When friends drop down dead at 46, it is inevitable that you dig deep. You try and find some answers, some logic, some comfort.
Max has found none. Like most of the people who yesterday went to pay their last respects to Julian Manduca - Choppy to all and sundry.
We all huddled under the cypress trees, uncomfortable in our suits and heels. Julian's brother read something. We could not hear. A girl threw up. A slight commotion, the crowd parted and the four undertakers walked past. The girl sitting on the floor shuddered. That's how we knew that Julian had been buried. Irene, my friend, Julian's wife, read something else. We lost the words to the wind. And then the crowd starting the long walk back.
And Irene saw Max in the crowd and whisphered in his ears 'I can't believe it... I still can't believe it.'
Max knows that like everyone else, he will seek the comfort of routine, family, work, loved ones, strangers.
Max knows he has to leave something worthwhile behind, before his time runs out.
Even if it is only two fingers, pointed at the sky, in a mock salute to our existence.
We just don't understand.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Thursday, April 07, 2005
The Odd Couple
I have been roped into Neil Simon's classic, The Odd Couple. I'm playing Felix, the neurotic divorcee, who ends up staying with his best friend Oscar, the slob, also recently divorced.
Almost two weeks away from the opening night, and the cast is still struggling with lines and cues. The props still have to show up. There is a general air of concern. It is a play with 'a lot of business' and one-liners.
Trying not to think of the clock ticking away.
But I cannot get the reams of lines into my head. Even Jacob seems to be doing better - he is starting to provide me with unsolicited prompts when he sees the script flashed in front of his breakfast yoghurt.
And to think that I got into this because he wanted to escape from the daily grind.
I last performed at the Manoel Theatre in 1983.
I'm finally old enough to play Felix.
Though there is no age-limit to being neurotic.
Almost two weeks away from the opening night, and the cast is still struggling with lines and cues. The props still have to show up. There is a general air of concern. It is a play with 'a lot of business' and one-liners.
Trying not to think of the clock ticking away.
But I cannot get the reams of lines into my head. Even Jacob seems to be doing better - he is starting to provide me with unsolicited prompts when he sees the script flashed in front of his breakfast yoghurt.
And to think that I got into this because he wanted to escape from the daily grind.
I last performed at the Manoel Theatre in 1983.
I'm finally old enough to play Felix.
Though there is no age-limit to being neurotic.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Republic Day
For some time, Max has been thinking of bowing out of this blog.
Max does not lead an interesting life. He lives on a small island. He has a small life. He has long ceased to be a member of an Air Miles Club.
And yet, on another level, there's plenty afoot.
For a start, a journey home now takes twice as long as all the roads leading to Siggiewi are dug up. The main access is now via what's best described as a goat track through what's left of an old valley. By the time Max gets home, he feels like lying down or getting a prize.
Max has also joined the iPod millions. No surprise that Max now takes his iPod to bed, and on the Saturday visits to the swings with Jacob. On most days, Max can be seen trying to untangle himself from the coil of his headphones.
Then, there was something that Julian told Max. He said that he had found it very difficult to figure out his father. Julian figures that Max is writing a blog to make Jacob understand his father.
And Max has been coerced into another play. More about that, on some other day.
This afternoon, a comment from somebody called Chris urged Max to remove one of his postings. It warned Max that he was making enemies by making snide remarks on politicians, corporates and those who hide behind them.
Max looked at his screen, sipped his camomille tea, then, almost without thinking, pressed the delete button on the post, and watched it vapourise into cyberspace.
Max was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of remorse.
Max remembers that when he was a child, he used to think that the cult TV series The Prisoner was shot in Malta. He used to go to bed with pictures of the large, inflatable white baloon chasing him to his bedroom.
In the late seventies and eighties, the baloon in Malta took shape, and the island wa s overcome by a spate of dictatorship, violence, teargas and fear. Max did what a many of his generation did - he sold his bike, bought a plane ticket, and lost himself in a large metropolis. London offered him anonymity, space, and a chance to start again. Max found his voice, got himself a career, travelled the world and made some money and real friendships.
It was only the grey that made him return to the island, ten years later. That, and the desire to own a house, with a courtyard and a cat, and to look at the waves. And some new-found sense of optimism, that the rock had changed its spots, that the place had somehow mellowed and grown up.
In 2005, there is much to point that Max had made yet another mistake.
But Max is grateful to Mr Chris. He has made him remember that there is a blog to write. And that the power of the Internet was never in the hands of the corporates, or the politicians, or those who serve them, and climb up the greasy career pole by selling their soul. Or those who continue to serve the system, silently, in fear, or in cocktail parties, because this is a small place and everybody knows everybody's business.
The fact that this blog is being written on Malta's Republic Day makes Max cackle.
Max may have deleted the post, but not the evidence.
Because Max never lies.
Max does not lead an interesting life. He lives on a small island. He has a small life. He has long ceased to be a member of an Air Miles Club.
And yet, on another level, there's plenty afoot.
For a start, a journey home now takes twice as long as all the roads leading to Siggiewi are dug up. The main access is now via what's best described as a goat track through what's left of an old valley. By the time Max gets home, he feels like lying down or getting a prize.
Max has also joined the iPod millions. No surprise that Max now takes his iPod to bed, and on the Saturday visits to the swings with Jacob. On most days, Max can be seen trying to untangle himself from the coil of his headphones.
Then, there was something that Julian told Max. He said that he had found it very difficult to figure out his father. Julian figures that Max is writing a blog to make Jacob understand his father.
And Max has been coerced into another play. More about that, on some other day.
This afternoon, a comment from somebody called Chris urged Max to remove one of his postings. It warned Max that he was making enemies by making snide remarks on politicians, corporates and those who hide behind them.
Max looked at his screen, sipped his camomille tea, then, almost without thinking, pressed the delete button on the post, and watched it vapourise into cyberspace.
Max was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of remorse.
Max remembers that when he was a child, he used to think that the cult TV series The Prisoner was shot in Malta. He used to go to bed with pictures of the large, inflatable white baloon chasing him to his bedroom.
In the late seventies and eighties, the baloon in Malta took shape, and the island wa s overcome by a spate of dictatorship, violence, teargas and fear. Max did what a many of his generation did - he sold his bike, bought a plane ticket, and lost himself in a large metropolis. London offered him anonymity, space, and a chance to start again. Max found his voice, got himself a career, travelled the world and made some money and real friendships.
It was only the grey that made him return to the island, ten years later. That, and the desire to own a house, with a courtyard and a cat, and to look at the waves. And some new-found sense of optimism, that the rock had changed its spots, that the place had somehow mellowed and grown up.
In 2005, there is much to point that Max had made yet another mistake.
But Max is grateful to Mr Chris. He has made him remember that there is a blog to write. And that the power of the Internet was never in the hands of the corporates, or the politicians, or those who serve them, and climb up the greasy career pole by selling their soul. Or those who continue to serve the system, silently, in fear, or in cocktail parties, because this is a small place and everybody knows everybody's business.
The fact that this blog is being written on Malta's Republic Day makes Max cackle.
Max may have deleted the post, but not the evidence.
Because Max never lies.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Body bags
The New Year is a body count.
The New Year is rows of white bags and tags, heaps of dog eared passports with fading colour pictures, orphaned children, eyeless parents, piles of rubbish and jagged tree trunks.
The New Year is investigative journalism at its worst, the living prying after the dead, trying to find some moral meaning out of the tragedy.
In the aftermath of the carnage, I have retreated to my head space. In the absence of any clarity or notion of where to head towards, in the future, away from the island, I am waiting to go to Cornwall later in the month, with Jacob and Liz. Somehow I am hoping that a couple of days holed up in a Landmark Trust cottage can help him step out of the moment he is stuck in, and find a way of moving on.
Right now, I cannot get away from the futility of the day to day, when millions of lives have been destroyed with what happened the day after Christmas.
I have no right to speak of my life, right now.
The New Year is rows of white bags and tags, heaps of dog eared passports with fading colour pictures, orphaned children, eyeless parents, piles of rubbish and jagged tree trunks.
The New Year is investigative journalism at its worst, the living prying after the dead, trying to find some moral meaning out of the tragedy.
In the aftermath of the carnage, I have retreated to my head space. In the absence of any clarity or notion of where to head towards, in the future, away from the island, I am waiting to go to Cornwall later in the month, with Jacob and Liz. Somehow I am hoping that a couple of days holed up in a Landmark Trust cottage can help him step out of the moment he is stuck in, and find a way of moving on.
Right now, I cannot get away from the futility of the day to day, when millions of lives have been destroyed with what happened the day after Christmas.
I have no right to speak of my life, right now.
Friday, December 31, 2004
On the verge of the New Year
Or more like 'at the foot of the cliff'.. or 'on the edge of the chasm'.
The body count in Asia is more like 110,000 people and counting, though we'll never know. And more than a million people have had their lives shattered by what happened.
Max has got lost in the tragedy of numbers and stopped watching TV. He logs on to the BBC site, watches the body count, switches to a Football site, reads about millionaires being lined up for transfers in the January transfer window, shops for food essentials, thinks, tries not to think. Liz has gone down with a bad bout of gastric 'flu and threw up in the garden. Jacob runs around like a clockwork orange, oblivioius of his mother's illness. In the end, Max gives up and administers the only drug at hand, the new Pinocchio DVD. Jacob is now perched on his blue potty, glued to the 1940's classic.
Elsewhere, the remnants of Max's friends will gather for their usual piss up and singalong. Max's sister has bought herself a furry top. Max's Dad has been roped in as babysitter. And the new year will be seen in to the traditional flurry of merry-making.
Max cannot stop thinking of mass graves and bodies caked up, like bits of plaster in an unsound structure.
Jonathan Head of the BBC in Banda Aceh, Indonesia: Water is the most critical problem here. The entire water supply has been contaminated - you can't imagine how they could clean it up as the number of bodies is just overwhelming.
I've just come from Thailand where it was pretty shocking but nothing compares to the health problems presented here by the thousands and thousands of bodies and the inability of the authorities and the survivors to deal with it. They are digging mass graves now but the number littered around is just staggering.
The entire town - where it hasn't been levelled - is covered in a sea of filthy mud with bodies and bits of rubble stuck in it. I think the authorities are going to have to think about moving people out because it's just uninhabitable.
There aren't the resources to clean up a mess this staggeringly big - the place looks as though a giant has picked it up, shaken it, torn it to pieces and then thrown this layer of mud, rubble and bodies across it.
All the people I've spoken to here say there is no more Banda Aceh. They're packing their bags and leaving whatever way they can.
On another day, another planet, this space would have been filled by lines of hope. Max, instead, thinks that the only appropriate blog, right now, is silence. And some stoic resolve.
To survive. Into the new year.
The body count in Asia is more like 110,000 people and counting, though we'll never know. And more than a million people have had their lives shattered by what happened.
Max has got lost in the tragedy of numbers and stopped watching TV. He logs on to the BBC site, watches the body count, switches to a Football site, reads about millionaires being lined up for transfers in the January transfer window, shops for food essentials, thinks, tries not to think. Liz has gone down with a bad bout of gastric 'flu and threw up in the garden. Jacob runs around like a clockwork orange, oblivioius of his mother's illness. In the end, Max gives up and administers the only drug at hand, the new Pinocchio DVD. Jacob is now perched on his blue potty, glued to the 1940's classic.
Elsewhere, the remnants of Max's friends will gather for their usual piss up and singalong. Max's sister has bought herself a furry top. Max's Dad has been roped in as babysitter. And the new year will be seen in to the traditional flurry of merry-making.
Max cannot stop thinking of mass graves and bodies caked up, like bits of plaster in an unsound structure.
Jonathan Head of the BBC in Banda Aceh, Indonesia: Water is the most critical problem here. The entire water supply has been contaminated - you can't imagine how they could clean it up as the number of bodies is just overwhelming.
I've just come from Thailand where it was pretty shocking but nothing compares to the health problems presented here by the thousands and thousands of bodies and the inability of the authorities and the survivors to deal with it. They are digging mass graves now but the number littered around is just staggering.
The entire town - where it hasn't been levelled - is covered in a sea of filthy mud with bodies and bits of rubble stuck in it. I think the authorities are going to have to think about moving people out because it's just uninhabitable.
There aren't the resources to clean up a mess this staggeringly big - the place looks as though a giant has picked it up, shaken it, torn it to pieces and then thrown this layer of mud, rubble and bodies across it.
All the people I've spoken to here say there is no more Banda Aceh. They're packing their bags and leaving whatever way they can.
On another day, another planet, this space would have been filled by lines of hope. Max, instead, thinks that the only appropriate blog, right now, is silence. And some stoic resolve.
To survive. Into the new year.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
The real tsunami
Welcome to an entirely new vernacular.
Today's word is 'tsunami'. It used to stand for a shrill Manic Street Preachers song from some forgettable album.
Now it stands for total destruction, for paradise lost, for possibly one hundred thousand souls drowned or battered in a flood that some religious freak will one day associate with the apocalypse.
Tsunamis after Christmas, before the close of the year, before people really had time to make a wish, hug their loved ones, and get inebriated in some loud, lonely party.
This year, Max has decided to pass on traditional New Year's Eve parties, or dinner parties with friends. Max will stay home, drink a glass of wine with Liz, and plan the future.
With a vengeance.
Today's word is 'tsunami'. It used to stand for a shrill Manic Street Preachers song from some forgettable album.
Now it stands for total destruction, for paradise lost, for possibly one hundred thousand souls drowned or battered in a flood that some religious freak will one day associate with the apocalypse.
Tsunamis after Christmas, before the close of the year, before people really had time to make a wish, hug their loved ones, and get inebriated in some loud, lonely party.
This year, Max has decided to pass on traditional New Year's Eve parties, or dinner parties with friends. Max will stay home, drink a glass of wine with Liz, and plan the future.
With a vengeance.
Monday, December 27, 2004
Friday, December 24, 2004
Christmas is served
There is a slight chance there will be snow in London, but no hope of that in Malta. Instead, the temperature has dropped to 15 degrees, but it feels like zero because stone houses are not made for winter. People with paraffin heaters make financial computations in their head to ration usage. The fat cats with fat cars cruise by Cafe Oasis and overfeed their designer children. Gift wrapping is a national obession.
Max has bought Jacob a plastic digger, three Percy the Park-keeper books, and Pinocchio and Lion King DVDs. Max has bought Liz a blender and Jamie Oliver's latest. Max has bought himself a string on DVDs which he will probably never watch, but which look great, still sealed in Play.com packaging.
Tonight, Liz will leave a glass of wine and a mince pie, to solicit Santa's visit, to fill socks, kiss sleeping angels and bring good luck to a household that needs it like millions of others. And for Max's friend Maurizio, living the darkest of Christmases... may he find a way out of the abyss, and realise that things come in cycles, and there there is only one way to go.
Up.
Max has bought Jacob a plastic digger, three Percy the Park-keeper books, and Pinocchio and Lion King DVDs. Max has bought Liz a blender and Jamie Oliver's latest. Max has bought himself a string on DVDs which he will probably never watch, but which look great, still sealed in Play.com packaging.
Tonight, Liz will leave a glass of wine and a mince pie, to solicit Santa's visit, to fill socks, kiss sleeping angels and bring good luck to a household that needs it like millions of others. And for Max's friend Maurizio, living the darkest of Christmases... may he find a way out of the abyss, and realise that things come in cycles, and there there is only one way to go.
Up.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Check up
This afternoon Max went for a heart check up. He arrived at the Capua Hospital in the usual heap, having spent nearly two hours in a meeting on a potential start up that ground gradually to a halt. By the time he was whisked away to the 'Executive Screening' Nurse, Max was prepared for any kind of bad news.
Max's two-hour stint involved:
(1) Being weighed (74 kilos - Max wondered how much of the weight could be blamed on winter clothing)
(2) Being measured (height unknown, Max told the nurse he was cheating as he was still wearing his shoes)
(3) Pissing in small beaker (not a problem, having consumed several coffees in the futile start-up meeting; urine surprisingly warm and golden coloured, which made Max think of the Indian premier who used to drink his own piss for good fortune)
(4) Blowing in a hollow tube and watching an electronic meter (the nurse cooed approvingly)
(5) Getting a chest x-ray (the x-ray man was more impressed by Max's twisted scoliosis spine than Max's heart - long sigh as the x-ray was mounted on to the flourescent screen on the wall
(6) Answering plenty of questions on family illnesses, pneumonias, diets
(7) Getting startled when the doctor said that he knew most of Max's family - Dr Montfort had even looked after Max's mother, while she was dying of Hogkins' disease in 1984. Dr Montfort said that if his mother had contracted Hogkins' now, most probably she would have been saved.
(8) Getting startled when the doctor said that his cholesterol level was high, even for a 43 year-old. Max was asked if he drank alcohol - Max confessed to a glass of wine and several cups of coffee. Max was told to cut on the caffeine.
(9) Getting part of his chest shaved for a cardio-vascular test on the treadmill.
(10) Puffing his way through a series of inclines on the treadmill.
(11) Getting told that he had a perfect bill of health, except for the high cholesterol, which would mean another check up in six months' time.
(12) Getting severe palpitations when he was given the bill for the exercise.
This evening, Max passed on the option of pasta with broccoli and gorgonzola, and went for pasta with broccoli, anchovies and pine nuts. Plus one glass of wine.
Max wonders how many people would be saved if they got sick twenty years later than they actually did.
Max's chest is itching from the shaving.
Max is going to spend some time searching for 'cholesterol' and 'wine', hoping there is no obvious linkage.
Max is listening to a tribute show for the late John Peel, who also died of heart failure. But not before championing some of the most exciting, dangerous, obscure and life-changing music of the twentieth century.
Max's two-hour stint involved:
(1) Being weighed (74 kilos - Max wondered how much of the weight could be blamed on winter clothing)
(2) Being measured (height unknown, Max told the nurse he was cheating as he was still wearing his shoes)
(3) Pissing in small beaker (not a problem, having consumed several coffees in the futile start-up meeting; urine surprisingly warm and golden coloured, which made Max think of the Indian premier who used to drink his own piss for good fortune)
(4) Blowing in a hollow tube and watching an electronic meter (the nurse cooed approvingly)
(5) Getting a chest x-ray (the x-ray man was more impressed by Max's twisted scoliosis spine than Max's heart - long sigh as the x-ray was mounted on to the flourescent screen on the wall
(6) Answering plenty of questions on family illnesses, pneumonias, diets
(7) Getting startled when the doctor said that he knew most of Max's family - Dr Montfort had even looked after Max's mother, while she was dying of Hogkins' disease in 1984. Dr Montfort said that if his mother had contracted Hogkins' now, most probably she would have been saved.
(8) Getting startled when the doctor said that his cholesterol level was high, even for a 43 year-old. Max was asked if he drank alcohol - Max confessed to a glass of wine and several cups of coffee. Max was told to cut on the caffeine.
(9) Getting part of his chest shaved for a cardio-vascular test on the treadmill.
(10) Puffing his way through a series of inclines on the treadmill.
(11) Getting told that he had a perfect bill of health, except for the high cholesterol, which would mean another check up in six months' time.
(12) Getting severe palpitations when he was given the bill for the exercise.
This evening, Max passed on the option of pasta with broccoli and gorgonzola, and went for pasta with broccoli, anchovies and pine nuts. Plus one glass of wine.
Max wonders how many people would be saved if they got sick twenty years later than they actually did.
Max's chest is itching from the shaving.
Max is going to spend some time searching for 'cholesterol' and 'wine', hoping there is no obvious linkage.
Max is listening to a tribute show for the late John Peel, who also died of heart failure. But not before championing some of the most exciting, dangerous, obscure and life-changing music of the twentieth century.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Crossing one's legs
Max can now go back to his usual life.
The ten-day marathon work session of non-stop work is over. Max is not quite sure what all of it will lead to. But at least he can go back to whatever it is that Max used to do before he got locked into a never-ending cycle of reports, presentations, brainstorming, e-business, online learning, team-building, budgeting, PowerPointing, bad food eating, male-bonding, waking up after four hours sleep of more of the same.
Max surfaces to see that the important things in life are still intact. Jacob still remembers his father. Smudge is still fat.And men round the world are faced with a new threat. Just as well that there is probably no longer a need for his reproductive prowess in years to come. And anyway, his Sony Vaio's battery died more than two years ago.
Max wonders whether he could justify buying himself a new laptop for Christmas.
The ten-day marathon work session of non-stop work is over. Max is not quite sure what all of it will lead to. But at least he can go back to whatever it is that Max used to do before he got locked into a never-ending cycle of reports, presentations, brainstorming, e-business, online learning, team-building, budgeting, PowerPointing, bad food eating, male-bonding, waking up after four hours sleep of more of the same.
Max surfaces to see that the important things in life are still intact. Jacob still remembers his father. Smudge is still fat.And men round the world are faced with a new threat. Just as well that there is probably no longer a need for his reproductive prowess in years to come. And anyway, his Sony Vaio's battery died more than two years ago.
Max wonders whether he could justify buying himself a new laptop for Christmas.
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