Sing-Along-a-Sacrifice – What the Pagans Can Do for Us

Tempus may fugit, temperatures may crash and burn but trees are forever – well a really, really long time… usually.  I’ve been listening to medical intuitive Caroline Myss rant – she likes to rant, by her own admission – about holy ground being well, bloody everywhere.  You don’t need to climb a mountain high, or seek a valley low to find a rendezvous for you and the divine.  The ‘subway’, Myss reckons, is as good a place as any. 

Divine destination?

But there’s something about the brief portion of my twice daily walks to and from work through Bunhill Fields Cemetery with its peridot and emerald studded arbour, like a mosaic ceilinged sanctuary, which soothes the soul.

England's green & pleasant graveyards

Feeling a tad tetchy the other morning I spent a bit of time stroking one of the bigger trees – embarrassingly I didn’t even ask its name – and experienced almost instant calm. The permanence of the tree versus the transience or impermanence of this moment in time filled me with a sense of peace and perspective.

Don’t worry, I’m not developing Dendrophilia – a real live ‘philia’ apparently – despite the fact I found myself panting under another tree in Victoria Park later that same day at a very clammy British Military Fitness session.

The Mediterranean summer means we’ve actually been enjoying the great outdoors and the simple life.  Summertime and the living is eeeaaaaaaaasy: ice cubes chink against tall glasses at tennis matches, pianos tinkle everywhere – part of the London Festival – and people stink while listening to rock bands. And a few weeks hence me and my sis sung along at Sing-Along-A-Wickerman, the pagan feel-weird movie of the summer solstice season. 

Basket case?

 Oft overlooked, or merely looked over for little other than Britt Ekland’s stand in bottom and her bewitchery wooing of Edward Woodward, The Wicker Man belts out a barrage of frolicking folk-style songs by a certain Paul Giovanni.  The luscious lyrics tell of getting down and dirty in rigs of barley and weave the circle of life with the Maypole song, which comes with it’s own actions – way before  Macarena was a twinkle in Los del Río’s collective eye.

Does my bottom look big on her?

As weird and wacky as the pagan world is made out to be in the Wicker Man the film and its unusual music evoke a time when people felt an intrinsic connection to the natural world, and were, as a result, in awe of it.  The pagans, as the film’s many musical interludes suggest, were aware of their part in the rhythm of life. 

But as the long awaited Wicker Man finally made his entrance and went  up in a blaze of gory sis said she felt funny singing-along to a sacrificial slaughtering. This was one of the many criticisms The Guardian blog commentatoratti had been expressing, although the presence of the Director Robin Hardy seemed to sanction the proceedings.  And the abomination of Christopher Lees in their crazy haired, polo-necked, tweediness seemed happy enough.

This is not my boyfriend...

Someone somewhere said the sing-along assumes the sing-alongee is siding with the pagans, when it’s the foolhardy policeman we’re supposed to support. Thing is, he hasn’t any memorable numbers… well only a hymn at the end, he’s too busy bossing everyone around and telling them they’re wrong, and he’s right, to really let rip. And, perhaps, if we want to sing-along with the oh-so-happy pagans but ultimately empathise with the bobby-with-a-bug-up-his-bottom it’s because we can see ourselves in him. 

Get down with an Owl

If you can see beyond Britt Ekland’s stunt-stripper-derriere, or musical murder scenes, then perhaps singing-along with the Wicker Man reaches parts the film, and the landlord’s daughter, otherwise may not reach.  As tempatures sky rocket, oil spills into the Gulf of Mexico,  and NASA releases images of a Greenland glacier melting a mile overnight maybe it’s time to really stop, listen and sing. This could be the last act.  Roasted nuts anyone?

Roasted nuts with that, sir?

Sermon ends.

My Favourite Top – Has it Got Something to Hide?

Does my skeleton look big in this?

My favourite top is slash necked and bat-winged. Sounds like some vampire horror story of a garment I know, but I feel good when I wear it.  I love the sophisticatedness of the slash neck – not to be confused with a slashed neck, which is not at all sophisticated, or comfortable – and the relaxed yet elegant cut of the sleeves.  It is effortlessly stylish.  And yet, something has come between me and my top.  I’m beginning to suspect it may be hiding a skeleton in the closet.

I’ve no proof – just rumours.  But all the same it’s got me thinking, where had it been before we met on that clothes rack in Zara, the Knightsbridge branch, all those years ago?  Because, I don’t know if you know this, but cotton, which is mostly what my beloved top is made from, isn’t as soft and fluffy as we’re led to believe.  At least it doesn’t start out that way. 

I mean what would you think if you thought your top, could, in some small way, have contributed to an ecological catastrophe? The disappearance of a sea, no less. I couldn’t believe it.  I know, it’s hard to imagine an innocent, albeit subtly sexy, top could be mixed up in this sort of mess, but it seems the

Cotton - queen of the crops?

evidence is mounting against it.

So, ok, the story goes something like this: once upon a time the Aral Sea, which lies between Kazakhstan, in the north, and Uzbekistan, in the south, was the fourth largest lake in the world. For thousands of years, the local people made use of the Aral’s natural resources – for irrigating crops and fishing – until, under Soviet rule, Uzbekistan discovered the export potential of cotton. Ka-ching!  Jackpot! And so, began the slow draining of the Aral Sea, to irrigate what the present government affectionately term, ‘white gold’.  An apt nickname, considering it rakes in over $1 billion every year.

The thing is cotton’s a kinda thirsty old plant: according to Water Footprint, it takes around 2700 litres of

water to produce the cotton for one lil’ ol’ shirt.  It doesn’t take a genius to work out if Uzbekistan is one of the largest cotton exporters in the world then a whole lotta water is guzzled in the process. The result? On his visit there a couple of weeks ago, the UN and Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said:

“…[H]e could not see anything except a “cemetery of ships marooned in the sand.” As a result of the disaster, people are getting sick, the land is poisoned, and storms blow dust and salt as far as the North Pole.”

Cotton is quite greedy, for a plant

I guess it’s not my top’s fault, but it turns out, the desertification of the Aral Sea is just the tip of the iceberg, or something like that. Cos Uzbekistan’s President, Islam Karimov, poetically described by Sting, the

dictator’s daughter’s fave famous person, as, “…hermetically sealed in his own medieval, tyrannical mindset.”  has, according to the UN and Amnesty International, lived up to this description:

Sting in the tail?

“…boiling his enemies, slaughtering his poverty-stricken people when they protest, and conscripting armies of children for slave labour.”.  Sounds like a grimmerer and grimmerer Grimm’s fairytale.

Hmmm? What’s that? Child slave labour?  I mean if slaughtering and boiling doesn’t capture the public’s attention, then animal or child cruelty surely will – just look at those doe eyes!  Well, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation, due to underinvestment and a shortage of agricultural machinery, 90% of Uzbek cotton is harvested by hand; and a lot of it by wee nippers, who miss up to 3 months of school, to pick the prickly crop – ouch!  The EJF’s Pick Your Cotton Carefully campaign has already encouraged many high street retailers to

Come along, kiddie-winkies!

commit to sourcing cotton elsewhere.  However, last month, fashion hotspots Zara and H&M found themselves in the hot seat, accused of buying Uzbek, and essentially supporting slavery. 

And so it goes on. There are many more tales to tell, from pesticide poisoning to sweat shop labour, but that’s for another day.  I’m not sure this is the end of the road for me and my fave top, maybe we can patch things up.  It just seems to me that it’s part of our responsibility to consider where our clothes – or anything we consume – have come from.  We can learn about each other that way – broaden our horizons.  And it’s a reminder, that although we may feel like our purchasing power is all just a drop in the ocean, even oceans can be finite, apparently.