Base Cullions ...

The need to protest against a perceived injustice runs deep in all of us. It is an expression of faith in the power of those that hear to redress the injury.

A couple of days ago Romanian football threw up another occasion for spontaneous popular protest. The machinations of the footballing barons, the disputes over ‘territory’ and the helplessness of ordinary against the powerful, resulted in several hundreds of fans protesting publicly, a minor skirmish or two (complete with broken heads), the temporary blocking of traffic and a loud march to the centre of the town.

It was quite exciting – I followed the crowd in the hope of seeing some action but in the end was disappointed as it fizzled out – the protesters were leaderless and, by the time they’d made it to Opera Square, it was late.

Although this made the national press little has appeared outside of Romania - which is strange, because it was such a minor protest in the same city of Timisoara which caused the Revolution of 1989, which brought down Nicolae Ceausescu (I won’t say communism) to start.

The difference, I guess, is the comparative political stability now. The spark of a minor grievance is not enough to set a significant social blaze – but should be heeded as a warning by those in power.

Shakespeare gives us a similar ‘protest’ at the start of the third scene of ‘The First Part of the Conflict …’. The protesters are the petitioners – men with a grievance they wish to make public and have redressed by the powers that be (in their eyes, the Lord Protector: Gloucester).

They are not able to get access to the person who counts (much as the Timisoarian protesters, who really need UEFA and FIFA to listen don’t get their voices heard through international media indifference).

The Queen, showing a severe lack of insight, sends them off with an:

‘Away, base cullions.’

She might as well have said, ‘Let them eat cake’!

In less than 40 lines, shifting from the seriously dangerous devil-dabblings of Gloucester’s wife, to an ‘all is not well’ in the body politic Shakespeare has given the foundations for all that is to follow – here we have the rule (and importantly spirit) of right and justice being swept aside, earlier we had basics of ‘respect’ and ‘God-given authority’ being ignored.

The protesters in Timisoara appear to have been as unsuccessful as those in Shakespeare’s play … All they need is a Jack Cade though to feed on their genuine grievances.

serendipity

A couple of things sent this wonderful word bouncing around in my head today.

First was watching a couple of ‘turtle doves’ flapping around in one of the parks down by the river.

I watched the Kevin Kline Midsummer Nights Dream last night – and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on it at a latter date – but today the line, “Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?” popped (not poo, this time) up when I saw the birds.

It was the colour that did it – and the naked young couples in the film as the line was delivered; Lots of very fleshy pink. Same as the birds.

I’d always thought of the birds mentioned as wood pigeons (well, I am English and did grow up in urban Manchester in the 1960.s) but Shakespeare must have meant their close relative, the ‘cooing’ or ‘turtle’ dove.

I’ve a couple visit the shelf outside my kitchen window each morning (sorry, I feed the little buggers); they’ve been around for over a year now. They tried to breed last year – but I think they were too young. The nest they built was destroyed in a storm and the eggs in it smashed. They’re looking at a different site this year. Fingers crossed for offspring.

What’s noticeable (and the constant cooing makes them noticeable) is they are almost inseparable – I haven’t checked but I think they must pair for life. So, when Theseus calls the lovers ‘wood-birds’ and says they are beginning to pair – he has seen more than linkage – it is a fidelity shining through too.

That’s what the flapping in the park reminded me of.

Second bit of serendipity came almost at the same time.

I was reading through Peter Brook’s Evoking Shakespeare and getting fired up to review it when, at the end of what was a talk given in Berlin, he answered a question – and came out with something so simple, so obvious I’d not thought of it (bit like the doves really):

(To paraphrase)

Shakespeare was born with a set of abilities, principle of which being a prodigious memory and a capacity to listen and observe; he used these capacities to the full when he wrote his first play.

At this point of first putting pen to paper he hadn’t ‘lived’ – hadn’t the experiences he would be able to add to these innate abilities to write the later ‘great’ plays like ‘King Lear’ and “eventually the Tempest”.

“… one sees a very interesting relationship between what’s inborn and what is developed by life.” (Evoking Shakespeare, pg 30)

Well, yes – that’s exactly what I want to see in this odyssey through the works, I thought.

How much is nature, how much nurture?

(Hopefully the doves have learnt to build a better nest this year.)

Selective Truth

Romanian football might not be everyone’s starting point for a quick look at Henry VI (part 3) – but there are parallels.

(I suppose, for cultural clarity, I should, at this point make clear I am talking about the game for men with balls that are not an odd shape.)

Soccer in Romania is dominated by baronets – rich men who ‘own’ clubs. There are 4 or 5 of them and they are very ‘public’ in their ownership: Never a day goes by without one of them appearing on the television; usually it is more than one.

Partisan is an understatement – ‘rude ignorant pigs’ still a bit too subtle.

They interfere in their own teams to the distraction of the managers – buy players who are not needed and sell others without replacing them with anyone to ‘fill the gap’ the exiting player leaves. They complain publicly about the managers performance, undermine their authority continually, and begrudge them the bonus payments when they win. It is strongly suspected that one baron even bribes individuals of his own team to loose matches so he doesn’t have to pay out larger sums to the whole team if they win. Of course, he then goes on television and says the manager is not doing his job properly.

More worryingly they are regularly accused (and even more regularly accuse each other) of corrupting match officials and rigging matches through other nefarious practices.

These are not the mighty magnates of English football – truly rich men who stay quiet publicly, dig deep into their pockets and let the teams get on with the job. These are petty men – pale shadows of the greats they attempt to imitate.

And here is the first link to Shakespeare’s play – gone are the great men of the earlier instalments (apart from York – who exits in Act 1) - to be replaced by much smaller men – men whose vision is not broad enough, token representatives and partisan upholders of faith in themselves.

“Mink coat and no knickers” (as my father used to say).

They ‘ape’ their predecessors but do not seem to understand what it is they copy.

They exist for the moment – there is no real continuity: Strategy is short term only. And so too is their perception of the world they live in.

In Shakespeare’s play, the past becomes a thing for selective quotation – a truth for being economical with. Partial truths about the past are used to justify present actions – and are publicly invoked in that justification.

In exactly such a partial way the truth has been used in an incident between two teams here in Romania.

Straight away, one petty owner leapt in front of the nearest television camera and started screaming about ‘the rules’ the past, the way it was done …

He was quick to add blame for the official (who had just been hit on the head by a flying object – premeditated, according to the all seeing owner).

Dangerous stuff – especially as public disorder, already abroad, was provoked, and awaits a next encounter.

Such are the things of civil war.

What I am left with is the sense of small mindedness, of a gap left which needs filling with truth, with authority based on right, … a worthy King.

In black and white 2:

2. Is this a question of Politics or Theatre?

I left off last time with a question – could Iago be played by a black actor?

It is a question with its origins in a debate that took place way back in the 70s when they were casting the first filmed version of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ – Norman Jewison the director, had cast a white Jesus and a black Judas . There was a bit of an outcry at the ‘negative image’ created by such a casting (remember, we are at a time when race issues were to the forefront of politics in a number of countries).

Quite rightly Mr Jewison pointed out that the ‘political correctness’ of those protesting was blinding them to the ‘unprejudiced’ nature of the casting – and that those objecting were, at best, misguided: What is trying to stop a black man from playing a major role in a major filmed musical on the grounds of the colour of a his skin if it is not prejudice?

I think this highlights the problem of political correctness and acting Othello – and also gives the best answer to the problem – to deny any actor the right to play any character in the play on the grounds of their race (and I’d add gender and culture) is just plane wrong – it is a denial of our common humanity and a clear example of prejudice.

It is also a common mistake ‘in understanding’ of the nature of theatre: Nothing on the stage is real – everything is illusion (and isn’t): All the World’s a Stage.

Shakespeare knew all about the illusions of life and the stage and one place he tackles it is in ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream”. His rude mechanicals hang on to the need to ‘bring moonlight’ into the hall they are to perform in – and they have to give the ‘lion’ a speech of denial – don’t be fooled, he’s really a man, not a man eater. Shakespeare is taking a quick kick at the literal minded (and dangerous) Puritans – but also exploiting what for many people at the time was an essential question – what is the nature of reality and the connection between the life we lead and what we really are?

No doubt exists in my mind that Othello is was meant to be looked on as a potential ‘everyman/everywoman’. (I also think the same of Shylock.)

There is a correction in the above paragraph is has been turned to was – as I have pointed out elsewhere, the text we have inherited is incomplete: The director, actors and audience do not miraculously shed the contemporary when they enter the theatre – despite the illusions of costumes and design, the obscuring quaintness of some of the language and tedious programme briefs, today is ever present.

I live in a country, Romania, where once performances of Shakespeare could carry a revolutionary message – when Ian McKellen brought his Richard III to Bucharest, the audience knew it was about dictatorship and corrupt political government – just like that of Ceausescu’s.

Whilst not wishing to limit theatre to this potential political dimension, it is a legitimate concern at times and a legitimate function of ‘theatre’. Brecht, after all, did exist. The casting of a white man as Othello can be symptomatic of political and social oppression. How Brecht would have challenged such oppression in the theatre I cannot say – but I can be certain he would have challenged it.

But Stanislavski also existed. And Eisenstein. Russia, during iconoclastic, revolutionary times producing icons for the future of almost the oldest profession in its newest manifestation.

How we got to modern Hollywood from such noble ancestors beggars belief, but we did (sorry – I actually enjoy a lot of the output of Hollywood, but I’ve got my low-grade-intellectual hat on at the moment).

Film, as it appears in Western popular entertainment, promotes a deceptive realism. If a character is meant to be ‘Afro-American’ he has to be played by ‘a person of colour’. The only exception I can think of to this in recent cinema is Antony Hopkins – who played (excellently) an ‘interesting’ part in a ‘worthy’ film about a ‘black’ man whose skin colour was light enough for him to pass as ‘white’ and who eventually gets accused of racism against black students.

Mr Hopkins, of course, also did a brilliant job as Othello in the BBC Shakespeare.

With the majority of people’s exposure to acting and storytelling (and, I suspect, Shakespeare) being essentially ‘filmic’, it is not surprising that a recent conversation I had with one young man, to whom I had lent Orson Welles’ film version of the play, started with the question – “Why didn’t they cast a black actor as Othello?” He went on to say you could tell Othello was wearing makeup.

I wonder if he would ask the same question about a stage performance?

If he lived in the USA most likely – combine the political realities with the deceptive film reality and expectations would be casting to ‘type’.

Over in Britain there has been a tradition of black actors playing Othello (from Paul Robeson onwards) at the same time as more traditional castings such as Laurence Olivier (in a controversial blacked-up performance).

But then again, British theatre productions owe a much stronger debt to Brecht than to almost any other practical theatre theoretician. It is one of those delicious ironies that an approach to theatre designed to focus the audience on social and political issues can result in magnificent musical dross like ‘Cats’ – which, in case you didn’t realise it, employed some of the greatest of Britain’s Shakespearean talent in its original production.

So, to return to my question, is this issue one of Politics, or Theatre?

Yes.

You have to make a choice – Politics or Theatre: Power or Imagination.

They are not the only choices available nor, necessarily, the most important; neither are they mutually exclusive, but they are certainly potent and polarising.

But what about the acting?

othello

shakespeare

Ambience and Accident

I'm just coming out of a week of workshop and performance with a mixed group of enthusiastic amateurs and (what I like to refer to as) proto-professionals.

What started off as a performance of a cut down Shakespeare, ended as a most interesting experiment in the application of 'ambience' and 'accident' to a variety of text extracts. The basis remained Shakespeare - as reflected in the 'All the World's a Stage' speech which both started and ended the performance.

On Friday evening, as the sun set, we promenaded the texts in front of an invited audience - in the local botanical garden, a public place which hadn't been closed to 'the public'. Most definitely intended as (as one participant phrased it) a work in progress, resonance and echo, bright bombs of ideas and dud squibs have been infecting my waking thoughts since.

The strongest image I come up with is that of Seurat's, 'La Grande Jatte'.

In that remarkable work, individuals, pairs and small groups are placed in a man adapted landscape: So too with our texts.

Monologue, dialogue and more extended extracts from scenes were placed in a landscape which evolved out of the mixture of human decision and selection, and the more powerful vagaries of natural growth working on a genetic ‘text’.

This is a rational/real-isation ‘After the fact’, but so much of what happens in theatre is precisely thus - no excuse needed.

Environment and text interacted far more powerfully than I anticipated (or hoped for). Indeed, I am not sure I was consciously aware of the potential when I started on the workshops.

What the gardens were originally chosen for – backdrop and oddness, colour and outdoorness, time and light - soon transformed the scenes.

The strongest effect, in performance, was to unify. Under the green wood, along the paths, confined in the fenced space; but much stronger in feeling was the awareness of people – the park was full of humans – like La Grande Jatte on a Sunday morning.

These people were sitting, talking, walking, playing guitar, watching the children – and the ‘actors’ were no different – they too were in the playground, a natural part of the park: Truly, all the world had become the stage.

Each text was given a relevance – and the extracts became caught moments of other people’s conversations.

Caesar was just walking along the footpath amongst a group of friends and between the park people when from another path, across the formality of a flowered bed, the soothsayer shouted her warning – a moment only, then passed on – not time to catch more than an awareness of other people’s lives.

Later, on a zigzag Chinese bridge, over a dry pond, Oberon has just parted from Titania – and calls for Puck to fetch the magic flower – a dog barks as he mentions the singing of the mermaid, children are noisily playing, a family, pushing a child in a buggy stop and watch, then move on – a man with his children had watched the actors ‘rehearsing’ a previous scene – time looped.

Once more unto the breech!

About to start a week intense directing-workshop sessions hopefully resulting in a promenade performance of a cut down version of either 'The Dream' or 'The Tempest'.
The weather is obliging us with appropriate storms and sunny bouts - not to mention national warnings about floods - so both seem appropriate choices.
At the moment the intention is to do the work in English - but we might have to shift to Romanian if the actors ain't up to the language - I don't want to have them 'parrot' what I say.

Performing Again

Not often I have the chance - but a couple of weeks ago I did my best to drag some willing Romanians into Shakey's world.

Striking thing was where and when I performed.

Outdoors, in a courtyard (about the size of a typical pub courtyard), in daylight on a slight platform.

It was impossible not to 'talk' to the audience - when I did the 'monologues' they became multi-logues.

'To be or not,' is dialectic!

We assume Shakspere was being Rhetorical - but he isn't.

More work and thought needed on this one.

Gone You Tube

Just opened a group on You Tube! Quite exciting all this media madness.

Open to all - but note the topic - Romania and Shakspear - not just any old madness.

Hope to post me doing some bits soon.

Blood

"... most people forgot that the very oldest stories are, sooner or latter, about blood."

(Hogfather, Terry Pratchett)

A Revolution is about to happen in Romania.

This is the last Christmas people will legally be allowed to kill pigs by 'sticking' them.

For those who don't know what that means - basically cutting the major blood vessel in the pig's throat whist it is still alive and letting it bleed, slowly and noisily, to death - ostensibly, in order to catch as much of the blood as possible (for black pudding making) as the still beating heart pumps like mad in the extremely distressed and dying porker.

Another view might be that the European Union's animal cruelty laws are about to bang another nail in the coffin of traditional culture and ethnic life styles: Romania joins the Union on the first of January.

The two weekends before Christmas are the traditional 'Pig Killing' days in this part of the world.

I was reminded of this fact Saturday morning when the squeals of the 'first sacrificed' filled the village.

Looking across from the vantage of a hillside location, a number of large fires were being started in courtyards and a heavy haze was settling in the still air. The fires are used to burn off the bristles and to boil the copious amounts of water needed to process the carcass of a full-grown pig. Burning pig flesh and hair soon added pungency to the normal aroma of wood-smoke from domestic fires.

I have become quite used to 'country ways' and have little of the townie's qualms about killing animals for food (or clothing - try living without a fur hat in the cold winter temperatures of Eastern Europe, say -15 degrees Celsius, on an income of under 100 Euros a month which isn't sufficient to buy the petrol-derived-artificial-fabrics 'politically-correct' fashion dictates) but 'The Pig Killing' still makes me angry.

There is no need for it - a bullet (or bolt) in the head and hoisting the dead animal up in order to let the blood drain under gravity is just as effective (but try telling that to the 'we've always done it this way and it tastes better' brigade).

What struck me this year though was the amount of blood wasted - not many people seemed to be collecting it.

As I walked through the village to go and buy supplies of bread and beer I had to step over several streams of blood and water flowing out of the courtyards across and into the channels which run down to the valley's main brook.

A couple of times I had to step through sheets of red which had spread across the muddy road.

Once I passed a rather furtive looking dog – there are a number of mangy village mongrels whose parentage and ownership is somewhat hazy – which had taken possession of a string of guts, and was mixing bouts of furious chewing with dragging its prize to a place of comparative safety.

Another sign, I thought, that the sausages were not being made.

Then my mind went walkabout.

‘Now that’s a sight you won’t see in the centre of Manchester! In fact, when do you see blood in Manchester?’

And, ‘I bet Shakespeare saw blood as a child – in fact, they’d have been sticking pigs at this time of year in Stratford, back then.’

There is a lot of blood in Shakespeare.

Watching death on TV – even real death, in wars and executions (Christmas in Romania is the Ceaucescu-execution-on-TV season too) – is not the same. Blood is distanced. It is contained, without the smell, at the control of a switch.

In films and theatre, nowadays, it is Kensington Gore, and no matter how realistic it seems, the disbelief is suspended and deep inside the spectator’s head, it is not blood. It is not death. And most modern theatregoers have never experienced real blood and death anyway – sanitised hospitals and ‘Brompton Cocktails’ rule.

They used real blood – pig’s blood in fact – at, The Globe.

And there was a daily familiarity with the reality of killing – from childhood.

The children and grandchildren are involved in my village still – keeping the fire going, fetching and carrying, watching.

I am reminded of the drowning kitten poem of Seamus Heaney – Early Purges.

There will always be people who do the ‘dirty work’ – the executioners (and surgeons) – and killing should be humane – but the rest of the world is losing its grasp on one aspect of reality essential and omnipresent: Blood.

Demon Drink

(or No more Cakes and Ale)

One summer, not that long ago, I spent a weekend in a remote village in Romania - so remote in fact there was no permanent vehicle access - cars drove up a dry river bed in summer to get to it - in winter, cars didn't.

It was there I learnt about water drinking:

Animals do - humans don't.

Humans drink wine, with breakfast, dinner and tea - even children drink wine - or the very young, milk. Herb tea would sometimes be taken for illness.

It isn't alcoholism - although it can easily spill over to that - and the associated domestic violence was an accepted part of life: It is the only safe way to live in a world where the water is dangerous (and science hasn't penetrated - schools? Boiling water cleans it of disease?).

Elizabethan England was the same.

Small beer (low in alcohol) was the Elizabethan 'water'. Every housewife made it at home, children drank it in school, and clergymen knocked back a pint before giving the Sunday sermon.

Strong ale was a social drink leading to drunkenness (and a reported cause for Shakespeare's death). Wine for the rich; cider in certain parts of the country.

No wonder then that drunkenness and drink is quite a common theme in the plays of Shakespeare.

The Porter in Macbeth is drunk.

He talks about drunkenness – and talks in a most vulgar way (it is also, in the hands of a good comedy actor, exceptionally funny).

Modern western audiences, with their convoluted views on alcohol and alcohol abuse, don’t see what Shakespeare’s audience see. An audience in America might be a lot more ‘puritan’ in outlook than one in England, but missing in both is the fundamental necessity of drinking ‘beer’ - or it’s fermented equivalent – as a preserver of life.

Also missing (although less so in parts of the USA) is the essential Co-Text to Shakespeare, the Bible (and associated Elizabethan Homilies and Sermons).

The first thing that came to me when thinking of the Porter Scene, was the text used by Luther on his First sermon on Advent – Romans, chap. 13 vs. 11 – 14.

The key verse is this:

13. Let vs walke honestly as in the day, not in riotyng & dronkennesse, neither in chaumberyng & wantonnesse, neither in strife and enuying.

Is there a better comment on Macbeth at this point in the play?

Macbeth is working at night, the porter talks about the carousing and drinking, about ‘chaumberyng & wantonnesse’ (lechery) and Macbeth himself, who enters quickly, represents envy and strife (although the porter does talk about fighting drunkeness).

It is worth thinking about Luther’s comments on the quoted verse at this point:

“The six works mentioned suffice to teach that he who lives in the darkness of unbelief does not keep himself pure in his neighbor’s sight, but is immoderate in all his conduct, toward himself and toward his fellow-man.”

When we watch Macbeth and Lady Macbeth ‘doing’ the killing, we get wrapped up in the tension and magnitude of the action: We do not think – oh, should he be doing that?

The Porter’s scene gives us space – not to relax, not to relieve ourselves, but to think.

We have an immoderate commentator – reminding us of the darkness of unbelief: Pointing, in the clearest possible way, the path Macbeth is treading.

Lady Macbeth has used the word drunk a couple of times by this point.

She talks of hope being drunk – and then sleeping off the effects.

More interestingly, she enters (Act 2 ii) and says – ‘That which hath made them drunk, hath made me bold’. She has been drinking – but what reads like simple Dutch courage to us, has the smell of sulfur around it:

Honest men it has incapacitated; the evil made bold.

Other drinkers in Shakespeare include Falstaff. If it is true that Falstaff has his origins in The Vice, then his constant drunkenness and whoring support the notion that an Elizabethan audience would be wary of such activities and, no matter how amusing he seems, see his route to the gallows is clearly marked out – lined with primroses maybe.

And a point worth making here is the audience watching Macbeth’s Porter could well have Falstaff in mind – surely it is the same actor playing the parts?

Which brings on the question – which parts did the Porter double? If it is a witch – his entrance as the Porter would instantly link evils.

What does this say of other drunks and drink scenes?

Iago uses drink to bring the downfall of Cassio – Iago playing another Vice/Morality play figure, Good Fellowship!

In Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra, there are drink scenes with negative connotations.

In Julius Caesar though, and 12^th Night, surely drink is looked on slightly differently? Antony is praised by Caesar for ‘loving drink’.

And Toby Belch’s repost to the Puritan Malvolio, ‘Because thou art virtuous, Shall there be no more cakes and ale?’ surely has a double edge.

Rotten Corn

The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;

One result of the rains this summer in Romania has been the rotting of the corn - maize now, unlike the wheat of Shakespeare's day.

It is hard for all of those people who live in towns and cities to grasp the significance of this.

The corn is used for two purposes - feeding the chickens and livestock through the cold winter, and as a staple of the human diet. Bread is a luxury in many villages and there is nowhere to buy it anyway.

The traditonal wooden containers found in many farmyards, usually full at this time of year, are empty. The stalks of the maize plants are still standing - barren. Animals will have to be slaughtered, and chickens will go hungry, get smaller, lay fewer eggs.

People are going to go hungry, their diets will be limited and various degrees of malnutrition will set in.

This is the reality hidden in the words - a true horror to those who still live this life all over the world.

Titania's Speech

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which falling in the land

Have every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents:

Perhaps the most interesting thing to come from my experience of the rain (previous post) is a realisation of just how physically real this speech is.

As we approach 2007 - the year when over half of the world's population will be classified as urban - connecting our personnel experiences with the natural elements of Shakespeare is becoming increasingly difficult.

I suspect, in Shakespeare's time, listening to Titania's speech was a much more powerful experience - it certainly is for me now - and physical/tactile rather than intellectual. There is an overwhelming sense of uncontrolled energy - an energy against which we are impotent.

My understanding of this is not now in terms of psychology - it is in terms of a concrete feeling based, as it must have been for the vast majority of Shakespeare's original audience, on being forced to endure a real storm.
Pelting rain is no longer just uncomfortable, it is a force to be reckoned with.
And this is not an extreme event (as it is sometimes suggested by people who have lived in the closed world of the ivory tower) - my experience was only on the edge of the really serious flooding that devestated parts of Romania.

Just as in the politic world of Theseus/Hippolyta, Egeus is being allowed to break the harmony and sends out the forces locked in the lovers; so in the natural world of Oberon and Titania, a dispute unleashes considerable natural forces, normally held in check.

Every Pelting River made Proud

The experience

We had our own Niagra Falls within seconds of it starting to rain: The guttering running the 20 meter length of barn roof was overflowing.

And I mean flowing - a solid, metalic sheet of water heaved itself off the roof and plunged onto the cobbles below. – I've lived on and off in the village for several years now and I'd never seen anything like it.

For well over half-an-hour the downpour hammered everything.

The yard was under several centemetres of water. Drainage was through the barn – soaking the bottom of the stored hay.

The tell-tale sound of flowing water signelled the road down the hill outside the main entrance had turned into a torrent – normally this only happenes in the worst of winter, when the ground is frozen – and rarely with such intensity; never for so long.

Plum and walnut trees seemed pressed down. Goodness knows where the birds had gone – they couldn't fly in this.

It was not dark exactly – the rain was light – but you only saw the rain – and how it was pushing against everything.

Inside, the chimney soon ran with water – the plaster was stained and I had to put down sponges and cloths to try to absorb some of the flow.

I moved the small icon I had bought in a flea market in Moscow, and the fine Chinese statue from Shanghai, off the mantle piece. A few old letters had already soaked through and were sticking.

I could only move things out of the way of the ever increasind drips and dribbles: The roof, not in the greatest of states, was incapable of holding out rain under this pressure: At one point, quite frankly, it seemed to me as if it had given up trying.

Back on the veranda the tiles were seaping. I saw one of the local house snakes glide up and into the summer kitchen – wether it was escaping the water or because it had scented a mouse escaping the water, I couldn’t tell – but at that moment any living thing I could attach an atom of sympathy to was a welcome sight.

There was nothing I could do: Whatever damage there was, there would be.

But damage was the wrong word – this was an unfocused, complete and all encompassing force – pressing squeezing, shifting – but not total. You knew it could do a lot more.

It was unmotivated, aimless, inpersonal.

One element – water – against … what?

Nature itself?