Indiens

I got the job by chance. Petrus had seen me ride bareback – he’d accompanied me to test a young arab mare, out in the reserve. Two years later, I got a call, an emergency: specialist bareback riders needed for a film shoot, casting TOMORROW!

That afternoon I bridled Phantom (the most bombproof of my rides, with a deep back) and took him for a ten kilometre trip in the veld, bareback of course, with lots of trotting and transitions, to find my seat and rediscover some of those muscles…

Next morning I stepped out of my bakkie at the old Culemborg sidings where a police pony, immaculately schooled, had been hired to test the applicants. I put my name down and settled to watch. Take the reins, jump on unassisted, then walk, trot and canter back to the start and leap off in-canter before the camera tripod. The casting agent was a slight, fit, tanned gay guy who’d never smelt a horse before, but he’d approached Petrus for contacts. It was a synch, though I baulked at the jump off manoeuvre – simply because of my habit formed by training my own horses to stand like statues when dismounting.

After a month of waiting I got the call to an evening measuring gathering, and found pretty much those guys I’d earmarked myself at the casting, including Petrus himself. We were twenty five, and according to the storyboard, I was “Stunt Double for Indian Chief” which sounded propitious. It seemed we had to wear loincloths with bumflaps, moccasins, tasselly leggings, wigs and feathers. The loincloths were of leatherette vinyl and I pointed out to the scary costume chick that the vinyl piping meant to go between our legs (a great big thick g-string in essence) was going to cause considerable pain. I was ignored, though I was quite right, of course.

Then came the shoot. It was a big one, an advert for the French Lottery. We were lifted out to Worcester before dawn and delivered to a 2 Star hotel. We filled it. The first afternoon, we were taken to a remote part of Nuy farm, where a railway track ran straight to some rolling Karoo hills.

So far only the horses had arrived – tomorrow was the shoot itself, and in track suits we practiced a few dry runs. We lined up on the causeway bank next to the tracks, and at a signal turned left and took a controlled canter next to the metals, an easy procedure and after a couple of times we were bored. Next day there was a steam train and everything changed.

Well. It was winter. We’d been woken at 3 a.m. to kit up. The makeup chicks were cute but it was too early for flirting. The leading man, the Chief (alias Tony Caprari) loudly demanded coffee – the hotel staff panicked. Tony barely acknowledged me, he seemed an arrogant bastard but by the end of the day I was to like and respect him. Makeup – first a layer of sunblock then a red skin from head to toe. Then war paint – circles on the arms, stripes on the face, pretty cool really. Then the heavy pigtailed wig, held on with pins. My hair was short and one of the pins spent the whole day embedded in my scalp. But it was all so uncomfortable I could barely notice. Finally, stuff not seen before, and just off a plane - a trial of the Chief’s war bonnet, all four kilograms of it and beautifully made, plus a breastplate of carved bones and feathers, precise replicas of nineteenth century Sioux paraphernalia researched in the Royal Cultural History Museum, London. But I wasn’t to wear them continually – they passed between myself and Tony throughout the day. We were each then given a tracksuit, to keep.

Finally, the set… predawn, July, Karoo… about -5°C. That’s when the tracksuits were needed, and the warm horse fur beneath us. It dawned crystal clear, with the train building up steam a click or two up the track, facing us. It had been given a great red chimney trumpet and a red cow catcher. It looked the real thing. Along the tracks, on the left facing the train, the fence had been removed for about 300m and the scrub flattened. On the right, the fence remained. The concrete sleepers for this distance had been painted brown to imitate wood.

The set was now huge. Apart from the horse trucks and paddocks, there were pantechnikons full of who-knows-what; mobile toilets and change rooms; an open air restaurant (lunch was fresh seared swordfish); trailers; and a fair sized parking lot. There were about two hundred people, including a few local sightseers.

We were marshalled for the first take. The train coasted down the slight incline towards us so the driver could take instructions from the Director. Suddenly as it drew near it let off steam. In the chill dawn, still fairly quiet, this had a devastating effect on the horses. An atomic bomb would not have caused more reaction. The steam shot up like a mushroom cloud in the icy air, with the rising sun behind it – and remember, these things are quite big. The noise, too, was like the hiss of an RPG.

The horses, and riders, departed helter skelter all over the veld. The train reversed back to its start point, and we got our now-quivering horses back in front of the big camera boom. The director team were from London, and they gave us a quick lecture on what they wanted. Already we were starting to know better. We lined up, myself in regalia nearest the camera.

‘Chief, shout something motivational to your men, it doesn’t matter what, then all turn left and canter next to the track towards the train. Those with revolvers fire them into the air. We want to see the smoke.’

That sounds easy, but I nearly panicked while thinking of something to say. After all, many eyes were now on us. No one had told me I would actually have to act.

The train in the distance started its run. At 500m, the director, loudly, shouted,

‘Action!’ Cameras were rolling. I paused, looked left, stiffened melodramatically. I punched my spear skywards, stood straight up with my knees, and bellowed,

‘Skiet hom in die hol!’

My horse reared, tried on its hind legs to walk backwards down the steep causeway slope, and fell on its back. The other horses ran helter skelter all over the veld. But now the train was coming down fast on me, and I was right next to the track. Having thrown my spear away I held onto his neck with my right hand, and twisted sideways to make him fall on his side, so we fell close together with only one of my legs under him, without my losing the reins. So in all this funny leather and yards of feathers I had to run with horse right behind me over bushes away from the track – I wanted at least 50m between us and the train when it arrived, or the horse would do something bad to itself. It ran over me twice, and twice I went down, getting my foot stood on quite badly. I remember passing Petrus lying on his back. He was laughing uncontrollably at the sky.

Take 2. I was given a light snaffle instead of the mediaeval thing my horse had arrived in, and things started to go better. He, by the way, was a handsome skewbald by the name of Apache, and he moved like the wind. He really fucked off.

We did twenty-one takes. If this doesn’t sound like a big deal, you’d better read on carefully. I took all day, ten hours in the – sorry, bareback. The vinyl ground into our arses. I had sneaked a tanga onto the set and in a toilet break I surreptitiously changed. That was much better. The horses could never be controlled again, and they soon learned the word ‘Action.’ To them, it meant, fly from standing into a flat out gallop. When we passed the train and it roared above us, they went faster still. The Director couldn’t believe his luck – here was an unprecedented bit of wild riding such as only the Sioux themselves ever attempted.

After each ride, which took less than a minute, we walked our horses back from wherever we had managed to stop them, blown and bruised, wranglers running out to retrieve some of the more difficult ones in hand. Before each ride, we felt real fear. It took courage to face the next charge. The horses ran in a tight pack; there was no leadership, it was a wild herd. Our legs bashed against other legs, and against horses, promising to throw us off. We knew that if we fell, we would die quickly among thrashing legs and hoofs. Sometimes we sat so lightly we were flying, and the horses jerked and sidestepped unexpectedly.

On one memorable take, the press of the herd forced me up the causeway slope and between the tracks. I was galloping across the concrete sleepers with stones in between. Below me on my left was the herd, an impenetrable pack. I couldn’t go there without the horse collapsing and probably causing a pile up. On my right was the fence, and there I would be caught between the train and the fence – certain death as I saw it. My only option was to overtake. I screamed and kicked at the horse and we pelted straight at the front end of the train, riding high above the causeway. I threw the horse left into the leading horse heads with less than 50m to spare: a sideways jump down at full gallop.

Apache in a gallop led with the right leg. My left foot in its light suede took the full knock of his powerful elbow with every stride. Next day my foot was so contused I limped with difficulty.

I know now, in a small way, why cavalrymen were considered courageous. A charge is an immense thing, something that once started cannot be stopped, or changed, or opted out of. It is incredibly dangerous. Even without live weapons going off, you can be killed instantly, every single time, violently; and this in spite of all the skill in the world.

In our burned out exhaustion we felt a glorious glow of achievement in a way no one watching or anyone else could understand. After the last take of the day, we rode back into the low orange sun, me standing straight, the horse jogging. Then a wind came up from behind and the great red and white war bonnet flapped open with a crack! and the power of a sail, and I knew we looked magnificent.

During the day I had several chats with Tony. He was no Arrogant Bastard – I soon saw he was a Real Man. A dedicated professional actor, he had mastered most things, and I watched him mastering the hands-free Indian leap onto a horse’s back, which he did expertly. He had first approached me in the midmorning coffee break to say,

‘Hey Evan that’s incredible riding, we’ve never seen anything like it. Thank you SO much for making me look so good.’

And then the day was over, redskins in Combis being gawked at in the Worcester rush hour at traffic lights, and a long drive home in the dark, winding down into reality.

Mind your own energy!

In 1807 Thomas Young first used the word ENERGY in its modern sense, from the greek word energeia meaning activity. Some time later, about 1824, the Prime Minister of England asked Michael Faraday, a pioneer of electromagnetism, just what use electricity was; to which Faraday is supposed to have replied, why, someday you can tax it.

Energy was no-one’s business.

Even if this ironic story grew with dramatic hindsight, we now have the situation, and this has never happened before in history, where states supply and indeed monopolise all the significant energy used in the world – to their great advantage. At first it was cheap. Colonial powers discovered massive stores of fossil fuel in subjected territories, and set about developing ways of using it. This led pretty soon to runaway growth in our energy needs (which had been quite modest up till then).

Today we are in crisis. Energy has become the one resource that is most likely to drag nations and the world into war – its done so a couple of times recently. The problem is not that energy is running out – quite the contrary. The universe appears to provide almost infinite amounts of it, in largely untapped and renewable forms. The real problem is that states control it. Remember, this situation has overtaken us really quickly. Zoom back to 1807… What were people doing? They were helping themselves! And their governments had not the slightest interest in getting involved. I can imagine they avoided such commitments nimbly. If you wanted hot water or home heating, you got wood or peat or dried cowdung and burned it. And if this was not absolutely free, it certainly was part of a local limited economic chain. And sustainable.

In fact, it was this dependence on renewable but very limited resources that kept explosive development and population growth in check. In other words, an economical and ecological balance was maintained. The sudden use of fossil fuels added, to man-hours, almost uncapped potential virtual man-hours. And at the same time it gave birth to megalithic corporate states with ever more totalitarian powers.

We have nearly reached the end of stage one of the Energy Revolution, the fossil fuel or carbon era. For stage two, many hopefuls are waiting in the wings to take us beyond. Wind, sun, waves – and others – are amply able to provide vast amounts of electric power. Then there is nuclear power, hydrogen, various forms of thermodynamic and chemical latent energy. We have not even started to imagine what the search for the Higgs Boson may reveal, but it may seem quite, magically, miraculous. E=mc²… this means that in the universe, if you take all the mass there is (yourself, interstellar dust, gas and dark matter plus the boring old stars and lumps of rock out there, quite a lot of them), multiply this by the speed of light, 670 million miles per hour, multiply your answer by the speed of light AGAIN, you will have calculated just how much energy exists in the universe.

Our, human, energy needs, now and forever, are insignificantly tiny considering what’s out there.

So. There is enough energy. More than enough. It should be free. And yet, it will never be as long as we keep expecting (or are given no choice for) states to deal it out. They have become so fat on energy, taking it from them will be like pulling teeth. Energy IS their teeth! Imagine what will happen if suddenly, whole communities become self sufficient and fail to see the need to pay large rates and taxes bills any more.

Remember the parable of the Boiled Frog – whether true or not. Put a frog in a pot of cold water, put the pot on the stove and turn the stove on. Apparently – and here we have to rely on the word of some anonymous psychopathic scientist – the frog’s nervous system is unable to notice a slow gradual increase in heat until its dead. Don’t try this at home, but true or not, it’s a useful simile for my argument.

Between 1807 and today, we’ve been frogs. We have let ourselves believe that we need states to supply energy. We have become locked into one of the most inflexible economic dependencies the world has seen.

I think it can all be reversed painlessly, though. Although I myself am largely off-grid, there is no self-congratulation or moral posing. It has taken incremental years and is not easy. There are many pitfalls, the greatest perhaps being that we merely swap a state dependency for a corporate one. I realised this after several years of solar powered equipment, when it all started needing expensive replacements and overhauls. So while we people on the ground feel the desire to be off-grid, corporations are gearing up to make a lot of money from this.

I want to introduce to you my idea of Capital Energy vs Vernacular Energy ©, so please read on.

The answer, to me, is to go low-tech and to reduce our expectations as far as possible. Systems should be locally made and repairable. This returns us to a pre1807 balance of neither living beyond our means nor expecting Big Brother to carry us. We humans are remarkably resourceful and vigorous animals with self-improving powers; yet we become flabby sitcom cripples in the twinkling of an eye. We might all be in wheelchairs considering the imbalance in the flow of resources towards us. States serve us, indeed, but in the way that farmers serve finely ground GM soya to chickens – as long as the eggs are laid. Without realising it, we also give a great deal back in exchange.

I said earlier that stage two will have many alternatives to fossil fuel to choose from. Now Capital Energy is energy that can only be harnessed using state or corporate capital. It takes big resources to develop oils wells on land or sea. Wave power is no option for a little old lady in a seaside cottage. And I have decided not to run my farm with a pocket nuclear reactor. The resources that only Big Brother can exploit do, definitely, have their place. But there is another, entry-level source, which is Vernacular Energy. It is freely available and the means to exploit it are available to individuals. Some are cheap and low tech.

Solar water heating, electricity generation, we are familiar with these. The scope however is much, much bigger. There is private transport, for example. Back in the day, we used our own horse that grazed our own grass. We need to unboil our froggy brains to get back to this sort of individual freedom.

I recently read all about the new South African electric car about to be released. The Joule is revolutionary, stylish, sufficient and impressive as a car. I admire its truly professional design and applaud its designers. But – and this is a big one – its batteries remain the property of the supplier and you must perforce rent them, and they may only be charged on mains supplies. Damn it! In one stroke, the Joule takes us to the very brink of total independence and then jerks us back to corporate and state bondage. Why was I so stupid to think a company would be even slightly altruistic?

I want a car I can charge from my own solar (or whatever) generators, for free. I want my transport to be as free as the backyard horse. And do the Joule designers really think that after the country’s recent debilitating power outages (or in real English power failures), all South African households will blithely plug their cars in every night?

HUH?

The answer of course, is to get a Joule or Joule-like, car, circumvent the battery contract and use a home made power source. But I’m starting to spiral off the thread. The point is that Vernacular Energy is available for every household’s needs, including transport. We have only to GO there.

Capital Energy has its place, and always will. Public transport, health, industry, the military and so on… but why should it go to households? Only because we’re become so lazy. A growth of Vernacular Energy use will not only free up Capital Energy for where its really needed, but it should downsize government. This will not happen overnight, and if too dramatic it will provoke oppositional reactions and regulations. So I suggest that what needs to happen is that we, the people, start slowly boiling our froggy governments.

In Thomas Young’s world, all energy was vernacular. It was available locally, at little cost. No one complained. Its possible now.

The earth receives (and loses) 24/7 huge quantities of electromagnetic energy. Life learned long, long ago to use it. Plants converted it chemically  and stored it. We call it food. Anyone warmed by a ray of sunshine is in the position to convert it too, and use it for any number of things. The trouble is, we have got used to just a few particular types of energy, and their gadgets. To take full, meaningful advantage of the birth of stage two in the energy revolution, many habits and expectations need to change.

All our domestic appliances and gadgets may soon survive only in museums. Well I hope so. Plasma screens, bread machines, fridges and stoves in their present forms can not be fuelled by Vernacular Energy. I could be wrong of course, things may stay as they are, but this will happen at the expense of ever increasing levels of environmental devastation, political imbalance and social illness.

But don’t worry about losing all those wonderful doodahs – low tech can also be high tech, paradoxically. Its just a question of our comprehension of our gadgets. We need never be starved of the wonderful new things we have become used to looking forward to. Technologies are ever-improving.

Comparing our energy use today with Young’s world gives a very useful perspective. It would have seemed crazy in that green and quiet time that one’s energy consumption was anyone else’s concern. And truly, it is crazy. History could have flowed differently. Its just a fluke that fossil fuel (in the hands of a few)  was the driving force for development, after all, electricity was known to come from other sources first. But it led to central control of Energy, and it was a better product than Coca Cola.