Tom Wolfe and the art of Mau-Mau

Posted by Cila Warncke

Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe’s famous new journalism is nothing but an abdication of the traditional journalistic ideal of objectivity. What makes him so beloved of white, middle-class, status-quo lovers is that he presents the ‘freaks’ of society exactly as they wish to see them. Peering out from his WASP bubble he offers no insight; only his own prejudice, funkily punctuated. Far from being revolutionary he is reactionary.

His 1970 essay Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers is Wagnerian. He plays every finely tuned instrument of white middle-American fear and loathing with masterful aplomb. It starts with a statement: “the poverty programme encouraged you to go in for mau-mauing.” You don’t know yet what ‘mau-mauing’ is, only that it is encouraged by “the poverty programme” – a vague bureaucratic entity endowed with a definite article. This is a beautiful piece of disinformation. There is not now, nor at any point in American history has there been, anything that could be described, accurately, as the poverty programme. Governmental attempts to succour, redistribute, endow, benefit, aid, or otherwise un-disenfranchise its economic laggards are desultory, peculiar, and limited. Wolfe knows this because he isn’t quite brave enough to give “poverty programme” the initial capitals called for by that “the”.

Over the next few paragraphs a rough sketch of “mau-mauing” begins to emerge. His breathless sentences tap-tap into the brain. The ones doing the mau-mauing are: “hard-to-reach hard-to-hold-hard-core hardrock blackrage badass furious funky ghetto youth.” Not like you and I, whispers beneath the shout. Them. People who mess everything up with their hard-to-hold hard-core hardrock. Hammering chunks out of language itself. I’ll show you how they do it, he beckons.

“There was one man called Chaser. Chaser would get his boys together and he would give them a briefing like the U.S. Air Force wing commander gives his pilots in Thailand before they make the raid over North Vietnam.” This, people, is war. Those furious funky ghetto youth are an invading army, they are braced and coming at you, in your suburban homes and Lay-Z boy recliners and apple-pie-and-ice-cream Sundays. Beware.

Chaser “used to be in vaudeville. At least that was what everybody said.” Old journalism couldn’t get away with substituting “that’s what everybody said” (Who is ‘everybody?’ When and where did they say it?) for fact checking. Did or did not Chaser used to be in vaudeville? Why not ask Chaser? That would ruin the rhythm. What matters is not where Chaser learned his gift of the gab but the image caught up in that word vaudeville. Cheap light entertainment. Minstrel shows. Something tacky, tawdry, archaic. Like Chaser, who “always wore a dashiki, over some ordinary pants and a Ban-lon shirt. He had two of these Ban-lon shirts and he alternated them.” Wolfe pulverises Chaser’s credibility with every phrase. He wears a dashiki over ordinary pants (he’s inauthentic) and he only has two shirts (he’s poor). By the time Wolfe describes him as a “born leader” the words hum mockery. Born leader to dumb ghetto youths too high on their blackrage badass to know you don’t follow men who alternate their shirts and might have been in vaudeville.

The putative ex-vaudevillian wing commander exhorts his troops: “when you go downtown, y’all wear your ghetto rags…see… don’t go down there with your Italian silk jerseys on and your brown suede and green alligator shoes and your Harry Belafonte shirts… And don’t go down there with your hair all done up nice in your curly Afro… you go down with your hair stickin’ out… and sittin’ up… looking like a bunch of wild niggers.” The phrasing lingers in sweet, heavy warning notes. Ghetto rags are a fiction perpetrated by slick-shod, Italian silk jersey-wearing, chocolate-coloured con artists trying to separate the God-fearing white taxpayer from his money by mau-mauing the poverty programme. Don’t even consider for a minute there might be real poverty down in that ghetto. Turn your back and they’ll all be in their Harry Belafonte shirts sporting nice curly Afros. Be wise to their jiveass. If they look poor it’s because they want to look poor. Don’t be a sucker.

It isn’t just the shifty slick-talking bloods leeching on: “before long everybody in the so-called Third World was into it.” The “so-called” (like “everybody said” before it) permits the double-barrelled phrase: Third World. These people aren’t even from here. You, dear reader, belong to the First World. They come from somewhere else, belong somewhere else. They aren’t your problem, the “Chinese, the Japanese, the Chicanos, the Indians” and especially not the Samoans who “were like the original unknown terrors… everything about them is gigantic…. They’ll have a skull the size of a watermelon, with a couple of little squinty eyes and a little mouth and a couple of nose holes stuck in, and no neck at all. From the ears down, the big yoyos are just one solid welded hulk, the size of an oil burner.” Hang on a second and listen while the nuances whisper out of those words: a skull the size of a watermelon; little squinty eyes – like pigs; not even a nose but nose holes like a fright mask; big yoyos; one solid welded hulk. They might be vegetable, animal, monster, mineral or machine but they definitely ain’t human. Not like you and I.

We know, now, who does the mau-mauing. Enter the flak catcher. This passage calls for subtlety. Tamp down the hard-hitting rhythm section, let the woodwinds carry the next segment through on their modulated breath. The “blacks, Chicanos, Filipinos, and about ten Samoans” confront (in all their oil-burner sized, “Day-Glo yellow and hot-green sweaters and lemon-coloured pants”-wearing glory) a single man who has that “sloppy Irish look like Ed McMahon on TV.” Read between them lines: you’ve never worn hot-green sweaters and lemon-coloured pants, but you sure as hell know what Ed McMahon on TV looks like. That’s someone you can recognise and root for. The levee holding back this colourful flood wears “wheatcolour Hush Puppies [and a] wash’n’dry semi-tab-collar shortsleeves white shirt.” We know the bloods have “brown suede and green alligator” shoes at home; time to learn that “wheatcolour Hush Puppies… cost about $4.99, and the second time you move your toes, the seams split and the tops come away from the soles.” Don’t feel sorry for them. Don’t be a sucker. Look down again. The Samoans are wearing sandals and the straps “look like they were made from the reins on the Budweiser draft horses.” Dear god. Someone, or something, has to keep a check on these massive animals. Just as white America shifts anxiously on its sofa, half-hearing terrifying trampling feet Wolfe plays a silken note of assurance: “Nobody ever follows it up. You can get everything together once, for the demonstration… to see the people bury some gray cat’s nuts and make him crawl… but nobody ever follows it up.” They, the Third-Worlders. Huge. Threatening. Noisy. Ultimately harmless. Foiled not by the obfuscation of wheatcolour bureaucracy run by gray cats but by their own ineradicable indolence.

There is more to mau-mauing. Plenty more. A virtuoso teardown of sucker whites slices through the: “middle-class white intellectual women… with flat-heeled shoes and big Honest Calves” and their students who “would have on berets and hair down to the shoulders… and jeans, but not Levi’s… jeans of the people, the black Can’t Bust ‘Em brand, hod-carrier jeans that have an emblem on the back of a hairy gorilla” (Wolfe overlooks the subject-object confusion in his rush to hang the words black and hairy gorilla together).

He is wise to it, and he wants you to be wise too. Don’t get hoodwinked by those twinkling alligator shoes. “Boys don’t grow up looking up to the man who had a solid job… because there weren’t enough people who had such jobs.” Don’t think he’s gonna dwell on the whys and wherefores of there not being enough people who had such jobs, though. Your honour, the witness refuses to answer the question in the grounds that it may incriminate him. Slide fast to the details about “$150 Sly Stone-style vest and pants outfit from the haberdasheries on Polk and the $35 Lester Chambers-style four-inch-brim black beaver fedora” and the men wearing them who slid into neighbourhoods peopled by “the bums, the winos, the prostitutes with biscuits & gravy skin, the gay boys, the flaming lulus, the bike riders” and got “a grant of nearly $100,000”. That’s what happens when civilisation gets mau-maued by the Third-World; the ghetto youth get their grasping – “hanging limp at the wrist with the forefinger sticking out like some kind of curved beak” – hands on “a $937,000 grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity.”

Any do-gooder, white middle-class intellectual fool who thinks any of this makes a difference ought to think again. Give them jobs? What for? “The jobs themselves were nothing…. You got $1.35 an hour and ended up as a file clerk or stock-room boy in some federal office… all you learned was how to make work, fake work and malinger out by the Xerox machine.” Moreover, Wolfe can explain why “Nevertheless, there was some fierce mau-mauing that went on over summer jobs”. Not because the community needed those jobs or even wanted those jobs but because “the plain fact was that half the jobs were handed out organisation by organisation, according to how heavy your organisation was. If you could get twenty summer jobs… when the next only got five, then you were four times the aces they were… no lie.” Your taxpayer dollars at work:  propping up the egos of pimp-swaggering furious funky ghetto youth.

There is one final movement, a violin-swelling, cymbal-clashing, curtain-call guaranteeing flight of earlicking fancy that makes the Ride of the Valkyries sound like a lullaby. There were so many groups mau-mauing, see, “you had to show some style, show some imagination.” Like Bill Jackson, who calls himself Jomo Yarumba and marches on City Hall with a “children’s army… sixty strong, sixty loud, sixty wild they come swinging into the great plush gold-and-marble lobby… with hot dogs, tacos, Whammies, Frostees, Fudgsicles, French fries, Eskimo Pies, Awful-Awfuls, Sugar-Daddies, Sugar-Mommies, Sugar-Babies, chocolate-covered frozen bananas, malted milks, Yoo-Hoos, berry pies, bubble gums, cotton candy, Space Food sticks, Frescas, Baskin-Robbins boysenberry-cheesecake ice-cream cones, Milky Ways, M&Ms, Tootsie Pops, Slurpees, Drumsticks, jelly doughnuts, taffy apples, buttered Karamel Korn, root-beer floats, Hi-C punches, large Cokes, 7-Ups, Three Musketeer bars, frozen Kool-Aids… a hurricane of little bodies… roaring about with their creamy wavy gravy food and drink held up in the air like the torches of freedom, pitching and rolling at the most perilous angles, a billow of root-beer float here… a Yoo-Hoo typhoon there.. a hurricane of malted milk, an orange blizzard of crushed ice from the Slurpees, with acid red horrors like the red from the taffy apples and the jelly from the jelly doughnuts… every gradation of solubility and liquidity known to syrup – filling the air, choking it, getting trapped gurgling and spluttering in every glottis – ”

The words scamper around like that hurricane of little bodies with their perilously angled food and drink. There is a racing pulse to the rhythm, ecstatic as a sugar high. You feel giddy just reading it. Every name snaps on your synapses like bubblegum popping. Without really knowing why you feel your throat filling with the solubility and liquidity of the syrup filling the air choking it getting trapped. You can feel the tide rising. Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood, only this time the savages are going to drown you in creamy wavy gravy Yoo-Hoo typhoon acid red horrors. Thirty pages ago you didn’t know to be afraid. Didn’t know how the furious funky born leader pimp true artists of the mau-mau are just waiting to rise up out of the ghetto and wash over your hallowed gold-and-marbled halls in “purple sheets of root-beer” but now you do. Because you “didn’t know where to look…. Didn’t even know who to ask” until Tom Wolfe came rolling through your door in his white pimp-sharp suit with his fedora and silk handkerchief and (probably) Italian-style socks. The man is a “rare artist” of the mau-mau.

DJ Mag: 50 Ways to Do Ibiza

Posted by Cila Warncke

Originally published in DJ Magazine Ibiza Edition 2008

1. Look both ways
Traffic runs on the right-hand side of the road here. Whether on foot or in a hire car an unexpected encounter with a fast-moving moto will ruin your holiday.

2. Take the bus
Everything else in Ibiza is “mañana, mañana” but the buses arrive and depart with Prussian regularity. You can zip between Ibiza Town and San An or Santa Eularia in 20 minutes, for a mere €1.65 (compared to €20 in a taxi) or hop on the Disco Bus to Amnesia or Privilege for €2.10, saving yourself the cost of a vodka limon.

3. Go to Underground
The tagline on its website reads “not for everyone” but that’s precisely why you should spend at least one night partying at this converted 200-year-old farmhouse. It’s a second home for the island regulars so the best place to pick up gossip or news about the coolest villa parties.

4. Go to a local café
Spanked your MasterCard buying shots at Pacha? Seek out the Ibicenco equivalent of a greasy spoon and enjoy a three-course meal with a drink for under a tenner. Also, Spanish laborers are partial to a beer or chupito with their breakfast so workerman’s cafés are an ideal place for a sneaky post-club bevy.

5. Have a drink at Teatro Pereyra
The drink prices are daunting (watch out for the €50 bottles of wine) but you have to visit this red-velvet venue at the end of Vara De Rey at least once for its live music and retro ambiance.

6. Hire a chef…
You’re in a villa full of hungry people more adept at frying their brains than frying eggs. Why not pool your resources and call for help? Catering companies like Le Grande Bouffe will whip up dinner, or provide a fabulous beachside picnic – for less money and hassle than doing it yourself.

7. Try vino payes from the source
There are polished local wines on offer in restaurants and shops but for an authentic taste of the island visit a vineyard like Can Pep (Sant Llorenc) or Can Rich (San An) and ask for a slug of vino payes – the Ibicenco vintner’s version of homebrew. Quality varies wildly by year and ‘yard but it’s better than the €2 bilge at Spar.

8. Talk to bar staff
They’re more than just drink dispensers, you know. If you’re looking for a great underground party go chat to Dave and Duze at Lo Cura or make friends with Steve or Sophie at Delano. Curious about island history? Miguel at Marino is a walking encyclopedia of local lore.

9. Take a barbeque to Sant Llorenc
Don’t spend your whole holiday living on ham & cheese baguettes – get out of town and up to the tiny village of Sant Llorenc to its municipal park/barbeque spot. There are picnic tables, individual bbq pits and even firewood.

10. Make sure you have your EHIC card
Hopefully you won’t need it but be sure to get your European Health Insurance Card before you fly. It entitles you to free emergency medical treatment (and Spain’s top-notch state health service puts the NHS to shame, so you’ll be in good hands).

11. Embrace Eroski
With its red white and blue logo Eroski looks more like a petrol station than a grocery store but it’ll save your budget. They do freshly baked bread, inexpensive booze, nice produce and their own-brand toiletries will bail you out if you forgot the wash bag.

12. Dance to cheese on the Sunset Terrace
Now the Space terrace is just another box with a roof and windows go catch the last remaining vestiges of the open-air vibe on the sunset terrace. Tom Novy, a resident for going on 15 years, will play the most appalling cheese imaginable and but somehow the extra dose of sunshine makes it bearable.

13. Get invited to a villa party
You haven’t lived till you’ve gotten off your head at a stranger’s country house… and with the strict opening hours laws in effect this season villa parties will be the only way to go. To snare an invite strike up conversations with the regulars at the bars in the old town.

14. Wear fancy dress
Embrace the un-coolness of wonky glasses, comedy wigs and outrageous charity shop castoffs. Look like a plum? Who cares! It’s Ibiza. Put on your weirdest clobber and take to the dancefloor with pride.

15. Get a tattoo
Perhaps it’s something to do with the general air of live-and-let-live liberalism, but Ibiza has more tattoos per capita than most prisons and great tattoo artists as well. For a permanent reminder of your perfect island summer visit Sandra at Tiki Tattoo who creates one-of-a-kind Tahitian tribal designs, or head to Inkadelic in the Mercado Viejo where Luca specialises in gorgeous script.

16. Hang out at Ocean Drive
The DJ hotel of choice, Ocean Drive at the end of Marina Botafoc is the perfect place to gatecrash debauched after-hours parties. Every weekend its full of the We Love… line-up and Pacha regulars so get down to the bar, blend in, and see where the night takes you.

17. Have a pizza at Punto.It
It’s approximately the size of a phone box but this pizzeria on the main drag in Figueretes dishes up the most delicious, authentic Neapolitan pizzas imaginable. Can’t be bothered to leave your apartment? They deliver too, just call +34 971 39 30 67.

18. Stock up on Saturday
Ibiza shuts down on Sundays so get in plenty of water, booze, loo roll and Rizla the day before. There’s nothing worse than rolling home after a heavy night to find your apartment fridge empty apart from jar of mayonnaise and a half-drunk tin of San Miguel.

19. Experience the ice cannon at Amnesia
You haven’t lived until you’ve stood in the pulsating centre of the main room at Amnesia, blinded by the lights and suddenly felt the temperature drop from 35 degrees to zero as the ice cannon belch out a blast of dry ice. It’s the best rush on the island, even stone-cold sober.

20. Get a massage on the beach
It’ll help shift the toxins and lactic acid produced by a heavy night’s raving and give you the energy boost you need to enjoy the next party.

21. Hire a mountain bike
Cheat traffic by hiring at bike. It’s the best way to get to Salinas or Es Cavallet during the height of the season, and if you fancy getting away from it all head inland towards Sant Llorenc or Sant Mateu for a relaxing ride in the countryside.

22. Get in the swim
There’s no call to learn open water swimming in England but it’d be a crime not to take advantage of Ibiza’s the crystalline shallows. Brush up on your skills and confidence with an hour or two of personalized coaching from Ibiza Swim.

23. Drink hierbas
Make like one of the locals and finish off your meal with a chupito (shot) of hierbas, the traditional Ibicenco licquer. It tastes a like a sweeter, milder Sambucca and is strangely, addictively refreshing.

24. Learn enough Spanish to order a cab
Radio taxi dispatchers in Ibiza are known for their zero-tolerance, especially at the height of the season. Speaking English will get you nowhere so remember this phrase: “Quiero un taxi desde (where you are) a (where you want to go), por favor.” It’s your only hope.

25. Go diving at Punta Galera
This rocky stretch of coastline at the end of San An bay is a fantastic place for diving. And the lack of a sand beach means it’s never crowded, even in mid-summer.

26. Eat fruit from the tree
We’re not suggesting climbing any fences to steal oranges (tempting though it might be if you’re down to your last 10 euros) but if you happen upon a fruit tree in the campo there is nothing more delicious than a freshly picked, sun-warmed fig or Clementine.

27. Share a taxi with a random
Shed your British inhibitions about talking in queues and find out who else is headed your way. It saves time, money, the environment and is good karma to boot.

28. Wine spritzers
Mixing good wine with fizzy water feels wrong somehow, but after a couple of stonking hangovers you’ll begin to see why Ibicencos regularly dilute their vino with a dash of agua con gas. It stops you drinking too quickly and – most importantly – keeps dehydration from sneaking up and wrecking havoc with your head.

29. Know the police
There are three police forces in Ibiza: local, national and the Guardia Civil. The local police are in charge of safety and public order, not drugs or violent crime. So remember who’s who, mind your manners around all of them and, if you’re unlucky enough to be involved in an incident, remember you’ll need to report it to the Guardia – not the local police.

30. Count on the chemist — 24/7
You can get almost anything over the counter in Spanish chemists for aches, pains, itches or ailments, including contraception and antibiotics. Be aware some medications are expensive without a prescription, though. Chemists operate a 24-hour rota system so there’s always one open.

31. In case of emergency…
There are two numbers you need to know: 112 – the standard Spanish emergency number — and +34 971 301 818 which connects you to the British Consulate, which can help with lost passports, legal issues and financial crisis (email: BritishConsulate.Ibiza@fco.gov.uk)

32. Buy a memory stick for your camera
Half the fun of coming to Ibiza is being able to taunt your friends back home with endless Facebook albums of your wild nights and sun-soaked days. Don’t spoil the fun for yourself by running out of memory space on day five.

33. Get a Spanish SIM card
They are about five euros each and mean you can receive calls from home for free and if everyone in your group gets one you’ll save a mint on those “I’m on the terrace mate, where are you?” texts.

34. Embrace locutorios
These cheap and cheerful internet cafés are the best place to pop in and check your email, or make a phone call. They also sell snacks, beer and cold drinks – which comes in handy at odd hours or on Sundays when the ordinary shops are shut.

35. Go to a market (but not Es Canar)
The “hippie market” at Es Canar makes Southend look like St Tropez. Avoid it at all costs. For an authentic market experience head to the Saturday morning car boot sale at the Hippodrome in Sant Jordi or to chic boho hangout Las Dalhias.

36. Buy at least one piece of “island clothing” (i.e., trashy, sexy, outrageous)
As far as high street shopping goes Ibiza is a bit of a wasteland so snap up some fabulous piece of Eurotrash gear instead. Diaphanous floral button-down shirt, lads? Feather-trimmed crop top with strategic cutouts, girls? Why not? With a fresh tan, and after a few days on the rave diet, you’ll look great in anything.

37. Arrive at a restaurant by boat
Be a VIP for a day and cast anchor off-shore from one of Ibiza’s super-chic beachfront restaurants. Ex Xarcu (34 971 187867) in Porroig is tops for luxury seafood, or idle off Cala Jondal and have your meal ferried out to you from Café Tropicana.

38. Check out the record stores
Vinyl outposts in a digital world, Ibiza’s record shops are among the best in the world. Satisfy your music cravings at 40-year-old institution Delta Discos for a Balearic-style mix, Industria (run by Inigo and Pepe from La Communidad) for hot underground electronica and techno or M15 for the latest compilation CDs (all in Ibiza Town).

39. Forget Atlantis
Honestly, unless you have a mate who knows exactly where it is the search for this mythical beach is about as fruitless as that for its namesake lost city. You have 80 other amazing beaches to choose from so don’t fritter away your sunshine time trying to find this one.

40. Have a drink at L’Elephant
A total style-magnet, L’Elephant boasts one of the coolest roof terraces on the island. Enjoy a sweeping view of the island as you sip a pre-Amnesia cocktail amidst its chic, minimal furnishings.

41. Jump into a pool with your clothes on
…because you can.

42. Have a close call/get thrown out of somewhere
Today’s catastrophe is tomorrow’s legendary tale. Just ask my mate who is still dining out on the time he got thrown out of Privilege for jumping in the pool, wandered wallet-less into a nearby cow pasture and was next seen slumped over on the back of a random’s scooter, fast asleep, after hitching a ride back to his hotel.

43. BYO to Amnesia
No, you can’t take your own drink in the club but you can do as the local kids do and loiter in the footbridge over the new motorway guzzling rum & coke before actually making your way into the club.

44. Have a tacky night in San An
It’s horrible, leery and full of 18-year-olds from Dagenham or Brum throwing up on each other and flashing their knickers. Er, what’s not to love? Rock on down to San An, get pissed on the cheap and enjoy the inevitable sense of superiority.

45. Take the water taxi to El Divino
Have a couple of drinks at Rock Bar then hop on the boat plying across the marina and arrive at El Divino in style, even if you only stay for a drink on the waterfront terrace.

46. Enjoy the view in the main room at Pacha
For sheer style Pacha is still the club to beat, and they have entertainment to match. Find a spot in the main room and admire the sexy moves and jaw-dropping physiques of their dancers.

47. Start a rumour
Wild rumours are to Ibiza what punch-ups are to Glaswegian pubs: an essential part of the ambiance. Tell your mates you’ve heard that Erick Morillo is going to have a secret all-drag theme party at Burger King, or that they’re going to open the roof at Privilege so Tiesto can sky-dive into the pool on opening night, and see how long it takes to whip around the island.

48. Play spot the DJ – whoever tots up the most wins
They are bloody everywhere, those DJs. Make a game of it (two points for a Space resident, three for anyone sporting a techno ‘tache, etc) and at the end of the week buy the winner a novelty tee-shirt.

49. Be careful with your valuables
It’s tempting to think that nothing bad can ever happen in Ibiza. This, unfortunately, isn’t true. If you don’t want to spend three hours baking in the Guardia Civil shack while some surly Spanish cop remains totally indifferent to the traumatic loss of your camera/money/passport keep your stuff close. You wouldn’t leave your bag on the floor in a bar in London, don’t in Ibiza.

50. Come back…
The worst thing about Ibiza is leaving. Ease the airport blues by planning your return journey ASAP. Whether it’s a “no luggage” two-day jaunt or a week during the off-season you’ll feel better for being able to say, “I’ll be back soon!”

Running to Stand Still

Posted by Cila Warncke

Blogging is like exercise: addictive, once you get the hang of it but dangerously easy to leave aside when life gets hectic. There is little to say about my several weeks’ hiatus apart from: stuff happened. Mexico. London. Ibiza. Plans made and then unmade for journeys to Ireland, the States, Mexico again. There were patches where I was seriously considering going to the nearest airport and buying a one-way ticket on the first flight to someplace I’d never been before. I got a little caught up in the idea of someplace new. A succession of adventures, coincidences, gin & tonics and long conversations with friends nudged me into the realisation that the ‘someplace new’ I need to explore is Ibiza – and my own motivations.

Home to Ibiza

Jumping on planes is A) more fun than jumping off them and B) only very occasionally an antidote to chronic discontent. I tried it with Mexico and couldn’t, at the end of 14 weeks, figure out why the hell I hadn’t learned anything there. Why I had come back as bored and irritable as I’d left. A few weeks rattling around in the Mediterranean sun, making fantastic new friends who kickstarted my brain from its tropic slothfulness into frisky, if somewhat tentative life, suggests that my problem wasn’t where I was but how I was thinking. Somewhere between Ibiza, E17 and Merida, I completely lost my bottle. Not that you’d have noticed, necessarily. I was still walking around spouting opinions, still capable of summoning enough bravado to actually get from E17 to Merida, but there was something missing. The best lack all conviction.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go, how I wanted to live or who I wanted to be. I was stumped. Then I got the following advice from a smartarse filmmaker:

Whatever you decide, feel good about it. Feel amazing about it. Feel as if you couldn’t have made any other possible decision. As long as you do that, everything will work out exactly as it should.

When I started to think like that suddenly the stubbornly wedged pieces began to fall into place. The decisions I fight the hardest are usually, in retrospect, as easy as falling over. It’s like standing at the top of a high dive. Turning, fretting, pawing at the board to buy time. Praying for a heavenly waterslide to appear. It never does. So I jumped. And my fear-hazed, pinched-in little world bloomed. There is much to be determined, questions to be posed and answered, work to be done, but it’s okay because life is exciting again.

Swine Flu – Notes on a ‘Pandemic’

Posted by Cila Warncke

I find it very difficult to take seriously an alleged nationwide emergency that I find out about by reading the Guardian website. Surely if swine flu or influenza porcina as the locals call it, were a hovering shadow of death across the fair land of Mexico someone would have thought to mention it? It was Saturday I happened across the UK headlines. The first local clue anything was up was the bored-looking attendents wearing surgical masks (tapa bocas) while handing out leaflets at the coach station when I returned to Merida on Monday.

Awful, isn't it?

Yucatan is for all intents and purposes a separate country, and the only reaction here seems to be mild boredom. The schools are shut, a fair few of the businesses (presumably because someone has to be at home to mind the kids) and the morning tae-bo class at the local stadium has been called off. This means us runners can hang out at the edge of the track and talk without being blasted by pumped up mariachi music, which is kind of nice. Jaime, my 10K buddy, put things in perspective: “They’ve shut the restaurants in Mexico City, but not the Metro.”

When he said that my already limited interest in swine flu bottomed out. The Mexico City Metro is a cross between a batteryfarm and a sauna. It is one of the most horrible, germ-spewing environments I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. If they haven’t shut the damn thing down they clearly aren’t that bothered.

Mexico City is a teeming hellhole. A city of over 22M people set in a natural bowl so every particle of smog, filth and germs sinks into lungs and skin. The fact 150 people have died after having flu symptoms is nothing more than a statistical blip. If this flu were anything to worry about there would be a lot more than eight confirmed deaths. As for the people who’ve travelled in Mexico and taken the flu home? People get sick travelling. I had terrible respiratory illness within 72 hours of landing in Mexico City purely from the poison air.

The hysteria is a massive PR job on the part of the drug companies and the WHO (aka the OMS Organizicion Mundial de Salud). It’s a slow news week, someone felt the need to stir shit up and hey, bird flu was fun.

Not that this total nonsense doesn’t have its good side. My boyfriend is off work so we’ve had two days of painting his office, eating popcorn and watching DVDs (because the cinemas are all shut). Also, it prompted me to go and look up the defintion of “pandemic” — an unjustifiably abused word at the moment.

“Medicine. Epidemic over a wide geographic area and affecting a large proportion of the population: pandemic influenza.

Wide geographic area? Possibly. But a large portion of the population? Hardly. According to The Economist there are 99 confirmed cases in Mexico, 91 in the US and 19 in Canada. The only other nation in double figures is Spain, with 10. I would love to hear the mathematical justification for construing those numbers as a pandemic.

One down, the Great American Short Story collection to go

Finally! A day off

I suspect my four blog followers are down to one or two now, thanks to my egregious neglect. For once, it’s not wilful laziness on my part. At least not entirely wilful laziness. Right after my last post Britney-blizzard struck and my lovely interlocutor Helen Skyped me a bunch of revision notes. A rush of freelance work (most of it odious) came rushing in at the same time. So I did the usual: panic. Cue 10 days of hyperventilating, staring at my laptop screen until my eyes wouldn’t focus then working more anyway (hurrah for being able to touchtype! It’ll come in double handy when I go blind) and going to bed every night with an unwritten-word tornado churning in my head.

It got done, somehow, in a flurry of strong coffee, biscuits, midnight MSN chats and the odd sneaky drag of a menthol. My last deadline proper was this morning. It was a strangely silent afternoon. Having no pressing work is far worse than having too much. After exhausting the entertainment potential of Facebook (about seven minutes) and a largely unsuccessful bash at making cheesy potato mash patties I decided to start studying for my UK driving theory test. Abandoned it to go running, then spent half an hour reading hostel reviews online.

I have a half-baked lot of short story ideas I want to tackle next but can’t bring myself to put my feet properly under the desk just yet. Hence blog-waffle. Ten days of hard writing-to-order has squished all the creative cells in my brain. They need a little time to ping back into functioning order, I figure. That, or I’m being lazy.

It’s Britney, Bitch

Posted by Cila Warncke

Answered prayers?

Though rarely alluded to, I suppose most of the four people who read this blog know I’m holed up in Mexico with the intention of turning out a book on the many facets of pop culture bellwether and post-modern princess in the tower, Britney Spears.

To my surprise/delight/terror I seem to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of accomplishing my self-appointed task. I have written 14-and-a-half essays-come-chapters titled things like: “paparazzi subject”, “mother” and “American Dream”. Half-biography, half-theory, it unpicks Britney’s many lives with a view to understanding what we think about her says about us.

Now the “send to agent” line is actually in sight the usual surge of paranoia and pessimism is troubling the sandbags. I don’t want to let it go for a number of reasons. Principally, and selfishly, because I like being able to say: I’m writing a book. Practically, because once I do the odds are fixed: 50% it gets a deal, 50% it doesn’t. No kidding.

I am trying to keep myself sane at least long enough to zip the file and fire it across the pond. Clinging bravely to the wall behind my laptop is a Post-It with one of my favourite quotes (borrowed by Truman Capote for the title of his unfinished novel):

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. – St Teresa de Avila

A useful reminder, whether the prayers are answered or not.

Pedant’s Delight

Posted by Cila Warncke

I’m not sure which is sadder: that I love poring over lists of commonly confused English words or that I am happy to publically admit I do so. Both will undoubtedly come to haunt me.

The cards are stacked (quite properly, I imagine) against all professional aesthetes, and no doubt we all deserve the dark, wordy, academic deaths we all sooner or later die. — Zooey JD Salinger

Chichen Itza – welcome to Maya Disney

Posted by Cila Warncke

Hell is other people, according to Sartre, and he never even visited Chichén Iztá.

Welcome to the show

Despite the overwhelming quantity of tourist press I was looking forward to seeing Chichén Iztá, the “new wonder of the modern world”. Uxmal and the Ruta Puuc whetted my appetite for picturesque ruins and walking across straw-coloured grass beneath cornflower skies, eagles overhead, lizards below and so forth.

As it was, a combination of bad navigation skills and bad timing very nearly melted my resolve to venture forth, but I finally happened across the bus station, had a lunch of sopes and chocolate biscuits and settled in for the ride. Bus journeys are one of my favourite things in Mexico. I love tucking myself into a musty seat, armed with random foodstuffs (on this journey, a giant bag of juicy, piquant, freshly-peeled tangerines, purchased off a little boy who jumped on the bus at one of the pueblos with a cooler full of fruit slung on his arm), a notebook, a camera and music. I like watching the sky and the unhurried, unvarying plains of the Yucatan snake past. Better still the villages with their neat, empty squares dominated by pink, yellow or blue colonial churches and dogs sagging in the heat. Beyond the squares lie Crayola-hued concrete block houses mingled with traditional, thatched Mayan cottages.

The signs get bigger and more professional as we approach Chichén Iztá. Cenotes! Artisans! 25km to Chichén Iztá! Taste of Yucatan! Swim in the sacred blue waters! 5km! Welcome to Chichén Iztá! Behemouth tour buses eddy in the parking lot, jockeying for spaces. To the left a giant banner, to the right the Mercado. Initially I feel a spasm of irritation when I realise it’s a few minutes to four, and the last bus back to Merida leaves at ten past five. Should I stay overnight? I decide to buy my entrada and take it from there. By the time I’ve taken two wrong turns in a maze of yapping American children, ice cream stands, gift shops and giant concrete planters my inclination to linger is nearly gone. Emerging from the parado turistico into a gauntlet of voices I resist the urge to turn around and walk straight out.

Basura

Hey lady. Senorita. Amigita. Mas barato. One dollar. Ten pesos. Cual te gusta? Mixed with: Scott! I’ll be right over here. Did you read this plaque? The other side of the pyramid looks nicer. Get in the picture. Oh my gawd, then he was like…. Sweet Jesus. It’s Glastonbury without the music, or drugs. Or something you’d find in a hotel foyer in Las Vegas. Corporate sponsorship is only a matter of time.

A creatively sunburnt conglomeration is sitting on the cropped grass around the splendid pyramid, El Castillo, as if waiting for the next band to arrive. They are bawling to each other in that peculiarly penetrating American tone. The Justins, Jennifers, Joshes and Jessicas of the world, concentrating and projecting their privilege from the space between the tip of their noses and the point of their chins. It’s a shame, because El Castillo is beautiful. Or would be if it weren’t surrounded by old ladies in sunhats; bare-chested, cigar-puffing goons on day trips from Cancun; and families trailing nappies and bags of pork scratchings.

El Castillo

I am definitely never coming back so getting a couple of dozen photos sharpish is priority. I do a lap of the pyramid, dodging tour groups and whining couples. The only thing I really want to see, apart from El Castillo, is El Caracol – a spiral-staired astronomical observatory. Taking a deep breath I plunge into another self-contained hell of hustling vendors. Everything from jaguar masks to embroidered handkerchiefs is going for 10 pesos it seems. Casi gratis, one vendor points out. Hellonwheels. That’s less than 50 pence. Anything that cheap definitely isn’t worth having. Sucking up a breath I swim through them. Peace on the other side.

El Caracol (snail) is the one outpost of this godforsaken themepark that looks like it might have some magic left in it. I can’t get close enough to tell, exactly, because – like everything else – it’s roped off. The crumbling curve of the tower carries itself with dignity, though, imposing a sort of stillness over its little empire. I flop down on the grass and watch a hawk drifting past. This would be good on a starlit night.

El Caracol

Behind me a man on a moto is mumbling into a radio, urging us in crackly tones to make our way to the exits as the park is closing. Ye gods. On my way across the main square I snatch a glimpse of what I came to see: the setting sun of the spring equinox tracing a triangulated shadow down the side of El Castillo, the undulating mimic of a serpent’s body meeting the roaring stone head at the base of the stairs. The awe-inspiring mathematical, astronomical and architectural nous behind this phenomenon is rather lost in the welter of tourists shouldering for a shot, and applauding when the sun emerges from the cloud. A man in yoga trousers and dreads flexes his bare torso. His girlfriend’s nose is pierced.

Taking a wrong turn towards the exit I happen across the ball court, snap a couple of photos then leg it for the entrance. Time to escape. Getting out is more fun than being there. A man gets on the over-crowded, past-due bus just behind me. I squeeze into a row of Mexican kids. A boy in the seat in front of me gets up, “sientate con tu marido,” he says, gesturing to a stranger. What the hell. I swap seats. “Hi. They seem to think you’re my husband.” The stranger looks at me for a second then we start laughing.

Commonly Confused Words*

Posted by Cila Warncke

*If you insist on writing, learn the difference, please.

Useful

There is no way to write this post without coming off like a pedantic arsehole but, as they say, if the shoe fits…

Certain words are commonly confused in otherwise literate copy, which makes me think that some people honestly don’t know the difference. For the edification of absolutely no one, here are some persistent offenders.

Rein/Reign
If I have to read one more time about some artist’s “rein” at the top of the charts, or someone “reigning in” their ambitions I’ll weep.

Rein
1: a strap fastened to a bit by which a rider or driver controls an animal —usually used in plural
2 a: a restraining influence : check b: controlling or guiding power —usually used in plural
3: opportunity for unhampered activity or use

Reign
1 a: royal authority : sovereignty b: the dominion, sway, or influence of one resembling a monarch 2: the time during which one (as a sovereign) reigns

The carnival king and queen will reign for a year. The driver has to rein in the horses pulling their float.

Discrete/Discreet
The couple having an affair may have left the hotel “discreetly” but that doesn’t necessarily mean they left “discretely”.

Discrete
1: constituting a separate entity : individually distinct
2 a: consisting of distinct or unconnected elements : noncontinuous b: taking on or having a finite or countably infinite number of values

Discreet
1: having or showing discernment or good judgment in conduct and especially in speech : prudent ; especially : capable of preserving prudent silence
2: unpretentious , modest
3: unobtrusive , unnoticeable

She made discreet enquiries and learned the outcome. In discrete letters to the panel members she made her feelings clear.

Wet/Whet
One does not “wet” one’s appetite, nor “whet” one’s whistle.

Wet
transitive verb 1 : to make wet

Whet
1 : to sharpen by rubbing on or with something (as a stone)
2 : to make keen or more acute : excite , stimulate

The cloudless sky whet her eagerness to go windsurfing. First, she wet her finger to test the direction of the breeze.

Definitions courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online

Experimental Cooking, Pts I and II

Posted by Cila Warncke

I love peanut butter with a greedy, by-the-spoonful-out-of-the-jar passion, so when I spotted Lazy Day Peanut Noodle Salad on my favourite recipe site, 101cookbooks.com I got kind of over-excited.

Being in Merida rather than San Francisco meant a few substitutions. Out went soba noodles, asparagus, tofu, sesame oil, rice vinegar and garlic and in came wholemeal spaghetti, red pepper, chile poblano, fresh spinach, fresh coriander, mushrooms, carrots, sunflower seeds, lime and olive oil. (Only the peanut butter, peanuts, spring onion and chili flakes made the recipe leap unscathed.)

Chile poblano

I made the dressing using lime juice in place of rice wine vinegar, with plenty of red chili flakes, of course. Everything else was pretty much as you’d expect. Chopped all the veg, chucked the spaghetti on to boil, then added first the carrots, then a couple minutes later the pepper and chile poblano (roughly the size of an ordinary green pepper but with a mild chili kick), then a minute after that the spring onion and spinach. Couple more minutes on the boil, drained and tipped into a big bowl where I tossed it with the peanut dressing then chucked handfuls of sunflower seeds, salted peanuts and coriander in.

It didn’t come out looking anywhere near as elegant as the original version, and to my taste it should have been a bit more peanutty (the lime really cut the peanut-butteriness, so I might experiment with something else next time) but we scoffed the lot so thumbs up.

Jicama

I’m on a bit of a local ingredient kick and bought jicama the other day. It’s a big, ugly lump of a root and I had to Google it to find out what the hell you’re supposed to do with it. Eat it raw, apparently. I have my doubts about eating raw anything you could use as a defensive weapon in the case of burglary but when in Rome… so I had a crack. The flavour is decent enough: slightly sweet in a rooty, parsnip-y kind of way. Unfortunately it bears plenty of textural resemblance to raw parsnip as well, which I can’t cope with. I stuck it in the fridge and waited for inspiration.

Roasting, frying and steaming all crossed my mind, but the oven here is a weird little creature I don’t understand and I instinctively felt jicama would be fry-resistant. Finally I decided to steam and mash it. Whacked it into the steamer and pootled off to check my email. Ten minutes later the rigid fruit was unscathed. Twenty more minutes and it was still raw carrot consistency. I refilled the steamer. Ten more, no joy. Boil it, perhaps? Just past 10PM, after half an hour at a brisk boil it dawned on me why Mexicans eat the damn stuff raw. It WON’T cook. Christ only knows what kind of super-cellulose it’s made of, but they should use it in fortifications. Bored of boiling, and hungry, I decided to stir-fry it with red onion, red pepper, spring onion, tomatillos (which, apart from making me think ‘fried green tomatoes’ every time I chuck them in the pan, are sublime) garlic and a tin of tuna. Plus the usual lashings of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, chili flakes, salt and freshly ground pepper. I drizzled the lot with fresh lime juice and ate it with corn tortillas. It was good, but more involved than I’d bargained for. If I’m going to fuck around in the kitchen for over an hour I want more to show for it than stir fry.

Tomatillos