Robinson Crusoe

In the spirit of getting back in touch with childhood I am currently reading "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe. Unfortunately, also in the spirit of childhood, it is pretty clear within about 10 pages of starting this book that the version of the story you heard as a kid was edited quite significantly.

The first thing that strikes you about Robinson Crusoe is that the main character is a complete eejit. The whole first section of the book is dedicated to people telling him not to go to sea because he'd need a life-jacket to step in a puddle.

He disregards his Father's advice and sets sail. Only he doesn't set sail for the tropics, he sets sail from Hull to London and almosts gets shipwrecked off the coast of Norwich.

As if this wasn't an omen enough, a succession of world weary sailors refuse to sail with him, mainly because he is walking bad luck and his lack of care for parential advice gives them the willies.

Eventually he finds one poor sap and they sail off to the coast of Africa where he makes a wee bit of money, enough to give him a buzz and make him try again.

The next voyage is not so sucessful because he gets captured by pirates and become a slave of the Moors in Morocco. He sticks this out for a few years before escaping in a small boat with "his boy Xory".

This is when you really start to realise how edited the story was when you were a kid. His escape along the coastline of Africa is filled with references to "savages" and "negros" and of course, "his boy".

It's hard to scream racism as it is obviously a reflection of the attitudes of the time when the book was written (first published in 1719) but it makes for some uncomfortable reading.

Anyway, eventually he gets rescued by a Portugese ship and escapes to Brazil. Along the way he sells "his boy Xory" to the Portugese captain with the explicit agreement that Xory shall be set free when his 10 years of slavery are done!

Yay! Thanks a lot Mr Crusoe!!

This has all happened and the eejit isn't even marooned on the island yet. This is also as far along in book I am at the moment so I can't comment on the second half but I'm sure it will be interesting.

I did however go and look up Alexander Selkirk on wikipedia. This is the Scotsman that Defoe is supposed to have based his story on. It seems that Selkirk was a lot brighter than Defoe's character as he actually "volunteered" (not sure if that is the right word) to stay on his island as he was doubtful about the sea-worthiness of the vessel he was travelling on. Turns out he was right and the ship sank a while later with the loss of most hands.

If only Robinson had the same amount of sense.

It has reminded me of an old Scottish joke though:

A guy walks up to the bar to buy a pint. There is a guy sitting on one of the barstools doing the crossword in the newspaper.

Crossword guy looks up and says "8 letters, it means stuck on a desert island"

The other guy says "It's marooned"

First guy says "Thanks a lot, I'll have a pint of Guinness please!".

"This is England" - A blast from the past

I saw a film called "This is England" yesterday. It's a film that reminded me a lot of what it felt like to grow up in 1980’s Britain. The time of Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands War, the Miners Strike, mass unemployment, union busting and... Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.

It was a time when it felt like everyone was politically engaged, yet at the same time, there was a disconnect in out popular culture. The music sounded plastic and disposable after the homemade ethos of punk. "Wine bars" were popping up and filling with people who would soon be known as "yuppies".

To my 12-year old eyes it seemed that people in the UK were involved in all manner of politics; the working class may have been under seige from Thatcher's goons at home but people still found the time to protest apartheid in South Africa, CIA-death squads in Latin America, and also time to support the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Amnesty International. The apathy that besets society today was nowhere to be seen back then.

This film delves right into the middle of this. The main character is a little boy whose Dad died in the Falklands war and in order to fill the hole in his life he ends up joining the gang of local skinheads - a gang that is really more harmless than anything at first, skinheads were not always nazis, the movement was originally about the music and the clothes. Music that came mostly from Jamaica with first wave of West Indian immigrants to the UK. Here is an interesting breakdown of skiinhead culture.

The problems arise when “Combo”, a racist skin gets out of prison and returns to take over the gang. The innocence is gone is and the ideology of the gang changes from a bunch of ska-loving kids to a fascist mob.

At it’s heart this is a pretty straight forward coming of age movie, but, to a guy who was pretty much the same age as the main character at the time when this is set, seeing this film was like getting a postcard from the past.

Stephen Graham who plays “Combo” is absolutely incredible in his part. He is every bit as scary as Ben Kingsley was in “Sexy Beast” (another great UK movie) and the tension he creates on screen is sometimes almost unbearable to watch.

There are a few obvious rip-off scenes in the movie from “A Clockwork Orange”, so obvious in fact, that I can only think they were a deliberate tribute. Despite this however, this is a movie well worth checking out.