big skies - deep waters - long memories

I'm writing this on our last evening in Orkney - tomorrow morning we catch the Hamnavoe ferry from Stromness back to Caithness (I can't call it "mainland" since Mainland is what they call the largest island here on Orkney). I'm trying to get my thoughts into enough of a linear form to fit them into things like words and sentences, while I'm still here, so that time and the city and the resuming of life doesn't dull the experience of this last week. This seems the sort of place that will drift away, somewhere past the cliffs of Hoy, pulled back to the islands and the sea, not something you can take with you. That's why people come here once and keep coming back. Or never leave at all.

And everywhere there's the marks made by people long ago - Skara Brae is the one everyone's heard of, but Maeshowe stole our hearts. You crawl though a 10 meter long passageway, lined with single 20 tonne blocks, and emerge in the main high-ceilinged chamber, three tombs like box-beds set into the walls. The blocks of the main room are covered with carefully etched graffiti - but no lazy tags or scrawled nicknames - these were made with axes and stones - by Vikings, 1000 years ago. The tomb was already old when they entered, sheltering from a wild snowstorm for three nights. Legends says there were 100 of them in the small space (a bit of Viking exaggeration?) - but they alleviated the boredom by writing messages on the walls: "Ingigerth is the most beautiful"...."The man who is most skilled in runes west of the ocean carved these with the axe of Gauk Trandilsson"....and up high, written by a man surely sitting on the shoulders of another -"Eyjolf Kolbeinsson carved these runes high". On the winter solstice the setting sun hits the Barnhouse standing stone, aligned perfectly with the entrance to the tomb, shines down the passage and illuminates the back wall of the Maeshowe. Oh, and you can watch it live via webcam every year - 21st of December (about 3.30, when the sun sets on the shortest day in Orkney).

The Ring of Brodgar is a huge stone circle amongst the heather, just across the water from Maeshowe. 104 meters in diameter, with a 130 meter diameter encircling ditch dug into the bedrock. The stones are huge - phenomenally big - and all from different places around the islands. The ditch was dug and the stones erected at the same time, but by different people - 4,500 years ago.

The Ness of Brodgar dig a little way down the road is uncovering a series of buildings of some kind - though they've no idea yet what they could be. We walked around, wondering if the people who made them had any possible notion that, 4-5ooo years from then people would be there - that people would even care? Perhaps they thought their society and culture would survive for ever, no mystery to their buildings because they would still be in use.

At the Tomb of the Eagles we handled Neolithic pottery shards. One was decorated with little fingernail crescent grooves. I put my nail in these marks - the same marks made by someone else's fingernails, 5000 years ago. A sense of vertigo, of incredulity. 5000 years ago.

But this is everywhere here - on every island - practically in every backyard. There are something like 300-odd Neolithic dwellings here, just rough circular marks in a farmer's field of a garden. Only a handful have been excavated, or ever will. Not much treasure here - the bronze-age hardly even made it to Orkney, most of the people here too poor (and too practical) to ever bother with the expensive, soft bronze.

I've spent most of my childhood in the remote hills of Mid-Wales. I know the bees on the brilliant purple heather and the scrubby moorland hills, rocky beaches and constant gales. I know the evening sunlight on the water and the geese skidding in to land. It shouldn't be new to me, or have this effect on me, but it does somehow.

The sky is just so big here. It's an odd feeling: being this open, amongst this much space, yet feeling as though you're right in the clouds, shielded from the mainland and the rest of the world behind a curtain of sky. And there's so much weather here too - it comes and goes at incredible speeds. It rains (though not as much as the rest of the UK), but the rain doesn't stay for long. Every evening here has been gloriously sunny. The wind never stops - you don't want it to, because a gap in the gales brings the midges out like demons. Our faces are red and happy with sun and wind-burn.

All we need now is a glimpse of orca during the ferry trip. Crossing all fingers and other crossable body-parts....

Well who'd a thunk it?!

For three years a friend at work has been telling me that I need to start cycling into work. For three years I've been replying with one or more of the following:

1) No.

2) Just absolutely no.

3) When hell freezes over.

4) Not in a bajillion years.

5) hahahahahhhAhahhahahahahahahahhhaahahah!

6) Really, no.

I'd spent the majority of my youth on increasingly larger hand-me-down bikes from my cousins or brother. I still remember the day I got my first ever brand new bike, my wonderful Grandad who I've mentioned here before would get my brother and I a new one every few years on our birthdays. I remember coming home from holiday one day when I was God-knows how old and demanding my stabilisers be taken off my little red, yellow and blue bike. There were rides to Llyn Eiddwen, bikes dumped unceremoniously in the rushes by the side of sheep-poo covered tarmac, Dad shepherding us on occasional trips, he on his big white Raleigh racing bike. Off-road rides up The Top of the farm, skipping ropes tied to each handle bar so my brother and I could pretend we were riding horses and play Lonesome Dove (yes, we did actually do this). But the extent of the traffic on Mynydd Bach was the occasional sheep with a death-wish, or on a really busy day, a tractor from a neighbouring farm.

But in London traffic? I would surely be flattened by a bus in a day. Or murdered by angry "expert" cyclists with serious faces and serious bikes and even more serious lycra. And considering my brief foray into learning to drive didn't go so well (I still have frequent recurrent nightmares about being put behind the wheel of a car) and the fact that I sometimes have to think quite hard before being sure which is my left and right - well, I thought it was probably best for everyone if I just stayed off the roads.

And then one day the impossible happened: my cycle-mad flatmate asked why I didn't just get a bike.........and I actually found myself considering it. And considering it in scenarios that didn't end with me under the wheels of a bus.

A little bit of idle searching online and I came across the Bobbin Bicycles site, which is basically porn for any vintage-style bike lovers out there. I'd heard about Pashley a while ago, and have been watching the past two annual Tweed Runs with tweed-green-eyed envy, but never in my wildest dreams could I have ever imagined owning one of these beauties.

If you've never heard of Pashley, I don't blame you, but they really are the most beautiful bikes.

Established in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1926 by an ex-WW1 dispatch rider, they're still making them the same way, in the same place over eighty years later. With bikes named "The Guv'nor" and "The Princess" you can't help be charmed. I'd seen a fair few of the ladies Princesses around and fallen in love from afar, but searching the Bobbin catalogue that day I came across the Pashley Poppy . It was a bit of a Wayne's World moment, me practically drooling on the keyboard and swearing that one day she will be mine.

A few weeks later the bike came up in the Bobbin summer sale, and I jumped. Taking her out for a test-ride I fell instantly in love with the "sit-up-and-beg" style of the high handlebars. I rode around the lovely quiet square behind the shop a few times quit happily in the skirt I happened to be wearing that day, and noticed how people smiled at me and my lovely bike. I knew I had to buy it - not just that model but that very bike. I walked away with it about 20 minutes later....and got it in the back of a taxi as I wasn't quite brave enough to make an hour and a half journey across London in rush-hour on my brand new bike just yet.

I thought it would be ages before I worked up the courage to begin riding on London roads, but progressed in one weekend from riding on the Thames path to Barnes, then riding to South Bank on some of the cycle lanes on roads, and then attempting my journey to work on a beautiful quiet sunday morning. By monday I made my first trip to work in rush-hour traffic and was loving it. Okay, so I still get a bit sicky-feeling with nerves when I think about it (not loving the lorries and buses....and serious cyclists frowning at me and my sedate pace every morning) but the wonderful feeling of air and movement and speed is infinitely nicer than the stale soot, delayed and cramped tube carriages. I even think that the type of perspiration you get from a bike is preferable to the type of perspiration you get from a tube journey at this time of the year. Here are some of the brilliant things that I've seen and have made me smile on my couple of weeks cycling to work:

A man jumping over a 7-foot wide cobbled road on roller-blades.

A business man crossing the road smoking a pipe.

The Royal Albert Hall and memorial every morning and evening.

Little girls being led around the paddock in Hyde Park on little piebald ponies early in the morning.

A man waiting at a crossing who looked exactly like my Grandad.

And here's what I've learned:

I love cycling.

My bike is a bit like me (old before her time, a bit creaky, likes to dress in vintage).

I call my bike Poppet and talk to it regularly. Out loud.

I bruise like a peach and my inner thighs are purple right now.

Safety is Sexy.

Exercise is fun when you don't know you're doing it.

If I can do it, anyone can.

And if I do end up under a bus? I just hope my Poppet makes it unscathed.

Illustrat(h)er..

So it turns out it's quite hard to get a picture of my tattoo - they warned me that a circle on my wrist would stretch, in time, and though it hasn't warped into an oval yet it does tend to look that way when I stretch it around to take a photo of it.

It's a year since I got it and I thought it a good time to write some thinky thoughts about it. I know this might sound stupid to people who have countless tattoos, but to me this was a very profound experience - and though I often wake up in the morning having dreamt of the crazy extensions that I've had tattooed around it (not sure what this signifies), it's not an experience that I'm in a hurry to have again.

Don't get me wrong - I love my tattoo. I've never regretted it, and I don't think I ever will, precisely because it was the act of getting it done that means as much, if not more to me, than the mark itself.

Have you ever doodled something on the back of your hand to reming yourself - something that you need to pick up at the shops, or a doctors appointment maybe? My tattoo is a bit like that - which is one of the reasons why I wanted it somewhere as prominent and visible as my wrist. It's to remind me, to make me think, about lots of things.

The design itself is a "koru", a Maori symbol that I have a jade necklace of from New Zealand. It quickly became a sort of good-luck charm, and it made me feel safer and more confident to have it with me when I needed a bit of a boost. I like the cyclical, natural look to it. Some people have commented it looks like a shell, like a nautilus, or a ying and yang symbol, or...well, a foetus. Okay so the last one is a little weird (I can't imagine who'd want that on their wrist) but it's interesting that they all sort of represent the same thing. The design itself, and the Maori's koru symbol is based on an unfurling silver fern. It represents new life, new beginnings, but also, ultimately, that life goes the way it is supposed to go, and the way it has done for millions of years. According to wikipedia: "The circular shape of the koru helps to convey the idea of perpetual movement while the inner coil suggests a return to the point of origin."

At the risk of sounding a bit of a hippie - I like this idea, and it comforts me. I want to look at my wrist every day and remind myself that I'm on the right path, that everything it as it is supposed to be and the little things that cause me pain, and anxiety now, are ultimately transient. Every now and then I need to remind myself that I'm doing the right thing, that I've come a long way but there's a whole life ahead of me. Also, anyone who has come into contact with me at all will probably realise that I the world's biggest worrier - and I'm constantly battling with the niggling feeling that I don't deserve such wonderful friends, such a great job, such a nice life. Not in the sense that I'm not good enough to deserve good things, in a moral sense, but that I'm not grown-up or worthy enough, somehow. That I'm running with the big kids and one day they're going to notice that I shouldn't be here. So koru is to remind me that, in the words of Desiderata:

"You are a child of the universe

no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."

As I mentioned before, the act of getting it done was important. I had just passed the three year anniversary of my moving to London, which in itself was a big deal for me. This time last year I thought I was happy, but I was lonely, a bit lost, trying to find myself again, I think. So the act of getting it done, the permanence of it and the pain, is to prove to myself that I am an adult - I am capable, I am strong - I can deal with these things. I can make big decisions and I can deal with the consequences.

Which brings me on to my last reason: if any of you know me well enough to have heard me go off on one of my "the trouble with kids these days!" rants, you'll know that I'm big on the responsibility of the individual - incidentally one of the reasons why the idea of organised religion has never sat well with me. Last year I was coming out of a place that had affected me deeply, and made me think deeply about my position in this world, the people around me and the way I want to go on with my life.

It basically boils down to this: shit happens. The world can be really fucking cruel sometimes. People can be horrible to you, or manipulative, or mean. Past relationships, friendships, childhood bullies, families. All of these people we come into contact with can leave marks on us, that affect us for a long time. But ultimately I believe you can't let this affect the way you treat other people. I wanted to remind myself that I am the only person responsible for myself, and I should be the only person who can leave a mark on myself.

So. A little bit deep and thinky, maybe. But I suppose if you're going to get a permanent picture drawn on you then it might as well be for a significant reason. So my tattoo is my lifelong "To Do" list: live well; remember I have a right to be here; be responsible; treat other people well - and you'll get where you're supposed to be.

Or, you know, something.

P.S. Lawks, this blog is getting far too serious! I'm going to have to counter this with something really stupid and frivolous. Go and check out "Condescending Lama" on http://animalsbeingdicks.com/ for something light and fluffy and really quite funny.

"P.S. How are the tomatoes?"

When I'm feeling sad, or sorry for myself, or lonely, I buy tomatoes for dinner - the small, expensive ones, still on their fuzzy sharp vines. The hot musky smell of them does something peculiar to my brain, opens a little wormhole in my head - or my heart, or somewhere- and sucks me through to my childhood. My own personal, internal, olfactory time machine. Time And Relative Dimensions In Smell. Or...something. I am a child again, standing in my Grandad's greenhouse, breathing in that smell. And it's a little bit theatrical, a little bit hammy (not the smell, the sentiment!), but I remember him like I last saw his yesterday, not five years ago.

But you see, my Grandad was often a little bit theatrical, a little bit hammy. A perfect, and my favourite example: The Curious Tale of The Missing Index Finger....

If I shut my eyes I can see my Grandad's hands - loose, wrinkled skin - the little nub of his left index finger which was cut off below the nail. When my older brother and I were kids he told us he'd got it stuck in the big anti-aircraft Bofors gun he fired during the war (presumably at a time when he and his mates weren't using the barrel of said gun to smuggle stolen tins of raisins, or being stranded on the wrong beaches with it whilst the rest of their regiment fought it out, a little way down the coastline, in the Invasion of Sicily.)

No, he told us that he'd been firing the gun in Egypt when his finger became trapped in the mechanism. Unfortunately it had to be amputated, but the story had a happy ending because he gave the nub of discarded finger, nail and all, to a sad and starving stray dog that had been skulking around camp - which led to the mutt following him around for the rest of the war. My mother, though, has another version: she was told as a child that he lost it in a duel with a Cossack. Yes. A duel. With a Cossack. Asking around, we realised that everyone had been told a different story.

That dashing looking blond lad up there is my Grandad, Ronald Price. I'm currently in the middle of spell-checking and correcting the grammar on the literally hundreds of letters that he sent to his parents whilst away during WWII, and which I've typed up and intend to make into some sort of book for my family. And I've finally found the truth of The Missing Index Finger:

"23^rd March 1945

I missed writing this weeks letter for a day or two as I squashed one of my fingers with a sledge hammer on Monday and the M.O had to cut the end of it off to trim it up. It’s the index finger of the left hand so it won’t bother me at all. It’s healing up very nicely so don’t get worried or anything."

They were putting up a tent. Not quite as glamorous as the duel or even the dramatic gun-mechanism-finger debacle. But this is my favourite story about my Grandad - if you know me well enough the chances are I've already told you it. It's my Grandad, right there. The entertainer. The comedian. The truth may not be as exciting as the overblown and entertaining tales that made us laugh as kids, but there's something in seeing this little paragraph, written to some parents at home in North London, worrying about their only son. Something so young and human. Reading these letters has let me see my Grandad as Gunner Price - in his early twenties, never left home till the war but now traveling the world, and desperate to document and share everything he sees and experiences with his mum, dad and sister back home.

In an odd way, I think I know how he felt. I spent three months in New Zealand at 19, phoning home almost every day to tell my family about the incredible places I'd been to, the people I'd met. I was desperately homesick but loving every minute - but more than that, more than homesickness, I was aching to share it all with the people I loved.

And here's my Grandad, old creaky Grandad young and blond, dancing and swimming and eating his way around Italy, spending his leave in Rome weighed down with guide books ("I saw the famous Colosseum but as it is not the first Roman amphitheatre I’ve seen I wasn’t very stirred"), going to a Turkish Bath in Iraq ("This brings to the surface all sorts of mud and slime whereon you blush hotly and wonder what mother would say"), picking up a tan in Sicily ("Yes sir, that’s me, the body beautiful. Oh what a treat the girls are missing.").

He was obviously making an effort to be cheerful and entertaining for his worried parents back home - and for his sister, who was slowly dying of a brain tumour. His letters to his parents and his sister in those last few months before she died are heartbreakingly chipper and positive, full of cheesy jokes and shared memories for her, and assurances for his parents' benefit that miracles happen every day, no matter what the doctors might say.

But it's the little things, the signoffs ("Cheerio love Ron"), the asides ("I hope Dad has just pruned the roses. Now is the time, you know) and the postcripts ("P.S. How are the tomatoes?") that bring it all home for me.

For a long time I've wanted to write something about my Grandad, but it's so hard to put into words all the things that I want to say. That I want to say to him, really. He passed away on the 29th of October, 2005. And I have missed him desperately, each and every day since.

I want to tell him how much we love him, of course - but other things, silly little insignificant things. I want to tell him that his letters are wonderful, that he was so very funny, and wrote so beautifully, and that I'm sure his words were a great comfort to his parents and sister. I want to tell him about my life now - the books I'm reading, the places I've travelled to and things I've done- the way I found the courage to get up and sing on stage because of him. The way I'll always try to be as good and loving and understanding and curious and excited a human being as he was - that I could never find a greater role model than him. And that I, like him, will never be too grown-up to get excited on Christmas Eve.

But I can't. But I do. In my head, every day. So here I am with my tomatoes, and I am a child again, and it's summer again - stretching on through endless sunny sunday nights, the knowledge of them ending there somewhere, but hazy, out of sight. I'm standing in my Grandad's greenhouse- stiflingly close air heavy with the earthy smell of things growing, sunshine and water on crumbly soil. The little concrete paving slabs line up between the tall green rows, a little tangle of strawberry plants makes a break for freedom through a gap in the breezeblock foundations. But mostly tomatoes. Little hot, sunny, red skin-cracked tomatoes.

"What did the Romans ever do for us, eh?!"

Cor, I spent ages on this picture! Again I'm left wondering when I will grow up and make proper worthy art instead of just drawing girls from different historical eras, but this was a great exercise in drawing straight on Photoshop which I very very rarely do. It's not really my preferred style, but it was good practice. Especially the hair, which took the bulk of 4-5 hours. This tiny crummy upload doesn't really do it justice, but there we go. Her name is Osian, which I know is a boy's name, but still.

I've no idea why but I'm currently in the midst of a massive Roman/Celt fixation. Alright, it's a bit of a lie when I say I don't know why - it all started when I went to see "The Eagle" movie a few weeks ago, based on the fantastic book "The Eagle of the Ninth" by Rosemary Sutcliff. The film is fun - nicely shot, good battle scenes, well acted - a little Hollywood-ish in places but forgiveable. It's not going to win any prizes for groundbreaking cinema, but it's a good fun movie - and it caught my imagination. And it's got that Billy Elliot bloke in it, skulking around being all slavey-y and Gaelic and moody and secretly/blatantly in love with his Roman master - Channing Tatum. Which is a made-up name if ever I heard one.

Every now and then I see a film or read a book which drags me into a particular obsession - usually a historical era. When this happens I just can't get enough of it: I need to read books and magazines about it, daydream about it, I need to watch films, listen to music, completely immerse myself in it. And then a few weeks later and normally with wallet a little lighter I come out the other end of the thing. Until next time, at least.

Mind you, I've always had a particular interest in ancient history and archaeology, so this is at least allowing me to indulge that. Everything seemed...more epic then, didn't it? When men built walls across entire countries, fierce painted tribesmen harried legionaries by appearing and disappearing in the mists, whole countries changed overnight. The list of things the Romans brought to Britain is staggering. I mean, locks and keys, glass, as well as little things like politics and governments and, you know, really really straight roads. They even had under-floor heating ("hypocausts" - amazing!). Turns out the Romans actually did do a lot for us.

The one thing that it's got me wondering though (and it's a pointless rhetorical question as I doubt anyone is reading this, but I can be self-indulgent on my own blog, right?): so much of our modern English language is from latin, and from the later Norman invasions, But when Rome officially got tired of mad tribesmen and year-long winters and abandoned Britain, the Celts and Saxons and British-born Romans were all left to jostle for power. The Celtic language was meant to be something like Gaelic but a lot more like modern-day Welsh (if that isn't a contradiction in itself) - so why aren't there more Welsh and Gaelic words in the English language? If that's what it evolved from?

Anyway, while I'm digging the whole Ancient Britain thing I feel I should really pimp out and recommend all the books by Rosemary Sutcliffe, and "The Eagle" soundtrack by Atli Örvasson, which has some truly epic celtic themed bits of music. I also watched "Centurion", which is alright but I enjoyed far less than "The Eagle" - because I couldn't give a toss about the characters and there was far too little bromance and much too much gratuitous day-go blood. Although it gets points for judicious use of Michael Fassbender. Oh and I revisited "Gladiator" and reminded myself why I loved it so much when I first saw it, and how magnificent the score by Hans Zimmer is. I'm currently debating whether I can sit through "King Arthur" and Keira Knightley's boney jutting chin again just to see the costumes and weaponry, or if it'll induce a repeat of the fit of hysterical giggles that it did the first time I saw it.

Hmm. Maybe my obsession won't stretch quite that far.

"Beautiful! Just beautiful!"

So on a spacey theme today, in honour of the 50th anniversary of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, I want to share this song - "Space Walk" by Lemon Jelly. The voice sample used is Alan Bean (so the internet tells me) an American astronaut, describing the sunset as seen on a spacewalk outside their craft. The song itself is wonderfully bouncy, uplifting and summery, but Bean's commentary is gorgeous - it's incredible to think that this is the voice of a man speaking as he sees the earth, the first "point of light" of the sunrise from space. The joy in his comment of "I feel like a million dollars" is evident. He's witnessed a sight that the majority of us will never know - a sight that would without a doubt change a person's life, and their perspective on the world they live in, forever.

Still, it'd scare the shit out of me. But then that's why I'm not an astronaut.

Enjoy!

Aiding and abetting: '50s shoot with Scarab Pictures

So my wonderful and talented friend Claire of Scarab Pictures asked me to run around in the Soho sunshine, dressed in '50s-ish rockabilly clothes - how could I resist? I'm very lucky to have such talented and creatively brilliant friends, who often not only abide my penchant for dressing up, but often actively encourage it!

Check out the whole shoot here.