Borders are cool?

“Borders are cool” croons Welsh artist MC Mabon in the song of the same name. They have certainly always fascinated me. It began with my childhood in a village-turned-suburb on the border of England and Wales. We lived on the English side of the border but my Nan lived on the Welsh side; and so my early years were spent shuttling to and fro, crossing and recrossing the invisible line that – according to the map – divided the two countries. It was the border which defined us as a community in fact. We were the people who lived on the border, who belonged to the border itself rather than the actual countries on either side of it – all the more so because many of us were of Irish descent to boot.

Where was the border? I was always trying to pinpoint it; but there are no physical barriers between England and Wales, except those imposed by rivers. Still i used to imagine – in my childish way – that there was a real line somewhere, a kind of energy line, that would zap you as you passed across it. My mum used to point out a pub: “The border goes through that pub”, she’d say. According to her, there was time when licensing laws were different in England and Wales. The pub’s customers would move from one side of the pub to circumvent them. Crossing and recrossing, just like us.

I don’t know if the story’s true. What is true is that people have very complex relationships with these lines we draw in our world. On the one hand you have people prepared to die to defend them, on the other you have people – like the drinkers in the pub – to whom they’re at worst a nuisance, at best an opportunity. And then you have people like me for whom they form a part of their identity.

I’ve been reading a lot recently about borders and the effect they can have in preparation for my forthcoming trip to Turkey (and hopefully Greece). Twice A Stranger* by Bruce Clark looks at the massive population exchange between Greece and Turkey which resulted from the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Over a million Greeks/Orthodox Christians and half a million Turks/Muslims were forced to migrate to the ‘right’ side of the border, as dictated by their religious identity. An invisible line had appeared in their world and it wreaked havoc – although not as much havoc as did the line which a couple of decades later divided India from Pakistan.

Many of the people who had to move between Turkey and Greece had lived a long way from the new border. The ‘Greeks’ often came from places like Cappadocia in the Anatolian interior; while many of the ‘Turks’ had been resident in Crete or in Greek Macedonia. Their stories are often traumatic; but what was it like for those people who found themselves living on or next to the new line itself – the border which now goes through Thrace? And how do the modern residents of the areas of Greece and Turkey which lie on either side of the border relate to it and to each other?

In any case, that border isn’t too problematic: the population exchange produced relatively homogenous populations which were easily identified with their respective nations. What about the border between Spain and France, however, which cuts through the territory of the Basque people, dividing rather than delimiting it? And then there are those darker borders, the ones designed to act not just as fences, but as impenetrable walls: the old border between East and West Germany, the modern border between North and South Korea for example. I remember visiting Cyprus in 1991 and being chilled (yet also mesmerised) by the border which divided the Greek and Turkish portions of the island. The images remain in my mind: glimpsing the other side of Nicosia, visible yet unreachable; gazing upon the no man’s land of Famagusta through binoculars – there was a city that had been destroyed by a border, stopped dead in time by it.

Thinking about the place where i grew up: what would it mean if the invisible line which runs through it suddenly became a real boundary? It might seem fanciful but what if it did happen? It needn’t be anything as dramatic or even tangible as the barbed wire fences that run through Cyprus (let alone the terrifying walls the Israelis have built between themselves and the Palestinians). As it stands the Anglo-Welsh border is politically only semi-active: it has an administrative function, one which has gained some power following Devolution; but to all intents and purposes life flows back and forth across the border without regard to it. The shoppers, the buses, the people out for a stroll only notice it, if at all, when they look at a sign and see that it is bilingual. If Wales were ever to become independent however, it could be a different story. What future can there be in a nationalistic world for communities which straddle two (or more) nations?

Alternatively, what would it mean if the line was removed altogether? Again, it might not seem likely at the moment, but it’s not impossible in the long run. Wales is far more vulnerable to assimilation by England than is Scotland: it’s smaller, divided within itself between north and south and between language communities; and it has a long land border with the English Midlands, a much more densely populated area. What if it were to follow Cornwall and become merged into England itself? The border would cease to exist and with it would go the identity of the border dwellers.

Indeed both of these two possible futures threaten that identity; the current border is a kind of unresolved problem and an identity based on it relies on the problem remaining unresolved. It relies on stasis. Yet in reality things do not stand still – not even in Famagusta, which is gradually falling down. Of course it’s also true that the solutions themselves aren’t permanent. Whatever lines we draw now, whether on maps or elsewhere in our world, will certainly be redrawn again in the future; it’s just a question of when and where. The tension inherent in this is in fact what gives a border much of its power: we’re as afraid of it collapsing as we are of being trapped by it. Equally afraid of both.

*Twice A Stranger. ISBN: 978-1862077522; author: Bruce Clark; pub. Granta Books (2006)

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Back to the bloodthirsty stones

Continuing my theme of trying to keep January away from my brain – or alternatively trying to get my brain through January, i bought a Doctor Who box set a week or so back and have been happily working my way through it. It’s called The Key To Time. Naturally it stars Tom Baker aka the Fourth Doctor. He was my Doctor and apart from Eric Morecambe the great hero of my childhood; but what prompted me to buy this particular box set was discovering, via YouTube, a clip of the story which gave me nightmares – the most wonderful, beautiful nightmares! – after i watched it as a kid.

It was so long ago that i didn’t even recall the title, just that it involved a circle of standing stones which came to life in the night and smashed down people’s doors so they could drink the inhabitants’ blood. In my imagination the stones were huge and absolutely realistic. I would dream that the circle was on a hill just beyond our house and watch as one came to life. Paralysed with terror – indeed i would be literally unable to move, let alone cry out – i would lie in bed as the stone made its way down the hill. It would smash its way through the front door, glide up the stairs – it was always me it was coming for – and then, as it came crashing through my bedroom door i’d wake up, sweating with fear. Fantastic.

Other than the stones i could recall nothing about the story itself apart from a scene in which dear old K-9 is nearly killed trying to hold them off (How i cried!). Well, that’s not entirely true: i did remember the Doctor (of course). Romana though – this first incarnation of her played by Mary Tamm – i had no recollection of at all. Re-watching The Key To Time stories now i find this incredible, not least because she’s gorgeous. But then i was only about 8 or 9 i suppose. Sex appeal was lost on me.

The Stones of Blood is the third story in the Key To Time (16^th series of Doctor Who). Perhaps i had always known that i could find it if i wanted to. In the age of the internet it’s almost too easy to find things. But at some level i’d always feared that the glory of that childhood memory would be diminished if i saw it all again through adult eyes – saw the dodgy props and the sets which were so clearly the interior of a studio. YouTube though gives you a way to peer back into a show without fully committing yourself to the experience. You watch a clip on a miniature screen, as though looking through a telescope at something in the distance.

Did it seem diminished? Well, obviously not or else i wouldn’t have bought the box set. Inevitably, the stones are quite laughably unreal, yet so strong is my recollection of my childhood terror that they still gave me a thrill when i saw them. More than that, i realised how much the show for me was always about enjoying the mixture of wit and loneliness that is Tom Baker. Him and plucky, clunky K-9 – my generation’s Lassie. This is still my impression now that i’m more than halfway through the six stories. Never mind the terrible editing or plots that don’t make sense (why does Romana walk backwards off a cliff?), it’s still magic.

What i’m loving most of all though are the commentaries with Tom Baker and Mary Tamm. My God are they hilarious together: Tom who can’t remember anything about the episode he’s watching and who greets each absurdity with a mixture of childlike glee and acerbic wit – in one scene where the druids are gathered in the stone circle to perform a sacrifice he suggests that they’re going to sacrifice Adric, one his less-loved Companions. And Mary who is a delicious flirt (why did she not flirt like that with him in the show?) and who has a wry humour all her own. I love the story she tells of flashing in the wings one night when she was appearing in panto with Sixth Doctor, Colin Baker. Someone should bring Tom and Mary back together in a Doctor Who audio play. Free of the ravages of time, the limitations of the BBC’s special effects department and the general awfulness of 70s television they would have the Universe saved in no time at all.

The unloved children of Pride & Prejudice

One of the many things I’ve done this month to ward off the winter blues is re-read Pride & Prejudice for the umpteenth time. I first read it when I was about 12. At that age the book was all about the Elizabeth–Darcy love story and the comedy of the ridiculous, as exemplified by the wonderful Mr Collins. Five years later, when the book was a set text for English A-Level, it was the formal beauty of Jane Austen‘s writing which arrested me: those graceful chains of semi-colons, the delicate narrative thread. And so it’s gone on: each time i notice something new or find myself rethinking my earlier impressions.

Reading the book this Christmas, what struck me was the terrible sadness of two characters, Mr Collins and Mary. Take away the comedy of Mr Collins and what you see is a man who has fundamentally been broken, destroyed as a person before that person ever really had a chance to form, by a lonely childhood under an oppressive father. I find it interesting that his childhood has parallels with that of Darcy: the latter attributes his lack of social skills and inability to connect with strangers outside his circle to being an only son, for many years an only child. Both men appear to have lost their mothers very early on in life and to have grown up dominated by their fathers. Both seem older than their years – probably because these dominating fathers were also old men? But where Darcy is more fortunate is that however much his father disciplined him he also built up his sense of worth. Mr Collins by contrast was clearly brought up to feel that he was nothing. All his pomposity, all his desire for and yet fear of status, all his servility is linked to this inner emptiness.

Then there’s Mary, the middle and deeply unwanted child of the Bennets. Jane was the first child and beautiful too; Elizabeth was her father’s darling and pretty in a less orthodox way; but by the time Mary was born impatience for the much-needed son was setting in and on top of that Mary was plain and serious. Kitty and Lydia who followed her, if not great beauties, were pretty enough and more importantly frivolous enough to win their mother’s affections at least. Not that would make much difference to Mary. She, i always feel, is a daddy’s girl. She craves the kind of relationship with her father that Elizabeth has, but he completely rejects and despises her. Like Mr Collins her personality is crippled by the lack of love she receives. This is to me the great irony: that the pedant that Mr Bennet holds in such contempt is in great part his own creation.

Imagine what Mary might have been like if someone had showed an interest in her as a young child. If her father had actually listened to her she might have learnt how to talk to people – rather than at them. If she had not grown up feeling the failure of her plainness so keenly she might have had a chance to develop a personality that would have made her lack of looks less important – as, for example, did Elizabeth, who while not plain as such is clearly not a beauty in the way that Jane is. Likewise with Mr Collins – to be sure he might never have been as handsome or charismatic as Darcy, but what about Darcy’s cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam? In another world, with a different upbringing might not Mr Collins have been more like him?

There again, would i really want Mr Collins to be other than he is? Fiction is cruel!