Maltazine 2 : Images

I travelled by ferry and train and train and ferry from Newcastle to Malta.





I arrived in Valletta a day before Raptorcamp began.



I drew landmarks each time we went out in teams to look for the birds being shot.











I decided to have an adventure, and left Birdlife for the night to go sleep rough, and greet the first sun of the equinox.


The south temple at Mnajdra is perfectly aligned with the sun at equinox, and also at solstice. I was privileged to see it beam over the hill, through the temple's entrance and to the altar.




But the experience was ruined by arseholes like this one shooting in and around the temple complexes.

Malta Zine 2

In a few hours I shall be returning from Malta, where I have taken part in Raptorcamp - an international volunteering effort to help Birdlife Malta stop migratory birds get shot indiscriminately as they try and pass from Northern Europe to Africa.

I wasn't sure at first if I would make a diary zine like last time, in part because I like to shirk the effort, and also because I wasn't quite sure what angle or story it would really tell. Malta Zine 1 worked, to the degree that it did work, in that it was my first attempt at recording the situation in Malta, so there's a directness and a freshness to my experiences, mostly written (as usual) on the spot, without post-editing. It also had the trip to Gozo and the excitement and sense of achievement that we were getting there - the first time that police enforcement was actually cracking down and pissing off the hunting fraternity, who up till that point felt unassailable on the island.

This time around, I wasn't quite sure where to look: my personal diary? the work of Birdlife Malta? the characters of the volunteers who went there? So I started out by just drawing pictures of clear landmarks, and not particularly trying to make an actual diary account. The first few days I was excitably sociable and didn't give much time to the introspection that usually results in me writing the more coherent stuff. I was really, REALLY glad, to meet characters I had met before, and not so long ago. All ages, a range of nationalities, several of whom I had crushes on, several of whom had brought their husbands/sons/travel partners etc.. So I just doodled the odd tower or chapel.

But I got a lot of love back for the first zine I made - tears even appeared in the eyes of one older man as he said 'that was YOU! that was YOU!' And you can't ignore that kind of thing. I felt really relaxed in the group and I started happily sharing sketches (which I usually don't do), and so I started filling in the gaps to tell a basic, summarised diary account of the camp. This was stage two.

Then I was getting a bit emotionally involved, and without going into details, the usual confusions and doubts that appear when you really like someone but aren't sure exactly what it means or how it might transpire, they unsettled me. I felt a bit more useless on the teams (not having bird knowledge, not catching the bastards in the act), and hit an energy low and lost confidence. This led to me getting a little less connected to the life of the camp and I started to wonder what I was doing the zine for again.

So I decided on an adventure - details in the zine, but it involved sleeping rough and ancient pagan architecture. And the camp supported me - they listened with interest to my harebrained childish whims; they dropped me off and picked me up. I felt welcomed in the fold, and that was good. And perhaps my emotional confusions and attachments of the mid-way lull were not so random after all. So I'm leaving on a high again, and Malta Zine 2 will be on its way to the printers before September is out. It will be free to participants, and a dozen or so extra packaged together with the remaining Malta Zine 1's for anybody interested at future stalls and events.

Malta Zine Two

I'm off today to Amsterdam, then tomorrow to Brussels and Paris, then overnight to Livorno, from where I'll get a ferry all the way down Italy, past Sicily to Malta, where I'll be taking part in Raptorcamp. It will be similar to the anti hunting camp I joined in with in April (and wrote up as Malta zine 1), and a Malta zine 2 is very likely, although now I've been once, it's a bit like 'the pressure's off' so I may not record quite so much. Info about this here.



In the meantime, I'm starting a 3panel comic in the Courier (Newcastle University's student paper):

Last attempt at a festival.

First the train was late and I had to miss the Hebcelt festival on the Isle of Lewis. About THAT one I was gutted.
I had to miss Rolling Hills, tickets bought, because old school friends came to visit. That was okay.
Redefest got rained off half way through. But I still had a good day.
Beacons was flooded and cancelled as we were just setting off, and 'Leave me here' cancelled too. That was more dramatic. I got drunk.

Tomorrow morning I'm giving it one last shot, to the Vale of York and then to the North York Moors, (so long as wages appear in my bank tonight, that is). It's like flipping a coin and it landing on tails 5 times, still hoping for 'heads'.

Then the next Opinionated Geordie Monsters comes out - so much for it being the festival edition, ay.

Something to Remember

After the first announcements of the riots, and asking what had caused it (the BBC wasn't saying at the time, but word was out that it was another street execution by police - the lesson here is when there's unrest in Britain, don't trust the BBC to report it accurately), I didn't pay them much attention. In a grand strategic sense, a battle between consumerism and the state has no heroes for me to root for. Just victims to empathise with.

But since then we've had days of escalatingly bare-faced cheek and an almost psychotic hypocrisy from the professional commentators, media spokesmen and politicians. Scumbags the lot of them, and all so privileged and safe that they thought their looting & their 'criminality' was beyond challenge. So I will remember that injustice, remind myself that it's only the weak and dispossessed who suffer, and also that it's only them who are available to be punished. I quote:

Gerald Kaufman (£43,564 expenses including 4 grapefruit bowls at £540) says 'I condemn the naked greed of these criminals and their taking advantage of their pampered and privileged opportunities ..'

David Wilshire (£160,532 expenses including £100k on a flat 15 miles from his main home)says 'My honourable friend has hit the nail on the head. This is not about ideology, it's sheer naked greed...'

John Healey (£84,562 expenses including £6,194 for renovating his kitchen ) says 'We should understand a little less and condemn a little more,Mr Speaker; only tough action against these feral youths will do...'

Tim Godwin (acting head of Met Police after resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson due to corruption probes and in command during Mark Duggan’s shooting by police officers) criticises ‘the criminality and wanton violence’ involved in the riots.

David Cameron (one time member of the Bullingdon Club Oxford University, alongside Boris Johnson and George Osborne, notorious for its members' destructive binges and drunken vandalism of resturants, churches, bars and other establishmets within the Oxford area) condems the 'pure criminality' of the rioters while agreeing that those who destroy "loot and pillage their own community" should no longer be allowed to live in social housing’.

Boris Johnson (one time member of the 'socially exclusive' Bullingdon Club Oxford University, alongside David Cameron and George Osborne, notorious for its members' wealth, priviledge and gratuitous drunken destructive behaviour) ascribes 'An excessive sense of entitlement" to those who looted.

Nick Clegg (guilty of two acts of arson at the age of sixteen for which he was given community service) stressed a need for an end to 'the needless ... destruction ... the priority ... to punish criminals involved'

Ursula Nevin (mother of two from Manchester), reportedly slept through the riots and did not participate in any way. The 24-year-old wailed in the dock as she was sent to prison for five months by a district judge. It is alleged she accepted a pair of 'looted' shorts from a friend.

Alcohol consumed

With Beacobs cancelled, I have instead [produced my 'alcohol and that' two pager : ee folloowing post: [ shit i am drunbk as iu try and write this, long live abcchus#]

Morning after notes: Beacobs = Beacons, near Skipton. abcchus = Bacchus. And yes I did vomit. And also I have no memory of writing the above, nor uploading the pictures.

And here are the scans of the pages produced in the scientific experiment:

My festivals have been cancelled.

The festival that I was going to work at this weekend has been cancelled because the river burst its banks. See here. And so my much-prepared fanzine workshop must now wait till next weeek.

But last weekend's workshop at Redefest went rather well, I think, and produced a very nice, & coherent, collaborative fanzine.

The front cover was done by Sam Redding:

& here's how he imagined the festival if it kept raining as much as it did:

The zine was one half collaborative typewritten story, and one half monster reviews of the music. I got it printed today: