Kasper der freundliche Geist!

When somebody says the word Germany, apart from our crushing defeat at their hands in a recent popular sporting competition, it is difficult for Hitler and Nazis not to pop into the mind of an Englishman. It was once the same for me, but for fairly good reason: To be 12 years old and to live in an Ex-Wehrmacht Panzer Base, overlooking the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, is to live in a Petri dish, cultivating negative German stereotypes.

Needless to say, the place has a fairly gruesome history; It was the death place of Anne Frank and over 50,000 others and was once home to some of the very cruellest individuals of the last century. The holocaust is somewhat drummed into us from secondary school so needless to say, you all know the background. This entry is, however, a little more fanciful, and focuses on the spookier, more frightening and sometimes laughable tales that come out of Hohne (as the base is called) Some of which I myself indirectly experienced.

Just as a disclaimer; I do not believe in Ghosts, but I’m hardly gonna let that get in the way of a good yarn. Indeed, no matter how sceptical you might be about ghosts, hauntings or supernatural goings on, the concept of living in such close proximity to a place of profound human suffering, is an unpleasant one and certainly gets the imagination fired on a cold dark night.

Allow me to set the scene. Bergen-Hohne, in Northern Germany, is built on the edge a vast forest near to the historic town of Celle. The majority of the families there live in large, dark flats, which consist of one very long corridor, 50ft long, with rooms branching off either side. These flats were once occupied by the Wehrmacht, but after they had left, the sick and dying from Bergen Belsen took up residence. On site, there is an enormous abandoned hospital [below]. It remains one of the only buildings left in Germany with a Swastika above the front door, and can be found towards the back of the base, on the other side of a line of trees which divided it from my apartment building; a tad too close for comfort.

Other points of interest include the Roundhouse. This building was once the German Officer’s Mess, where balls and dinners would be held, it too has Nazi effigies above its front door but the swastikas have since been obliterated. One of the cellars remains unopened, due to the sensitivity of what lies within.

The strangeness begins with one building, tucked away within the furthest recesses of the camp, not far from the old hospital. It too, once bore a Nazi eagle of its own, above the front door but it has since been torn down. Instead, a dirty, mouldy impression of an eagle endures, highly visible to passers-by. As you would expect, attempts have been made since the end of the war to clean and paint over the garish blemish, but inexplicably, its gradual return can be guaranteed mere weeks after treatment has been applied. When I last saw it, it was vividly eldritch, as though the Eagle Plaque had only just been taken away.

Horror stories aren’t hard to stumble upon in Hohne; there were a lot of bored, stay-at-home wives, whose husbands were off in Iraq or Afghanistan and who loved to perpetuate some really absurd stories. Some of the more ridiculous things I heard were tales of furniture flying around the room, stories of coming home to find all of the furniture had vanished completely, there was even one of a family that had run, shrieking, from their home, having seen a pair of Hassidic Jews standing in their hallway, staring sullenly into oblivion. There were some buildings in which families were said spend mere weeks, before being frightened into leaving. These had apparently been closed as a result. None of this, I can confirm. It all seemed fairly ridiculous to me, even as a 12 year old boy.

My experiences, odd though they were, were subtler. Being left alone in that flat for an entire afternoon was enough really. Perhaps it was the diabolical Feng-shui, or the knowledge of who had lived there before me, but sitting by myself in our apartment never failed to evoke the strongest sense of dread in me. I would end up curling up into a ball on my bedroom windowsill and wait for hours for people to return, hardly budging.

That bedroom of mine had a lot to yield to the budding horror novelist; My lasting memory of that room, was of waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of my brother crying. We shared a room then. [such was our sacrifice for a dining room] And through the darkness one night was audible his distressed sobs. He must have been 9 or 10 and I, 11 or 12. I called to him to ask him what was the matter. His reply to me was shaky; “I can feel someone touching my face, its like a hand… like a rough hand.” Needless to say, I nigh on crapped my pyjama bottoms. All of the hairs on my arms and neck stood up. And very stiffly I reached out for the lamp and turned it on. To my relief, there was nothing there. I reassured him that he was probably imagining it all, and although he didn’t seem convinced or at all comforted, I turned the light off and went swiftly back to sleep. Half an hour later I was to be woken again. I inquired once more to my clearly distressed brother and was given much the same answer as before. The process repeated itself several times until morning. How we didn’t mention anything to our parents the next day, I will never know, so odd was the experience.

There were also other little instances which always kept it fresh in our minds: Two of my Aunts once came to stay for a while. My brother and I were back at school in England so our aunts used the room we had left vacant. One of my Aunts maintains that she experienced a very similar sensation to my brother, saying the covers of the bed had been pulled up around her neck. Although she is Irish and as a result, prone to superstition; she was and still is unaware of my brother’s experience.

Other minor points, were; my brothers bizarre and uncharacteristic, monthly midnight vomiting, occasional bodiless footsteps, a one off spontaneous light-bulb explosion whilst down in the cellar (which was not a great moment in my life) and the dead bats, which turned up on the bathroom windowsills. It made for a fairly interesting stay. If the Jewish graveyards and Albert Speer-esque architecture wans’t enough, the seeming supernatural activity kept one entertained.

So for some, ‘zee Germans’ played tricks with the furniture, others would receive impromptu visits from gormless Rabbis. The Walker family, however, was plagued by, amongst other things, a spectral hand that seemed to pop into our lives intermittently. I can’t say it ever had its ghostly way with me, but it was fairly creepy all the same. Ultimately, everything that I or anybody else experienced there can probably be explained away with ease by a rational, level headed approach. It wasn't exactly 'Castle Wolfenstein' [below] but I don't want it ruined by being too sensible about it; sure, it was unpleasant to live there, but its definitely a story...

Saving Private Rijhaan

As my first, very eco-friendly post will tell you, during the holidays I live very close to a British military training ground in South West Canada. Access to this enormous tract of land is fairly limited, but today, the head brass decided to let in several of the soldiers' family members. Their purpose for allowing this, however, was purely practical; it was not going to be a courtesy visit, just to have a look around.

Somewhere out in the vast plot of land that is BATUS training ground, is a very small village called 'Hettar' it is situated in the fictional country of Pokharistan, and looks and feels almost exactly like a small Afghani settlement, complete with a Mosque, Bazaar and Well. Every summer a group of about 20 or 30 Afghani ex-pats are employed to fill the settlement and live there during the period of time the battle groups need training. They are paid well, but its no walk in the park; as they are often awoken in the twilight hours, having had large, heavily armed men come screaming into their homes, guns blazing.

Our reason for being allowed onto the prairie was to act as Afghani people, extras in the training operation to make it a more believable environment for the soldiers.

having been briefed by several echelons of military staff, who prepared us for what seemed like a very robust experience, we [24 women and men] piled into a car park within a military base which stood just before the Prairie. The men were given a choice of hats, scarves, breeches, shirts and waistcoats and the women were given a single, black, nylon Burka. See handsome photos of Ma and Pa [right] and I [left]. The clothes were extremely uncomfortable and unwieldy under the hot summer sun. However, once dressed, we all piled onto a big yellow bus and embarked on the hour long journey along dirt track all the way to Hettar.

We arrived at about 11 o'clock and stopped about half a kilometer away from the village, from where the domed Mosque was clearly visible. We alighted from the the yellow bus, after which half of the group was herded into a smaller vehicle which had been dubbed the 'Jingly Bus' [see photo below]. The rest of us trudged into the village on foot.

Photos were strictly prohibited inside the complex which is a shame because it was hard to believe we were still in Canada, so realistic were our surroundings. We passed by arabic signs and mud houses and before long we were in the square, where the bustling market place was situated. The stalls had a mixture of arabic and english signs above them. Some retailer names I can remember were 'Farouk's Fancy Department' selling unappetising looking [plastic] vegetables, 'Ahmed's Appliances' selling knackered lawnmowers, power-tools and bicycles and one place called 'Al Malik and Sons Electrics ltd.' which could be found away from all the action, so I sneakily took a photo [below]. One stall in particular was packed full with Afghani ex-pats and British pretenders alike, due to the fact it was the only stall selling food which wasn't made from plastic. A small contingent of Afghanis were cooking up a storm of naan breads and kebabs and handing them around to sate our considerable hunger.

Three of the older guys stopped my mother, (probably because she was walking in front of her husband - a huge faux pas) but we engaged them in conversation. It was interesting to hear that they remembered Afghanistan in the 1980s when the Russians were there; one of them even claimed to have gone to University in Moscow and spent 10 years there, which would have presumably meant he was a communist ally to the Russians fighting against the Mujahedin. At any rate I was able to converse in broken Russian with them for a little while. For some of them it seemed to come easier than English, although conversation topics were indeed limited; one of the three was very interested to talk about the Russian girls at length.

Eventually, a British general came around to have a look at the village, at which point all of the Afghanis put their best acting skills into play and started yelling and selling their pretend wears. We were stood near one woman, who tried to give us an impromptu language lesson in the Pashto names for various root vegetables on display. I was told that I was a "bad boy" for not being able to understand her when she gabbled at me in swift Pashto, so I politely handed her some pretend money, took a plastic melon out of the basket and shuffled away awkwardly, only to be confronted by an even more loquacious Afghani, who forced me to haggle with him over some artichokes, a vegetable which he and all of his friends admitted they did not recognise. (Authenticity was clearly not 100%) Meanwhile a young man was herding eight or so chickens through the Bazaar, but struggling to coax them away from a mud bath which they all seemed to be enjoying immensely. He told us that he had tried to sharpen their talons to try and get them to fight, but that it hadn't worked because they were 'Canadian' chickens and were thus too friendly to set upon each other. The general didn't stay for long and soon we were taken back to the bus, for another long and uncomfortable journey home.

A lot of effort and money had clearly gone into the construction of Hettar, and it was very realistic, although upon closer inspection it is clear that it was a simulation. I had wondered if we were going to be attacked by one of the battle groups and although we weren't, there was a great deal of military activity; tanks rolled noisily around the settlement and troops skulked menacingly past from time to time. Soldiers could be seen surveying the village from the tops of buildings and every now and again the mock police force would stroll over and impose themselves upon the market place. I couldn't help but feel a little on edge, despite the obvious lack of danger.

Right, I've rambled on a bit, I do apologise, but I hope you've stayed with me through this, only its not every day you get to go and 'be' an Afghani for the morning. My guess is that its about as close as I'll ever get to being able to actually experience life in that part of the world. I also apologise for having not made a more poignant social commentary, but I daren't comment on the contentious political situation abroad... So, until next time, whenever that may be.

Salieri's bane

So the academic year is over, and the results of the year's toils are in... I'll be candid; my exam results were bad. When compared to my peers' marks, my results were heartbreakingly dismal. High 2.1s and low 1st's were the order of the day; whereas I scraped a 2.2 by the hair of my teeth. A very poor show. However, don't be deceived, I wasn't disheartened by my marks, I was quietly, very grateful. I had done scant to deserve even the low grade I had managed to achieve. Having always been someone who didn't have too work hard in school to achieve fairly high marks; my early successes helped to engender a very laissez-faire approach to academic work. I can masquerade quite convincingly as a bit of a know-it-all; what with my needlessly floral and pretentious diction and good recall abilities. However, at tertiary education this apathetic approach has been tested to its very outer limits. But I simply cannot muster the motivation, no matter how interesting the topic to exert myself in my chosen field of endeavour. In my free time I could remorselessly stare for an hour out of the window without so much as a cursory glance at Russian verb tables, gerunds or declensions.

When the time comes to be assessed, I'm filled with some pretty powerful feelings of self loathing; during exam time, I sit in the exam halls, cursing my past-self for fucking me over quite so royally. But then, says I to myself, "all is not lost, I'm a pretty intelligent guy, even if I do end up failing my course. Maybe I make my riches turning my hand to a bit of creativity. Yeah, I'd like that, maybe I'll become a poet, or an author or singer-songwriter, that'd be swell!" So I sit at my desk with a blank pad of paper and a fresh pen and start writing:

Words materialise swiftly. Interesting rhyming schemes manifest themselves before my eyes. I start getting into the swing of it. I'm writing furiously, working harder than I have for months. Then suddenly, three hours have passed and I've hit a lull. I look cautiously for the 3rd or 4th time back over what I've just done, but this time with more sober eyes, less drunk with ego and misplaced self worth. The words now seem contrived, disgustingly gloopy and cloying, and ultimately, very poorly realised. So I screw everything up, making sure to tear it to ribbons, lest someone discovers it, and laughs loudly and with unmitigated derision at my emotions laid so very bare in such an appallingly amateur fashion.

In this new, lugubrious [brilliant word btw] mood, I finish the ritual creative orgy by taking a famous piece of work by somebody halfway decent and rewriting it as a disgusting scrap of toilet humour, lampooning the author unfairly, so that I feel somehow vindicated, knowing that, if my work ever saw the light of day it would be met with even more savage criticisms. This end result is the foul proverbial ejaculate of a long, frustrated session of metaphorical masturbation. Eww... sorry.

The eventual outcome is acceptance of my own mediocrity. This in turn precipitates even more ambivalence and inner conflict. But what can I do? I'll tell you. I plug in the Xbox and spend the next few hours venting my dissatisfaction by murdering vast swathes of blameless civilians on GTA4...

I am the paragon flaneur and these were my 'confessions'; High Renaissance Man, eat your heart out!

I like to keep a vague theme of travel as a pretext for these posts, so here is one of the aforementioned 'foul ejaculates'. It is a rip-off of S.T.Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It was quite a cathartic to write, and it amused me when it was done... Let the narrating voice inside your head be that of Sir Ian McKellen.

THE RIME OF THE FECULENT MARINER

by R.Q.Walker

It is a fetid Mariner;

On the ship's poop deck he stands,

With a painéd face and an awkward gait,

He shuffles, wringing his hands.

The Helmsman fussed,

-“What plagues thee thus?”

-“My bowels are churning grim!”

-“Weigh anchor you fool!”

-“But I must go make stool!”

said the mariner unto him.

The Helmsman cared not for this pre-pubic scrot,

He screamed and he whipped and he threw,

The mariner sank down, for his breeches were brown’d;

In his hose sat a voluminous poo.

The mariner was seized by the scruff of his neck

And kicked to the starboard side,

Though he wriggled and stank, he was put on the plank

And the shipmates looked on as he cried.

The First Mate stepped up and each cocked his ear;

All waited and watched in a line.

The mariner’s face was etched with fear,

The First Mate’s shout was loud and clear!

And the mariner was pushed into the brine.

With one more shout, he was hoisted out,

and cast upon the deck.

This wretched boy in seconds flat

Was reduced to a cowering wreck.

He got up as they jeered, then he tacked and he veered;

Burst straight through the privy door,

Although his hose were stainéd brown

His sphincter held back more!

He sat down and with a frown

The faeces followed free!

Relief had come! forced ‘twixt his bum!

The Mariner sighed with glee!

The Mariner did not sleep that night

He'd suffered tremendous scorn!

But I promise you this,

More feculent, rose he the morrow morn!

Into the Wild?

Hello, this is my blog. I shall update this as thoughts and concerns

pop up in my mind during my time away from Bristol.

My current home nation of Canada has a fairly good track record as one of

the 'Western World's' most environmentally sound nations. The following entry may

seem to sully Canada's good name; but that is not my aim, its is merely a criticism

of our selfish human nature in general, and the disappointment I felt when the

eco-friendly venire of a country that we look to, to set an example was pulled

away for my viewing displeasure. If anything, this entry is an indictment on the

rest of the world; if the world considers Canada to be environmentally friendly,

what sort of abuses must be occurring elsewhere?

As my family made its move from Wiltshire, all the way to mid-west Canada, we knew that we were embarking on what would be a very isolated venture into the expansive wilderness of the North American Great Plains, a far cry away from Foxham, a village tucked into the hills behind Bath. But what our new home would lack in proximity to historic towns, we thought it would make up in other areas; peace, nature, solitude and wildlife. We had the feeling that in Canada we would be leading lives of simplistic, rustic beauty; where one could go on day trips to the lakes, rivers and mountains, take in the clean air, maybe, at a push, see bears and elk foraging and grazing in their natural habitats - and not from a bus window in Longleat wildlife park. All in all a life where noticeable human impact is scant. A sort of 'colonic irrigation' of the soul was the intended achievement of living in the absolute middle of nowhere. The reality was somewhat different, but before the I reveal the true nature of the situation, I shall detail my first impressions of the emigration to our little house on the Prairie.

[Ralston]

I was, of course, shocked by the sheer vastness of the place. My jaw remained slack and open for virtually the entire duration of the first three hour car journey back from the airport. One endless, almost perfectly straight road pointed home. A barn I could see a little further down the road, turned out to be 14 miles away and on either side of the Trans-Canadian highway was a field that stretched all the way to the very, very distant horizon.

I threw myself with enthusiasm into my new surroundings. I jumped at the chance to walk dogs for all my neighbours , just so I had an excuse to walk and walk until I had passed a set of small hills that obscured the very small community of Ralston completely from view creating the illusion that I was surrounded by nothing except a very distant shack or grain silo. I relished being able to observe storms raging away upon the distant horizon, while directly overhead the weather was comparatively clement. I enjoyed seeing gophers scurrying into their burrows at the alien sight of my human form, the deer tentatively wandering past and at night, packs of coyotes howling at each other, mere yards from our front door. I imbibed it all with a voracious appetite.

All of this was to seem false when I discovered the true nature of Man's impact on the area.

Ralston is situated a few miles from a vast British Military training ground; every soldier who goes to Iraq or Afghanistan must be put through a rigorous and very realistic training regime, with live rounds and authentic Pashtuns, wielding Kalashnikovs, clad in the garb of the Mujahedin, explosions going off all around them ... At this point one would be forgiven for assuming that this was the problem; that our military was shelling the proverbial shit out of the local, beautiful, Canadian ecology! Not so. The animal deaths caused by gunfire or artillery are far and few between. A soldier may occasionally have to euthanise a wounded deer, or something of the sort, but in actual fact, this vast part of the Prairie has become a haven for the burrowing owls, dear, coyotes and many others, due to the lack of mechanized farming there. The animals are forced off of the rest of Alberta's chemically enriched land, which sees mechanical leviathans tear up every square inch of soil, leaving none for the wildlife to inhabit.

Its sad that every creature I see before me is a refugee. But what with the culture in North America, to hunt and build and dump and consume ad nauseam, it is nice that there is at least somewhere for the creatures of the great plains to live, even if that area is only the size of Luxembourg and the fact that they have to dodge the odd stray shell here and there. It certainly isn't perfect, and there are yet other extant problems, corroding the local ecosystem, which could be solved by a more effective environmental department, but these are too manifold mention in an entry which is already longer than I had intended.

Despite the clear environmental angle of this, my first ever post; I am not an eco-warrior. I had merely hoped that there were still some inhabitable parts of our world which were not being squeezed and exploited to the very farthest reaches of their potential by us humans. I had hoped to visit them and revel in them. What I found instead was a vast asylum of displaced creatures, fleeing destruction, from mechanised farming, a human vice which is often overlooked when placed beside other, more topical environmental crises, perhaps due in part, to its isolated, expansive and rural setting. Has my soul been shrieved as I thought it might be? No. I have merely become more misanthropic and cynical. I have looked closer at an edenic garden and seen decay.

My next post will follow shortly and probably won't be as politically motivated as this one.