December began with Saltburn. As someone reading English at a top three university in the UK, and one of Oxford’s foremost competitors, the atmosphere of the first act of this film really sat with me. Sacrificing air conditioning for the sake of ‘the fucking wood fucking panelling’, lonely evenings at the pool table, indoor smoking, and the awful anxiety of sitting at the dining hall on the first day of term – haunted by paintings of who-knows-the-second and three-quarter-portrait-the-fifth looming above. It’s terrible. Constantly surrounded by signet rings, sterling cigarette cases, the question of where do you summer? and what school did you go to? If you haven’t got a family crest or a father who knows a department head in some vague ritualistic clap-on-the-shoulder way, you’re sort of fucked. But sometimes, if you’re especially quick and clever, you find a way to worm yourself in.
Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn is a cinematic tour de force. Grandiose, with a scale large and looming amplified by its aspect ratio, Fennell creates an opulent cinematic experience that reaches for the unthinkable and certainly doesn’t shy away from the perverse. Saltburn primarily functions not as a surface-level class commentary (as it’s doubtlessly going to be misconstrued), but as a character study – an intense experiment of empathy, as the narrative focuses on its paradoxically ambiguous and yet radical protagonist.
Wide shots like these communicate the imposing, prodigious scale of Saltburn and the world it represents
From the very beginning, we find that Saltburn is – essentially and at its core – a British film. The opening jingoistic anthem ‘Zadok the Priest’, composed by George Frideric Handel and used for royal coronations since the 18th century, sets this up fantastically. We find this British quality again in the tense, dissonant interplay between dialogue, action, and context in an unforgettable scene involving a pie. This here is particularly British, and particularly upper-class British. The refusal to acknowledge even the most terrible, soul-crushing thing and to simply carry on eating and drinking and politely confabulating is quintessentially British in a way that I think audiences from other cultural contexts might fail to appreciate completely.
A piece with so much personality, it truly is constructed and cemented by its influences. Pasolini’s impression is felt with lucid clarity. An homage to River Phoenix is paid in a subtle yet very present moment. There are faint hints of Hitchcock in the framing of a particular scene, along with long, dragging takes evocative of Kubrick. The literature that forms the foundation of this film is genius and marvellously curated. There are obvious traces of Waugh and Forster, with strains of Brontë and du Maurier in the gothic-romantic details. These all blend in a manner so rewarding, as if forming the bouquet of a particularly lavish vintage you might find in Saltburn’s cellar.
Like a moth on a windowpane, Oliver peers through—ever watching
‘Quiet, harmless, drawn to shiny things’ is how Venetia (Alison Oliver) describes the central character and unreliable narrator Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan). He is incredibly obscure throughout much of the film; vaguely northern, amorphously working class, and ill-defined in terms of his feelings towards Felix (Jacob Elordi). His attitudes, desires, sexuality, and motives are always inexplicit and undefinable. His actions, however, tell a different tale. Beneath this pretence – and Oliver is well-versed in pretence – he is an incredibly radical character. Machiavellian in the pursuit of his object, whatever it may be. We see fierce, concentrated eruptions from him often when we arrive at Saltburn, as he is overwhelmed by what visceral affections he is constantly trying to conceal from character and audience alike. He is intense, almost militant in these actions. There is no presence of shame or regret – just base, perverse, urgent necessity; a heightened and somewhat violent ‘giving-in’ that engenders a lasting, grieving ache in us as viewers – as voyeurs.
Voyeurism, exhibitionism – both lead to the discomfort of the audience. Uncomfortable art is always controversial, but it is also always adored by me. I will always advocate for art that makes us squirm, that arouses us in an unconventional and sometimes frightening way. Fennell takes what is normal and twists it into the abnormal, further the subnormal and further still the supernormal. It is a film preoccupied with fetishisation – fetishising mess, fetishising wealth, fetishising poverty and pity and misery and broken birds. Fetishises watching; from an ajar bathroom door, practically an invitation, to the very way the affluent and aristocratic live and move in their own home (dirty underpants discovered as the maids rifle through your luggage). A detail I’d like to highlight: the bathroom Felix and Oliver share has two mirrors positioned in an awfully clever way. Even when the two have their backs to one another, there is no scenario in which they can’t look. The film is obsessed with fervent, zealous, destructive yearning and desire. It explores how these feelings can mutate into self-loathing, further – into violent, intimate anger.
It is a film that asks us to look at our desires, look at them with both eyes and see them for what they are: grotesque and animal and writhing. Fennell argues that we as the authorities of our narratives cannot make something ‘frictionless and sweet and streamlined and easy; you have to make something complicated, and you have to make something that’s going to make people argue.’ Visceral and coarse and servile – these are things we find in Oliver. We see him reduced – bared and broken – in any number of contexts. His actions and our reactions are what Fennell plays with; she wants us ‘aroused and alive but also kind of freaked out.’ She nobly succeeds. We never hate Oliver. Never. We are always forgiving, understanding and terribly, terribly empathetic.
Felix and the ‘stuff of life’
Saltburn is crucially a film obsessed with the beauty of stuff – mundanity as defined by the upper class. The stuff of life, the stuff of wealthy domesticity. The intermingling of Flemish tapestries draping the wall and half-smoked Marlboros dying in a diet Coke can on the desk just below. ‘It’s the kind of surreal and the kind of mundane – the kind of beautiful and the sort of silly, all together in one’, Fennell says. It’s really a glamourisation of opulent, tart’s boudoir filth. Crystalline reflections sparkling off crisp packets and Carling cans in the college bar. ‘The constant dismissal of beauty’, Fennell calls it. It’s this blending of the Edwardian stately home life and the languid, dripping summer haze of the late noughties that gives Saltburn its unique atmosphere. The bridging of the two is achieved through the efforts of production designer Suzie Davies, costume designer Sophie Canale, and their respective teams. The aspect ratio of the film allows us to see not only the vastness of the estate, but the height. Shots which include both floor and ceiling are common, with details strewn about everywhere (an old piece of flypaper hanging limp on a diamond chandelier). Something I’d like to note about the costume design is Canale’s clever use of material – particularly her penchant for sheer materials. By way of capturing light through linen and gossamer night dresses, we are further able to empathise with Oliver’s frame of mind; when you are in love with someone, you are constantly aware of their body, constantly distracted – as we see in the long-take of Felix’s tour.
I do believe that is Emerald Fennell’s main goal with Saltburn. I’ve seen many ask ‘What are we supposed to take away from this?’ And no, I don’t believe we are supposed to walk away with a tepid inner monologue droning about class criticism. Saltburn is less an ‘eat the rich’ film and more an ‘eat out the rich’ film (notice the fixation on bodily fluids, so far as to be assigned to each character with the same casual purpose as any other idiosyncrasy; Venetia and blood, Farleigh and spit, Felix and spend). Its commentary on the middle class – particularly the upper-middle class – and its relationship to the extraordinarily wealthy is present, but takes a backseat. Saltburn is fundamentally an interrogation of our relationship with our own desire and how destructive that desire can be. It’s why we empathise with Oliver. It’s why we connect as much as we cringe. The film has to be queasy and uncomfortable; it has to freak you out and grip you in order to show you how impossibly carnivorous, locust, and insane that desire can be.
An unreliable narrator grieves
‘I…I hated him. I hated him! Yeah, I—I hated him.’ Oliver sighs at the end of it all. His monologue to whom? A comatose witness, a nobody audience? Desperate to convince himself and him alone it seems. Convince himself that this is what he wanted—all he wanted all along. Defensive. Cagey and paranoid around his own self-failure (don’t look! don’t look!). Willing to turn himself inside out to cope with the grief of his mistake: ‘This was always the way it was supposed to go. I meant for it. I meant for it.’ The events of the maze mark the frantic spiral of it all. There it goes, down the drain. And Oliver meant to pull the plug, he did. You have to believe him.
Tattoos drawn on with eyeliner borrowed from the girlfriend in the Coppola-style Marie Antoinette costume. A fitted white t-shirt. Greased hair that looks like an effortless “F you, world” to what other people would call showering before work, but really took 45 minutes and a fine-tooth comb to perfect. Carmen “Carmy” Berzattos were en masse last Halloween. “Yes Chef!” has become a dog-whistle amongst those who want to signal to others that they too have watched the hit, Grammy- winning TV show, The Bear. Yet, this phenomenon is not down to one TV show, this is a legacy finally taking hold. Chefs are cool thanks to Anthony Bourdain.
Bursting onto the scene in the 90s, Bourdain’s New Yorker article Don’t Read This Before Eating, which later became the basis of the remarkably cool Kitchen Confidential, took the lid off from this edgy underground hidden in plain sight. The Escoffier notions of overly gastronomic, mustache twisting chefs have since been fleeting; chefs are cool people, who just happen to like good food. When Bourdain criticises people who order well-done steaks it feels like an in-joke, stove-top banter, not the scathing judgment of some worn out Cordon Bleu alumni. His writing, his intensity, both in print and on screen, strikes us as simply friendly, never passing judgment, at least not too severely.
Bourdain scoffs “who cares” when told his Georgian dumplings “aren’t very sophisticated”; if the food is good the food is good, no two ways, two stars about it. “I eat a lot of shit”, remarks Bourdain about filming Parts Unknown, for Bourdain the food was glue holding his show, and career, together. We eat to explore, and each meal tells a story about an area. Fresh out the fryer, scotch eggs arrive, yoke dripping down the chin to escape a greedy end, a pub that feels like the smoking ban never came into place – why do we eat here? And why does it taste so good here? The bún chả eaten in a front room restaurant in Hanoi with Obama, the overly truffled animal rights nightmare of a meal eaten in Montreal, all receive equal praise.
Unlike Obama, Bourdain refuses to travel with cars and escorts that equate to the protection of a US backed and built nuclear bomb shelter; he slips in and does as the Romans do, even if that means crashing a Shanghai wedding to experience Chinese drinking culture in full force. Everyone in Vietnam, President or not, eats off plastic stools on the pavement, no reservations, no table service – just something steaming and delicious with a cold beer. There is no brashness. No guidebook. No Michelin guide. Just people eating a meal and being human. Bourdain wants Americans to have passports and to use them, and what better way to persuade people to get to know a stranger in a strange land than through our voracious need for the delicious. Food is shown to be an experience, a political moment, a zeitgeist of the area. “The smell: that’s the first thing that hits you, promising everything in exchange for your soul”, quotes Bourdain as he introduces us to Hanoi. The smell of incense pours from every size temple, a split keg from last night’s bia hơi leaves a tang within these notes, humidity colours the streetside with impossibly green plants that sweat against the fumes of thousands of mopeds, against these endlessly moving bikes aunties and workmen sit alike letting their lotus tea and thick, treacly coffee steam into the air, sizzling herbs and simmering pots of a bone broth left to bubble up the smell of something amazing and only to be slurped down in an almost religious trance, gulping to savour this fleeting flavour forever, the smell of life everywhere.
For his American audience this is monumental. This is Vietnam without the war. This is a place at ease, a place that in so many ways is like theirs – if only they took the time to join the flow of thousands of Vietnamese people on the streets of Hanoi, to throw away their ideas of what dining should be, to sit on a plastic stool and enjoy the experience that we call eating. This is Bourdain’s rock-star in a chef’s hat legacy on travel; leave your expectations behind and get ready to experience the chaotic, friendly, altering reality of immersion. Whatever the local delicacy is, there is a care to show it at its most organic state, be that be on a boat on the Congo, or in a pub with Nigella. All food is good, why be pretentious about eating a Jollibee ‘jolly spaghetti’ or eating freshly hunted game from A.A Gill’s estate if that’s what you’re meant to do to have a good time?
That is what essentially being a chef comes down to, ensuring people have a good time from whatever you can provide for them in the under 30 minutes wait time it takes to pan fry fresh trout, reduce a jus, and shout at your KP for being a slow ‘mal carne’. Bourdain exposed us to real eating, real kitchens, real people. Food is not aspex coated truffles from some unpronounceable 20km radius of Tuscany, it’s where people flock to have a good time over. Kitchens are not in fact military operations, but made of people who know what people like, and have a good time doing it. Revisiting his first experience in a kitchen in Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain introduces us to a Down and Out reminiscentOrwellian underworld, although this time with slightly better worker’s rights; temperatures are high, and temperaments are higher. The air is perfumed with seafood, garlic, and hints of cigarette smoke. Knives flash and pans blaze. Someone’s speaker is swelling with old school rock as another FOH gets bollocked for not being able to operate within this mystic backroom. Grill chefs show off their newly formed scars as the KP’s hands break out in soapy soars. The EPOS machine whirrs. Baptisms happen over the pastry station as a rookie earns his stripes in this misfit’s lair. These characters may be loud, mean, and sometimes dangerous, yet they know how to transform a place of relentless 12 hour work days into a community. Food isn’t a chef’s armoury, it’s they’re ability to understand people, in and out the kitchen. Walking into my first day as a chef 8 months ago, I realised this. We may have been working through a heatwave in a poorly ventilated kitchen with 6 tickets racked up and waiting, but I was welcome and cared for in a way like no other. I adopted the name ‘chef’ and joined.
Carmy No.4 of the party is starting to waiver. He trudges up to the bathroom, wobbling against every instinct telling him to lie down and not summit that treacherous peak of the staircase. He may have whacked a pizza in the oven for dinner and hasn’t cooked something that would take longer than 15 minutes to prepare in months, but he knows he loves food. He knows The Bear was a good show for more than just it’s writing and Jermey Allen White, he felt tension like no other watching Boiling Point, and when Thomas Straker’s homemade butter or WhatWillyCook’s loaded breakfast crumpets videos appear on his for you page, he never scrolls past. Even being one of many counterfeit Carmies has given him a taste of that chef community, the chef respectability advertised to him. Bob Ross passes him with a “Behind, chef.” as Carmy No.4 rolls a cigarette and prepares to enter the rabble once again. Eating is cool. Being a chef – cooler.
I sleep better when I’ve had something to drink. Apparently, that’s impossible—at least, my brother likes to say so. Everytime I come downstairs on a Saturday morning, having had a few drinks before and after supper, and I say, ‘God, I slept well last night,’ he squints a little before telling me, ‘That’s impossible, scientifically.’ Those five forbidding, unbalanced syllables, with their maliciously rushed ‘ti-fic’ and the slick arrogance of the concluding ‘ly’, exist for the sole purpose of disproving the intimations of my own body. I hate them.
I’m sure that scientifically, it’s true; I reckon that technically, it might even be correct. No doubt that fictional character, adored by Pollsters and Populists alike, the ‘Man on the Street’ (Who is he? Tell me!) has been rigorously monitored and tested and that was what the results said. So I’m not going to sit here, tapping away, arguing against the scientifically correct. Instead, I want to question how on earth we’ve allowed ourselves to return to some barbarically puritanical mindset in which our own personal experience of what makes us happy, what makes us tick (given that, of course, it’s in moderation: don’t do crack, etc.) means precious little.
Until recently, the only salvation was that no matter how much said pursuers of the SCIENTIFICALLY-proven might judge your habits, they couldn’t do much about them. But then, last week, the UK’s expiring PM Rishi Sunak announced an imminent ban on smoking for those born after 2009 in what strikes me as a cynical ploy to secure a legacy beyond the immoral expulsion of immigrants to Rwanda. As David Hockney rightly said: ‘There are too many bossy people in England … Bossy people are humourless. This is just madness to me. Why can’t Mr Sunak leave the smokers alone.’ Sunak (tee-totalist and faster) doesn’t propose to take cigarettes off everyone, only those born after 2009: imagine in 2050, then, the farce in which a forty-two year-old can smoke and a forty-one year-old can’t. It shows the hour hand is moving yet closer to midnight: that midnight being, once again, scientifically proven to occur in Derby in 2050 when the UK’s last cigarette will be smoked, according to a 2019 report.
Obviously, smoking kills. But, as Hockney writes, ‘The National Health Service will always have to deal with birth and deaths. They are part of life: the cause of death is birth. On the cigarette packet it says “SMOKING KILLS” … well, what do I reply? “LIFE IS A KILLER.” I’m one day nearer oblivion today than I was yesterday. This applies to everybody on the planet.’ As ever, Britain’s preeminent artist (who should live in Britain, but moved to France due to our intrusive smoking laws) is onto something.
As thick and naive as I was when I smoked my first cigarette, I never doubted that it was pernicious. In fact, I reckon that’s why I did it: when you’re young, danger seems sexy and mature, if almost heroic. If smoking is, really, considered ‘cool’ then I think that’s why: because it kills you. Most cool things tend to. (Guns, Flamethrowers, Sports Cars, Alcohol, etc.) But the assumption of Rishi Sunak is that he can tell people how bad smoking is, at which point they will immediately stop and then thank him for this unprecedented enlightenment. In positioning himself against it, I daresay Rishi Sunak has made smoking more cool and more appealing to a lot of people.
In any discussion of smoking, or of the debates between happiness and longevity, it seems right to recourse to Martin Amis’s novel The Pregnant Widow, in which he writes: ‘He thought, Yeah. Yeah, non-smokers live seven years longer. Which seven will be subtracted by that god called Time? It won’t be that convulsive, heart-busting spell between twenty-eight and thirty-five. No. It’ll be that really cool bit between eighty-six and ninety-three.’ Yes, smoking ends what non-smoking extends. But we must never let ourselves look at human lives as if they are statistics. In this Bureaucracy of Happiness, in which illegality and social pressure take away each slightly individualised form of pleasure, I feel we are all becoming like Auden’s “Unknown Citizen,” of whom the poet asks:
“Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.”
In arguments of this kind, I always remember a Times interview with France’s leading cancer specialist, David Khayat, who spoke in opposition to what he perceived to be the tyrannical intrusion of an Anglo-Saxon puritanism (diets, teetotalism, avoidance of red meat) on French customs: he spoke of how “The risk we face is of a life without pleasure, a life without enjoyment … And if you force that upon people, they will explode.” He goes on to say that with an immaculately healthy lifestyle, ‘you will be able to avoid old age, illness and death. But that’s wrong. We are all going to grow old, we are all going to fall ill and we are all going to die.’ Thus, we should aim for balanced lives: never the excess of an addict, nor the zeal of an ascetic. And, with Khayat’s backing, I suppose I’m correct here (scientifically).
So, I implore you to stave off the social condescension, the bossiness, and the arrogance which you might adopt in the face of those who seek a healthy balance in their life which includes a bit of pleasure and happiness as opposed to posting a double ton of miserable and waning years. And if not drinking, not smoking, not eating red meats and fatty foods, makes you happy, so be it: your happiness delights me. I do not mean to criticise or infringe upon your happiness. I merely want to shout, alongside Hockney: ‘END BOSSINESS NOW.’
How to Have Sex is a deeply uncomfortable film. Not because it is overly graphic in its depiction of sexual assault, but rather because, throughout its short 90-minute run, I couldn’t shake an agonising feeling of déjà vu.
Remember when this was you? the film whispers. There’s the post-exam, early wake-up calls because you had booked the cheapest flight for your girls’ trip, which inevitably was a 6:00 am Ryanair flight from Stansted. The frantic, hourly texts from your mum to check that your plane hadn’t, in fact, fallen out of the sky mid trip. The crinkle crisps and bottles of vodka that you could convince yourself would work as breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next four days. The colour palette is awash with nostalgia; the film shimmers with luscious pinks and oranges, reminiscent of your first foray into sun-bathed freedom. Blurry camera work and light-bathed montages capture the kind of binge-drinking you could only ever have hacked at sixteen.
How to Have Sex follows three teenage girls, Tara, Em, and Skye, on their post-GCSE girls’ holiday to Malia on the Greek island of Crete. Though their fears about their futures and apprehensiveness about their forthcoming results linger in the background, they are mostly concerned with who will be the most successful in their four-day shagfest.
As she sits awkwardly bundled up on the sun lounger, Tara is bombarded with messages of loud sexuality. Sheepishly, she watches the men and women of her resort interacting, avidly curious about these performances of flirtation. Uncannily cheerful holiday reps encourage guests to get off with each other, whilst intimate, muffled bathroom conversations reveal the awkwardness of these girls trying to figure out what exactly it is they’re supposed to be doing. As Skye nearly reveals Tara’s virginity to the group at large, her discomfort is obvious, and it’s impossible not to feel sympathy. Hasn’t every girl been scared of being too uptight, too prudish? Haven’t we all been confronted with the insatiable need to be seen as sexually liberated, to be laissez-faire with our virginities, to be the cool girl.
After a sexual interaction that toes the line of consent, silent close-ups on Tara’s face show her wrestling with the enormity and yet the apparent insignificance of what has happened to her. Her reactions capture the universal feeling of ‘it wasn’t supposed to be like this’. As she stumbles down the deserted strip in broad daylight, seemingly a million miles away from the camera, we’re hit with the overwhelming reminder that she’s just a kid, after all.
Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature doesn’t deal simply in black and white. The problem lies more in ignorance than insidiousness, as she captures the blurry boundaries for young girls’ first sexual experiences, who are told repeatedly: come on, this is what everyone else is doing! Tara’s awkward flirtation attempts show her grappling with the expectation that she should be throwing herself into it all, at the expense of her gnawing feeling that something is amiss.
There are no blow-out confrontations – Tara doesn’t even admit what has happened to her until the final moments of the film. The unshakeable feeling that something is wrong simply bubbles underneath the surface, as we watch Tara bottle up her emotions. As the camera focuses on her reflection in the mirror, it’s clear that questions are flying around her head: it was yes once, why shouldn’t he think it was yes again? How do I find someone to blame? How does he get to move on when it feels like I’ll have to live with this forever? And God, doesn’t everyone feel like this, even a little bit?I’m not rushing to rewatch How to Have Sex. But it’s important viewing in an age where girls are bombarded with messages that scream that they must be having casual sex to be liberated, that it’s their duty as good feminists. It reminds us that sometimes a ‘yes’ is constructed by our outside influences, and that consent is an ongoing conversation rather than just a tick-box question.
Whilst the Acropolis or the temple of Aphaia amassed huge swathes of tourists, pop up coffee stands, tat stores and keep off signs, here, there’s no ticket office but just a rusting blue road sign, covered over in peeling paint and stuck ad hoc into the rubble curb. We’re the only visitors, so we stop in a layby and pile out the rental car, wondering if we’ve made a wrong turn and the winding drive has left us at a dead end.
This is Paleochora. The little-known Byzantine ruins tucked into the interior of the Aegina hills, one of the closest islands to Athens, built as a refuge from pillaging pirates. It is the remains of an old town that purportedly had 365 chapels and churches- one for every day of the year. Now only 38 remain, hidden from the Saracens, shells of fragile stone guard mosaicked gold within the mountains’ shadow shelter.
It’s just a few steps from the eroded signpost and display board to the first chapel of Timios: a whitewashed building still in use despite the large lightning shaped fracture above the threshold. The shrine holds gifts and wishes that the faithful locals have left as tokens to the saint: often pictures of people to hold in prayer, other times gleaming silver tamata– votive offerings of embossed metal, given the Greek saints’ apparent penchant for shiny things. The chapels lead us gradually up the rock-strewn hillside, it’s around 11am and already 30 degrees and we’re looking at churches – most of which no longer have roofs, it’s a tiring but rewarding climb. While plants and weeds grow through the old places of worship, the gifts and tamata are still left at the shrines in small mounds by the entrance or rocky enclaves. The saints still seem to serve their purpose despite their fallen sanctuaries. Nevertheless, where the ceilings and insides are intact there are the tell-tale signs of devotion, sometimes a locked door, a burning sanctuary lamp, holy oil in old water bottles (definitely olive oil), holy water in old coke bottles, a hung sakkos – the orthodox priests are elusive but attentive. I imagine they must have come up at dawn or slept the night in these essentially cave-like lodgings with their single aisles and fading icons.
Each chapel honours a different patron saint important to the islanders. Although we’re alone on the hill, aside from a small group of (loud) American student archaeologists, the presence of these 9th century digs is somehow comforting, the prayers of centuries preserved into the knolls and stones. We pass Barbara, Nikolas, George, and Episcopas amongst the remaining 38 patrons. Cicadas and bleating goats fill the beating September air, prickly pears, figs and pefkos dot the valley’s expanse- sun baked pine gusts, mingling with the salty breeze. Some olive trees look as wizened and knotted as the ruins themselves as we reach the more 14th century Venetian citadel atop this antiquated land.
We enter one partially preserved shrine where the gaping window has been infilled and jammed with rocks, wooden madonnas, engraved saints, and scrap metal, so as to block the light falling on the older wall mosaics. This haphazard, makeshift shield is almost a sculptural collage itself, a blessed form of heritage protection. The paint peels and dust falls gently from the walls as we creak shut the door behind us. The scent of burning sage turning to ash drifts toward us, as the delicate construction exhales under the weight of our feet. Striking frescoes pepper the stone, cobalt blue melts into sandstone and madder red, a broken halo, faded dove, a saint’s foot: these are what remain of the archaic art that murmurs biblical tales through the fragments. Icons are now venerated by lizards, the occasional hornet and absentminded tourist. There’s no health and safety, even though some churches are so entangled within the rock faces and groves that we literally have to scramble and climb inside, to find tree roots holding the building- breaking through the byzantine marble.
Remarkably, people still lived in the steep and hidden town until 1840, when the islanders moved outwards from Vathy towards the coast and started their pistachio growing enterprise on the more fertile western slopes, for which Aegina is now famed. The old town of Paleochora and the island herself were eventually overrun with pirates, creating a stronghold during the 12th century. From there, Aegina fell under the successive rules of the Venetian Republic and then was brutally captured by the Sultan Sulieman in 1537 when Ottoman rule commenced. Finally, it was a centre of the Greek revolutionary influences during the war of Independence, then later becoming a tourist spot for weekend-ing Athenians. These saints have seen it all.
We squeezed into this convenience store, jostling past customers as they bought their individual cigarettes, to the back door. Out in the yard were two motorbikes sitting there. They were for us. We had a few days to kill in Ulaanbaatarbefore heading north, and the lure of a motorbike trip was just too appealing. Nonchalantly we asked Beno, the garage owner, if we could expect any trouble with the police as we didn’t have official motorbike licences. ‘This is Mongolia’, he replied with a smile.
Bags strapped on the back and saddle bags brimming with food, we bade farewell to the Beno. Hal rode out the gate first. I wasn’t in any rush to take the lead. I’d ridden smaller bikes before, but this was a different beast, and it had been a while since I’d been on a bike. My feet scuttling along the ground, pushing the bike to cover up my consistent stalling. Hal glancing behind every now and then checking that I hadn’t died this early. Slowly I was getting used to being back on a bike. At traffic lights I was no longer popping wheelies out the gate. Through dusty roads and past the flurry of gers we were on the main road out of the city. This was the one main road in the country, a linear path connecting the north and the south. Driving amidst the chaos of traffic was not an experience I’d like to repeat.
The pollution and the noise didn’t last long. Soon there was nothing. Ulaanbaatar was quickly left behind. The Steppe. All my life I’d read and seen pictures of the Mongolian steppe but none of which quite encapsulated it. Rolling green fields, broken by sharp mountains. My eyes filled with every shade of green. Even now, gunning it on the bike, you still didn’t really feel like you were moving. The vastness of the landscape swallowed you. We were just distant specks moving in this barren world. Emptiness. Emptiness. Emptiness. Everywhere, there was nothing. We would pull over every now and then for a smoke and to rest our arses, and the silence would hit. My ears, no longer filled with the roar of the engine, were empty. Nothing. Not a sound.
Riding a bike in this vastness, your mind can’t help but wonder. My mind was free, no longer blocked in by the constraints of buildings or the buttresses of people. Wonder. Space to breath. Space to think. Free from all the external buzz that beats you into shape. We crossed entire worlds. We would ride to the horizon and then cross the lip and a whole new world would reveal itself. Down into a new valley and a new world.
Up in front I saw some police lights and Hal getting pulled over. Reducing my speed, I drove past and pulled over a safe distance in front and peered nervously behind. Hal and the police officer were chatting. The first test. A big grin broke out across my face as Hal hopped back on his bike and slowly approached where I was waiting. I couldn’t see under his helmet, but no doubt there was a grin there as well.
We still had a few hours of sunlight left before we would be forced to make camp, so we hurtled on. The steppe was eternal. Once we were in it, I didn’t believe in an outside world. Herds of horses galloping across the landscape. Occasionally, the bizarreness of everything would overwhelm me. Passing by a herd of camels I couldn’t help but giggle. The weirdness of life is a great and beautiful thing.
Another police stop. As expected, we were beckoned over. Filled with confidence from our last interaction we pulled over and got out our documents. There were three of them. One in a smarter uniform was clearly the big boss, the other two in uniforms of a lighter blue. One of them was twirling his baton while occasionally rubbing his stomach that poked through his shirt. The other had a much quieter presence. The big boss would speak to the quieter officer who acted as our translator. He explained they weren’t happy with our standard driving license. Still, we weren’t too nervous. This being Mongolia we expected to hand over some money and be on our way. We figured this was just fear tactics. Amidst a serious language barrier, we exchanged the occasional few words, awkward laughs, and some cigarettes. The big bellied officer jokingly hit us now and then with the baton.
The big boss drove away, while the rest of us remained. A few hours later and we’re still in the same spot watching the sun set from the side of the road. Our mood started to slowly dwindle with our frustration mounting. Now everything was less jokey. The officer with the baton was getting slightly too power giddy and was becoming a serious annoyance with his baton. Every hit was bringing us slightly closer to our breaking point. Cigarette after cigarette to pass the time and calm our nerves. The wait continued. We figured we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, so we might as well sit and enjoy the sunset.
The sky was now dark. After four hours of waiting the big boss returned and the conversation picked back up. After some mumbling we grasped that we were going to have to pay a fine. Yes, finally. Brilliant. We both had our cash in our hands and were basically thrusting it towards them. Take it and let us continue. They didn’t make any move to take our money. Instead, they mounted our bikes. Woah. Woah. Hold up. Hal sprinted and jumped in front of the bikes. He had no intention of letting them drive off. Standing in front of them, he called up Beno and hastily explained what was going on. He handed the phone to the big boss. After talking, Beno told Hal that only a Mongolian citizen is allowed to pay the fine, so they were going to take the bikes for now and we had to go with them. Left with little choice we got on the back of the bikes, with the police driving. At least we were leaving this spot on the side of the road. Here we were in the middle of nowhere in Mongolia getting a police escort to lord knows where. I made sure to give his belly a big squeeze.
We were dropped off outside this restaurant. They unstrapped our bags and then sped off on our bikes. There were some rooms above the restaurant, a Mongolian motel it seemed. We sat down on the curb. Both of us taking a second to process what had just happened. The two of us sitting there, we still had no clue where we were, there was the restaurant, the road and then further off in the distance some lights from a small village. We had no clue where our bikes were or where the police station would be. Where in the middle of the steppe does one find a police station?
We talked to Beno and the plan was for him to get a bus to where we were so we could go to the police station and get this all sorted. Well, this wasn’t where we pictured we would be spending the night. A woman walked us upstairs to our room. We thanked her and dropped our bags. Dirty and bug infested with cracked walls, it wasn’t too inviting but it would have to do.
We found a nice bench to sit on and cooked dinner on the side of the road. As our noodles simmered, we joked about, trying to see the funny side of it all. You have got to accept you are not in control. There’s no script to follow and that’s where the excitement comes from. The monotony of normal life manifests itself in the repetition of events to where it becomes tough to distinguish between one day and another. Here that doesn’t exist.
I woke the following morning bleary eyed. The night’s sleep was pretty rough. I kept getting woken up by bugs crawling on my face and parts of the ceiling falling onto me. We had nothing else to do but to kill time until Beno arrived. Back on our bench, backgammon and chess were our cure. The motel owner’s little daughters kept us company, insisting we play with them. My focus on the chess games would be shattered by some brutish pigs occasionally running around behind us. Sitting next to a mountain of trash and an outhouse wasn’t the best placement. Determined not to waste the day, we strolled around the plains for a bit. The sense of barrenness you couldn’t escape. Walking along, you passed by a carcass every now and then. Sitting on a hillside we tried to get the lay of the land. Below us was a little village with gers and a few buildings. We figured that’s where the police station would be, and hence, our bikes. Mourning the loss of our bikes, I watched as a motorbike troop drove past in the distance. We could see the road where we were pulled over. A little streak across the open land. I could make out little figures on motorbikes simply driving past the checkpoint on the grass, taking a wide berth of the police. So that’s how it’s done.
Our rescue turned up at around six. Boy, were we glad to see Beno. We quickly stopped for a quick meal in the village. Sitting there, we discussed the game plan. He seemed confident that we could get the bikes back. He chatted with the restaurant owner about the police in town. She apparently knew them, so she gave them a ring. She got off the phone looking more dismayed than before. It wasn’t looking good, apparently the big boss had contacted the police in Ulaanbaatar about it all. We packed up and made our way to the station. The mood was a lot more sombre.
We found the station in the middle of town. It was empty apart from some cows milling about outside. The waiting never ended. Some herders came over to chat. Apparently, the police had gone to a different village, but they confirmed our bikes were here in the shed. They were chuckling as they told Beno that the three police men, fuelled on vodka, were joyriding our bikes around last night.
A police car finally turned up. Hal and I nervously glanced at each other. It was time for our best behaviour. Beno approached the big bellied officer and they talked in hushed voices. Neither of us had any clue what they were saying so we stood there trying to adopt what I thought of as an innocent expression.
Beno started to walk away, beckoning for us to follow. After we had put some distance between us and the station, he broke down what had happened. The bikes needed to be transported back to Ulaanbaatar on a truck – we weren’t allowed to ride them – and we would need to pay a fine in the city; but we were all free to leave. Relieved that this was all over, we bought some beers and headed back over the hill to our motel. The realisation that our motorbike trip was over dawned on me, but I didn’t dwell too much on it. You just got to it rolling.
Back outside we shared a beer with Beno and chatted. Our new friend talked of his time studying in Moscow while we talked of our far-off lives in Durham. The sun was starting to set so we grabbed our bags and walked off to find somewhere to sleep. With the fine looming we didn’t fancy paying for another night at the motel. I pitched the tent while Hal started to cook our dinner. Lying on the grass with our bellies full, we chatted about things that never come up in daily life but out here feel so normal to talk about. Soon, the orange glow of the setting sun gave way to a blanket of stars. Stars don’t exist elsewhere like they do in Mongolia. There’s a depth to them, layers. You feel like you’re looking further and further into them, beyond them. We picked out the different constellations we could see and created our own.
The only problem with the steppe is just how exposed it is. The wind cuts across the land without obstruction, making for a tough night’s sleep. It was basically like a dust bowl. I awoke with everything covered in a layer of dust, I couldn’t see out my glasses and my hands were black. Shaking off the dust, I crawled outside. Standing there, a tear almost left my eye. A herd of horses were trotting about by our tent. You’re awake and immediately alive in one of the most magical places in the world.
Cooking breakfast on the side of the road, we prepared ourselves for a day of hitching. Straight away a car pulled up near us. Through google translate he offered us a lift back to the capital for a few bucks. We threw our bags in the back. That was the easiest hitch of my life, we didn’t even have to try. ‘There’s got to be some sort of catch’ Hal said. He started driving the wrong way. He seemed to be conducting his morning business around town, dropping off tires at different houses. We stayed along with him though, figuring he wouldn’t take too long. We parked on this hill for close to an hour, while different cars, bikes and even people on horseback pulled up to meet him. We joked about how it felt like he was the entire town’s drug supplier or something. One by one people also started hopping in the car, until it was now more than full with six of us in there.
There’s a saying in Mongolia, ‘we get there when we get there’. We were finally on our way. Driving the same way as yesterday but this time we were on four wheels, myself sitting in the front with Hal knocked out in the back drooling on this herdsman, this time burning our way back to the capital.
