The Tangram...

Most board games leave me well, bored, but there are some delightful exceptions topping the boxed heaps of chaff. One of these is that tantalising Chinese puzzle, the tangram. Its origins are lost in millennia, and it arrived in America in 1815, shipped by a Captain M. Donaldson. It was an instant hit in the parlour-bound society of the West where countless ladies sat, looking for material to manipulate with relentlessly restless fingers. The tangram, also a brain teaser, proved an ideal distraction.
It consists of a square carved into seven definable geometric pieces, five triangles, a parallelogram and a small square, a fraction the area of its larger parent. These shapes can be formed into thousands of patterns that resemble people, animals, birds and so on. Their stylised nature is prescient of suprematism, an artistic philosophy that emerged in the early twentieth century. Kasimir Malevich found abstract, geometrical forms the embodiment of a higher reality. Whatever, there is something eminently soothing about the hours spent focused upon these shapes, forming and reforming them again.
The tangram presents a number of mathematical paradoxes best defined by experts in the many books written about it. The puzzle can be made of materials like plastic, cardboard, and so on. But for a more sensual touch, seek out a set in classy wood. My young niece has a ‘competitive’ version, where two players seek to outwit each other in constructing tangram forms selected at random from a deck of cards. But I would eschew the competitive element and simply get lost in the sheer pleasure got from working with ‘pure’ forms, a reminder that I once dubbed geometry visual poetry.

The shape of things...

For as long as I can remember, I have wondered about those little, stylised representations of ‘men’ and ‘women’, when in search of a public convenience. I always think about the stick figure with the skirt: do the majority of women look like this? Just recently, I was confined to bed and was reading through a bundle of magazines, when I came across a feature by a writer recollecting his maiden aunt who wore a salmon-coloured corset underneath her clothes, for all the days of her life. What puzzled him most was that his aunt, in his opinion, was in no need of such a garment because she was so skinny.
Ah, dearie me! I screamed with laughter as I remembered my Nanna and her attachment to her corset. Like all Victorian ladies, she had been put into ‘stays’ at an early age, then had grown up and old, that way. Size didn’t come into it. In her opinion, a lady was not properly dressed without a corset. Getting into the corset was a coming of age ritual for the Victorian girl, it seems. Sometime in her teens, her hair went up, her waist pulled in and her skirts down, giving her that familiar violin silhouette. It was all blown away in the roaring twenties, of course, but this bypassed Nanna as she lived in remote parts. She also missed out on the decades prior to the swinging sixties and as late as the nineteen seventies, she was worrying our Mum about putting my sister and I into corsets – I need not tell you what we thought of the notion.
Curiously, corsets have been called ‘foundation’ garments, as if the outer garments won’t work without the laced stays underneath. More curious still, while the lady kept her corset underneath her clothes, the Victorian tart is often portrayed with a laced bodice for an outer garment, coyly hinting at what is underneath. Even today, the corset is often used as a fetish, a symbol of femininity. Yet, few contemporary women actually wear one. When Madonna wore one for a stage act, she knew exactly what she was doing. And like the ubiquitous girl symbol outside public bathrooms, few women look like that.

Why it will be different this time...

The building sits serenely on the bank of the Thames, unaware of the consternation that has washed about it in the thirty-five years since its main use was decommissioned. Battersea Power Station is like a fine, old lady, fallen on hard times. She is expensive to maintain, yet too grand to be put to humble albeit lucrative use. Her credentials are impressive. BPS was designed by leading architect, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, in the ‘brick cathedral’ Art Deco style. The main building was built by John Mowlem & Co, and the total cost of construction was £2,141,550 – billions in today’s money.
It was 1953 before BPS was fully in operation as a coal-fired powered station, and it seems incredible that such thought and care went into a venture that stayed in place for only twenty-two years more. But by 1975, the day of coal as a major provider of electricity was over. In the meantime, the building had become an international icon – hear the word ‘Battersea’ and what do you think of? Witness the prescience of Alfred Hitchcock using the new BPS building as an action backdrop in his (1930s) movie, Sabotage. Since then, it has been used on music album covers, and as an action backdrop setting in numerous TV shows, including Dr Who. Incredible, then, that the site fell into rack and ruin but the problems surrounding it are legion. BPS has both the blessing and the curse to be the largest brick building in Europe. Its expansiveness makes it unsuitable for the type of development of Bankside, its sister building down the river (Tate Modern). Besides, the other end of town has the benefit of City finance, a privilege the Battersea site lacks. Over the years, proposals have come and been banished, one by one for a variety of reasons; among them a dearth of funds, opposition by heritage groups, and of local residents. There was the theme park idea that cost too much, and the various ‘retail and housing’ developments that would surround BPS, and block its view from the river. Now, Real Estate Opportunities, the firm that bought the site in 2006 has just had a £5.5 billion ‘retail and housing’ plan approved, with the proviso that the Northern Line is extended by two stops to facilitate the shoppers and visitors who will certainly want to go there. In short, if the public money is made available, private funds will follow. It all looks very credible, but so have the plans of the past. We can only wait and see.

History of the World

The history of the artefact is the history of all humanity. After all, it is our ability to make things that delineates us from other animals. Sure, birds build nests and beavers build dams, but that is all they will ever do. Man is not stuck in such an evolutional groove but has the capacity to go on creating and building, seemingly forever. Archaeologists and anthropologists work in tandem, trying to pinpoint the time when a rather sophisticated primate became ‘human’.
The answer may never be known, but we do know that the ‘oldest’ cave painting, found at Lascaux in France and dated at c 17,000 BC, is rather recent in the history of mankind. The Greek poet Homer wrote of the Trojan wars, estimated to be about 12 or 13 BC. Whether the story of the wooden horse is truth or fantasy matters not. It says much about the level of skill in woodworking, and the ingenuity of the military strategists of the time.
Indeed, Greek mythology is rich with instances of gods, humans and monsters using made objects to secure their own ends. The hero of the Trojan war, Odysseus, was an Achaean who had left his wife Penelope at home with their son. Suitors that claimed Odysseus was dead, and wanted to marry her – and her lands and money, no doubt, besieged her. The wise woman started work on a tapestry. She laboured at it by day, promising to choose a suitor when it was finished. But she unpicked the stitches by night and held off the marriage brigade for the twenty years or so that it took her husband to fight his wars and return from his travels.
Odysseus had his own material issues. In one instance, he spent seven years marooned upon an island, stranded there after his ship was wrecked in a storm. Then, some passing deity took pity upon him, and bequeathed him that very practical thing, a boat. Odysseus may have been a hero, but he lacked skills in woodworking. Meanwhile, Hermes had his winged sandals to help him deliver, while Poseidon was all powerful with his trident. No matter how invincible the mythical deities seemed, they still needed things to be effective.

Technology into Mythology

Right now, it is the most beautiful, talked-about piece of engineering in the world. It shot towards the centre of the earth and back nearly forty times, like a magic bullet, on a rescue mission that was almost mythical in its intent and eventual success. Whoever named it Phoenix knew exactly what he was doing and this tiny capsule – with the radius of a bicycle wheel – should rank above space rockets and submarines in its importance to humanity. Small is indeed beautiful.
But then, miniaturisation has long been the benchmark of technological progress – just witness the microprocessor! Here, I am not going to calculate how many of these things can sit on the head of a pin. Instead, I marvel at how a piece of metal, two inches by one half, can store all the work I have ever done; manuscripts, articles, photos, drawings, college work, correspondence, in short, everything. And my memory device is far from being the most powerful. Truly, these things are the contemporary equivalent of the magic wand. It is no wonder they are being incorporated into jewellery and carried as talismans. After all, a man’s work is his gold and technology becomes mythology.
With machines that fly and ones that dive, doors that open and shut free of human contact, and gadgets that give us seemingly telepathic powers of communication, it is worth pondering whether our plethora of super-power devices isn’t the contemporary fulfilment of age-old legend. More than one self-help guru has written: what we can conceive and believe, we can truly achieve.
Yea, the Phoenix may have risen but miniaturisation does have a downside. Right now, the entire nation seems to be licking its collective lips at the prospect of that age-old behemoth and public institution, the library, reduced to a trestle table laid with grubby, dog-eared tomes for public borrowing, at the entrance to pubs and supermarkets, and staffed by ‘volunteers’. My library is a grand, purpose-built building containing a comprehensive collection of the literature and learning of our times, presided over by paid librarians and their qualified assistants. Such places truly are mythical – may they not vanish into myth…

This old house..

It has oft been said that a house regresses back to the nature from whence it has come, almost as soon as it has been built. I can believe it. This could account for the phenomenon whereby a deserted or vacant house falls quickly into disrepair. Yet, it goes against all logic when you think about it. Most other non-consumable goods gain from preservation rather than use; just think of cars, fine clothing and footwear, glass and china – the reason why the ‘antique’ of these are valued so highly. Vintage electricals are mostly useless, apart from their totemic value. Paradoxically, houses actually gain in price as functionality diminishes.
But what can account for the link between said functionality and the level of occupier involvement? Occupiers most often have a vested interest in keeping a house in good repair. There is no substitute for human vigilance in spotting cracked walls and leaking roofs, in keeping rimes of dirt off of window panes and paying attention to outside walls. A constant occupier will warm the house in winter, thus preventing mildew and other, creeping growths. In warmer weather, the occupier checks the presence of bugs and insects, rodents and nesting birds. The more preternatural among you will say that an empty house does not feel loved. It is no secret that a house becomes like its owner. A stroll down any street will reveal the mindset of a domestic occupier; fussy and pedantic or laid-back and hippy, with the millions of shades in between.
In short, many people identify with their homes to the point where their house is an extension of their own physique.
The anthropomorphic debunking of the dwelling façade – windows as eyes, door as mouth, etc – has long been in place. Most of us, to some extent, regard an attack upon the home as an attack upon the person, but a sizeable minority push the allegory a little too far. In the days when children actually played outside, every child knew of at least one occupier who would not, absolutely not hand back any ball or plaything that landed, however inadvertently, on their home territory. One point of contact with said concrete or grass, and the occupier regarded the object as their own. How we vainly cried and protested.
On becoming an occupier, I can understand the mentality of certain of these freaks – while not agreeing with their methods, of course. After all, you can protect your body as best you can, like your home, yet it will always be subject to outside forces. At the end of the day, I still feel there is more, much more, to this house/occupier thing. Can anyone enlighten me, please?

Let there be light...

Just now, Britain is remembering the Blitz, it being exactly seventy years since Luftwaffe bombs rained down on this island. The events sparked off another way of life. People became au fait with bomb shelters – Londoners translate as Underground – and going to work in damaged buildings that managed to stay ‘open for business’. A night of uninterrupted sleep became an aspiration rather than a matter of course and an entire generation grew up having been, or having played host to, evacuee children. Our inconveniences today don’t even compare with the sufferings of those times but it seems Britain is headed for a new type of blackout.
In order to save money, local councils are cutting down on street lighting, possibly shutting off one in five streetlights, and saving hundreds of thousands of pounds annually in the process. Great, but who will it leave in the dark, and when? Householders fear security risks if their street goes too dark and in rural areas where streetlights are already few and far between, pedestrians already run a higher risk from traffic after dark.
My concern is that yes, we do need to turn down the lights but it must be done equitably, in appropriate areas and for the right reasons. Light pollution is already a buzz phrase in many urban areas, since bright lighting in town centres cancel out the glorious, celestial overhead display. These are possible targets for the borough councils’ light brigade. A spokesman for the Institution of Lighting Engineers has said it is perfectly possible to save on lighting by dimming street lighting when it is least needed; i.e., at evening dusk and at first light in the morning. Good thinking, and such changes will have to be carefully orchestrated so that no-one loses out. What we do not want in a new era of light fascism, with lighting hours being conserved for the showier, ritzier parts of towns and villages, while the sink estates and more downbeat areas are left to moulder in darkness, becoming magnets for criminal and other, questionable activity. This would be especially ironic since it is most likely lack of resources that makes them ‘no-go’ places in the first instance. At the end of the day – and all through the night – we do not need light inequality to join the line-up of inequities that already plague our lives.