A pale half-moon hangs still in the daylit sky

A pale half-moon hanging in the sky, winking down on Hackney Downs near my home.

Solstice

I will be on home turf in Yorkshire tomorrow for some Yorkshire nuptuals! The summer is blooming out all over (including as a fever of hay in my nose), and it really is a wonderful English Summer's Day in all its glory!

By coincidence the wedding takes place in a small hamlet in West Yorkshire where, as a child, my extended family had tradition of gathering annually on/around the Winter Solstice to meet pre-Noel and congratulate my Uncle John on his birthday. I will be back again tomorrow in splendid Burley-in-Whafedale, just as we climb to the approach of the Summer Solstice, to attend my friend Lucy's own turning of a landmark in personal time.

I am reminded of the last wedding I attended. Not least by once again looking to the skies, as I did on my bicycle this morning and seeing a pale half-moon hanging up there in sun-lit morning sky - an image of this captivating but not uncommon phenomena inspired the opening image for the poem I wrote for that (last) wedding. The wedding was in Taiwan - a wonderful country, which I should also share of through writing one day - and was the wedding of my very good friend Yu-wei Chang to Yu-Shian.



Here is the poem I wrote for Yu-wei's wedding on 13 December 2009 - just, of course, as the Winter Solstice was in keen approach.




Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide
In me, no lunar power can reverse;

- Jonathan Coe, 'Somniloquy'

A pale half-moon hangs still in the daylit sky
Graceful, beautiful, ephemeral,
Celebratory of all that is Yes.
Its pale possession, the joy in the essence: we're
alive, and love, and can.

I have stood with you among the Art, at the River also,
Against the stand-grained sky
Swoop and sail birds, pepper-sprinkled, and kites.
A kite somersaults in deadly straits above the Ganga calm.

This, is the great river
The source, the journey, our ultimate.
Children cry, running helter-skelter at its side
Holding hands, grasping, clasping at kites.
We are them; and they are us.

And so they watched on
With pride, and with molten hearts
Tears-occasional prickling
As the two breathed
Spoke, and breath again. Together
And made promises of love
And honour and truth and beauty.
And promised. To cherish from this day forward
Tapestry-bound for the fabric of their lives.
Yet, when you love and are loved
You remain to extent immortal.

Come. Do not let go my hand.

broadcast from the Purple Revolution*

.
* work in progress


YOUTUBE VIDEO - Take Back Parliament, London Rally, 15 May 2010



And if you haven't heard music from James in a while, now is the time!

James: a band born in the '80s in Manchester.

The most Romantic and supremely memorable job I had at uni was working in a nightclub cloakroom. The only night from the regular repertoire I remember was the Madchester night, and I used to love it. I sat with my books, pretending to work my way through some work of Eng Lit, meanwhile the sounds of Morrissey, The Smiths, James, New Order (etc) really kept me entertained.

Madchester: a music scene born in the late 80s/early 90s in Manchester;
mixing indie rock, psychedelic rock & dance music

Madchester: The music scene that came out of this very particular northern town, in a very particular space in time.

A Purple Revolution please. PR will do.

Last Saturday I demonstrated for change in the voting (& political) system. And I will be out again today. 2pm - Parliament Square. Be there.

More than a thousand people demonstrated for their belief in the need for real political change (watch BBC video). It was Saturday afternoon, and just the day before Parliament had been declared to be very beautifully hung. So beautifully so in fact, that the mathematics of it held the nation (& the politicians - yes, they are different;) in suspense for several days. I had a recurring image of a ballet dancer's toe in pirouette -the balance so poised, when and where would it turn? Nick Clegg and the LibDem team were holed up in Transport House, wondering that to do with the crucial balance of power their 57 seats held. On Election Day, the electorate had spoken - but no one knew quite what they had said. So it was up to the great elected to work it out.

FYI: No Entry General Public

To heckling for "Fair Votes Now", "don't sell out" and "we want to see Nick", Nick emerged...
"I never thought in my wildest imagination that central London would have a thousand protesters protesting for proportional representation. It's a topic which traditionally only concerned a small number of academics and constitutional experts, but the fact that you are here, out on the streets [...] is absolutely wonderful... " (What Nick said: BBC video) Suddenly, PR was looking cool.

It's about fair votes, and everyone's vote counting Equally. It's about bringing our voting system out of the 19th & 20th Centuries where voting was largely along block Blue/Red lines and into the 21st century where Britain and the identities of people living here are more plural. Let me say it - it is not about doing away with these political stripes. It is not about party lines at all (quite the opposite!). It is about putting fairness, and the people, at the heart of the system.

A quick number crunch:
Lab: 33k votes/seat; Con: 35k/seat;
LibDem 120k/seat; Green: 285k/seat

Safe seats cover the country, and as such many of the constituency elections are a foregone conclusion. Sometimes governments even tweek the boundaries - just to make sure. The real balance of power is held in a small number of key marginals, and as the election approaches, the tribes are mobilised and politics becomes about getting past the post, gaining the seat, ascending to parliament and to power. That is the aim, and the manifestos and campaigns work towards that end.

This tribal political landscape sure does make election night is colourful though. We - the great electorate (those that haven't given up entirely at least) - approach election night in a spirit akin to the World Cup Final or Eurovision Song Contest. But the ritual sit-in with snacks, fizz and friends is the only thing I will miss when reform finally comes (and it will). I will not miss my mood sinking into the Kettle Chips and Rioja at 4am as again and again one Tribe triumphs and all others are thrown into dark abyss for another 5 years ("nil point").

I want to see more plural parliament, where individual politicians don't have to button their mouths and personal values/politics to follow the party line. Where more views can be represented, and where there is less corruption. And I want my vote to have the power of 1, not 0.067 (try it - Power Voter Index).

I voted in 3-striped pyjamas this time. I surprised even myself on this count. One colour for national; another for Hackney Mayor; and yet another for the local council. And yet this weighted voting cannot be expressed in a parliamentary election. We cannot vote intelligently, with how we really feel and think.

A tiny reading list:

Will Hutton: Fair Voting/Fair Capitalism

Caroline Lucas: 'We could have had a new politics. This isn't it'

Stephen Fry on 'Stalemate: PR and PR, Ice cream, Bananas and Fudge

YOUTUBE video - London Rally, 15th May 2010

4.52pm, Cowley Street

4.52pm, Saturday 8th May 2010
Balletic: Britain has a hung parliament for the first time since 1974. The balance of power teeters, like that in the tip of a ballet dancer's toe.
Which way will the LibDems turn?

The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg is all set for her teatime broadcast outside 4 Cowley Street (LibDem HQ):

http://twitter.com/BBCLauraK

6 May 2010

A multi-coloured elephant. I'd like parliament to look a bit more like this!

These pictures were taken on election day, 6 May 2010, on New Bond Street in central London. It was 6pm in the evening, and I was cycling from work to my friend Kitty's for our election night party. For cider and wine, wasabi and guacamole; and to watch unfold how the nation had spoken - and, conversely, how this would translate into the new nature of the beast that is parliament.

Nawal el Saadawi

"my mother's name - Zainab - disappeared in history; disappeared"

Nawal el Saadawi @Southbank, London - 15 April 2010

These words sum up much about our patriarchal world. Aspects too that I have thought about myself - and felt at times alone and almost mad in these tumbling reflections. There was a time that I changed my own name upon the turn of them. Yes, I have not always been Caroline Watson! For some that know this fact about me, it is an amusing anecdote - and for me I too laughed (and continue to) at the linguistic, cultural, societal conundrum that I was trying to weave my way through (the process is ongoing... and not resolved... ). That story is for another day - for today belongs to Nawal el Saadawi: born in Egypt (1931); Feminist; Writer; Activist; Physician; former Presidential candidate; former Prisoner; Woman.

Tonight, Nawal el Saadawi raised a standing ovation. Sprung by her force, her smile, her positive composure, her clarity, her bravery, her resiliance, her politics and wisdom, we had absorbed something of her formidable spirit.

Her achievements, and her radicalism and stridency, are extra-ordinary. She spent 50 years campaigning in Egypt against female genital mutilation - for which she was punished. In 2008, the practice was finally outlawed. Most remarkable in this, is her breaking through language - for language is a matrix in which we are all held. Imagine taking words used to name and describe sex organs and sexuality at a time and in an atmosphere where they were unspoken, and for which almost everyone would spit on you for doing so - and writing about them. Publicly.

She has suffered recrimmination for her writing, for her ideas, and - ironically and powerfully (since we are talking about his-story and her-story) - for what her daughter has written. In 2007, her daughter Mona became the target of contraversy when she wrote an article on Mother's Day, and undersigned it absorbing her mother's name "Nawal" into her own. She was making a point of gratitude, connection, respect - visibility - to her mother (and also a legal point). Two years of prosecution for heresy ensued. The case led to a new law for the rights of the child, giving children born outside marriage in Egypt the right to carry the name of the mother.

Nawal el Saadawi had much to say:

"writing is like breathing;
it is very natural,
it is like talking.
We are all born writers"

"What is feminism?> Feminism means that you become angry when they treat you unjustly"

"I became a feminist when I was a child"

"veiling and nakedness [ref. women] are two sides of the same coin"

"when you become creative, you become dissident"

"when/if you challenge, you win;
if you are afraid, you lose"

"we live in a world that separates everything;
but everything is connected"

(all quotes are from tonight's event at London's Southbank, where I had a front-row seat and Nawal spoke directly into my eyes)