The Street of Crocodiles

Storm Goretti was battering the South-West last evening, so I wasn’t venturing out anywhere. That gave me a chance to finish reading the book that arrived here last week. It is called The Street of Crocodiles, a collection of short stories by Bruno Schulz. It was Patti Smith who led me to discovering Bruno Schulz when she mentioned him on page 338 of her Book of Days. Patti said that Bruno Schulz was shot dead in the street by a Gestapo officer on November 19^th, 1942. This made me curious to find out more about him. I discovered that Bruno Schulz (12 July 1892 – 19 November 1942) was a Polish Jewish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher born in Drohobych, Poland (Now in Ukraine) where he lived all his life. He was the son of cloth merchant Jakub Schulz on whom the main protagonist of the book is based. At a very early age he developed an interest in the arts, writing and drawing. Bruno became recognised as a writer when several of his letters were brought to the attention of the novelist Zofia Nałkowska who encouraged Bruno to have them published as short fiction. They were published as The Cinnamon Shops in 1934, and when published in English in 1963 as The Street of Crocodiles. 

My Copy

Several of Bruno's manuscripts were lost in the Holocaust, including short stories from the early 1940s and his final, unfinished novel The Messiah. When WW2 began in 1939 Drohobych was occupied by the Soviet Union, but when the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviets in 1941 Bruno along with thousands of other Jews was forced into the Jewish Ghetto. Most of the Jewish population were sent to the death camps, but Bruno was kept alive by a Nazi Gestapo officer called Felix Landau who liked Bruno’s artwork and wanted him to paint a mural in his house. Bruno even had a pass to enter the Aryan Quarter. In 1942 he was walking home carrying a loaf of bread when another Gestapo officer called Karl Günther casually shot and killed him. This murder was in revenge for Landau having murdered Günther's own "personal Jew," a dentist named Löw.

The thirteen stories which make up the book are all fictionalised boyhood memories set in his hometown and concern his immediate family, other relatives, and the employees of the shop downstairs. His father Jacob features in most of these fantastical tales. This is one of the strangest books I have ever read because of Bruno’s incredible imagination which begins in some sort of reality but then takes flight in all directions. For instance, in one of the most amazing stories simply called Birds Jacob in order to relieve the monotony of their drab existence takes up ornithology and begins importing exotic bird’s eggs from all over the globe. The eggs hatch and before long, their apartment is full of parrots, pelicans, vultures, and even a condor which bears an uncanny resemblance to Jacob. Finally, the housekeeper Adela tires of the noise and the droppings all over the floor, opens the windows and doors and shoos them out. They do return in a later story to visit their ‘master’. 

There is great humour in this book. At times Jacob with his bizarre experiments reminds me of De Selby in Flann O’Brien’s masterpiece The Third Policeman where bicycles also feature prominently. In Jacob’s universe there is even a new constellation called ‘The Cyclist’. Time and space are twisted like a bicycle wheel; In The Night of The Great Season the year grows another 13^th month at the end of August which is stunted like a hunchback. Jacob is tired of the tyranny of the Demiurge who created the physical world and wishes to create his own universe of pseudoflora and pseudofauna. 

In this strange world, houses, Apartments, Streets, and roads become labyrinths full of long forgotten rooms where even the wallpaper comes alive. The seamstresses Pauline and Polda are forced to listen to lectures by Jacob such as his treatise on tailors’ dummies. Every paragraph has vivid descriptions, a flock of crows resemble flakes of soot, Jacob’s face looks like an old plank full of knots and veins. Uncle Charles leaves his room in the morning while simultaneously walking in the opposite direction into the depths of a wardrobe mirror to a world that doesn’t exist. Nimrod is the pet dog who meets a cockroach, Pan is a tale of meeting an old tramp in the weeds of an overgrown garden. The Gale describes an account of a storm which is so strong his brother has to fill his pockets with irons and other metal objects as ballast in order to leave the house. 

The Street of Crocodiles itself is a sleazy area of the city where you can venture into the shallow mud of companionship and dirty intermingling. Tailor’s shops sell dirty books and there is a black market in railway tickets. One story called Cockroaches is very Kafkaesque where Jacob’s obsessive fear of cockroaches leads to him metamorphosing into one. I won’t tell you any more in case you read it yourself. 

I’d just like to add one thought about the cruel death of Bruno Schulz where the world was robbed of the work of his brilliant mind. Casually shot dead on the street by a fascist. You would think that we have progressed and such depravity has no place in a modern ‘civilised’ society. Then you look at the BBC News and see that Renee Nicole Good, an acclaimed poet, guitar player, mother of three, and peace activist is shot dead in Minnesota by a government official who enjoys full immunity. The lesson of Bruno Schulz is that we cannot afford to take our hard-won freedom for granted because it could easily be taken away again.

Bruno Schulz

 

Who Dares Wins.

In these cold dark days of Winter I often don't have anything worthwhile to talk about, so on days like this I thought I'd revisit stories I wrote years ago and see if I can improve them a bit. Andy Warhol once said that one day everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes. He might have been thinking of TV quiz shows. This is a story of when I appeared on one about 26 years ago.....          It all began in the early 90's when pubs began introducing quiz machines where you could win money by answering general knowledge questions. I was soon completely addicted to them because I found I could answer the questions quite easily and could have a free night down the pub whenever I liked. The local pub landlords grew to hate me as I went further and further afield in search of quiz machines to empty. One night I started in the Phipps Arms at Westbury Leigh and went on to The Hollies, The Royal Oak, The Castle, The Angel, The Horse And Groom, The White Lion, The Ludlow and The Crown. When I emptied my pockets that night I found I had about £70 in £ coins. It weighed a ton.
The Landlord of The Horse And Groom was Rod who decided to use my talent to his advantage and asked me to be captain of the pub quiz team. In our first season we won the Trowbridge and District League and my local fame grew in leaps and bounds. I felt really brainy. Then one night in the pub my mate Dave said I should go on Fifteen To One. This was a popular afternoon TV show which was a forerunner of The Weakest Link and at its peak had an audience of 4,000,000. It was very popular with pensioners, students and the unemployed. I sent off an application form and was invited to an audition in Bristol. Two weeks later I received a letter inviting me onto the show. This was going to make me famous. Everybody I met I told that I was going to be on the telly and to make sure they watched.

Our Quiz Team.

The big day arrived and I set off for London and my date with destiny. The studios were in Wandsworth and myself and the other contestants were put up in a nearby hotel as the show was to be recorded the following morning at 10.00. I began to have my first niggling doubts because the others looked really well educated and posh, and I found out that several of them almost made a career out of TV shows and had been on several other shows. I stayed in the hotel bar till 1.00 in the morning. The others went to bed. Next morning I was suffering with a really bad reality attack and all my bravado had gone out the window.  At the studio we drew lots and I was to be number 8. Then we were led into the place with the cameras and the genial host William G Stewart. I felt like I was about to be executed. The floor manager said, "One minute to recording". My right leg suddenly started shaking uncontrollably. William started asking the questions and everybody was coming up with the right answer.

Finally he got to me and he might as well have been talking Chinese. I was so nervous it sounded like this,
"Whatisthemathematicaltermforlinespointsorcurveswhichareequidistantapart?"
I stood there just looking at him. Then  realised what he was asking and I thought, "That's parallel, surely he wouldn't ask a question that easy". The buzzer went before I could blurt it out and William said, "The answer is parallel".
A couple of minutes later William returned and asked me who wrote the music for the film Brigadoon. I didn't know, but I was in such a state I didn't care who wrote the music for fecking Brigadoon. I answered "Rogers and Hammerstein", in a sort of high pitched squeak, just to say something. "The answer is Lerner and Loewe", said William, and I was out. My entire TV appearance was about 14 seconds. I hoped that nobody I knew would watch the show but of course they all did. For about a year afterwards I was known around town as Parallel Pat. People came up to me in the pub and said things like, "Sorry I didn't see you on the telly, I  blinked and missed, it", that sort of thing. Just when people were beginning to forget about it, the TV company went and repeated it the following summer and the jokes started all over again. I lost all interest in quizzes for five long years. As they say though, revenge is a meal best eaten cold and I was to get my revenge in the sweetest possible way.

Five Years Later........

Five long years had past since my disastrous TV appearance. Then in 1999 they announced that if you hadn't appeared on the show for 5 years you could apply again.
"I've gotta go back",I announced to Kim.
"Where?"
"London, I've got some unfinished business with William".
Once more I set off for London,
"Go get 'em Floyd", Said Kim, "Go kick some ass".
The stakes had never been higher, if I messed up this time I faced total humiliation, but as they say, 'Who Dares Wins'.
This time I was number 5. As William came along the line asking the questions my leg started its familiar jig, but this time I was grimly determined. Finally William got to me,
"When Britain joined the EU in 1974 which two other countries joined at the same time?"
"Ireland and er um Denmark"
"Correct"
I breathed a sigh of relief. Two minutes later William was back with my second question.
"Dancer Michael Flatley became famous in which musical show?"

 "Riverdance".
"Correct"
Brilliant! I was into round 2 and had all my lives intact. In round 2 if you got your answer right you could nominate one of your opponents to answer the next question. This is where it got dirty. I soon got nominated.
"Such is life" is reputed to be the last words of which Australian outlaw?"
"Ned Kelly"
Then I went on a killing spree. One by one my opponents were going down like skittles. I was enjoying this. After a few minutes there were 12 down 3 to go and I suddenly found myself in the final. My two rivals in the final were a lady who worked at Tesco's and a lad from Galway called Brendan who had only entered so he could visit his brother in London for free. At the beginning of Part 2 you had to smile at the camera while they told the viewers all about you. 'Pat lives in Westbury, Wiltshire, he enjoys reading and music particularly Van Morrison and he supports Peterborough United football club'. Then it was into battle. I got my first 2 questions wrong and only had one life left, so the other two kept nominating me to try and kill me off. I held my nerve, and answered 13 questions in a row correctly. The others started to get their answers wrong and I was fighting back. The Tesco lady was the first to crack and she was out. Then finally Brendan lost his last life and I had won. I scored 113 points and the 13th highest score in the series so far.
 I kept my composure until I left the studio. I was back on the street again, back on top again. Then I jumped up and punched the air YES!. Then floated on a cloud all the way back to Waterloo Station. I couldn't wait to get home and see everyone up at the pub. "I'll give them parallel Pat", I thought. I had to wait an hour for my train, so walked across Westminster bridge and went in a pub near the houses of parliament. It was frequented by politicians. "Look at them", I thought, "they think they are so  important, don't they realise that I'm the 13th most brainy person in Britain".
We had a big party in the pub to watch my glorious win and  had a cake with 15 candles and I blew out 14 of them.

A lady came from the local paper and wrote a story with the headline, 'Getting the answers off Pat'. I was invited back on the show twice more as a previous winner. It wasn't as exciting though. I didn't get the same buzz off it. When you get to the top there's no where else to go and that was the end of my TV career. You can see the second half of my appearance in the video below.

                                                                           THE END.

Fifteen Minutes Of Fame..

You Boy, When Is Bin Day?

Today actually feels like Monday. Since Christmas every day has merged into the next until I can’t tell what day of the week it is. I had to look on the internet to find out when to put the wheelie bin out. It was today, but I noticed that some of the neighbours were unaware of this fact. It has been sunny, but bitterly cold here. Yesterday I got well wrapped up with warm coat, woolly hat & scarf and made the supreme effort to go to the shops for some provisions, and I thought the exercise would do me good. 

I don’t like using the self-service check outs because I get confused over some items and need to ask for assistance. I waited patiently in the queue at the regular tills. The people in front of me spent about £200. Then finally I placed my humble items on the conveyor belt. The check out girl whizzed everything past the scanner in the blink of an eye, as if she was on some sort of speed, and said, “£27. 52”, even before I had pulled my carrier bag from my pocket. I raced to fit my stuff in the bag as quickly as possible because the next people were already loading up the belt. “Phew, I’m sweating after that effort”, I said to Amphetamine Annie, eager to make conversation because I hadn’t spoken to anybody since saying hello to the post lady on Friday. She stared at me blankly as if I was speaking a foreign language. “Do you want a receipt?”, she asked. “No thanks” I replied. As I walked home, I thought that they don’t need to replace these people with AI robots because they have already been turned into automatons. When I got home I listened to Talksport and found that The Posh had been hammered by Lincoln City 5-2 which is a major setback, but never mind, onward and upward!

Wolf Moon.

 People gather at Glastonbury Tor to observe the first Super moon of the year.

 

Joanie

After I spoke to you yesterday the intention was to go out to the shops and later the pub, but in the end I thought there was no real reason to venture out in the cold, so I had another quiet day indoors, reading my new book (which I might finish by Sunday evening) and watching the TV. There wasn’t a lot on worth watching to be quite honest. After the second episode of The Traitors the highlight for me was a 1965 BBC concert by Joan Baez. This was to celebrate the fact that next week on January 9^th Joan (or Joanie as Bob Dylan likes to call her!) reaches the age of 85. The concert was most enjoyable. You can find it on Youtube.  

There is no denying that Joan has a wonderful, almost operatic voice, clear as a bell. Also, despite my eclectic taste in music I am at heart a folkie fan of singer-songwriters, although primarily Joan is an interpreter of other people’s songs and traditional ballads. The concert included such trad type songs as Mary Hamilton, Plasir D’Amour, Silver Dagger, We Shall Overcome. 500 Miles, and The Unquiet Grave, a sprinkling of Dylan songs, With God On Our Side, Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, and It Ain’t Me Babe. (She didn’t sing my favourite Joanie Dylan song though which is Farewell Angelina, so to make up for the disappointment I found a video from 66 on Youtube and shared below).

I did notice a few differences to BBC concerts these days. Firstly, some of the audience were smoking. That would be a big no no in today’s world. Secondly, I have always admired Joan for her political views. As a child Joan was subjected to racial abuse due to her Mexican heritage which coupled with her Quaker upbringing made her very aware of social injustice, Civil Rights, and non-violent protest. To this very day she has never been shy of standing up for what she believes in. In between the songs of the 1965 BBC concert she made a few anti-establishment statements. The Vietnam war was at its height and Joan said those politicians who ordered the bombing were murderers. I don’t think these days the BBC would have the courage to broadcast someone like Joan. There would be calls in the right-wing press for the BBC directors to resign for showing such a lack of  impartiality. It would cause outrage. Just look at the row this year when they broadcast Bob Vylan and Kneecap at Glastonbury. I think the Beeb was more enlightened back in the 60s. Anyway, that was last night, I don’t know what today will bring. It is a Wolf Moon tonight, so I’ll try and look out for that. See you later.

PS,  I just put the BBC News on and heard that the USA has attacked Venezuela and captured the President and his wife. Hmm, I wonder what Joan would say about that.  

Joan baez - Farewell Angelina 1965