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therefractory · 4 years

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The clown king: how Boris Johnson made it by playing the fool | Boris Johnson | The Guardian The Guardian · by Edward Docx The long-running German satirical show Extra 3 recently featured a sketch with the following voiceover: “From the people who brought you The Crown – the epic saga of the Queen – now comes the ridiculous story of this guy, a notorious buffoon at the head of a country … The Clown.” The word “clown” has often been used in a flippant or dismissive way with regard to Boris Johnson. But the underlying paradox is that it is only as a clown – a fool in the oldest and deepest sense of the word – that his character can truly be understood. What happens when you make the clown king is what we in the UK have been witnessing in real time. With the success of the vaccine, though, a new question emerges: can one archetype transform into the other? Can Johnson creep away from his clownish past altogether? Clowns, of course, are very serious and important people. At their simplest, they remind us of the silliness of things: that the world we have created is ridiculous. They reassure us in this observation by appealing to our innate understanding of the absurd. They relieve the endless tension and trauma of reality. At a deeper level, the clown is the mirror image of the priest. Both represent two ancient sides of our nature. Both elucidate what it means to be human. The priest summons, celebrates and interrogates the sacred; the clown does the same with the profane. The one is concerned with the eschatological, the other with the scatological. The priest propounds abstinence and fasting; the clown gluttony and indulgence. The one solemnifies sex, the other carnalises. As David Bridel, founder of the Clown School in Los Angeles, says, clowns are often roundly welcomed because they “remind us that we are as practised in falling over, shitting and humping, as we are in prayer and purification”. Would-be biographers of Johnson might do worse than to read Paul Bouissac, the leading scholar on the semiotics of clowning. Clowns are “transgressors”, he writes, cultural subversives who enact rituals and dramatic tableaux that “ignore the tacit rules of social games to indulge in symbolic actions that … toy with these norms as if they were arbitrary, dispensable convention.” Clowns “undermine the ground upon which our language and our society rest by revealing their fragility”. They “foreground the tension” between “instinct” and “constraint”. Bouissac could be writing directly of Johnson when he adds: “Their performing identities transcend the rules of propriety.” They are, he says, “improper by essence”. Observe classic Johnson closely as he arrives at an event. See how his entire being and bearing is bent towards satire, subversion, mockery. The hair is his clown’s disguise. Just as the makeup and the red nose bestow upon the circus clown a form of anonymity and thus freedom to overturn conventions, so Johnson’s candy-floss mop announces his licence. His clothes are often baggy – ill-fitting; a reminder of the clothes of the clown. He walks towards us quizzically, as if to mock the affected “power walking” of other leaders. Absurdity seems to be wrestling with solemnity in every expression and limb. Notice how he sometimes feigns to lose his way as if to suggest the ridiculousness of the event, the ridiculousness of his presence there, the ridiculousness of any human being going in any direction at all. His weight, meanwhile, invites us to consider that the trouble with the world (if only we’d admit it) is that it’s really all about appetite and greed. (His convoluted affairs and uncountable children whisper the same about sex.) Before he says a word, he has transmitted his core message – that the human conventions of styling hair, fitting clothes and curbing desires are all … ludicrous. And we are encouraged – laughingly – to agree. And, of course, we do. Because, in a sense, they are ludicrous. He goes further, though – pushing the clown’s confetti-stuffed envelope: isn’t pretending you don’t want to eat great trolleys of cake and squire an endless carousel of medieval barmaids … dishonest? Oh, come on, it’s so tiresome trying to be slim, groomed or monogamous – when what you really want is more cake and more sex. Right? I know it. You know it. We all know it. Why lie? Forget the subject under discussion – Europe, social care, Ireland – am I not telling it like it is, deep down? Am I not the most honest politician you’ve ever come across? Herein the clown’s perverse appeal to reason. Next, witness how, in the company of a journalist, Johnson’s whole demeanour transmits the sense of him saying: “Aha! An interview! How absurd! This is no way to find anything out! But, yes, if you want, I will play ‘prime minister’ and you can reprise my old role – if that’s what the audience is here for.” Notice how often he asks (knowingly) “Are you sure our viewers wouldn’t want to hear … ?” or “You really want to know this?” This is because the clown is always in a deeper relationship with the audience than with his ostensible subject. See how he rocks on his feet as if to lampoon a politician emphasising his words. Hear how his speech is not – in truth – eloquent, but rather a caricature of eloquence. The dominant mode is not fluency, but a kind of stop-start oratio interruptus; hesitancy followed by sudden spasms of effusion. The hesitancy is designed to involve us in the confected drama of his choosing the next word. The sudden effusion that follows can then be marketed as clinching evidence of his oratorical elan. You do not have to be a dramatist to recognise the clown archetype immediately. Johnson’s impulsiveness. The self-summoned crises. His attitude to truth, to authority, to every construct of law and art and politics, to power and to pleasure. His personal relationships and his relationship to the public. The self-conscious ungainliness. His blithe conjuring of fantasy and fairytale. The way he toys with norms – inverts, switches, tricks, reverses. The collusive warmth oddly symbiotic with a distancing coldness. Anything for a laugh. Everything preposterous. All of it richly articulate of the antic spirit that animates his being. Indeed, Johnson is an apex-clown – capable of the most sophisticated existential mockery while simultaneously maintaining the low moment-by-moment physical comedy of the buffoon. Recall general election Johnson of 2019. Think of the famous moment where he drove a JCB through a polystyrene wall on which was written the word “Gridlock”. His union jack-painted digger burst through the polystyrene with the legend “Get Brexit Done” written on its loader. His subsequent speech even mentioned custard: “I think it is time,” he said, smirking, “for the whole country – symbolically – to get in the cab of a JCB – of a custard colossus – and remove the current blockage that we have in our parliamentary system.” This scene must surely be as close to the actual circus as politics in the UK has ever come. Boris Johnson at the JCB headquarters in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, December 2019. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Consider what is actually going on here. The wall is a wall that he helped create. Now he wants everyone to join him demolishing it. And he’s the man to lead the charge. Why? Because he’s the only one who can smash through the nonsense that is … the wall. Yet, he built the wall. Most of this nonsense is his doing – figuratively, literally, in the studio, in the country. And why are the hazard lights on? Because, of course, this is an emergency, for the clown must forever be concocting drama. An emergency that he has conjured and staged – to place himself in the cab of the rescue vehicle. Which is not a rescue vehicle. But a JCB. (Paradox inside paradox; is he destroying or rescuing?) A JCB painted as a union jack. Why? To celebrate the flag? Not quite. To mock it, then? Also, not quite. But in order to toy with it – to clown with it – to move back and forth across the borders of the serious and the comic. “Time for the whole country,” he says, “symbolically – to get in the cab of the JCB.” Symbolically? Was ever a word deployed with so many layers of foolery? What – we thought he might mean we all get in the JCB? Of course, we didn’t. So who is he mocking with that word? He’s mocking everything – the stunt, us, himself – even in the moment of performance, he mocks his own performance. We cannot take him seriously and yet we must take him seriously. And note how that word “symbolically” steps up from the backstage of Johnson’s consciousness when talking of Brexit – which, as he well knows, is an act of symbolism at the expense of everything else. The JCBs, the polystyrene walls, the stuck-on-a-zipwire-with-two-mini-union-jacks, the hiding in fridges, the waving of fish, the thumbs up, the pants down, this is the realm of the mock heroic – to which Johnson returns again and again. This is where he’s most at home. This is where he’s world-king. And he urges us to join him there. Nudges our elbows. Offers us a drink. Beckons us in. Smirks. Winks. Johnson’s novel Seventy-Two Virgins is one long tour of the territory. The book is beyond merely bad and into some hitherto unvisited hinterland of anti-art. More or less everything about it is ersatz. Commentators who fall for his self-conjured comparisons to Waugh and Wodehouse miss the point entirely and do both writers an oafish ill-service. Because here again: Johnson is not seriously interested in writing novels at all. It’s not that he’s a fraud. Rather, as ever, he is a jester-dilettante peddling parody and pastiche. In truth, the attentive reader is not invited to take anything seriously about the novel – not its title; not its handling of character, dialogue, plot or point of view; not its dramatic construction, nor its stylistic impersonations. And certainly not its thematic dabbling. In fact, for more than 300 ingenious pages, Johnson manages to commit to nothing in the art of writing a novel so much as the attempt to be entertaining in the act of mocking a commitment to the art of writing of a novel. There is no heroic; it’s all mock. “To a man like Roger Barlow,” Johnson writes of his clownishly named hero in the book, “the whole world just seemed to be a complicated joke … everything was always up for grabs, capable of dispute; and religion, laws, principle, custom – these were nothing but sticks from the wayside to support our faltering steps.” Clowns have been with us through history. They turn up in Greek drama as sklêro-paiktês – childlike figures. During the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a clown-king was chosen and all commerce was suspended in favour of a wild cavort. (“Fuck business.”) In Norse mythology, the archetype is the figure of Loki – silver-tongued trickster and shape-shifter who turns himself into horse, seal, fly, and fish. (Note the echo of the reference by a close ally of Joe Biden to Johnson as a “shape-shifting creep”.) In the Italian commedia dell’arte, there is the character of Pierrot. There is Badin in France, Bobo in Spain, Hanswurst in Germany. And here in Britain: Shakespeare’s many famous fools. We need our clever fools, of course. Too much solemnity is sickly. We need the carnival. We need reminders of our absurdity. The culture should be subverted. The sacred should be disparaged. Institutions should be derided when they become sclerotic. We live in an age of posturing and zealotry and never needed our satirists and our clowns more. But the transgressor is licensed precisely because they are not in power. The satirist ridicules the government – fairly, unfairly – and we smile because (ordinarily) they are not in charge of the hospitals, the schools, our livelihoods or the borders. We laugh and clap at the circus, the theatre and the cinema because we can go home at the end of the evening, confident that the performers are not in charge of the reality in which we must live. Boris Johnson stuck on a zipline in Victoria Park, London, August 2012. Photograph: Getty Images Previously, of course, this was Johnson’s relationship to power. He was the clown-journalist tilting idly at straight bananas, Tony Blair, political correctness gone mad. When he was made mayor of London, he was in effect elevated to quasi-official court jester. There he was stranded on the zipwire (the buffoon parodies the circus trapeze act) but real power still remained elsewhere. Even during the referendum campaign, David Cameron and George Osborne were the government … whereas Johnson was continuing to perform the role of fool – holding up a kipper here, draped in sausages there, arriving in town squares with his red circus bus and a farrago of misdirection and fallacy. He was stoutly devoid of any real idea or concern for what might replace the structures he disparaged. His humour, his glee, his energy, his campaigning brilliance – it delighted and sparkled because he was free of responsibility, free to be himself, free to throw the biggest custard pies yet dreamed of in the UK. Vanishingly few people had any serious idea of what was involved in leaving the EU; and resoundingly not Johnson. But those who simply wanted to leave because their gut instinct told them it was right to do so would have failed and failed miserably without him. These men and women – the likes of Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis, Steve Baker, Nigel Farage, Mark Francois, John Redwood, Gisela Stuart, Kate Hoey et al – were never more than a dim congregation of rude mechanicals. And what they required to win was someone who instinctively understood how to conduct a form of protracted public masque. Someone who could distract, charm, rouse and delight with mischief and inversion and a thousand airy nothings. (The clown was ever the perfect ambassador of meaninglessness.) But even Puck sends the audience home with an apology and the reassurance that all we have witnessed was but a dream. We, however, have made our clown a real-world king. And from that moment on, we became a country in which there was only the mock heroic – a “world beating” country that would “strain every sinew” and give “cast-iron guarantees” while bungling its plans and breaking its promises. A country “ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles” and act “as the supercharged champion” of X, Y, Z. A country on stilts – pretending that we had a test and trace system that was head and shoulders above the rest of the world. A country performing U-turns on the teetering unicycle of Johnsonian buffoonery – A-levels, school meals, foreign health workers and more. A country of tumbling catastrophes. Trampolining absurdities. Go to work. Don’t go to work. A country proroguing parliament illegally here, trying to break international law there. Paying its citizens to “eat out to help out” in the midst of a lethal pandemic. A country testing its eyesight in lockdown by driving to distant castles with infant and spouse during a travel ban. A country whose leadership stitched up the NHS in the morning and then clapped for them at night. A country opening schools for a single day, threatening to sue schools, shutting schools. A country on holiday during its own emergency meetings. A country locking down too late; opening up too early. A country sending its elderly to die in care homes. A country unwilling to feed its own children. A country spaffing £37bn up the wall one moment and refusing to pay its own nurses a decent salary the next. A country doing pretend magic tricks with the existence of its own borders – no, there won’t be a border in the sea; oh yes there will; oh no there won’t; it’s behind you …. A country of gimmicks and slapstick and hollow, honking horns. This is Eastcheap Britain and Falstaff is in charge. It is in the two Henry IV plays that Shakespeare most clearly illuminates the gulf between his great, theatre-filling clown, Falstaff, and the young Prince Hal who will go on to become the archetype of the king – Henry V. At the mock-court of Falstaff’s tavern, we are invited to laugh and drink more ale, pinch barmaid’s bottoms, dance with dead cats and put bedpans on our heads while Falstaff entertains us with stories of his bravery and heroism that we all know are flagrant lies. Says Prince Hal to the portly purveyor of falsehoods: “These lies are like their father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” Meanwhile, the realm falls apart. Since we have no Hal and have crowned the clown instead, the play we are now watching in the UK asks an ever more pressing question: can Falstaff become Henry V and lead his country with true seriousness and purpose? Or is the vaccine-cloaked transformation now being enacted merely superficial – a shifting of the scenery? The lies themselves are the problem. The kingly archetype embodies at least the ambition of sincerity, meaning and good purpose at the heart of the state. Whereas deceit continues to be the default setting on Johnson’s hard drive. Rory Stewart calls Johnson “the best liar ever to serve as prime minister” but writes that “what makes him unusual in a politician is that his dishonesty has no clear political intent”. But Stewart does not quite see that Johnson is the purest form of clown there is – “improper by essence” – and that truth and lies are like two sides of the argument to him: equally tedious, equally interesting, equally absurd, both a distant second in their service of tricks, drama, distraction, invention, manipulation. He will write you two columns, four, 10, 100 – pro-Marmite, anti-Marmite; pro-EU, anti-EU. And then he’ll tell you all about them. All about how he couldn’t decide. Because not deciding is where all the drama is to be found and who cares about the arguments anyway? No, what the trickster wants is neither your agreement nor your disagreement. (For he himself agrees and disagrees.) What the trickster wants most of all … is for you to admire his trickery. Heinrich Böll, the German Nobel-prize winner and author of the truly great novel The Clown, answers Stewart’s question when he says: “You go too far in order to know how far you can go.”

The clown king: how Boris Johnson made it by playing the fool | Boris Johnson | The Guardian

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the-houseoffaiza-blog · 5 years

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House of Faiza, lovingly called HOF by fans all over the country, is the standard for Pakistani high end fashion in the UK. The e-store has established itself as the prime go-to retailer for premium Pakistani fashion. House of Faiza provides the latest Pakistani designer dresses & clothes Worldwide. Browse our fantastic collection of designer brands suits including Maria B, Sana Safinaz, Baroque, Sobia Nazir, Elan, Gulaal and many more at our website

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houseoffaiza-blog · 6 years

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The e-store has established itself as the prime go-to retailer for premium Pakistani fashion. The store is well stocked with the latest offerings from the likes of Elan UK, Gulaal UK, Sana Safinaz UK and Maria B UK continues to expand its vibrant collection. Our motto, ‘There is always a reason’, highlights the character of our brand. One that aims to set a trend of taking up and accepting the fine things in life, the premium that there is, the crème de la crème. Connecting millions of expatriates with their homeland, HoF provides trendy, affordable clothes mixed in with luxury brands that are still within reach.

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102090508dc · 2 years

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WEEK 6 : What is digital citizenship? Hashtag publics, political engagement and activism

SHEIN is a ultra-fast fashion website which has garnered popular support online. SHEIN is unique in that it functions purely online, without any physical stores for consumers to visit (DW Planet A, 2022). Younger women are the audience, with its social media strategy being centred around consumer marketing. Influencers and typical users participate in trends that promote the brand for them, with algorithms presenting trends to younger women that play on their desire to fit in and conform to social norms (DW Planet A, 2022). The popularity of the site contradicts the values of Gen Z - who largely exist online - as it produces mass ammounts of unsustainable fashion, and contributes to the growing environmental impact of fast fashion (Elan, P., 2021).

The emergence of sustainable fashion has been fueled by concern for the environmental, social, and economic impact of the practice (Lai, Z., Henninger, C., Alevizou, P., 2017). Sustainable fashion refers to clothing goods which sustain the wearers basic needs and quality of life while limiting the use of natural resources in its creation. Fast-fashion on the other hand refers to the mass-produced, cheap, and quickly out-of-style clothing items which popular companies often produce (Lai, Z., Henninger, C., Alevizou, P., 2017). The fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters globally, and is a huge cause for concern (Lai, Z., Henninger, C., Alevizou, P., 2017).

The sustainable fashion movement is commonly thought of as the antidote to the fast-fashion crisis (Chi, T., Gerard, J., Yu, Y., Wang, Y., 2021). The online movement aims to influence attitudes towards fashion, centering sustainability, function, and comfort over what is ‘trendy’ (Chi, T., Gerard, J., Yu, Y., Wang, Y., 2021). Shaping consumers' attitudes is achieved through social media campaigns which present exciting alternatives to fast fashion. The trend has become so popular that many popular brands have jumped on the bandwagon - producing clothing that capitalises on this business model (Chi, T., Gerard, J., Yu, Y., Wang, Y., 2021). Despite the rising popularity of slow fashion, the U.S continues to produce 16 million tons of textile and apparel waste - most of which ends up in landfills (Chi, T., Gerard, J., Yu, Y., Wang, Y., 2021)

Bibliography

Lai, Z., Henninger, C., Alevizou, P., 2017 ‘An Exploration of Consumers’ Perceptions Towards Sustainable Fashion – A Qualitative Study in the UK’, in Sustainability in Fashion A Cradle to Upcycle Approach, Palgrave

Chi, T., Gerard, J., Yu, Y., Wang, Y., 2021, ‘A study of U.S consumers’ intention to purchase slow fashion apparel: understanding the key determinants’, International Jounral of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, Edition 14

DW Planet A, 2022, ‘If you think fast fashion is bad, check out SHEIN’

Elan, P., 2021, ‘Worst of the worst, why is fast fashion retailer SHEIN launching a reality show?’, The Guardian Sun

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assignment-for-mda20009 · 2 years

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Week 6 - Thrifting Shein Paradox

Being a fat girl, I can’t help but succumb to Shein’s taunting promise of clothes that fit and are in fashion. It sounds shocking, but I am dead tired of shirts with the shoulder cut out to show modest skin, floral print and deep cleavage. I know I’m not alone in this sentiment – an article in The Guardian said that Shein is the most inclusive fast fashion retailer in the UK (Elan 2021). The problem in this lies that I contribute to the problem – as the reading this week stated, I am in a “viscous circle” of being aware of the negative consequences, but partaking in fast fashion anyway (Lai et al 2017 p. 85).

Its deeply saddening – I want to be more conscious of my impact, but with my current stature and body there is no space for me in ethical fashion. I am a lower middle-class, full time Uni student – I can’t afford the luxury of $200 pants, or even a $50 shirt. I have to agree with the participants in Lai et al’s study, “being ecological should not effect the price of a product,” (Lai et al 2017, p. 93).

Not all hope is lost, however. Ozdamar-Ertekin and Atik say that the emergence of slow fashion products is driven by the community interest in these issues of environmental and social sustainability (Chi et al 2021 p.102). They also recognised that when we, the consumer, are aware of the environmental impact a product has, we will second guess our purchase and shift ideologies toward a more sustainable option (Chi et al 2021 p.103).

This begs the question – if I thrift Shein from Savers, do I contribute to the problem? I actively support fast fashion by buying the brand… but its secondhand and doesn’t give more product to the company. It may be a sustainable option, but me wearing that outfit in public may inspire another fat girl to purchase directly from the source.

References:

Chi, T, Gerard, J, Yu, Y, Wang, Y 2021, A study of U.S. consumers’ intention to purchase slow fashion apparel: understanding the key determinants, Taylor & Francis, Vol. 14, viewed 10th April 2022, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17543266.2021.1872714

Elan, P 2021, ‘Worst of the worst’: why is fast fashion retailer Shein launching a reality show?, The Guardian, viewed 10th April 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/aug/29/fast-fashion-retailer-shein-design-reality-show

Lai, Z, Henninger, C, Alevizou, P 2017, An Exploration of Consumers’ Perceptions Towards Sustainable Fashion – A Qualitative Study in the UK, Springer Link, p. 81-101, viewed 10th April 2022, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-51253-2

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stylemantrauk-blog · 5 years

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Summer Wardrobe Essentials - you can’t live without. Style Mantra has a collection of some beautiful pieces of fashion to inspire your wardrobe this summer. From cotton embroidered shirt to net, chiffon or silk dupatta, Style Mantra has got you covered! Style Mantra is giving you a wide range of ELAN LAWN’19 to brighten your summer in a spectacular way. Sana Safinaz Luxury Lawn 2019 is exclusively available at My Style Mantra with Enticing Prices. Go ahead with the latest trend of Summer Lawn Collection in modern style.

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eat-pray-and-love · 6 years

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Time and again...….A Short Story.

One monsoon in the 1970s my grandfather died. His portrait hung in the pooja room along with the pictures of Gods, demigods and our Gurus. He was sitting on a wooden chair staring quite blankly ahead in the frame. Apparently it was a sketched portrait of an artiste whose name I never got to know. His hair was neatly combed and his forehead revealed a frown that appeared both confused and baffled as if questioning the artiste as to why he needed to sketch him at all. But of course my grandfather never questioned any decisions. He remained silent in the portrait…in death and throughout most of his life. Dadu silently endured the pain from an ailment and even though the house was bursting at the seams with a dozen people, no one even noticed.

In an early memory I am sitting reluctantly with a plate of boiled up ‘death time food’ which the elders called Hobishi….to me it sounded very Japanese. Rukmini will come and eat you up whole , someone says while passing by with familiar ferocity. Most of us were scared of Rukmini . She was maimed and scarred all over, her face distorted after an acid attack, carrying a sack like bag over her shoulders. Stories reveal that her father maimed her in order to enhance the sympathy of passers-by who would drop a penny or two in her aluminum bowl ….a source of income. She was the Francis Drake of our time.

I rushed for refuge to the long window, which gave me an aerial view of the rickshaws waiting in line and their drivers….or should I say pullers. This was my favourite haunt. I considered this window the best place in the house. It even had a jutting inward platform so thoughtfully constructed to allow me to stand and get an elevated perspective of the world below unseen.

Forced into an unwanted afternoon nap, I lay looking at the ceiling with its thick heavy beams clothed in dust and cobwebs. It was in this room that my grandparents started their life with their two sons. There were dusty frames in the room of people standing, a seated woman and many others that I didn’t recognize. My grandparents used to introduce these framed people to visitors time and again.

There was an enclosed veranda with a dilapidated railing and we were forewarned not to lean against or on the railing. In one part of the room lay a bed and in the other part a folded ‘bedding’ rolled up straight along with a jute mat. We were privileged and so occupied the bed. I would play many games with my cousins in that room.

My thoughts wandered from the nooks and crannies of the house to the kitchen which was surprisingly at the entrance on a sectioned off balcony. My grandmother cooked behind a partition dividing the kitchen from the rest of the house. The room was never thought of as a kitchen. There was a sack of coal in the corner of the kitchen along with a huge metal drum with a little brass tap and a miniature iron bucket placed strategically below to hold the spill. The misty water in the bucket had to be emptied out onto the open drains nearby time and again.

In front of the kitchen was a make to do dining space. It was definitely different from the modern dining rooms with a rosewood dining table and formal sitting rooms which we strangely called drawing rooms of the house that I grew up in…..in a different part of the world.

In the early years of my childhood, all meals came from this kitchen of my grandmothers. My mother on a yearly vacation, my aunts and others would cook sometimes together, chatting and sharing anecdotes while being assisted silently by Amola.

Amola was a little older than I was at the time. She wore long floral printed dresses. My grandmother found her slow and often caught her unawares smiling to herself, lost in a different world. While mopping, we would exchange furtive glances and in our own way, we found time to be together. Around 4 pm, when the rest of the house was taking a nap, after a sumptuous meal, Amola would come to me smiling and we would play ludo and snakes and ladders on a colourful board laughing and chatting in careless yet hushed whispers, always careful not to wake up the adults. Amola strangely called me Didimuni though that was not my name.

We were happy following this routine for most of the days when quite abruptly she stopped coming to the house. Her beautiful young mother in a saree Amolar Ma as we were expected to call her took over the household chores with equal elan. Amola was to be married soon. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye and often wondered what this new uncertain world of marriage, would have in store for her.

The kitchen had a bottle green cemented floor while the rest of the house had a red coloured flooring. The kitchen was dark with a makeshift ‘’low power bulb’’ hanging dangerously over my granny’s head. It had a low sooty ceiling and coloured platforms with a furnace like oven projecting upwards. The cooking here was done on coal fire stoves which looked like buckets coated with thick clay. The coal that went into it was fanned and blown upon the courtyard outside until they lit to a red glow.

Refrigerators were uncommon and were the preserve of the rich and elite. Vegetables, fruits, fish were bought afresh each day. Most of the fish were bought dead but there were some varieties which were just killed and some fish were bought alive and kicking and put immediately into miniature tanks or large buckets before my grandmother butchered them. There were lengthy discussions about the fish scales, quality, size, price, etc by almost all the adults. We were not allowed to jump or play in the courtyard while the fish were being cut and sliced and finally cleaned by Amola’s Ma. It was too dangerous they said.I went to my cousin’s room. He was always seen ‘matching his routine’ as he said and packing all his textbooks into a screechy aluminum briefcase like thing which had a latch quite different to the light weight satchels that I was used to. He remained serious and silent during school days.

My mother was always observed with gracious suspicion as if her world was intruding unknown strange pastures. This was confirmed with greater fury once she had the audacity of ‘’crossing the 7 seas’’ to live with my father in the UK. She was only trusted with cutting vegetables and every morning she sat with these gargantuan bags of potatoes, brinjal, cabbages, greens etc chopping them up with a knife and on a wooden board as opposed to the ‘’bonti’’and sheets of old newspaper. She was often caught reading these newspapers until someone asked her with an alien firmness’’ do you even cook? What do you eat? Soup bread??? Tinned food?? She only smiled filled with quiet astonishment.

She would sit with these damp vegetables often chatting with her sisters husband who was a frequent visitor along with her brothers from ‘’oi bari’’ or the other house referring to her parents home. They would discuss Tagore, novels of yesteryears, debate on new literature, the changing political scenario, Gregory Pecks performance in The Roman Holiday while I played hopscotch on the red cement floor drawing the grid with an old white chalk. Amolas Ma would remind her to dip the cut potatoes into a bowl of water or else they would turn black she said. My mother looked at her and smiled feeding on her own images in her mind.

There was a widowed aunt who lived in the rear section of the house who would often would come out and help in the cooking or add to the spread with a cooked banana stem vegetable . She was an unacknowledged chef among them and it was only later that I realized that Pishi as they called her was a tenant and had relocated from Benares after her husband passed away. I eagerly watched her apply mustard oil to her hands before she cut the banana stem. She was on a restricted diet forbidden to eat anything other than vegetables and lentils. They told me it was because she was a widow. This connection between being a widow and food I clearly did not comprehend. Somehow it didn’t seem strange or wrong to anyone else.

We were in the last lap of our holidays. My grandmother never came downstairs during the tearful farewells as the taxi approached to take us to the airport. Instead she told my uncle to bring a few ‘’aerogrammes’’ or postal letters as her stock had replenished writing to us. She sat knitting sweaters for us firm as a rock yet tears rolling down her cheek. We later learnt that no one disturbed her or entered her room for a few days after we had left.

As a family we strayed much further away from India making another two countries our home for lengthy periods of time. Today I have two grown up sons …one of them living in Canada. I look forward to having him home time and again…so that he can eat rice, dal with us… with his hands, speak in Bengali, revisit our past….things we sometimes worry he will no longer do after we die.

We did visit Calcutta time and again and took back with us draw string pyjamas , tea …the best of its kind and other things special only to Kolkata as the city is now called. We have finally decided to grow old here.

After an early dinner I read the newspaper….look out of my now familiar window and sit in front of my laptop. I decide to send an email to my son in Canada. Come home son…its been a long time.

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houseoffaiza-blog · 6 years

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Pakistani Clothes Online UK | House of Faiza

The e-store has established itself as the prime go-to retailer for premium Pakistani fashion. The store is well stocked with the latest offerings from the likes of Elan UK, Gulaal UK, Baroque UK, Sana Safinaz UK, and Maria B UK continues to expand its vibrant collection. Our motto, ‘There is always a reason’, highlights the character of our brand. One that aims to set a trend of taking up and accepting the fine things in life, the premium that there is, the crème de la crème. Connecting millions of expatriates with their homeland, HoF provides trendy, affordable clothes mixed in with luxury brands that are still within reach.

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#womens clothing #womensfashion #womens clothes #Pakistani fashion industry #Pakistani Clothes #designer clothes #clothes #Pakistani designer suits

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clothsuppliers · 4 years

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SANA SAFINAZ Embriodered LinenCollection 2020 Hamza Collections *Same As Original* 10 Pcs In A Catlouge *Front Linen Embroidery Neckline On Base* Printed *LINEN* Dupttas Dyed Linen Trouser #Cloth #Clothsupplier #Clothsuppliers #baroquefashion #baroqueofficial #mariab #MariabLawn20 #sapphirepakistan #sobianazir #nishatlinen #elanlawn #khaadi #ColorMeCrimson #maryamhussain #CrimsonLuxebySairaShakira #CrimsonPakistan #Rupehli #Elan #elanofficial #Mprints #SanaSafinaz #Khaddar #elanlawn2020 #khadijahshah #FTALawn2020 #FarahTalibAzizLawn2020 #Linen #UK (at Karachi, Pakistan) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGb5yCZFfMe/?igshid=122b3plqkeko6

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pakioutfits · 7 years

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Exclusive Ayesha Zohaib Linen Collection Volume I 2017

(more…)

View On WordPress

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azan33111-blog · 8 years

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Elan Lawn Collection 2017-18 For Girls in Summer Season Coming Soon on 18th march. Therefore Girls re very excited about Elan collection. Online booking of this Elan lawn collection is starts tonight at 12 am sharp. So hurry up and put your online order for this Elan lawn collection 20117.

Elan Lawn Collection 2017

Furthermore, brief of this Elan lawn collection is made according to the realistic tradition. Also special effects are put in this collection by designer. Due these reason and qualities girls are out of control about this collection.

Another quality of this Elan lawn collection 2017 is mixture of too many colors. These colors make this collection delightful and stylish. Girls can wear these dresses at different occasions to get a remarkable personality.

Another perfect thing in this collection is fabric quality. Lawn fabric is use by designer to make this collection. As we all know about lawn fabric because lawn fabric is the most used fabric in spring summer season for girls and women clothing. That s why lawn is used with class stitching quality.

Furthermore, price of this Elan lawn collection 2017 is not yet announced by the company. But according to news of designer price range of this collection is very affordable and in the range of everyone.

In conclusion, I close this entire collection in few words. This collection is girls heart touching collection for spring summer season. Every girl and women want to get this collection at top priority level.

Finally this is the best collection of elan all time. For more updates and latest collection of new year and seasonal collection keep touch with us . Also visit our site www.fashobazar.com regularly. So Our specialist are always try to give you the latest collection of the season.

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Elan Lawn Collection 2017-18 For Girls in Summer Season Coming Soon Elan Lawn Collection 2017-18 For Girls in Summer Season Coming Soon on 18th march. Therefore Girls re very excited about Elan collection.

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namitaoommen-blog · 4 years

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Online Clothing Rental Market Size and Growth Analysis and Forecast To 2030

Online Clothing Rental Market is valued around USD 1.22 Billion in 2019 and expected to reach USD 3.55 Billion by 2030 with the CAGR of 10.2% over the forecast period.

Online clothing rental is a service which allows an individual to rent the clothing items for the specific period of time. Owing to the limited availably of financial resources with cost effectiveness is the major supporting factors. These services prove to be helpful during the events & functions and provide latest trending clothing items which easily fits in the budget.

Global Online Clothing Rental Market report is segmented on the basis of product type, demography and by regional. Based upon product type, the online clothing rental market is fragmented into westerns wear, ethnic wear, and others. Based on demography, the market is fragmented into men, women, and kids. The regional bifurcation of countries includes North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and RoW which are further segmented into major countries such as U.S., UK, France, and others.

The online clothing rentals market is mainly driven by the continuous changes in the fashion industry with limited availability of budget. There is a steady growth in the technological advancement which in turn boosts the e-commerce as well as online services to promote the growth of online clothing rental market. In addition, there has been surge in the experimenting with clothing ideas from different fashion brands. Moreover, development of entertainment industry also plays an important role in the online clothing rental market which enhances the market growth. However, lack of customization option, limited availability of sizes and lack of social acceptance may restrict the market growth.

Download sample copy of this report at https://www.nextmsc.com/Online-Clothing-Rental-Market/request-sample

The developed regions such as North America and Europe are expected to hold the major market share owing to the well-established network and internet service with surge in the e-commerce services in the region with advanced technology. Moreover, Asia Pacific is expected to dominate the online clothing rental market in terms of growth rate owing to the rising consumer awareness about fashion trends, budget constraints and growth in the function & events. Moreover, availability of wide clothing range and brands from the designers has also expected to augment the market growth.

The major market players profiled in the online clothing rental market includes Poshmark, Dress & Go, Etashee, Envoged, Rent the Runway, Secoo Holdings Ltd, GlamCorner Pvt Ltd., Elanic Services Pvt Ltd., and Secret Worldwide among others.

About Us:

Next Move Strategy Consulting is an independent and trusted third-platform market intelligence provider, committed to deliver high quality, market research reports that help multinational companies to triumph over their competitions and increase industry footprint by capturing greater market share. Our research model is a unique collaboration of primary research, secondary research, data mining and data analytics.

We have been servicing over 1000 customers globally that includes 90% of the Fortune 500 companies over a decade. Our analysts are constantly tracking various high growth markets and identifying hidden opportunities in each sector or the industry. We provide one of the industry’s best quality syndicate as well as custom research reports across 10 different industry verticals. We are committed to deliver high quality research solutions in accordance to your business needs. Our industry standard delivery solutions that ranges from the pre consultation to after-sales services, provide an excellent client experience and ensure right strategic decision making for businesses.

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#Online Clothing Rental Market

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vsplusonline · 5 years

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The coconut water repertoire

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/the-coconut-water-repertoire/

The coconut water repertoire

Coconut water is among the best thirst quenchers in the sweltering months. But there’s more. Did you know that coconut water can be the base material to develop alternative leather?

A little known Kerala-based start-up ‘Malai Biomaterials’ courted spotlight a few days ago when it won the second edition of Circular Design Challenge (CDC) at Lakme Fashion Week (LFW), Mumbai. The CDC was instituted a year ago to recognise those who employ innovative methods to recycle discarded materials to create new products.

Malai Biomaterials manufactures a water resistant bio-composite material that looks like leather, using raw materials such as coconut water and banana fibre.

Founded by Zuzana Gombosova, a material researcher from Slovakia, and C S Susmith, a product designer from Kerala, the start-up now supplies its vegan leather called ‘Malai’ (named after the coconut flesh) to a few international labels.

The CDC had more than 400 registrations from 40 cities in India, and five entrepreneurs were shortlisted. Zuzana and Susmith admit that they were pleasantly surprised to find themselves among the final nominees. In an email interview, they tell us that their surprise also stemmed from learning about the work of the other nominees in sustainable fashion. “To initiate and run such a project, you need determination and patience. I think our project was distinctive in a way that it went further with finding a solution to waste generation. We try to prevent waste generation by providing a material that doesn’t turn into waste. Malai is a circular material by default. It emerges from agricultural waste and ends its life becoming a nutrient for soil,” says Zuzana.

Circular Design Challenge at LFW is in collaboration with Reliance Industries’ R | Elan and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in India.

The other finalists for the CDC apart from Malai Biomaterials were: Samaritan that uses industrial plastic and textile scrap to make furniture and accessories using charpoy and macramé weaving techniques; Hyderabad-based firm Cancelled Plans that uses industrial waste to create clothing and accessories; Chambray & Co that upcycles waste into a funky line of clothing; and Off-Grain that upcycles textile waste.

What goes into Malai? “Bacterial cellulose (that’s developed from coconut water), fibre from banana stem, sisal fibre and hemp fibre,” state Susmith and Zuzana. They also use natural dyes, natural gums and starches.

The firm liaises with coconut farmers and processing units, collects and re-purposes coconut water to feed the bacteria’s cellulose production. A small coconut-processing unit can collect around 4000 litres of water per day, which can be used to make 320 square metres of Malai.

Both Zuzana and Susmith were working in Mumbai when they first met. “She told me about the possibility of growing bacterial cellulose on water from mature coconuts and I found that interesting because nobody makes this kind of product in Kerala or India,” recalls Susmith.

They began experimenting in their kitchen and then moved to the vicinity of a coconut processing unit where they developed the material further. “Malai emerged as an attempt to create material based on bacterial cellulose that’s ecologically friendly and usable for commercial products. Our criteria was to keep it as sustainable as possible, both environmentally and socially,” he adds.

Their mainstay is the material, Malai, which is now supplied to brands such as UK-based Ethical Living, Czech Republic firm Playbag and Riti in India, among others.

In 2018, Malai expanded its portfolio by designing product prototypes. A crowd-funding campaign was mooted and 10 products — bags and accessories included — are now in production. “We will be stocking some of these products at a few retailers in India and abroad soon. But our main focus is on material development,” they state.

They hope that the win at LFW will bring them more visibility in the fashion and lifestyle sector and help them reach a wider audience. They will be showcasing their new collection at LFW Winter/Festive 2020 and at Neonyt Berlin 2020, the international fair for sustainable fashion.

The fashion spotlight aside, Zuzana and Susmith intend to begin a new phase of research and development, and test the first batch of Malai products with their users.

Sustainability remains at the core of their ideology. As Susmith puts it, “We have to constantly remind ourselves that we are borrowing from nature and we are bound to return it back to nature in a form that nature can use.” He describes the work at Malai Biomaterials (made-from-malai.com) as a mix of art, craft, design, science and engineering.

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cepavantaj · 5 years

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Piracy Composition

Research the relevancy of post-modernist neo-tribalism inside coeval usance behaviours

Foundation

This seek testament chiefly believe the relevancy of neo-tribalism inside a modern-day mart, exploring how tribes gremlin phthisis habits.

Chief Consistence

Neo-tribes are outlined as corporate groups of multitude, commonly-linked unitedly by divided or reciprocal passions, emotions or attitudes (Maffesoli, 1995). Crossways an academician check, neo-tribes suffer been conceptualised as a treatment of sociable atomisation and individuation inside a coeval companionship, pioneering the re-embracement and of historic tribal life (Unfearing et al. 2018). In circumstance, academics debate that as humanity let evolved to exist inside tribal societies, they leave not be capacity until around colour of traditional tribal lifestyles has been re-created (Maffesoli, 1996).

In rehearse, present-day neo-tribal members are mentation to follow consumers whose use choices mull a self-constructed whimsy of individuality, e.g. football fans or medicine civilisation fan-groups (Fearless et al. 2018). Hetherington (1992) farther indicated that neo-tribal members are fluent, choosing to disaffiliate from the people and naturalize sub-cultures. An exemplar includes goths, who sustain had a touchable tempt on markets such as medicine, clothes and elan; with supportive explore indicating that medieval furniture has had a billow in sales chase emergence of goth sub-cultures (Cova et al. 2012).

Although the radical has no prescribed rank, engagement inside mediaeval interests forms an adherence ‘tween grouping members ecumenical. A important import for marketers refer to the fact that unofficial neo-tribes such as goths are potentially unmanageable to mart to or scope done traditional merchandising methods.

As neo-tribes are unremarkably associated with trends (Cova, 1997), merchandising so moldiness be responsive to this outgrowth, referring to a dynamical potentiality whereby new or forward-looking trends interrupt the intake grocery (Schumpeter, 1942). An instance includes the late Pokémon Go furore which led a 105% lace in Pokémon-branded product inside habiliment, play and knitted shift bears (Forbes, 2016). This thusly identifies with the possibility proposed (Maffesoli, 1996) that neo-tribal lifestyles are verbalised done uptake to reinsert societal indistinguishability; peculiarly in the suit of the Pokémon Furore which was mostly impelled by nostalgia and emotions (LinkedIn, 2017). An crucial considerateness relates to where consumer inevitably, affiliations and interests afterwards variety, consumers no thirster are goaded to enter (Unfearing et al.

2018). In reenforcement, inquiry now indicates that four-out-of-five Pokémon Go users sustain now depart, suggesting that in about cases neo-tribes can be impermanent and thence undesirable to prosecute as a semipermanent militant scheme (BGR, 2017; Gatekeeper, 2008). Additionally, an historical lesson of a ever-changing dynamical entity is the phylogeny and retroversion of mods and bikers in the 1960s’ which now arguably ceases to subsist (The Protector, 2012). This is advance exemplified by coeval pop-group One Focussing fans labeled ‘Directioners’ (Buzzfeed, 2017); consisting of rock-ribbed fans who oft intermeshed with One-Direction related newsworthiness crosswise societal media, including gig entropy, new songs and level potential sighted locations (Reysen et al. 2010).

Yet, astern breakup in 2015, Directioners now deliver less tie, indicating that neo-tribes are impermanent sources of a militant reward inside present-day marketplaces; as consumer interests progressively chemise (Ostiary, 2008; Stalwart et al. 2018).

Moreover, creation in skill and engineering and rhytidoplasty development inside the Gen Y selfie coevals has led to globalization of the lift marketplace in moment (The Cable, 2014). Renown influencers such as the Kardashians bear besides fuelled a tribal pursuit and had a far-flung impingement on lift enhancements global (Jung & Hwang, 2016). E.g., inside the UK, Asda’s £6 ass enhancing drawers contributed to a sales increment of 4,600%, marketing out in upright complete a workweek (The Autonomous, 2015). In summation, the Kardashians are progressively incisive Outside markets such as India and development tribal followings, symbolizing a switching to normalising enhancive procedures in Asia, divergent from historic resistor to westerly values and lifestyles (The Defender, 2016; Occupation Insider, 2018). Withal, in apposition, neo-tribalism has arguably contributed to growth underground of contemporaneous ethnical annexation and de-racialisation whereby many consumers are sounding towards ‘skin-lightening’ tactic (The Shielder, 2018) in issue of an utmost want to adapt inside society’s approximation of beautification (Coombes, 2003; BBC, 2018).

Hither academics deliver identified a compound matter whereby historically complexion was coupled to class, with those traditionally top of the club argued to deliver the fairest tegument (McIntosh, 2010). Inside present-day lodge thither are hush many reported cases of racial inequality inside the work (Anecdotist, 2018), suggesting the subject is calm extremely predominant. Moreover, a palpable firm need inside exercise for de-racialisation procedures or skin-lightening designate that many brands are attempting to capitalize and lucre from neo-tribal inequalities confront inside modern-day use (The Shielder, 2018).

Instead, thither are many cases where brands are favorably adoptive by neo-tribes to separate and non-conform, including Quiksilver which is a long-familiar surfriding mark (Maffesoli, 1995; Canniford, 2010). Nevertheless, a restriction to conceive is that stigma espousal inside neo-tribes can leash to early consumer groups existence estranged (Marx, 1844); potentially negatively impacting steel sensing. One exercise in drill includes the damaging sensing of the lavishness Burberry sword formerly connected with what are referred to as ‘chavs’, a disparaging condition to delimit a untested low-class mortal typified by cheeky and swinish demeanour and the wear of (veridical or impersonation) architect dress (The Telegraphy, 2004). A farther illustration relates to realness TV genius ‘The Situation’ from ill-famed US shew T-shirt Prop, who was nonrecreational a six-figure sum by the steel to forbid him from eroding Abercrombie & Foumart vesture; fearing terms of its stain upscale locating (Reuters, 2011). Whilst in around cases neo-tribal tie may not be minus, such as Vauxhall Corsa’s association as a car for ‘male boy racers’ which successively has led to increased sales (Lumsden, 2015), estrangement undischarged to tribal selling or position can let a blackball hob on boilersuit sales by isolating client segments.

In documentation, whilst Harley top5writingservices Davidson enthusiasts are purported to be uncoerced to pass round $40,000 of disposable income on individualised bikes, a recess placement as an ‘All American Bad Boy’ blade has resulted in a liberal sales declivity, with product scaley cover and a subsequent job departure in resultant (The Protector, 2015a).

Neo-tribes are a comparatively late societal phenomenon whose comportment is aided by the digital networking, spanning crosswise outside boundaries (Bennet, 1999). Later, authors cede that the gather gait of consumer prime and technical developments let aided in the mass and sort of tribal-group association (Hamilton & Hewer, 2010). A welfare to marketers is that neo-tribal members are usually less price-sensitive and thus are probably to be volition to pay bounty prices (Fearless et al. 2018). An exemplar includes Apple Tech-heads who deliver formed a cult-like chase and are super devoted to having the up-to-the-minute Apple products (Pongsakomrungslip & Schroeder, 2011).

Whilst having fast following can gain commercialise portion and subsequent lucrativeness, the disfavor is that where customers are disgruntled and as a termination pass aside from the steel; they are progressively probably to diffuse electronegative viva-voce, influencing stigma fairness (Hamilton & Hewer, 2010). In reply, increased nimbleness via dynamical capabilities can enable flexile resources to help with guardianship up with a ever-changing marketplace (Overwinter, 2003). For marketers, this can be achieved done usage of Big Information, apt that a expectant ratio of tribal members intercommunicate on-line done mixer media (Hamilton & Hewer, 2010). Later, information and course analytics could thus assistance brands with obtaining a militant vantage via gaining insights proportional to client see, interests and perceptions (LaVelle et al.

2011).

Moreover, inside a modern-day landscape the zoom of video-blogging or ‘vlogging’, has farther catalysed a chopine that brings urban tribal followings unitedly inside categories such as play, way and cosmetics (The Shielder, 2015b). As academics yield modern-day neo-tribal targeting can be hard as tribes are garbled physically roughly the mankind; digital platforms such as YouTube and wider mixer media consequently offer a potency chance for marketers to efficaciously amplify ambit inside coeval intake (Jung & Hwang, 2016). This may be progressively the vitrine when adopting kindred sentiment leadership as intermediaries for make messages, whereby in rehearse, a reform-minded numeral of ‘beauty gurus’ such as Zoella, Tanya Bur and Samantha and Nicola Chapman are beingness utilized for stigma sponsorship (Mardon et al. 2018).

After, whilst present-day neo-tribal targeting has the palpable danger of consumer disaffection, it is discernible that tribal members let well warm ties to their neo-tribes which thence makes them identical hefty groups of consumers to objective. In representative, for Apple Tech-heads, a MacBook, iPad, Apple Lookout and iPhone can mother approximately £4,000 in sales per client (Apple, 2018).

Termination

Conclusively, as contemporaneous neo-tribes are formed done emotion and life-style, they are arguably attractive targets undischarged to the aroused investiture they handgrip which has led to rock-bottom terms sensitiveness. Still, in practise they can be seen as unfriendly butt markets, presumption that they are mobile, active and hence prostrate to apace alteration. Intrinsically, whilst marketers can get militant achiever done highly-focused mark selling; it is patent that strength and long-run strategical focussing for neo-tribal sectionalization is more equivocal inside a modern-day market, tending that advanced tribal targeting can inspire disaffection.

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Teknoloji ve Mobil Yaşam Rehberi Taste Masters Deservingness Selling Analysis

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cyclinginaskirt-uk · 5 years

Text

It started with just a small innocuous advert on the message board of my mountain bike club…..”planning a trip, anyone interested in bike touring get in touch”.

Why not I thought, what harm could there be in just replying……

A lot as it turns out, which is why, a few weeks later, I’m sat around my kitchen table with 3 strapping strangers drinking beer and discussing luggage. Bike luggage.

It seemed only polite at this juncture to get to know my fellow suffer-fest companions as in just a week’s time we are off to Wales to take on the Trans-Cambrian trail, cycling and camping together for three days covering over 100 miles of some of the best remote mountain trails in the UK. It’s nice to put faces to names too with communication thus far being limited to What’s app banter.

M, my long-suffering partner appears with pizza and our intrepid band is complete. For the first time ever on a trip I have done none of the planning or organising which is both wonderful and scary, especially for those of us with control issues. This is Keith’s baby, submitter of advert and veteran cycle tourist he completed the trail last year and apparently enjoyed the pain so much he’s willing to give it another bash.

Two of his friends Gary aka Action Man and Paul, make us the remainder of the party. Gary is hyper qualified in the bike stakes as he’s just returned from cycling across New Zealand – on a bike carrying a disabled ex-service man, one of his many feats of endurance as we will learn.

Fast forward a few days and the next time we meet it’s in the middle of a field on the Welsh borders at Knighton, close to Offa’s Dyke. The river running through the field is the cartographic dividing line between England and Wales or so I’m reliably informed by the sat-nav. Handy information but it doesn’t make up for her failure to direct us to the campsite. After much inching through precipitous single track lanes in the car it’s good old fashioned human-eyesight which finally spots the handwritten felt-tip sign welcoming us to Panpwnton farm hikers camp.

The campsite is small but with a warm welcome and spotlessly clean toilet, which gives it high marks with me even if a bit of a queue forms for the single cubicle at peak times.

Tent pitched, Gary and Keith soon arrive but with the sad news that Paul has had to pull out last minute. One man down already, but undaunted we head to the pub for a pre-event athletes’ dinner of pizza washed down with copious amounts of beer and wine.

The next day dawns misty but dry. In my true organised-bordering-on-obsessive style I’ve have arranged all our kit for the fastest most efficient start possible, with provision for a decent cooked breakfast to send us on our way. M returns from the car with cups of tea, time to start the day and the adventure……

M: Where are the car keys….?

Me: “Very funny”.

M: “No, seriously where are the car keys…..?” And then the rain starts.

Three hours later the breakdown man is shaking his head having tried and failed to open the car using what looks like a credit card, blood pressure cuff and a coat hanger.

All our gear is still firmly imprisoned inside the car, perfectly packed bags, clothes, keys for the bikes also locked to the car.

I’m all for throwing a brick through the window (it’s M’s car) spurred by the heady effect of Hanger (hunger induced anger) and frustration. Fortunately Keith has spare food but the kit is still safely locked away and we’re going nowhere. After hours of scouring the camping field combing knee length grass in the drizzle, our best but unfounded guess is that the keys have been locked in the vehicle. In defeat I sit in the tent listening to the rain. With nothing better to do I decide to check M’s sleeping bag one more time just in case…… I FOUND THEM. Relief washes away frustration as the Breakdown man just rolls his eyes at us and leaves. We finally set off and even the drizzle is clearing up.

The trail: Day One

Knighton to Elan Valley

35 miles, 4150 feet of climbing

It’s great to finally be moving as we cycle up the hill away from the campsite. The car keys are firmly stored in my pocket for when we return in 3 days.

The trail begins after only a mile or so of tarmac. The whole route is advertised as over 70% off road, with any tarmac that there is consisting of small country lanes making it fantastic MTB country.

After turning off onto what looks like someone’s driveway, pedalling up a last bit of steep tarmac, we head through our first (of oh so many) gates leading uphill on a rugged trail. Full of enthusiasm we pedal hard wanting to ride every hill even though Keith has warned us it’s impossible. Panting and blowing at the top there’s a shout below from Keith, we’ve taken a wrong turn (and ridden the hill for no reason). Slightly cowed we turn around, me rolling squarely through some wet dog mess as we do, the pungent turd slathering my tyre and throwing up fumes as we descend.

Back on the track Keith points to a vertical bank of grass behind us. This is where we start pushing.

Any hopes I had of riding the whole way instantly drain away. The hill is monstrous. I’m pushing the bike vertically, using the brakes to stop us tumbling back in to oblivion whilst the sheep look on amused. It takes well over half an hour to reach the top, during which time it starts raining again. I also begin to regret packing quite so many flapjacks and all of my camping equipment as the bike weighs a ton.

As well as being mostly off road the route is also billed as a very respectable 95% ride-able which sounds wonderful until you realise that means that you will need to push/carry your bike for at least 5% of the time and at 108 miles long that’s still 5.4 miles of pushing. It feels like more, much more!

The route continues on soft grass, winding slowly uphill. The grass makes for hard going although it’s thankfully relatively dry. If really wet under wheel it would be exhausting. With blackening sky the day rolls on, the views are of dark sweeping hills and sheep. Many sheep. The aroma of dog shit is joined by the earthy tang of sheep poo which sprays up under wheel and coats pretty much everything. My mood is brightened somewhat when M starts shouting and cursing having gone to grab his water bottle and picked up a handful of steaming dung. Snigger.

The grassland is interspersed by a few gravel walking trails although most of the time we are heading across what look like sheep tracks. Keith’s doing a prime job of navigating even when we look at him askance as he send us away from a lovely gravel road down an invisible path in the grass.

The day passes in much the same way, grass trail across hills and gravel tracks, dipping through farm yards and climbing back out. It’s hard going but the views are spectacular and go someway to reminding you why you are putting yourself through this. At the end of a long day it’s a weary and subdued bunch however that hit the town of Rhayader to raid the Co-op shop before heading the final few miles to our campsite at Elan Oaks.

The site is off of pretty trailway and well set up….. for caravans. Camping seems to have been a bit of an afterthought as we push our bikes to a soggy field past a couple of sad porta-loos and outdoor sinks. True to form, just as we arrives the weather sticks 2 fingers up and starts raining hard as we pitch our tents.

The evening is saved however by the promise of hot food as we regroup in the Elan Valley Hotel across the road. I hang all my wet clothes out to dry in it’s near deserted dining room as the owner smiles tolerantly as he offers a menu and a place to charge my phone. I could have cried.

Over the years I’ve cycled a lot with camping gear, including off road through the mountains of Chile and Argentina, but today was tough. The boggy grass and precipitous hills were something else. To top it all off tonight was actually the last night of camping as we had booked rooms in a pub for the second (final) night of the trip.

It was then that I had a rare moment of genius….in true damsel in distress fashion I appealed to the owners of the pub to ask if we could perhaps leave our (sodden) camping gear with them tomorrow and collect it on the following day on our way home. I have never been so grateful as when they said yes!

An excellent meal with more copious amount of beer and wine left us all feeling good. Even the rain had let up for the walk back to the tent.

The trail: Day Two

Elan Valley to Llangurig

41 miles, 5220 feet of climbing

It can really psych you out when something is billed as ‘the toughest day’ and this was exactly how day two had been described. Now, day one had been tough so this was scary prospect. It would certainly the longest day in terms of miles and the most climbing and it dawned with a sense of trepidation….and the sound of rain lashing against the tent. Waiting and failing to find a break in the weather we de-camped and squelched over to the hotel for breakfast bearing armfuls of soggy camping gear. An hour later and it was with a huge sense of relief and a considerably lighter bike that we headed out, fortified by a large cooked breakfast and minus camping kit. Even the rain had stopped.

The Elan Valley is known as the Welsh Lake District, it covers 70 square miles of lakes and countryside and hosts 6 reservoirs built, not to provide water to locals, but to be shipped to the industrialised city of Birmingham hundreds of miles away to help cope with it’s exploding population.

Leaving the hotel, the trail quickly took us past the first reservoir before dropping down the side of a steep hill. Having missed the on road route we managed to improvise with a sheep track which plunged steeply down the side of a tall hill. Skidding down the rock strewn grass was certainly a good way to shake off the last bits of sleep.

A short pedal and then what goes down must inevitably go up again….and up….and up, a winding tarmac road until stretching out like a wall in front of us which was, Keith proudly informed us, Puke Hill. With an average gradient of nearly 15% it loomed ahead ominously.

The joy of mountain bikes however, over road bikes, is that they have a low ratio of gears of which I was incredibly glad. Coupled with the lack of camping gear my bike felt, if not lighter than air, then something approaching it.

Inch by inch I took on Puke Hill, pedalling and panting until, lungs screeching I topped out. Even if that killed me for the entire day it was worth it, with the added bonus of being able to get a photo of all 3 boys pushing up behind me.

And so the day went. The scenery and terrain differed markedly from day one, there was the inevitable same number of gates to open and close but aside from that the terrain, was varied, technical and wonderful.

After Puke Hill came a section of boulder-strewn undulating tracks full of rocks the size of sheep and traversed by the same. Technical climbing and descending whilst also ploughing through deep water-filled holes never knowing if you’d be just wetting the tyres or the entire bike. The track ended in the magnificent Claerwen dam (and a tarmac road which gave an easier option for arrival) before a steep push to head up and around the reservoir. The lee of it’s banks provided a sunny lunch stop, the rain having decided to take a well-earned day off.

Although rough under-wheel the reservoir tracks allowed us to pick up some speed and flow which continued when we hit the tarmac the other end. Being a roadie at heart I love a bit of tarmac and this was the best kind, smooth and near traffic free, long swoopy undulations, bordered by wild grasslands and lakes. The miles disappeared under-wheel in a way so different from the previous day, spirits soared along with the hawks we kept spotting. By the end of the road section we’d covered half of today’s miles relatively easily. We’d also acquired a new companion….a be-horned sheep’s skull, nicknamed Larry after the 1960’s children’s TV character, Larry the Lamb.

An off road climb next, through pine forest this time, the heady smell of warm sap accompanying us before some of the most beautiful, fast, flowing single track descents thorough the trees which left a permanent grin and many insects plastered across our faces.

Another winding valley road, this one with starker but no less stunning fauna, through abandoned mining stations and derelict houses until the sat nav kindly led us into someone else’s garden….no, not some random house after all but another trail leading up the steep side of the valley. Once a metalled road it had obviously long since fallen in to disuse but a funny strip of tarmac remained down the middle and it was on this we spent the next hour pushing and pedalling up in turn. The summit was a cold and windswept place with spectacular views and the partial descent back down into the sunshine a welcome relief if somewhat hair-raising, brake discs squealing in protest.

Two trails now presented at the bottom and sat-nav seemed unwilling to commit herself as to which one…. the left fork to a bridge which looked like it crossed into a boggy field and the right fork the beginnings of a gravel track into the woods. Both trails headed the way we needed to go, roughly in parallel, separated from each other by 2 small rivers.

Long story short, we chose the right. It should have been the left. It took us less than 10 minutes to discover our error but somehow the idea of retracing our steps seemed a stupid one, after all, they were only small rivers.

Step in Action Man…. as we stood debating the wisdom of trying to cross we were distracted by some loud crashing, splashing noises. Gary was in the river hauling around stones to make a walkway, he then proceeded to carry all our bikes one by one before helping us across. Same process for river number 2. Thirty minutes later we were standing, mostly dry on the other side of both bits of water and right next to the first path that we didn’t take. Somehow the sense of adventure completely outweighed the stupidity of a 10 minute back track.

Anticipation was with us now, it had been a long day but we were nearing the end and, weirdly, nowhere near as bad as anticipated. The last few miles were a steady climb through more sun-bathed fragrant pine forest before an undulating descent into the town of Llangurig. Happily sailing past the campsite on the outskirts of town, a short pedal later and we were pulling, tired, but elated into the car park of the Bluebell Inn our home for the night.

A welcome pint or several, a great meal and no camping. Winner.

The trail: Day Three

Llangurig to Machynllnth

31 miles, 3510 feet of climbing

Despite some serious crossing of fingers day 3 dawned drizzly, but as it was the last of our adventure, spirits were high and we were looking forward to finishing in style. Buoyed by our exertions of the last 2 days and still enjoying the relative freedom of the pared-down kit we fairly flew out of the pub car park, retracing our steps from yesterday for the first few miles to pick up the trail again.

Gates and more gates as we dripped along the edges of farmland before climbing again through fields of sheep and the inevitable poo.

I love sheep and the way they evaluate life and its potential dangers. Little clusters of them would watch us intensely for long minutes as we climbed steadily towards them getting to within feet before finally, one in the bunch would lose his nerve and dash off in panic. Of course the others followed suit but would get tangled up in themselves in their mad-hurry to get away in a noisy thrashing of woolly limbs, a little white tidal wave of bodies surging before us everywhere we went, 0 to 60 mph panic in seconds.

Back to the trail. The rain and mist intensified and for the first time long trousers came out (at least for me) as the temperature dropped. Gaining altitude over the whole morning we squelched across bleak, treeless fields before coming to a loose, slate-covered downhill of narrow single track which Keith was now recalling from the previous journey. It was very gingerly that we scooted and slid our way down the precipitous, shifting slate path, a grass bank towering to our right, a steep drop to the left. It was with some relief that we skidded to a stop at the bottom in one piece only to faced with an equally vertiginous push up the other side.

And the sketchy trails didn’t end there, another cold and windswept area of grassland led to another cliff-like valley edge and more hair-raising single track descents. It required all my concentration and bike handling skills (what little I possess) to navigate the steep downhill slopes of tumbling, loose shale. The panniers’ weight on the rear of the bike added an extra flavour of spice as did the constantly shifting floor beneath your wheels. The only solution was to keep rolling and, in amongst the fear, adrenaline and total concentration there was a huge buzz at the speed and thrill of careening down the hillside, barely in control but flying.

Our brakes were literally smoking at the bottom on the hillside as the pace steadied and we once again hit the tarmac. There was no respite from the hills or the rain however, steep steep climbs on legs that already felt they had cycled far to many miles and we were all feeling the burn and having to dig deeper and deeper on each climb.

After a significant amount of upwards mobility we reached a literal and metaphorical fork in the road. Previously when Keith, our erstwhile planner had gotten to this point during his trip he’d been in severe danger of missing his train home so had had to bail out of the last section and opt for a sprint down the road to the station some 6 miles away. We of course had that option now, to be kind to tired, wet and weary bodies and do the same or……

Bugger, everyone voted to continue the trail. Of course we did, it was only 8 miles after all, just over that ridge over there……!

For the next hour we toiled up a never ending series of steep inclines, first an energy-sucking grassy track followed by a narrow ridge line so steep we were pushing near vertically, struggling for footholds. I was incredibly glad I’d offloaded my stuff but that was the only happy thought that sprang to mind as we cursed and squelched and pushed our way up the ridge, lashed by rain and sliding and stumbling over the rocky ground. Finally reaching the top M announced that, after all that, we’d only covered a measly half a mile, I could have cried.

The only way was down however, via a fast and hair-raising descent along muddy, slippery single track, punctuated by large rocks and larger potholes. I’m going far too fast but so cold and tired now I just want to finish until…. we’re lost. We can vaguely see the direction we want to take through the mist but every path we take the sat-nav says we’re off course unless…. we push up again…..another steep, soggy hillside, another muddy slippery descent and we’re still off course although vaguely in the right direction.

Breaking out google maps we take stock and take shelter from the driving rain. Despite the GPS insisting we’re off course it does at least look like the forest trail we’re now on will get us to a road which will get us to our final destination. A look and a silent agreement passes between us and as one we charge off, bolting down fire-trails and eventually, joyfully finding the road. As it turns out we’re only a mile or so from the original exit point and a soaking speedy dash brings us shivering into Machynllnth, our planned final destination.

Officially the trail ends at Dovey Junction but we’d have to retrace our steps to this point anyway and none of us feels like we’ve missed out. It’s lashing down now and too wet to take a finishing photo as M’s camera has gotten waterlogged and wisely, there are no people about to ask so we squelch to the nearest pub where we are viewed with suspicion as we drip mud, sheep poo and water on their clean floor.

A change of clothes and a coffee is all we manage before thankfully the amazing bike taxi arrives to whisk us back to Kinghton, which feels like hundreds of days ago, not just 3.

Reflecting on the way back to the taxi, trying to ignore the smell of wet, sweaty cycle-wear, I look back on what has been an amazing trip. The scenery and the terrain have both been varies to look at and ride through, demanding and exhilarating. It feels like an achievement and, even more, a real adventure, which at a total distance of 107 miles with nearly 13,000 feet of climbing I can safely say it was.

Would I recommend it, certainly, would I do it again…..hmm ask me later!

In short, what there’s much of:

Gates

Sheep poo

Windmills, forests of them.

Water….. if you’re lucky enough to escape the rain there are still plenty of fords and deep puddles to soak you.

Pushing up hills/hike a bike

Technical single track, climbs and descents, plus a huge variety of scenery, trails and terrain.

Miles, smiles and a sense of adventure.

What there’s not much of:

Spare Oxygen – all used up on climbing!

Shops or humans, once you’re on the trail there’s no nipping to the supermarket for a mars bar. The same when seeking help for injuries or mechanicals problems.

Phone signal, as above. I wouldn’t fancy riding this one alone.

Traffic

Signage, take a good sat-nav/GPS device

For more information on the trail see here

Final thanks go to Keith, Action Man, M and Larry, the best bunch to get muddy and go adventuring with!

Waterproof socks!

Mountain Bike Touring: The Trans-Cambrian Trail It started with just a small innocuous advert on the message board of my mountain bike club....."planning a trip, anyone interested in bike touring get in touch".

#bike packing #Cambrian Mountains #Camping #Cycling #Mountain Bike Touring #raining #sheep poo #Trans-Cambrian Trail #travel #Wales

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