January 2016 – Page 2

Soulful Music And Amazing Images

I have just come across a video that combines two amazingly creative forces in one work of art. The extraordinary photos of Steve McCurry with the haunting Duduk playing of Levon Minessian.

Together, the overwhelmingly sad look in the eyes of most of McCurry’s subjects and the equally sad sound of that most evocative of instruments, the Duduk work together to make a document about the less happy side of humanity and life.

Occasionally among the haunted look in the eyes of most of his subjects, there comes a soul that is happy, full of joy, or a landscape that is simply peaceful and gentle, but most of the images are as the famous one of the Afghan Girl.

Along with these images, we have the music of Armand Amar, a piece called Amen Hayr Sourp (Canticle of the Trinity)

A truly heartbreaking image of a small Peruvian kid…..

My Pig – Humber Armoured Personnel Carrier

Many, many years ago I was the proud owner of a 7 ton chunk of armour plate, affectionately known in the British Army as a Pig, or more formally as Humber Armoured Personnel Carrier.

This splendid vehicle boasted a completely waterproofed 4.75 Rolls Royce petrol engine (and by waterproof, I mean the entire engine was encased in a sealed steel box, with the various lines (fuel, air and exhaust) passing out through one way valves. So when one opened the bonnet, a tricky job in itself as it was made of thick bullet proof steel, one was confronted with a large, rounded pale green steel box, and no engine to be seen…

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Curiously enough, it only had one set of gear ratios, no low gearing as one would expect to find on any vehicle that was designed to go off-road, but the engine was so powerful, and 1st gear so low, and as it was always in 4 wheel drive, it went perfectly happily over mud, small rivers and so on on its enormous “run-flat” tires.

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Inside it was remarkably spartan, no unnecessary comfort for driver or passengers, and of course, being military, no seat belts to be seen.

Anyhow, you can find the specs for this small monster easily enough on line, so I shall stop going on about that side of the thing, and talk about what it was like to own and drive around in such a vehicle. It was in effect my car, as I had no other vehicle at the time, so I used it to drive to work every day, and to drive around at the weekends too. As one would in a normal car.

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Angola Minefields – Look Innocent, But Will Bite You!

While we were working in Angola a few years ago, we had friends who worked with the Halo Trust clearing landmines all over Angola. At that time (2006) there were estimated to be about 17 million of the horrible things lurking in the ground.

We were invited to visit them at their upcountry headquarters in a small town called Huambo, which had suffered very badly during the civil war, so was full of shot up buildings, burnt out tanks in back yards and all the remains of a vicious war, which after a bit of time in Angola, we were becoming all too familiar with sadly.

They decided to first take us to a large minefield that they were busy clearing on the edge of a small village nearby, so off we went to see our first minefield in the flesh as it were. When we got there we were taken to the edge of the village, where the local school had its playground and the guy in charge pointed to the grass field beside the kid’s playground and told us matter of factly that that was the minefield. Simply a large area of grass beside the beaten earth of the playground… No form of separation, walls, fences, ditches.. nothing, simply an innocent looking grassy area.

This was when we understood that actually a minefield is simply a chunk of land which happens to have landmines buried in it…. In no way special or dangerous looking. As a friend from the Halo Trust put it, a landmine is the Beast that doesn’t bark – but sure as hell can and does bite!

The thing that got me at that moment was the realisation that the kids at the school played football and ran around as kids do, right on the edge of a minefield, with no form of barrier to prevent them running into the minefield.

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WE VISIT THE FIRST OIL FIELD IN ANGOLA

Some years ago, Lotty and I worked in Angola, arriving about three months after the 30 year civil war had ended, and found ourselves in a ruined country, in which travel was tricky to put it mildly. However, we were invited one day to go and look at the very first oil source in Angola.

This trip was organised by a couple who had been in Angola for a very long time, and both of whom worked in the oil industry there, as do almost all non-Portuguese expats.

Four of us from the International School of Luanda (where we worked) went on this trip, which meant leaving the school at 6:15 am! After recovering from this early start, we rumbled through a surprisingly active Luanda (This was a Sunday morning, by the way) to a section of Luanda called Mirimar, which I have never visited before, and appears to be the part where the rich and Embassies have their being… streets of very expensive looking houses, and the sure sign of wealthy people, lots of broken car window glass along the pavements (the Break the Window of the BMW and Steal Everything from Inside it syndrome). From here, we had a superb view of the port of Luanda, but we were warned not to take any photos of it, as it is considered to be a security risk if someone such as I should happen to have any snap shots of mountains of containers and lots of rusty ships… oh well……

Anyhow, there were about 50 of us, spread over some 25 huge 4×4’s, and after a short lecture beside the road about what we were going to see…… Off we headed, in a most imposing convoy.

It would have made the Mayor of London happy to have seen us, all those 2 ton SUV’s roaring along a perfectly good road. Oh well, you are nothing around here if you don’t have a monstrous 4×4.

We were heading north of Luanda, to a part of Angola that neither Lotty or I have yet seen, so we were very curious about what it would look like. It turned out to be flat….extremely flat, which is one reason there is oil to be found there… the land there is made up of sedimentary rocks, which are soft, and thus weather easily, unlike the granite which makes up about 90% of Africa (We were told all of this by the guy organising the trip).

Anyhow, we rumbled along happily in our convoy, causing people in the various villages and small towns we went through to wonder what the hell was going on, reasonably enough…. we were the event of the day for a lot of them, I reckon.

After a while, we stopped at a bridge over one of the regions main rivers to admire the view across the flat country to the mountains in the distance, but were warned not to stray too far from the cars, owing to the recently discovered presence of landmines all around this bridge (I was worried about how they had discovered them!) We sort of stood nervously around, taking photos of each other for a while, whilst the leader of our intrepid group told us a wee bit of war history, relating to this bridge and road. It seems that owing to the marshy quality of the land in this part of Angola, the only way for tanks to get across it was via this road and bridge. As the enemy (FNLA) neared this bridge, the gallant defenders of Luanda (MPLA) had posted a whole group of Stalin Organs (Multiple rocket launchers mounted on trucks) on top of a nearby ridge with the intention of blowing the FLNA tanks and soldiers to hell and back as they neared this bridge along the road. However, there was one problem… No one had a clue how to use the things!

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Amazing And Intriguing Image

In my continuing search for weird and wonderful images that might help teachers inspire their students to flights of fantasy in their writing, I have just found a truly wonderful one.

There absolutely has to be a story in this image, any red blooded writer would be able to put together at the very least some sort of short story about what on earth was happening in this church out in the middle of nowhere – apparently.

Share with us:

Please do come back and let us share whatever this image produces…. I am intrigued to know what young and fertile minds might make of it.

Odd Photos Of Odd People

As part of my continuing series of curious images that might be of use to teachers as starting points for creative writing, here are another set of inexplicable and weird images for you to enjoy.

I shan’t attempt to describe what they show, or even to attempt to explain them, as several defy any sort of sane explanation in my view… But they are all thought provoking which is why I chose them.

So here you go…………….

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Steve Cutts – A Most Extraordinary Cartoonist

I have just come across the work of Steve Cutts, a very strange but committed cartoonist and animated film maker, whose work shows a very strong involvement with the less attractive sides of our society.

As you will see from the several examples of his work I shall bung up here for you to look at, he is deeply concerned with environmental issues, social problems and the general difficulties of life.

He puts it this way: “I like to make animations about life and society in general, so there tends to be a message in most of them. The general insanity of mankind is an almost endless pot of inspiration!”

I would say that having looked at a large amount of his work, that this is, if anything, an understatement. His work is totally involved in the problems of the world in one way or another, in a very dry and succinct manner as well. One is in no doubt as to the message he wishes to impart unto us when looking at any of his drawings or animations.

Anyhow, to whet your appetite, here are a few of his cartoons, and a couple of typical videos.

Cartoons:

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Woodford Folk Festival – I Clean Lavatories

A couple of weeks ago Lotty and I spent a strange week working as volunteers at the Woodford Folk Festival, the largest such festival in Australia. We were two vollies (as they are called here in Australia), among about 3000 others all of whom work their little butts off to make this festival happen.

To be honest, neither Lotty nor I have any great interest in folk music, but many of our friends have worked in this festival for years and had told us it was great fun, and anyhow, it seemed to us to be an essential part of our education in living in Oz, so we signed up as soon as it was possible – about 6 months before the actual festival occurs.

One signs on via the web, and all manner of information is required from prospective vollies, among which is the burning question of what sort of work does one wish to do in the festival. This is accompanied by an imposing list of possible areas of work – publicity, stage hand, selling stuff and so on – we had no idea what we might best do, so we simply selected the “do anything” button, and sat back to wait and see what would happen next.

What happened next was an extremely enthusiastic email from a bloke called Alan who would be our chief for the festival, as we had been placed in one of his teams and would be glorying in the title of S-Bend Warriors. This meant that we would be one of many teams of Inter-galactic S-Bend Warriors who would be charged with cleaning and provisioning a load of showers/lavatories in one of the many camping areas in the festival.

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