Appearances can be deceptive

“Braggadocious!” was the word emblazoned across the crotch of P Diddy as, sunglasses reflecting the flash of a camera and clutching what looked depressingly like a glass of orange juice, he made his way towards the photographer. As the lead article in the Indie ‘Extra’ and sub titled “On the road with Diddy and Snoop” I looked forward to fuelling my detestation of his life style, morals, ideas and, above all, his so-called music. Here was another example of a topic which in actuality I loathed but about which I took a ghoulish delight in reading. Into this category you could include The Princess of Wales, The Dirty Digger, That Woman and Jade Goody. I well remember a Pluto Press (oh, the memory of a left wing publisher!) production about Dianna Princess of Self Publicity which showed her picture on a Heinz 57 varieties can, and which provided a few hours of cheerfully directed detestation towards a fitting target.

Imagine my disappointment at finding nothing in the article which could not have been applied to David Beckham or Elton John or the nasty one from Oasis: money fuelled excess without the absolute, unforgivable vulgarity which would allow a self indulgent wallow in assumed moral rectitude on the part of the patient reader! Snoop smoking hash, being arrested, and then (gosh!) smoking it again the next night doesn’t really cut it for me in the detestation stakes. This is all small beer while Robert Mugabe thrives and is able to demean himself by opening his mouth and articulating his obnoxious Jesuitical (I used the word advisedly) doublethink in the soft gleam from the rich sheen of his exclusive hand made suits.

It is always good to get learning and knowledge out of the way as soon as possible in a well ordered day. This approach characterised my mode of teaching when I adopted the indiscriminate scattering of unconsidered trifles of knowledge in lessons so that pupils could then rest easy in the confidence that they had been touched by a piece of arcane information which they would never use in the normal course of their lives. Given, however, the ubiquitous presence of the quiz show on television, radio and in pub, club, church hall and private gathering, there is always now an odds-on chance that some snippet of unconsciously stored knowledge will crackle its way from the synapses and actually prove itself to be the answer that differentiates.

This occurred for me when I diffidently and conversationally mentioned when someone was trying to describe an exotic island which “looked like a maimed hand” that they were probably referring to Celebes which was now known as Sulawesi.

The trick when saying things like this is to be as casual as possible and give the impression that this is the sort of general knowledge that really is general and known, therefore, by everyone. The way not to do it is to confess that you are an ardent reader of ‘The Nerdy Boy’s Big Bumper Book of Really Interesting Facts‘ and that you can tell them plenty more super things like that as long as they don’t instantly leave the room.

It’s also got something to do with the way that your mind works. Some people remember things like names, important dates, where they parked the car and significant others’ birthdays while others know the colours of the Basque flag; the name of the Muse of Dancing and the names to go with the numbers of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies. These two types are not mutually exclusive, but in reality they do not go together.

There is also the difference in the delight with which information is garnered. For some it is the discovery of a little known Building Society with an interesting ISA for others, like me, it comes with listening to Radio Three in the morning.

I listen to Radio 3 because sometimes the relentlessness of the misery which can come with over indulgence on the ‘Today’ programme is just too much. How much more intellectually bracing is it to be condescended to by superior beings who decide your musical sustenance in the mornings and who introduce Mongolian yurt rattlers throat warbling a version of an early Hadyn quartet as if it were as prosaic as ‘Abide with me’ sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. So obscure is some of the music broadcast by Radio 3 that, when they actually play something that you recognise and can hum, you instantly feel a pang of guilt, as though they are only playing it to make you feel wanted and guilt too because this piece of populist tunefulness has take the place of an exquisite rarity which will now not be played because of your vulgarity!

What Radio 3 played was not, on the face of it, obscure: music from ‘William Tell.’ Everyone knows the overture, or at least The Tune, if not the very long introduction. The length of ‘William Tell’ makes some of Wagner’s operas look like quick frivolities, and you don’t often get the opportunity to hear it in its entirety. The selection on Radio 3 was for the ballet music from the opera. The first few chords did not seem familiar, but the music had a sort of ‘rumpipumpiness’ to it which would ensure that a single listening would brand it onto the memory. I therefore settled back (as much as you can while driving) and prepared to be entertained. A theme emerged and I jolted into a deep memory. A television programme on some remote part of Russia showed a group of workers sitting around drinking vodka and singing words to the tune of “Those were the days, my friend” by Mary Hopkins. It turned out that the song was actually based on an old Russian tune! With the ballet music from ‘William Tell’ it was someone even further back in time that was brought to mind.

The singer was Andy Stewart, and the song was ‘The Scottish Soldier – The Green Hills of Tyrol’ – you can see how Rossini and ‘William Tell’ got into it! To be fair, when I looked up the words the melody was described as Midi Sequenced by Barry Taylor. I don’t know what that means, but at least the music is not being appropriated unscrupulously.

It was a shock, not only to have Andy Steward brought to mind after a quite comfortable number of years, but also to hear something recognisable in what was unknown. A little learning indeed!

My previous comparable shock was when I was downing a pint in The Carpenter’s Arms; that statement in itself shows how long ago that was, as that pub is now the sort of place that I would not enter for a nmber of free pints. There I was (in those days of yore) just about to put the glass to my lips when I stopped in mid potential gulp as the juke box played a top ten song which used the last movement of Sibelius’s fifth symphony as its melody!

It almost sounds like one of those games on “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue” where one contestant has to say something then the next contestant has to say something completely unconnected to it.

Like “bank” and “consideration.”

Bitter!