All badged up

The overarching message from today’s exercise in re-badging my leather jacket, now returned from the cleaners, seems to have been that you can make statements without appearing to do so.

I started badging it some years ago, seeing it as a very personal form of ‘rock chic’ and absolutely refusing to add any obviously ‘political’ badges.

Over the last few years, it’s attracted plenty of comment and enquiry. Perhaps counter-intuitively, I think it says more about me and what I believe in than if I’d dressed the jacket in rather more obvious pins.

Loosely, there are themes. And as Thomas Mann once said: “Everything is politics”.

So here’s a guide to my newly badged jacket.

From top left (approximately) – travel is good. We start with a flag pin representing Lübeck. This was my destination as a 50th birthday ‘thang’: I’d never been out of the UK on my own before this and it was a (long overdue) rite of passage to prove I could travel to ‘Abroadland’ all on my own.

I chose Lübeck because of Mann and Günter Grass and because I’d spent around 10 years teaching myself a bit of German so felt a certain confidence in the idea that I might be able to communicate at a basic level.

It was a fabulous and seminal trip.

Füssen? More German stuff – Bavaria; the Alps; simply gorgeous. Ties in with the edelweiss pin.

Then Thomas Mann – I have spares ope this pin; that’s how important it is to me. I loved Buddenbrooks … but then I read Death in Venice and my mind was well and truly blown.

The travel section includes Collioure – of course – plus Vienna, Sorrento and Sicily: all are special to me.

Beethoven is crucial: I love classical music and Ludwig in particular. And his 250th birthday is next year, so it would be poor tom leave him out.

That Concorde? A lovely pin, bought in Folkstone, together with a Spitfire pin. But at present, wearing a Spitfire could send out all the wrong signals, while this suggests European co-operation.

The Royal Opera House? Well, if you read this blog regularly, you’ll know why.

The Haring ‘resist’ pin? Haring at Tate Liverpool was my art revelation this year and resisting the Establishment and racism and bigotry in general is good.

The birds? Well, I saw a kingfisher this year and interacted with a raven (my absolute top bird). I love corvids in general, including those beauties, magpies. Red squirrels – only seen in Germany and Austria – but wonderful nonetheless.

Stephen Sondheim is a god, Star Wars is a big part of my cultural life, along with The Wizard of Oz (and as some of you will know, I’m a ‘friend of Dorothy’), while Captain Haddock represents comics and cartoons, and Shakespeare … well, I ‘dig’ The Bard big time.

This is how to make comments about yourself but leave others imply enjoying the colour!

Reinventing Christmas folklore

Christmas Present

A few days ago, chatting over morning coffee and social media, The Other Half and I happened upon a mention of Père Fouettard, a Christmas character.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet and search engines, it didn’t take long to discover that Père Fouettard is a sort of counterpoint to Father Christmas in northern and eastern France, and in Flanders, and that he carries a whip with him to punish the naughty children.

This is not too far removed from Krampus, the half goat, half demon figure who can be found from Bavaria to northern Italy to Hungary and more, and who, through comics and more recently a film, has found his way into American and British minds.

It struck me how sanitised our own gift-bringing mythology is: at one time, a bad child in the UK might have been led to expect a lump of coal as a present, but we don’t seem to have the same child-snatching villain as Krampus or, indeed, Père Fouettard, who is sometimes equipped with a sack to take away naughty children, never mind whip them.

But then again, Victorian society was a weirdly mixed bag when it came to frightening children with morality tales, yet sanitising the likes of fairy tales.

The late 19th century was also the time when British personifications of Father Christmas morphed from the sort of Green Man version that owed a great deal to ancient myth and folklore – and is famously presented as the Ghost of Christmas Present in John Leech’s illustration for Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol – to the red-cloaked old man we are so familiar with today.

Our discussion ranged across various other elements of Christmas folklore, including the vexed question of when Santa first needed elves.

Godey's Lady's Book

Elves were an established part of Germanic and Scandinavian folkloric traditions, but it was only in the US, where they’d made their way via migration, that they were incorporated into Christmas, with a first festive appearance in literature coming in 1850 in an unpublished book by Louisa May Alcott, called Christmas Elves.

Harper’s Weekly published a poem mentioning elves in 1857, but for the idea of the elves in the workshop, we can thank a 1873 edition of women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, with its cover illustration showing Santa surrounded by toys and elves and with the caption: "Here we have an idea of the preparations that are made to supply the young folks with toys at Christmas time”.

I’ve always rather thought of folklore as a process that has stopped, and that we preserve, as in amber, but it continues to grow, even if modern communication and entertainment methods have largely overtaken the oral tradition.

Star Wars has a sense of the mythological about it. And Christmas myth and folklore have not stood still in recent years either. Some reworkings and new versions are more successful than others.

In 1996, Terry Pratchett’s 20th Discworld novel introduced us to the Hogfather – with a two-part TV version following a decade later.

Josh Kirby's original cover artwork for Hogfather

Pratchett, of course, famously said that he’d occasionally been accused of penning ‘literature’ – and Hogfather is a good example of how his novels are so much more than simple ‘entertainments’.

Here, beyond the satire – and I’d suggest that Pratchett is one of the finest satirists the UK has ever produced – are questions and reflexions on the relationship between storytelling, myth and folklore and the human condition; on the fine balance between somehow believing (à la the willing suspension of disbelief we engage in at the cinema or theatre) and yet not allowing such beliefs to usurp science and reality.

The God Delusion didn’t hit bookshelves until three years after Hogfather, but re-reading it again this December, it was difficult not to see The Auditors as being akin to Richard Dawkins and others.

However, Hogfather is far from the only evocation of Christmas to add to the mythos and, indeed, to offer a sense of Christmas not being ‘just about the children’.

A Dan Mora cover for one issue of Klaus 

Klaus, written by top comic creator Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dan Mora (who has won an award already for his work on this), first appeared in seven parts, beginning at the end of 2015.

Now available as a trade – although when it’s a large-format, limited-edition hardback with gilded page edging, it’s hard to think of it as a ‘trade’ – this presents us with a far darker Santa origin story that draws on Norse myth and Siberian shamanism.

There are no elves here and nothing sanitised, but a brutal and beautiful tale that draws us back to Christmas as a festival marking the depths of winter.

It’s a really top work (the architectural aesthetic attracted me first, since it owes more than a little to the kind of Germany that we’ve experienced in the last couple of years), and left me with a meditative sense of something that was not new, but as old as the hills.

If you’re unfamiliar with Morrison’s work, just this work should illustrate why he’s so highly regarded.

Klaus is available now from BOOM! Studios, both in the limited edition mentioned above (it seems that Forbidden Planet still has copies) and in a non-limited edition. A one-off, single story comic has also just been released to follow up the first series/book.

I’ve also read Krampus! from writer Brian Joines and artist Dean Kotz (published by Image) and, while it’s an entertaining romp, it also serves to reiterate how good Klaus is.

So, folklore/mythology does not stand still, even in technological, cynical times such as ours. And thank goodness for that.

The Eagle has landed to leave the establishment flustered

For those of us who are long enough in the tooth, memories still exist of the career of Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards, Britain’s lone ski-jumping competitor in the 1988 Winter Olympics.

In most cases, that’ll not so much be for his actually managing to land some jumps – and set new GB records in the process – but more for his excited, flapping celebrations after jumping.

It might not be the main aim of Dexter Fletcher’s ‘dramedy’, Eddie the Eagle, to rectify that situation, but one of the things that the film does achieve is to remind us that Eddie (real name Michael) was not quite the sporting buffoon that most will recall.

In reality, this son of a plasterer and a factory worker was a good downhill skier, who had a number of medals and trophies to his name and had only narrowly missed selection for the 1984 Games.

The film makes sure we’re aware of this – and then takes us on a journey with Eddie as he converts to ski jumping and sets his sights on exploiting a loophole in British Olympic rules that means he only needs to compete in order to gain selection for the 1988 team.

That, however, is without taking into account the British Olympic Association’s stubborn commitment to avoiding having someone from such a background sullying the team.

As only a slight aside, it reminds me of people in Lancashire saying that the only reason that the likes of David Hughes and Jack Simmons never got called up to the England cricket team was because the sport’s rulers were worried ‘they’d eat their peas with a knife’.

How Eddie gets on in Calgary is familiar terrain, but the story that has been forgotten is just how he got himself there in the first place.

It took real guts – or a slate loose, as they say of goalkeepers: make up your own mind – to do what he did, with no funding and against a background of being considered a joke.

The films adds a character in Bronson Peary, a washed-up former US ski jumper who finally agrees to coach Eddie, but this is pretty much crucial to allowing the eponymous dreamer someone to build a relationship with and bounce off in the film, as well as providing a sub plot.

The pace is good and it offers the chance to revel in some wonderful Bavarian Alpine scenery – Garmisch-Partenkirchen is Garmisch-Partenkirchen, while Oberstdorf stands in for Calgary.

Taron Egerton does a fine job as Eddie – complete with all his little tics and quirks.

Hugh Jackman adds a bit of Hollywood glamour as Peary, with more coming from Christopher Walken as his former coach – and all of which stardust presumably helps broaden the film’s potential market (it’s already earned its money back, apparently).

Tim McInnery is superb as the odious British Olympic official who takes a particular dislike to Eddie, while Jim Broadbent lends some delightful warmth (if more were needed) as a British TV commentator at the Games.

Keith Allen and Jo Hartley are in fine form as Eddie’s parents, and Iris Berben adds further class as the bar owner who gives Eddie a job while he’s training in Garmisch.

It even has the advantage of a sort of ‘companion’ album (not the soundtrack, per se) of new songs from ’80s stars, including the likes of Midge Ure, Marc Almond and OMD’s Andy McCluskey – plus a duet from Egerton and Jackman.

All things considered, it is a heart-warming, life-affirming film – and that would be enough to make it worth an evening out.

But there’s a little something else here too – a bit of steel at the core of what could otherwise be viewed exclusively through a potentially sentimental prism.

In being on the side of the ‘little man’, it gives one big finger to the British sporting establishment; to the snobbery and arrogance not just of the officials, but also the sort of people who were acceptable competitors.

It raises the question of just what constitutes the Olympic spirit: an elite sportsperson, subsidised heavily so that they can train and compete all year round, or someone who has to sleep in a van just to be able to get on the snow?

And that’s without getting into the question, which the film touches on, of establishment hypocrisy over ‘amateurism’.

All in all, Eddie the Eagle is well worth a viewing.

In search of the world of the Brothers Grimm

The iconic Plönlein

The tour party flowed into the town square, streaming past their guide, leaving him standing rather lamely on the cobbles holding aloft a little paddle so they wouldn’t get lost; a 21st-century pied piper whose tune had – temporarily at least – lost its power.

There would be little time to see much. If they were quick, they’d be able to snap off a couple of selfies on Plönlein, where the road splits in two and exits the old city through different gates, and in the square itself, where the Rathaus stands on one long side and two large, half-timbered buildings make a perfect medieval corner.

It is doubtful that they would be able to make it into the Jakobskirche to see the wondrous wooden altarpiece by Germany’s Michelangelo, but there would doubtless be the opportunity to nip into one of the town’s many Käthe Wohlfahrt shops to pick up some extremely overpriced Christmas decorations as a souvenir as an arranged part of their trip, before heading back to the coach and the next stop on their whistlestop tour of Germany or Europe ...

Market place – Rathaus to the right

Such tourists bemuse me: it’s the same as with people in galleries, taking selfies in front of famous paintings – what do they honestly get out of it?

There may be a reason that Plönlein comes up as the main result in a Google image search for Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

You could be forgiven for imagining that it was the main (if not only) medieval vista in the old city. But to find some of the others, you have to scroll down further on that search – and you need to spend longer in the city itself than a coach visit will allow.

US travel writer Rick Steves has noted that, while millions visit Rothenburg, far, far fewer spend even a single night in the city.

For those who do, the benefits are obvious: whatever time of the year, after the tour guides pipe their charges back aboard buses, the city is yours as the sun falls.

Steves says that, after dark, you can almost feel the past. I beg to differ, but only ever so slightly: there were moments in the daytime when the centuries seemed to spin past, leaving me almost dizzy with a sense of times long gone.

Markusturm – complete with storks' next

Rothenburg ob der Tauber – there are other Rothenburgs, so its relationship to the river Tauber is important – is somewhat on the old side.

A prosperous, independent city state, it was besieged during first the Peasants’ War and then the Thirty Years’ War, before a subsequent burst of the Black Death effectively halted its development, leaving us with the most perfectly intact medieval city anywhere.

‘Rediscovered’ in the 19th century and, in the 1930s, it was raised by the Nazis to a semi-religious level as a perfect, idealised German town.

In 1945, bombing did much damage, but it was spared worse when the German commander defied Hitler’s orders and accepted a US army promise that surrender would spare the city.

It is one stop on Germany’s Romantic Road, a 350km route through the forests and mountains of Baden-Würtemburg and Bavaria.

Starting in Würzburg, it ends in Füssen, where we spent a few pleasant days last March, walking in the Alps and visiting Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein – a visit that had led directly to this one.

Old bridge

We left London early on a Thursday evening, and spent the night comfortably in a hotel at Stuttgart airport before setting off the following morning by train – first to central Stuttgart and then, from there, to Bavaria and Rothenburg ob der Tauber itself, via three trains.

Our hotel was in the centre of the old city, just above an ancient gate leading to a park and, after unpacking as rapidly as possible, we set off for a first orientation.

It’s impossible not to be instantly struck by the city. Plönlein actually feels rather understated in medieval terms, such are the other sights to be encountered, but in general, this is like walking through a fairy tale.

Hardly surprising, indeed, that MGM’s Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm was filmed here in 1961, while the village scenes in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were also shot in its streets.

A view from the city walls

The latter, incidentally, also saw filming at Neuschwanstein, adding another sense of continuum to this trip.

If Neuschwanstein gave Disney the template for its castle, then Rothenburg gave Hollywood as a whole an architectural aesthetic for fairy tales.

The half-timbered, slanting, sloping, tiled buildings are what you expect. You’ve seen it all before before – on a small or a big screen – but wandering around, you have to keep reminding yourself that this is no theme park, but a real, living town, full of real, living people.

The Markusturm is one of the city’s gates, surrounded by half-timbered buildings in bright colours. Perched atop an adjoining roof is what looks to be a metal wheel, lying horizontally.

Burgator, leading from the garden to the city

In fact, it’s a frame for a stork’s nest: these huge birds have returned to the area in recent years and a couple of days before our arrival, a pair had just returned from their winter sojourn to Africa, triggering excitement among local people.

The previous year, “Mr and Mrs Stork” had produced four chicks, to the evident delight of the community. Another nest, opposite our hotel room, was still awaiting birds when we departed, but the sight of the birds taking off and returning to their nest at the Markusturm could only add to the magical sense of the place.

Anyway, after that initial stroll into the past, our first night’s repast in Rothenburg saw us dine at an old tavern, filled with local people and with a waitress dressed in a dirndl, serving properly hearty German food.

For me, that was a piece of pork shoulder, flaking off the bone and accompanied by red cabbage, gravy and potato dumplings, with a dunkel (dark beer) on the side.

And then we slept in the peace of our centuries-old hotel, dreaming the dreams of fairytales all around us.