Northern Sky

In response to my last posting, whinging about the usual non-appearance of the sun on what's supposed to be his big day, the summer solstice, a friend wondered why I had personified the sun as male. I remarked that I was following accepted, and near-universal, convention, as formalised in the Greco-Roman deities Helios and Apollo, or the eastern Shamesh, Mithras or Surya. But on investigation (in that bullshitter's bible, Wikipedia), I discover quite a few cultures personified their solar deities as female. Including, intriguingly, the Germanic solar deity, Sol, otherwise known as Sunna or Frau Sunne. Incidentally, the Norse tradition has another sun god, Freya who is also the god of rain. Bloody typical. We in the north can't just have a god responsible for sun like they do down south. I suppose because there was not enough work to go round, and he had to lend all the other stormy, rainy, thundery colleagues a hand with their workload to justify his post. Sunny spells with intermittent showers, the celestial weather forecast since time immemorial. But I digress.

I do find the idea of old Frau Sunne rather intriguing, and, in my experience, more plausible than the Classical tradition of the sun god, riding his shiny red boy-racer chariot across the heavens each day, and sending phallic rays down to fructify mother earth. It all makes sense now. The sun of the north, the sun of my sky, is most definitely female. Take today, I went to bed last night fully expecting the sun to be shining, as suggested in the weather forecast. But here we are, past 10.30 and I'm still waiting for Frau Sunne to turn up. Looking at the revised forecast I find that she, or at least her meteorological handmaidens, have changed their mind. A woman's prerogative, supposedly, on both counts. As the Monkees so eloquently put it, 'When I wanted sunshine, I got rain'. Needless to say, I'm not a believer. Not when it comes to weather forecasts, and well...

Now, please don't mistake this for a cheap misogynist rant. Take it rather as the tragic lament of a sensitive sun-worshipping romantic who is unlucky in both love and sunshine, and finds the fact that our ancestors thought Sunne was a Frau confirmation of a big theme in my book. A book I describe as 'an open love letter to the most fickle mistress northern man ever served'. I wanted to call the book Sunshine: A Love Affair (but my publishers knew better, and consequently you are more likely to find it, if at all, in 'biography', or even 'personal development' [yuk] than where it should be CULTURAL FEKKIN HISTORY; but that's a rant for another day). I have a whole chapter on love and sunshine, and why all those pop songs and before them poems, find the weather a perfect metaphor for the highs and lows of love. I'll sign off by quoting myself from that chapter: "Weather must surely be the most baffling, tricksy, and infuriating realm of experience to have tasked the intellect, patience or reason of man, from the very dawn of time. After love, of course.". I'll leave my post now, but intend to return to this theme another day. I don't think I've exhausted it, it's just that I have to go upstairs and close the skylight through which rainy Freya, who has come in the stead of Frau Sunne, is now tinkling. TBC...

All Stice and no Sol (once again)

It's the longest day, in the northern hemisphere, and with tedious inevitability the sun refuses to show up for the third year running. Solstice means the time when the sun appears to stand still at the very high point of its 'journey' across the heavens. So he should be there, in his own spotlight, taking a bow from his adorers at the very pinnacle of his journey across the heavens, and his victory over darkness. Stonehenge, one of the most impressive megalithic structures in the world, whose solar and astrological alignment betrays a profound significance at which we con only guess, and whose construction took centuries of extraordinary effort and ingenuity clouded in the mists of time. As such, it must be the most redundant public edifice the other side of the Millennium Dome.

For if solstice means sun standing still, our sun has been standing still behind a filthy great bank of cloud, and it's high time he showed a bit more consideration. But can we really expect more, when the odds are so heavily stacked against us? Here's a depressing little historical snippet from my book: our word 'sky' derives from the Old Norse word for 'cloud'. And what do our more fortunate Latin neighbours further south call their sky? The same word for 'heaven'. Whilst they beheld an infinite dome of celestial blue with a golden god riding across it, we looked up and saw, well, very little, and went down the pub. Small wonder the British are known for melancholia, and an urgent need to escape. One in ten British nationals live abroad: the favoured destinations Australia and Spain.

Wish you were here?

A snap shot from my holiday. This is Malaga airport, and yours truly making the most of the last drop of sunshine before returning to the grey. With an hour to kill and the sun still beating down at 19.30, I managed to find the last patch, next at the corner of a car park, on the edge of a building site. It is part of my creed that sunshine can turn the meanest scrap of land into a corner of paradise, but this was pushing it. The security guard opposite hand me down as a suspicious character, and kept muttering into his walkie-talkie with officious intent. I was almost looking forward to being detained and grilled, so I could claim a martyrdom for the sunshine cause - harassment in the lawful course of my obsession -; but then the signal went up that Spain had beaten Sweden in some football match, and he even gave me a thumbs up and left me alone. He to his pleasures me to mine. An unusual snapshot from a holiday, perhaps, but for me a fitting souvenir from the land of solar abundance.

Making Hay while the sun shone

Just back from Hay-one-Wye literary festival, where I was spectacularly inappropriately dressed. I have devised an outfit as part of my 'brand' for my public promotional performances. It is composed entirely of blue and yellow, and includes yellow canvas sneakers. You can imagine what colour they are now, as it has rained every day bar one at Hay, and the local fire brigade had to pump the site to stop it disappearing. Whilst grungy musos and young folk will wallow with glee in the mud at Glasto, but we sensitive literary types have to maintain some standards.

Well this getup certainly raised a few eyebrows, as did the bright yellow flip flops I adopted once the sneakers were cacked in brown. When asked why I was in flip flops while everyone else was in wellies, I quipped: when they said we want you to talk at Hay-on-Wye, I thought they said Hawaii, and dressed accordingly. Yes, it didn't get a laugh then either. Which is unfortunate, as it was on live national radio, albeit at something like 3am. Graveyard shift, or what the BBC called 'up all night at Hay'. This, let me tell you, was rather a surreal expereince. It ran from 1.00 to 5.00 on Radio Five Live, and involved bantering away about books with the nice folk from the BBC and the Festival, and took place in this caravan parked in a muddy field. This caravan combined the cosy kitchy domestic of the usual granny-shunting, country-road-blocking, bungalow on wheels you'd expect of a caravan, with the high-tech gubbins of a BBC recording studios. A bit like those units spies and criminals have in movies, when they are monitoring people, but with a toaster, a jar of Mellow Birds and a pair of Marigold gloves drapped over a tap.

As the night wore on, the cosy domesticity overtook the high-tech, and I began to relax, be myself rather than on my best behavior. Being yourself is not a bad thing on the radio if it means opening up and giving a natural performance. In my case, however, it meant cracking corny jokes and snerking at double entendres that would escape Finbar Saunders. In short, enjoying myself immensely. What this will do in the interests of 'promotion' is any one's guess. Although I'm not sure how many sun-worshippers listeners avidly tuning in at 4.00 am on a weekday I'm likely to alienate with my wittering anyway. In all, not a bad way to round off my first Hay Festival. And the sun shone the day I was there.