Ai Weiwei...

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei currently has an exhibition on at the R&A in London. And it's fab. 

On entering the R&A courtyard, the sight of a small forest of large, leafless, bolted-together tree carcasses greets you. It looks slightly out-of-kilter but it's strangely beguiling, and you're drawn to the trees, made from bits of different dead trees, now Frankenstein-ed together. You can wander around this bizarre forest as you make your way to the R&A building proper. As you do so, there's an armchair made out of marble, plus a red BMW, where donors can deposit Lego bricks through the sunroof for the artist's next project.

It sounds really bloody strange. It's Lego, it's dead trees, it's a comfortable thing made out of a hard and cold material. It's playful and moving and thought-provoking and you haven't even made it through the doors of the exhibition yet. 

Al Weiwei is the Chinese artist the Chinese government wish would keep his mouth shut. They tried to imprison him, but the international outcry was so great he was freed. They tried to bankrupt him by claiming he hadn't paid taxes and presented him with a £1.5million bill. Well-wishers clubbed together and raised the money in record time. They said he couldn't talk about his imprisonment, so he created six half-size, replica cells showing the claustrophobic conditions he endured that were supposed to teach him obedience. 

Weiwei's a fascinating man and, in terms of the global arts scene, he's probably one of the most important living artists. His art comments on the role of China in the modern world and it offers a critique of how the superpower oppresses its citizens, while at the same time celebrating the spirit of those people and their astonishing craftsmanship.

Take Straight, one of the exhibitions at the R&A. It acts as a monument to the lives of the thousands of schoolchildren who died when an earthquake ravaged Sechuan Province in 2008 and many schools collapsed. On the wall is a stark and huge list of the dead, while on the floor is 150 tonnes of straightened rebar steel, the stuff used to strengthen buildings against earthquakes, stacked as a rolling landscape. 

It's claimed that one of the causes of this tragedy was local government corruption, which meant that cheap and sub-standard rebar was bought... meaning the buildings weren't built to standard and vulnerable to major tremors. It's both a strangely moving tribute to the victims and a brutal critique of those responsible. It's also a visually stunning piece.

There's so much to recommend in this exhibition. Straight was the thing that really wowed me, but other rooms have many other diverse items and installations, which vary in size but not in impact. It's a genuine joy.

Sticking Point: Part V...

I am grading in a week and a bit for parts two and three of my second dan in Hapkido. This is quite a lengthy process and there are about 12 parts in total so I am some way off a new belt. But, for the first time, I will be grading alongside the Other Woman, who has passed part two and is grading for part three. 

This means we are grading buddies and we will be testing at the same time. This should be a lovely and harmonious experience. Unfortunately, she is uber-competitive and it has trouble written all over it, particularly as there will be sparring involved and we are also grading with weapons.

How competitive is she? Well, she's entered a 'just-for-fun' Bake Off competition at work and she is genuinely considering poisoning the other contestants to ensure victory. 

I suggested this was not a normal course of action. She sneered. 

This morning, we stayed after class and did an hour of running through Hapkido techniques leading up to black belt. Even trying to be gentle, she was in an unforgiving mood and she seemed to enjoy wrist-locking me and slamming me to the mat a little too much. 

She then went onto to tell me that I should see these rapid and sometimes painful descents at high speed as 'mat cuddles'. 

An hour later, I am so sore from 'mat cuddles' that I can barely move. Fortunately, we have another review and grading preparation session booked in for next week. And I am going to 'mat cuddle' the fuck out of her tiny, violent and malevolent frame. 

If I can move by then...

Howarth: Top Withens Walk

There is some dispute about whether Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse with two imposing looking trees next to it, is the inspiration for the farmhouse, Wuthering Heights, in the novel, Wuthering Heights. But, located a few miles outside of Howarth, it’s known that Emily did walk there and, even if it was not the exact house she based the literary farmhouse on, its remote location on top of a remote hill must have offered some form of inspiration.

The walk from Howarth to Top Withens and back again is about seven miles and it goes over utterly stunning scenery. It’s sometimes a bit slippy-slidy over mud walking paths, and there’s a couple of difficult bits where it goes uphill, but it’s well worth the effort.

The walk also takes in the Bronte Falls, another haunt of the sisters when they went walking, and it’s very picturesque. The views throughout the walk are nothing short of majestic, but it’s the arrival at Top Withens that is the star attraction. The vistas from this site are breath-taking and it’s a great place to stop and rest before attempting the journey back that goes around the other side of the valley. 

Yorkshire is a beautiful place. I’ve obviously always said that anyway, but it’s good to reminded that your birthplace affiliations do actually have some basis in fact, too.

Howarth: Bronte Parsonage Museum

Howarth is a small town set in the Yorkshire Dales with one key claim to tourist fame: its links with the Bronte family. 

Although not born there, it’s the place where Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte, plus their vicar father, Patrick, and their dissolute artist brother, Branwell, grew up and lived the bulk of their lives. It’s also the place where the three sisters created a world-famous literary legacy by writing novels such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and several others in the first half of the 19^th century. 

Bronte Parsonage Museum, the home of the Bronte family throughout that period until their deaths, is the physical focus of that fame, and it’s an amazing place. 

The parsonage was bought thanks to private donations in the 1930s, then given to the Bronte Society to restore and create a permanent home for the ever-growing collection of Bronte artefacts, as well as providing a hub of pilgrimage for Bronte fans. What they have created and built over that period of time is a stunning achievement. 

The parsonage itself has been restored so most of the original rooms are recreated as they would haven been when the family were in situ: downstairs is Patrick Bronte’s study, opposite is the living room where late at night the sisters would walk around the table and discuss their novels, then there is the study of Charlotte’s husband, and the kitchen, where Emily would spend lots of time and look out onto the moors through the window. Upstairs are the bedrooms, then a room leads to a permanent exhibition about the sisters and their work and lives. 

The combination of the restored house and the exhibition offers a comprehensive but not overwhelming or intimidating introduction to the lives and works of the three sisters, and it also tells the story of their father and their brother, plus the other two Bronte sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who both died young, and their mother, also named Maria, who also died young. 

For what could have become a garish literary Disneyland in more corporate hands, it’s a surprisingly intimate and tender place. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see the sisters and their family living and working and writing in the restored rooms. You can tell the whole project has been nothing short of a labour of love for those involved for the past 80-plus years.

When we went, we splashed out on a VIP private tour, which was followed by a private viewing in the collections room. There was obviously an additional price attached to both these experiences, but it was worth every single penny. Our guide, Amy, was obviously passionate about her subject, but she was also knowledgeable, funny and engaging as she took us through the house. 

It was a wonderful experience. I bought it for the birthday of the Missus, who’s a bit of a Bronte nut, but I also found it thoroughly engaging and surprisingly moving. 

Physiotherapy: Part I...

I am a bit knackered. An old martial arts injury has reoccurred so I am undergoing a course of physiotherapy. And it's got me a bit perplexed...

The first unsettling thing is my physiotherapist. He's utterly lovely and he clearly knows his stuff. But he's young. The sort of young that makes me realise I am not. He looks younger than my son.

The second problem is I forgot to pack any gym shorts for my first consultation session. I did obviously have clean boxer shorts on, but there was a moment I was laid flat out on a bench, raising one leg at a time, and I realised my boxer shorts were a bit loose... and I may have exposed a low-hanging bollock to a young, fresh-faced boy on a Monday morning.

This badly conflicts with my preferred self-image.

In my head, I am not a 46-year-old man: I am a modern-day member of the Hwo Rang Do, a breed of historical warrior poets from Korea, who valued intelligence, courage and compassion and were trained to fight. I am articulate and witty.

But, in reality, I am an injured old man who has exposed a testicle to a twentysomething boy.

Grappling Talk...

I’m currently injured so I’m out of regular BJJ training for a while, apart from a few open mat sessions, where I’m essentially turning up to do light rolling or drilling.

It’s not my first injury lay-off and it won’t be my last, so I try to remain philosophical. But injuries remain annoying, especially when it’s put the kibosh on all my BJJ competition plans for this year. 

I was reading an article online a few days ago, though, about an American black belt called Chris Haueter. He’s one of the so-called ‘Dirty Dozen’, a group of BJJ practitioners who were the first 12 Americans to be awarded their black belts in the US. And he said the following thing:

‘It’s not about who’s good, it’s about who’s left.’ 

I love that and it chimed with me a lot as it reminded me about my other ongoing martial arts journey. 

In Hapkido, a Korean martial art I've now studied for 13 years, I was a terrible white belt and not much better in my other early belts. I also saw younger, more skilled and more graceful students join and leave me in their slipstream as they progressed up the ranks while I struggled. Their kicking, punching, knees, elbows, takedowns, joint locks, throws and sparring were all superior to mine. 

But they didn’t stick around and I did, so I was left. And because I was left, I slowly got better. Even at the giddy heights of my current black belt, I still wouldn’t claim to be a good black belt, especially when I look around the do-jang and see other students who are faster, more technically proficient, more graceful, more balanced, etc. 

But I'll be left and that means I'll continue to improve. And that's the same approach I take into BJJ and pretty much anything else. It’s a good lesson and one that keeps me sane when injury prevents me from seriously training in either Hapkido or BJJ.

Fame at Last…

I am in Metro. It’s an idea I came up with in the pub with the Other Woman and now it appears it will be an occasional column (see above). 

The gist of the column is that I am a Tech Virgin, an idiot who doesn’t understand technology but who would like to. 

In truth, I have some competency with technology that I use regularly. But the rest of it is a muddled blur, so the gimmick is not too far from the truth. I still have no real idea what a Twitter is or how it works, even though I had an account for a few months. 

But I’ve also had a wife for a while now and I have no real understanding of how that works either. As she continually tells me… 

The thing that seems to have amused most people about the page, though, is not my laser-sharp wit or cunning turn of phrase, but the fact I am pictured next to Sean Connery as James Bond. 

In my head, I could easily be James Bond. But it seems many other people disagree. The cunts.

Dave Marson...

I got the news today that an old friend had died. 

His name was Dave Marson and, unless you were involved in the Hull arts scene when Spring Street community theatre was getting under way before it became Hull Truck in the mid 1970s, or unless you saw any of his plays at London Fringe theatre venues in the late 1970s or early 1980s, or unless you were involved in the Goole Docktown Project in the early to mid-1990s, the name probably doesn't mean much. 

But he was a comrade-in-arms when I was cutting my teeth and working on community arts projects and fringe theatre in the early 1990s in Yorkshire, and we became good friends. I viewed him as something of a mentor figure back then, although he always rather generously treated me as an equal, which I clearly wasn't at the time.

Dave came from a working-class family in Hull and, like the rest of his family, he'd worked on the docks. He got involved in the union while on the docks and that prompted him to get an education that eventually saw him study history under famed Marxist professor Raphael Samuel.

Theatre work alongside peers like Alan Plater and Mike Bradwell followed in the 1970s, before he left the UK to work abroad. Then he returned to Goole, of all places, and he opened a book shop. In Goole. Dave was always an optimist. 

We met in 1991. I was fresh from college and determined to stage theatre that meant something in my home town. I'd ordered a book by John McGrath and my mum went to pick it up for me. Dave mentioned he'd worked with the actress on the cover. I went into his shop the following day and we talked. I had ambition, drive, ideas; Dave had experience, craft, knowledge. A friendship was born in an instant, with any shortfalls in our skill set being covered by other key movers within the Docktown group we quickly formed. 

Docktown involved and was created by an astonishing bunch of people. We all shared stories, ideas, dreams and we all worked relentlessly for three years to ensure Docktown, the large-scale community play and arts project for Goole, was a success. I may have provided the initial drive and the engine, but Dave was one of several strong hearts and wise heads guiding that, offering counsel and jokes when things were going badly. 

Memorably, in one meeting with the largely Conservative borough council, he told several officers that Goole deserved better than the 'Tory shower of shit' who were stopping something artistically vital for the town from happening. Dave could play the diplomat, but it was never a role that sat easily with him if he felt a wrong needed to be righted.

Dave was many things. He was a playwright of skill and heart who wrote the script for the Docktown play, he was a comrade-in-arms and, for a man originally from Hull, he was an unlikely champion of Goole at a time when the town needed it. More than anything, Dave was one of those rare people who believed anything was possible. He was also my mate and I consider myself blessed that our friendship extended long after Docktown was finished.

In his later years, ill health took its toll. Dementia affected him badly towards the end, too. 

The last time I saw him, though, he was in good spirits and he was even talking about working on a new play. I'm sad that I never saw that happen. But I'm sadder still that I'll never see Dave again. That magical three years working on Docktown and the friendship it created afterwards remain boons I cherish. 

Goodbye mate. You won't thank me for saying it, but you were always on the side of the angels. Even if those angels were occasionally foul-mouthed and brutally funny.

The Great British Bake Off...

The news desk at The Daily Mail, that so-called protector of middle-class England, must have been foaming at the mouth with the sort of right-wing indignation that wouldn't have looked out of place an English Defence League march when the final three contestants competing in the final of the Great British Bake Off on BBC1 was announced. 

A gay fella, a Muslim and a hippy competed for the first prize and some 13.4 million viewers watched them in the final, which ended with Muslim mother and wife Nadiya crowned the winner. 

And, after splashing the GBBO victor on the front page of The Daily Mail for the past several years, where did Nadiya appear in the paper? The front page? No. Page two or page three? No. She made it on page seven. 

The racism of the paper isn't even subtle any more. And, what's worse, the decision to not feature her as prominently as previous winners means that the paper obviously thinks its readers are as racist as it is. 

And, you know what, they're probably fucking right. 

Shame on that paper and shame on the bigots who buy it. They'd probably start defending these accusations by saying something along the lines of, 'I'm not a racist, but..'

The Best Joke in the World: Parts III & IV...

Q. Why should ambitious people with a love of travel collect stamps?
A. Because 'philately' will get you everywhere!

I'm having the faces of gay men and women, plus paintings of Regency-era architecture, all over my living room. That should 'Brighton' the place up!