fortythingsI'veneverdonebefore

No.10. Got sung to by about 900 people.

I've been to see Jacky sing in her choir on numerous occasions. The first time I saw her sing it was Faure's Requiem with the Nottingham Bach Choir. She's not in a choir at the moment so for Christmas I bought her a ticket to sing Faure once again as part of a massive choir filling the audience seats at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. A very small audience filled the seats the choir usually sit in. It was loud. Rock concert loud. I'd say it was loud enough to rouse a sleeping baby but in fact Emily slept through half of it. She was sort of nodding in the awake parts. Jacky has a tendency to headbang in the better gigs so maybe there's some early signs there. 

No.9. Met with the Department of Wandering Ghosts and the Department of Demons and Monsters.

The Dongyue Temple in Beijing  is dedicated to the Gods of Mount Tai, aka Tranquil Mountain, the holiest of the 5 sacred mountains of China. It is a remarkable and fascinating place. I can't quite profess to fully understand how it's all  supposed to work but in addition to being a repository for a substantial number of 'sacred texts' inscribed on enormous stones it also appears to operate as a complicated spiritual bureaucracy. Around the main courtyard are something like 70 or so 'Departments' each dedicated to a different aspect of Taoist life. If you've got a problem with Wandering Ghosts there's a team on hand to offer advice and maybe even intervene on your behalf. And it's not just ghosts, demons, monsters, river spirits, mountain spirits and the like. There are departments for Bestowing Happiness, one to help with Suppressing Schemes, one for Fifteen Kinds of Violent Death as well as The Promotion of Fifteen Kinds of Decent Lifestyle. It's brilliant. I left a donation with the Department of Raising Descendants. If Emily turns out to be a spoilt consumerist brat then clearly I should have been a little more generous with the Yuans. 

No.8. Walk the wall

I wasn't planning on setting the bar particularly high for my 40 things. Going to some new pubs, growing some new plants, doing some new things with Emily or with friends, that was the general idea. So ticking off a UNESCO heritage site, listed on Wikipedia as one of the wonders of the Medieval world and with a (false) reputation of being visible from space exceeds the brief somewhat. I had to go to China for a work project. And it turns out that sections of The Great Wall are a mere 90 minute drive from downtown Beijing. I'm not always very good with tourist sites. I tend to be more interested in why we find ruins interesting than in the ruins themselves. And find it a bit difficult to marvel at stuff created at the expense of countless lives. But the landscape of The Great Wall is extraordinarily beautiful. The local tourist board have done their best to spoil it with market stalls, cablecars up to the wall and believe it or not a giant slide to come back down on. But these are fairly unobtrusive from the wall itself. I arrived as early as possible and was the first and only visitor there for an hour or so's walk between a few of the towers. Thought of as an elevated road through beautiful mountains it is indeed a wonder. The landscape was strangely reminiscent of the Alpujarras in Spain. It must be even more picturesque when surrounded by autumn colours. A beautiful morning in a beautiful place. 

No.7. Unblocked a drain

In the 39 years I've had thus far I've undertaken various DIY / home emergency measures. But I've never unblocked a drain. Even buying drain rods, a dirty water pump and 30M of hosing in Screwfix felt like it should come with some sort of 'proper bloke' badge. Usage of said bendy rods proved successful if fairly unpleasant. Turns out the source of the problem is more severe and we need a new sewage system. I've never bought one of those either so maybe that'll be a blog entry later.   

No.6. Travel by Rickshaw

They're brilliant. They run on gas. They're small and you can fit loads more in a small space. Very few of the drivers understood my accent and you have no idea if you're going where you're going until you get there. They're yellow. They're often customised. They're fast. They're ridiculously cheap. Every city should have them. 

No.5. Ride on the footplate there and back again.

I like to see new places. And I like to travel on trains. Mumbai is a thrillingly exciting city. It features one of the most amazing railway stations in the world.  Chhatraparti Shivaji Terminus was influenced by the Victorian Gothic of St Pancras and does a reasonable job of outdoing its grandeur. The suburban trains that bring passengers to it from around Mumbai are the lifeblood of the city. It costs about 5p to travel 2nd class and 50p to travel first class in from Bandra on the Harbour line. 2nd class is a bit like travelling in rush hour Tokyo but without the station assistants to shove people into the carriages. Hanging out the door while hanging on to the pole on the footplate in first class is a choice rather than a necessity. And a great way to see the city slowly moving past and get a feel for the inspiringly chaotic blend of shanty town and boom town that is modern Mumbai. 

Bandra - CST, Mumbai from paulstallard on Vimeo.

No.4. Feed Emily

For a few weeks Emily has been watching us putting food into our mouths with an expression that looks a bit like baby envy. Or at least curiosity. So we thought we'd try her on solid food. She's a fan. Favourites so far include avocado mush and banana mush. Following up having a spoonful of mush shoved in your mouth by sucking your thumb is not an eating technique I recommend. But nonetheless I am proud. We have a foodie daughter. 

No. 3. See Andy Warhol

Not the man himself, Rest in Peace Andy. But an exhibition of his films at MOMA. I've always found Andy Warhol more inspiring in principle than in practice. The idea of The Factory c 1969 remains far more exciting than standing in front of a screen print of his soup cans. I really like his soup cans. But there's a bit too much playfulness in them to be really moving or compelling. I'd always filed his films in a similar mental space. A bit jokey. They are hauntingly brilliant. Particularly his screen tests. Portraits which move. Which capture the presence and sense of being of a whole host of people who were each somehow engaged at the time in their own personal projects of reflexively and self consciously shaping their identities and defining a sense of presence and being. Seeing them captured as giant sized moving portraits makes you wonder why you would bother with any other kind of representation. It feels like they're there. Hi Nico. Hi Paul America. Hi Edie. Hi everyone. A real sense of themness comes off the walls. Lou Reed is awesomely, motionlessly cool but appears to hide a gentle loveliness beneath the supercool surface. Alan Ginsberg is like a scifi brain in a human box. Dennis Hopper is genuinely scary, a brooding, malevolent energy for which a portrait frame seems an inadequate containment device.  Powerful. Andy you're a star. 

No. 2. Walk the High Line

The High Line is an urban park built along the route of an old elevated freight railroad formerly known as the West Side Line. It currently runs from 10 Ave and 12th Street up to 12th and 20th and is scheduled to extend further in the near future. It's the result of 10 years of campaigning, fundraising and building by the Friends of the High Line. And some great planting design by Piet Oudolf.  

 The only real evidence of Mr Oudolf's prairieland planting style was the gentle structure it imposed on the snow, and occasional glimpses of dry winter grasses and birch trees breaking through the whiteness. But there's a clear sense of how the structure and the planting of this long raised garden acknowledges its location. There's no competing with the New York backdrop. So the High Line is a series of viewpoints encouraging its users to take delight in the city around them. Comfortable day beds practically insist on a lounging look out to the Chelsea Piers and across to New Jersey. Theatre style seating faces a glass screen framing 10th Avenue as though capturing real life on celluloid. Art installations get people queuing to see cityscapes in new ways. And the linear, prairie style planting and railway inspired street furniture encourages onward movement to the next discovery or vista. On a smaller scale it contributes a similar combination of retreat from and reference to the city it inhabits as Central Park. A magnificent addition to the cityscape.    

  

No 1. Run round Central Park

Let us start with a bang. There are lots of things I like in life. Running is high on the list. And so is New York. I also quite like a good park. And have to be confess to being geeky enough to appreciate the fact that Frederick Law Olmstead was inspired by the municipal park in Birkenhead for his splendid design for NYC's splendid urban oasis. I've been to Central Park a few times before. But I've never run round it.

This morning I did. It was brilliant on many levels. It's a while since I've managed to get out and hit the trails and there were some serious winter cobwebs to be blown away. New York has recently been decorated with a nice layer of snow. Which has been cleared from the roads but in combination with a sunny daybreak gave the park a sparkly winter wonderland feel. Add some cross country skiers and ice hockey training on the Lasker Rink at the Harlem end for a proper NY winter feel.  

The winding circuit round the park is a joy for the senses. Glimpses of the uptown skyscrapers through the trees, the mix of old and modern as diverse as the woodland and rocky outcrops of the park. A few runners for company as well. And that ever present NYC feeling like you've been here before and expecting to encounter a movie scene as familiar as the backdrop. No Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen or Ghostbusters to report.  My run back to the hotel took me past a majestic looking Hudson River swirling dark and cold beneath a backlit Queensborough Bridge.