learnin’

Went to watch an educational and harrowing film yesterday: The Wind the Shakes the Barley. It is another Ken Loach film and as good as Land and Freedom so I would recommend watching it if you get a chance. It’s all about Ireland in the 1920s so only watch it if you need convincing that occupied countries are a bad thing or you are prepared to be traumatised in a character building exercise kind of a way. Although I confess to being very sensitive so don’t take my words as wisdom if you are more of a hardened character.

In between distressing myself I’ve been hanging out with my lovely family and visiting the Sainsbury Centre at UEA for free lectures on Polynesian warfare – not really my thing but certainly interesting and definitely free! I always feel that good stories are a better way to transmit information that lectures. Take for example Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – which gave a good sense of the importance of warfare and the mysticism and power that lay behind it, in a palatable form. Compared to a lecture that touched on a similiar topic, albeit in a different culture, the novel causes the individual to empathise and thus leaves the ‘consumer’ with a powerful sense of the topic.

The family are all dashing about trying to leave to get to another free lecture – this time on Picasso and Bacon so I’d better dash too…

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