Kindness

Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby paid a very moving tribute to Caroline Flack on Dancing On Ice last night. For those reading this blog from far-flung places, Caroline Flack is a British TV presenter who, on Friday, took her own life at the age of 40. The finger of blame is pointing very firmly at social media and the media in general. She was hounded mercilessly after apparently assaulting her partner who subsequently asked for the charges to be dropped. 

Holly Willougby quoted a tweet from Caroline with a particularly beautiful message, “in a world where you can be anything: be kind.” 

And so, today, social media is filled with people writing about kindness. Ironically, the trap that many seem to be falling into is the belief that they still have carte blanche to be as unkind as they like - as long as they’re being unkind about those they deem to be unkind. I have read so many tweets angrily demanding everyone stop following Piers Morgan, Katie Hopkins and Nigel Farage because of their hate-filled words. Frankly why anyone would follow any of these people in the first place is beyond me, but they are also the most obvious examples of figures who court controversy by spouting prejudice-filled bile. They’re the sorts of names us liberals can fire into the echo chamber and be met with a sure-fire round of applause. Criticising them makes us feel good about ourselves because we’re signalling to the world that we’re virtuous. But the likes of Nigel Farage don’t give a shit what us liberals think about him. We’re not his target audience! 

The great irony is that I saw people tweeting messages today about kindness today whom I’ve witnessed aggressively piling onto people who don’t share their very narrow and specific views, and people who have publicly shamed others who’s only crime was questioning the liberal status quo.

And here’s the thing which really upsets me: 

Most of the people reading this blog will know that, in July this year, my husband lost his livelihood and very nearly lost his life as a result of asking people to be kind to each other. The only differences between what he said and the beautiful words of Caroline Flack were that he was asking for people to respect one another whilst discussing the thorny issue of diversity. Within minutes his words had been twisted and the obliterating tidal wave of hatred rolled over us.

And let me tell you something: It’s not the figures like Piers Morgan whose opinions cut the deepest when the shit hits the fan, it’s your friends who suddenly distance themselves from you. It’s the people you worked with in the industry who, out of fear for their own careers, disown you on social media without so much as phoning you up to find out the truth. And believe me, that is where a lack of kindness really shows itself in its horrific true colours. 

And that is when you realise who your true friends are. And believe me, I will eternally be grateful to every single friend, family member, colleague, ex-lover and person in the knitting world who kept us alive in the dark times. You know who you are. I wish I could thank you all by name, but they’d only go after you. 

Before what happened to Nathan, I was as guilty as anyone else of allowing my venom to be sharpened as a result of reading nothing but headlines. Particularly when it came to matters relating to the LGBT community, I could be incredibly self-righteous, deeply sarcastic, dismissive and horribly mean. When Seyi Omooba was offered the role of Celie in The Colour Purple, and homophobic tweets that she’d previously sent were made public, I became utterly addicted to outrage. I would often get myself so worked up by the anger I felt, that I’d sit up late at night, picking online fights with anyone in the industry who attempted to support her. I still remember that churning sensation, which grew and grew and often meant I couldn’t sleep at night. Friends and colleagues who told me what a lovely girl Seyi was were plainly the supporters of homophobia. I was incensed. 

But now I realise, that at the centre of this maelstrom was a young actress. A talented person with hopes and dreams and a joy for life who will now be changed forever and, as maybe a direct result of her treatment, probably far more entrenched in her views. She was taken to the cleaners and she’ll probably struggle to work again in the industry. Is that really what we wanted when we threatened to boycott the theatre if she performed there? Can anyone truly say they’re glad that this happened to Seyi? 

I saw first hand what Nathan went through and is still going through. The waves of terrible pain. The howls of anguish. The bewilderment. The loneliness. The sense of betrayal. And all this combining with the glee which some people seemed to show when I announced he’d been taken into hospital. We were accused of white fragility. Male fragility. Of weaponising our situation. Of lying about being in hospital and being told to provide filmic proof of where we were if we expected to be believed. The messages rolled in, one every five seconds, as we sat waiting to be assessed, a gash on the back of Nathan’s hand where he’d clenched his fist so tightly to combat the pain, the skin had simply split open. 

And those same people are still going after Nathan because he hasn’t apparently been punished enough. And they’re still chasing Maria Tusken, a year after she was torn limb from limb in very similar circumstances. A week ago, she posted a picture of herself on Instagram dressed in vintage 1940s clothing. The picture was simply captioned, “a 1940s day”. Someone then circled the phrase “1940s” and wrote “oh my God, unfollow this Nazi.” And I, for one, take particular exception to the misappropriation of the word Nazi. I believe it to be deeply insensitive and hugely antisemitic. 

It’s worth pointing out that people online are now calling calling their behaviour “radical kindness.”  But, in my view, if kindness needs to be qualified with an adjective, it can’t be called kindness. 

I stand with Caroline Flack. Nothing in the world is more important than kindness. Genuine kindness. Not kindness to a degree. Not kindness until someone says something we don’t want to hear. Not restricted empathy. Genuine understanding that every single one of us is struggling through life and if we understand and listen to each other’s fears, even if we think they come from the wrong place, we can consider ourselves kind. 

And I, for one, know that I still have a long, long way to go in that regard. 

Icelandic wool

We are presently on a bus heading away from Reykjavik towards the airport. The weather has turned. I think it’s raining. It might be snowing. We’re passing through the most bizarre lunar landscape of black, jagged rocks, almost entirely covered in snow, but a mist has come down, and we can’t see for more than about thirty metres. I now know exactly what everyone meant when they told us we’d lucked out with the weather! 

Yesterday found us exploring Reykjavik more thoroughly. We took ourselves to a frozen lake in the middle of the downtown area and dared to walk across it on the ice. I say “dared” but a group of girls were playing a game of football on it, so plainly there wasn’t any great risk of falling through! I have no idea how deep the water was as I blithely skidded across, but it’s certainly not an experience I can expect to repeat in the near future. I am just about old enough to remember cold winters when we were able to walk across rivers and things in the UK. I think they even used to flood a field in Kennilworth for ice skating... but I’m sure global warming has put paid to that. 

There’s an area on the side of the Reykjavik lake into which they pump warmer water, meaning the ducks, geese and swans have something to float about on. We stood by the side of the lake to watch them, and were astonished by the appearance of three young swans who rushed up to us and started honking, plainly hoping for a bit of food. 

Nathan is a sucker for any animal he can anthropomorphise, so immediately demanded we head to the nearest shop to find them something to eat! Twenty minutes later, we were back at the lake with a bag of raisins, having read that they make a lovely treat for ducks. 

Of course we all know what happens when we eat too much fruit, so I have images of the entire population of water fowl suffering terrible diarrhoea today. 

We met a couple of Nathan’s friends for lunch: an actor and a politician. Everyone in Iceland knows each other. Asking an Icelander if they know one of their fellow country people is not at all like Americans asking English people if they know the Queen. In fact there’s an app here which tells you how closely you are related to a fellow Icelander which is often used by people going on first dates. The theory is that you don’t normally need to go back further than four generations to find a link! 

We met outside the parliament building, which is the least securely protected parliament I’ve ever seen. The square in front of parliament is where Icelandic people go to register their disgruntlement. The first time people went there en masse was in the early twentieth century, oddly to register their disapproval at the idea of an under-sea phone cable being created. 

Most recently, in 2009, thousands gathered to demonstrate against the government’s response to the country’s economy collapse. I’m not sure why Icelanders took to the square to bang pots and pans together but the event is known as the Kitchenware Revolution.

From the parliament building we went to Harpa, an astonishingly beautiful concert hall by Reykjavik Harbour, which was designed, I think, by the same bloke who made the brilliant Weather Project at the Tate Modern. That was the one with the giant rising halogen sun, which remains one of my favourite-ever pieces of art. 

The building is something else, based around tessellating hexagons and cubes of glass and steel which hang off the ceilings and cling to the walls like a blue, white and mirror-ball beehive. The views from the concert hall as as impressive as the architecture itself, across the lavender blue sea to snow-bedecked mountains on the other side of the bay. 

We did some souvenir shopping. I always like to buy a bauble for the Chanukah Tree whenever I’m somewhere special! The Icelanders have a particularly strange - and spectacularly pagan - Christmas tradition, which involve thirteen different, hugely mischievous Santas called the Yule Lads visiting Icelandic homes in the thirteen days before Christmas. They are the sons of a giantess called Grylla and they have somewhat bizarre names which describe their specific, anti-social tendencies. There’s Door Slammer, Sausage Swiper, Window Sniffer, Spoon Licker... Despite their puerile tricks, they leave little gifts, unless the child they’re visiting has been naughty, when they leave a potato. It must be great fun to live in Iceland during this period! Why stop with one, benevolent Santa when you can have thirteen evil ones?!

It started snowing at about 4pm. It was the first time we’d seen snow falling since our arrival, so it felt very magical as we walked along Laugevegur. 

Nathan’s knitting friend Rósa picked us up from our hotel in the late afternoon to take us on a tour of some of the many yarn shops in the Reykjavik area. It was an incredibly brave thing for Nathan to do as he has no idea whether he’s welcome in the shops or not. The most painful aspect of his horrifying experience was seeing friends of his - good fiends whom he’d holidayed with, shared experiences with - publicly distancing themselves from him after being told by some of the Social Justice Warriors that if they didn’t denounce him, they’d be next for the treatment. 

The deepest cut of all was the designer, Stephen West. I went on holiday to Italy with him, and thought we’d got on very well, so when he made his public statement telling the world what a horrible person Nathan was, I desperately wrote to him to explain exactly what had happened and that what he’d been told was nothing more than rumour and lies. I was literally at the end of my tether and I reached out to him for his help. He ignored my email. He didn’t even offer an explanation as to why he’d done what he did. I was utterly devastated.

To make matters worse, the person who badgered him to denounce Nathan, (a terrible podcaster with a face like a gurning, melted candle) was subsequently sent to court on charges of fraud. What a veritable beacon of morality she turned out to be. Well done Stephen: you sold your soul to the devil. 

Seeing books by him in the shops we visited was a hard pill to swallow and the experience made me feel highly uncomfortable, but everyone we met was utterly charming, particularly Rósa, who is one of the most beautiful and generous souls I’ve ever met. She asked me why I didn’t knit. Would you want to be part of a community which would eat its own?

Reykjavik is part of a continuous collection of different towns and cities which come together to form a mega-conurbation (at least by Icelandic standards!!) We visited one of them: Hafnafjörth, which looked very lovely. Rósa tells us it’s architecturally similar to Bergen... 

After a fabulous evening meal, Rósa took us back to Reykjavik, tipping us off about a little sculpture park in the vicinity of the main church. I noticed, as we drove past, that the gate was still open, and the place was floodlit even at 10pm, so, after being dropped off, we took ourselves back there for a look around. 

It’s so very “Iceland” to have a sculpture park which you can walk around at night. There was no one there to read us the health and safety riot act. No signs to tell us to beware of pick-pockets. No impending sense of danger, or group of lads smoking weed under a doorway. It was free to enter. We just got to wander around by floodlight, all on our own, our long shadows dancing on the glistening snow. It was a deeply memorable experience. 

But then again, that’s Iceland. Around every corner, something magical is waiting for you. You just need to open your eyes to it. I can’t begin to describe what a wonderful time we have had here and how welcoming and beautiful we found the people. I return to London feeling inspired and excited. 

Reykjavik

Waking up naturally in the dark is a very surreal and confusing experience. You literally have no idea what time it is and whether you’ve woken up in the middle of the night, or if you should be thinking about starting your day. 

The air up in the mountains in Iceland is as pure and soft as any I’ve ever experienced. Before we left the summer house for the last time, I stood outside taking huge gulps of pure oxygen, wondering how awful it must be for an Icelander to arrive in London, and then, how many years I’ve knocked off my own life expectancy by living in the metropolis since the age of 20. 

I learned this morning that the centre of Iceland, an unimaginably huge area of land which they call the Highlands, is entirely inhospitable and uninhabitable. There’s apparently a single road, which dissects the island and links the north and the south, which is closed for close to eight months of the year. I’ve been looking at pictures of the Highlands. They are profoundly beautiful in an utterly otherworldly way. It’s so bizarre to think that so few people will ever get to appreciate the area in the flesh. 

The Northern Lights we experienced last night were more glorious and magical than any we’ve seen on the trip so far. They are almost certainly our last before returning to London, as we’re in Reykjavík from now on, where there’s a great deal of light pollution - and the forecast is for overcast skies. But three straight nights of the phenomenon is about as good as it gets. Last night’s were brighter and more vivid than any we’ve experienced before. They were bright green with splashes of yellow and the sky turned into a giant lava lamp at one point. 

Watching the northern lights from a hot tub is one of life’s most decadent and wonderful experiences. Ice crystals actually form in your hair whilst the rest of your body slowly cooks!! 

On our way to Reykjavík this afternoon, we crossed over a river which had entirely frozen over. Thoranna and her daughter Ysold were both astonished and said they’d never seen the river like that before. 

The sun’s been incredibly watery today and was hidden behind milky, pastel clouds, which gave us far more of a sense of how depressing it must get in this country when there are long periods without the glorious, bright sunshine we’ve been experiencing for the last three days.

We are staying downtown in Reykjavik. It’s certainly unlike any other European capital city I’ve visited. It’s small, slow-paced and architecturally unique. A lot of the older buildings have roofs and walls made from corrugated iron. Many of the houses are painted in bright, vibrant primary colours. I’m sure they very much brighten up the winter months for the locals. 

We walked up to the main church, a striking building which looks like a giant Art Deco fan. We ventured inside for a few minutes, but I can never stay too long in a church without beginning to feel incredibly uncomfortable - even in Iceland, where the majority of people are atheist, and where Christians tend to be more tolerant than anywhere else in the world. 

The organ inside the church is stunning. It has over a thousand pipes and some of them stick out at very bizarre angles, almost like a heavenly band of bugles. For some reason I imagined those particular pipes providing sounds on the brassier end of the spectrum! 

The tarmac on the road leading up to the church has been painted with a giant pride rainbow. I’m not sure I can imagine that ever happening in the approach to St Paul’s Cathedral but it’s hugely indicative of the Iceland’s general embracing of “other.” It feels appropriate at this point to point out that Iceland doesn’t have an army. Many feel that this implies a general tendency towards pacifism whilst others argue the Icelanders are way too laid back to take up arms. Yet more suggest that they have a healthy disregard for authority. My kind of people, then! 

In the late afternoon, we visited the Penis Museum in Reykjavik, which is a sight to behold! It’s filled with jars with cocks in formaldehyde belonging to an assortment of animals from whales and elephants down to hamsters and mice. And yes, there are human penises there. 

The art and sculpture inspired by phalluses was fascinating, the picture of a dolphin pleasuring itself was hysterical, the ancient examples of condoms were bizarre and I very much wanted to have a toot on an ocarina shaped like a dick, but the willies in jars made me feel increasingly queasy.  I suppose it’s something to do with penises being life-givers and seeing them cut off and in jars felt utterly wrong. 

This evening we took ourselves to a drag show at Iceland’s premiere “queer” bar, Kiki, which was a huge amount of fun, despite the place being half empty and the drinks being twice the price of the UK. (Ironically, it was happy hour!) Based on the numbers in the bar, I’d wager that Iceland is either so tolerant towards LGBT people that no one needs a gay bar or that Sunday night is not party night here. There were certainly no Icelanders in the bar apart from its staff. Our drag queen was called Faye Knús. Get it? Fake News? Apparently “knús” means hug in Icelandic, so it’s a clever little name. She was very witty, very crude and a great lip-syncher.

The audience was invited to get up on the stage to lip-sync numbers, so I put Nathan’s name in the hat to mime to “And I’m Telling You” in a suitably over-the-top and comic manner. It went down a storm. Sadly no one else followed suit... I think they were intimidated. 

Tomatoes, torrents and trolls

We woke up in Thoranna’s family’s summer house and realised we were surrounded by mountains, snow and the clearest, most crisp air. It’s always rather intriguing to arrive somewhere when it’s dark, only to discover what it actually looks like in the morning. 

We had left over pizza for breakfast and were on the road by about 10.30am

The Icelanders have definitely worked out how not to be slaves to the horrors of the natural world.  Broadly speaking, this is achieved by working with and harnessing nature instead of trying to defeat it. What they don’t know about driving in the snow, for example, probably isn’t worth knowing. In fact, I learned today that the first team to drive across the South Pole did so in a vehicle designed by an Icelander. 

The snow is far dryer and more powdery here than the sloppy stuff we get in the UK, but all the roads are quite comprehensively covered in the stuff and the cars just keep on driving. I’m told it’s largely to do with decent tyres. 

We drove along the “Golden Circle” today which is Iceland’s preeminent tourist circuit. It takes in some breathtakingly spectacular locations, so I thought it was going to be utterly thronged with tourists, but it was really rather quiet. 

The Golden Circle takes you through the mountains and, what I think the Icelanders might consider to be woods. The trees here don’t grow very tall, so when they’re clustered together they can look a little pathetic. Before the Vikings moved to Iceland, the place was apparently highly forested, but, after they’d chopped everything down, it apparently proved fairly difficult to bring them back. There’s a joke over here which goes, “what do you do if you get lost in a forest in Iceland?” “Stand up!”

Our first major stop was at the Gullfoss waterfall. I have no idea why this beast of a waterfall isn’t every bit as famous as Niagra or The Yosemite Falls. It’s on a scale so epic, I’m not sure I can quite do it justice by trying to describe it! The falls are incredibly wide - surely far wider than Niagra. Water thunders down in two stages and disappears deep, deep down into a ravine. The sheer volume of the water kicks up so much spray that you can’t see the river underneath. You literally can’t see where the falls end. 

The water which pours down the hillside is a somewhat mystical greeny-yellow colour: a little like oxidised copper mixed with chalk, but what is most thrilling about the waterfall at this time of year is that a lot of it has frozen solid. Huge towers of icicles cling to the sides of the ravine. It’s almost impossible to comprehend that such fast-flowing water would ever be able to freeze over, but the temperatures were astonishingly cold. I could feel my ears burning to the point that I felt if I’d bashed them too hard they would have shattered into a thousand pieces. 

From Gullfoss, we went to an area of great tectonic activity where a real life geyser called Strokkur spurts columns of boiling water thirty meters into the air. There used to be two geysers right next to each other, the first of which was considerably more impressive. That geyser was actually called Geysir and was the geyser which all other geysers were named after. Sadly, an earthquake in the 1970s brought Geysir’s work to a close and he’s remained a dormant, hot, sulphurous pool ever since. 

When you walk around the area, you encounter scores of circular pools surrounded by rocks shimmering with multicoloured minerals, none of which it would be wise to touch because they’re full of boiling water. People cook eggs there! They bubble restlessly like curious cauldrons and it’s of little surprise that Icelanders are so obsessed with trolls, witches, ghosts and folklore. 

We tore ourselves away from the geyser for the next adventure in our Icelandic saga, and saw scores of horses galloping along the side of the road. They’re smaller than ordinary horses but what apparently separates them from all other horses is a fifth gait called “skeith” which is somewhere between a cantor and a gallop, but an unbelievably smooth variant: so smooth, in fact, that the jockey doesn’t bob up and down as he or she rides. No other horse in the world possesses that particular ability. Or so I’m told. 

We had our lunch in the most peculiar setting, namely a geothermally-heated greenhouse where they grow tomatoes all year round. There are tables set up within the tomato vines and all the food served is based on tomatoes. Bumble bees live in the greenhouses all year round. The waitress told us that they’re a little quiet in the winter months but they were certainly still buzzing around. It was all absolutely fabulous. And the food was delicious. 

The last part of our glorious day saw us driving through the mountains as the sun melted into a peach-coloured light, which made the snow-covered mountains glow magically. 

As we made our way through the stunning countryside - tall skies, 360 degree panoramic views - we listened to ABBA. That’s about as good as it gets, in my world, particularly when everyone sings along in harmony. 

The sun set as we climbed a hillside overlooking a wide, wide river, silhouetted against the tangerine sky as the evening winds began to strengthen. To make matters perfect, we’re predicted more Northern Lights tonight. How lucky do I feel? 

Steam, sulphur and silica

We woke up in the dark this morning. It was a surreal experience, made all the more surreal when we discovered that sunrise happens in these parts at 10.30am! I saw for the first time, as we breakfasted in the dark, with the wind howling outside, that this sort of thing could get a bit too much after a while!

We left the house in the dark, and Karl drove us to the “Bridge Between Continents.” What I didn’t realise is that the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates rub against each other directly underneath Iceland. It’s why the place is so volatile. 

Thoranna and Karl come from towns no more than twenty kilometres away from each other, but they joke that Karl is European whilst his wife is American. 

We stood underneath the bridge as the first rays of dawn started to creep across the sky. 

Dawn was a pink, mauve and lavender affair in the fresh wintery air. We’ve been told many times how lucky we’ve been with the weather and today, the sun shone constantly... 

We went from the bridge to a lighthouse a kilometre further along the coast and marvelled at the shimmering winter wonderland which was being revealed by the rising sun. The ground was covered with a thick hoar frost and the lighthouse started glowing a sort of peach colour. Long icicles hung from the edges of the cliffs. I realised that I haven’t seen an icicle since my childhood (when I used to see them all the time.)

From the lighthouse, we walked down the hill to an area where huge clouds of steam were bursting out of black rocks. The air stank of sulphur and the steam was a brown-yellow colour in front of the sun. The zone had been set up so that people could safely walk around without getting burned by the roasting hot gushes of steam shooting out of the ground. 

A series of wooden walkways led us through the plumes of steam and smoke, and, rather thrillingly, the sun was in exactly the right spot in the sky to create the ghostly phenomenon of Brocken Spectres. This meant that our shadows were actually being cast onto the wall of steam in front of us, and because the sun was low in the sky and directly behind us, our shadows started to appear in completely circular rainbows. It was surreal and deeply magical and we spent at least half an hour getting absolutely drenched by salty, sulphur-filled water whilst filming the phenomenon! 

From there we headed to Grindavik, the little town where Karl grew up. We had lunch in a fabulous little cafe within a complex where most of the town’s shops were situated. It’s very much a local space for local people. The shopping centre was no bigger than an average-sized supermarket, but there were a number of rooms within, housing individual establishments including a hair dressers and a women’s clothing shop. The walls of the corridors between the rooms were filled with photographs of different amateur sporting groups from the town over the last forty or so years. Karl found a picture of his sister in an all-female football team in the 1980s. 

Almost everyone who lives in Grindavik works in the fishing industry and we drove down to the harbour to have a look at the hustle and bustle. I’ve yet to see a whale. 

From Grindavik, we headed to the famous Blue Lagoon, an astoundingly beautiful geothermal spa complex and pool, which is probably the biggest tourist attraction in  Iceland. It bills itself as one of the 25 Wonders of the World. I’m not sure what the other 24 are, or indeed which list of Wonders of the World goes up to 25. I thought there were ten but then again, I thought one of them was the hanging gardens of Babylon which I don’t think is an actual thing...

Whatever the case, the place is stunningly beautiful. The water, which is filled with silica (a sort of white, mineral-rich mud) is a very light blue colour and it reaches temperatures of 100 degrees, which makes it utterly glorious on a cold, winter’s day. 

The lagoon is in a snow-filled dell, and the water is really buoyant, so you sort of bob about in the steamy, misty, toothpaste-coloured water. We felt like those wonderful red-faced Japanese snow monkeys who flock to the Jigokundani hot springs to keep warm in the winter. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, google them, and then imagine Nathan and me! We were so blissed out that we missed two minor earthquakes which happened whilst we were there! 

The area around the Blue Lagoon is the place where the most ferocious tectonic activity is currently taking place. The locals don’t seem to be hugely concerned. I chatted to a lady in a petrol station this afternoon who said she’d been experiencing tremors all afternoon. 94, according to the news, in the last 24 hours. This evening there were two more significant tremors. Icelanders are being very pragmatic. We’re told the epicentre of the earthquakes is in a “convenient” place where any lava flow would probably avoid a key power station and a major road. That’s alright then! 

This is evening we drove to Thoranna and Karl’s summer house in the southern mountains of Iceland, which is the warmest part of the country, and an area where trees grow. (A relatively rare sight in Iceland.)

The journey took us along the beautiful southern coastal road. As the sun started to set, the sky went the palest blue colour, which was reflected onto the snowy mountains.

The summer house is made of wood, and it’s absolutely wonderful. It reminded me of a far grander version of the hut little Heidi lived in with her Grandfather on the Swiss Alps! There’s even a little loft bedroom... but sadly no hole in the roof to look at the stars! 

The Northern Lights returned - fuzzier and more covered in cloud than last night - and Thoranna gave us baked cheese and apricot jam before we all jumped into their hot tub. We went to bed just as a huge green arc started to stretch across the sky. 

We were desperately troubled by news from back home that the UK has now pulled out of the EU. I can think of no place I’d rather be on this hideous night than looking at the Northern Lights in one of our neighbouring European countries, but I can’t stop my mind from telling me that I entered Iceland as a proud EU citizen and will exit it as a piece of shit ready to be thrown into the fan which Boris Johnson has gleefully erected on the White Cliffs of Dover. What will become of us, I wonder? 

Where are we?

We arrived at Gatwick airport yesterday morning with that specific gnawing hunger you get when you get up too early in the morning! 

Our flight’s check-in was, rather bizarrely, in an area of the airport almost exclusively reserved for flights to China. And, of course, China, as a result of the Coronavirus, is a place where people are presently a little wary of travelling. The check-in zone was a somewhat eerie sight, almost empty but for a few people wearing face masks. I was a little perturbed that the area felt so hot. The woman behind our desk was fanning herself keenly. It strikes me the one thing you don’t want from an area where a virus might be trying to transmit and mutate is a hot, moist environment. Maybe I’m being paranoid? 

Funnily enough, on the way to the airport, I’d watched a series of terribly moving images featuring hundreds of people in the Wuhan district frantically shouting messages of support and encouragement to each other from their tower block windows. Each apartment, of course, is a prison cell. They shout “add oil” to each other, which I assume is a way of saying “have courage.” It must be absolutely terrifying to be quarantined in your own flat, helplessly peering from your window into a potentially disintegrating world. 

I bought a camera case from Dixons, reluctantly acknowledging that mine has fallen apart. It’s been a hugely expensive month. The man behind the counter seemed rather shocked when I declined his demand to provide him with a boarding pass which I’m pretty convinced is just a cynical attempt to collect more data about me. I recently discovered that handing over one’s boarding pass in these situations is not actually a legal requirement, so, because I’m a contrary bugger, I’ve stopped doing so! I would rather tell the world via this blog what I purchase in airports! 

The ludicrous internet Social Justice Warriors have moved on to their next targets in the crafting world. It is no surprise to me, sadly, that both targets are men. One of them has been torn apart for designing a pattern called Spice Market. I assume his crime is cultural appropriation or insensitivity to those who work in spice markets.

The other “education” work they’re selflessly carrying out is a peach of an own goal on their part - and absolute proof (if any were needed) that they are not just fuelled by rancid misandry, but that few of them actually bother to find out basic facts before their addiction to outrage forces them to wade in and comment on a rumour based on a half-fact based on a prejudice-fuelled lie. 

The brief headline is that a guy called James wrote a book filled with knitting patterns and recipes for cake. The book came out last year and was successful. A couple of weeks ago, James and his husband (a doctor) were interviewed on a Channel 4 show called How To Lose Weight Well, and asked if knitting could actually help you lose weight. Their response was that any weight loss would be negligible but that, if you lived a sedentary life for whatever reason, doing something with your hands would almost certainly be better than doing nothing at all. 

Before the show was even screened, the SJWs moved in and James was accused of fat-shaming. Before long, a rumour started to circulate that his cake recipe book was actually a diet book which told women how to live their lives. Just like in Nathan’s case, if it hadn’t generated such a damaging tidal wave of vitriolic hatred, their uninformed response would have been funny. And actually, now that I understand the motivation and tragic modus operandi of the SJWs, my sense of humour about them has partially

returned. 

Obviously it was mere seconds before James’ gender was brought into proceedings. Words like “mansplaining” “misogynist” and “bully” were bandied around gleefully. There were even threats of violence towards him. But don’t take my word for it before becoming incensed on James’ part: get out there and read the actual facts. Do what no self-respecting SJW would do!! 

Of course, there’s a great deal of pain lurking behind my flippant remarks. The experience we lived through over the summer nearly cost both of us our lives and it’s certainly the reason why I don’t write this blog very often. The sense of helplessness I felt as Nathan was torn limb from limb was utterly crushing and still, six months on, I feel my stomach clenching. 

For what it’s worth, the radio 4 documentary about Nathan’s experience is being broadcast on Sunday, so you can hear all about it in his own words. It was recorded whilst we were in the thick of the hell, so heaven knows how we’ll come across. But here’s the link. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d70h

But that’s enough about that! 

Where did the flight from Heathrow actually take us?

Iceland. ICELAND!! 

Seen from the air, Iceland is a white tundra. Hills and mountains dusted with icing sugar rise from deep blue lakes. Huge plumes of white steam burst out of the ground. It’s deeply other-worldly and like nowhere I’ve ever visited. 

We were picked up from the airport by Karl, the husband of Thoranna, with whom we are staying. The sun was low in the sky as we touched down. It turned everything a glorious shade of orange. 

Karl told us that there’s a huge amount of tectonic activity on Iceland at the moment, including, to my surprise, earthquakes. I don’t know why this information surprised me so much. Iceland, after all, is known as the land of fire and ice. 

Karl drove us back to the house he shares with Thoranna and their two wonderful children, Ysold and Isak. Thoranna and Nathan were in a production of the Rocky Horror Show some twenty years ago and she’s been trying to get him to come to Iceland ever since. 

They live in what the Brits might call a Scandinavian-style house. From what I can gather, most people over here do. Big, open, communal bungalow spaces seem to be the fashion, with light pouring in from all angles. 

Obviously we came to Iceland because we’re desperate to see the Northern lights. They’ve been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember, and, after seeing Monument Valley, a ghost town and a total eclipse in America in 2018 and then meeting Björn from ABBA, I’ve got the bug for ticking off more! 

We we sitting around the kitchen table when Ysold ran in to say that the lights were in the sky, so we ran out into the street to see a feint green arc stretching across the night sky. It wasn’t dancing or morphing into different shapes and it was competing with the street lamps and the general glow of Reykjavík in the distance, but it was there. I saw the Northern Lights. Yay! 

We had supper with Thoranna’s wonderful mother and father. The mum is a highly talented knitter and she and Nathan were able to have long, nerdy chats on the subject.

We have a Northern Lights app on Nathan’s phone which suddenly started glowing red, suggesting there was a 30% chance of seeing the lights where we were - if there were clear skies. 

A quick look out of the window assured us that there were, indeed, clear skies, so Thoranna bundled us into her car and drove us to a peninsular on the very west of Iceland where she (rightly) said there’d be no light pollution. And suddenly the Northern Lights were there in the sky. Another ribbon of green, but this time wider and far clearer. 

A small gathering of people had their cameras fixed on the sky, and long exposures were generating very lovely results. I just wasn’t set up to take anything decent on my own camera. I didn’t have a tripod, my hands were freezing and I couldn’t see any of the buttons or controls because it was so dark! 

Thoranna then decided it might be good to drive to an even darker location: a golf club she knew in the middle of nowhere... and that’s when the light show kicked off in force. To put what we saw into context, the Northern Lights do not appear to order, they weren’t really predicted to appear at all last night and yet, Thoranna (an Icelander) said it was one of the best displays she’d ever seen. 

The sky was filled with milky ripples and flashes. A glowing staircase suddenly appeared, with scalloped edges, and then fiery ribbons of mint green started dripping down from the heavens, dancing, bobbing, rolling. Sometimes the lights were mere smudges. Sometimes they were sharply-defined spears shooting upwards, directly above our heads. And then, almost as soon as the glorious display had started, it faded, firstly into a gossamer haze and then into the blackness. We felt truly blessed. 

It’s funny: I knew we were going to see them and I knew we were going to see them in a spectacular way. Perhaps I threw this desire out into the universe. Perhaps it’s just because I believe in magic. But magic, we saw. 

My Scottish Odyssey: Part Two

I woke up to find Edinburgh bathed in wintry sunshine. It was bitterly cold. There had probably been a frost whilst I was having a rather lovely lie-in in the very pleasant, not-too-pricey room I’d booked myself. 

Somewhat irritated by having to pull a suitcase about, I made my away along Rose Street, before crossing North Bridge and hauling myself up to the Castle, memories constantly rushing into my head from scores of Festivals in the 1990s. That feeling of invincible optimism returned. The sense of innocent hedonism. The Edinburgh Festival is a bubble of exhausting fun - at least, that is, if your show is selling out. If not, it can be a fairly humiliating experience...

Handing out fliers on the Royal Mile brings out the very worst in everyone. Passers by are forced to become the rudest people in the world simply to get from A to B. Introverts become almost catatonic. Public school boys become obnoxiously confident. Wannabe thesps turn into mini-Brian-Blesseds. I remember one year organising some sort of horrific, wanky exercise involving a company of actors, in chevron formation, standing on a street corner, moving and breathing as a single organism. No one wanted to be there. As instructed, they started moving like fronds of seaweed swaying in the tide, but then mortification took over and they started shuffling at ever-greater speeds down the cobbled hill... straight into a pub! 

I remembered the year when everyone came down with the most shocking flu and Philippa and I clung to one another in a single bed, shaking violently. There’s a picture of me wearing an enormous jumper in the height of summer because I felt so cold. I’ve only had a flu three or four times in my life and that one was a stinker! 

The sun set as my train pulled out of Edinburgh and skated across the beautiful hills and moorland towards Glasgow. 

As I walked through Glasgow Station, I could hear someone playing a pub piano version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah on the honkytonk piano in the ticket hall. It seemed most strange to me that all the street lights in the city were on at just gone 4pm. In this neck of the woods you get beautifully long summer’s evenings but those winter nights must be super-punishing. 

Speaking of punishing, the hills which lead up from the station in Glasgow are almost as impressive as those in San Francisco. I was rather relieved to only have to walk up one of them.

I was staying at the Ibis Hotel, which is all a bit too cool-for-school for an old man like me. Instead of a check-in desk, they have a person who hangs about in the bar with an iPad. I walked in and immediately assumed I was in the wrong place...

Maybe I was! 

The room was fine, but I’ve started to get very angry with hotels which don’t have baths in them. Invariably, when I arrive in a hotel after a long day of slugging things about, I want a nice, long, hot bath. And, actually, even when I do manage to bag myself a room with a bath, it’s often either tiny, or the soap dispenser is half way up the wall. Life, it seems, favours those who shower. Mini-rant over... 

We ate at Glasgow’s CCA, which has a vegetarian restaurant attached to it. I had been joined by Adele, who is UK Jewish Film’s first point of contact up there, her husband Michael, and Tanya, who is one of my oldest university friends. She’s one of the group I go camping with, and, because she’s based in Glasgow, I don’t get a chance to see nearly enough of her. I adore Tanya and her entire family and have made a mental note to spend far more time with them. 

The screening in Glasgow wasn’t perhaps as well-attended as I was hoping. It was a late screening and the first time this autumn that temperatures in the city had dipped below freezing. I was given a proper telling off afterwards by one of the audience members who plainly feels that London Jewish people don’t think enough about Jewish people in the rest of the country. “We don’t all come from NW3” he said, “no,” I replied, “I’m from Northampton!” Of course, his argument has a degree of validity and it’s very much in the same sphere as the North-South divide issues which (Islington-based) Jeremy Corbyn smugly brought to the country’s attention after the recent spate of flooding. Of course, the thing which irritates me most about all of the discussions on the subject is that there’s this incredibly misguided assumption that everyone in the country is either Northern or Southern. If you really want to feel ignored, try coming from the Midlands. Or worse, East Anglia!

I had a troubled night’s sleep, and wondered if I’d been having nightmares because I woke up feeling quite anxious and sad. It’s a mood I didn’t managed to shake for the rest of the day. A long train journey home, crammed against a radiator didn’t help matters, neither did my bizarre ticket home which told me that my train left from “Glasgow Central/ Queen Street.” My outsider’s assumption from that piece of information was that Glasgow Central Station is also known as Queen Street. Wrong. They’re two separate stations, which are at least as far apart as Euston and Kings Cross. My map took me to Queen Street Station where a mock-astonished staff member scoffed before telling me that NO trains from his station went to London. I actually said excuse me to him three times before he deigned to give me his attention. Yay. 

So there I was, with fifteen minutes until my train, dementedly running through Glasgow to the main train station...

When I finally arrived there, I discovered the station had two levels, so asked a member of staff where trains to London went from. “Upstairs” - came the reply. “And whereabouts is that?” I asked. “Upstairs.” Ask a silly question - mock the silly Englishman who’s plainly in a panic! 

I have two bugbears about Virgin Trains. The first is that, when the crew come down the aisle with the food trolley, whenever anyone asks for a cup of tea, they’re trained to say “would you like anything to go with your tea? Crisps? Cake? Chocolate?” It’s hardly encouraging healthy living... 

And then, when you enter the loo, the most awful thing happens. A chirpy little voice pops up saying “hello, I’m the toilet. Well, actually, I’m Fiona from Glasgow and I won a competition to be the voice of the toilet.” She then lists all the things which can’t be flushed down the loo on the train. It’s deeply distracting. In fact, I know blokes with relatively shy kidneys, who wouldn’t be able to pee for a week after hearing that! 

Euston station was hell. Welcome to London! They’ve moved the entrance to the tube and now funnel people into tiny little, deeply-angry lines. It took five minutes to get down the first escalator into the ticket hall, where we were greeted by two gurning women flanking someone dressed in a Pudsey Bear suit collecting for Children In Need. I wonder how many of the frustrated commuters wanted to rip that soddin’ bear’s other eye out!