Mangala

July 30, 2026

The Sixth World Nomad Games will take place in Kyrgyzstan from August 31 to September 6, and my daughter Sarah will be representing Great Britain at the game of Mangala. My wife Katharine is going along in support but will not be competing.

The opening ceremony of the games will be held in the capital city of Bishkek, while the main sports competitions and cultural events will be hosted around the Issyk-Kul region (primarily Cholpon-Ata). Participants from around 100 countries are expected, competing in traditional heritage sports.

Competitions include:

  • Kok-Boru, or Kok-Par, essentially polo with a goat carcass;
  • Er Enish (horseback wrestling), Alysh (belt wrestling), and Mas-wrestling(stick-pulling contest) as well as tug-of-war, this year played in rounds of 1v1, 5v5 and the standard 8v8. There are also dozens of other forms of wrestling that were invented by, typically only entered by, and always won by the Kazakhs and the Kyrgs.
  • Traditional Archery, Horse Archery
  • Eagle Hunting and falconry.
  • Taigan Zarysh (sighthound racing)
  • Heer Shalga, (Breaking of the Vertebral Bone) sounds extremely violent, but it’s really a contest of breaking animal bones by hand.

Then we have the intellectual sports, including Mangala, Oware and Toguz Korgool (originally played with sheep dung). Straddled halfway between the intellectual sports and sports requiring aim is Ordo.

These sports are the highlights of a programme that also celebrates nomadic cultural traditions and scientific achievements, so will be accompanied by musical performances, dramas, talent shows and a museum compromising of dozens of yurts, each hosting exhibitions for unique parts of Central Asias Geography and history.

I’m following the GB teams Traditional Intellectual Sport Teams Instagram.

Anish Kapoor

July 19, 2026

We went to see the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Hayward, which is really worth a look.

One room is devoted to Vantablack, the super-dark pigment made from carbon fibre tubes to which Kapoor, controversially, has sole artistic rights. It absorbs light so totally that features of a surface are invisible when viewed head-on – they look flat unless viewed from the side. This is remarkable and a lot of fun, though it perhaps has the feel of a corporate tech presentation more than creative art.

Another theme is bloody sacrifice, with an upside down bloody mountain and piles of large, realistic entrails. Before entering we were solemnly warned not to touch anything – one appealingly fluffy red mountain would apparently leave indelible stains on the fingers. On a similar theme, perhaps, there are paintings of what look like wounds and scars gilded or streaked with gold. There are also gigantic red inflatables crammed into a couple of galleries: perhaps they too recall huge guts.

In the outside spaces are a series of curved mirror shapes, the perfect reflection being perhaps the opposite of the Vantablack. The distorted views from these are again a lot of fun, and they would be great permanent additions to any public space.

I feel I may have missed the deeper significance of these works, but one thing I can promise is that you won’t be bored.

Annabolina

June 27, 2026

I have a piece about Anne Boleyn in Pond Life, a Carshalton fanzine, available from logofiasco records. This is linked with the current Carshalton Festival featuring CAOS, in which an impressive number of local artists open up to visitors.

In the zine I’m afraid they got my name slightly wrong, and they changed the title of the piece. But they made up for that by giving it this very nice illustration by Ruth Joyce.

Omnidawn

June 22, 2026

I was one of five finalists in the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Chapbook contest, for my collection Folded World. They only publish the winner, but perhaps I’ll self-publish mine? I had a very nice email from the editor in which she singled out for praise the story Romans in Australia, arguably the least fantastic in the collection.