In the Night Garden of the Soul

If you are not a parent, you are unlikely to have watched even more than a couple of minutes of “In the Night Garden” – if you are even aware of its existence.

If you are, you may – as I have – sat through hours of seemingly identical episodes of this bizarre and yet (for toddlers) utterly compelling programme.

Over the years, advertisers and even programme-makers have every so often proclaimed that they have produced some sort of televisual material “for dogs”, “for cats” etc.

Supposedly, these offerings have been based on research into how the minds of pets work, so that they will appeal to them.

Quite why anyone would want to create television that appeals to creatures that (i) do not have any money to spend on goods and service advertised and (ii) have better things to do than watch TV, such as sniffing the ground or licking their testicles, is unclear.

And yet it was nevertheless done, no doubt bringing to bear the kind of “science” that makes shampoo capable of increasing hair shine by 80% and inventing Bifidus Digestivum.

Over the years, I have watched some of these programmes “for animals” and my overriding memory of them was “what the hell was that all about?” – much as I expect the reaction of most dogs and cats to have been.

The argument as to why it made no sense to me, I suppose, would have been that these things were designed to stimulate the brains of animals, which in cognitive and (presumably) phenomenological terms are very different from mine.

That then, I suppose, explains the complete incomprehensibility of “In the Night Garden” to anyone older than three and its narcotic, addictive effect on toddlers. It has been carefully designed to interface with the brains of the undeveloped in a way that leaves the adult confused, bored and liable to drift off themselves into flights of WTF? fancy.

Which is what you are about to get right now, after I watched an entire episode of this with Tancred at the weekend.

Perhaps the Night Garden is in US

It occurred to me at the outset that ITNG features a lot of Freudian motifs.

First of all – the whole thing is a dream. Each episode starts with IgglePiggle going to sleep. The Night Garden is not a place; it’s a dream state.

Take the little sail down 

Light the little light

This is the way to the garden in the night

The “way” is the method of the dreamer, a psychical roadmap not a geographical one. It is only by taking his sail down – by ceasing to resist and to strive – that IgglePiggle can approach the Night Garden.

IgglePiggle then is a figure of tragic proportions. In reality, he is:

Out on the ocean 

Far away from land

He has – like Borges in “The Circular Ruins” – dreamed himself a whole new existence. No wonder he doesn't want to go to sleep at the end - to sleep in the dream world is to return to the utter isolation of the sea. 

The three central characters – or archetypes – correspond to Freud’s tripartite division of the mind: 

• IgglePiggle is manifestly the Ego at the centre of consciousness.
• Upsy Daisy is the Id – her phallic, erectile hair; her skirt which pops up wantonly at the pull of a string; her wandering bed which “only Upsy Daisy is allowed to sleep in”; and her overwhelming desire to kiss everyone are surely proof enough that she represents a raging whirlwind of sexuality and unconscious desire.

• MakkaPakka, by contrast, with his stooped, gnomelike body and obsession with “cleaning the faces” of the other characters is clearly the Superego – the force of repression, conscience and self-control.

The Ninky Nonk, moreover, is clearly Thanatos or the death instinct. Every journey on the Ninky Nonk ends up as a terrifying hellride which all are lucky to survive and yet the characters KEEP GOING BACK ON IT.

"An unconscious sense of guilt"

At this point, my analysis begins to break down. The opposite force to the Ninky Nonk is – as everyone knows – the Pinky Ponk, which ought then to represent the life instinct or Eros. The only way I can give any justification to that theory by pointing out that it looks like a big, green, flying tit.

Eventually, one’s knowledge of a subject matter and willingness to stretch an already ridiculously overtaxed metaphor becomes exhausted and the maddeningly disorienting power of the programme drives one’s thoughts along a new track.

Tombliboos are clearly the immature form of Teletubbies. The Tombliboo larvae and hatch out after a couple of weeks as adult Teletubbies – at which point, they are carefully relocated from the night garden to Teletubbie land.

Terrifying, bloody slaughter

The principal predators in the Tombliboo ecosystem are Fimbles. A hungry Fimble that breaks into a Tombliboo bush: a bloodthirsty tornado of fang and claw ensues, which – trousers or no trousers – the Tombliboos are helpless to resist. It is one of nature’s most shocking scenes, which has yet to have been captured on film.

As you can see, it is bewildering for an adult human to watch an entire episode of “In the Night Garden”. I haven’t even touched on the Pontypines and the myriad potential meanings of “wave to the Wottingers”. Is Mr Pontypine’s detachable moustache an emblem of castration-anxiety? And what are the Tittifers really?

Beware the Night Garden – once you have been there, you may come back a different person altogether. 

The White Caterpillar – Part 3

In which Roger of Sicily completes his daring journey home. Oh, hold on – that’s given away the ending. CONTAINS SPOILERS. Too late.

Part 4 – The Ramp

Five minutes before we got back onto the correct route for a 671 bus, I had texted Elvira saying that if the bus didn’t speed up, I was going to get off and walk.

Oh! The folly of impetuous youth, dear reader!

Turns out, we were stuck behind two cars that had collided in the middle of the road.

Why is it that by the time you get to the scene of an accident, they’ve always just managed to clear it out of the road?

Obviously, I’m not addressing that rhetorical question to any emergency rescue personnel who may be reading. It’s more directed at the casual sitter-and-waiter in traffic jams.

Into Rodley we headed, and I expected the worst. The road up to the notorious Rodley roundabout (the precise analogue of the Traverse of the Gods on the Eiger’s Nordwand) is almost always jammed up. The road from Calverley to Greengates is always jammed too, so I expected gridlock from this point onwards to the end of my bus journey.

“Hold on”, called the driver as we rounded the corner on the approach to the roundabout. I think he meant it in a jaunty, team-spirity way rather than in a literal, alarming way. But I did, just in case.

Well, the roundabout was indeed jammed – but NOT IN THE WAY WE WERE GOING!

I cannot tell you of the joy that went around the bus as we realised that traffic was coming out of Calverley, but none was going in. If the other passengers or myself had spoken to or looked at each other, I’m sure we would all have shared a very special moment of camaraderie. Still, it was implicit.

And on we sped, unimpeded by further traffic. Now that we were back on route, we started picking up passengers – loudmouthed secondary school gobshites mostly.

What is it about being in a school uniform and in a group that makes young people feel an obligation to shout?

And to shout complete bollocks at that?

We crossed the border into Bradford. Friendly territory at last. The bus pulled up and I barged past the teenage guttersnipes. “Well done”, I said to the bus driver as I disembarked.

Part 5 – The Second Ice Field

I had rested for about two hours by this time, and my clothing – while hardly dry – was at least warm.

I must here take the opportunity to pay tribute to my shoes.

The standard, black leather lace-up, brogue-style ankle boot may not be the most fashionable piece of footwear in the men’s department right now. Especially when it has a rounded toe and a rubber sole with “Clarks” embossed on it.

But by god they kept my feet warm and dry, no matter what I was walking through. And as we all know, wet feet are objectively the single worst thing in the whole universe.

Those shoes are the unsung heroes to whom I must pay tribute.

I hopped off the bus and immediately noticed a change in the road conditions since I had boarded.

The snow was now much wetter and rain-like. The road was covered in slush.

Oh brown slush! Child of snow and mud and sly dog poo - how I had missed you!

The thaw had truly begun.

Thus heartened, I began the final yomp back to Casa Sicily.

Walking on snow is really quite uncomfortable. As I had discovered while trying to haul my bike to a suitable berth, brogues afford relatively little purchase. You are therefore forced to walk with flat feet, splayed outward, rolling your shoulders to maintain balance and forward momentum – in a manner reminiscent of the young Liam Gallagher.

[Facebook friends – notice anything familiar? Yes, I am reusing status updates from last month! ODHSNM used to be so much better...]

Back to the plot.

Are we all familiar with the thoracolumbar fascia? Also known as the thoracolumbar aponeurosis?

Good.

Long-term readers will know that this is an area of my back with which I have – if not outright trouble – then nagging doubts.

It turns out that this bit of muscle – which, I must say, feels a little bit too deep to be called a “fascia” – does a hell of a lot of the work when you’re walking uphill in snowy conditions with your feet turned out. And waterlogged, falling-down overtrousers etc.

15 minutes after arriving home, I was unable to bend at the waist. Two days later, the tops of my thighs and the backs of my calves joined in.

Strange, isn’t it, how one’s muscles will often wait a day or so before complaining about over extertion? It makes me think of that terrible silence between the crash and the child starting to cry. The longer that silence is, the more serious you know the screaming is going to be.

Onward and upward, upward and onward I went. By now, the snow was pretty much just rain. I was steaming like a Grand National winner. I kept telling myself “just get to that point then you can stop for a rest”.

I soon realised that “stopping for a rest” would result in my entire body ceasing to function properly – which would necessitate what the mountaineers call a “bivouac” (ie sleeping in a ditch until someone rescued me). In the words of Gaston Rebuffat:

“The human animal in me was unhappy”.

So I didn’t stop and on and on I went. I measured the distance covered the next day. Two miles.

I know it doesn’t sound very impressive. But then the Eiger is only about 13000 feet high, which is about two and a half miles. And I walked further than that. Yes, with a bus journey in the middle, and yes, on a slightly shallower gradient. But a GREATER DISTANCE nonetheless.

Eventually I made it home. My children rejoiced at my return: Roger Jr by carrying on watching TV in the living room; and Tancred by attempting to bring me in on his side in his ongoing, screamed demand for crisps.

Always Tancred with the crisps. Oddly, after he was bought off with chocolate buttons, he proclaimed “I’m not crying any more Daddy” – as if he had only just noticed. However, he started again soon after the buttons were gone.

Part 6 – Epilogue

That evening, I took one final leaf out of the book of Heinrich Harrer – and indeed of the many other 19^th and early 20^th century explorers whose books I have been reading in recent years.

They often treat brandy as a medicine for fortifying people. In general, we no longer use strong alcohol as a means of bringing people to their senses – but I thought, why not? If it was good enough to get Andreas Heckmair down the mountain, it should be good enough for me.

However, by mistake I drank the best part of half a bottle of whisky and instead of being fortified and revived, I became even more tired – and had a hangover on top of the manifold aches and pains the next day. Clearly, my constitution differs from theirs in more ways than one.

Nevertheless, I did manage to get my bike back the next day. All the snow melted overnight, as if it had never been there. Had it all been a dream?

The White Caterpillar – Part 2

We last saw Roger of Sicily dumping his scooter in a snowdrift, and setting off on foot to walk home in the blizzard of February 13, 2013.

Part 3 – The First Ice Field

All things considered, I was not as disheartened at the prospect of figuring out how to get home from the outskirts of central Leeds in a snowstorm as you might expect.

Firstly, I was quite well-dressed for the occasion – not a statement I have regular cause to make. I had on waterproof trousers, a water-proof and insulated coat, heavy gloves and – last but not least – a crash helmet. I was only wearing ordinary office shoes though, to which I will have cause for laudatory return to later.

I was unlikely to get too cold. However, walking in all that get up is fairly difficult.

The overtrousers are prone to a continuous downward trajectory, usually settling with the gusset a good six to eight inches below the ideal level. That means the upward lift of the armoured leg is more demanding than when otherwise unencumbered. Melting snow added to the weight.

I quickly gave up on wearing the crash helmet, as it made me look insane. I started off by carrying it, like a lady’s handbag. After half a mile or so, I realised that it now had about an inch of snow in the bottom of it. So I strapped it to my backpack instead.

Do you have a Buff? I have a Buff. It’s like a scarf for people who are not ponces. Mine is black with red flames on, because I am a rock and roll outlaw.

I pulled mine over my head in an LA gangsta bandana style. On viewing my image in a window – so on reflection in two senses – in fact, I looked more like an out-of-breath Hairy Biker Simon King.

Not like this...

...like this

Style, of course, was not my primary concern. Keeping my ears warm was.

So off I went, and I was soon trudging up a hill with no footpath – that is, I was walking in the road as there was no traffic coming at all.

And on and on it went.

I stopped at the occasional bus stop to catch my breath.

Eventually, I glanced behind and there was a bus coming! I started to run to the nearest bus stop.

Running after walking uphill in snow for a mile or so while wearing a lovely warm set of protective clothing was not – I soon discovered – something that made me go any faster. But I carried on anyway.

I’m the kind of person who would rather be half an hour early than a minute late. Knowing that the bus was coming – even if it would have had to suddenly accelerate to light speed to overtake me (a velocity Transdev's fleet has yet, to my knowledge, ever to attain) – I had to get to the bus stop as quickly as possible. Even if (i) that meant I moved in a manner that got me there no more quickly but used considerably more energy and (ii) it meant I had a long wait gasping for breath and watching the distant bus approaching.

I checked the distance I had walked the next day. It was just over a mile. It felt more like ten.

Part 4 – Hell Ride to Stanningley

As the first bus approached, my heart sank – 508!

But what’s that right behind it? Holy shit, it’s only ANOTHER BUS! And a 671!

The 671 goes to Greengates before turning off to Bradford city centre. Greengates is only a couple of miles from where I live. I can catch another bus from there or walk it, I thought. It will be a nice opportunity to catch my breath.

I got on board. The bus was largely deserted. There were maybe another seven or eight people on there.

I was steaming. That’s not some kind of metaphor. I was quite literally wreathed in a mist coming off my body. I doubt it was pleasant for the other passengers.

We had got to the crest of a hill where the road descends to Rodley when another bus driver – without bus – banged on the window.

He told the driver (and a woman passenger heading to Calverley who had by this time attached herself to the driver in a semi-official, self-appointed capacity as co-driver and general source of unsolicited advice) that there was NO WAY we could go down there, as there were a load of buses piled up unable to get out of the bottom of the dip.

And so began our journey to the outer limits.

The outer limits of West Yorkshire bus route 671, at any rate. We continued straight ahead.

Around 90 minutes later, we finally came into Rodley – probably about half a mile from where we had left the route.

We had been on a fairly wide diversion, which I – having nothing better to do than sit and try to dry my gloves, Buff and helmet out – followed closely on Google Maps.

What did we do before Google Maps, ladies and gentlemen? I suppose we got lost more. And were unable to follow and critique the improvisations of lost bus drivers.

Turns out, when heavy snow falls, a lot of people want to get home quickly. And the upshot of this is that nobody gets home quickly, because all the roads immediately grind to a halt under the weight of the extra traffic.

Weirdly, some of the roads we took were completely gridlocked and others were completely empty. Another reason to have Google Maps on at all times – you’re not then restricted to the four roads that everyone knows about.

Kasparek and Harrer: drying out

Returning to “The White Spider” I remembered reading that mountaineers typically resorted to drying out their wet clothes by wearing them, hoping that body heat would do the rest of the work.

Hanging over the back of the bus seat in front of me was clearly not having much of an effect on my gloves, so I put everything back on with the intention of steam cleaning my gear dry.

Very soon, I was shivering with cold but unwilling to take the soaked equipment off, as I would end up even colder.

We passed through Stanningley – past the big camping shop, where I wondered if I had time to hop off the bus and nip in for crampons – and into Farsley. Kids threw snowballs at the bus, as the heroic, off-route driver refused to pick them up. Soon we were crawling into Rodley. Very very slowly.

In the next thrilling and mercifully final instalment, Roger of Sicily returns heroically home – to be confronted with a two-year-old screaming for crisps. 

The White Caterpillar – Part 1

I am reading a book called “The White Spider” at the moment.

Yes, a book! Not an out-of-copyright free Kindle ebook. It was a birthday present.

It is the story of the first ascent of the north face of the Eiger, by one of the party that did it in 1938. By all accounts, it was a pretty unpleasant experience – mollified only by the fact that they, unlike a lot of the other people who attempted to climb it, did not die.

Well, yesterday I experienced my own snowbound odyssey. It wasn’t perhaps quite as steep, or cold, or risky, or indeed historic as Heinrich Harrer’s – but at the time, it felt not too dissimilar.

Even though I did end up on a bus for quite a lot of it.

So I am calling my own adventure “The White Caterpillar”, for the following reasons:

• Caterpillars are less dangerous than spiders (unless eaten)
• Caterpillars are a bit fat and generally unsuited to strenuous physical extertion – like me

I should point out at this point that the White Caterpillar has nothing to do with the “white slug” referenced in The Inbetweeners movie... I was fully trousered – double trousered in fact – the whole time.

Part 1 – The Ascent

I don’t know if anyone else saw it yesterday morning (February 13) but the sky was uncommonly red when I was walking the dogs around 7am. So red, in fact, that everything took on a pinkish hue, much as I would imagine it would in the aftermath of an atomic blast.

In both these sets of circumstances – red sky in the morning and immediately after a nuclear explosion – shepherds are exhorted to take warning. Some people say sailors – I say shepherds.

Alas! I did not take the hint. I merely commented on how pretty the sky was, hopped onto my oft-mentioned scooter and zipped away to work. As per my undertaking at the end of “Horsforth and my balls...”, I was wearing full waterproofs.

Now, it’s about 10 miles by road from my house to my office and the journey in was uneventful.

Part 2 – Leeds to Kirkstall

It soon began to snow. I wasn’t worried. It does that a lot around here, and usually it’s only the last 100 metres of my journey home (ie the road I live on) that causes a problem. Everything else is a main road and they tend to stay clear.

I kept an eye on a planter in the middle of the road outside my windows to monitor the progress of the snow.

First, the soil was coated with snow. That’s nothing to worry about, I thought.

Then the leaves of the flowers went white.

By lunchtime, the cobblestones between the two carriageways was getting a dusting, but the roads themselves were still clear. I had no cause for concern.

I had intended to leave about 2pm, so I could get home before it started to get colder/darker/snowier and so I could get some work done when I got back. I didn't believe that there would be a problem. After all, snow had been forecast - the gritters would have been out...

By about 1.45pm, the snow was encroaching onto the road from the edges and it looked like a blizzard was in progress. I decided that it was now or never. The main roads would still be fine.

I jokingly said to some colleagues as I left that I would probably be dead in 30 minutes.

As soon as I was on my bike, I realised it wasn’t fine.

Visibility was appalling – my helmet was continually steaming up, and even when I could see through it, my vision was impeded by the barrage of snow.

But worse still was the road surface. Maybe half a mile out of Leeds city centre and the snow was being compacted into ice. I was on Burley Road, which is very undulating (not unlike the motion of a caterpillar). I should have gone down Kirkstall Road. Maybe that would have been better.

Vehicles with front-wheel drive were swishing their back ends left and right. Vehicles with rear-wheel drive were only going forward at 10-20 degrees off straight. No one was going more than 10mph.

I was soon going along with both feet on the ground to try to steady my fishtailing back wheel, stopping repeatedly to let anyone coming up behind me pass, so that if I came off there would be no one to run me over and so as not to have anyone lose control and run into the back of me.

By the time I got to Kirkstall Hill, I was – for want of a better expression – shitting myself, as cars and lorries skidded around and ploughed into one another. I gave up on Kirkstall Lane, rang Elvira – who was expecting me to get home so she could leave Tancred with me while she picked Roger Jr up from school.

There was no way I could make further progress. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of losing control and coming off my bike – which I was. I was more worried about someone else losing control and hitting me.

I pushed the bike on foot into a car park – approximately 300 metres and it took me at least 15 minutes as I had no grip from my shoes and the bike weighs about 18 stone. It was like dragging an unconscious fat man on a skateboard across an ice rink, with a runaway Zamboni careering towards you.

I locked up, and set off on foot.

Come back tomorrow for the second exciting episode of Roger of Sicily’s attempt to get home in bad weather!