be browner.”

The drugging smell became unbearable. She put the loaf out and wrapped it in a wet shroud and placed it in a slavjačato cool down and harden the crust. When she revealed the loaf it was brown, and had scars on it. It looked like the same tattooed land the grain came from, from which it was made.

There is not much in it: between a pulverised mountain and a pulverised heart. From the outset, they are both formidable. Immovable, unsurpassable, unassailable. Daunting. Although most do not realise the magnitude they are up against. In the effort to conquer another’s heart; 6,803.8855 kg of explosives dropped.

There are four chambers to the heart, two major passageways, and ventricles and countless veins and some arteries. There are a couple of tendons that are so strong and crucial that they lift the entire of that lump of muscle. And drop it too.

There is a brazen self-satisfaction in conquest. As any mountain climber who scales slopes and sees the world from a rare perspective knows, it is a perilous journey. Once you have surmounted your love, and planted your flag, you declare your dominion over this heart.

There in the Nangarhar province of Eastern Afghanistan lies the White Mountain. 50 km to the West is the Khyber Pass: a place of resistance against all invading forces. The Soviets in the 80s. The Americans and their bedfellows in the 00s. It is limestone and has a deluxe range of naturally formed homely caves on offer with spacious kitchens. Although, I have been informed it can get a bit on the dark side.

And what about inside, the slumbering caverns and chambers and caves. Who knows what you would find. What resistance, eking out a lean existence, waiting for an opportune moment to blow.

Reduce to fine particles.

Defeat utterly.

The shutter released and I knew the image was one that revealed defeat utterly. The limbs entwined and languid, exhausted from the battles of love and hate. There are dunes that appear as monumental as mountains. To have come back and stood on the precipice, my eyes cast on the horizon I knew so well. Reduced to fine particles of black dust. A dune. Unstable, the direction of the wind – the whim of it – deciding the shape of the horizon. I encounter you, but I am yet to meet the same person twice.