Caitlin through the Looking Glass
Bob Dylan is releasing some previously unreleased recordings through an exclusive distribution deal with Starbucks. Previously he has appeared in adverts for Victoria’s Secret lingerie.
Go, the counter-revolution!
Actually, I have read interviews with Dylan where he has said things along the lines of: “I never cared about politics – that was just what sold at the time. All I ever wanted was to be like Elvis.”
And people wonder why everyone’s so cynical these days.
Spain could be about to change its laws on marriage to enforce equality of the sexes and fair division of household chores, according to this report in The Australian. It’s written by Emma-Kate Symons, who worked at The Australian when I was there and is now a Paris-based contributor. I caught up with her when I went to Paris in March.
The story says:
Changes to the marriage contract supported by the Socialist Government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, along with conservative Catholic and right-wing politicians, will force men and women to promise not only fidelity but equal shares of housework, childrearing and care of the elderly until death they do part.
It’s quite radical for a country like Spain, which still has that macho Latin edge and, so E-K writes, mothers do their adult sons’ washing and young girlfriends prepare all the meals for their partners as a matter of course. Of course, it’s largely symbolic since it will be almost impossible to enforce but apparently judges will look at how well men have lived up to this promise when considering divorce settlements.
It’s fascinating to see how another culture has chosen to respond to this challenge – I can’t imagine this ever happening in an Anglo country.
Although it’s interesting, I must admit I find it quite bizarre. For starters, I find it bizarre that the Government would legislate what goes in the marriage vows. I think these should be personal and reflect what the couple believes in and wants. And while, I think equality of the sexes is a good thing, this is blatant social engineering. I do really dislike paternatlistic governments that presume to say how people should live or what they should believe in. Finally, if both couples are working then housework should arguably be divided equally but if one half is financially supported by the other half then they might regard doing extra housework as a fair compromise. Surely everyone is different and it depends on each individual couple’s circumstances?
And how will this stop the given examples of mothers washing the clothes of their adult sons or girlfriends cooking every night for their boys? They’re not married – they’re not breaking any law!
It gets better and better. AOL has just invited me and a guest to go to Live 8 so my boy can come too! (And I didn’t even ask them).
They’re Golden Circle tickets, which has nothing to do with the Australian juice brand, and everything to do with the fact that it’s a VIP area with a maximum of 10,000 people as opposed to the 200,000 in the main concert area. Woo hoo!
I am checking out the situation with press accreditation but one of my colleagues will probably use that. And if they don’t, I can take a friend.
I am writing something for Media Week on the marketing and media side of things and also doing some vox pops for Third Sector, a charity magazine published by our new owners, so my press pass is not a complete rort.
Yes, I’m fully appreciative of how lucky I am. I hope my London friends won’t hate me too much!
Dilemma solved.
I have been lucky enough to secure press accreditation for Live 8 on Saturday (I am doing a story on the corporate sponsorship, simultaneous broadcasting on radio and the all-round massive media coverage). Now I am seeing if I can get another ticket for my other half but I am not sure if that will work out. We have a few mates going to watch the screens in the park so he won’t be short of company if I can’t swing the extra ticket. I’m really excited as it should be a good vibe and fun to actually see the concerts close up.
The other thing is that the concert doesn’t start until 2pm and since I have press accreditation there is no need for me to get there early. So I am going to go up to Birmingham on Friday night and come back on Saturday morning. It’s only two hours away by train.
France is going to host the world’s first fusion reactor, according to Reuters.
I won’t go so far as saying I am pleased by this because I do not feel I have enough scientific information or understanding to judge the merits of fusion power. However, I am definitely interested and anyone with an interest in the future of this planet should be too.
I am not a fan of traditional nuclear fission power. It has many advantages over burning fossil fuels but it still doesn’t rest easy with me. There is always the danger of meltdown as happened with Chernobyl, whether through malpractice, accident, sabotage or terrorist attack. There’s the fact that in Australia mining uranium causes radioactive tailings to leach into the waterways in pristine waterways, upstream from Aboriginal communities. There’s the fact that selling uranium is, at best, a gamble as to whether it will be used for energy generation or diverted into weapons programmes. Then there’s the biggie – what to do with the waste. There’s not a lot of it but it’s nasty stuff and it lasts virtually forever. I am not at all convinced by any of the proposals of how to deal with or store the waste.
That said, it’s clear that we can’t keep burning coal and other fossil fuels either. The evidence for global warming is now so compelling that it’s not an overstatement to say that if we do that, the world will die. Whereas with nuclear power, the world might die. (The same arguemnts hold on a smaller scale, with the nasty diseases caused by coal dust. If you live next to a nuclear plant, you might die; if you live next to a coal-fuelled power plant, you almost certainly will). Many environmentalists (not Greenpeace but that’s more about politics than science) are beginning to wonder if global warming is such a pressing and urgent concern that nuclear power might indeed have a case after all.
It would be better if there were another way but most clean energy sources are still very small scale and have some fundamental problems. Solar power is the one most Australians are aware of but for obvious reasons that is not practical everywhere in the world. In Europe, the big one is wind power, while there has been some research done on wave power. One problem with both solar and wind power is that they take up lots of land; with wind power there is the added problem that they are noisy and unsightly. There are offshore wind farms but I believe it’s still quite expensive and no one knows what the disruption of the air currents does to birds’ migratory patterns. Still, many of these problems can no doubt be overcome. I fully agree that we should be investing the R&D dollars to bring them to fruition but I am not sure the planet can wait another 10 or 20 years. We need at least an interim solution now.
I also agree that we need to cut down on the amount of energy we use, both in the home and in industry. But this sort of social change takes decades at the very least and we don’t have decades. And as India and China and other developing nations industrialise, it’s only going to get worse.
Fusion power is certainly not an ‘interim’ solution as it will be many years before it’s truly useful. But I am really interested to know how it goes. It’s touted as an extremely clean source of almost unlimited energy. Can it live up to the hype? Or is it just another form of nuclear?
Tonight, the English, French and Spanish are reenacting the Battle of Trafalgar, which was fought 200 years ago in October 1805. Except they’re not calling it the Battle of Trafalgar and, although it will replicate the battle in almost all respects, they are calling the two navies the Red team and the Blue team in order not to offend anyone. (See this article in The Times).
Meanwhile, work is in progress to transform London’s St Pancras station and make it the new Eurostar terminal. Although it’s further north, it will take a straighter and more direct route and will actually shave 20 minutes off the travel time to Paris. It’s an epic engineering project as they have to dig underground without disturbing the labyrinthine Tube network and also preserve and renovate St Pancras to its full glory. It’s a great project – but I have mixed feelings about it. Partly because the current Eurostar terminal is very convenient to where I live (although by 2007 I could be living anywhere so I guess I don’t really mind). But mostly because there is something rather poetic about the French arriving into London at Waterloo.
The field below Parliament Hill in Hampstead Heath is home to a rather unusual art installation this summer. The sculpture ‘The Writer’ by Italian artist Giancarlo Neri is meant as a monument to the loneliness of writing. The location is quite fitting since Hampstead has produced so many writers over the years. The statue is 30-foot high and quite striking with all the Lilliputtian figures at its feet, as you can see.
‘The Writer’ sculpture at Hampstead Heath 
Close-up of ‘The Writer’ sculpture
This guy managed to climb up one of the chair legs to thunderous applause from the crowd
…and then he took a running jump, grabbed hold of the top of the table, hoisted himself up and made it all the way to the top! He must be very strong!
I had a pleasant afternoon in the park – it was sunny and warm but not baking today. It was a good weekend all in all. I’ve already written about the concert on Friday night, then on Saturday my boy and I went to a barbeque with some of his work friends at a flat on the Isle of Dogs (near Canary Wharf and Wapping). and I also went for a skate with Natalie in Hyde Park after Hampstead Heath this afternoon. I’m going to start going for regular lessons soon.
I released this on Sunday 26 June 2005 at The Writer sculpture, Hampstead Heath in London – Hampstead, England United Kingdom. I left it by the base of one of the chair or table legs, next to a copy of The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, which someone had released earlier. I’d planned to meet other BookCrossers for a picnic but it was very busy and unfortunately I did not spot anyone. I still had a very pleasant afternoon sitting in the sunshine with a good book.
It was caught by a BookCrosser who left this journal entry:
Journal entry 4 by inkognitoh(805/322) from West Kensington, Greater London United Kingdom on Sunday, June 26, 2005
The other bookcrossers can’t believe we missed you. We had been keeping our eye on the Kelly Gang book and had turned away momentarily when we saw your book there as well. Initially a gent picked it up but he left it further up the hill in the grass. I grabbed the book and brought it with me. Looking forward to reading it. Sorry we didn’t find you.
See all journal entries for this book.
After a fairly stressful week at work I finally left the office on Friday afternoon and headed off to Hyde Park to meet my boy. We were going to see Moby and New Order at the Wireless Festival.
Of course, festivals in this country are traditionally wet and muddy and, after a week of sunshine, the weather gods simply couldn’t resist. We got soaked in the downpour when we first arrived and since all the tents were full, we had no choice but to stay outside. Luckily the rain more or less stopped during Moby’s set and only resumed as a light drizzle while New Order was playing. I didn’t care – I was in festival mode and was quite prepared to accept whatever came. I think it was a lot less crowded than it might have been had it been fine too so I guess it’s fair to say that every cloud has a silver lining. (Groan).
And at least we weren’t at Glastonbury where tents were being washed away in floods of mud, according to newspaper reports. At one point Moby told the crowd: “I’m really glad to be here. Like everyone, I think that the institution of Glastonbury is a good thing and I know it’s all about spirituality and lay lines and so on, but a friend sent me a picture from Glastonbury of portaloos floating in a sea of sewage and that made me really glad that I get to sleep in a hotel bed tonight.”
Caitlin soaks up the rain at the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park
The first band we saw was Bravery, which I hadn’t heard of but they were pretty good. Next up was Moby, who was awesome. He’s really good to see live if you ever get the chance. The crowd was still quite quiet so I could just relax and enjoy the music. I had a big smile on my face by the end of that set.
I really like New Order and they are really pioneers of a lot of this stuff so I think it’s pretty cool that they were headlining Moby. Moby seemed to think that appropriate too, dedicating one of his songs to New Order and saying that he wouldn’t be here today without them.
New Order played an awesome set and did a good job of mixing old crowd pleasers like Bizarre Love Triangle with newer ones. The crowd was really hopping, which was fun as it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a mosh pit, but there were a few drunk idiots who kept flicking people with their shirts and falling backwards onto people. Oh well, it’s par for the course I suppose, though I found it strange because I didn’t think New Order fans were renowned for being big beer drinkers! 
Moby on stage at the Wireless Festival
‘Horny guys’ listening to Moby. At one point Moby pointed into the crowd and asked if they were actually Scandinavian. He then introduced a song about quantum mechanics.
New Order on stage at the Wireless Festival.
There’s more festival fun to come. Next Sunday I am seeing Jamiroquai at the BLive festival in Clapham Common (just down the road) with a bunch of mates. There are others over the summer but I haven’t booked tickets yet.
I’m still trying to decide about Live 8 on the Saturday. The band line-up is: Annie Lennox, Bob Geldof, Coldplay, Dido, Elton John, Joss Stone, Keane, The Killers, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Ms Dynamite, Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, Razorlight, REM, Robbie Williams, Scissor Sisters, Snoop Dogg, Snow Patrol, Stereophonics, Sting, Travis, U2, UB40, Velvet Revolver. I would particularly like to see U2, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney and Madonna and wouldn’t mind seeing a few of the others but there’s also quite a few I’m not that interested in. Of course, I wouldn’t actually be ‘seeing’ them – I would be watching on big screens and hearing them from a distance. The main problem is that I had planned to go away for the weekend. Please see this blog entry and help me with my dilemma.
Here’s my dilemma: I have been planning to go to Birmingham for the national BookCrossing meetup on the first weekend in July since about February. I went last year and had loads of fun meeting new people, swapping books, playing Cranium, drinking red wine… This year will be even better because I’ll already know a few people, plus there’s a free writing workshop with an author on the Saturday afternoon and plans to go out dancing in the evening. I’ve been stuck in London since I went to Oxford in April and I am looking forward to getting away.
On the other hand, the Live 8 concert is that weekend as well. It’s an historic, one-in-a-lifetime event with performances from U2, Paul McCartney, and a reunited Pink Floyd, among others. I don’t have tickets but they are putting screens up in Hyde Park and we’ll certainly be able to hear the music since it’s an open-air event. My friends Natalie and Tash, who were meant to be coming to the BookCrossing weekend and sharing my room, have already bailed and decided that they will go to Live 8 instead.
I am really undecided about what to do. I can’t really do both because the Saturday is the main day for the BookCrossing weekend – there’s not much point just going for the Friday night and I was always leaving early on the Sunday because I have Jamiroquai tickets for Sunday evening in Clapham Common. On the one hand, I want to go to BookCrossing – it will be fun and I really want to get away for the weekend. Also lots of people are expecting me there (though not relying on me – the show will go on without me), and unless I can find someone else for my room I will still have to pay about £40 for accommodation. Also, BookCrossing is guaranteed, while Live 8 has lots of variables – will it be too crowded, will it be too hot, will it rain, will I be able to see or hear anything, am I particularly excited about the bands anyway? On the other hand, I can’t help feeling I would be missing something if I didn’t go to Live 8. There will be other BookCrossing meetups but only one Live 8.
I need to decide soon but would be interested to know what you think… please leave comments or email me.
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