ALAN ASHTON-SMITH

20 February 2012

Home brewing

In the absence of anything else that’s piqued my interest enough that I want to write about it, I’ve decided to write a few words about the homebrew I currently have on the go.

These eleven bottles constitute my second attempt at brewing my own ale.  The first might be worth remembering as an interesting experiment, but is probably best forgotten.  Although the recipe I worked from promised a light ale of medium alcoholic strength, the product of my endeavours turned out to be rather dark, extremely sweet, and alarmingly potent.  Not altogether displeased with this cheap route towards inebriation, but nonetheless confused, I wondered whether this discrepancy was due to an excess of sugar, or whether the fact that I conditioned the first batch in two litre coke bottles rather than more professional looking 500ml glass bottles could possibly have had something to do with it.

The brewing process is actually pretty simple: first you dump a load sugar and malt extract in boiling water for half an hour, then add hops and boil for a further half hour.  When the mixture has cooled you sprinkle on yeast and leave to ferment for a week.  Then siphon into bottles and leave for ten days or so to condition.  With so few ingredients and not a lot of steps to take in, it should be very difficult to mess it up, but during my second attempt I realised where I had gone wrong first time round.  For all of the ingredients, I had halved the quantities stated in the recipe – but somehow I’d neglected to do this for the malt extract.  This excess malt evidently released a surfeit of sugars into the beer – hence the sweetness and strength.

Round two is currently conditioning in its bottles, so I can’t comment on whether it’s any good, but it’s certainly looking better the malty moonshine I ended up with last time.  With luck, I’ll finish up with something that doesn’t knock you out after a half a pint, and having mastered the simple starter recipe I’ll be able to move onto boiling up the malt from scratch rather than using jars of extract from Holland and Barrett (a pleasing side effect of this will be that I should never again have to go into the Dalston branch of Holland and Barrett, which has possibly the slowest cashiers I’ve ever encountered), and experimenting with different varieties of hops.

In fact, part of the reason why I’m feeling very positive about what’s currently sitting in those bottles is that I suspect over-energetic future experimentation might mean that this turns out to be my best ever brew.  I’m keen on the idea of culinary meddling and hate seeing food go to waste, so once I’m dealing with bags of raw grains and blending hops together I will no doubt find it hard to resist throwing all kinds of extra ingredients into the brew – anything hanging around in the fridge too long could end up in the ale.  And at the moment that includes capers, marsala syrup, and black pudding…

9 February 2012

Hatchet job

A couple of days ago The Guardian’s website proudly announced that Adam Mars-Jones’ review of Michael Cunningham’s latest novel, By Nightfall, published in its sister paper The Observer, had been awarded the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year award.

The prize, which in its material form consists of a golden hatchet and a year’s supply of potted shrimp, is awarded ‘for the writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months’.  The manifesto published on the award’s website states that it is intended as a means of championing the role of the book reviewer and ‘to promote honesty and wit in literary journalism’.

While that’s a commendable remit, I can’t help but find the ‘Hatchet Job of the Year’ rather depressing.  I’m not setting out to defend Cunningham’s novel, which I haven’t read, nor to produce my own hatchet job of Mars-Jones’ review.  In fact, Mars-Jones presents a compelling case for why I shouldn’t read By Nightfall, and as such I’d say he has produced a strong review of the book.

However, it’s a pity that the Hatchet Job of the Year favours angry and trenchant reviews.  It suggests that a book review can’t be witty or honest if it praises the book under review.  People will always enjoy reading things that are acerbically critical, and all the more so in the age of an interactive internet in which they can verbally spar with one another and achieve kudos amongst their peers by coming up with a put-down that is accurate, incisive and funny.  But the Hatchet Job of the Year seems to imply that the best reviews are by their very nature negative.

I’m very much in favour of the literary review becoming something that is recognised as a form that one can enjoy reading, rather than merely something that is glossed over in order to determine whether a book is worth bothering worth.  As an occasional book reviewer myself (and a more regular reviewer of music), I’d love to see the profile of the form raised.  Additionally, I’ll admit that it can be fun to write a negative review: if you’ve had to read a terrible book then it is satisfying to explain what makes it so bad.  And the English language does seem to lend itself so well to expressions of dissatisfaction.  It’s difficult to rave about something without sounding either clichéd or maniacal, but original barbs are fired far more easily from the pen.

So how about another new prize, which rewards the best positive book reviews.  Being able to write a favourable review that’s entertaining and honest, and which doesn’t wax on in such a way that you suspect bribes have been handled, is at least as commendable as being able to wittily explain what’s wrong with a book.  Let’s remember that good criticism needn’t always be critical.

27 January 2012

Must it always be rampant?

Last night I went to see Shame, a movie that makes you feel like you’ve been hit in the head with an iron bar and then left to think about the implications of what has happened to you.  Plenty of films manage the iron bar part, but not the left to think part, so I suppose Shame is quite remarkable in delivering not just an immediate blow, but also a sense of prolonged trauma.  It doesn’t leave you reeling as though from some kind of brutal attack; rather it makes you feel as though you’ve suffered such an attack in the relatively recent past, and are now going through a process of recovery characterized by numbness, anxiety and occasional twinges of pain.

Enough about the film though: I want to talk about what happened when I got home and my girlfriend asked me if it had included lots of rampant sex.  I hesitated, then said that there had been a lot of sex, but most of it was not rampant.  ‘Rampant’, I pointed out, means standing up.  She immediately recounted this brief exchange on Facebook, concluding that I am a pedant.

This morning it became apparent that she had mistyped ‘pedant’ as ‘pendant’.  The error provoked amused reactions, but it also made me wonder whether I too had made an error in my declaration that ‘rampant’ means standing up.  Of course, the word ‘rampant’ has more than one meaning: it can signify either the position of being upright on two legs, or something that is wild and uncontrolled.  I had meant that standing up was the primary definition, but by now I was uncertain whether that was the case.

Clearly, the two definitions are connected.  I understood ‘rampant’ to mean standing upright, having read about heraldic terminology as a child.  On coats of arms, an animal is said to be rampant if it is portrayed rearing up on its hind legs.  I confirmed this by running a Google image search for ‘rampant’; lots of drawings of animals appeared on my screen, of which the goat I’ve reproduced here is obviously the coolest.  I then repeated the search with Safe Search disabled, and was pleased to see that the screen remained filled with lions, unicorns and the occasional goat, rather than pornographic photos.  It’s easy to see how the rampant animal might lead to ‘rampant’ meaning uncontrolled or fierce; the beast rearing up on its hind legs is manifestly ready to release his wildness.  If you don’t believe me, just look into that goat’s eyes.

My image search confirmed that ‘rampant’ can definitely mean standing up, but I still needed to check whether rampant meant standing up before it meant wild and uncontrolled.  So I turned to the OED.  Here I found my suspicions to be correct.  The first definition cited is, ‘Of an animal, esp. a lion: rearing or standing with the forepaws in the air, esp. in a threatening manner’, and the earliest recorded usage is c.1300.  It’s not until 1609 that we arrive at the definition, ‘Of a person: violent of unrestrained in action, performance, opinion, etc.; unchecked, holding sway.’  Meanwhile, the third definition – ‘Lustful’ – was recorded as used in 1596 in the lines, ‘Thus began the holie warres of Sion Against the rampant Hagg and whoore of Babylon’.

Having browsed the dictionary, I felt that I was justified in declaring authoritatively that ‘rampant’ means standing up.  Yet it is also clear that it’s possible to have rampant sex in any number of positions.  This troubles me – not for prudish, sentimental reasons, but because the idea of ‘rampant sex’ has become so ubiquitous.  A flick through the tabloids and trashy websites shows that everyone, from the Beckhams to the Osbournes to Benito Mussolini, is having ‘rampant sex’.  It seems that no one ever has sex that isn’t rampant any more.  Must it always be rampant?

One fact that’s evident from the OED’s entry for ‘rampant’ is that the meanings of words change.  The heraldic image of a lion rearing up fiercely has given rise to ‘rampant’ referring to unchecked aggression or lust.  But more recently it seems to have become a word loaded with innuendo.  I am all in favour of the natural evolution of the English language; however, I do think it’s a shame that describing a lion or a goat as ‘rampant’ will more than likely elicit giggling.

There is one abjectly memorable moment in Shame in which the sex-addicted protagonist played by Michael Fassbender spies a couple going at it while standing against a plate glass window, and then engages a prostitute to help him reenact the scene.  I can accept that this is ‘rampant sex’, and am happy to condone it: whatever does it for you.  But I do wish that sex wasn’t described as ‘rampant’ so often that the word ‘rampant’ has come to signify sex.

25 January 2012

East European Museums

Although my knowledge of museum studies is very rudimentary, I do know that the relationship between the museum and its visitors is an important part of the field.  Of course, this is something that becomes apparent upon visiting a museum or gallery.  I’m not just talking about the visitor’s perception of their own experience at the museum: whether you’re at the British Museum, the Guggenheim or the Rijksmuseum, it’s impossible not to be extremely conscious of your fellow visitors.  They tend to be busy places.

But this is not the case everywhere, and here I want to focus on the far less crowded condition of museums in Eastern Europe.  That doesn’t apply across the whole region: the Hermitage in St. Petersburg heaves with visitors, as do most of Prague’s museums.  The places I am specifically referring to are the parts of Europe that suffer more from being ‘othered’ by people from the West.  Cities that lack the imperial histories of St. Petersburg or Prague and which are instead thought of as underdeveloped places blighted by their communist pasts.  In fact, they have all the amenities of cities in Western Europe and more often than not the same brand names; cities in Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria don’t actually feel all that different.  However, there is one aspect of these places that has always felt ‘other’ to me, and that is their typically near-deserted museums and galleries.

Skopje's city museum is unusual in looking pretty much the way most people would expect an East European museum to look

A valid response to this would be to say that this is because these East European countries don’t act as tourist destinations in the same way as the cities that are home to the more teeming museums of the West.  In some cases that would be true.  Macedonia’s capital is not a popular holiday spot – if it was, then perhaps the Museum of the City of Skopje would be in a better state then it was when I visited last year.  It consisted of three displays: a room of portrait photography, a poorly lit hall of archeological fragments, and some reconstructions of mid-twentieth century homes.  In Katowice too, tourists are in short supply, but those who do visit have the chance to go to the Muzeum Śląskie.  Katowice doesn’t rate highly on my list of favourite European cities, but where else could I have discovered the wonderfully peculiar work of Kazimierz Mikulski?

The weirdly wonderful work of Kazimierz Mikulski

But many of Eastern Europe’s towns and cities host plenty of tourists.  It’s just that, for some reason, few of these tourists seem to be interested in the museums.  Take Bratislava, for example.  The city’s old town overflows with tourists, but visiting the Slovak National Gallery, I found it to be almost empty.  There were more staff than visitors and, as seems to be the case throughout Eastern Europe, they were far more hands-on than the attendants who sit impassive in the corners of galleries in the West: they are often very keen to ensure that visitors don’t stray from the recommended route through the museum.

The Montenegrin city of Kotor is like a more bijou Bratislava, though the majority of its many tourists are from Serbia rather than Western Europe.  The main attraction for energetic visitors is the long, steep ascent to the city’s fortifications, while those who like to remain sedentary prefer the beaches.  But there is also a maritime museum that chronicles Kotor’s nautical history.  Its custodian helpfully pointed out that, as a student, I qualified for a substantially discounted entry, but then refused to let me in because I didn’t have the right change.  Maybe this explains why the museum was deserted – presumably not all visitors are prepared to go and get a drink and then return with the right coinage.

In Sofia, the amount of English I heard spoken surprised me.  But the museums were predictably quiet, despite the impressive collection of the National Gallery for Foreign Art, where the highlight is surely the ukiyo-e prints.  Down the road in the National Ethnographic Museum, I was literally the only visitor.  A woman approached me as soon as I entered the exhibition space; I assumed that she was there to make sure I viewed the displays in the correct order, but instead she asked where I was from, and on learning that I was British she fetched an Anglophone attendant who gave me a one on one guided tour of the museum.  Afterwards, I wondered whether I ought to tip him, but concluded that this probably wasn’t necessary.

After all, he was simply doing his job, and I’m sure his job is significantly more interesting when people actually turn up to the museum.  And museums and galleries are also a more enticing prospect for visitors when they’re busy – ideally not so busy that you have to queue next to each painting to get a look at it, but at least with some sort of buzz.  Some of these tragically under-patronised museums in Eastern Europe feel like tombs full of grave goods that you’ve wandered into by mistake.  Unfortunately, sitting here in London, I can’t do much to drum up business for museums in Poland or Bulgaria; the best I can do is recommend that you check these places out if you’re visiting anywhere in Eastern Europe.

13 January 2012

Going Public

This will be the first blog post that I actively publicise.  I’m writing that not just as a statement of fact, but as an instruction to myself.  Yes, I have to tell myself to solicit readers, so slight is my natural inclination to do so.  It’s not that I don’t want anyone to read what I’ve written; it’s just that I feel uncomfortable asking people to read it.

Of course, one can maintain a blog without seeking out a readership, and it’s theoretically possible that such a blog will acquire readers of its own accord.  There is a chance that people might enter a specific chain of words into Google, hit the search button, and find themselves directed towards my blog.  But unless the chain of words being entered happens to be my name, it’s a fairly slim chance, and it would be naïve to rely on that possibility as a way of generating a readership.  Moving swiftly on from the Field Of Dreams school of blogging (If you build it, they will come), the obvious thing to do is to plug the blog through social networks.  Better to post links to posts on Facebook and Twitter and let people read them that way.  They might even pass the links on to other people.

But this is the point where the sense of disquiet kicks in and I feel funny about sharing the blog.  Why, then, am I so reluctant to give people to opportunity to read something that I want them to read?  The trouble is that it has to start with people I know.  I don’t particularly like the idea of people I know reading my blog.  OK, that’s not strictly true.  If you know me, I don’t want you to stop reading now.  I just don’t like thinking about people I know reading my blog.  This is partly because I’m anxious about their judgement.  There are a lot of very clever people on my Facebook friends list (I’m not saying that to butter up anyone who’s come here via Facebook; I really mean it) and I wouldn’t like them to perceive me as foolish or trivial.  But it’s mostly because I feel that beginning the quest for readers by foisting the blog upon people I know is cheating.  For some reason that I’m unable to explain, I hold the view that I should be able to bypass the stage of building an audience of friends, acquaintances and online contacts, and jump straight to the mythical realm of the ‘wider public’.

So, here goes.  Once I’ve finished writing this post, I’ll upload it to my website and then dutifully share it on Facebook and tweet a link to it.  I might not be going straight for the ‘wider public’ but I’ll take some comfort in the fact that I have ended up using a rather unorthodox strategy for procuring readers: the first post that I’m sharing is all about how I don’t want people to read my blog.  Talk about how to alienate your readership from the off…

4 January 2012

Lexical Exercise

In early January the back doors of the blogging sites are as crowded as gyms, full of people who will probably have fled from them before spring.  Despite the time of year at which I’m writing this, I feel entitled to pass such a remark, or at least to attempt some kind of self-justification.  That’s because I’m not strictly a new blogger – I created this site about a year and a half ago.  Admittedly, the only things I’ve posted here since then are links to things that I’ve written that are posted elsewhere, but I’d like to think that I still have some kind of edge over everyone else who resolved to start blogging in 2012.  If I may return to the metaphor of exercise, I’m not a gym virgin.  I’m someone who’s been a member of the gym for a while – it’s just that I haven’t lifted a lot of weights.  I may still have very little upper body strength and no stamina at all, but at least my trainers aren’t fresh out of the box.

So why the desire to start blogging in earnest now?  It’s not as though I’ve resolved to start writing, as that’s something I do quite a lot of already.  In the past three and a half years I’ve written around 90,000 words about Gypsy Punk music, which I’m currently attempting to whittle into a coherent PhD thesis.  I’ve also produced over a hundred short pieces of music journalism in the past year, and a handful of other writings, both academic and journalistic.  Although I don’t earn a living from it, and though I spend more time doing the stuff I do earn a living from, I think it’s reasonable for me to describe myself as a writer.

Hence the need for this blog: it’s so that I can move away from thinking of myself as a ‘PhD student’ or a ‘music journalist’ and perhaps become the kind of semi-mythical entity that’s known simply as ‘a writer’.  For such a being the act of writing is more important than the subject being addressed.  If that sounds like a defence for twaddling on and on without ever making a point, then bear with me: I’m not seeking a licence to write about nothing, but the capacity to write about anything.  I hope that by the summer of this year my PhD will be done and dusted, and I don’t want to finish that huge project and have nothing left to write about.

This blog is a kind of lexical exercise, then (see, that gym metaphor wasn’t just plucked from nowhere), and I’d like these blog posts to be comparable to physical workouts.  I’m a painfully slow writer: these three and a half paragraphs have taken me that best part of an hour.  It’s not that I struggle to remember how to spell words, or that I type with just one finger.  I agonise over word choices and spend too long wondering how to phrase sentences.  This kind of silliness needs to stop, and by writing regularly, and with the freedom to choose my subject matter, I hope that it will.  Striving for the ability to write 500 words of prose in under half an hour might be pretty feeble compared to pushing for the burn on the cross trainer, but consider my literary treadmill turned on nonetheless.