14 ACTORS CREATE ANARCHY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

Well, it happened, quickly, too quickly.
But I wasn't thinking that as I stood in line waiting to go on stage. Our play, a one night only production called, 'Nine Meals from Anarchy,'  explores what might happen in a local community when the oil runs out and food shortages start to happen.
My heart was pumping and thumping like Sigourney Weaver just before the Alien jumped out of her chest. This was the first time I'd acted since school days. That was when my phobia for forgetting lines started. It happened in 'The Importance of Being Ernest' and again in 'The Christmas Carol'. Mortification and embarressment for myself and regret at letting people down. I just hoped that this time I wouldn't be the one who messed up or forgot her cue.  Us 14 actors managed to get through the play, somehow, with a couple of scenes going awry and our supporters said the audience would never have known. They may have been kind but there were some really good performances, particularly those from my old school play mate, Jo, and Amanda, a new member of Peacock Vein's Script Cafe. How Derek, Emily and Sarah managed to pull together the script from our weekend of devising and manage the production in three and a half days is truly amazing.
Derek was also directing Sylvie Butterbach's play, 'White Goods', which explores the experiences of an African asylum seeker and his relationship with a charity worker (played by Emily). It is beautifully written, exploring how language and cultural differences can lead to tragedy. It was also very well received by the audience at Pontadawe Arts Centre.
So, what's next?   I'm off to our allotment, so when the oil runs out  . . .

THE LIVING IS EASY?

 It is said that time goes faster the older you get. That's not my experience this year. This summer seems to be going on forever. Like one of those that gets talked about from an idyllic childhood. False memory syndrome wasn't named that then but I often wonder if summers in the 50's really were that long and hot.  The summer for me started in April in Mexico and there's still a couple of months left. The past two months without much work have been spent idling in Pembrokeshire. Wonderful especially in the sunshine but good weather is bad for my writing.  I tend to avoid it.  So I'm willing a shower or two to water my creativity.
Rain or shine I've signed up for a weekend with Pontadawe Script Cafe, led by Derek Cobley and Emily Hinchelwood, devising a play about climate change with the working title, 'Nine meals from Anarchy' to be performed at the Arts Centre on 8 July along with a play called 'White Goods' written by Sylvie Butterbach, a member of the group. For further info contact Emily on 07522 076084 or contact Pontadawe Arts Centre 01792 863722.

40, 60, 51 & 57

Congratulations to Chris and Dave on their 40th wedding anniversary! We were among the sixty odd people who were invited to share the couple's celebrations at Manor Parc Hotel. It was a great evening, an intimate, elegant venue, excellent food and interesting company. One woman had last seen Chris and Dave on the day of their wedding. She remembered waving them off on a train to their honeymoon. Their lives taking different routes she hadn't heard from them again until through 'Friends Reunited' Chris tracked her down living in Ireland and invited her to the celebrations.
 Nowadays it would seem that you can re-connect with anyone you might wish to from your past. I did the same last year and met up with old College friends who I hadn't seen for nearly forty years. I've written a play, called 'The Reunion', loosely based on the event. I enjoyed meeting them again. I'd been unconsciously searching for one of them for years. Her look-a-likes appeared randomly on buses, at train stations and once even at Bangkok Airport. When I met her again I realised that I'd fossilised her in my imagination, a young skinny girl with a chestnut bob. Forty years on she's still very slim but her bob's pure white. I had been searching for the wrong person. After forty years, can you just pick up again or has too much life gone by for the historical connection to be enough to sustain a future relationship? In this case apart from one e-mail straight after the reunion we haven't been in touch.
On Monday we went to London to share Kate's 60th birthday celebrations in a special lunch held at The Exhibition Rooms in Crystal Palace. Kate had invited sixteen of her closest friends. Having heard a lot about some of these people over the past ten years since I first met Kate it was nice to meet them.
It made me think about how and why we choose people to be our friends, why we are chosen and why certain friendships endure?
We stayed with one of my oldest friends, Jane, who has been my friend for the past fifty-one years. We met at secondary school and became close friends from the start, encouraging each other to be wild, dramatic and in the eyes of the teachers so naughty that at one point we were separated.  Drama is still our passion and we went to see a play at the Young Vic, called 'Joe Turner's Come and Gone'. A very deep and complex play about the interplay of shamanism and slavery on the black person's psyche around 1914.
We met up with another school friend for lunch at LMNT, an Egyptian- themed restaurant in Hackney. I have known Sue since primary school, around fifty-seven years. I see her perhaps once or twice a year but she's been such a loyal and reliable friend I know that I could always go to her if I needed support or help. I hope she feels the same. This for me is the essence of true friendship. Everything else is a bonus.

Some names have been changed to protect identity.

NEW DAWN NEW DAY NEW WORLD

4.30am. I love that song by Nina Simone. Really captures the hopeful feeling of the candy-rock sky behind my screen and the baby black bird hopping after its parents across the patio. Joanna Macy's book, 'World as Lover, World as Self' didn't make me nod off, so after laying in bed for a couple of hours in the dark thinking about my future I got bored, and thought I'd bring you up to date with  what's been happening.  
We got back from Pembrokeshire last night. The hedgerows are teeming with white and pink hawthorn trees, sunny gorse, red campions, bluebells, garlic and those tall white umbellifers, that could be wild parsley or carrot. I'm not sure.
 On Monday we went to Broadhaven South Beach. Together with Barafundle Bay, a little way further along the coast, these have to be the best beaches in the world. Horseshoe bays backed by dunes, clean sand and turquoise water.  Despite the water being too cold for me even wearing a wet suit, brave souls were swimming in bikinis-not for very long mind you- the average time running into the water, thrashing around in a small circle and skipping out, was around 20 seconds.
I finally managed to complete my fifth full moon poem for April based on the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan outside Mexico City. Just in time as it's May full moon today. This is a project I have for 2010-to write a poem at each full moon. It's hard not to repeat oneself!  I thought that May's poem would be under the cut of the surgeon's moon-shaped light.  No such luck. Instead, I've written him a poem.

HIP OP

Please Mr Jones

Operate my hip

cos my hip aint hopping.

Like Chester after the Sherriff

I'm a limping and a-lopping.

I can stomp like Ian Dury

but aint got no rhythm stick

I aint got no rhythm.

Mr Jones

September is far too long to wait

It's a bore

Operate my hip

Make me tall and straight

Not crook'd no more.

Replace the chewed up bone

with your new ball and socket

Lock it Mr Jones

so I can jump, skip and run

walk miles, have fun.

Be Cool Mr Jones

Operate my hip!

Have a great bank holiday weekend.

HIP OP CANCELLED

It's May 18, the day I was supposed to go into hospital to have my left hip replaced, the day this year has been planned all around.  In the letter postponing the op until September there was mention of bed shortages, bed blocking and emergencies. However, the cynical side of me and a view confirmed by some NHS workers, is that this is where the cuts begin. One nurse friend even said,
'Don't believe otherwise.'
The Occupational Therapist came yesterday with her measuring tape and plastic elephant feet to do a rece of our home and furniture and to sus out if Rhys is up to what it takes to look after me post-op.
'He's been doing it all our married life', I said.
He said, 'I've had the op myself.'
They compared notes on equipment. Three years ago it was cheaper to give you all the equipment you needed new:-commode, extra-long shoe horn, grabber, sock-thingy that looks like a cotton bike saddle with long tapes, high chair, elephant feet etc, rather than loan them, collect after use and recycle.
The OT noticed the extra-long shoe horn with Rhys' name on hanging in our porch. Very useful for scratching your private parts and getting your boots on and off without bending down. Problem is you still have to bend down to do up your laces. It's where your walking partner's mobility and willingness to stoop that low is tested. If you are walking alone and can't face asking a random passerby then you may trip over your laces and you're back to square one. Waiting for another hip replacement operation.
'We did try to give the stuff back, honest!', we said in collective guilt, 'but nobody wanted them.'
'It's all different now,' she said.
She apologised that I was to have an inferior grabber to the one Rhys had-one without a magnate on the end. Cuts again. Not that I can think of a good reason why I would want to use my grabber as a metal detector, but Rhys assures me not having one is a distinct disadvantage.
Now I'm all measured up and perfectly fitted out with no party to go to. Today, I read an article by Barbara Ehrenreich in Therapy Today (May 2010), She says that positive thinking won't help me in my situation if it ignores the reality of my circumstances and inhibits action. Given I might reach September having not worked all summer (positive) and then be postponed again(realistic?)- potentially putting me out of business for even longer, I've put myself on the 'ready to go at a moment's notice' list just in case some other poor person is cancelled and I move up the queue.
So I've bought a new hoodie dressing gown. Steffan says my wearing it reminds him of the 'grim sleeper'. I couldn't find a cotton nightdress, so bought a dress that could double up. Oh, and some pink slippers with rubber soles-for grip. Very out of character. Now, all I need to do is pack my hospital bag. Bit like preparing to have a baby.
That house-sit in the jungle of Panama. . . How long would it take me to get home if I get that call and there's been a cancellation ?

'VIVA LA VIDA!' VIVA MEXICO!

'Viva la Vida' are Frida Kahlo's words. I think it means something like, 'Celebrate Life!'  'Long Live Life!' It's salutary that despite all her pain and suffering she was still able to say this at the end of her short life.
Tomorrow is our last day and given the problems I've had with the lap top I've decided to do a brief summing up of our Mexican experience tonight instead of waiting til after our visit to Teotihuacan tomorrow and the possibility that Dell boy may not want to cooperate.
Mexico is a fascinating country of contrasts; huge, diverse, complex, rich in history, custom, tradition, with many of the contemporary problems facing the rest of the world: rising unemployment and cost of living, climate change, diminishing resources etc. This year 2010 celebrates two hundred years of independence. At the demo supporting the strike by the Mexican Electricians' Union, we saw a poster which we think said something like,

Celebrate Mexico? What's there to celebrate?
Narcotic trafficking, Lack of Security, High Crime, Corrupt Politicians, Unemployment, Injustice...

Clearly, if workers are prepared to go on hunger strike then the situation for some must be desperate.
We have only been here for five weeks and our contact with Mexican people has been quite small. However, what's impressed us most is that despite the possible personal consequences there are those individuals and groups, like staff and volunteers at Natate, the Zapatistas and the Electricians, who are standing up for what they believe in.  One of our guides talking about environmental issues told us, 'In Mexico it's dangerous to be an activist. People who protest loudly can disappear. Get killed.'
In a video of Rufino Tamayo's work, a Mexican muralist of Rivera's generation, he says that in his view it's a myth to believe that Mexicans are all about fiestas and celebrations. He believes that the national Mexican personality is quite a tragic one. I guess if you consider the oppression that the people have been subjected to from the very earliest times this view is understandable. The Mexican, 'Day of the Dead' is a celebration of the lives of ancestors and sees death as part of the process of living.
We have felt safe here, even in Mexico City, where we've riden the metro, the train and the bus and where we've stood out as the only gringos seemingly taking public transport. There are obviously dangers, like in any big city, and maybe we've been lucky, but there is also a large police presence. Maybe that helps us feel safe too.
We find the people very helpful and friendly. To our surprise most Mexicans don't speak English and our appalling Spanish has caused some grins. We wish we'd come better prepared language-wise. 
We've learnt alot during this holiday. House-sitting for Larry was a great experience. He taught us to re-examine the place of trust in our lives.  He's truly an exceptional person. We look forward to getting to know him better when he comes over to Europe next year.
We'd love to get to know this interesting, colourful and vibrant country better. Hopefully we'll come back one day. In the meantime, VIVA MEXICO!


  

FRIDA, TROTSKY & MEXICAN ELECTRICIANS ON HUNGER STRIKE

It' s May 1st and it would seem that the whole of Mexico City is out on the streets enjoying La Vida. The streets are teeming with people, mostly young, arms and lips entwined. It's very very hot. In the 90s at least, maybe even the 100s. The streets are full of little stalls with tin baths of iced drinks, others selling mangos on sticks like lollies, cups of sliced tropical fruits, ice creams, hot and cold food wrapped in banana or corn leaves, that you can eat on the go. Or, you can sit by the stall, eat, chat and watch the world go by. We haven't done much of any of this as we've been cowardy custards fearing that some germ would get into our system and spoil our last few days in Mexico.
Today, we took the metro to Chapultepec to visit the park and the National Anthropological Museum. It's an impressive building, very spacious and airy and is said to be one of the best of its kind in the world. It tells the story of the indigenous people, their beliefs, myths and rituals and has rooms dedicated to different groups such as those who built the pyramids, like Teotihuacan, a massive site north of Mexico City and a contemporary with Imperial Rome. We're hoping to visit it tomorrow, our last day.
Yesterday, we visited the home of the great Mexican artist and communist, Frida Kahlo. Her home,where she was born and lived all her life including during her marriage to Rivera is in Coyoacan, a posh residential area of the city There's a small collection of her paintings: self portraits and narratives of key points of love and pain in her life. Some are a mixture of the literal and surreal. She uses the iconography of Mexican folk art. Rivero gets in on her act again, with a room displaying his paintings, portraits and landscapes. However, we get to see the bed ,where she spent so much of her time after the traffic accident that left her in so much pain. There's a canopy over it and on the underside is a huge mirror. She used it for her many self portraits. On the wall at the end of her bed there are pictures of Lenin, Trotsky, Marx and Stalin.  We also saw her studio with the wheelchair she used towards the end of her life after her leg was amputated. It sits against an empty easel and her paints, pastels and coloured inks are arranged on a table nearby. The room is also full of books in English and Spanish, including the history of art. I spied a book of Augustus John. There are also many books about communism.
It was very strange and probably totally psychological but when in her bedroom, I felt intense hot pain in my hip, dry bones rubbing against each other. I've been in pain with my hip over the holiday but this was different. 
I desperately wanted to see the larger collection of her work at the Museo Dolores Olmedo Patino, but before setting off for it, Rhys persuaded me that we might regret it if we didn't visit the nearby Trotsky Museum, the house where there were two attempts on his life and where he was assassinated by a Stalinist sympathiser. We did the tour led by a Mexican woman who'd done her masters at Sussex and spoke a Brighton English. She was clearly somewhat infatuated by Trotsky. On the tour was a Russian couple, who were n't able to throw much light on how Trotsky's role in the Russian Revolution is now taught in Russian schools. Given Trotsky's influence in revolutionary socialism in the UK, it is rather sad to see how politically sidelined he became with Stalin's rising popularity and influence. The Russian guy tried to tell the guide that when Trotsky was head of the Red Army, there were things he did and ordered that were n't good. But the guide didn't want to listen.
So, off to the Museo Dolores in a very hot taxi in a very crowded rush hour (Or is it rush hour all the time in Mexico City?)  only to find that the whole collection of Frida's work is in Europe (Where?) until December 2010. Grrr!
We took the overland train and metro (3pesos a single trip cf 70 pesos by taxi) back to the centre, the Zocalo, Constitution Square,supposedly the largest public square in the world after Tienamen Square. There we found a demonstration, speakers, banners, men in earnest conversation. We stopped several people to ask what was going on but could find no-one who spoke English. Eventually, someone we asked  found a school girl, who told us that some Mexican Electricians sitting under a canopy nearby were on hunger strike. The Union, SME are protesting about their rights and work opportunities. Her mother worked for the Union. Today, when we visited for the May Day celebrations, there was a large banner in English saying 'Famine Strike'. Everywhere, there were people in red shirts rattling tins to support the protest.
Trotsky would have been well pleased.

NATATE

Our main aim in coming to San Cristobal de las Casas has been to visit Natate, a partner organisation of UNA Exchange. We have been very well looked after by the Mexican staff and the volunteers. We have visited a private alternative school, a street school, sustainable development project, an ecological park, a Mayan Medicine Museum. Tomorrow we are returning there, with basil and an egg so I can have soul healing.
There are volunteers from France, Italy, Belgium, Czech Republic and elsewhere, but no British volunteers. This is an excellent place to volunteer. You can come for two weeks on a work camp, or up to a year on a range of social, educational and environmental projects. Theres no upper age limit. You can learn Spanish for 40 pesos an hour (about two pounds fifty) in the language school next door, run by the Italian woman responsible for setting up Natate a few years ago The town is lively, lots going on, very pretty and elegant, culturally and historically important and interesting, and many tourists. We have felt very safe here. Mexican people are friendly and helpful. Theres also lots you can give and contribute. And lots to learn. Tomorrow we will be meeting with the Director to talk about how we take forward two-way volunteering between Wales and Mexico.
Then, we àre off on a fifteen hour bus journey to Mexico City before heading home on the 3rd of May.
Finally, we just heard from Larry. He hàs seen his first hummingbird of the season, humming and hovering on his jasmine. The Aztecs believed that the hummingbird was the spirit of a warrior and they were prized as talismen, representing vigour, vitality, and power. It seems a fitting symbol for Larry s return to his own home..

THE IRISH & ZAPATISTAS

Tuesday 4.30pm. Hotel of the Half Moon
I am so excited. I can not quite believe what I have just experienced. Rhys and I took an alternative tour to the usual tourist trail. We had a young Social Anthropologist as a guide and visited the regional HQ of the Chiapas Zapatista Movement. Inspired by the revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, this movement started in 1994,  overpowering the local municapality and police for thirty ours but managing to negotiate an agreement on the rights of the indigenous peoples. The people fought with sticks. Over 600 were killed and around the same number police and army.
It is still trying to get these rights recognised, but this movement is still very much alive. They work and organise themselves quite separately and autonomously from the Mexican Government.
We drove for about an hour into the mountains and stopped at what looked like an ordinary village. The difference was that the women dressed in traditional Mayan costumes were also wearing black woolen balaclavas. Our passports were checked and we were led into a small room. Behind the table three men in black balaclavas took our details, writing them down carefully on what looked like a home made scrap book. Black eyes peered at us without any real curiosity. They àre used to Gringos visiting. The next stop was another hut, where six people, four women and two men in balaclavas welcomed us as comrades-campaneros. Again our details were taken, three writing meticulously in exercise books and we were given permission to take photos of the murals but not anyone else and not the cars. We sat on a bench in front of them like we were being granted an audience with the Pope or the IRA. In fact above their table were photos and flags, images of Che Guevara and Zapata, and a green silk kipper tie, with the inscription,
Kiss me I m Irish.
We were told about the Zapatistas. I cant remember much of what was said through our translator, except, we àre still here, struggling for our rights to social justice, freedom and peace. Half of the reception committee were falling asleep in the heat. The temperature must have been in the 90s.
Our guide took us round the village. Those wearing balaclavas were volunteers coming from other villages and were part of the organising authorities. We saw a secondary school, where education is focused on cultural tradition-these communities are indigenous Mayans- history, culture, revolutionary change, leadership,and organic guardianship.  We visited handicraft cooperatives, a clinic and we photographed all the murals we could. 
I hàve just read in my Rough Guide that being in or near the conflict zone invites suspicion of taking part in political activities-illegal for foreigners-and can lead to deportation.
If it does it will have been well worth it.

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS

Sunday evening 9pm.  Hotel Media Luna.
Well, this is going to be interesting. I am using the hotel s computer. It is linked to another keyboard. Both are Spanish and a lot of the keys donàt work or work differently, as you can see. So this blog will be full of typos, so apologies in advance.
The journey from San Miguel de Allende to San Cristobal de las Casas took nealy 24 hours with a long stop in Mexico City North Bus Station. It is spacious and clean, not like poky old Victoria so we felt quite safe sitting and biding our time. We travelled from Mexico City by night and woke up to a misty dawn over the most stunning scenary-semi tropical and mountainous, very different from the plains of Central Mexico
We are here mainly to meet people and visit projects run by UNA Exchange s partner organisation, Natate. On the first evening the young staff and volunteers did a presentation about their work and yesterday we visited a school, where a young French man and an Italian woman are working. It is an alternative private school, a bit like Steiner and I had the sense that both would like to be working with indigenous, more needy children. On his own initiative, the French man, who is just 19 and on a gap year, has set up, with an Irish guy, an evening school for children who are working during the day. It is held on the streets and we àre hoping to drop in. Young boys polish shoes and little girls, often followed by younger brothers and sisters sell handicrafts. Our children dont know they àre born. Tomorrow, we àre hoping to visit three projects, two are environmental and the other a museum for Mayan medicinal plants.
San Cristobal de las Casas is a lively little town surrounded by limestone hills with the Rio Grijalva running by. Today we went on  a boat trip through The Sumidero canyon, full of Egrest, Vultures and Pelicans. We even saw some crocodiles!.  The town was designed as a Spanish stronghold against an often hostile indigenous population. In 1994, there was an uprising  in the spirit of Emiliano Zapata, led by a pipe smoking balaclavaed Commandent.  Even now, there are signs everywhere, Action not words. The Mayans are the predominant indigenous group and it would seem that there is still a lot of discrmination against them.
Yesterday, we visited the home of Trudy Blom, a Swiss journalist and photographer, who died at the age of around 95, in 1993, and who recorded the faces of the indigenous people of the Lacandon rain forest, particularly the women who fought in the 1910 revolution Her house is known as Na Bolom. In the local language, Bolom means Jaguar, which has special powers as a spiritual messenger between this and the other world. When she and her husband, a Danish Archaeologist, first arrived there was a misunderstanding about their name. The local people heard Bolom rather than Blom, and so this gave her a great start in the respect department. She is still highly regarded for the work she did to protect and advocate for the rights of these people who were never colonised by the Spanish.. Their house became known as The House of the Jaguar.