Delayed Days!

What are the signs of a real capital city? Murder, mayhem, rape, violence on an escalating scale, traffic gridlock, death of the inner city, high level corruption, world class paintings, an opera house, an international airport, a rapid transit system, a landmark building, and civic pride.

How does Cardiff fit this profile? Far be it from me to speculate how many of the requisites above apply to my fair city, but the element which is uppermost in my mind today is that of the airport.

I know it is fashionable, especially among the classes who habitually travel by air in a class which is not steerage with knees tucked firmly underneath chins, to decry the growing trend of folk to travel by air. Global warming and the cataclysms which threaten to follow that phenomenon should make us think more than once about the consequences of trivial foreign (or domestic) travel by plane. To me it seems as if the chattering classes are a little miffed by the fact that anyone can now hold a conversation and pepper their talk with details of foreign cities and resorts which, at one time, would have been the preserve of the rich and the very rich.

It is the same sort of argument which is used in the debate about the Amazonian rain forest and the destruction thereof. We in the west decry the indiscriminate cutting of the rainforest (“the lungs” we are told, “of the world”) by rapacious capitalists intent on making money, while carefully ignoring the fact that countries like Great Britain were once densely wooded. Where did that timber go? Why, it was fed into the furnaces that stoked up the Industrial Revolution and make this country a pre-eminent economic power. We got rich by destroying our environment, but perish the thought that any country should follow our lead.

It is a symptom of class fear: the Victorians were the best exemplars of the terror that comes with increased industrialisation and the expansion of the fruits of capitalism actually allowing the Other Breeds Without the Law to enjoy the fruits of increases in the standard of living. Travel and communication are the basic elements which allow people to know, develop, learn and expect. No wonder that these were taxed and limited by the governing classes to keep the people down. I had thought that we had developed further than the Victorians, but there again I always did have a hazy idea of history.

Once the Pandora’s box of consumerism, instant communication and cheap travel has been opened and the concepts have been firmly embedded in the consciousness of a people, it will take a revolution of grim repression to close it again.

One of my many heroes was Clive Jenkins (of whom I can do a passable imitation, though for depressingly few people who still remember him) trade union leader of ASTMS and bon viveur. His epicurean tastes always got him in trouble in the scum press, but he invariably used to say something like, “Yes I like caviar, champagne and good cigars, and I am working to enable all members of the working classes to enjoy them too.” He should have been a Jesuit!

I can’t help thinking that all the preceding history babble is mere justification for the continuation of cheap flights so that I may continue to swan my way around the world. Fair point, but it seems to me to be justification enough.

Saturday 9th

I can only plead that a fun filled day of chauffeuring has precluded the necessary scribbling to the quotidian mean. I will do better today, though I only have until the afternoon to write something, as I am going to the Rocky Horror Show with Michael Aspel as the narrator. Makes a bit of a change from the concert yesterday in Saint David’s Hall with Britten, Bartok and Shostakovich!

The concert hall was depressingly empty. Although Huw said that while waiting with the tickets he thought that the audience was amazingly varied in its demographic, just looking around showed that the majority of the people sitting in their scattered seats were older rather than younger. It is a fact that a sizable chunk of the teaching profession is reaching retirement age, we live in an ageing society, but if classical music is to survive without absolutely breathtaking subsidy (instead of the present merely extortionate subsidy) a new audience is going to have to be attracted.

The programme was not that taxing: The Sea Interludes by Benjamin Britten; Third Piano Concerto by Bartok and Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony. The concert and each piece were introduced by Michael Berkeley. This is an innovation and I can only applaud the BBC by making the link between performers and audience a little less intimidating. The presenter had that plumy voice beloved of the BBC Third Service and his comments were directed towards a listening public with some degree of musical knowledge. I thought that the level was about right for the audience that was in front of him and the likely audience listening to the broadcast on Radio 3, but I’m not sure that it would encourage a first time visitor to come again, and it was not the sort of commentary which would make the music approachable for a musical neophyte.

Having said that, I do not want a dumbing down of the content of a programme or the way in which the music is described: but that in itself is perhaps a condemnation of classical music to oblivion. Unless habitual concert goers feel some intellectual pain then the level of communication for the concerts will probably not reach outside the comfort zone of dedicated audiophiles. It is a tricky problem. Some concerts will perhaps price themselves realistically, and therefore price themselves out of the pocket of most normal music goers, while the BBC with its commitment to music for all will have an increasingly difficult problem in providing music at any sort of reasonable price. It seems to me that the television license is the only way to fund the majority of the BBC if it wants to keep up or expand its present remit.

Sunday 10th

Meanwhile the concert: the choice of programme was interesting and not necessarily ‘pop’ but the composers were mainstream and the pieces of music relatively well known.

The Britten was a revelation. I realised that it was the first time that I had heard the music played as a concert piece in a purpose built concert hall. Previously I have had to contend with the Acoustic of Death in that hell hole for opera – the New Theatre. The sophistication of the orchestration is not fully appreciated without the clarity of a superlative orchestra playing with verve which was the keynote of the performance of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The sharp delineation of the soundscape of the pieces was a delight to hear. My only reservations were in ‘Moonlight’ where the ensemble playing was not quite as exact as in the other pieces, but this is a cavilling criticism and it did not detract from the overall impression.

Llyr Williams’ performance in the Bartok Piano Concerto No 3 was the best that I have heard him give. There was an authority about his playing which fully deserved the enthusiastic reception given at the end and, unheard of treat from a British performer; he did an encore of another piece by Bartok (I think!)

The star performances were reserved for the last item on the programme, Shostakovich’s Symphony No 10. This is a piece which has to be heard in the concert hall so that the pianissimo opening of the symphony can be appreciated. There were no false moments in this symphony and the orchestra and conductor seemed to be fully in accord. The enthusiasm of the conductor at the end of his mammoth piece of music was more akin to the scoring of a goal, and I think fully justified in its glittering achievement.

Thierry Fischer continues to impress and he certainly seems to have the full support of the orchestra in the way that he want the music to sound. I look forward to the next concert.

The Rocky Horror Show was the usual phantasmagoria where the audience seemed to be vying (and in many cases outdoing) the antics on the stage!

The set was intelligent and well used with a few moments of genuine theatrical presence. Janet (Slut!) using vigorous hand movements to get the windscreen wipers working characterised the ambiguous single entendre that worked so well on stage. The use of ladders, sliding flats and models worked incredibly well and Rocky managed to combine a chiselled six pack with a more than decent singing voice! It was a good ensemble production only limited by the fact that it was the first of two performances that night.

Michael Aspel was magisterial as the narrator, but his performance did not manage to eclipse the defining performance of Charles Grey and, in the same way, other performances by Frank N Furter and Riff Raff were too close to the characters in the film to be comfortable and they were not good enough to make you forget the originals.

The chit chat between actors and audience was limited, more I think by the necessity of getting the audience out for the second house than any disinclination on the part of the actors to respond to a hyped up group of weirdly dressed observers! I think that the second house would probably have been more open ended.

The after performance meal in the Italian restaurant Trattoria Pulcinella was grotesquely overpriced, taking full advantage of the proximity to Christmas to fleece the willing and gullible paying public. If I had known that the price for four was going to be £150 (admittedly with a few bottles of wine, house wine, thrown in) I would have looked elsewhere. But elsewhere at a reasonable price probably doesn’t exist in the centre of Cardiff on the 9th of December.

After taking the Catalans back to their plane, the rest of the day has been one where rest and relaxation has been the order of the rest of the day.

We will probably spend the next week finding where Carles has placed the objects that took his fancy.

At least it will give me an incentive to clean properly. Who knows what I might find.

House of cards

It is not an easy thing to admit. Some things attack the very basis of your understanding of your character. Some painful instances are just too painful to recall. The attacks on the very foundations of your being are too profound to be dismissed. Yet, surely it is better to face your failures rather than pretend; to sweep the negativity away with a defensive swish of the back of your hand.

So facts must be faced; the assumptions made must be rigorously re-examined; new strategies devised; reality accepted.

It comes down to credit cards.

I am not really old enough to be trusted with the responsibility of a credit card. The temptation is too easy, the fruits of ill use too sweet; but modern life is made almost impossible without one.

Ian is the only person I know who has made a virtue out of his inability to drive – the whole of his life is geared to the reality of the lack of a car, and, because he never has owned a car he does not miss it in the way that a confirmed driver would. I know other people who do not drive, but they have ensured that they are married to or are living with a confirmed driver. But driving is not like a bank account.

I do not know anyone who does not have a bank account: they may resent the fact that they have to have one, but have one they do. I know some people who try to limit their financial exposure by relying on a cash card like Maestro rather than succumb to the easy snare offered by a credit card (I see people like this every time I look in a mirror!) But all of those people who can have a credit card do have a credit card.

We are all ensnared by the complex web of capitalism, so that anyone who does not have access to credit in one way or another is regarded as a freak.

To be fair a credit card is useful when buying things over the internet and paying for theatre tickets by phone etc; but anyone who actually uses the card for credit is paying over the odds for the money which they think is a gentle service offered by their bank. Credit cards use people, not the other way round. The only way to escape the snare of instant gratification is to ensure that your credit card is paid off (in full) at the end of every month.

This still leaves you with the residual guilt of using the banking system which, if you think back to your time in university, was a rapacious monster encouraging spendthrift ways while persuading you to all sorts of excesses. This schizoid behaviour by the bank is suddenly resolved when the bank demands its money back or informs you that you are now a wholly owned subsidiary and must pay a soul churningly large amount of any money that you have and might expect to have into the bottomless coffers of the bank.

In my own case the financial reality of a student’s life was only brought home to me when my bank manager (a fellow Labrador owner and therefore an easy touch for the extension of any loans that I had) went on holiday and his under manager took over control. The under manager whose signature was ‘A. Hodges’ with no gender indication, turned out to be a particularly vindictive lady who always took the opportunity to write me pointed letters basically asking me what the hell I was doing with the bank’s money. The situation was only resolved when the ‘real’ manager came back off holiday and we had a meeting (including, when I really was financially non existent, with my Labrador in attendance: present, as they say about Jeremy Bentham [the well known dead nineteenth century philosopher] in present day London University Meetings, but non voting) when everything would be resolved. Then he left. Nothing was the same again, and a credit card really did become one of the key cards in the Devil’s suit. It was eventually at this point (yes, I know that doesn’t actually make sense) that the whole payment at the end of the month to ensure some sort of reality check for the credit card is dated.

I also attempted to find some sort of moral basis for the ownership of a credit card by ensuring that my credit card account was with the co operative bank (one of the most inefficient organizations in my experience) and the credit card was one which gave a percentage of the money to Amnesty International. I might add that the logo of Amnesty was prominent on the card itself.

I have used this card (very occasionally) ever since and have never even been tempted to take money out by using it. It continues to be paid off at the end of every month and some sort of stability is maintained.

Until today. Today I attempted to hire a car (see yesterday) and as the company takes a vast sum of money notionally you have to use a credit card. When the vehicle is returned then the amount on the credit card is cancelled. This did not happen as my credit card was blocked when it was placed in the machine. It turns out that all cards in GB are now chip and pin; all of them, not just my Maestro card. I do remember a pin number being sent to me, but as I never use it to get money then I thought that I could ignore it. It turns out I was wrong. With all my much vaunted finger-on-the-pulse of the white hot heat of the technological revolution: I have been caught out.

We did find a way to get the process completed, but, the shame of it all!

What other aspects of technology are waiting to bite me?

The Black Spot of electronics has been passed to me: the Admiral Benbow will never be the same again.

Driving with the enemy?

Everyone has his price.

No one is beyond being bought.

How much does it take for long held principles to fade away into mere memory? How firms are your values as temptation slides into view with an alluring leer?

It is not easy for someone as life affirmingly easy going as myself to imagine possessing a personality which rubs up against the minor irritations of life and finds expression in diatribes of venom flecked vituperation against everybody and everything which irks. However, I am prepared to make an effort and, using a considerable amount of imagination, I will try an empathy exercise and think myself into a curmudgeonly personality and make a list of ten of the sort of things which might be the bane of such a person’s life.

1. Use of mobile phones in public.
2. Wearing baseball caps the wrong way round
3. Able bodied parking in disabled spaces
4. That Woman and all other Conservatives
5. Drivers not indicating when turning
6. Chelsea tractors or people carriers
7. MacDonald’s
8. The ‘nobility’ including HRH and parasites
9. Rap
10. Rat dogs (i.e. any dog which is not a yellow Labrador bitch)

A list of amazing ordinariness and restraint you might say. I apologise for my lack of extremism in this empathetic attempt to get in touch with my obnoxious doppelganger.

Say, for a moment, that this list did bear some sort of resemblance to a list I might be persuaded to articulate: what would encourage or force me to go back on long held certainties and lapse into sin?

This is where semantics comes into its own. As old professor Joad always used to say before giving his opinion on any subject, “It depends what you mean by . . . “ it is a useful reminder of the slippery nature of words and contexts.

Take, for example, mobile phones. I own a mobile phone and I have used the same but, and this is an important qualification, only when it was essential to do so: this is allowed. It is not the reflex action of a socially challenged adolescent who obviously feels unloved and isolated unless a showy piece of engineering is fixed permanently to one side of his skull and he can engage in phatic ‘conversation’ with an equally vacuous individual.

I have worn a baseball cap backwards; but only when swimming in a sultry climate and when my (alas!) unprotected pate has not fully adjusted to the rigors of that rare visitor in Wales, the sun. You try swimming with the cap on the right way: impossible!

So (with a few obvious exceptions) you can work your way down the list and find extenuating circumstances. The most ‘obvious exception’ from the list above is, self evidently, freedom of choice in the type of dog that is acceptable: only the Labrador. Obviously!

But, and it’s a big but, there comes a time when you have to accept that you will be acting outside your normal parameters. Tomorrow will be such a day. Tomorrow I drive a People Carrier.

Now there are reasons: the Catalan contingent arrive, complete with grandson and, if the normal round of shopping is to be achieved then a mere saloon car is clearly going to be inadequate. I only hope that nobody I know sees me; though given my prejudices I’m sure that if anyone does see me they will assume that their eyesight is at fault and I will be safe.

The photography continues to develop. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one!) My concentration on flowers also continues with my attention focussed on the humble cyclamen. It has proved to be a very tricky subject. I bought a small pot of cyclamen and put it on the metal table outside in front of the French doors. The small flowers have now gone past their best, and their size and number have been added difficulties in producing a decent image. I’ve eventually come down to two.

What do you think?

See what you like!

And today’s word is: Pareidolia.

It is not a word that I have come across before, and the computer’s dictionary does not believe that it exists. But it does.

I suppose that many of you have wondered what word to use to describe the people who have claimed to have seen the face of Jesus in a pile of rice crispies or the name of Allah in a cut tomato. Apart, that is, from nutters. Bed time will have been a place of torment that night as you struggle to find the mot juste to describe the sad faith of gullible folk happy to share their unthinking belief in the vain hope that it will convert others to their sanguine religions.

Sleep soundly from now on. The word which just failed to work its way into your conscious mind was, of course, pareidolia.

Wikipedia (an ever present help in time of information trouble) defines pareidolia as “a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. This is the word which describes seeing images or faces in the clouds and can explain some (if not all) of the religious apparitions of holy folk in beetroot stains in a pair of underpants, clouds, sheep’s wool, cut tomatoes, shadows, indeed anything which can be ‘interpreted’ by an inventive mind.

Wikipedia goes on to suggest that “Human beings are ‘hard wired’ from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces” in virtually anything. And not only faces, but also dogs, as the famous spot picture demonstrate.

The full extent of peoples craving for evidence from the distant god that he/she/it is all around us and working with chocolate bar manufacturers to stamp his image in random cross sections for example, is too depressing to tabulate, but if you are interested then you could do worse that look at this web site:

http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/minormiracles.html

I have to admit that this site does have a fairly obvious agenda, but it makes for interesting reading nevertheless.

All of this is to justify the photo which is at the head of this article.

I am still in the process of getting to know my camera: a Casio Exilim EZ-Z1000 a 10.1 mega pixel monster that can fit comfortably in my shirt pocket!

Flowers, unlike for example, herons, do not move about when you get anywhere near them and very few flowers in my experience have flown away from the questing lens! The close up in focus is the one thing which is very difficult to achieve with a compact camera, so I am more than delighted with some of the results that I have obtained from this machine.

I can also see why photographers take hundreds of photos so that they can come up with one or two decent shots. I am not claiming to be a photographer (with a compact camera who but an idiot would claim to be?) but I am seeing that selection is the most interesting and difficult part of the photographic process. See, even with a compact camera, I am trying to get into the way of thinking! I was always able to kid myself along to keep myself warm when the cold light of reality came biting.

So, what I have produced is a photographic essay of two shots which demonstrate the principle of pareidolia.

And there aren’t many blogs which do that!

You must wear yours with a difference!

As the mad Ophelia wandered embarrassingly around the court at Ellsinore distributing flowers and smut, she accompanied each gift of blooms with a knowing description of the meaning that each plant possessed:
“There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray,
love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts.”
I’m sure that we, like the Danish court, remain a little mystified by the gnomic utterings of Hamlet’s ‘girl friend’ and notoriously poor swimmer!

However the Victorians developed the so called language of flowers. Each flower had a significance, so that, for the Victorians, a bouquet of flowers could actually be a sophisticated declaration or intriguing message.

How debased that language is today! Some people have a hazy realisation that going to hospital with a bouquet of red and white roses is the equivalent of presenting the ailing person with a wreath; they might know that in China (or is it Japan) chrysanthemums are flowers associated with death and that the colour white is allied to the Grim Reaper; some might know that May blooms should never be brought into the house; and most know of the funereal associations with lilies; but anything more precise eludes the majority of us.

Flowers which excite some repulse others. One of my mother’s favourite flowers was the anemone; a flower many find old-fashioned and rather tawdry and a bloom which is characterised today by being something rarely found in florists. I know people who find spray chrysanthemums the floral equivalent of cheap Chardonnay and others who regard a splendid array of roses as repugnant and vulgar. I know some people who fill their house with cut flowers and others who look on that act as little short of horticultural murder and putting the flowers in vases the equivalent of the callous flaunting of corpses.

So the giving of a bunch of flowers is fraught with problems and what was, at one time, a panacea for all ills is now something more problematical. Consider what the presentation of a floral gift entails, not only on the part of the giver but also on the part of the receiver.

Unless the flowers are presented ready tied and in their own vase, the presentation of a bouquet is usually the signal for a sort of domestic melt down. After the initial expressions of delight the first problem is the finding of a vase.

Although one of the few things that ‘make over’ programmes have taught us is that anything can be used for anything: a large empty coffee tin becomes an amusing Warholesque toilet roll holder; a tractor tyre becomes the base of a bean bag seat; a lump of earth in a jam jar becomes a strategic design feature (No, I don’t know what that means either.) So the finding of a container capable of containing water should not be a problem: but it is.

When a selection of ‘possibles’ have been discarded and a final choice has been made for the flowers, the sudden discovery that it is not clean produces a flurry of cleansing operations only hindered by the fact that the convoluted shape of the container makes it impossible for the human hand to get into the highly visible dirt harbouring crevices. A variety of kitchen brushes sometimes obviates this problem and eventually the vase is ready.

The next problem is the dividing or not dividing of the bouquet. Should the receiver have a profusion of blooms in one vase or be artistic (or parsimonious) and divide them into other containers? This is a real problem and one which sometimes is solved by the “Oh I’ll do it later” approach. The fewer the blooms the more important the arrangement: quantity allows lack of restraint and the ‘plonking’ approach to be adopted.

But before the flowers are placed in the vase there is the question of cutting the stems. Most people cut the stems of cut flowers (otherwise they wouldn’t be cut would they? Boom! Boom!) Because they have been told it will prolong the plant life. But is it cut, or cut at an angle, or cut and crush, or cut and split or . . . so many choices, and with people watching you!

Then the arrangement! On TV the professional florists seem to throw a few blooms into a vase and hey presto! Art! For us mere mortals the flowers never seem to form themselves into a convincing arrangement. I remember one floral purchase which had to be transferred to a smaller vase because of the constant ‘adjusting’ of the length of the stems of the flowers to make them fit.

Having got your small vase of amputated flowers ready, the next problem is, where? There is a language concerned with the positioning of a vase of flowers which have been given to you which speaks loud and clear to the donor. Place on the central table is an ostentatious thank you; while placing them in an alcove in the hallway is the equivalent of a cursory nod of the head in gratitude; leaving them in the kitchen is rejection; while leaving them in the kitchen and not in water is a declaration of hostilities for the evening; ‘plonking’ is casual and dismissive, while totally ignoring the donor and spending ages cutting and arranging is just impolite.

So give a plant. Already planted. In its own pot. Job done. Or is it?

One of the most stylist plants to give as a gift is an orchid. I know that some of the more extravagant varieties look so un-British and artificial that pleasure is lost in a sort of creepy fascination, but the simpler orchids, long stemmed and single colour live and growing in a simple pot are beautiful in that ready arranged by a native Japanese way which occidental people find difficult to achieve with cut blooms. But there are dangers inherent in this gift too.

Orchids are notoriously difficult to grow. Their literary links include General Sternwood in Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Big Sleep’ (a novel I took with me on holiday to France as my only English book so that I could read and re read it so I would finally understand who did what to whom and why) who grew orchids in the steamy hothouse which also kept him alive. In other words it needs attention to keep the things alive and constant attention needs to be given to the fluctuations in temperature to ensure survival. A gift of an orchid is therefore a time limited gift: growing to die, as it were. Enjoy it while you can.

Which is why the everlasting orchid still growing and blooming in Ingrid’s bathroom in Exmouth in Devon is a constant accusation. It blooms in an out of season; it thrives and throws flower laden shoots as if it was a dandelion. I went down to see it yesterday (and to see Ingrid too) and can attest to its potency. Now in its xth year of growth and seemingly gaining in strength.

The mystery of its thriving display is only party explained by its location in one of the sunnier parts of this rain sodden land, but I feel that it might have something to do with the ability that Ingrid has to produce other things which are just as exotic.

I refer, of course, to poppy seed cake: a speciality of Ingrid’s which I for one find delicious. I have yet to find another of my friends who agree with me, which is just as well as I am loath to share my bi annual cake! So, my advice to budding (!) orchid growers is to try their hand at poppy seed cake. I’ll be happy to sample their efforts (the cake not the flower) to encourage them on their way.

Happy cooking!

Kicking the habit?

When your library is in storage and your partner has made various threats about the establishment of a new one, your reading needs have to be satisfied by new approaches.

Having seen Ruskin’s dictum, “If a book is worth reading it’s worth buying” at a very early stage in my development and taken its message very much to heart, my first inclination in reading something new is to buy the book. This must be music to the ears of publishers, but in my present circumstances my instincts must be curbed. The impulsive purchase must be restrained and other methods of satisfying my addiction (because that is what reading is for me) must be used.

Before anyone suggests cold turkey; that is not a thinkable way forward. I remember once my parents asked me to put the dog’s food in her dish. Like a dutiful child I disappeared into the kitchen and did as I was told. I then failed to reappear for some time. When my mother came into the kitchen to find out where I was she found me squatting down by the side of the feeding dog reading the newspaper underneath the dog’s dish.

I think it was at that point that she gave up on the concept of my bedroom looking anything less than a second hand bookshop.

Somerset Maughan once wrote a short story called I think ‘The Book Bag’ and in that story the narrator travels around with a bag of books to satisfy his needs and he says that if there is nothing else then the telephone directory is better reading than no reading! I thought this was a piece of narrative invention until once I found myself doing exactly the same (and it’s amazing how interesting a telephone directory can be!) This is an addiction stretching back over most of my life. The person to blame is my father who taught me to read.

There are many different approaches towards teaching young children how to read. These different approaches all have their positive points and differ depending on the education fashions at the time. Child centred; look and say; phonetics; ita; flash cards; paired reading: all of them have their adherents. All of these approaches have one thing in common – they try and bring the child into the learning process and make the child an enthusiastic partner in the education and development of reading skill.

My father’s approach was slightly different. He had, he told me much later, asked me when I was very young, if I wanted to learn to read. I was disinclined. He repeated his question at regular intervals, but, alas, I did not evince any real enthusiasm to gain this new skill. The reasonable child centred approach having failed, my father, a highly professional, experienced teacher, tried another approach – one that was a little more directed.

He sat me on his knee and in spite of my tearful pleas for mercy forced me to work my way through some form of Janet and John books by holding me in a half nelson and ignoring my aversion to his teaching methods.

In later years, when I was a teacher of English my father used to taunt me by saying, “My methods certainly put you off reading, didn’t it?” He ever had a certain sense of irony!

So the reading quota has to be kept up and, although the solution of my supply problem may seem absurdly obvious to some, it took me a while to realise that there was a dealer for my drug within easy distance of my home. The library!

Now, I’ve said before that the purchasing ethos of my local library seems to be to supply modern literature through recently published books and not care about providing a ‘balanced’ version of ‘The Great Tradition.’ Having the books that I want to read, therefore, would seem to be a problem.

Having used Inter Library Loan years ago now was my chance to see if this service, too, was a thing of the past.

I am delighted to report that Inter Library Loan is alive and well and producing books within a week! Admittedly, ‘Oliver Twist’ was not exactly a hard test for availability. I hope to extend the resources of the service in the following months. But as for the present, I am impressed with the service.

My habit can continue!

Presentation is all!

There are some Scrooge like characters who are getting their sneering into match fitness in preparation for the horrors of the forthcoming festive season (Oh cruel adjective!) They will be watching the more obvious manifestations of rampant capitalism with malevolent glee. How much raw material for their contempt is forming around them: fungus like in shop fronts; dripping like slime from supermarket aisles; framing newspaper advertisements like gallows and flooding from radio and television like suppurating wounds? Tasteless, vulgar, cynical, cheap and tawdry – and that’s the quality end of the market. The rest: contemptible and vile. How quaint the word “Humbug!” sounds to the modern Scrooges, hardly conveying the revolted rejection from the lips of the twenty first century reincarnation of the Dickensian ogre!

Let’s be fair, it’s a season which presents too many easy targets for even a lightly ironic personality. To speak of shooting fish in a barrel gives too spacious an image. The eager acceptance of Greed and Excess as honoured companions guiding everyone through the December frivolities has become breathtaking banal. To a modern child a Christmas present not needing an electricity supply is like ice cream without sugar, milk, cream, flavouring, additives and E406 to E511: it’s not a present.

Just imagine a modern version of one of the old Cries of London. Christmas lunch has been attacked and the surfeited stuffers have fallen into various aspects of sodden exhaustion sprawled in attitudes of despair on the sofas. The only activity comes from the pampered youth which turns in desperation to their mountain of toys to avoid the Movie Non-premiere droning interminably in the background. What do they discover as they select a random part of their loot which has cost 40% of the GNP of twelve small countries in equatorial Africa? They discover that they have left the ‘educational’ toy switched on after their cursory ‘playing’ with it for the statutory fifteen seconds. And the batteries are now flat. Horror! The only way to get power is to take batteries from one discarded present and put them in another. Unthinkable! What self respecting child would ever consider doing that, when the far more attractive prospect is to turn on the terrified parents who stare wide eyed at their unsatisfied progeny and are berated by the fruit of their loins for their parental failure exemplified by the complete lack of care by not having a bunker full of batteries stocked for just such an emergency. Cue arguments, recriminations and bitter words: a traditional Christmas afternoon meltdown!

Now imagine, if you will, the magical effect a mellifluous voice from the street outside calling through the stodge filled lazy afternoon with a modern Street Cry, a travelling peddler singing:

Who will buy my alkaline batteries?
Who will pay for some peace of mind?
Who will squander all their spare cash for them?
These little darlings the best you can find?
Who will buy?
They won’t die!
Still that sigh!
Hush that cry!
You know why!
Buy! Buy! Buy!

You could have a mark up of 1000% and you will still find desperate parents prepared to ‘pay for a little peace of mind!’

Of all the aspects of Christmas that have struck me this year the one that most interests me is the ALP approach of so many large stores. ALP, as you probably know, stands for Affordable Little Present: those well packaged gifts which all cost £5 or less and can be given with clear conscience to almost anyone.

I am fascinated by such gifts: you only see them at this time of year. Looking at the percentage of gifts dedicated to the sport, I would estimate that approximately 80% of the population plays golf! The great thing about golf gifts is that a substantial part of them is composed of tees – which are cheap and bulky and look like good value.

The other gifts are masterpieces of packaging where the full fatuity of the gift only becomes apparent when the item is extracted from the wrapping. At their best the gifts are presented in rigid plastic almost like an Airfix model plane with all the little bits ready to be put together. But in the case of the model plane when all the bits are brought together there is something to be proud of, while in the case of the cunningly presented present it is invariably disappointing.

There are also the gifts which only exist to fulfil the gift giving impulse: the seventeen function pocket penknives which are as thick as a double pack of playing cards and just about as useful in ordinary life; anything which is powered from a USB socket other than a printer or a mouse; humorous packs which rely on cheap contents and weak jokes; any drinking aid; all coasters which are not innocuous and, from my own experience, a barometer.

This barometer is actually a multi function piece of equipment, bought three years ago as an emergency present to be used if . . . if . . . Well, who the hell do you give a barometer to? No one. No one at all. I eventually kept it for myself and put it in the entrance porch, and there it has stayed for three years. Sitting there with its three small unreadable dials: temperature, barometric pressure and the time. I can truthfully say I have never actually looked at the dials to register what information they might have been giving until today when, cleaning, as is my wont, I finally noticed that the clock was some four and a bit hours out.

In some ways that barometric time temperature taker or whatever is the perfect gift: always in sight; never needing attention; looking mildly interesting.

Who could ask for more from an ALP?

O that this too, too solid flesh and all that

Empathy.

Sometimes there comes a rare moment when suddenly you realise that your experience has put you in touch with the emotional state of some great character from literature. You gain an insight, through suffering, of what one of the tragic heroes has had to endure. An epiphany of sensitivity; a cathartic instant when your sympathy becomes almost universal, you reach for the infinite and Sorrow brushes your soul. A time to stop, take stock and ponder.

Such a moment has come to me. Today: in the domestic, nay, trivial surroundings of my living room. A moment unlike any other. A moment when, with all humility, I can say that Hamlet became, for a moment, my friend. I could say with him, “The time is out of joint.”

I have wrapped my first Christmas presents and it is still November!

As someone who relies on Christmas Eve Shopping for the bulk of his gift acquisitions this early seasonal activity is tantamount to the world being turned upside down. If I can start wrapping presents in November then anything is possible.

There is, of course, a partial explanation: the Catalonian relatives are arriving for a Traditional Christmas Dinner next week and part of the Great Plan is for them to take back the presents for distribution to other members of the family so that we can travel somewhat unencumbered when we join them later on Christmas Eve.

There is also the slightly more pressing incentive of my going down to Exmouth this Saturday and having to have presents for Ingrid and Hugh wrapped and ready, not to mention preparing a forgotten birthday present for Clarrie and getting Clarrie and Mary’s Christmas presents together. All in all an unnatural set of circumstances forcing me to appear to be efficient and Ready for Anything.

The most indicative test of Yule readiness of course (which is the British Standard Preparation Mark for Christmas) is whether you have your Christmas cards ready for the Scout Post.

Given the laughably extortionate rates demanded by whatever organization now runs what used to be the General Post Office, it is astonishing that mere members of the public still have the audacity (or cash) to think of sending anything through the normal post.

Nowadays the size, colour, shape, texture and the way you hand it over the counter all contribute to the pricing of an item: the simple uncomplicated days of paying a single understandable price have long gone. Our only pathetic wheeze of opposition to the callous giant of distribution is to take petty advantage of the breaking of the monopoly of the Post Office and once a year give some of our mail to an organization (the Scouts) which will only charge a large amount of money for delivery rather than a ruinous amount of cash!

This year the Scout mail poses problems for me other than mere readiness. Where will I get the special stamps and where will I post them? Problems yet to be resolved. As far as I know I may have already missed the deadline for the posting of the early Scout mail. Only my Aunt Barbara will know these things by instinct and I confidently expect that she has been prepared for Christmas for a considerable period of time and will regard my wrapping of presents at the end of November as unbelievably tardy!

For the last three years I have been attempting to emulate my friends Andrew and Stewart who have organised their Christmas cards so that they are chosen, specially printed and put in labelled envelopes all in good time for Christmas. What I would consider to be a fairly simple concept: typing names and addresses onto a pro forma so that they can be printed out has eluded me for the same period of time. I am determined this year that they will be printed: even if it takes me longer doing this way than writing them by hand. I am nothing if not counter intuitively stubborn over something which is inconsequential.

The new problem this year connected with the printing of address labels is that the addresses were typed using Works. I have since added a new version of Word to my computer and there are minor, but significant, differences between the transfer of one document into the format of the other – I think. Or not. It could just be one of those little built in Evils which Gates delights in scattering throughout his programs. It means that when the labels are printed out more than half of them are cut off and half is printed in the margin. It is very annoying. That is not what I would write if I could ignore the constraints of decent language and moderate expression.

I would like to know the person who owns a computer and has not personified it so that it could be heaped with vituperative, vile, foul mouthed (totally justified) abuse: physical and verbal.

I would not go out for a drink with a person who had maintained calm and measured speech during all his dealing with a computer. Just imagine what their reaction would be when their turn to get them in came around.

Point made

How does it work?

So many pieces of electronic equipment that we humans ostensibly own, in fact own us. They sit there smugly, their little lights gleaming malevolently waiting for us to sacrifice peace of mind and sometimes fingernails (when is the last time you changed batteries without physical pain?) in a vain attempt to make The Machine acquiesce to modest human requests.

The time is long past when an individual was able to understand the way in which his life worked. At one time your happy peasant lived in a community where everyday articles were made by known individuals in close proximity. Shoes, clothes, farm implements, food, building materials; everything was a part of a whole understood way of life. Not only did you know who made your comb, but also you knew how it was made and what it was made of. You knew and comprehended all aspects of its manufacture from raw material to finished article and, even if you couldn’t fabricate something yourself you knew someone local who could.

Now we have watches where an electrically stimulated oscillating crystal somehow tells the time; where pock marks on a disc illuminated by a beam of very strong light give us films; where micro waves cook food; where atomic explosions make the electricity work; where something on a key ring holds more music than the whole of my youthful record collection and where a phone can fit comfortably in a shirt pocket without making an unsightly bulge.

Even when something has become an everyday part of normal life, we have little or no idea how it works. As far as I’m concerned my ipod which contains ALL of my (not inconsiderable) CD collection (with room for much more) is the nearest I get to magic. If I went back in time to, say the 1950s, and managed to get access to the brightest minds in the scientific world at the time, how much hard science would I be able to give them to make them believe that the description of the electronics with which we surround ourselves today was not merely the frantic gibberings of a crazed self delusional maniac? The transistor was invented in the late 1940s, how would I describe printed circuits? Laser technology: light concentrated through a ruby and able to cut through steel – not convincing is it? Personal computers? DVD players? The Internet? DAB radio? DNA? I can’t explain any of them. It’s as if I am an ignorant savage wandering through a world made by the gods who show their care by lavishing wondrous products on us; but products whose secrets are hidden from impious eyes.

I have never forgotten working for Securicor and taking made up wage packets to factories around Cardiff. That phrase ‘made up wage packet’ in itself shows how long ago it was: imagine firms wasting time by producing little brown envelopes with large perforations in the front (to check the coins) and a half flap on the back (so you could count the notes) just before you went back to the cash office to query the amount that you had been paid. I know; I did it in the steel works!

Anyway, when working on the vans for Securicor we went to one factory and most of the workers were women at long production lines. When my mate was taking the locked case with the money to the management, I engaged the girls in conversation. I asked them what they were making, and not one of them knew. They were working all day making something of which they knew nothing. They could have been making weapons or toys; it was all the same to them. The only important thing was the wage packet that we were delivering; their part in the production process was irrelevant to them. This is a perfect example of the dislocation that characterises much of the workforce and indeed the population today.

You might think that in my own profession of teaching this xxx would not occur. A teacher, after all, is alone in a classroom with his pupils and is teaching his subject in which he has a qualification or two. But even here there is a process going on which has some affinity with the dislocation of the general population. Although most teachers are on fairly safe ground when their subjects are discussed, they are not so confident when ‘education’ is talked about. Although I can teach the novel ‘Great Expectations’ to a class, do I really understand just why I am teaching it? And if I resort to the justification that Dickens is a great writer, or that ‘Great Expectations’ is a great novel, or that English Literature is important, I haven’t really touched on the wider ‘educational’ aspects of my activity. And even if I was confident about what my subject was, would I be able to place it in the idea of a curriculum within an education system within a society.

I’m sure at one time I would have been far more confident about what I was doing: I would not have had the feeling that the truisms which underpinned the ethos of what I was doing were up for grabs. That the society in which I was living was asking far more searching questions about the very basis of my activity, but that the questioning itself was the preserve of minds beyond the mere reach of a subject teacher. The actual process of education was something beyond a single subject and a single discipline.

Questions of education have been asked ever since discussion has existed. Theories of education abound and always have, but when you just cast a cursory glance over the pseudo technospeak which is the language of modern educational discourse then the sense that you are no longer a living part of the process of educational method is undeniable. Teachers have been marginalised within their own profession by those who seek to complicate the process and limit the knowledge to adepts who embrace metaeducation and denigrate subject knowledge.

Not for the first time, appearance has transcended reality. Education for theorists has become hyper reality which unfortunately has to rely on the grubby reality of teachers teaching things to get the thing working. I am reminded of a member of the Registry staff in my university saying to me once, “You know Stephen; it’s amazing how well this place works when the students aren’t here.

Exactly.

Presenting present presents!

Many (and I mean many) years ago I was given a superbly interesting Christmas present by one of my uncles: a tiny radio. It was blue and could only be listened to by use of an earphone. The reception was (how shall I phrase it?) erratic. The only time that you could possibly hope to listen to any recognisable sounds was when the moon was high, the pressure was low and you were turned reverently towards some mythical station whose name only appeared on the illuminated dials of ancient radios. If you deviated from strict alignment by the thousandth part of a degree then you were left with instant white noise, and, let me add, that degree of variation was produced by your beating heart, so constant listening pleasure was not really feasible. But, but, but, it was a wonderful present. Just because it didn’t work did not detract from its wonder.

There is a whole series of possessions that all normal people (I thought that I would use that little rhetorical device to protect the guilty) have which cannot be justified in terms of their utility or, indeed, in terms of anything at all.

The can openers that do not work well, or at all, but they have been in the family for over twenty years and so it is unthinkable that they be thrown away; the weighing scales which have to be scaled themselves to get anything like an approximation of correct weight; fountain pens that have not seen ink for three generations; towels (and this is one that I do not comprehend) that do not soak up water efficiently, but which are still kept and laundered and put back in cupboards to be used and scorned time and time again. How expensive is a bloody towel for god’s sake?

Cutlery that doesn’t work: knives, after all, are supposed to cut. So get rid of them all. Buy new. Create a new tradition. Pencil sharpeners that break the lead in the pencil and do not, and have never, sharpened a pencil in their miserable lives: but thrown away, no! Sellotape dispensers which do not allow the tape to be cut; the only thing that they dispense is angst and tape which folds back on itself. Mobile phones! Mobile phones which are the size of small flats; have batteries which stay charged for seconds and have all the sex appeal of a leprous yak. Are they thrown out or recycled? No, they are kept together in the darkness of an obscure drawer, presumably so that at the end of times they can rise up and take their place on the right hand of Marconi. And don’t you feel superior reading this, you think about your own home and the ostentatious detritus resting like terminal moraine in secret places in your domicile; stuff that never is used, never will be used and never will be thrown out!

When you start to pack up your home you find many things like that. I am loath to put a figure on the items that you find because it is too shaming. I would estimate that in any home which has been lived in for more than ten years, more than 40% (by weight) of the home is stuff which can be thrown away without any noticeable effect on the running of the house and the universe.

The point that I almost made a number of paragraphs ago was that the spectacular and innovative and exciting from years ago is now the quotidian and boring. My exciting mini radio: a present of awe and wonder is now to be found in a Christmas cracker. I know - I look at the backs of boxes of the things. I am fascinated by them. How ordinary that extraordinary gift in my childhood has become. I felt the same way about digital watches. I can remember watching ‘Tomorrow’s World’ with Raymond Baxter when he demonstrated one of the first digital watches. It was a thing of science fiction, amazing and in a true sense fabulous. It still had a little of that mystique when, wearing my own digital watch I went to see the first part (not the first part, the first film made, you know what I mean) of ‘Star Wars.’ As the glittering, futuristic epic began its filmic journey, I looked from the film to my wrist and back to the film and I felt that part of that amazing life presented on the screen was ticking (well, a crystal oscillating silently) on my wrist. The final disillusionment was when I noticed that a container of car oil had a free digital watch stuck to it!

But we keep around us all the superseded historical mementos from our lives. To throw them away is to throw away a part of ourselves. Each useless item is a tiny but essential anecdote in our autobiography. It is one of those charged artefacts that, like Proust's Madeleine, can cause memories to spring forth; something which has a worth which far outweighs its intrinsic value.

So I’m not throwing anything away. So there!

Pirates and provincialism

What would a Sunday be like if there wasn’t a film to keep us quiet? It was with a childish excitement that I looked forward to ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ – an opportunity to wallow in spectacular rubbish and be unaccountably moved by the potency of the cheap music which accompanied it.

I was reminded from time to time, as I watched the film, of my responses to ‘The Devils of Loudun’ a film by Ken Russell. It was a remarkable film of considerable visual intensity, but I watched it with incredulity; to me it seemed as if Ken Russell and his motley crew had been wandering though Pinewood or wherever and suddenly come across this fantastic set and turned to the people who were with him as said, “Look, there’s no one here; why don’t we make a film?” And so, like a group of naughty schoolboys, they took advantage of the grown ups absence and make a thoroughly self indulgent film. And that is ‘Dead Man’s Chest’: a thoroughly self indulgent film with no grown ups to say to the director (it had a director?) you mustn’t do that; your audience has rights as well as you.

There are two writers credited with this farrago of nonsense and presumably, considering the amount of money lavished on his production, there must have been somebody asking, “Why are we doing this bit of the story now, because it doesn’t really make sense if we try and link it with that last bit?” Alas, the adults with narrative integrity were all at lunch, and the wayward kids were able to do as they liked.

What I am trying to say is that this episode (Part III – ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The End of the World’ couldn’t have been more clearly indicated by the non ending of the film) could hardly be described as a triumph of narration. Story strands appeared from nowhere and went nowhere all to end up (you’ve guessed it) nowhere! Commander Norrington? I’m sorry? Where the hell did he come from? Was it all part of the contracts of anyone who appeared in part one that they had to appear in part two? Unbelievable in oh so many ways!
It might be fair to say that to look for narrative integrity in something which is based on a fairground ride is asking too much. But the first episode did have a strong theme, well stated with humour and panache.

Well, we did have some humour in an atmosphere of total camp. The mincing performance of Captain Jack Sparrow has now gone beyond caricature into another realm of something which is only tangentially related to acting!

The set pieces of the action in the film are very well presented. Some scenes have all the verve of a much better production: one which actually is greater than the sum of its parts – but that isn’t this one.

At its best this film does not rise above pantomime and cartoon, which at least is an homage to its entertainment roots.

There are far too many ideas in this episode: cannibals, strange voodoo women, discredited commodores, free wheeling mill wheels, Davy Jones, the Kraken, fights, action, it’s all too much, giving the impression that it was made up as it went along.

The acting almost defies categorization: it’s easier to talk about prosthetics and scenery – at least we are on safe ground there!

As ever the music is fantastic, but somewhat repetitive; it’s as if the composer realised when he was onto a good thing and then plugged it for all he was worth.

Did I enjoy the film? Up to a point! It is easy to see that lots of people had fun making it: the tragedy is that the enjoyment does not always add to the spectator’s enjoyment of the production as a film for which they have paid hard earned cash.

One critic noted of this film that it didn’t matter what he said, the film was obviously going to make shed loads of money! In my view, this is where the director had a duty of care towards the paying public. He knew he had a hit, he could have experimented with his subject matter, taken a few chances and perhaps taken his faithful (paying) audience a little bit further in a cinematic sense, but, there you are, I’m being idealistic again!

On to more mundane things: I am beginning to realise that there is a whole sociology of putting things away after going to the supermarket. It is a process which is fraught with dangers and difficulties from the disposal of the surplus plastic bags to who puts away the stuff in the freezer.

Don’t know about you but there is a definite hierarchy of difficulty in the way in which things are put away. It’s almost like those competition divers: when they only do a straight dive then the tariff for the dive is quite low, but, when they are doing things before they hit the water that a number of years ago would have found them being burnt at the stake because of the ostentatious defying of Newtonian gravity, the tariff is quite high. In the same way there is a tariff for placing items in their appropriate places.

Take for example eggs. Eggs go (in our unenlightened domicile) in the fridge. How they go in the fridge is part of the ‘difficulty’ rating of the exercise. If there are eggs left from the last purchase, do you add the eggs to the old container; do you cut the container down to maximise space; do you place the new container in the fridge thus having to move other things around to find sufficient room or do you have another solution? There are no right answers, only answers which are woefully inadequate when your partner sees what you have done. That’s a simple example.

What do you do when you have something frozen? If your freezer is anything like mine then it will be full at all times. Any extra purchase will, therefore, necessitate the wholesale rearrangement of the freezer drawer at best or the whole fridge at worst. Frozen items are best ignored. So the best plan is to utilize your whole arsenal of displacement activities in the vain hope that The Other will weaken and take the things to the fridge with the implicit acceptance of rearrangement. Today, for example, I put bleach in the sink, cleaned the sink surround, filled the dishwasher and cleaned the taps – the last one mentioned being a sure sign of desperation. He weakened. Result!

Fresh fruit (keeping bananas apart; taking the little stickers off the apples; deciding where to put the grapes etc.) has problems too numerous to catalogue fully. Salad always forces crisis decisions about the efficacy of so-called fresh food chilled compartments which are of varying efficiency. Tins – made in wilfully, playfully, infuriatingly different, non-stackable sizes create vast problems before the decisions about where to place them come into play: by type, by size, by use, by God, it’s never easy.

There ought to be a special late start on Mondays for those benighted folk who go supermarket shopping together on a Sunday, so that the enormity of decisions made on the hoof on a lazy weekend Sunday can be considered more carefully on a careworn weekday. Then, and only then, can considered agreements be entered into to sort out misalignments of tins, wrong placements of salad and jammed contents of freezers so that a placid week can be enjoyed by all.

You know it makes sense.

Cornish Confection

I am Du Mauriered out. I have just finished reading ‘Jamaica Inn’ and enjoyed it, but not as much as ‘Rebecca’ which was quite different in quality.

The short stories were competent but, in retrospect, little more than that. Admittedly some of them were fairly early pieces, but they were forgettable and showed too much of the mechanics of the story to be essentially enjoyable.

‘Jamaica Inn’ was a surprise. I have seen adverts for the ‘real thing’ as far as this novel was concerned and, without having read the novel, I had expected the action of the story to be centred on a Romantic location which would bring hordes of tourists flocking to the inn to experience the ‘Jamaica Inn’ ambience and luxuriate in the Cornishness of it all. It came as something of a shock to find out that ‘Jamaica Inn’ was not the Olde Worlde centre of Wrong but Romantic smugglers set in an atmospheric quaint setting; instead we are presented with a brutally stark reality. The inn is harsh and unremitting in its repulsiveness. The scenery is harsh and unremitting. The characters lack all sympathy. It’s not the place that you would want to visit. The moors, far from being described as places of beauty are more the habitat of the exiled, the outré and the immoral. The landscape is something antipathetic to humanity not its solace.

The action of the novel is fairly predictable and the narrative is pleasingly unsurprising. The most interesting character is the albino vicar who has that quality of other worldliness which du Maurier seems to prize so much. He is a fascinating character and his eventually revealing as the master criminal behind it all is well signposted throughout the story. In spite of the obviousness of the strangeness of the man of God, du Maurier manages to make the denouement scene interesting because of the arrogance of the ‘evil’ character in his attempts to lure Mary away from the path of rightness. His conversation is enjoyable because we become involved in the contest between the two ‘equals’ as they struggle to ‘convert’ the other.

The final scene on the moors is well written and engages all the sympathy of the reader with elements of excitement found in the chase.

The actual end of the novel should be nauseating in its sentimentality, but is saved by the male/female contest: the last in the whole series of such contests which have characterised the novel. In this final battle of wills, we share the conflicting emotions and intelligent evaluation which motivate the character of Mary. The ending, yet again, is one which has enough ambiguity to satisfy!

No visit to the library: that will have to wait for next week, so that I can fully test the capabilities of the local library. If necessary I will employ inter library loan. Something I have not done for over thirty years! I wonder if it still works! I am determined not to buy another copy of ‘Oliver Twist’ – even I can see that this would be foolish expenditure.

It’s late and time for bed: hopefully a lie in tomorrow as Toni does not have overtime!

Choices, choices!

“What this blog lacks, of course, is a strong narrative thrust: the blog’s general title seems to promise much, but Catalonia too often fades into the background, and even Cardiff lacks a clear profile.” I can almost hear my alter ego talking, whispering critical words of admonishment to me as I merrily continue my self indulgent way pontificating as the mood takes me, butterfly like from topic to topic. Can I get away with the assertion that the essential eclectic nature of the writings and a predisposition to digression is what makes them interesting? Worth a try, I suppose.

But, today I do have a sort of link. The ever present question of where to eat on Christmas Day is one which has occupied Laura and Carmen. Once again I luxuriate in the knowledge that in Catalonia it is not that unusual to have lunch on Christmas Day in a restaurant and, (this is the really unusual bit for Brits) it does not cost an arm and a leg and various other bodily parts to partake of a meal at this time.

Looking around in Cardiff I have noted, with a sort of sadistic glee, all the pretentious foodie meanderings in ‘special’ menus which make up the normal Christmas time meal options in the restaurants in town. We accept the fact that we will be fleeced by unscrupulous restaurateurs because “it’s Christmas!” A mark up of anything up to 100% and more, much more, will be accepted as yet another of the penalties of being British. And, of course, being British having to exhibit that legendary reserve and inability to complain when complaints are the only way that afford the prospective diner any degree of self respect, for which we are justly famous.

To be fair some of the menus look mildly interesting with some local, seasonal variations on the tried theme of turkey and all the trimmings. There are sometimes a reasonable number of courses and, of course, it being the twenty first century, an edible vegetarian option or even (breathe in not in Garth!) options in the plural. People with allergies have been catered for, and all nut content (including traces thereof) is carefully printed underneath each offending dish.

In some generous and largess dripping effusions of the festive spirit there are even offers of a mini bottle of Champagne, or a bottle of wine to be effusively forced on diners as long as they share and they have a party of more than ten and it is not on a popular night. All other drinks, up to and including water and coffee will have to be bought. And bought at the absurdly inflated prices that we seem unable to refuse to pay, in spite of the fact that for the same wine that we are offered at £15 a bottle in a restaurant we would not think of paying more than £4 or £5 for in a supermarket. So, for example, one menu that I glanced at today was for £28 with no drinks. This means, of course, that the final cost of the meal after bottles of water (don’t start me!); wine, Cava, liqueur, coffee, is more likely to be closer to £50 or £60 per person. And these prices, of course, are not for Christmas day itself. Obviously.

Luckily none of this seems to govern what is offered and for what price it is offered in Catalonia! I think that the nearest that Catalonia comes to vegetarianism is to offer a tuna salad! And wine and Cava is part of the way of life and not something which must be consumed because of the price it cost.

The meal which we will probably have in Terrassa will comprise: Christmas soup; selection of fish; shank of lamb; ice cream; bread; water; wine; Cava; liqueur and coffee with turron for the princely sum of about £35 on Christmas Day itself. We do not, however, have crackers; it is not the tradition. The descriptions speak for themselves. I will let you know what it all tasted like after Christmas!

As for reading: I am now starting on the short stories of Daphne Du Maurier. The only previous collection I have read is ‘Birds and other stories’ published by Penguin with a particularly effective line drawing of an eagle like bird with blood dripping from its beak. The strangeness of many of the stories reminds me of Roald Dahl; almost normal but not quite, and that small element of the ‘other’ makes the whole relation disturbing. I am thoroughly enjoying reading them.

I’m not sure that Aunt Bet has started her re-reading of Dickens, but I am decided about the way that I am going to approach my own re-reading: chronologically. Obviously ignoring some of the more esoteric volumes that that compulsive writer wrote! According to a list that I’ve downloaded the next major novel that I should read is ‘Oliver Twist’. Now, I know that I own that volume, but it is safely in store in lower Rumney and not available for me to use. As Toni is becoming more and more virulently anti book in the house I will have to try and find an alternative way of getting the requisite volume. I loathe borrowing books because you have to give them back, and library books have a soiled appearance which I also find distasteful.

I am still recovering from the policy outlined by a very helpful person in my local library: we have no book more than five years old. If you want a classic novel then it will be ok as long as a version of it has been published in the last five years. Do you believe that? I will go down to the library tomorrow and find out for myself just how much of the Great Literary Tradition is available to the citizens of Rumney. Who knows, when I’ve finished reading the short stories of Du Maurier in the morning, I might be reading the second of the great novels by Dickens.

We’ll see.

Last night I dreamt . . .

It is astonishing how often some unwieldy tome weighed down with the appellation of ‘classic’ turns out to be, well, classic and well worth the read!

I remember when I had to read ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky as part of my course I was intimidated by many facts about the novel. Firstly it was published in Penguin ‘World Classics’ the black spine books which indicated that they were not for mere ordinary people to read but only the good and the great and the intellectual. The second daunting fact about my edition was the introduction; it was lengthy and in small print. In other words the book was of such world importance that the introduction was necessary entry ticket before you could even be considered to be allowed the privilege of turning the pages of the story itself. The third disconcerting element in this tome was the fact that it was in two volumes, thereby claiming to be of massive importance not only by the name of the author and the fame of the story, but also by the size of the bloody thing. All in all it was not for me. But I did have to read it and so, with a heavy heart and a feeling that I was a complete fraud waiting to be discovered by the Intellectual Property Police and charged with being in possession of a superior example of western philosophical thought and taken away to be given a good hiding by Those Who Know, I opened the book and started to read.

And discovered that the intimidating book was a detective story and was a positive page turner with the story of the Grand Inquisitor being something which still moves me every time I read it! A classic because it was a gripping read!

There is a programme on Radio 4 called ‘A Good Read’ where three people talk about a book chosen by each which they think is a ‘good read.’ Whenever I hear the programme I mentally begin compiling my list of books which would qualify ranging from ‘Catch 22’ to ‘Great Expectations’. I have added another volume to the lists that I make: “Rebecca.”

This is hardly a surprising choice; it is, after all, a classic (with a great Hitchcock film as a bonus) which has been eagerly devoured by generations of readers since its publication. It has never been out of print and sells throughout the world. But I hadn’t read it before!

It is an extraordinary novel which is superbly written: you constant feel that you are in a safe pair of hands when you allow yourself to be taken over by the prose. The narrative voice is intriguing and, as the novel progresses and the reader finds more and more links with ‘Jane Eyre’ the complexity of the presentation is a continuing source of delight.

This is not an easy read, even though the pace of the novel makes it a real ‘page turner.’ The plot constantly confronts the reader with a sophisticated take on the characters and the period in which it was written.

There is a modern feel to the presentation of the conflict between the sexes which is especially surprising when the woefully subordinate position of the unnamed female narrator is considered. Deception and perversion are essential elements in the story and there are many uncomfortable points in the novel where the reader is torn by what is happening to whom! The sympathy of the reader is constantly moving: ambiguity and moral dilemma force unnerving decisions, and constant re-evaluation are essential in the flow of the narrative in which the reader is involved.

The ending of the novel (so unlike the film) is deeply disturbing. The destruction of Manderley is difficult to read: is it a necessary element in the development of the relationship of Mrs de Winter and Max, or a terrible revenge which destroys much more than the fabric of the house? As the end of the novel is actually the beginning of the novel the reader has to reconsider so much that it is impossible to close the book with a feeling that equilibrium has been re-established. A truly disturbing read! And a damn good read at that. My new first choice for the Radio 4’s ‘A Good Read.’

Should I be asked!

And music shall untune the sky!

Happy St Cecilia Day!

Well, I expect that went down like a persecuted martyr in the reign of Alexander Severus. After all, who really knows that today is Saint Cecilia’s Day? Apart, that is, from listeners to Radio 3 who are regularly reminded of this important anniversary throughout the day? Oh, and sorry about the poorly chosen simile, because there weren’t any persecuted Christian martyrs in the reign of Alexander Severus. Silly me. I must have got the story wrong about one of the most revered martyrs of the Christian Church.

Saint Cecilia, patron saint of Music; object of various pieces of music celebrating the power of Music: the well known martyr not killed during the reign of Alexander Severus. Why is she the patron saint of music? Apparently she heard heavenly music in her heart when she was married. Was that her marriage to Valerianus or her betrothal to an angel, which she mentioned to her new husband when they entered their wedding-chamber after the ceremony? The previous betrothal of the angel precluded the possibility of any impurity with her new husband, of course. Don’t worry though, it does have a happy ending, a crowning with lilies and roses and then death. Such an improving story! You’ve got to hand it to Christians; they never impose on faith do they?

The one thing that this story does show is that the process of becoming a patron saint is simplicity itself. All you have to do is think about something in your heart and it’s yours: your own sainted possession.

It certainly is a more civilized approach than the usual way of saints being linked to their area of patronage. The normal method is to look at the way that the saint has been bloodily killed and then in a witty and cheerfully callous sort of way link the method of death with a profession or product or aspiration. So, following that sort of approach, if a person was killed by being, say, burnt to death while being crushed by plates of red hot iron, then the person could become the Patron Saint of George Foreman Lean Cooking Machines!

I’m not going to continue in this vein because I have just been to a web site which has a calendar of saints and it’s far funnier than anything that I can write I do urge you to visit it at: http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/indexsnt.htm

I really wanted to fume about music. It is too easy for someone of my age to rant about the quality of music that I sometimes hear on the radio. I am not going to be a part of the continuum of persons of a certain age decrying the decline in music evinced by the quality of recordings that youth admire and acquire. Though, God knows, it’s bloody awful. Don’t start me on that homophobic, misogynistic, drug advocating, anti-musical adulation of violence known as rap.

No, I will (with a visible effort) rise above such easy posturings and (after a few deep breaths) merely confine my thoughts to the quantity of music ‘consumed’ by people today.

When I was young, growing up in Cathays in Cardiff, we did not have a television set. I must be one of the last generations to grow up without a television from birth. The most important entertainment element within the house was the radio and the stations on the radio were confined to the Home Service (the present radio 4) and the Light Service (the present radio 2). We did not have a gramophone player. I eventually acquired a wind up gramophone and a limited number of records (my parents came to hate with a vengeance ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’) which were 78s. We eventually got a black and white telly and, on my 10th (?) birthday I got a selection of LPs and we got a record player. LPs were relatively expensive in the very early 60s and it was only when I was into my teens that the cheap classical music LP became the basis of my music collection with, I remember Marble Arch Records being 9/11 (nine shillings and eleven pence or almost 50p.) So my access to music was basically via the radio and eventually via cheap LPs. My first tape recorder was second hand and hardly portable, so my music was confined to the radio and a few records.

Today, from the point of birth the child is surrounded by music: portable and adjustable music! The number of radio stations which are easily available (without pointing aerials and orientating radio sets) is growing daily. The use of ipods and other portable music devices, up to and including telephones means that music is available on demand at all times. Access to the whole range of music is available on the internet (at a price) and can be downloaded.

How I this all affecting people? The ease with which music can be owned and rejected is amazing. On my ipod I carry my entire CD collection of well over 900 CDs. I find this astonishing. On the latest version of the ipod this music collection is searchable so music can be found almost instantly. Obscure tracks which are part of a compilation can be fond by typing in a few letters of the track title; all composers’ works can be listed. ~This is a revolution in access to music and it must be having a profound effect and I’m damned if I know what it is.

It’s late, and Toni has overtime tomorrow. I’m for bed, but this theme must be developed by a fresher and more literate hand!

Brush and brush off

The first advert on British television was for Gibbs SR toothpaste. This simple statement came to mind when I was wandering down the aisles full of toothpastes, toothbrushes and other dental products. I seem to remember that our toothbrushes were colour coded when I was a kid, but the design tended to be just about exactly the same year after year. There was no excitement when buying a new toothbrush: it was a chore. Toothpaste was the same all the time with the excitement of the first striped one, which was, of course, deemed far too frivolous to be bought on a regular basis.

As both my parents smoked there was always a tin of Eucryl smokers’ tooth powder. Now that I’ve written that brand name I realise that it is the first time that I’ve ever actually written it down in my life.

I wonder how many other things – products, people, places, foods – that are as familiar as a flannel, but which we have never written down?

There was toothpaste which was bought from time to time: Euthymol. This was, as I remember it, a pink colour and tasted absolutely vile. It was bought on the principle that anything which tasted that disgusting must be doing you some good: the degree of unpalatability being in direct proportion to its efficacy. The same principle was used in the use of TCP as a disinfectant for those childish cuts and grazes. It hurt so it worked.

Nowadays the idea of no pain no gain in products is almost lost from the market place. The only product in which physical discomfort is a selling point is in a certain brand of mouthwash where the advert on television shows a man using the mouthwash and having to suffer the effect of what looks like a small explosion happening in his mouth; but even here the company has produced a version of the original product which has been watered down in its intensity so that it achieves the degree of blandness which products seem to need.

Today the choice of toothbrush is bewildering. The days when the only choice was the degree of firmness of the bristles is long gone. The head of a modern toothbrush looks more like a sculpture by Barbara Hepworth or a garish pop art frippery than anything else. The elegance of the handles of some toothbrushes are breathtaking in their svelte dynamism and you feel that you should be brushing your teeth while hurtling though the air attached to some formula One racing car rather than standing bleary eyed in front of a misted up mirror.

My present toothbrush is a masterpiece of chamfered sides, twisting planes, ergonomic stylishness and a ‘multi media’ head composed of differentiated tufts and a border of extended crenulations of funky plastic. Gosh! And all for under a couple of quid! I get the same feeling contemplating this morning and evening miracle that my Dad used to get from looking at a fizzy drink can which does indeed have an elegance all of its own.

The proliferation of electric and electronic brushes (yes, there is a difference between those two designation, ask the producers) should be a continuing source of delight to me given my predilection for gadgets of all sorts, but I have mixed feeling towards them. They fail the Euthymol test, because they make a chore easy; they take the work out of a task – therefore, it must be wrong! To say nothing about the changing of the battery: this gives rise to a whole series of problems. When should you change a battery? When you sense the power of the brush action is lessened? When pressing the brush against the teeth can actually stop the action? At a designated time after a predetermined number of days has passed? And what happens when you forget to change the battery? Such questions are of far more importance than most of the so called world shattering questions facing mankind about such things as what to do about global warming, the proliferation of atomic weapons or how to avoid even a glimpse of “I’m a nonentity get me a tarantula.”

I’ve finished ‘The Pickwick Papers’ and I’m at a loss to explain the affection which this novel commands. Its narrative structure is deeply unsatisfying and the nauseating sentimentality lacks the killing emotional charge that such writing has in the later novels. Sam Weller is the hero of the novel and by far the most interesting character, and the only one that you would fancy having a drink with! It is a reversal of the Don Quixote/Sancho Panza and Tom Jones/Partridge relationship, and is much nearer to the relationship of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.

The ending of the novel is the usual tying up of loose ends and relationships. Everything ends well all because someone has enough money to make all things right. Mr Pickwick is cheered when he leaves The Fleet after his servant has distributed gallons of beer; but nothing is actually changed and only two colourful characters are (eventually) saved by the financial impetus of Pickwick.

It’s only a novel: why should the novelist be expected to make social comments and provide answers to great social problems; but there is an element of literary voyeurism; a use of human misery for the purposes of entertainment.

I don’t think that it will be a novel that I will reread soon.

The enjoyable question which I find facing me now is which novel will I read next? Any suggestions?