Campus aside, Camperdown is a curious mix of old light industrial – factories, warehouses and workshops, and residential – of the bungalow, flat and terrace kind. Indeed, like so much of Sydney, Camperdown has swathes of Victorian and Edwardian terraces and semi-detached Federation (turn of the 20th century) houses.

The area was first named by Governor Bligh (1806-08) after the Battle of Camperdown between the English and Dutch in 1797. Bligh received a 240 acre grant of land, which also included parts of neighbouring Newtown. Early in the 19th century, Camperdown was established as a residential and farming area. Lying just four kilometres west of the city centre, it was only a matter of time before it became swallowed by the city.

Camperdown is a small suburb, though this is in part an imposition of its division down the middle by Parramatta Road. It is a very built area, with a few good parks and small reserves, but nothing especially large – again, not including campus. Most of the houses are, however, one or two storeys, and, apart from the hospital, few of the reclaimed and gentrified warehouses and factories are especially tall. With streets and gardens full of trees and vegetation, it thus retains an old-town feel which adds to its appeal.

We are fortunate to live in a tree-heavy cul de sac which fronts onto Camperdown oval. Our apartment block is a creaky old firetrap, which, from the back lane, looks awfully un-inspiring, but from the front seems well-disposed.

Inside, the place takes on the curiously nostalgic complexion of an old, wide-corridored hotel in the Blue Mountains. The flats themselves have a pleasant vintage character to them and certainly scrub up nicely, with redundant fireplaces and tile features. It is hardly baroque, but rather an elegant sufficiency.

Downstairs, in the base of the apartment block’s front are two cafés, Gather on the Green and Store, both of which are perfectly okay – the former good for coffee, the latter for food. Because of their proximity to the park and the dead-end nature of the street, customers regularly take their orders on the grass beside the oval. With the prevalence of youngish professional couples round these parts, the park and cafés are usually full of young families with a good number of children running about. This creates what my friend Paul calls a certain “prambience.”

Camperdown always struck me as an in-between sort of place. It is stuck between Parramatta Road and King Street in Newtown – then stuck between the university and hospital. In a sense, it just peters out into the west, hemmed in on the other sides. For this reason, I never felt comfortable about moving here, knowing that I was, to some degree, cut off from the water. To compensate for this I have extended my run considerably and now I cross Parramatta Road and follow the canal down to the water.

It’s a lovely run once on the other side – under the aqueduct, through the canal-side parks, under the great curve of the Glebe railway viaduct, then along the promenade in Bicentennial Park. After cheering on the wind-turbine, I swing past views of the Glebe Island Bridge (now sadly renamed Anzac) and Sydney Harbour Bridge. My long ago established love for the Glebe area is such a powerful thing that I feel uplifted just running through it, but the sight of the water and bridges from the park takes things up another notch.

Back to Camperdown, the land of the in-between. It is a very handy place to live, pure and simple: King Street with all its attractions is a ten minute walk away and, most Saturdays, we head up to the markets at the old Eveleigh rail-yards.

The beautiful campus of Sydney University – V’s workplace – is just ten minutes walk to the east. Public transport is plentifully available for the price of a short walk – to Parramatta Rd for buses, King Street for trains – and it takes me fifteen to twenty minutes to get downtown.

When we have access to a car, it takes us roughly twenty-five minutes to drive to Bronte Beach – every Saturday and Sunday – which is not such a big imposition. Camperdown also meets one of my toughest conditions when it comes to choosing a house – being within walking distance of an art-house cinema. It also helps that the locals all seem to be friendly, harmless, open-minded lefties and that rare breed of unpretentious hipsters. It all feels perfectly safe.

There are, inevitably, a couple of drawbacks: despite being mostly quiet, Camperdown is often the victim of flight path diversions and there are some eyesores. The huge slab of old hospital near the modernising Royal Prince Alfred is particularly unattractive. Surrounded by chain fence and barbed wire, it has a post-holocaust hollowness to it that is chilling and disquieting.

It is a monolith of arrant functionalism, yet, despite its ugliness, it often inspires enjoyably melancholic thoughts of the end of civilization. Now overgrown and toweringly glum, it invites one in with its brooding lassitude and I long to break in and explore the corridors. It is probably riddled with asbestos.

Parramatta Road doesn’t exactly leave a lot to be desired and I suppose there isn’t actually anything to do in Camperdown itself. Apart from a few dumpy sports pubs on the main road, there aren’t really any bars or cafés. This really ads to its in-between feel, because in order to do anything it is necessary either to walk to Newtown or Glebe, or bus and train the hell out of dodge. Still, nothing is really out of reach, so being sleepily stuck in the middle isn’t such a bad thing after all. Either way, it certainly has grown on me over the last few months.

I owe a great deal to both of those cameras for being just good enough to give me the confidence to take photography more seriously. The images seemed excitingly clear and impressively accessible and available. This was, of course, when digital cameras were in their early phase of expansion – going from a novelty item to a technology commodity that everyone owned. It was also before mobile phones could offer anything like the same level of quality as a compact.

Prior to this I’d used a range of compact film cameras, never having owned an SLR. I certainly enjoyed taking photographs, though I understood very little about the craft. It was, after all, difficult to experiment without access to a dark room or committing to the cost of developing regularly and immediately, so I mostly focussed on taking snaps of people. I did, however, have a strong yearning to record the many places I visited when I was first travelling around Europe and, later, doing the same whilst based at Cambridge. These photos, whilst ambitious insofar as what I hoped to achieve, were technically naïve and taken using cameras that weren’t quite up to scratch.

Getting my first digital camera, however, opened up the opportunity to experiment as much as possible and it wasn’t long before I grew in confidence. Another great leap forward for me came when I first printed a digital photograph using my own inkjet. I was absolutely astonished at how perfectly clear and glossy the reproduction was. I sat staring at it in wonder for some time, and kept going back to take another look. The capacity to shoot and print my own photos for so little cost and with such ease turned into an obsession, and soon my walls were covered in prints. This fuelled a strong desire to get out there and shoot as much as possible, and so I did, starting the habit I’ve had ever since of never leaving the house without a camera, and was often to be seen carting a tripod around in the hope of some good long exposures.

These photographs all date from that period of great enthusiasm, when I saw how I might tell stories just as easily through photography. Prior to this, I’d seen photography primarily as a means of recording, rather than a means of expression. I was, at the time, writing novels, poetry and short stories with a furious passion. Photography added the much needed colour and a pleasingly easy adjunct to what I considered those more difficult arts. I don’t mean to suggest that photography is easy,  especially not for those who agonise over setting up compositions and technical exactness, yet as someone whose photography has mostly been opportunistic, I’ve always seen it as a refreshingly easy and fun means of creating a vignette or narrative.

In retrospect, these photographs aren’t all great by any means and, coming back to them, they seem disappointingly low-res. Yet there are some here which I dearly love for their compositions and the memories they bring me both of how much I liked them at the time, and where and when I was in life when they were taken. Everything here is from Sydney, and many were taken near to where I was living at the time – Glebe. Either way, I hope you enjoy them!

When we woke up that first morning and saw the mountains on the horizon, it was immediately clear that we had made the right decision in coming there. Not only that, but as V and I contemplated what we might do over the next few days, it dawned on me how little actual sightseeing I had done previously. Sure, I had walked all over town, up and down and around the fringes back in 2010, but apart from a few outlying monasteries I had come across, there was much that I had ignored: The Zoo, the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, the Happy Valley Tea Estate, the view of the sunrise from Tiger Hill. Admittedly, I had ruled out the zoo, having mixed feelings about such places, and, despite being interested in the history of regional exploration, never worked up enough excitement about the Institute. I dropped Tiger Hill on the grounds that the mountains were not visible anyway and I didn’t need to ride in a jeep somewhere NOT to see them, when I could do that perfectly well from the town. As to Happy Valley, however, it was just an unfortunate oversight.

This time around we determined to try to see everything we could, as well as do a lot of wandering about. We spent the first day doing the latter – wandering about and re-orienting. I was trying to avoid that terrible habit of constantly referencing experiences from my last visit, but the excitement at seeing things again was too great. The one major disappointment for me was that my favourite tea and momo stall on the edge of Chowrasta was not open. After the first couple of days, I’d eaten almost every meal there and drunk a river of tea. I figured they must be having a day off as their signage was still in place, but felt a sense of foreboding that I would not see them this time around.

The second morning was even clearer than the first, without a trace of cloud anywhere to be seen. After some strong coffee and a huge breakfast at Sonam’s Kitchen, we set off for the Happy Valley tea estate and promptly got lost. The road we took, however, turned out to be that which led to the Zoo and Mountaineering Institute, so we decided to go there instead.

It was a lovely day of bright sunshine and cool air – around 11 degrees – just warm enough to wear a tee-shirt when walking keenly. The road we followed afforded occasional jaw-dropping glimpses of the mountains on the horizon and sunlit views of Darjeeling, houses stacked up above wooded slopes.

The zoo brought out the usual combination of excitement and pity one experiences in such places. Seeing a snow leopard, a Bengal tiger, a panther, red panda, bears, Himalayan wolves and the world’s oldest living variety of deer was all very pleasing, yet seeing them in cages was not. Their miniature habitats, where some effort had been made to provide a natural environment, were just a bit small for my liking.

The Bengal tiger certainly made an impression – after we found it, that is. Its enclosure was one of the larger ones; a sloping hillside, overgrown with trees and shrubs, full of camouflaging shadows. Our first sighting was of the tiger’s enormous head, surrounded by dark vegetation. There were not many people around, and little of the excited noise that often assails one at a zoo, and the tiger seemed languidly un-harassed. Its eyes stared ahead, straight through the fence and beyond us, as though, with appropriate contempt for its captors and tormentors, it had managed to pretend we didn’t exist. Later, we found it pacing about behind a tree, which was an altogether sadder sight. The weight of its muscle was evident, and despite its obvious agility, it had a fearsome heaviness about it. Such great power, when combined with adrenaline, must be one of the most awesome sights in nature. As we walked away, I remember thinking that at least this one was safe from the poachers; a thought swiftly followed by despair at just how dire the tiger’s plight now is.

The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute lies directly behind the zoo and is available on a combined ticket. After a couple of circuits looking at the animals, we followed the path to the courtyard outside the building, in which the centrepiece is a statue of Tenzing Norgay, one of the first two men, along with Sir Edmund Hillary, to climb to the summit of Mt Everest in 1953. Originally born in Nepal, Tenzing moved to Darjeeling at the age of 19 and, on account of his incredible achievement, he is revered by the locals with no small amount of awe.

Standing before the statue, inspired by the weather, the views, the cool crisp air and full of the spirit of discovery, both V and I were deeply moved. There was something so heroic about this handsome man who had done such extraordinary things. In the statue he seemed happy and kind, humble and unassuming. My father, who dreamed of climbing Everest for years but never did so, had told me about that first ascent in my childhood, placing, with his classic socialist support of the little guy, appropriate emphasis on the role of Tenzing Norgay, whose name I had never forgotten.

Tenzing was one of my early heroes, though I knew very little about him, and standing there before his statue I felt myself choking up. What a champion! What an incredible thing to do! It was almost as though I was finally meeting him after all these years. V, funnily enough, felt just as I did, and both of us came away with moist eyes and lumps in our throats, appetites keenly whetted for the Institute itself.

The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute is certainly worth a visit. It is full of wonderfully tired old displays – decrepit stuffed birds, dusty, mangy wildlife and lots of climbing equipment from various eras. The displays trace the history of Himalayan expeditions in a series of time capsules full of equipment from different mountaineering teams, which map the gradual evolution towards the present. Despite the obviously more primitive nature of the earlier expeditions, some of the equipment seems surprisingly modern and ahead of its time – which, no doubt, it was when they set out. The museum also displays a lot of old photographs and newspaper clippings, which remind one of just how important the climbing of Everest was in the popular imagination. These days, the North Face is more like a busy highway, though no one in their right mind would belittle the effort in climbing it.

That same day we checked out of the Dekeling Hotel and into the Windamere Hotel for one night. This was in fact a belated birthday present for V. Back in November, I’d given her a mocked up “Passport to pleasure”, entitling her to a night of luxury in India. Originally I’d had the idea of staying in a Maharaja’s palace somewhere, but things didn’t quite work out that way and the Windamere seemed like the best option.

The Windamere Hotel, once described as “One of the three jewels of the Raj”, is actually a converted boarding house for bachelor English and Scottish tea planters. It’s cozy collection of wooden cottages wasn’t converted to a hotel until just before the outbreak of the Second World War, thus making it something of a late-comer to the Raj. Located on Observatory Hill, it occupies a special place in Darjeeling both geographically and historically. We arrived to find that we had received an upgrade, to one of the Colonial Class cottages, if I remember correctly, which was everything I was hoping for. The cottage included a sunroom, a large bedroom, small dressing room and a lovely bathroom. The wood-panelled walls, the antique fittings, the historical photographs and prints on the walls, the gorgeous carpets and furnishings, all exuded a charming Britishness that was both quaint and tasteful.

Devonshire Tea at the Windamere is listed among the Darjeeling things to do highlights, and we weren’t about to miss it. At 1600 that afternoon, we were shown into the reading room – another time capsule of colonial luxury and restrained decadence. As we waited for the tea and scones to arrive, we explored the hotel’s common rooms – the bar, the music room – it was all bloody splendid, what.

When the tea arrived it came not merely with a couple of scones, cream and jam, but with a large tray of cakes and pastries. My excitement at this was only slightly diminished by the knowledge that we were booked in for a three course meal later in the dining room, which promised to be lavish and hearty. Wanting to enjoy the hotel as much as possible, we stayed there all evening, taking baths, lying in bed with the coal fire burning and only venturing out for what proved a smashing dinner.

When the alarm went off at 0330 the following morning, I can’t say I was keen to leave the hotel. We had, however, determined, on the back of the amazing weather, to go out to Tiger Hill to watch the sunrise. This, we thought, would be easy, because the Lonely Planet suggested that all one had to do was walk down to the bus and jeep station and there would be a positive scrum of tourists and drivers ready to roll. Whilst this may be the case in the high season, nothing could have been further from the truth for us. Indeed, when we did finally reach the bottom of the town, rugged up as best as we could against the still freezing darkness, there were just a few locals kicking around, none of whom were planning on driving to Tiger Hill.

We asked around, followed the odd moving jeep, then finally, out near the Toy train station, found a driver who had arranged privately to take a couple of other tourists out there. He said we could wait and check with his customers if they were okay to have us along. We ended up waiting with him for almost half an hour, before another jeep full of Bengalis up from Kolkata swung by. The driver said we could squeeze in the back, and so we did at around 0430.

I can’t say I was very happy at this stage, being overly tired and insufficiently warm. The ride itself was interesting – rocking back and forth in the steamy jeep, full of dark men in dark clothes, occasionally muttering to each other. We smiled and were friendly, but I was too tired to be open and affable. When we did finally arrive at Tiger Hill, after a half hour drive, I was still not in the best of moods and kept sullenly to myself.

Considering how quiet it had been at the bus and jeep stand, we assumed Tiger Hill would not be so busy on this occasion. When we pulled in, however, the dark road was thick with jeeps. Up at the observation point, there were already hundreds of people all huddled together, waiting for a view of the sunrise. It wasn’t an easy wait, either. The biting cold crept slowly and painfully into my fingers and toes and I tried to keep them as warm as possible, but had no gloves and was wearing thongs with socks. When the sky finally began to lighten and I started to take photographs, my fingers soon became so stiff and sore I could barely adjust the settings on the camera and struggled to hold it steady. I wondered if it was really worth being here at all, and then, something incredible happened. The sun came up.

It was, in itself, a beautiful sight, even before its rays had hit the mountains. Yet what was so great about this particular dawn was the collective gasp that came from the huge crowd of frozen, anoraked, beanied and gloved-up people. The exhalations of the watchers were full of excitement and wonder and an almost desperate relief. It was not merely a beautiful sight, but the sun’s warmth was so utterly necessary in the cold.

The sun rose slowly but surely and cast its light across the long range of the Himalayas. The view left nothing to be desired. From Tiger Hill it is possible to see a very long, craggy stretch of the range, including distant sights of Everest. As the sun struck Mount Kangchenjunga, its bold ridges came starkly alive with gold.

We remained on the Hill for another half hour or so, before finding our way back to the jeep. The road home included a couple of other pit-stops. One, a splendid view point, and the other, a Ghorka war memorial.

By this stage, however, despite feeling fully respectful of the Ghorka people, we were ready to go home. I took a few more photographs, but was feeling pretty sore from freezing and thawing a few times. We returned to a marvellous breakfast and spent the rest of the morning luxuriating in our warm hotel room. At midday we were to check out and move back into another, different and equally cosy room at the Dekeling Hotel.

That afternoon we finally found our way to the Happy Valley tea plantation. There the land view really opened out, for the slope was very steep and covered only by the low, hardy, neatly-clumped tea bushes. We followed the rocky road down the undulating hillside, sunshine belting on down. Below, the road was lined with tall cedars, straight and magnificently proud. We found a nice place and sat a while in the sun, still feeling some of the morning’s chill in our bones and muscles.

Earlier, at the hotel, V had arranged to go one a one-day trek into Nepal the following morning. I was interested in going, but initially opted out because I had no shoes other than my flimsy, worn-out thongs. It had seemed crazy to buy a pair of shoes I would not keep just for a single day of walking, but then, sitting there amongst the tea bushes and soaking up the afternoon sun, it ceased to seem crazy at all. I knew how much I would regret missing the experience and decided to go after all. The real problem was going to be finding some shoes that fit me in a country full of small feet, and once I’d decided I wanted to go, the search for a suitable pair of shoes could not wait. Up we got, a little reluctantly, and began the walk back into town.

Novice Wisdom

1

An emotion one rarely knows

what to do with: beauty.

Once, reading Proust, being so overcome by the Vaseline

of his lyricism, (cornflower, umber,

hawthorn, yellows – few words remained, but the colours, Impression)

I wondered, after Morris, whether beauty should be

useful after all;

where else to deploy this ache, this disturbance?

My brother once helped an old lady

from a bus and was duly praised;

mother, father, driver, old lady. It struck home

in him and in me, from whence

he was saintly. I was

yet to show this

and sought old ladies.

“How old are you now, son?” my father asks.

Yes, I am ageing

and still not THERE.

2

I have a favoured myth that I uphold

(though it does me no immediate good

to instill, myself, the doubts in your appraisal)

that greater trust will come from honesty

about past indiscretions.

These are not the actions

of heroes, nor men

you’ll hope to love.

“Now your ships are burned…”

3

Yes, old friend, this line

will also lend to me subdued Athens;

long walls demolished, proud fleet scattered,

empire nipped and tucked. This line

will clang and scrape with the chairs

of room seventeen; the cold morning echo

of thin air, thinner, shriller sound,

and the meandering certitude

of Mr Jones. But earlier than that,

before then, when we started there and knew

but a little of each other and the world,

when we feared naively all the corrupting

we’d been warned to avoid, thinking we, as children,

had no say in it, then what was good

was obvious, uncomplicated. Or was it just

that our desires did not yet involve others?

Love was still to be conducted

honestly; ethics and morality were not

understood, they were known.

4

Twenty-one, balcony morning running

fast behind the night. Woke tired, wanting everything

but work. In the early hours we came out

to catch a glimpse

of Knowledge in the fanning light.

On a borrowed bicycle the bear

went over the mountain

to see what he could not see:

that as we expand, so the space expands.

Since growing was equated with knowing

so youth as a state of mind was fixed eternal.

“We’re learning,” you said

“and knowledge can only make us children. Hence Socrates,

wise and petulant.”

5

Took this naïve youth for a state of beauty,

off the main and down the slower

bronze and iron side streets

sat and smoked up pipes and durries

stared across the corrugations,

plaster, brick and concrete houses,

ached for women wanting nothing

more than a restless looking

for a place and mood alone

and not a thing.

Was that not better than knowing?

Was that not more pure than “purpose”?

A useful beauty?

Another all-night morning

off in the park with the chirping,

all-night affirmations primed a fancy,

going through the rising dew. That was love

most visceral, love like scent-stirred

recollections, only in it.

In it

in it.

In time it seemed she was merely there

to be broken.

6

“You have to be strong about things,” she

warned too late. “I ought to be a good thing,

like new bottles of shampoo, well-cooked

mushrooms and deep green fabric,

not the be all and end all. If you hold

something fragile too tightly…”

Perhaps it had been too hot, or we were too dizzy

after the ordeal of essays and exams

“It was two animals, scrapping, savaging each other”

Inside, the currency of our moments

remains unspent, for she never wronged me.

That our love was the Axis Mundi,

she did once know. Possessed by its dogma

I closed my grip; tightened

these smotherer’s hands.

She puts her hairbrush elsewhere now;

hangs her tartan scarves and leggy skirts,

her blouses, berets, bras – all likely

new and not the ones I’d sometimes choose -

I don’t know where.

7

Having lied and cheated, having done so again

how long must we wait to be trusted?

The prisoner serves sentence, the liar instead

depends on the mercy of friends, of himself.

Must we apologise for ourselves

to those we have

not yet wronged?

When can we again say we are good?

From tyranny to the rule of law

so Solon followed Draco

8

Yet still there came Peisistratus,

in the urgent days with another.

I’d refused the church

to join the lovers’ guild of thieves.

My brother shone like a silver lining;

through the storm he’d stuck it out

for a later, cleaner break.

“This dream girl must have been

quite a catch,” he said.

She was quite a wicket

for old butterfingers;

an ageing novice, surrounded

by the zip-lock bags

of shot-up beauty.

“Why must you always put beauty

up your arm – the highs are gone,

let beauty be

the active thing, and let yourself

be passive in its gaze. How like

those wild oil barons, those violent guzzlers,

how like a junkie you’ve sucked and sucked

(and wisdom may in time limit the range

of feeling, of enthusiastic hope -

experience lends a brevity to myth,

our passion for the novel loses heat)

Run with the beauty and be it,

run with it down to the river,

run with it up to the heavens, my sour old friend.”

What follows is mostly from two years ago, with continuations. It is worth pointing out that I wrote this whole series with the idea in mind that I was creating both a personal account and a historical record. It might seem fanciful to imagine that my blog or its content will still be readable in, say, two hundred years time, or of interest to historians for that matter, but should it be the case, then it might prove insightful to anyone interested in the detail of game mechanics, online social habits and the psychological impact of online gaming. As someone with a PhD in history, I greatly appreciate the efforts of those who have made detailed records of their present in the past. It is for this reason that I included so much detail in these accounts. In several hundred years time this period will be seen as the time of earliest origins in an entertainment media – computer gaming – that is already well set to dominate the future as a means of narrative storytelling. If I can make some contribution that might furnish future history PhDs with primary source material, then I’ve to some degree justified my education : )

Confessions of an MMO Addict, Part VI

“God I’ve been asleep so long, I’ve been away

Back from software limbo the natives call today

I let their promises bind me

I let seductive logic blind me

I embraced a machine, I went through the routine,

And I hid from the people who were trying to find me.”

- The Church, Tantalised

I had hoped that my holiday to South East Asia would help me kick the Dungeons & Dragons Online habit, but I returned to Sydney a desperate junkie. My travelling EEE PC, bless him, had struggled to render the game at all and I had been forced to play solo, with the sound off and graphics turned down to minimum. All I could manage was to farm low-level dungeons on the easiest level for collectables, to buy and sell from the brokers and thus make money on the auction house. It had, in reality, been the very worst sort of grinding, but it kept me going on those heavy hotel-room nights on the road. I couldn’t wait to get back to my desktop, log in, team up with some random bunch of heroes and play the game on full specs in magnificent wide-screen. My New Years resolution had been 1680 x 1050 and I was aching to go from the grind to the grandeur.

Sadly, my return to Sydney also marked the end of my relationship with S. I hadn’t exactly been the best companion much of the time and I was, quite rightly, let go, so to speak. I was a terribly sad way to end things, though it was at least amicable. I was left feeling pretty awful all round – not entirely enamoured with myself. What, however, was most alarming, was that I didn’t really mind all that much. I was used to being mildly unhappy and at something of a low ebb. Nor did my response have much to do with S herself, but it was all about my being so utterly consumed by the game. Without a partner in real life and working part time, I was almost entirely free to game at will.

When I hadn’t been playing the game during my trip, I’d spent my spare time using the DDO Character Planner to experiment with multi-class character builds so I might build these characters upon my return. Now that I was back, however, I realised that my first priority must be to take Hallifax Bender, my long-standing stalwart bard hero and favourite alter-ego, to level 16, the then level cap.

This target was really part and parcel of a grander scheme, which was to achieve 1750 favour with the various representatives of the different Houses of the city of Stormreach. The city contained four different wards, largely populated by the different, major player races. There were the Elves of House Phiarlan, the Halflings of House Jorasco, the Dwarves of House Kundarak and the Humans of House Deneith. These different districts tended to specialise in different classes, and earning favour with them allowed access to certain privileges in the form of new vendor options, buffs and useful reward items.

The city of Stormreach was run by a group of people known as the Coinlords, and currying favour with the Coinlords was of particular importance as this granted extra inventory space. There were also the mysterious Twelve, the Free-Agents, the Church of the Silver Flame and the Agents of Argonnessen. If one achieved 400 favour on a single character, it unlocked the Drow race, whilst earning 1750 favour allowed one to build a character with 32 build points, as opposed to 28. This was by no means insignificant, and for those who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, I shall elaborate.

The six principal attributes of a Dungeons & Dragons character are Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma, and, in the original rules, these scores were generated by rolling 3D6, or 3 six-sided dice. This produced scores ranging between 3 and 18, with the higher score being the better. As it was such a significant disadvantage to have a 3 or, indeed, anything below 8 in an ability score, most players rolled 4D6 and ignored the lowest scoring die to generate their attribute scores. There were always other fudges allowed, such as rolling the numbers first, then allocating them to each particular attribute, or, for example, subtracting a point from one attribute score to be added to another. In the pen and paper days, as was so often the case, it all hinged on the famous “DM’s discretion.” In other words, if the Dungeon Master said it was OK, it flew.

The character creation system in DDO took the dice out of character generation altogether. It followed a similar pattern to that used in Neverwinter Nights and was designed to ensure game balance, so that players would neither roll a completely crap character, nor spam the generation process until they rolled an uncannily high set of numbers, as one could do in Baldur’s Gate for example.

The system worked as follows. Each character would begin with a base score of 8 in each ability, and be granted 28 points to allocate to the aforementioned attributes. The cost of allocation was one for one, until the score reached 14, at which point any subsequent increase would cost two points. After 16, however, any subsequent increase cost 3 points. Thus, for a human character, it would cost 6 points for a starting Strength of 14, but 8 points for 15, 10 points for 16, and 13 points for 17. One could choose either to focus on particular attributes or go for a broader spread. With non-human races, who had racial bonuses or penalties to particular attributes, say, for example, Elves, who have a racial bonus of +2 Dexterity and -2 Constitution, the starting score would be lower or higher accordingly, as would be the bar at which increasing the attribute began to cost more. Thus, the starting Dexterity for an elf was 10, and raising it to 16 would cost 6 points, whilst the starting attribute for Constitution was 6, and raising it to 12 would cost 6 points, whereas an increase to 14 would cost 10 points, with any further increases costing 3 build points per attribute point.

It therefore made a not insignificant difference to have 32 build points with which to commence a character, allowing the player either to increase a class’s most important attribute, such as wisdom for clerics, or to avoid penalising another less important attribute. It also gave one the option of increased specialisation or flexibility, the latter being particularly important with multi-class builds.

I have documented elsewhere my obsession with creating characters, and DDO was the most dynamic means yet for testing the efficacy of certain builds. It was not only the functionality of the characters that interested me, but the personality I’d give them through their name, style, appearance and, where I could be bothered providing it, their biography.

Before I could really go to town and start creating a whole slew of new characters, I needed to advance Hallifax to level 16 and hit that much coveted favour target. The process took me no less than a month and a half of solid play, every weeknight, every weekend, with occasional breaks when exhaustion became so overwhelming that I simply couldn’t concentrate any longer. Even then, I often pressed on, both impressed by and ashamed of my incredible ability to endure.

As I ran Hallifax up through levels 12, 13, 14 and onwards, I was continually coming across new quests and explorer areas I’d never seen before: The Vale of Twilight, The Orchard of the Macabre, Ataraxia’s Haven, The Menechtarun Desert, The Ruins of Gianthold and The Reaver’s Refuge. The novelty of running these areas for the first time kept my enthusiasm for the game at a very high level, despite the hit and miss nature of the groups in which I found myself. One of the greatest attractions of computer games is the ability to surprise and to fascinate through exotic locations, interesting challenges, impressive artwork and terrifying opponents. DDO had a lot to offer on these fronts and sharing the experience with random people, especially when they too shared my enthusiasm for the task at hand, made it all the more pleasurable.

The higher level quests were, on the whole, more colourful and complicated than some of the low-end dungeon crawls, though there were certainly a few outright slogs. In so many ways DDO failed to live up to the true promise of Dungeons & Dragons. It was too fast-paced, magic items were as common as muck, most players were focussed on end-game builds, rather than the journey, which invested them with an impatient zeal to farm as much XP as possible. Almost no one tried to role-play in character, and those who did were generally ostracised for not acceding to the meta-game narrative. By metagame narrative, I mean talking about the game as a game, not as an immersive role-play experience; discussing the mechanics, the structure, the rules and parameters rather than the story or narrative.

The 3.5 edition Dungeon Master’s Guide states:

“Any time the players base their characters actions on logic that depends on the fact that they are playing a game, they’re using metagame thinking. This behaviour should always be discouraged, because it detracts from real role-playing and spoils the suspension of disbelief.”

It was, indeed, immersion breaking, to have some nerdy kid ramble on about his weapons, or whatever inane thoughts were on his mind. All too often it was this metagame narrative that drove the conversation; babble about character builds, favour-farming plans, crafting, magical items, the effectiveness of spells, special attacks, strategies, boasts about lucky loot hauls etc. Much of this could have been contained or disguised within a more theatrical role-play, yet almost no on in the game was interested in doing so. Add to this the fact that so many players were non-native English speakers, lacked microphones or were unable either to hear or interpret chat, and you had a situation where communication in the group was largely limited to the task at hand, discussed in the plainest possible meta-game language.

Once players knew the game well enough, metagame thinking became the only sort of thinking. This was, of course, very sensible as knowing the mechanics of the world and the tendencies of the game designers made it possible to make better predictions about what lay ahead. Also, for players who had run quests several, possible hundreds of times, there was, quite simply no mystery remaining, only the satisfaction of a swift, efficient, error-free completion. The game did not foster an environment in which role-play was at all practical or desirable for people joining pick-up groups, though it could be, if one were able to play regularly with the same, like-minded people. For the vast bulk of players, this was simply not possible.

Whilst in many ways DDO seemed very different from Dungeons & Dragons, it was oddly true to it in other ways. Many of the quests involved treks through long, complicated dungeons, replete with traps, riddles, tricks, monsters and loot, locked doors, secret passages and illusions. The impossibly long corridors under the city of Stormreach and in the ruins and settlements surrounding it resembled those of E. Gary Gygax & co.’s earliest dungeons. They were classic dungeon crawls, which, if mapped onto pen and paper, would not be entirely out of place in a pile of First Edition modules. The principal problem, however, was the pace at which they were run. If the quest Walk the Butcher’s Path were played as a pen and paper game, it might take an entire day of careful dungeon-crawling between mob fights to complete. Yet, in DDO, an efficient party could smash through it in nine minutes, possibly less, with everyone running the entire way, as is most often the case.

This high-octane, fast-paced dungeon crawling was very much de rigueur on all servers and almost every group contained a player, if not several, with sufficient experience to spoil the surprises by giving advance warning of what was to come. It was a very useful preventative, but stripped the game of immersion and, at times, suspense.

Despite these short-comings, the game was still thoroughly enjoyable, especially when running quests for the first time. Some of the lower-level quests could seem quite bland, but things certainly became more diverse and colourful as time went on. The exciting newness of the locations and challenges, the landscapes and environments – be they interior or exterior – was sufficiently immersive in itself. As Hallifax Bender first began to make his way through higher level quests, I was also very fortunate in finding good groups who did not spoil the excitement, but rather encouraged it. I mentioned in earlier instalments one stalwart companion, a bard by the name of Holz, with whom Hallifax regularly ran. Though I had started playing the game some time before Holz, we both hit mid to high levels at roughly the same time, and thus experienced many quests for the first time together.

By the time Hallifax finally hit level 16, the in-game level cap had already been lifted to 20. I found some good people and made the final push for 1750 favour out in the craggy, burning wastes of Gianthold, with its depressing, relentless brown and purple landscape. Despite my great love of the character of Hallifax and my pride in his many achievements over what had now been more than a year of gaming, I knew that the instant I hit 1750 favour I would be abandoning him. So it was that, that same afternoon, I created two new characters; Barronio Morrowind and Snowfell Vanish of Mirabar.

Shortly prior to this, as Hallifax was clambering towards level 16, the Favoured Soul class had been introduced to the game. Favoured Souls were Divine casters, using essentially the same spells as Clerics, yet with a spell progression and spell point allocation similar to Sorcerers. Barronio was an attempt to create a versatile, combat-capable support character and, with my usual zeal for experimenting with multi-class combinations, I made him a Human Monk / Rogue / Favoured Soul. I’ve mentioned earlier that I don’t always get it right with multi-class character builds, but that depends on how you look at it. When it comes to the end-game, at level 20, they are unlikely to hold up as well as specialist characters, largely because in a twelve-member raid group, all the bases are already covered and such diversity of talents is not required by one single player. Indeed, in the end game they tend to be too compromised in all their fields to be as effective as the specialists. That doesn’t make them useless, yet it makes them seem somewhat second tier to the pros.

At lower levels, however, and, I would argue, all the way through to around level 15, their effectiveness was unquestioned. Barronio Morrowind, on account of his mixed talents, was not only a formidable combatant with great durability and incredible saving throws who regularly topped the kill count, yet he was also a maxed rogue splash who, with spells and a backpack full of wands, could act as a back-up healer and buffer. I should also give myself some credit for equipping and playing him with expertise and precision. His rise was meteoric and he was always appreciated as a standout character.

Snowfell Vannish, meanwhile, was another indulgence of my multi-class zealotry. An Elf Monk / Wizard / Rogue, I too saw him as a combat-capable support character. The plan was originally to take him to level 2 in Monk for the abilities, saving throws and armour-class bonuses, level 5 as a wizard to access haste and displacement on top of other protective spells, then put the rest in rogue. After several months of play, he finished up Monk 2 / Wiz 5 / Rogue 7, at which point I decided to retire him for a good long while.

Snowfell’s effectiveness was also incredible, if I may say so myself. He regularly smashed the kill count using unarmed attacks, was practically unhittable, could boost the whole party with haste in moments of need and was a top notch trap-monkey and sneak artist. Playing him was also very satisfying in that, strangely, a lot of people didn’t see the point of the build, nor could they determine what his role was, but he never failed to impress. Indeed, he was the only character I ever had who made it past level 10 without dying a single time. Ultimately, I decided that, for the sake of durability, he should in future only level as a Monk, but even then, I suspected that his effectiveness beyond level 14 was doubtful.

The creation of these two characters was just the beginning of a massive expansion of the playing roster. I went to town coming up with further multi-class builds, most of them following more traditional combinations that were tried and true. There was my ludicrously named Elf Ranger / Rogue / Monk Applefrost Loveblossom; the equally keenly named Drow Rogue / Ranger / Bard Honeydrop Sundew, the specialist Elven wizard whose name I borrowed, Faffle Dweomercraft and several others, some of whom were ditched shortly afterwards as failed experiments.

Many characters came and went and the quality of my game-play rose continually with experience. I gradually became far more familiar with the higher-level areas which improved my capacity there at the cost of my sense of wonder and excitement. I met many excellent people and played with my fair share of irritating dead-shits as well. As time wore on I stopped caring about the outside world altogether. I lost interest in my friends, family and other activities. I was impatient whenever other responsibilities arose and often accepted invitations to things, to which I would invariably fail to turn up.

Once in the game, however, I was unstoppable. The insatiable desire to start new characters never went away, however, and so I rarely ever took my characters through to level 16 or beyond. I’d usually make it into the teens, or at the very least to level 8, then switch out onto another toon and run them up. I often sat there, staring at the screen, scrolling up and down my list of characters wondering – who do I want to play? Once the game had switched to free to play mode and the option was there simply to pay for additional privileges, such as extra character slots, I bought up a good few and soon had 15 different characters on the one server: Lucessa Rainsinger, Rhodon Froste, Lusetta Sorrowdusk, Yardley “The Scisssors” Bruce, Jyzze Badajon, and Swimm Lantern to name a few.

When new servers were opened and announced, I logged straight in and created a whole host of characters, in effect reserving names that were otherwise impossible to have as they had been taken from the start. Names such as Summer, for example, which can only be used once on any given server. On the Sarlona server, where much of my gaming took place, I’d had to run with Summerr – in the time-honoured tradition of variant spelling to get around the unique name issue. It was a fair compromise, I suppose. Most of these characters I never returned to and, I must admit, I feel a bit guilty in retrospect for denying those names to others. In some ways it was like having multiple personalities, and I would always, to some degree, try to be in character, at least in my own mind.

Time flew on by and, seven months after returning from South East Asia, I was more immersed in the game than ever. My first real attempt to break with DDO came in March 2010 when I travelled to India for two months. I had no intention of playing the whole time I was there and felt a wonderful sense of liberation once I was away. That trip to India, which I have written about elsewhere, was one of the key experiences of my life. I took over twelve-thousand photographs, wrote a lot, met great people and visited amazing places. I thought I had pretty much shaken off the DDO experience once and for all.

Upon returning, however, after a few nights of dedicated photo-editing, the desire got to m and I logged back in to DDO. As was typical of my habits, I instantly created a new character – Jasparr Krait of Luskan – who was a dual heavy pick wielding kensai fighter with rogue and ranger splash. I enjoyed being back so much, and was so enamoured of my character with his Tom Selleck Moustache, that I became lost in the game again for the next two months.

My second serious attempt to exit the game came in July, when I was asked to mind a friend’s parents’ house in Paddington. Despite the gnawing desire to stay with the game, I decided not to take my desktop with me and try instead to free myself of the addiction. I succeeded quite admirably and, were it not for a sinus infection that lasted a month, I would have used the time even more wisely to reconnect with friends etc. Soon after this, I briefly moved back to my own parents’ house before another move. I thought I might have shaken off the bug and logged in only intermittently. Yet, shortly after moving and settling into my new house, the bug got me again and I was back in Stormreach, hacking and slashing and zapping my way to glory.

There’s an advertising campaign about quitting cigarettes at the moment, which states that every time you quit, you get better at it. In the first instalment in this series, I’ve described that final moment when I deleted the game and never went back. It was a tough decision, but it was made a lot easier by having walked away so many times before. It ultimately came when I realised I was not getting the same joy from grouping any longer, as my patience had worn thin over the years. There were also too many elements of the game that required a lot of grinding. To be effective at the highest level required running the same old raids on scores of occasions in the hope of looting the desirable crafting materials, of which there was no guarantee. It was just too frustrating and nowhere near as much fun as the low and mid-level ambitions of levelling and developing the character build. When I realised I’d had enough of the low and mid-level game, and believe me, I did it to the absolute death, there was simply nothing for me any longer.

Like any MMO, the game’s growth continued from its inception. As it progressed, I found that generally the updates improved elements of the game. The new quests, character classes and races, new look armours and outfits, the new prestige class options for clerics and sorcerers were all welcomed. There were, however, a couple of major changes that, in my mind, changed things considerably for the worst.

The first was the introduction of Guild Airships. This in itself was a fantastic thing – they made it easier to get around, provided an exciting place to visit and gave being a member of a guild some real oomph. Where they were flawed, however, was that the best airships offered characters the chance to buff themselves to quite a ludicrous degree, giving them so many simultaneous bonuses that people began to joke about it as God Mode. This also created a huge disparity in many quests between those with ship buffs and those with none. It also created an often long and frustrating wait to begin a quest because players would insist on getting ship buffs first. In the end, I got fed up with it all.

I did, however, create my own guild: The Frozen Spine. This might sound like an awful medical condition, but was actually an homage to Icewind Dale and the Spine of the World Mountains. It was fun to have my own guild and to buy an airship – the cheapest and least attractive to begin with as it was level-restricted. Yet, in the end, it just felt like something else to manage in game, when I was already busy enough with the auction house and so on.

The other upgrade that I especially didn’t like was the new crafting system. Indeed, this was the final straw. I would have welcomed this in theory, and did so initially, yet the consequences of it were, in my opinion, dire. Within weeks the auction house became flooded with countless replicas of the same item, and instead of selling their excess loot to the brokers in the market place, most players simply broke it down into magical essences etc. The items that were sold to the brokers were then bought en masse and deconstructed by wealthier players, so that the brokers never had anything left to sell. In effect, this killed one of my favourite in-game hobbies.: shopping for second-hand goods and finding overlooked treasures to sell at auction. In many ways, for me, DDO was like a grand, fantasy-themed episode of Bargain Hunt.

When that pleasure was gone, I felt such a sense of loss that I didn’t really want to hang around any longer. I didn’t like the sort of rinse and repeat grinding and farming that it encouraged and the process itself was rather tedious to carry out. I’m sure I might have given it more of a go, but at that late stage, when I was already looking for an exit, it just seemed like a disappointing nuisance.

At least I had a good last hoorah. In my last phase of play, between February and April 2010, I spent a lot of time running as Jyzze Badajon, a sorcerer specialised in electrical spells. It was awesomely good fun and I was impressed with how much I nailed not only the build, but also the performance. Despite my lack of experience in the highest level quests, all of which I’d done at least once, I was pretty hard to beat in the rest of the game. Jyzze was a wonder, so good in fact that he often spoiled the fun by killing everything before anyone else could swing a weapon.

There was something wonderfully visceral about using maximised Shocking Grasp and Ball Lightning and despite spamming these spells, I never seemed to get bored of them. Still, even this had its limits, and ultimately, it was the same old arenas, same old dungeons, same old mystical, magical settings. Perhaps it’s not at all odd to think how bland and run of the mill they could be after a couple of years.

As the game slowly became less appealing, so the outside world grew in stature for me. Then, over the course of a couple of months in 2011, I slowly emerged, blinking, into the real world. It was the Arab Spring that dragged me back to reality. I became so engrossed in the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and the subsequent civil war in Libya that I went from running DDO to live-streaming Al Jazeera full time. I also took up writing about the revolutions and spent a lot of time researching Middle Eastern affairs further. Suddenly the world was very exciting again, with the onset of what seemed like a major historical shift in that region. It was a long-overdue re-engagement with reality.

I got my life back on track with other new projects, a new partner and, leaving the dreadful embrace of the machine, embraced instead a more active life. I fell in love again and, when in June of that year, it all ended in tears, the revolution was completed. That break-up proved the best misfortune I’d suffered in years and, after some deep despair and depression, another move and frequent visits to a psychologist, I came out fighting and haven’t looked back. It all made me realise what a low gear I’d been rolling through life in, and just how much underlying depression there was after having spent so much energy in preceding years writing unsuccessful novels.

Since then, despite the occasionally overwhelming desire to re-install the game and log on just one more time, I’ve been, as my old friend Justin would say, “keeping it clean.” Ironically the strongest desire to play again hits me when I’m most bored with computer games. It’s because, deep down, I love gaming and likely always will, but what is missing most of the time is the human element. Online gaming might be anti-social with respect to the real world, but it’s a highly social activity within the context of the game. The game itself has moved on with new character classes, higher level advancement, new adventures and the like. In many ways I’d love to have a look at it, but the idea of going back and not quite knowing the deal helps keep the game at a further remove.

I can’t say definitively that I will never again lose myself in an MMO, and with the Elder Scrolls Online coming out some time this year, there are dangerous waters ahead. Yet, I learned so much from this experience and know how to manage my urges much better. There is too much to do in life that is too important, and I just cannot afford the time any longer for such devotion to a game. It seems a lot easier these days simply to say no.

The recent escalation of rhetoric has certainly been dramatic. The bellicose reminder of the state of war between North and South Korea, tough talking about ballistic and nuclear capability, overzealous reactions to even the smallest slight from the south and, more recently, the statement that foreign embassy officials could no longer consider themselves safe in North Korea – all amounts to an alarming increase of tension, but likely little else. As an official at South Korea’s defence ministry quipped – “barking dogs don’t bite.”

Pyongyang’s recent attacks on the south – the torpedoing of the Cheonan, which left 46 dead, or the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, both in 2010 – have been by stealth, or come without warning. That doesn’t mean his threats have no substance, but it does suggests that talking and walking are by no means linked, so to speak.

Some years ago a wit described the India / Pakistan nuclear arms race as “Viagra Diplomacy,” a term which applies itself well to the current situation with North Korea. There is something ludicrously phallic about rocket launches, a situation not helped by North Korea’s tendency to suffix its rocket names with the word “Dong.” Take the Taepodong for example, a name which lends itself spectacularly to punning, or the even sillier and counter-intuitive Nodong, which was effectively an adapted Soviet SS1 or “Scud” and, dare I say it, a bit of a flop. Joking aside, there’s no doubt that North Korea has made progress with its ballistic capability and just may have the capacity to mount a nuclear warhead, but the threat to rain down missiles on the United States seems farfetched considering their as yet limited range of roughly 6000 kilometres.

Having said that, North Korea certainly has the capacity to target its immediate neighbours; the southern capital Seoul, at just 25 kilometres south of the border, is within artillery range. There is no doubt that North Korea could inflict terrible carnage if they wished to attack the south. Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons aside, the scale of their conventional forces is staggering. A quick glance at the Wikipedia list of countries by number of military and paramilitary personnel puts North Korea on top, with an active military of roughly 1.1 million, bolstered by an incredible 8 million reservists. The Korean war of 1950-53 cost the lives of two million people, and whilst any modern war would prove a very different beast, there is little doubt that it could also cost millions of lives.

Yet what, one must ask, would be the point? Surely, despite the capacity to inflict untold damage on the south, the North would ultimately be defeated. North Korea would have no allies – China would wash their hands of them and Pyongyang would find itself facing off against a broad alliance led by the United States and supported by the U.N. The north might achieve initial successes, but would surely lose the war, and, apart from the disastrous human, social, environmental and economic consequences of a conflict, losing the war would potentially mark the end of the regime, the end of military domination, and the end of North Korea as a state: the end of Kim Jong-Un. One suspects that nothing other than unconditional surrender would be demanded, especially considering how long the situation has festered and how great the desire to avoid any furtherance of this geopolitical cancer. What might follow is anyone’s guess: re-unification, a long and awkward occupation of the smoking ruins… It would all depend on the nature of the war, which, after an initial bout of shock and awe by both sides, could even be over in a couple of days with an internal coup.

Which brings us back to this important question of what the hell Kim Jong-Un is up to? If war is unlikely, what is the point of all this belligerent rhetoric and rocket-rattling? Surely the most likely explanation is that he wishes to shore up support at home.

Just as George Bush, John Howard and Tony Blair all rhetorically escalated the level of external threat to their respective countries after 9/11 in order to shore up domestic support for their imperial ambitions by creating a clear and present external danger, so it would seem King Jong-Un, perhaps struggling to define himself internally and to assert the legitimacy of his rule, wishes to create an almost hysterical climate of fear. If anything this whole business seems to highlight his insecurity rather than his capability or intent. Ironically the very survival of the regime depends on avoiding conflict, but the state largely defines itself through struggle and conflict.

The real fear is that with tensions so high war might begin by accident rather than design. Miscalculation, misinterpretation… it seems unlikely, but it is by no means impossible. The levels of readiness are such that hell could be unleashed at very short notice – perhaps before clarity prevails. Should a war begin, even by accident, it will be extremely difficult to stop.

There is also the genuine possibility that Kim Jong-Un is something of a nutcase. He is certainly less predictable than his familial predecessors and less well understood, but he must know as surely as anyone else that war would be the end of his regime with all its privileges.

It’s very easy to parody and caricature Kim Jong-Un as a greedy little brat of a despot, and I have to confess I’ve been guilty of such parody myself, yet whilst it might be childish fun to joke about him, it’s somewhat counterproductive. The belief that he is genuinely mad, propagated by the parodies and caricatures, only fuels the paranoia about his intentions.

Yet, as always with humour, there is a great deal of truth in much of it. He likely is a spoilt brat with delusions of grandeur instilled through constant inflation of his talents and charms, drunk on power. He really does come across as the tubby, nerdy gamer kid with a chip on his shoulder. His recent actions remind me of people on Facebook, including myself, who, when lonely or feeling starved of attention, start posting in a more exclamatory and regular manner. His international threats are like bad-tempered tweets – mouthing off at a world he can neither influence nor change because of his own relative impotence, despite having a vast army at his back.

We must not forget how recent his accession to the throne was. Despite great popular efforts to create a new cult of personality around him, there must be pressure to put his own personal stamp on the regime and cement his rule. Perhaps there is internal pressure from within the military himself. Perhaps he fears the ambitions of those who surround him. Perhaps there is fear of popular unrest. Whatever the case, all this rhetoric seems to be more inwardly focussed, despite its outward broadcast.

The real question now is what happens next, and, to be honest, I haven’t got the faintest idea. I suspect things will die down, flare up, die down, flare up, die down, flare up… for the next decade, possibly even longer. Then again, Kim Jong-Un might be dead next week, assassinated by an ambitious general, or dead by deep vein thrombosis for that matter. Whether North Korea will ever come in from the cold is anyone’s guess, but as unsustainable as the current situation appears to be, we should remember just how long it has been sustained – sixty years this very year. It is hardly possible for this feudal Stalinist regime to become more isolated internationally, and anyway, it is isolation and insularity that allows the regime to survive. Rarely have two nations existed in such contrasting states of connectivity as North and South Korea, the latter the most wired state in the world, the former disconnected from everything, including, it seems reality.

Perhaps somehow the internet will work its magic; perhaps starvation will start a revolution; perhaps there really will be coup, or an unexpected Myanmar-style change of heart. In all honesty I think there won’t be a war and nothing will change. Ten years from today, Kim Jong-Un will still be there, fatter than ever, rubbing his wealth in the face of his own people and waving his latest Dongs at the world.

Having spent a month in the heat, the cold air was so exhilarating it felt like waking up with a new level of alertness and sensation. The torpor of humidity vanished in the chilly fog. That first night as I wandered through a town shrouded in near darkness, it was as though I had arrived not merely in a different state of India, but in a different country. The marriage of local and colonial architectural styles, the Asiatic faces, the different landscape and climate, the quiet calmness – all were very different to the India I had seen thus far.

That first night still seems like a dream in retrospect. The journey in getting there – a perilous ascent into cloud – the sense of remoteness, the light mist, the lost wandering to find my hotel, the huddled dogs on the streets, the darkness, all combined to give the place a sense of enchantment. As a childhood fantasy genre tragic, it left me feeling as though I had entered a magical and mythical land.

The following morning only confirmed my excitement. The vantage point that Darjeeling affords – perched high on a ridge so that it looks down into valleys on either side – allows not merely for great views, but also adds to its feeling of remoteness and safe seclusion. It is like a world unto itself, tenuously connected to elsewhere by a winding, pot-holed mountain road.

Yet, while the views of the surrounding hills and valleys were amazing, on that first day the cloud on the horizon prevented me from seeing the mountains. I imagined that at some point the cloud would lift and I’d be treated to the spectacular backdrop, pictures of which had lured me there in the first place. It was not until the late afternoon, after a surprisingly intense downpour, that the clouds briefly parted and I caught my first glimpse of Mount Kangchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world.

The mountains were barely visible in the late afternoon light. Clouds above prevented any direct sunlight from striking the peaks, so they seemed as phantoms, faint outlines in low-contrast. I had taken shelter under the drumming tin roof of Glenary’s bakery and had a relatively clear view from their back window, but I wanted to get a better vantage point and not have to shoot through glass. Concerned about the rain, I set off at pace back to the hotel to collect my umbrella, planning to make directly for Observatory Hill. At the Hotel Tranquillity, I briefly joined some other guests and the owner on the roof for a view of the mountains. The sky was clearer now and the mountains better lit by the sun, yet there were trees, buildings and a large satellite dish in the way. I saw just enough, however, to know that the mountain was the largest thing I’d ever seen attached to the earth. I set off optimistically ready to photograph the living hell out of the mountains. Yet, sadly, by the time I reached Observatory Hill, the cloud had returned. That brief, slightly obscured view from the rooftop was to be the last I ever got of Mount Kangchenjunga.

It was largely for this reason that stayed as long as I did. Not only because I was so entranced with the town itself and its immediate surrounds, but because I became obsessed with the idea of seeing the mountains and photographing them. Over the next nine days I got up early every morning and made my way towards Observatory Hill and the various look-out points along the road that circumnavigates it. Every day, despite clear weather overhead, the horizon was covered in cloud.

There was much to compensate me, however, in the form of pea-soup fogs, great walks, excellent food and tea, friendly people and some smashingly good local weed, but I hung on as long as I could, desperate to see the mountains. It was not to be, and when I finally left Darjeeling, I vowed that of all the places I’d visited in India, it was the one to which I must return.

There are many places in the world I’d like to see for a second time and doubt I ever shall. With so many countries still to visit for the first time – take China and South America for example – there’s less incentive to prioritise a return journey. Some places have been particularly favoured – Rome, Venice, Paris, London, New York, for various reasons – but on the whole, only a few places ever get a second look. India, fortunately, is big enough and diverse enough to warrant several expeditions and when V and I decided to go there again last December, I immediately began considering making a return visit to Darjeeling.

To cut a long story short, whereas my first trip had been around the north of India, this time I decided to focus on the south. We thus flew into Thiruvananthapuram and worked our way slowly north over a course of four and a half weeks. We had a lot of “targets” – things we really wanted to see – the Keralan Backwaters, Fort Kochi, Hampi, the Ellora and Ajanta Caves etc, but our itinerary was very organic and we made it up as we went along.

Darjeeling, therefore, was never guaranteed and we almost dropped the idea of going there altogether. Yet, with tickets booked to fly out of Kolkata, it made sense to take in Darjeeling since we ultimately had to head east anyway.

I was keen to go to Darjeeling, but was worried about how cold it might be in January. I also felt somewhat circumspect about returning, as I was afraid that I might have a different response this time around. V had never been to Darjeeling and though she wanted to see it and I wanted her to see it, I felt a bit guilty about pushing for it and decided to leave it up to her. It wasn’t until very late in the day – four days before we flew, on our one night in Mumbai – that we booked the flights.

The journey to Darjeeling turned into something of an epic in itself. It really began in Aurangabad, when we boarded a ludicrously overcrowded and chaotic eight hour train ride into Mumbai. We arrived at the airport at 2300, dirty and exhausted, planning to sit it out until our 0600 flight. After a “shower” in the bathroom – the one great thing about squat toilets is the hand-hose! – and a change of clothes, I felt refreshed and ready to face the wait. Everything would have been fine if V had not then become ill from the left-over vegetable biriani we had brought with us from dinner the night before. The next few hours were torture for her, though she did manage to take intermittent naps. Knowing how impossible it is for me to sleep in such situations, I hunkered down with Civilization IV on my laptop, fighting a lengthy war with the Aztecs and Spanish…

When we finally boarded the plane V was still not at all well and had a miserable time. At Delhi – which was refreshingly wet and cool – we had a two hour wait before our connecting flight on to Siliguri.

The second leg of the journey was certainly easier for V, but it was a longer flight, via Guwahati in Assam, and she was still very fragile when we finally touched down around 1530. From this point on, however, everything went completely right for us. A lovely young taxi driver, who was returning to Darjeeling anyway, offered to take us up the mountain for a mere thousand rupees. At less than twenty dollars, this was a small sum for such a long private taxi ride. He also proved to be very patient and helpful – taking us to a chemist to get drugs for V and then to a local market where I bought an el-cheapo so-called “Armani” coat and a pair of extremely unfashionable long trousers. Until this point I’d been travelling with just tee-shirts, a pair of board shorts and thongs and knew that it could get down below zero in Darjeeling in January. The fisherman’s-hat-shaped hood fell off the jacket when I tried it on – an ineffectual zipper being the culprit – but this proved advantageous as it offered more freedom of movement and looked even more fetchingly ridiculous.

That ride up the mountain proved a highlight of our trip. I was pleased to see not only that V was feeling a lot better, but that she was equally excited about the journey. Both of us are lovers of mountains and the combination that the region around Darjeeling offers – the quaint, colourful houses stacked along the winding road, the tall cedars, the yawning vistas – was especially beautiful as the sun came down.

We didn’t run into any fog on this occasion and instead were treated to a powerful and evocative sunset as we swung past the other jeeps on the road. By the time we reached the half-way point of Kurseong, both of us had completely forgotten about the travails of our journey and lack of sleep.

Passing through Ghoom, roughly ten kilometres from Darjeeling, we caught up to the toy train. We had been following its narrow tracks since Kurseong, winding back and forth across the road. The little steam train with its cute, shoebox carriages huffed and hooted like an outsized child’s plaything, chugging determinedly up the hill at a snail’s pace.

Such was the traffic on the road and such was its narrowness that we were forced to stop repeatedly, thus we not only drove alongside the train for a while, but we overtook each other several times. It was great to get so close to the train and to see it in action again. Tired and emotional, full of intense sensations, my eyes flooded with tears as I silently cheered on this wonderful relic.

Our driver made excellent time and the journey to Darjeeling took only three hours, by which time the sun had gone down. When we farewelled him, we couldn’t resist giving him a big tip for being such a nice bloke and a safe driver. Our early evening arrival at the Dekeling Hotel was equally well-fated. After a steep stair climb, we entered reception to receive a touchingly warm greeting from the young gent at the counter. Indeed, it was the most friendly reception experience we’d had thus far – and not to suggest that the others were unfriendly. He stood in the cold vestibule, rugged up in woollens, his wise eyes showing a hint of tension as he held himself tight for warmth. After the usual passport-photocopying, form-filling rigmarole, he led us upstairs into a cute and cosy space with wrap-around windows, comfortable couches and a wood-panelled ski-chalet décor. In the centre of the room a curly-haired old dog reclined in front of a pot-bellied stove with a long exhaust pipe stretching out the window. Here an elderly lady, perhaps the hotel matriarch, invited us  to join her for a nice hot cup of tea once we had settled in.

Our room was just off this warm lounge area and proved very warm and comfortable. After long, hot showers and a lovely cup of Darjeeling tea in the lounge, we ventured out briefly to find something to eat. It was cold indeed outside, but wonderfully crisp and fresh. Darjeeling shuts down very early and already much of the town was closed. V didn’t have much of an appetite, but we found a place that sold hot and sour soup and sat down to dinner.

We had one last, welcome surprise that evening as we were preparing for bed. There was a knock at the door and I opened it to see the polite young man from downstairs holding two hot water bottles. Having so long dreamed about returning to Darjeeling, and having held so fondly to the memories of the place – all this warm hospitality made it feel like a homecoming.

After an early night, we both awoke at dawn. Through the curtains I could see a clear blue sky, still tinged with pale sunrise pink. I dared to hope that we should be lucky on our first morning and see the mountains on the horizon, but was wary after so many near misses last time. Indeed, all too often the sky overhead had been clear, but the mountains engulfed in cloud.

Despite being a mostly rational atheist who doesn’t believe in fate, I am riddled with petty superstitions. I had told myself that if I made this journey again, I would see what I had come to see. Irrespective of that, the law of averages dictated that surely I must get lucky at some point. Nervous with anticipation, I threw off the covers and made straight for the long wall of windows, pulling back the heavy curtains. I lifted the latch and opened one of the windows wide, sticking my head out into the cold air. My heart leapt. There in the distance, tall and seemingly immortal, toweringly omnipotent, was the staggering vastness of the Himalayas. Finally, after so much trying, I had a clear view of Mount Kangchenjunga.

That may sounds deliciously mysterious, or perhaps rather dully melodramatic, but I shall explain. Basically, in recent weeks the number of followers of my blog has increased dramatically – from somewhere in the 300s – which took a couple of years and two Freshly Pressed posts to accumulate – to well over five hundred, with a serious head of steam up towards 600. Over the last four days I have received regular e-mails from WordPress informing me that new subscribers have signed up to my blog, yet not a single one of them has liked any of my posts nor made any comments. Indeed, I’m convinced that none of them has even looked at any of my posts, judging by the activity data on the Dashboard, because there has been no corresponding increase in the number of views. In fact, quite the contrary – the last few days have marked a steady decline in viewing numbers – no doubt in the absence of any recent posts.

After my post Back to the Front was Freshly Pressed in February, I received a significant spike in views, likes and subscribers as might be expected, and for which I am still very thankful. Inevitably, as my post moved off the top and steadily further down the page, thus receiving less exposure, that flood of views dwindled to a trickle and, ultimately, down to a daily average that hovers somewhere between 40 and 100. Once a few weeks had passed the number of people liking or subscribing – outside of my posting anything new – also dwindled to the very occasional – maybe one a day at best. This is precisely what I would expect without the exposure offered by the Freshly Pressed page because it fits the pattern I’ve identified over the last few years.

At the end of that burst of activity and attention, I had roughly three hundred plus subscribers. This was a very pleasing number and, it seemed, a group made up of people who had actually read my work or looked at my photographs, judging by the distribution of likes and comments. Then, about three weeks ago, I noticed that the number of subscribers had risen to c. 450 odd. This came as a real surprise because I had hardly received any e-mail notifications of new subscribers in that period, or notice of any activity for that matter. I began to wonder – is this because WordPress no longer informs me when people without a Gravatar sign up? Had I received a torrent of subscribers getting notification via e-mail, but without any presence on WordPress? Previously I had been notified when people without a Gravatar signed up, so, perhaps something had changed. Either way, however, the numbers seemed outrageously inflated for such a short period of time. Where were these subscribers coming from? What was going on?

Then, four days ago, my inbox was suddenly full of WordPress notifications again. My first thought was, oh joy, perhaps I’ve been Freshly Pressed, for outside of a fresh post which receives an uncanny amount of attention, there are never so many notifications. This, however, was not the case, and, as stated above, none of the new subscribers liked or commented on anything I’d posted. It occurred to me that I should Google Tragicocomedia and see if my blog was somewhere being promoted or highlighted, yet apart from a bunch of references to various of my posts, the only other site that seemed to be associated was one called Bloglovin’ of which I’d not previously heard, but which seemed to provide links to roughly eight million blogs on exactly the same subjects – fashion and vanity. This was depressing enough, but also entirely unenlightening, because when I searched through all the categories I couldn’t find my blog anywhere prominent that might explain the attention it had recently received. It also seemed so far removed from the subject matter of the top blog list – which are, quite literally, almost all about fashion – that I can’t imagine anyone visiting that site would take an interest in Tragicocomedia.

I was left feeling very deeply suspicious. Was this an example of the sort of bullshit that goes on at Twitter, wherein people buy whole swathes of followers in some desperate attempt to promote their personal brand of self-obsession or some utterly undesirable product? I’d certainly not instigated any such activity. Was this some slightly back-handed flattery, in that my blog had received enough hits to warrant people wanting to follow it for the sake of jumping on the bandwagon, in the hope of drawing attention to themselves? The idea seems both utterly preposterous and also deeply annoying as I had liked to think that WordPress existed outside of that insincere and pointless follow me if I follow you universe. Surely people would only follow blogs because they actually want to read them, right?

Maybe I’m being horribly naïve and old-fashioned about all this. Either way, I certainly have no desire to alienate or upset new subscribers who genuinely are interested in my writing and photography. But if you’re only here to get a leg-up of some kind, then I’d recommend you go back to Twitter, because I’m not in this for the numbers and frankly am not going to follow you back just because you followed me. I’m only interested in following blogs I’ll actually read, which I really ought to do a whole lot more of! Indeed, I just paused a moment in writing this to work out why on earth I never receive notifications of posts from blogs I’ve chosen to follow. Strangely, the default setting is to send no notifications whatsoever. Having now made reparations for this, it seems my inbox is going to be a lot fuller after all and the time I allocate to reading is going to need a serious extension.

Anyways, to finish up, I’m still baffled about all this and would be happy to receive clarification, should anyone know the cause. Either way, what I would like to say is a great big thanks to all my subscribers, especially those who have been following me for some time now. I shall try in future to be more inter-active, as it were, and to pay proper attention to what is going on in your worlds as well. All the best!

The physical destruction or disintegration of something or the state of disintegrating or being destroyed.

I wanted to combine the physical and the metaphysical – the evocation of actual ruins, alongside the ruin of love, dreams and hopes etc. This might seem like a rather glum preoccupation, and I suppose in some ways it is, yet it is a natural offshoot of having an almost cripplingly nostalgic personality. It also comes from an overactive interest in history, which I indulged throughout my undergraduate degree, my honours year and, later, a PhD in late Roman / Early Medieval Italian history. I’ve spent almost half my life thinking about the fall of Rome and what it signifies – the first failure of a sort of proto-modernity. It’s a sad period, the onset of the so-called Dark Ages, but an absolutely fascinating one. The hangover of Roman civilization, the undercurrents of continuity, and, in the peoples of western Europe, the lingering, shadowing, saddening awareness that greatness was behind them, not in front of them. It’s a period full of nostalgics and studying it only seemed to fuel the emotions which often left me paralyzed in contemplation of the past.

In Ruin Diary I wanted to get this emotion across – in all of my preferred forms of expression: through photographs of actual ruins, modern or ancient, or poems and stories which touched on these places and the atmosphere and moods they generate; through stories and poems about the failure of love and relationships, the sense of loss itself, the effects of loss and failure. It was a naïve and overly ambitious idea, without an agent or publisher or real awareness of the market, but irrespective of that, it was a great spur to develop ideas based around this theme. Indeed, in the end, I accumulated more than enough material, some of which, particularly short stories and poems, have already been published on this blog.

Anyways, without further ado, the following poems are some of those I had in the Ruin Diary basket. I’ve never quite regarded them as complete and have continued working on them until recently. Some have been rejected by publishers several times, and possibly with good reason, others have never been let out of the stable. I find my style a little overblown in retrospect and have resolved not to work on these any longer, yet I still have a strong liking for the core elements of these poems, which, here and there, get it right. It is also the case that the publication of these poems is a nostalgic tribute to the spirit that first inspired them and to my slightly younger self.

I’ve also attached a badly stitched together panorama of one of my favourite ruin sites – Termessos, in southern Turkey. The shots were taken on a crappy film compact and later scanned. The quality is pretty appalling, but I think you’ll want to go there all the same after checking it out : )

Termessos, Southern Turkey

Achilles Matures

Achilles, ripped and sanguine,

sure to have his way with mortal men

expects no less of softer flesh,

and, heavy with the trophies

of his speed and savage skill,

of having flung into the sand and waters

countless armed and gilded men,

he puts upon a sulky brow

the first onset of love.

Agamemnon’s grizzled manhood

lusts after elixirs, offers

“seven girls of Lesbos, plus

a bunch of even better ones”

and claims Achilles’ catch, Briseis

‘of the lovely cheeks’. Achilles,

sword sheathed, tent-bound, never

traded prize for compromise,

refuses thus to join the fray -

the ache that tore up man and beast

has settled on a girl.

“Fight, Achilles! Fight!” they cry.

Achilles likes to stay indoors

and guilty, fucks Diomeda,

who, also ‘of the lovely cheeks’

(how many lovely cheeks, Achilles?)

offers him a vessel for the sour

milk of glory.

How many men as well, Achilles

wonders in the sail-cloth light;

“for once the life of man has passed

the circle of his teeth, then nothing,

horses, gold, nor love

can call the lost life back.”

And now it seems, for love, Achilles

hides behind his teeth.

Achilles sat and sulked a while

beneath the horseflesh moon

and falling from him, slow and sure

the envy of the other men, became

for him, a counterpoint,

of what is true and why.

Were You Half So Cruel

Were you half so cruel

as the harm your cold and distant

care – you held my hand

to sympathise, and even let

me cry upon your shoulder –

wrought like any mockery,

(all that is scorned is made

foolish) brought to this tired self,

who, wrung out from surfing love

into an ancient cliff, inured

against erosion (some disparity

in the run of aeons –

you eternal, me

a fleeting suitor to your long-protected

chastity) – more wilted spinach

than man – fell upon his knees

to, quite literally, beg,

then, I might hate you.

I tried to shake you off on a thousand

dates, a hundred

beds, a hundred bodies pulsed

with throes I told not what the source

of energy, the tears I hid in pillows

bit and never brushed

by your hair, that straightened, elvish

waterfall, never matted with the subtle

violence of sex, the punitive, corporal affair

where love, for which, sparing rods

spoils chides of faithfulness

from altruistic hearts

and minds aligned

in book and thought (high ideals and pedestals

are well enough in orbit) expends

itself in fucking, sends its warriors

to the necessary resolution. Love,

it seems, must be punished,

let die, once

in a while, like the bee that stings

to save the hive.

l’amour, le vin et le tabac

 (After a visit to the Mucha museum in Prague)

They didn’t mention the women,

- though one photo was of

a “mistress” – of which

there must have been many:

the sleepy-eyed,

pursy Zodiac, (she’s a wet one

and a bonnie tickler)

pure tears and a prim, good heart

though not as good

a sport as the knowing Spring,

all vermicelli hair and blossoms,

languor and vigour both

in the smiling eyes, the curling

lips, the confidence and clip

of a coming bumper harvest.

Spring a woman, Summer

a woman and Winter

too, a woman. All these women

and, despite their vivid florescence,

none of them a cinch.

Sarah Bernhardt wanted something

quickly, something new, for

two weeks hence she strode

- Athenian and Florentine -

upon a footlit Parisian stage,

and came to you, a man

so steeped in women, prone

to idealise the softness

and the purity, threw out

the trim and trappings for a rustic

decadence, a fecund innocence,

that of a rural princess

lavish and mosaiced, a frond

in hand as if young Jesus

on a donkey comes, to bring

a message like to be misread.

Europe marvelled, eyes aflame

with this sudden wedding seen

upon the streets of Paris, took

the posters home to cherish,

hailed the dawning of some new

art, styled and curvy, bold

and feminine, soon to spread

to buildings, seats and lamp-posts

soon to travel far on soap-tins,

matchbooks, wine, tobacco,

scents and, indeed, anything

which a beautiful woman

might help sell. Innocence,

yet not naïve, with something

other than simplicity

in those invitations.

Epochs

Most of our epochs (and by this I mean

the parcels within which we group recollections)

are woven of lovers or houses

are mapped by the heart and the places

we dwell. And Rome, no stranger

to epochs, though I never foresaw

such meadows of learning, of love and of war,

wrapped, like a rubric, in four long

months, a lifetime of potent nostalgia.

For three years preceding, my fields

had run wild with some loves

overlapping the brinks of each other

so Rome promised, in word and in deed,

farewell to the wet newspaper days,

that left one so close and so permeable.

On those frozen-toed, sandalled, Campidoglio

dawns, we were taken to see such masterpieces,

some absolute heroism on a wall, or the pocked

boldness, standing victorious in stone

buildings (it was the Renaissance

after all) or frescoed in dim-lit churches half

propped with the spolia of past

ages when grandeur first – Roman

hardware, Greek software – crushed the West.

And well, that was winter, or January

anyway. How I slept and breathed, having bashed

up my organs in an English climax in parting

from an orgy of work. Through a slower,

February of keen archaeology;

drove to ruins in snow-smoothed Tuscan

hills; to a frosted, icicle-hung

amphitheatre; field-walked the Tiber Valley,

carried ladders into Herculaneum

to measure Roman houses, eyes fixed

firmly on a Manx redhead I hoped

to touch up in Ostia Antica,

bracing in sunlight against the February

wind. Soon March was upon us with war

leaning close and the neatness that hedged

in behind me the past, the warmer sun

set fresh shoots blooming and, feeling at last I

belonged here, I chirped from my hedgerow

a wholly new song. Going now,

to the Pantheon daily, finding

beneath the streets, things hard to believe. Such sights

and the bright holding tight to privilege

must have coloured my cheeks just enough

to be bedded by a famous man’s mistress

after three congenial dinners in a month

of monasteries: Farfa, Assisi, Subiaco,

Cassino, that ended with hopes pinned

to a guest list of girls’ names come for another

stirring course. And what girls, when they came

and were friendly. Tiber Island roared

with rains and thaws and on the first April

day, lit like the sun-side of Mercury, I fell

in love, wounded, having dived

into a hedge on the post-shrove Wednesday,

slashed and scabbed like Easter’s coming thorns.

She cut my hair with praise for the way

these hands kept to themselves, when later we

sat on a colosseum backdrop

slope. There, that milk-skinned kitten, that doe-eyed

soft pixie, Lottie of the grass heads, bloomed gorgeous,

legs tucked beneath her, sun streaming

down. I should have run to do her whims

- but to be apart from her! So I ran

faster still and she crowned me

with a makeshift laurel; her fingers

brushed my ear-tips as she placed

the very grass heads that made her like a flower

when she and I sang with Nils, full of pride

for the odd bond I’d knotted between now and then,

salvaged in a day of proclamations.

Unable to lean for a peck; to declare

with a cheek-kiss the birth of a new love

while Baghdad enthralled in the common room and April’s

new tone was a blossom of history to come.

It was a month that soared on to the winding

down of this heart-wrench of coming and going

and still never knowing which epoch the present

belonged in, whereon to prop and nurture

some constant in life and love.

La Pelosa, Stintino, Sardinia

Tomorrow’s feted high upon this stretch

of Caribbean tints. The sea and sky run through

in lissome strokes; azure and watered cobalt overwrite

a blazing, foreground palimpsest

of lemon essence light, tinctured soft with pearl.

Stripy market stalls arise

among the littered towels and humps

of footprints dug by posing youths,

while sagging older bathers prop, as wineskins

hung before a vision inked upon a rippling silk.

There is an invitation in the dunes to rest a while,

yet, cool and jewelled, the ocean lures; shallow

is the gradient of shore, invisible the water

lapping near, so creeping up the shins the coolness

comes; the body horizontal, starts its glide.

Across this smite of paradise a cannon tower calls

the swimmers on. They fetch up here

to sample lizard heat and squatting shrubs and view

this structure, rough and sharp; its jagged stone

makes weathered shelves for ample seagull nests.

History left this island half unmade as epics

gathered round Aegean shores and poets

slung their words to Sicily. Pirates sought

this empires’ afterthought and Spaniards, fearing them

erected towers such as this to guard their chiming ports.

Not all we build winds up to be for us alone

for time and seasons bring new dwellers in. So witness

in this structure not our strength in making lasting things

for to the rocks the purpose of our striving soon is lost

and by the weather, transience, is nurtured slow to dust.

Winter Morning, Campo dei Fiori

I’d been here before at night,

drunk and swearing through spittle;

with Italians singing songs

of bandits and hard-working

peasants; “bella ciao, bella

ciao” – drunk as well, but never

as drunk as a foreigner.

Back here I stand where they sang

beneath some martyr who burned

for I forget what. He is,

nonetheless, unforgotten

in a statue – (no hissing

gobbets at dawn in the drum-

fires of the slow-warming men).

So here I am hoping for

real scenes, but it’s so real that

I see no mystery, and point

my camera in vain at some

old men; popping off half-arsed

shots in this “field of flowers”

in the winter of the day.

Spring comes and flowers come too,

rolling on rusty carts; wheels

fat with weight, and stumpy men

pushing and pulling colour

to make the tents blossom. Blooms

erupt in the piazza

and the stalls wash with women.

Sun creeps down the palazzo

and falls in a canyon street.

Again I shoot the essence

as Romans sit on bollards

to thaw beside their mopeds,

and once again the “unique”

pales into quotidian.

I’ve drunk from springs all morning

to quench a colosseum

thirst, for I’ve been walking since

oily light infused across

the Apennines; angling low

through the burnished frost; rich clad

in the promise of warming.

Once home, my fragility

is paramount. Emotion

strikes, my hands begin to thaw;

the agony, as blood resumes

its course, jewels my eyes with tears,

and, by my Roman window

I cry, weak as a blossom,

but a blossom all the same.

Ancient Sky

The diesel warmth of the metro breathes

me onto the broken pavement:

Rome, bus station, dawn.

Aboard the bus I lose my eyes

in the smear of road lights;

sinking into holiday’s end,

sinking into thinness strung

across long sleepless nights

and wakeful days.

Then it hits me, here at last,

through fatigue and failing

hope, it comes,

the light, the sullen pink;

bloated fire dulled by frost,

fanning from the mountains so

at last I see things as they were

in the silhouette of peaks;

grey-brown, massive, graphed against

this nebula of dawn.

From here was marble dug,

the sources flowed, the Samnites poured,

the very spine that Pyrrhus hoped to break,

- the unchanged, ancient Apennines.

And above them, blooming slowly,

a sky as like to those of distant days

when Justinian’s vengeful murderers

shattered Italy to a ruin.

To Capo Caccia, Sardinia

Dry and rugged, the land about Fertilia;

sharp and rough, the rocks. Bristling

tinder, sparse forest, needles and ochre

yellow earth in suffocating heat.

Until I entered a darker coastal stretch

of deep green undergrowth coolly shaded,

sunk in a fecund gully.

This was once a land of pygmy elephants,

dwindled hippos, rhinos shrunk

on an island trapped in a basin of burning

salt; a landlocked sea that came and went

until the pillars of Hercules fell

bringing an Atlantic deluge

to flood the briny deltas

of the Rivers Rhone and Nile.

The first peoples left us no writing,

only tombs and bee-hives:

Nuraghi, the rounded citadels;

dusty and softly echoing

with stones like hardwood mushrooms;

iron rich and orange as the cork trees

peeled to an umber trunk and dotting

the tawny grass of the island’s hilly fields.

Concrete lattice rises, rusty, weed run;

clicking with insects and the rubbish tipped

in the many failed constructions,

and, just along the coast of these,

the beach resorts milking

sweeps of sand between volcanic

rocks to which the mastic

trees and hardy cistus cling.

I remained optimistic, when passing Palmavera,

of reaching the Grotto of Neptune,

beneath Capo Caccia, till from the cliffs

I spied a vast bay and saw how maps

can trick one. Back through the thorns

of briar-trapped forest, a long retreat

in forty-degree heat.

Was this because I had swum

and masturbated in a rocky shadow,

spilling my seed in the ancient God’s sea?

Blistered, dry-mouthed and miles from the cape,

I shuffled back to Alghero.

At dusk, the town welcomed me sore

and I took the first hotel to lick my wounds.

The surroundings certainly helped. Below us the pool and the maze of garden paths were empty – indeed, there seemed to be no other guests in our hotel. The hotel itself was a network of bungalows and two-story villas, terraced onto a gentle slope that steepened and dropped away into rainforest. Behind the lush trees in the mid-ground was a backdrop of wooded hills with rice paddies occupying their lower slopes. A few scattered clouds still lingered in the sky – the dark, bruised colour of storms – and the air had cooled significantly from the sticky heights of midday.

Both of us agreed that this place was heart-achingly beautiful, and more than that, it was serene. One might think such a place would cost an arm and a leg, yet in Bali luxury is very cheap. Our hotel cost a mere thirty-five Australian dollars a night, an astonishing bargain, but one that was repeated across the whole island, outside of the excesses of Seminyak and Kuta.

Not only is luxury cheap in Bali, it is, almost universally, surprisingly tasteful. Most “resorts” have achieved a harmonious balance of local architectural styles, modern amenities and lovely gardens. Having only spent a total of eleven days in Bali in two stints, I can hardly say my experience is comprehensive, yet judging from what I have seen, both on the ground and on the net, there is a surfeit of genuinely beautiful accommodation on the island.

The “resorts” often mirror the arrangements of a local family compound, but on a grander scale. Behind the decorated stone and brick walls lies a cleverly landscaped mix of flourishing, immaculate gardens, pools and water features and traditional stone and brick-built bungalows and standalone two-story villas, often with high, thatched roofs.

The buildings are rarely dull and blocky as so many hotels can be, but rather they have an elegant simplicity or sport the intricate busy-ness so apparent in Balinese religious architecture. This baroque, Hindu-influenced style combines the humble commonsense of the village house with the strident decadence of a palace and blends marvellously with the colourful gardens. Even where the adornments have been stripped back to a more minimalist presentation, the effect is still a pleasing marriage of the humble and palatial.

I don’t generally like overly busy architectural or decorative styles – take the Corinthian bombast of the later Antonine Pax Romana or the garish flounce of the Rococo, or, for that matter, the overwhelming intricacy of Hindu temples – but in Bali the rendering is apposite. It has an organic, natural quality, especially in its unpainted masonry, which, whilst texturally in contrast with the limpid green of the vegetation, rises from it like a finely crafted termite mound. This organic quality is also ever-present in the woodwork and thatching.

The floral and bestial carvings in the stone and wood – intertwined curlicues – run the eye gently round in the mesmerising manner of a celtic manuscript illustration, or indeed, an overgrowth of creepers. Inside, more often than not, the rooms lack ceilings and, rising above the high walls, the tall, pointed thatched roofs lend the rooms a sense of immense space, as well as keeping them cool in the tropical conditions.

For someone who prides himself as a lefty with strong socialist tendencies (though I don’t pretend not to be a bloody hypocrite at times), such luxury usually comes with the added moral and ethical price of guilt. It is a price all people with a social conscience pay when they travel in the “developing” parts of Asia, or indeed, any country where the locals earn considerably less money and have fewer opportunities. Yet, sitting there on the balcony that evening, drinking beer and watching the sunset sky, V and I both expressed the same conclusion – that in Bali, this feeling did not take hold as it did elsewhere. What seemed different about Bali, in comparison to, say, Cambodia, Vietnam or India, was that the locals seemed far more content and most people appeared to live well. The power relationship, so often dictated by money, was still to my advantage, yet I didn’t detect the same degree of envy, jealousy or desperation in exploiting the fact that I had money to spend.

I don’t mean to suggest that there aren’t plenty of people in Bali who are struggling to make ends meet, nor that there aren’t people out to make a buck from the tourists, for there certainly are, yet the living standards and way of life seem adequate to allow for contentment and harmony. I come to this question from a completely amateur sociological / anthropological perspective, yet my encounters and observations suggest that generally people are happy in Bali. This might be a consequence of their religion, rituals, close family relationships and their solid, largely village-based social framework, yet I suspect it is also on account of the beauty of the place and the constant climate. That both V and I had arrived at the same conclusion independently could purely be a misleading coincidence, but it gave me some confidence that there might be at least some truth in this.

When I travelled in India for the first time in 2010, I also encountered many people who seemed content in getting on with their lives. Yet there was the unmistakeable feeling of being constantly pursued and receiving constant attention. It is understandable in a country where the gulf between rich and poor is so much greater than in Bali, and where the sheer size of the population dramatically increases the competition for resources, but the end result is that simply by being there, I felt I had in some way destroyed the equilibrium of the place. Poverty is very relative and people don’t want things if they don’t know about them. They are also less likely to feel jealous or in anyway inferior or inadequate if not exposed to the wealth of others. Yet, even when travelling on the cheap with a day-pack and a pair of thongs in India the amount of money I had to spend on luxuries and services far exceeded the capacity of most of the locals and I was constantly aware of this fact. Without trying to cut too many corners, nor deny myself too much, and yet, trying to stick to a pretty decent budget, I would end up spending around twenty dollars a day – a thousand rupees then, and now almost 1200. Consider, however, that those lucky enough to get the minimum wage receive roughly 160 rupees a day for skilled labour and a mere 100 for unskilled labour, and you get some idea of the vastness of the chasm between even a poor tourist like myself and the local people.

India – hard slog for peanuts

On this note, I once had a conversation with a man in India where I tried to explain that although I came from one of the richest countries in the world and was far wealthier than he was in real and relative terms, back in Australia my income placed me in the bottom fifteen percent of the population and I could afford neither a house nor a car. It took some time to get the message across, but we got there in the end. Even bearing this in mind, however, which, for simple practical reasons, meant I couldn’t afford everything India had to offer, it never stopped me feeling guilty about how much easier life was for me.

In Bali, however, despite a relatively similar disparity in spending power, I never felt the divide as greatly. Again, I must reiterate, this is not because there are not poor or desperate people in Bali, there certainly are, yet their lives don’t seem anything like so harassed and stressful as the lives of poor people in India.

One thing V and I had noticed was the apparent contentment of the rural population. Despite rural areas often being poorer in real terms, in Bali the rural population appeared mostly happy. The locals certainly worked hard in the fields and in many and various other manual tasks, yet the villages were clean and organised, with good housing, nice gardens, easy access to running water etc.

On the first trip I took to Bali with my brother, we drove through countless villages as we cruised across the island, and we were constantly impressed with the quality of the houses and how attractive these small urban environments were. So much so that I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to live in such a house for some time and write a novel.

This was in contrast to the experiences I’ve had elsewhere. One thing I’ve noticed over the years, about the difference between rural and urban areas in poorer or developing countries, is that whilst in cities people will offer services simply because they can, in rural areas, they are more inclined to ask directly for money. I first noticed this in Turkey back in the nineties, where, outside of the cities, children would often approach me and asked for what sounded like “Boom boom”, whilst rubbing the forefinger against the thumb. The expression itself might be misconstrued! though there was no mistaking the gesture. Some children actually used the word “money”, saying nothing else. “Money?” “Money?” This was repeated in Cambodia and India on many occasions, but only very rarely in Bali. It could simply be a consequence of greater comparative wealth, in which case, I’m not entirely sure what my point is, but either way, the absence of this direct appeal for money help to ease any possible sensation of guilt.

This was the subject of our conversation, sitting there watching the sunset. It wasn’t the most impressive of sunsets, but the beauty and serenity of our surroundings hardly needed the help of an elaborate lightshow on the horizon. It is worth pointing out that V’s observations and opinion on this front were founded on greater travel experience than my own. Having been to South and Central America five times, often for lengthy periods, having travelled extensively in Asia, India, the Middle East and the poorer parts of Eastern Europe, I trust her opinion and judgement. She had also spent more time in Bali than I had, visiting the place, as I had, just a few of years before. The people of Bali, we both agreed, had a softness, warmth and generosity of spirit that stood out.

Another difference we noticed in Bali was the high quality of customer service. Certainly at times things are a bit ad hoc – which is fine with me as I don’t like formality and fawning attention – yet nearly everyone in Bali that we had any dealings with – drivers, waiters and waitresses, hotel staff, shop assistants, ticket vendors, you name it – were polite and attentive and professional, or enthusiastically and charmingly amateurish. This seemed to be the case even when there was no direct incentive to be so – no commission, expectation of a tip, etc. One thing I was later to notice when we arrived in India was that the service varied wildly, and often veered into total rudeness and indifference, depending on the degree to which the person with whom we were interacting was to benefit from it. In the first six outlets of Café Coffee Day which we were to visit in India – so desperate were we for espresso coffee that we kept going back – the staff practically ignored us completely, even when standing at the counter, and then were surly, unfriendly and not especially professional. It must be said that we were to have a very different experience in Kolkata, where we found very lovely people who were totally on the ball, yet by this stage the damage was already done. I’m not sure what it was, but despite our cheery hellos and attempts to be friendly and engaging ourselves, the staff were almost universally indifferent and acted as though they had been massively put out by our coming into the café in the first place.

Customer service is not the most important thing in the world by any means, and while it is unreasonable to expect a certain standard of professionalism, friendliness and politeness leave a lasting impression and have a universal appeal. The way one is treated by people makes a huge difference to how the experience is remembered; rudeness and negativity can sour the memory of a place. If there is one thing that seems to truly stand out about Bali, it’s how bloody nice everybody is when they don’t need to be. This friendliness goes a long way towards creating a much more equal relationship, rather than one that is all about extracting money, which is too often the case elsewhere and which creates a very uncomfortable situation. Some of the few other places in developing countries where I’ve had such a sense was Darjeeling in northern West Bengal and in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

Was it culture? Was it religion? Was it the environment? Or were their lives simply full enough and rich enough not to need much more than what they could afford and had available to them already? In these places I didn’t feel the resentment and envy that tourists in poorer countries will almost inevitably attract.

I don’t doubt that people will have had very different experiences and I repeat that these are just casual observations that are in no way scientific. It also must be said that in and around Denpasar, as in many big cities, the pace of life is faster and business a little more cut-throat, so here one might find a very different vibe.

It is also necessary to point out that when we went to the temple complex at Pura Besakih the day after having had this conversation, we had a pretty unpleasant experience. The Lonely Planet had forewarned us that the hawkers here were most aggressive and that tourists were often subjected to scams wherein local men would tell them that they were not allowed into the site without a guide, despite having already bought a ticket.

It seemed as though this might be quite easily gotten around, but when we arrived at the place we were not only lied to by a number of people at the entrance, but they were very aggressive about it and even tried to block our path. When we decided to ignore them and push on through they still didn’t drop the ruse, but continued to shout rudely at us. This might have been amusing if their tone wasn’t so ugly and aggressive and instead it made me so angry that it spoiled the experience of the place, which was pretty unfortunate. Though, to be honest, so far as temple complexes go, it’s not that much to write home about.

This negative experience, however, was an isolated one. During both of my visits to Bali I have found the people to be very friendly indeed, as has V on both of her trips. It is a gross generalisation, but I was left with the impression that people live happy lives and they are mostly content just to get on with things. Whilst going there in the first place is a somewhat disruptive thing in itself, so far as local balance is concerned, the overall feeling we had was not one of guilty privilege and yawning disparity, but one of more equal interactions. All of which makes travelling there more relaxing and fulfilling.

We finished our beers as the light vanished from the sky and the mosquitoes began to close in. Below, under a thatched canopy, on a beautiful deck beside a patch of jungle, calmed by the trickle of a fountain, the smiling staff were waiting to serve us, the only guests. It all seemed so utterly decadent and quite ridiculous for the price, but at least we didn’t feel guilty in allowing ourselves this indulgence. And, as is so often the case in Bali, precisely because there was no pressure to do so, we were happy to leave a generous tip.