There Will Come Soft Rains: Rest In Peace, Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury was arguably the most influential Science Fiction author of the 20th and 21st century. The world is a lesser place for his incisive commentary on our ever increasing conflict between technology and humanity. 

Part of the genius of science fiction -- good, high quality, genre defying science fiction -- is not as many people think, that it warns us of some horrific future dystopian world that may come to pass if we do not divert ourselves from the path on which we've begun to travel as a society. Good science fiction (or speculative fiction as Margaret Atwood sometimes prefers to call it) exposes the most horrific aspects of our own world that we have taken as normal or buried down so deep that these elements of our lives cease to terrify us because we deny they even exist. It is all the more chilling for what it shows us that is uncannily familiar and therefore uncomfortably close to our everyday lives already.

The great American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury exemplified this in his prescient stories and novels. By his own admission, Farenheit 451 is more about the decimation of interest in literature by television than it is about censorship. How many of us, like Montag's wife, have felt at times more emotionally invested in a television character's life than our own? How many times have we seen the awful consequences of children being satisfied in all their material desires and being allowed to have an overflowing cup of the pleasure principle, as in 'The Veld'?

As has been noted so many times by so many critics, Bradbury was the accessibly science fiction writer. I love Isaac Asimov, but he is the domain of the Sci-fi nerd almost exclusively. Equally, I love the works of Kurt Vonnegut, but there is once in every reading of Vonnegut where I feel the joke has gone slightly over my head.

Bradbury struck the right balance while still conveying sharp insight and most of all, capturing our fear of losing more and more of our dwindling humanity in our struggle with science and technology.

Do check out Margaret Atwood's lovely article on Bradbury in last week's Guardian right here.

Enjoy the short story, 'There Will Come Soft Rains' by Bradbury and check out the faithful film version of Farenheit 451.

Gentrified Hackney Revelry: The Clapton Festival 15-17 June

My Jewish colleagues, a number of them from Hackney old East End Jewish families born and bred in Clapton only to later drift north to Boreham Wood, expressed no small amount of shock at my plans to enjoy The Clapton Festival this weekend. And it is funny how much Hackney has changed.

From a village adjacent to London where wealthy merchants came to buy big houses and retire (so, the Essex or New Jersey of the 16th Century then?) to a run down borough best known for its high incidence of knife crime; rough, cheap, 'bohemian', 'ethnic' area with 'a lot of character' to gentrified destination for the hip and famous. Now the cool seems to be spreading and with it the decent coffee shops and some of the fun too. Some people have complaints, but I have to say, the effects, on balance, seem good for Hackney, which is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to The Second Annual Clapton Festival. The other is, there really will be something on for everyone, so if you're passing East or not, but in London this weekend, make time. There may be scoffing and a bit of 'far from that I was rared' from those who know Hackney of old, but you won't regret it.

Not Your Typical Rainy Day Out in London Town: St. Paul's Cathedral

The wonderfully imposing structure of St. Paul's, standing since 1710 when it arose from Christopher Wren's imagination, still glowering austerely down over The City of London

After eight years of living in this ever impressive metropolis, I finally climbed up to the top of St. Paul's on Thursday. 

We arrived at the cathedral rather late and it's a bit of steep climb into your pocket just to afford admission at £15 a pop, which struck me as rather strange given that it's part of a Christian institution and given that there was such a public outcry when the Occupy Londonmovement 'prevented' worshipers and tourists from enjoying the grandeur of the great edifice. A cynical person might think the loudest outcriers were cityites attempting to rid themselves of any guilt pangs they felt about the act of trudging to and from the freemarketeering that brought one of the world's mightiest economies to its knees, endeavouring as it were, to sweep any reminders of unpleasant truths out of the bastion of beauty added to the world that sits amid the tax collectors. I digress. 

We arrived rather late and were debating about the worthiness of the price and the idea of walking across The Millennium Bridge to The Tate Modern when we decided, well how many St. Paul's Cathedrals are there in the world? As it happens, the price turned out to be worth it because here's your cheap living in London tip of the day: Gift Aid the money you pay for your ticket, and it turns into a reusable ticket for a year. Is there enough grandeur, enough humbling enormity in the heights of the dome, stunningly forward thinking imagination in the design and famous people buried in the crypt to make you want to go back for a second, third and fourth visit? Certainly, and I am glad I paid the price for it. 

But I am not great with heights. Fortunately, I decided to bite the bullet and not let my jittery sense of vertigo stop me form one of the most breathtaking sights in all of London. As with the CN tower in Toronto nine years ago, the nearest children to hand were braver than I was when we reached the top and there was a small glass in the floor from which you could see all the way down to the Cathedral floor. Of course, the nearest child this time around was my own, but at least I haven't passed this particular anxiety on to him. 

The vertigo-inducing view from the top.

And the view at the top was awe-inspiring. And humbling. Say what you like about old London town. There is a fierce and terrible beauty in those rows of slate grey emanating stories told and untold, generations upon generations of that wonderfully gruff mixture of peoples that make up this city. 

 I feel civically and globally obliged to mention that there was  protest the day we went. It was led by a group called Jews forJustice for Palestinians. I felt fully in support of the protest as they were protesting against an insidious Anglo-Danish company called G4S, a company that is contracted by the government to deport asylum seekers. 

The protest was also supported by The Boycott Israel network, about which I feel deeply ambivalent. I get the fact that the state of Israel has some deeply unsavoury policies, especially amongst hardcore Zionists, but I also know from having worked with Jews now for six years that, oddly, not all of them are Palestinian-hating hardcore Zionists and the Israelis who are most likely to be the exceptions, the liberals, the intellectuals, the open-minded Palestinian sympathizers are also the ones who are likely to be the actresses, actors, and academics who come over here to speaking engagements or to bring over productions of The Merchant of Venice in Hebrew and who are going to suffer because of boycotts. It just seems like a classic example of organisations making enemies out of exactly the kind of people to whom they should be reaching out. 

Divine Revelation Under The Arches: Coffee Is My Cup Of Tea

Last Monday was Shavuot, the Jewish festival celebrating the bestowal of the Torah on God's chosen people. I work at a Jewish school and the school was closed for the day. As a gentile and not one of God's chosen, I had the day free to enjoy the rare appearance of the London sun shining down and bestowing its blessed warmth on all God's creatures. 

My wife and I, footloose and child-free for the day, aimed to lunch at The Happy Kitchen, which we'd heard so much about but had always found difficult to locate. As it happened, last Monday was no different for us. We searched and searched the arches around that little paved tributary of London Fields letting out all the sun worshippers on these rare, bright days and found The Happy Kitchen bakery, which by all accounts is still doing lovely gluten-free cookies and cakes and ended up lunching at E5 Bakehouse, sitting amidst the buzzing atmosphere full of bright young self-made stylistas of Hackney, enjoying an unusually delectable chilled pear and pea soup.

However, the real epiphany came after lunch when we decided to head to somewhere else for iced coffees. A couple doors down, where The Happy Kitchen used to be, we found Coffee is My Cup of Tea, where we were promptly served deeply luxurious iced coffees that cooled us as we sat outside and sipped in the afternoon sun. The inside was bright, airy and full of clean bright whites with welcoming, railway arch industrial chic about. Sadly, I cannot speak for the menu, except to say it was full of organic classic looking Spanish-leaning savouries and richly tempting cakes and muffins that I am looking forward to trying on my next visit. But if you are ever in need of some divinely inspired iced coffees on a warm day in Hackney, Coffee is My Cup of Tea does not disappoint. 

Diamond Jubilee Weekend: Republican Three Ways

We're just coming to the tail end of the long weekend commemorating HM the Q's diamond anniversary as head of state for The UK and it feels timely and appropriate to mention my friend texting me on Sunday to say, 'Watching the royal flotilla on TV. Really makes me feel proud to be British.' You cannot really do indignant in a text message and I suppose with some people's upbringings, you can't help the particularly unsavoury shape your patriotism takes, but it was difficult to imagine feeling some sense of pride welling up in your chest for a symbolic gesture of what has brought millions of pesky subalterns, colonials and orientals to heel as an empire on which the sun sets is acquired. One does not feel amused. 

Of course, in America, we tend to hold ourselves sceptically, righteously and disdainfully above unquestioning royalism and the notion of the monarchy in general, for a number of reasons, including among them that it seems a tad unjust to siphon off tax money into supporting an anachronistic institution leading a charmed existence within which individuals have had to do nothing of any merit in order to earn the privilege that is bestowed upon them every day of their lives. Poke or prod a bit into recent American political history, say around 1 May, 2003, the presidential election of 2000, The Watergate scandal etc... and you start to scrape away very quickly at the crumbling integrity of the moral high ground on which we Yanks like to stand. 

Neither here nor there. What I found funny was that my naval proud friend was the exception amongst our set this weekend. Probably because of the nature of my own political leanings or the general tendency of expatriates, perhaps because of the inevitable direction in which the zietgeisty wind is blowing, most of the friends I spoke to were keen to assert their antipathy for the royal family as an institution. Of course, the British say it much more concisely, but not more simply. If they are anti-royalist, which many are at pains to point out, they say, 'Oh well, I'm republican.' This claim still induces a double-take because the British can't be simple. They can't be like Cromwell's Puritans during the English Civil War and call themselves Parliamentarians. And I do get it. They support the abolition of a costly and useless sham of a national tradition in favour of a completely representative 

democracy. But why use one of the most confusingly connotative words in history? 

When I think of Republican, I think of people who are likely to subscribe to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, the economic theory of Frederik Hayek and the rock-solid belief that if you are unemployed and living on food stamps then you are simply as lazy as sin; and you are likely to misquote Patrick Henry.

Then again, when Gerry Adams thinks of a Republican, he thinks of a freedom fighter who would like an ideal Irish-speaking paradise in which the Irish live in a Catholic Socialist society. But generally, there are quite a few who wouldn't assert themselves as Republican in many parts of Ireland any more, which is in stark contrast to many Irish Americans, who swear loyalty to the IRA, without a thought to what it might mean or who it might offend.

Don't even get me started on what the term Republican might mean to an ancient Roman or a Frenchman circa 1789.

So, I support my liberal British friends in their Republicanism, but wouldn't be easier and less confusing to declare anarchy in the UK? 

London Cycle Diaries: Irony on Romford Road

I cycle the length of Romford Road nearly every day, newsagent-lined, paan-spit splattered, multicoloured, aroumatic thoroughfare that it is. But I have to come from Ilford, just East of London, a suburb that looks something like a low-key Paterson, New Jersey, complete 60s/70s era low rise tower blocks of offices filling the place with upright oblong shapes, and a moderately sized mall (or shopping center/re).

The most efficient way to enter onto Romford Road from Ilford is to first careen down a road called  Mill Hill into a tunnel so narrow that space only allows for one car at a time and so dark that you never know what will meet you on the other side: the light  still red, sedans and smart cars waiting in readiness or the oncoming grill of a BMW with which you are about to have a close encounter. Once safely through the tunnel, you ride up to a traffic light, beyond which you can either join the traffic and turn left back into Ilford, or pass one lane and turn right into what looks like a labyrinthine mess of wide pot-hole speckled concrete paths, one of them being an entrance ramp onto the A12 motorway. The trick is to go right, past two busy roads that allow cars into Ilford from the A12 and continue right onto the exhaust-fume-fogged Romford Road, safe in the knowledge that you are out of any danger of being criss-crossed by two trucks and a hatchback. It is a bit of a daunting spot.

So it's no surprise to me that in waiting at that light, I first witness a cycling accident in London.

I wait at the light between Mill Hill and Romford Road, keenly observing the traffic when I see a bright yellow blur zoom past from left to right heading in the same direction in which I am about to go. I see the blur slow down near the entrance ramp, enough to recognize that he is in fact a very professional looking cyclist who seems to have just taken a detour from the Tour de France, complete with spandex and sponsors on his top, but through the cacophony of horns and engines, and the interlacing of Cadillacs and Puegots, I can only just about make out that he starts to sway, like a circus man balancing on a unicycle. Balance is not in his favour and he topples to the ground, just near enough to the A12 to be in the way of oncoming vehicles.

This is it, I think. Time to prove what a good Samaritan I am, what a good paid-up member of the brotherhood of cyclists I am. Tragic and sudden though it seems, I've been waiting the whole two months that I've owned my little urban fold-up to prove my mettle to other two-wheeling travelers.

The light turns and I speed round to the right, slowing down as I near my bicyclist brother-in-wheels. Alas, he's surrounded by the time I get there by a whole village of seeming Samaritans, and so I say breathlessly, even as I'm slowing my bike in readiness to spring to action, 'Has anyone called 999?!'

A bulky Eastern European man with a shaved head, turns to me with vague interest and gestures towards his bleached blonde wife, also standing by the side of the road and says, 'She's on the phone to emergency services now.' Right. Good. Glad I've established that. I look around to take in the rest of the scene now that I've gained a closer position on the concrete island between the entrance ramp and Romford Road.

Our cyclist is sat on his bottom on the road, legs spread, elbows and knees scraped and bloody, otherwise looking not generally harmed, but dazed, periodically shaking his head in an effort to clear any disorientation. Hovering over him is a middle-aged Spanish woman, offering him his water bottle. Beside her are her curious son and daughter, looking on with unashamed amazement. About three feet to the side of them stands the father, squat, proletariat and noble, every once in a while asking the man if he is all right. I seem to be the last Samaritan at the scene, but it's okay. I'm sure I can act as a witness.


The cyclist seems to shake his head free of any remaining wisps of confusion enough to look up into the Spanish man who is currently crouching down furrowing his brow. With a veritable international community of concerned citizens looking at him with utter sympathy, the cyclist says to the Spanish man, 'You caused this!' It takes a minute for anyone to register what the up-until-a-minute-ago-victim of the situation has just said, perhaps because the accusatory tone, more than anything else, shocks the air itself, but we all stand rigidly still, the wind from passing cars gently whooshing by. Cyclist continues, 'That's right. You were in the wrong fucking lane, mate. You caused this.' Possibly through sheer awkwardness and an inability to articulate what any of us are feeling, or not feeling, I think we all turn the other way, unable to face the accuser. I also think I can see our collective sympathy leave us and rise up like a haze of smoke in the smog-filled air.

'You shouldn't have been turning there. You un-der-stand?' he shouts, clearly convinced that this foreigner doesn't and has obviously passed his driving test in a country with poor road safety standards, with all the patronizing bigoted vitriol of the a card carrying member of the British National Party. 'You fucking caused all this!' All of us begin to recover our senses.

'You still want us to call emergency services?' asks Eastern European Man.

'Yeah,' says the cyclist, 'the police, on him.' Blonde Eastern European lady stays on the phone looking a bit confused and helpless. Yellow-shirted cyclist sits resignedly, arms crossed, awaiting the local constabulary so that he can have the satisfaction of testifying to a middle-aged Spanish man crossing his path on a busy road in Ilford, having lost all the sympathy in one breath that he could ever generate for himself in one accident. The Spanish man blinks uncomprehendingly at his wife. I'm sure he understands English perfectly, but can't understand what's going on. I begin to look for an out, worried that I may really be asked to be a witness when, in truth, I only saw it distantly and could hardly make anything out when it happened and certainly didn't see any motorists cutting any cyclists off.

'You know,' I begin to say to Eastern European Guy, who is still looking frustrated and confused at having now to call and wait for emergency services for the most ungrateful cyclist on the planet, 'I only saw things from pretty far back. To be honest, I'd make a pretty poor witness.'

He shrugs. 'Go ahead.'

'You sure?' I ask.

'Sure. No problem.'

I look back towards the cyclist, now shaking his head and swearing under his breath, and I shake my head myself, thinking I am late for work, and that perhaps Good Samaritanism is over-rated. 

Blurring Boundaries in The Dennis Severs House: 'You Either See It Or You Don't'

'It may feel a bit strange at first,' warns our host, Mick Pedroli, 'because you have to be completely silent, but as you make your way around, you'll find yourself immersed in the magic of the house.' And indeed, it is hard not to feel strange at first, as you enter a candle-lit front room, full of opulent smells and curious sounds as though you are eavesdropping on a lively conversation taking place through the wall in the next room; or indeed as you descend the stone staircase to the basement and the invitingly warm hearth of the Jervis family's kitchen.

By the time you ascend back up the stairs in order to make your first foray upstairs, it is hard not to become immersed in the magic of The Dennis Severs House, and enveloped in the narrative of this family of silk weavers who rose to wealth and prominence  around the year of our lord, 1724. The family itself is fictional, as you will no doubt find out if you visit. You will also forget this fact as you wander through hallway and drawing room following in the footsteps of their mercurial fortunes.

My particular favourite was 'The Hogarth Room', in which hangs a print of the painter's above the mantelpiece depicting seventeenth century ribaldry of the most raucous sort, with men in expensive wigs and breeches debating, halfway towards fornicating, and falling over themselves with upturned chairs, pipes and glasses of brandy and port wreaking all sorts of havoc. The image itself is mirrored in the room, with furniture arranged meticulously, ash arranged in half-strewn perfection spilling jauntily out of the floor. But clearly, the room would not enchant if it did not fill your nostrils with the rich earthy mixture of fermented fruits and scented tobacco which appears to be wafting up from lazily left punchbowl and pipe hither and thither. The chamber is an olfactory sea of scents, with the faint echo of debauchery and rising tempers echoing in the walls.




Elusively, the experience defies categorization. Clearly, some of the rooms in which you sense the fictional family members' fates are quite morbid, such as the room on the third floor in which Mr. Jervis' son hanged himself, and the Dickensian rooms upstairs, sparse and empty, indicative of the decline of the Jervis family and their exodus to the country as they rented out the rooms of the house, but to call it spooky would be to trivialise, since this house builds no expectation of unseen ghosts, except for the unseen phantom of history, appearing to surround us for the passing moments we spend inside the four walls of this Huguenot residence.

In exploring this place, I follow in the footsteps of eccentric compatriot Dennis Severs, who bought the house in the 1970s, and promptly decided it needed a narrative. Thus the Jervis' came into being. He called his medium 'still-life drama' and as many note cards dotted around the house tell us, his mantra was 'You either see it or you don't.' It feels like, 'You either sense it or you don't' would be more accurate, but less catchy.

The Dennis Severs House has slightly odd hours, so it is worth calling ahead. Open Mondays from 6-9, so long as you book ahead and every Sunday afternoon from 12-4.