Mellow musings

For a frustrated pyromaniac like me, the fact that the actual day of November the 5th was a Sunday and therefore people set off their fireworks on the Saturday, thus creating a two day Guy Fawkes Night spectacle was a Good Thing. With the house perched as it is we have a panoramic view of the whole of the south of Cardiff and surrounding hilly estates and can merrily count up the millions of pounds launched into the sky with cheerfully detached enjoyment. Also, you might think, a golden opportunity for Day Three of the Photographic Experiment to include spectacular bursts of fiery colour. Well, you will have to judge for yourselves. Never mind, there’s always next year and, if I’m lucky, the Christmas and New Year Celebrations in Catalonia!

Half term has ended and the real hard slog towards Christmas has begun. The autumn term should be one of the most rewarding in the school year; this is the term when the back of the year’s work has to be broken if you are not to spend the rest of the year trying to catch up. It is the term when, the pupils still being relatively fresh, they can gobble up some of the educational dainties spread before them with visible results!

It is also the term, however, of started theory driven educational initiatives spawned out of fear of Inspectors; coursework; fine tuning of, or sometimes wholesale reworking of, specifications; coursework; absence of colleagues through illness and the Grim Reaper; coursework; non arrival of oft promised teaching material and resources; coursework; the arrival of new colleagues and the sickening knowledge that there will be two more terms to go after this one before the sort of holiday in which you can really recuperate! Not something I miss.

Though in an abstract sort of way I do miss teaching. That is the actual standing up in front of a class sort of teaching; not the sort that needs complex administration! Once or twice in the past few months I have found myself in the sort of situation when somebody needs to say something to get something done; and I open my mouth and inside my head I can hear the Old Teacher still alive and kicking. There is the automatic saying of something three times before you believe that anyone has understood anything; the note of authority wrapped in a tinge of egalitarianism; the Teacher Look; the . . . the other things that make teaching such a life changer and a character developer!

Talking of developing characters, I listened with triumphant complacency to the news report that recounted the results of a survey which noted that British teenagers are the worst behaved in Europe. Such news must be a godsend to the tabloid press and a quarter of a million teachers!

I shudder to think what The Sun and, more particularly, the obnoxious Daily Mail made of such rich pickings. Ugh!

I was more interested in thinking about what the pundits (self styled) made of it all, especially in their analysis of the possible reasons for our lowly position. (Sorry Daily Mail not 'innate evil' in all young people under the age of twenty five.)

Many concentrated on the finding that young people in Britain tend to spend much more time with their own age group than with their parents or other adults. The modern habit of ‘grazing’ for food; the lack of family meals and the lack of adult organised ‘activities’ were all cited as part of the reason together with the lack of a town square.

Now, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I cannot recall frolicking at the feet of my parents as they sipped a glass of wine in one of the many boulevard cafes of Whitchurch Road, watching the evening promenade along Dogfield Street with the distant sound of the fountains gushing heavenwards in the town square of Cathays! And I don’t recall my parents recounting such idyllic scenes in the Blaengwynfi, Mountain Ash or Maesteg of their childhoods and adolescence! This has never happened in these damp and gloomy climes. We must surely look elsewhere for the real reasons.

Taking the age of the youngest teenager today and adding to it the likely age of a young parent we get a figure of something like thirty five. That would give us the date of about 1970 for the birth of the parents. What was happening in 1970? Heath became Prime Minister and oversaw a period of something close to economic chaos, not made much better by the Labour Government which followed him and, by the time our young parents to be were nine years old, and beginning to take an interest in the world around them, they were citizens of a country which had as its Prime Minister Margaret Hilda Thatcher and the start of eighteen years of Conservative rule.

I used to blame Thatcher for most things that went wrong, and lots of times I still do, but the one unforgivable element in her attitude was to create generations of self seeking what-can-I-get-out-of-it children; as a head teacher is responsible for the ethos of the school, so a prime minister is responsible for the general attitude of a country profile, and her deep selfishness transmitted itself to young minds. Those corrupted youngsters are the parents of the worst teenagers in Europe today.

It’s worth quoting what are perhaps Margaret Thatcher’s most famous quote and one which has been taken as the epitaph for the eighties, “there is no such thing as society.” The quotation in full is taken from an interview with Woman magazine in October 1987.
"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

Like Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of blood’ speech there is, surprisingly, much with which I agree: but only if you take the speech as a whole and think hard about the philosophy behind the words. A politician knows that a whole speech is not a sound bite and they are perfectly capable of reading the public mood and providing the titbit that the media likes while hiding behind the casuistry of the excuse, ‘but I didn’t say just that you have to read all of it.’ Enoch was a wrong-headed rabble rouser and Thatcher revealed her true sentiments in this speech, not in her theoretical explanation, but rather in the popular reading which urged those 'with' to realise that those 'without' were coming to take everything they had. We should be so lucky in this country! Revolution? What revolution?

So, our young parents will have come to maturity and childbearing hearing, subliminally, the banned verse of ‘All things bright and beautiful’ ringing in their ears:

The rich man at his table,
The poor man at his gate;
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Hardly surprising that their progeny is not the most socially conscious generation that this country has produced.

Generalisations are dangerous and tempting!

I know that this analysis (if it deserves that appellation) is simplistic in the extreme but, for a man with a Margaret Thatcher candle, waiting for the obsequies to start before ignition, it has a sort of ‘rightness’ to it.

A Brown Study

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and Sigri estate coffee from Papua New Guinea and central heating: an autumn to savour. Looking at frost is so much more pleasant when you see it through double glazing.

It’s rather sad looking at the more fleshy plants in the garden some of which have now been reduced by an icy kiss to a rather depressing mush leaving the remnants looking like a series of gaunt reminders of vegetation blasted by war in no-man’s-land in a canvas by Nash. In the midst of this killing coldness the chrysanthemums are thriving, indeed the weather seems to have brought on a second growth and the two plants provide the only real splashes of colour in the garden. Amazingly, a lone snapdragon has chosen this time to burst into a restrained bloom, with autumn pansies seemingly oblivious to the weather reminding one, if you want to continue the First World War analogy, of Brave Little Belgium! There is one rose left in the garden dying decorously and held together by the frost. (See yesterday’s pictures.)

The roses in today’s photos come courtesy of Tesco. I did not actually step outside the house to take any of the pictures today: so much for the ‘wandering further afield’ assurance of yesterday!

The news from Iraq is depressing if predictable. Saddam has been sentenced to death. Saddam used chemical weapons on his own people; he was instrumental in the death and torture of countless others and, in common with other dictators had execrable taste. And now he is going to be legally murdered. The moral questions around this trial are the questions that we shy away from. We always behave as if we were right in the western world. And let’s face it, to a large extent I think we are. We pay at least lip service to fundamental human rights which are enshrined in the UN Charter; however cynical we may be about our institutions they do give us a level of protection which is only a fond dream in the countries around Iraq.
The response to the death penalty is surely a litmus paper test of the degree of civilization of a country. I do not pretend for a moment that if any one I love were to be harmed then I wouldn’t want to kill the perpetrator myself: but laws are put in place to limit my actions when logical response is lost in passion. The desire for the ultimate revenge is understandable, but can never be justified; and please, don’t trot out the old ‘What would you do if you could go back in time and take a pot shot at Hitler’ argument. I am not a devout believer in the Great Man of History Theory where the forces of historical change are concentrated in the hands of one person who directs the flow of history rather than acts within in.

I can see many arguments for the death of Saddam but none of which do I find convincing. So I sit in my comfortable living room looking out at my garden, safe in the country with the fourth largest economy in the world, governed by a parliamentary democracy which, in one form or another has been around for a very long time and as I sit here, I pontificate about what country, whose history is a shameful catalogue of cynical intervention by western powers; racked by a bloody sectarian civil war after a recent history composed of bloody wars and invasions, should do. Their ‘democracy’ is, to put it mildly, fledgling and their understanding and belief in the institutions we take for granted is limited. But how far should the, admittedly horrific, situation be allowed to dictate (ha!) their actions? Remember the Diplock Courts; the suspension of habeas corpus; policemen with guns; the suspension of mobile phone lines after the Tube Bombings; restrictions of movement – all the concomitant paraphernalia of tin pot regimes which have at some point in our recent past been part of our experience in this country too, as a, perhaps, justified response to terrorist action or its threat. Our fundamentally solid society can wobble with depressing ease at the slightest touch: what the situation and mind set is like in Iraq we can only guess at.

So does that justify legal murder? For me no; it never can. It’s a conviction which is close to a belief which seems to me to be necessary for our continuation as a society for which I can have any respect.
Should I expect a country in chaos to have the same convictions as I: yes, a thousand times, yes. It is only at times like these that the quality of the moral basis of a society is tested. If it fails now, when it needs to be strong, then the actions taken in the good and easy times are irrelevant – there are unlikely to be any.

Goodwill to All!

My cultural plan for the edification of my sophisticated reader has been stymied on Day Two of the Photographic Week by the refusal of the system to allow me to download photographs, so I will just have to struggle along with mere words.

I will try and download them later, thoughI’m damned if I am going to change this opening; so if you can see any photos in this writing, you will know that the system relented eventually and allowed this user to use it usefully.

Getting up so early certainly does give one a different perspective on life. I had completed the few quotidian tasks that I had set myself by 8.45 am and had a long, long tea break to look forward to!

As usual the disjointed snippets of news that wormed their way into my conscious mind while applying myself to the rigorous intellectual demands of gentle dental abrasion and epidermal laving meant that only a partial element of my natural ire was ignited by the honeyed tones of the Radio 4 announcer and, by the time I had stumbled downstairs to have a cup of coffee (“Not tea, it’s the weekend!”) the more wearisome elements of the world situation had resolved themselves into the burning question which took the form of trying to decided which Tesco biscuits I would buy on my way back from taking Toni to work.

The real trouble about entering Tosco’s at seven in the morning is that the night and early morning vultures have picked the ‘Reduced’ cabinet clean and the back room boys have not restocked the shelves with exotic bargains of foods you never buy and which are, consequently, hard to resist. Leaving the shop with a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk seems to be spitting directly at the whole ethos that has made Britain Great and kept the people poor!

Another problem associated with browsing through the deserted aisles in the early morning is that it does nothing to prepare you for the full horrors of the ‘School Out Shop On’ experience if you forget your schedule and make inappropriate visits to the store: mothers, children and other humans fill your path and your ears with their very tangible presence. It is at times like this that you remember old novels which frequently described characters who ‘laid about them with riding crops’ with efficiency and determination clearing paths though protesting humanity to get to their rightful destinations. Or perhaps it’s just me who noticed those incidents? Further, not fully realising that it was always the baddies who behaved like that and not the clean cut heroes and heroines. Well, I’ve always had a grudging admiration for Satan and ‘Paradise Lost’ and Iago in ‘Othello.’

In the on going battle between Owner and Customer Tesco has taken another psychological step against the natural cynicism of the purchaser: they have taken to Odd Price Labelling. This consists in marking the price of an article as £3.47 or at some things which are marked at 71p. What is the twisted logic behind this? Have people finally realised that £4.99 is, in fact, only a single penny short of a fiver? Have they (we) finally realised that in spite of the ninety-nine part of the cost we still respond to the price as being substantially less than five because the first digit is a four? Surely not! I’m taking in by it all the time and I have taught recognition of this technique as part of the necessary analysis to tackle Paper II in English GCSE to Year 10 pupils.

Obviously knowing what retailers do does not make you immune from falling for the techniques. So, if the old 99 trick still works, why change to 47 or 71? There must be deeper and more sinister reasons. Let’s get the positive spin out of the way first: we can, I take it, dismiss the idea that this odd sum of pence is a result of cutting the price back to the lowest possible sum and when you can reasonably cut no further, that is the price you charge the consumer? Facile, childish and jejune.

We must look deeper. Surely this is another example of the double bluff: you think it is a cynical attempt to get you to believe that Tesco is a charitable institution; but if they were that cynical then they would be still at the Old 99 trick; but they aren’t so they must be being truthful and it is the cheapest they can do it; therefore you buy and are grateful.

Think about it: say Tesco could make something and make a profit and the cost came to £1.99; that price seems calculated, but, if you were to charge £2.23 then that price seems real and fair AND Tesco could make an extra 24p profit.

Now let’s get one thing straight. I am not for a moment saying that Tesco (or any other noble purveyor of comestibles) would, are or have been doing this; I just say it could be an explanation – and one which could get GCSE candidates a few extra marks if they were able to express this in cogent English in their English examination.

On the run up to Christmas when punters seem to lose any concept of sufficiency and act like hyper active consumer driven sheep on acid, believing that, if they don’t buy something immediately (and in bulk) it will disappear from the shelves and NEVER EVER be made again let alone stocked, the subtle gambits of canny shops like all supermarkets are directed towards tempting (no, forcing!) hapless punters to buy ever more surreal gifts for Christmas.

Gifts priced under the magic £5 limit are stretching even my fairly elastic credulity to breaking point. I know people who have never played, will never play and know no one who plays golf who scoop up composite golfing gifts (you know, the ones that look like golfing 'Lucky Bags' filled with artefacts made of plastic, metal, rubber, glass and cloth, looking like a particularly vicious form of Kim's Memory Game) from the shelves marked ‘Seasonal Presents’ with the jubilant exultation of Carter at the tomb of Tut!

“Wonderful things!” be damned; it’s incomprehensible rubbish that barely make it to Boxing Day and was probably thrown out with the packing paper on the previous day of mild family disputes and serious drinking.

As you can see, I am gearing myself up for the festive season: Peace and goodwill to all will be my motto.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

This picture is my favourite from the pick (pun intended) of the crop today. I have to admit that I did not actually go further than about ten steps from my front door for these, but I do promise to go a little further afield tomorrow, while still staying within the two minute radius!

Click!

What is the point of having slogged my way through a copy of Hogarth’s ‘Line of Beauty’ if the end result of the reading of this treatise on art is that I still cannot compose good photographs? Why is it that if Toni and I stand in the same position pointing our camera towards the same object at the same time with the same weather conditions, his photos always look better?

I traipse from world famous art gallery to National gallery emoting like fury in front of some of the most revered artistic endeavours that mankind has laboured to produce and still my photos look as though I had vaguely noticed a point of interest and had thrown the camera in its general direction hoping that serendipity would depress the button at the opportune time and take some sort of interesting image.

I suppose that it is a common conceit to believe that merely reading about something and passively regarding it will result in the triggering of some type of innate ability and, hey presto! You’re an expert!

In education you have a prime example of this: as everyone has been through the educational mill they assume that as clients (i.e. pupils from a previous generation) they have a perfect understanding of the modern demands of teaching and that they must share their incontrovertible understanding with the professionals whenever they meet. One could, of course, extend the examples to include doctors and patients; solicitors and paying victims; politicians and voters, not forgetting dogs and their owners.

We shouldn’t go overboard [captains and their passengers] about this; parents [adults and children] and everybody else should be concerned about education and take a view – the more passionate involvement the better, but do remember the professional point of view. The point of view of those practioners who actually are doing what others only talk about: they have a right to be respected. Teachers like doctors and lawyers do have access to a body of professional knowledge they have been tested on both theoretical and practical aspects of their work; they have earned the expectation of consideration in their professional lives.

I’m aware that I’m on thin ice here because the comparisons with doctors and lawyers and painters and architects get somewhat attenuated to the disadvantage of teachers. But, I will press on regardless.

Having your photograph taken and being given the result to look at doesn’t make you a photographer; yet, noticing how a good photographer goes about selecting a setting and a pose, how he adjusts the lighting and focus can lead to an increase in knowledge by the subject; while looking at great photographs and seeing (if only though visual repetition) how the framing of a successful photo works must have some sort of effect. So the observation of the whole professional experience of photos can lead to better efforts by the amateur. Should lead to better efforts. So why isn’t it working with me.

This morning was crisp and bright. As Toni was working overtime I had extra time to contemplate the wonders of nature without the intrusive presence of the rest of the population who were, god rot them, mostly still in bed. I made a decision. Without going more than two minutes away from my house I was going to take a series of photographs over the course of a week which would show that I was capable of producing visual images which reflected some sort of artistic appreciation of my immediate surroundings. With light frost covering a swathe of grass opposite the house and the ivy clad oaks standing stark and gaunt, how could I fail to find a subject suitable?

I have recently bought a new camera on the specious grounds that the screen on the back of my present camera is far too small. The camera I now have is a 10 million megapixel job with a screen which virtually covers the back of the machine. It also has a multitude of ‘helpful’ settings to ensure that the rankest amateur is able to take photographs of acceptable and obviously effortless interest.

So, the challenge is set. The camera is primed (well charged up) and the epic journeyings of not more than two minutes from the house have begun. The fact that the evidence of my efforts will be plain for all my reader to see is a sort of incentive for me to rise above the mediocrity that has characterised my previous efforts and produce something which will . . .

And it was at that point that my enthusiasm left me. The work, as they say, will have to speak for itself. You’ve seen it: does it speak? More tomorrow.

Cartier Bresson eat your heart out!

Peel me a grape!

One of the many pleasures in foreign travel is being able to glut yourself on what would be hothouse fruits in this country but which are available ‘cheap as chips’ in the country that you happen to be visiting.

I remember once incident in Istanbul during one of my perambulations consequent on getting lost.

(By the way, the ‘lost traveller system’ is a technique I heartily recommend as an excellent way of getting to know a part of a city and its inhabitants. People usually go out of their way to get you back to a hazily understood destination described in any language to hand. Even if they have absolutely no idea of where you want to go and are totally and unutterably foreign with nary a word of the Emperor of Languages, English, they will all have very decided opinions about which direction you should go. Helpfulness personified part of the great fellowship of humanity, and all that. Though, thinking about it, it could be, of course, that they merely want to get you out of their lives, but that is far too pessimistic a view of our fellow Johnnie foreigner for me to contemplate.)

Anyway, lost as I was; hungry and thirsty, but taking a keen interest in the colourful Turkish drivers taking no interest in the colour of the traffic lights, I decided that I would have to help the local economy and buy something from the street traders lining the thoroughfare. I decided, from the plethora of vegetation on offer to settle for grapes. By various facial grimaces and hand gestures the man weighed out a bunch of grapes, put them into a cone of brown paper and then held up the number of fingers for the total amount of lira that would complete this quaint interchange. It was at this point that I realised that the man who was smiling in anticipation of my cash was actually charging an exorbitant amount of money for the grapes. I was immediately furious: here was this man taking a poor tourist for a ride. But, I had been in Istanbul for two days, I was no greenhorn, I was a seasoned resident in the city, I was wise to the ways of wily street traders – and told him so in loud and fluent English. To which the man immediately replied in louder and more loquacious Turkish. This could have gone on for some time in the tradition of the best of all regulated discussions where what one side was saying was not only irrelevant to the development of the argument it was also, literally, incomprehensible. The contretemps was brought to an end by a polyglot passer-by who soothed both our tempers. I paid less and the trader scowled. I walked on eating my grapes with rather more vigour than was strictly necessary for a soft fruit, but secure that right had triumphed. No gullible fool I. No indeed! It was as I was walking and eating (a multi tasking feat which put me in touch with my feminine side) that I realised that the amount of money over which I had been in dispute was the British equivalent of 2p!

In my defence I did feel ashamed and I immediately set about forming a defence for my actions. (You’ll note that I didn’t return to the trader and give him the difference.) And eventually came to the conclusion that I had adopted the Turkish system of values and that, in Turkish terms the amount of lira was significant, even if it really wasn’t to me. It sounds a bit weak, doesn’t it? Well, it’s the best that I could do.

But that attitude is around today; best seen in petrol. Every driver needs petrol. No driver knows the cost of petrol. You ask anyone the cost of a litre of petrol and they will start flannelling and say something like, “Depends on where you go” and that is exactly my point. Drivers drive around for the best value, thus wasting the gain in the amount of time and petrol that they waste in their search.

For me (I buy my petrol from Tesco, ‘cos it’s easy) the nit picking analysis of best buy comes to the fore when I am buying water.

I think (I know) that the purchase of water in a country when the stuff that comes though the taps has been shown (by Which amongst others) time and time again to be of exceptional purity, is one of the most stupidly fatuous purchases you could possibly make. The fact that we buy French (French!) water makes me nearly speechless with the total follie de grandeur of it all. The further fact that some idiots actually buy Fijian water at a cost which places it on the same level as wine is surely a pathetic upper middle class attempt to ape the grandiloquent gesture of Queen Elizabeth dissolving a pearl in vinegar and drinking it. At least she thought that it was going to do something more than quench her thirst! Tesco gave me a choice of all the home countries to squander my money on. Which should it be? The rugged, heather infused peaty fluidity of Highland Scotland or the loquacious smoothness of the Emerald Isle, or could the well bred, spiky class of the English tempt? Surely I would pick the liquid essence of the sheep trod hills of my own country? Ballocks to the lot of it.

The only reason I buy water at all is because Toni insists on it. I therefore spent ten minutes debating which of the thieving organizations was going to take the least of my cash. Tesco of course, do not make that easy to work out. The usual trick of pricing the water using price per litre and well as price per 100 ml was well to the fore. To complicate things further they had a selection of special offers. Special offers on water! Just say it and you’ll see how stupid it sounds. It does actually drop from the sky, placing it in a different category say, from bread. Anyway, special offers which were on buying one and getting another at a different price; special offers of a simple reduction; special offers because other stores sell them at higher prices. It was a mathematical jungle, but I was determined to hack my way though the lianas of misinformation, confusion and deceit that Tesco uses to bewilder its customers and get to the cheapest. I did. I came away thinking that I had waged a war of sense against the cynical leer of capitalism and I had been victorious. But, rather like that younger version of myself eating grapes, I came away with a saving of 2p!

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Wild Drink is Raging!

‘Schadenfreude’ is one of those wonderful German words (or phrases) which sound to my ears like some sort of vaguely threatening expletives but which will, given the wilful nature of Germanic pronunciation, turn out to mean ‘candy floss’ or something equally innocuous.

The word sits comfortably with such English stealings as ‘Zeitgeist’, ‘Sturm und Drang’, ‘Gotterdammerung’ and ‘Angst’ as words heard, but rarely fully understood, when used in casual conversation. (Though what casual conversation would utilize that portentous vocabulary is difficult to envisage.)

They are words used for effect and as an attempt to arrest communication rather than facilitate it. Oh yes, I’ve just thought of another one, ‘Weltschmertz’ (roll it around the mouth!) – And I’ve also just thought: a casual conversation about Wagner would be able to justify (nay, would demand) the use of all those words with no effort whatsoever.

‘Schadenfreude’ however, was the one that rose unbidden to my mind today as I listened to a friend recount his drunken ‘conversation’ with a mutual acquaintance. He took, it appears, the opportunity to expatiate (at length) and enumerate (in detail) the failings of the stunned recipient of this tirade. A recipient, I might add, who had just provided him with dinner. It was a situation in which the onus of guilt fails squarely on one set of shoulders and one set of shoulders only. There is, at it were, one ‘baddie’ in this scenario, and one only. Black and white, pure and simple: J’accuse!

At this point, let the ex-teacher take over. ‘Schadenfreude’ is one of those German words made up of separate words, in this case, ‘schaden’ meaning ‘harm’ and ‘freude’ meaning ‘joy’. So, when you put them together ‘harmjoy’ they are a meaningless oxymoron. But the story does not end there: it does have a meaning and it is usually interpreted as meaning something like “deriving pleasure in the misfortunes of others.” Now it begins to fit together.

Our responses to wrong doing are complicated; the same fault can have very different responses when the circumstances are altered. Take, for example lying. Lying is always wrong, except when it isn’t. I will not insult my Reader (literal not figurative) by giving examples: think of today and just count up the ‘necessary’ lies you told, or like the great lie told at the end of Conrad’s ‘The Heart of Darkness’, the saving lie. Take instead, theft.

This seems to be clearer cut, though I remember in my first year of teaching, I presented by top set year 10(or form four and they were then called) with a moral problem. What would they do, I asked, if a local shop had been robbed and, when involved in a police chase, the robber had thrust the stolen money through the letter box in your house? Would you, I naively asked, expecting a 50/50 divide, keep the money or give it up to the police. Not only did no-one say that they would give up the money, they also had zero understanding with my position of wanting to give it back. Total incomprehension. My ‘open ended’ moral discussion became a sort of revivalist sermon putting a (no, MY) clear moral point forward in a more and more this-is-what-is-correct-and-you-are-all-wrong sort of way than the open ended (!) discussion that I intended. I had the same problems with lying to Insurance Companies and taking money to which you were not entitled; evading VAT in any way possible, and keeping things by finding them.

Now I do not want to give the impression that I have led a blameless life during which I have no deviated by a nano millimetre from the straight and narrow, so there is, understandably a sort of harmjoy or, one might say, a certain sense of Schadenfreude in watching the moral writhing of a friend as he tries to come to terms with the drunken outburst of the night before. Sympathy (for both sides) yes, but also that little gleam of happiness that mainly consists in knowing that someone else is at fault and, not only are you blameless (in this instance) but also you were not even there to share the blame of association or proximity.

The aftermath of such an exhibition is, of course, different. Just hearing about it implicates you. This is where character and human sympathy comes in.

And that, as they say, is quite another story.

Memory

The landscape of my childhood is being redrawn: what were firm strokes of the pen outlining clear shapes filled with strong colour are gradually fading. What used to be in sharp focus in the shallow field of my infancy has lost its definition. I feel more and more distant from the static pictures that populate my memory.

These images seem almost like those sepia vignettes that you can find in some Victorian books: fading out towards the edges, like little islands of coherence surrounded by misty fraying. The colour and movement in those monochrome depictions comes not only from pushing memory for the sensory information to animate your past life, but also from those who knew you who add the telling detail; the defining anecdote; the hidden link; the music of the moment which breathes life into a half understood early response.

The more I speak to my relatives the more I hear and understand. Each view of a fugitive event: a sight, sound, taste, emotion gains immeasurably from the perspective of an adult, viewing and explaining sometimes fifty years after the event. Sometimes the perception is not merely a piece of a jigsaw, filling in an otherwise blank space in a partially completed frame, but rather a piece from an entirely different puzzle. Casual reminiscences; conversations; photographs; books; letters: all part of the magic of creation which accompanies knowledge in depth and though time linking personal experience.

It was my uncle’s funeral today. Another link gone; another active, vital, articulate, intelligent man now only kept in memory; but a man who, because of his touching of so many lives, will be kept in a multitude of memories.

The religious content of the funeral was limited; the dynamic of the service was taken up with a series of addresses and readings. I was moved by the obvious emotion of those who were speaking about their links with my uncle. The range of memory covered more than fifty years of his life.

My contribution to the service was to read an extract from Meditation XVII by John Donne; something that I read in my father’s funeral and a piece of writing to which I respond strongly.

Funerals are rarely uplifting events, but this one seemed to satisfy people as being fitting for my uncle and passionate in its assessment of the character of the man who has gone.

I can think of no more suitable memorial to my uncle than to reprint the reading from Donne. (The selection, editing and punctuation of the extract are my own.)

AN EXTRACT FROM MEDITATION XVII BY JOHN DONNE

The church is universal. So are all her actions. All that she does belongs to all.

When she buries a man: that action concerns me.

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume.

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated;

God employs several translators.

Some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation,

And his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls.

It tolls for thee.

Some things you can't avoid.

Pretend as much as I like, I cannot deny that I enjoyed reading The DaVinci Code. Everyone said that it was a real ‘page turner’ and I duly turned the pages: short chapters, big writing and action all the way through. At the end of the book I would not have gone to the block to defend it, but, not only did I respond positively to it, but also I read other books. Yes, they were formulaic; yes, they were thoroughly unbelievable; yes, character development didn’t, but readable, always readable.

So, we come to the film. The critical reaction was universally dismissive, so I was not tempted to pay money to be irritated by the ‘skills’ of Tom Hanks making an unconvincing portrayal of an unconvincing character. Toni saw the film in Spanish and was enthusiastic about the general effect. I was unmoved until today; I gave in. I watched.

Tom Hanks has not gone up in my estimation. I know that I have certain prejudices about Hanks’ acting ability (Who can forgive him for ‘Philadelphia’?) but as I always consider a prejudice to be something which is unsubstantiated by evidence, it therefore follows that my detestation of the acting ability of Hanks is a valid opinion (and indeed right.) To be fair, I do not think that the script is always kind to him: some of the inane lines he has to say would tax the ability of most competent and professional actor and Hanks . . .

There are plenty of set pieces to ensure that this could be a good adventure movie: car chases, graphic murders, exotic locations, fights, dramatic music, everything that you need to fulfil the needs of the formula: but it doesn’t work, it’s unconvincing and slack. If the picture had been more intelligently edited then the tension would have been sustained and the overall effect of the picture would have been improved.

In the novel, the character of Silas is an ever present, seeming invincible threat; an almost super and sub human character with a emotive back story which gives just enough credence on the page to substantiate his actions in the present – but in the film his effect is lessened by the mere fact of his visual presence and the fact that he is the only real ‘baddie’ to engage our interest; the cardinal and the secret group within the church is never developed enough to pose a dramatically exciting threat to the status quo and be the social earthquake that the script keeps telling us the divulgence of the ‘secret’ is going to be. Sir Ian Mckellen hams up the character of Teabing but he obviously enjoyed the portrayal of the character and I just lap up his acting anyway.

The ending of the film is cringe-makingly inept. I like the deceit of the tomb of the Magdalene being underneath the glass pyramid in the courtyard of The Louvre, but the final picture of the previously lacking in faith Hanks kneeling in prayer is mawkish and deeply unsatisfying.

Thank god I've got 'Ice Age 2' to look forward to!

You expect me to believe that?

Coincidence, for me, is best expressed by an ex-colleague going back to the churned up mess of a rugby field in the dark to search for a contact lens lost in the middle of the match; bending over at random and picking up the lost lens at once. I was there, it was true! It’s the sort of thing that you just couldn’t put in a novel because, no one, quite rightly, would believe you.

Is that on a par with my experience of visiting the childhood home of the Danish composer Carl Nielsen on the remote island of Fyn, signing my name in the visitors’ book, flicking back a few pages and finding the name of a colleague I’d taught with two years previously?

Or perhaps losing my wallet in Upper Saint Martins Lane in Central London, continuing blithely on my way to Brixton where I was staying unconscious of my loss and, when I made it back, getting to the door just as Clarrie was concluding a telephone conversation with the man who had found my wallet; found my address in Cardiff; phoned my home; given my mother a huge shock (a stranger asking if I lived there? Obviously I was dead); got the phone number of where I was staying; phoned Clarrie to tell me not to worry, the wallet was safe and awaiting collection. Where was the coincidence? Why, in having the only honest man in Central London finding the bloody thing!

Coincidences, extraordinary coincidences, happen with such regularity that perhaps they ought to be considered normality, and the so-called mundane treated as exceptional. Imagine a world without coincidences; what a boring place it would be. If it wasn’t for Newton sitting beneath an apple tree ready to disgorge its fruit we would never have discovered gravity and we would all now be drifting aimlessly though space. Gosh aren’t we lucky?

All this came to mind as I was eating my lunch of baked partridge.

I would like to let that sentence stand by itself as I quite like the kudos or ethos that it seems to exude. But, perhaps I should explain that foul is not my usual repast and this bird was the fruit (so to speak) of my undignified scavenging of the ‘reduced’ section in Tesco. However, apart from being a little resilient to the teeth, it was more than acceptable. The coincidence aspect of my meal was one of those serendipitous occasions when the senses of sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell are all bought together in a completion which is judiciously apt: as I brought out the partridge from the oven, Radio 4’s food programme started to talk about pear trees - it’s the sort of thing that happens in badly produced TV shows when one character turns to another says something about the current situation and then turns on the radio for a seamless disembodied commentary on exactly that topic!

This is not the first time that this has happened. A while back on the way to work when I was telling Toni about the trauma which used to attend each departure from university during the vacations when all my belongings had to be packed, and my room in Hall left empty for the Conference People to use; the only way I kept my sanity during the packing process was to listen to a recording I had of insanely ‘happy’ music which dulled the horrific tedium of trying to get my possessions (even then) into some sort of portable mass.

André Ernest Modeste Grétry (an eighteenth century Belgian composer, usually linked with Gluck in compilation CDs) was the writer of the ballet music I used to listen to at these trying moments. I was just saying to Toni that I had found the actual cassette of the music I used in University which would come in handy for the upheaval of Pickford’s taking our stuff into storage, when, as if on cue, the familiar strains of Grétry’s music emanated from the Radio 3 programme that neither of us was really attending to! Now that is a significant coincidence in my view; though it would have been an even greater one if we had been listening to Radio1!

What a lazy Sunday this has been. Though, thinking about it, not quite as lazy as I thought. The adjustment of my watch last night meant that though I thought that I was getting up at a much laid back midday; because of my faulty adjustment I actually got up at a much more respectable 10 am. You see, even when I try and live a life of total indulgence, circumstances intervene to show me the right path!

I sometimes wish my guardian angel was a little more louche.

Words! Words! Words!

Which book have you bought most? For the majority of the population this is surely a nonsensical question: you buy or acquire a book, read it and then ignore it, or give it to Oxfam or place it in you library. Why would you buy a book again?

There are obviously lots of reasons. My little pocket version of the Oxford English Dictionary accompanied me through school and university, but eventually gave up the ghost through sheer use and had to be replaced when I started teaching. Some books simply explode: something to do with the brittle binding, which can disintegrate with a single reading. My edition of ‘Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell’ by Susanna Clarke did not survive intact beyond page 393 – and that was just over a third of the way through!

Although I am not inclined to buy a replacement for that book, some of my childhood editions of Great Works have been replaced. A A Milne (one of the great existential writers of the last millennium) has had the honour of his Works being repurchased and one is constantly amazed at how little (really) one has to pay for so much pleasure. Perhaps I am parading my middle class credentials in liking Winnie the Pooh and his ilk, rather than siding with Dorothy Parker (or Constant Reader as she called herself when reviewing books) who, as Marion Meade in her biography of Parker relates, "Constant Reader's best-known review was of A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner. Milne's whimsy had always nauseated her. When she came to the word hummy, her stomach revolted. 'And it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings,' she wrote, 'that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.'" I do have sympathy with that response, but I don’t share it.

There are also replacement purchases for those books bought when in school or university which Had To Be Read and which were purchased in the cheapest available paperback. Sometimes in the truly horrible Signet editions which were virtually impossible to open and which were printed with easily smudgeable text. Reading a hefty text in a Signet edition was little short of torture. The pages in the books had to be prised apart and they never lay down, it always needed considerable physical pressure to stop the damn things from snapping shut. So, the completion, in Signet, of a normal brick-like nineteenth century novel was often more physical than intellectual. What pleasure then, to buy a better edition and luxuriate in placid, responsive pages lying calmly for perusal? But that is only buying two copies, who would buy more?

Well, as the British man in the car advert says when he is trying to score points against the French woman’s attempts to show the superiority of her literary culture by using such names as Victor Hugo and Jean Paul Sartre, “Sssssssssssssssakespeare!” I have bought more than two copies of some of his works. Not only do I have multiple copies of the complete works, but I also have numerous copies of some individual plays. Being an English teacher of course, you can always justify the purchase of another copy of ‘Macbeth’ solely because of the different introductions and notes which are contained with the text of the play; and, if you are buying second hand, it becomes more than a pleasure to buy but rather a positive duty! And you do teach the play, so any attempt to increase your knowledge has to be a good thing.

But leaving aside the ‘Desert Island Discs’ staples of The Bible and Shakespeare, what would possess you to buy more than two copies of anything? The answer, of course, is the Missionary Impulse.

Book reading is truly one of the great pleasures. It is a deeply personal pleasure because print can do nothing until your imagination has made something of the individual words and phrases. I have just finished reading ‘The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society’ by Chris Stewart – the third volume of his descriptions of life as a farmer in Las Alpujarras in the south of Spain, which started with his book, ‘Driving Over Lemons.’ Apart from the fact that he and his family are actually living in Spain while for me this is still as aspiration, is a little galling, but his writing style is easy and his descriptions are vivid and engaging. The point though, is that while reading it, I have been sucked into another life and have been in Spain, not Rumney. When quotidian events like phone calls recall me to Wales, I am genuinely disorientated for a moment until I fully realise where I am. The amount of time spent reading is only a few hours, yet the experience gained bears no relationship to that expenditure counted in minutes. This is real time and space travel: both literal and figurative.

With this ‘drug’ so freely available, and in so many flavours, I behave like any normal addict and want to get others hooked as well. What better way than giving free samples to encourage total dependence? I do enjoy giving books as presents: sometimes they are weapons, especially to hardened non-readers; usually, however, they are a sharing of a discovery and a burning desire to have your enthusiasm matched by another.

In this sense I have bought one book more than a few times, one book which has my accolade of being something so special that everyone should have a copy.

Now my enthusiasms have not always been utterly dependable. “Old Saint Paul’s” by William Harrison Ainsworth – an historical novel set during the time of the Great Fire and Great Plague in the seventeenth century in London – was a book given to me my Aunt Bet over forty five years ago (in hardback so it has survived intact!) and cherished by me as a damn good read. It is not to everyone’s taste, but three friends of mine in College read and enjoyed, and each Christmas, as a special treat, we reread the chapter entitled, “What befell Chowles and Judith in the vaults of Saint Faith’s.” Gruesome and vivid and moral as well!

Another recommended book, which I thought was clever, witty, accomplished and of a high intellectual standard was ‘Cards of Identity’ by Nigel Dennis. I read this though the wonderful provision of interesting book by Penguin in the ‘Modern Classics’ series: modern classics usually short with excellent modern art on the covers and usually incomprehensible – at least to the strugglingly ‘intellectual’ school boy that I was then. I recommended this book to all and sundry, telling people that this was the book which I would most like to have written. Then I reread it and panicked, seeing the novel as pretentious, obvious and facile, nothing that I would recommend today. Ah well, put it down to experience.

So, the book that I have bought more than once is a volume which may be surprising given my stated opinions and one with a title which makes it seem like a mixture of ‘I-Spy’ and kiddies book. It’s ‘The Lion Book of Christian Poetry’ compiled by Mary Batchelor and published, amazingly, by Lion. The ISBN is 0 7459 5183 X. It is one of the best anthologies of poetry that I have ever read (though this is the paperback and I have the fuller out of print hardback edition) with one of the most stimulating selections of poetry that you can find. It is divided into sections which are further subdivided. For example the section headed, ‘The Pilgrim’s Way’ is subdivided into sections The Journey; Faith and Doubt; The Struggle of Good and Evil; Sickness and Suffering. This is, obviously, a Christian anthology, but any one of any faith or no faith can respond to the ideas, the passion and the belief in these poems. They are not all classics and not all of them are profound: they are as varied as the experience of Christianity itself.

As a taster I will give you my favourite poem, and the one which I read when looking at this book in the bookshop which persuaded me to buy the book.

AGNOSTICISM
by
John Tatum

It doesn’t come easy.

In spite of it all.
I can’t help pushing open
the doors of country churches;
shoving a coin or two
in the box by the wall,
paying twice over
for the leaflet I take.

It doesn’t come easy.

Wandering among gravestones
is irresistible;
departure is almost
impossible. I delay
It over and over
to hear once more the song of the blackbird.

It doesn’t come easy.

As I race back
into the modern
rationalistic world,
I think of cathedral towns
and country rectories
and gentle rectors’ wives
arranging the flowers.


Well worth buying more than once!

Faith me no faiths!

Facts and statistics too often get in the way of a forceful opinion. The indiscriminate use of the word ‘prejudice’ in discussion has unfairly truncated what could have turned out to be a productive exchange of views. ‘Mankind,’ as T S Eliot so perceptively said, ‘cannot stand too much reality,’ how unfair then to expect truth (the handmaiden of reality) to be paraded like some vulgar ringmaster when putting forward a genuinely naïf point of view.

Modern civilization has not developed by people having a solid base of evidence for their actions: faith, whim, desire, belief, instinct and muscular spasm are far more persuasive in the understanding of the history of mankind than anything else.

So don’t expect dry evidence to be used in the following observations; a partially overheard news story is basis enough for me to pontificate.

The government, yet again, appears to be adopting its usual supine posture when confronted by an eager coalition of opposition groups without power. Stalin is once reputed to have asked an aide, ‘How many divisions does the Pope have?’ when confronted by religious opposition, and the self evident answer allowed Uncle Joe to pursue his murderous path dismissing any whingeing voices from the Vatican. The Religious Right in the USA may seem to give some reason to doubt the unthinking continuation of this cavalier rejection by any person in power, but although seemingly united on issues such as abortion, capital punishment and homosexuality their instinctive innate conservatism usually ends up supporting the status quo and not really threatening the true power bases in their respective countries. And they don’t have divisions either.

Great Britain is a notoriously secular country with church going decreasing like the level of enjoyment in each new series of Big Brother, yet our government capitulates to opposition which wanted the non-religious quota in state supported so-called ‘faith schools’ to be made mandatory.

I can see no justification for the continuation of state funding for sectarian schools. If faiths want to have their own schools then good luck to them. But they should be funded entirely by the faiths themselves: buildings, maintenance, teachers’ salaries, books, toilet paper, everything.

The cost of building a school is nothing compared to the year on year costs of salaries and the day to day running of the institution. If faith schools had to bear the real cost of these schools then most of them would close tomorrow. We the taxpayers are actually funding the division of our society and funding it in countless millions of pounds every month.

OK I know that our society is riddled with absurd contradictions: we are a democracy with a hereditary monarchy; a secular society with a head of state who is also the head of the ‘established’ church of the country; bishops who sit in the second chamber of our legislature; an heir apparent who mouths vapid platitudes about ‘faiths’ which show his grasp of reality is tenuous, to say the least; and, of course, our wonderful system of law. We need a fundamental restructuring of our society; from the top (if that is how you regard the present Defender of the Faith) to the . . . what? Bottom? The 93% of the population who own 16% of its wealth? Get real!

One of the more sickening justifications for the continuation of the essential basis on which our country has been governed for . . . ever is that any change would unset the odd, idiosyncratic, essentially English way that we muddle through and somehow manage to survive. After all, they say, the one country in Europe that did not have a revolution in 1848 was Great Britain.

All that means is that our ruling classes were fractionally less criminally and self destructively stupid than the inbred cretins who had power elsewhere. The meritocratic basis of English society, so the story goes, can even be seen in Tudor times when the butcher’s son from Ipswich rose to be the most powerful subject in the realm; but I seem to remember that one word from the bloated dictator Henry VIII and Wolsey was nothing. So much for merit.

Any attempt to tinker with the Heath Robinson system that we have will result, like an overdrawn Mr Micawber, in ‘misery.’ As if, in percentage terms, we weren’t living in financial, political, educational and moral misery now. Heath Robinson’s fantastic drawings were surrealistically complicated showing, in one case, machines for drilling holes in Swiss cheeses of fiendish complication which would have had William Occam weeping with frustration and reaching for his razor to start excising all the unnecessary elements.

We need William now, today, to come back to life and start looking at the way in which we govern and educate ourselves. It is just depressing to think that his philosophy has been around for over 600 years and, if you want to look further, you could say the principles that he advances can be seen in the writings of Aristotle who has been dead for over 2,300 years.

We don’t learn do we? Especially not in faith schools.

Love Labradors?

Never underestimate the ability of a relative to astonish and astound. I’m not quite sure how the conversation veered towards the luxury market for canines but when it did, astonishment was not the word to describe the nth degree of luxury lavished on some pampered pooches.

One colleague once told me that she felt that something was wrong in the domestic management of her household when she realised that she been to the supermarket to get something for tea and had bought steak for the dog and baked beans for the kids. To be fair she told the story against herself and vehemently denied that this was anything more than a glitch and the dog would soon be back to his normal feed of Pâté de foie gras stuffed lobster on a bed of caviar and truffle potatoes dauphinoise with Spillers Dog Biscuits crudite. Such a relief that I didn’t have to phone ChildLine!

My aunt was telling me about the kennels in which my cousin places his dog when he is away: a recent trip to Amsterdam saw his paying more for the accommodation of the dog in GB than for himself in Holland!

The kennels are called apartments and some apartments are suites, with names like The Elizabethan. The surrealistic (though in this country, easy to imagine) description continued with a list of ‘extras’ that owners could purchase for their dogs. These included things like films and videos for the fury inmates to the disturbing payment of a few quid for ‘cuddles’ which sounds worryingly like some form of shady escort service. The truly depressing thing is that given these as starting points you can fill in the more exotic details which are no doubt enumerated in astonishing detail in the high-gloss heavy-paper brochure (probably antique vellum) which is gifted to each besotted owner before the poor little doggie is left stranded, abandoned by his owner like a Getty on a yacht.

Anything that I can write from my imagination would probably be shown to be woefully inadequate to the fabulous reality.

I’ve not been able to find it (this canine Utopia) on the web (you probably need to be a high ranking member of some sort of Bilderberg Group to know the true location) but it is apparently called the Triple AAA Kennels – do let me know if you find it, and break to me gently the most outrageous extravagance that it contains.

I remember a Punch cartoon (god that dates me!) which showed the nameplates on the door of an office block. The drawing concentrated on two: the first a polished metallic plaque with elegant engraving displaying the initials RSPCA; beneath this expensive nameplate was a grubby scrap of paper attached to the wall by a drawing pin on which were scrawled the initials NSPCC. The point was clearly made, but facile.

It is too easy to be negative about the British approach to animals and, if they are little rat dogs (that is intentional ambiguity), it becomes a positive duty to be viciously vindictive; but what if the canine in question is, for example, a yellow Labrador bitch? All bets are off and luxury is the least you can bestow on such deserving animals. The Labradors in question, of course, would accept any little pleasures you could afford (in both senses of the word) with extreme equanimity and, as they lie in their exorbitantly priced rented penthouse having the canine equivalent of peeled grapes (specially softened Chews, in case you were wondering) one glance from those liquid brown eyes would make you feel guilty and inadequate.

And you have to buy them in the first place! And they are unbelievably expensive! It would be easier to buy yourself a ball and chain: at least you could take it with you on holiday without having it vaccinated and it having to have a passport. And it probably poses no rabies threat.

I’ve travelled with people going to Spain from Cardiff and Bristol who looked far more likely to be harbouring life threatening qualities than any Labrador that I have seen.

What was the point I was making about people and animals again? Gone! Gone: like a stick thrown for a Labrador who has no intention of indulging you by actually finding the thing, let alone brining it back to you. No wonder they take dogs to Old Folks Homes and Hospitals. When the ill and the aged see such smooth, placid examples of smug self satisfaction they surely have a real incentive to assert their humanity to try, at least, to emulate their doe eyed masters, return to the real world and become the highest thing to which a human can aspire: a paid companion (with no remission for supine behaviour) for a dog.

Cardboard Conundrums

I’m worried about the fact that I’m not worried about the fact that I am getting demonstrably older. I was musing on the tempus fugiting aspect of my life while perusing my birthday cards. As is my wont my musings became a little more analytical (or self indulgent as some people insist) and the results are here for your delectation.

Of the total number of greetings which were received on or about the Day, the statistics read as follows:

Cards: vaguely insulting and ageist 41.6%
Cards: winsome 8.3%
Cards: Romantic 8.3%
Cards: generic and complimentary 8.3%
Cards: Xmas with ‘Birthday’ written in 8.3%
Greetings: electronic 8.3%
Greetings: telephonic 16.6%
TOTAL 99.7%
[The missing 0.3% is the sum total of the Powers That Be wishing you well] {I would now expect Catrin Lloyd to work out the total number of greetings}

What is the earliest age at which it is acceptable for irony to be used in cards? When did I first appreciate irony? Like the shock of understanding death as a child, it should have been startling, a life changing moment – but I can’t remember it. Isn’t that ironic! And the percentages: when I was younger most of my cards were perfectly acceptable stereotypical cards for boys: racing cars; football player;, train drivers; the countryside; earnest and sinister junior storm troopers masquerading as inoffensive boy scouts; swimming and cartoon characters. No humour. No irony. And, as I recall, many of them with money inside: I am young enough not only to remember a crisp ten shilling note (10/-) looking impressive but also realising that it had considerable buying power (e.g. it would buy 480 Black Jacks!) What person now would ever get away with giving any relative (no matter how distant) 50p as a gift?

I suppose that there must be a certain moment in a person’s life when the giving of a sincere birthday card will be both disturbing and suspicious: where sincerity appears to be the easy option – no thought needed; the greetings equivalent of quorn. Irony (or real abuse) shows, paradoxically, that you care. No wonder so many people can watch ‘The Simpsons’ and merely laugh rather than weep with the realisation that the programme exudes weltschmertz more graphically than the collected works of Jean Paul Sartre.

The electronic greeting came a day late, but the sender assured me that it was still the day of my birthday where he was because of the time difference: a very nice point! Given the prevalence of computers and the way in which all of us are in thrall to the electronic dictatorship of communication around the world; perhaps there should be the internet equivalent of GMT – a sort of internationally recognized cyber time completely divorced from any terrestrial or snail time.

Everyone knows that time spent using a computer is like time spent looking something up in the Guinness Book of Records: you start with a simple evening’s get together being poisoned by vicious arguments developing over simple questions like, “What was the longest strand of spaghetti ever produced?” Before armed conflict breaks out in your dining room you have recourse of the Final Word on Trivia – the aforementioned book. But, it is only when The Book is produced that the real dangers of human interaction reveal themselves.

As the Holy Text is brought into the room each person shows themselves eager to be the devotee to turn the pages and discover the grail of truth. When the Galahad character deemed worthy by the company has wrested The Book unto himself (usually by physical force) then The Searching begins. The methods of find the answer vary from the Divine Intervention approach, that is, opening the book at random and expecting the answer to leap forth to following the helpful comments of whose the company regarding looking at something called the index which is ordered ‘alphabetically’ – a mystical arrangement whose intricacies are explained to the Galahad character by helpful persons reminding him that “’s’ comes after ‘r’ you plonker!” But this advice and information is far too late because the reader has now discovered that there is an entry called, “Road Kill: largest quantity discovered on a one mile stretch” and feels impelled to expound his discovery to others, to their mingled astonishment and delight. Taking heart from this response he goes on to “Retching: highest velocity in insects” and “Rattan mats: greatest number eaten by trained wombats.” At this point the initial question has evaporated from all consciousnesses and the evening is over. Time has gone.

So too with computers. Cyber time is not real; it has its own dynamics and should have its own terminology. Hours, minutes, seconds; they are all interchangeable in cyber space. They have no solidity they cannot be measured by mere clocks, they are the way we touch another universe.

Beware: Christmas is not far away. There are cards involved in that festival too. Interesting, very interesting.

UNO it makes some sort of sense!

Having a birthday on United Nations Day (the 24th of October) gives one an unhealthy interest in the doings of that organization throughout life. You feel a sort of belonging and always have a type of grudging admiration for the ethos behind it and resent the carping criticism of the United Nations by those people who not only do not have a birthday on the 24th of October but also by their vicious denunciations of the whole UN idea never seem to have heard of October itself!

As a secret Romantic (in spite of the brittle shell of ironic distain) you get idealism as an unexpected free gift, so the concept of the Whole World coming together to talk through differences and decide on policies for the betterment of humankind seems obvious and eminently achievable. It therefore comes as an almost personal affront when one country after another parades, demonstrates and vaunts narrow minded sectarian bigotry through the honeyed tones of smug UN ambassadors in the General Assembly. The obvious lies, half truths and cynical spin are breathtaking in their banal splendour as each tin pot (and platinum pot) country mouths some inanity as their ‘contribution’ to the squabbling which passes for debate in New York.

The Security Council, in its way, is worse than the General Assembly. We have Mickey Mouse nations (which, come to think of it is a metaphor which insults Mickey Mouse) taking their turn in the councils of the mighty, while the mighty (including of course the historical anomaly of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland pretending to be a great nation, jealously guarding its permanent status at the high table) browbeat, intimidate and generally push their weight around, while countries like China (how long did it take before their were even allowed to join the UN) pursue a policy of self-interest which makes the British Empire seem positively egalitarian, enlightened and philanthropic.

Soldiers from the contributing nations of the UN are sent into some of the most desperate trouble spots on the planet and are told that they must not, under any circumstances shoot at anyone. The squalid failures of UN ‘peace keeping’ are too numerous and shaming to enumerate.

And what of the Secretaries General? One is tempted to say that there hasn’t been a decent one since Dag Hammarskjöld – and we all know what happened to him.

What are we left with? A deeply flawed organization, constantly on the brink of bankruptcy (thank you USA) sending out inadequate forces (thank you all those countries that have not paid their dues) while bickering grown ups (thank you all the rest) present a picture of our planet which, if submitted to an Inter Galactic Commission of Enquiry would mean our vaporization in nano seconds.

I am reduced to weary despair but, in a very uncharacteristic moment, I turn to the words of that notable war criminal, Churchill, about democracy: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Ditto the UN. Happy Birthday!

We all belong. Don't we?

In the history of British advertising there is one advert and one campaign which are often cited as the perfect example of how not to do it. The art work for the adverts was moody and atmospheric, but as a campaign it was disastrous. It was to advertise a cigarette called ‘Strand’. Based on a Frank Sinatra film, the advert showed actor Terence Brook as the mysterious man lighting up a Strand cigarette on a street corner and declaring, "You're never alone with a Strand".

It was hugely popular and Brook became a celebrity overnight, with the accompanying Lonely Man theme reaching number 39 on the charts. Yet, much as people loved it, they didn't buy the product and the campaign was soon discontinued.

The theory was that viewers believed that if they smoked Strand they would end up as lonely as the chap on the deserted street corner in the commercial.
(For the record, Strand cost 3s 2d (16p) for a packet of twenty at the time.)

I like the irony of the fact that the use of the word ‘alone’ was more powerful than the sense contained in the full line of the advert. ‘You’re never alone’ merely emphasised the isolation of the person trying to pretend to connection.

I feel very much the same when I hear the repeated use in the news, television programmes and on the radio of the word ‘community.’

Everyone has a ‘community.’ It doesn’t matter what ethnic, sexual, political, religious, social, professional, aesthetic, sporting, aspirational, educational or nose picking style you adopt: there is a ready made ‘community’ to surround and succour you. It will be described by journalists; pandered to by politicians; analysed by sociologists; led by ‘community leaders’; and fleeced by the community of cynical entrepreneurs. It will form the basis for a photo shoot in ‘Hello’ magazine or ‘Heat’ and, eventually, the community of radio 4 producers will make an amusing programme listened to by the community of radio 4 listeners.

What, in the name of the living god, is, for example, the Christian Community? Especially, for example, in Rumney? Is it the total number of those people who go to church or chapel in this locality? Or the number of people who say they are Christians? Or the number of people who actually have views which can be related to any of the various religious creeds which are loosely lumped together as Christian? Or those people who have not been to church since they were married or someone died or a kid had to be christened but wouldn’t like to be thought to have no religion at all, even if their ‘theology’ is faulty, heretical and frankly wrong? Does it make any sense at all, in such a disparate group to speak of community at all?

I remember some earnest spokesman in the early days of Gay Liberation telling some frankly startled looking interviewer, “Well, you know, we’re all gay really.” What the hell does that mean? If the man was saying that the whole spectrum of sexuality may be seen as a line with exclusive homosexuality at one end and exclusive heterosexuality at the other and all people can be placed at some point on this imaginary line, then I don’t see any problem in agreeing with this, because it basically means nothing. Any statement about human behaviour which, whether it is right or wrong makes not a jot of difference to understanding of that behaviour is surely irrelevant?

Community, in the way in which that word is used today, suffers the same fate. Am I a member of a bewilderingly multifarious selection of communities? Yeah, why not, bring them on; they are, after all, meaningless.

And I speak as a fully paid up member of the Noble Community of Cynical Gits.

Pin dancing angels?

A question: Who or what links the following names: Domnus, Eusebius, Eustathius, Spyridion, Marcus and Athanasius?

Yes, you’re right, the answer is of course, the First Council of Nicaea. It was ‘Athanasius’ that gave it away, wasn’t it? Too easy.

Well, that wonderfully corrupt council which had so much to do with the modern foundation of the restrictive, authoritarian and repressive organization known as Christianity leaped unbidden to mind today when I, like a modern Hamlet, pondered the empty plastic carton resting lightly in my outstretched hand which had contained the minced beef that had been the basis for a version of fajitas (recipe courtesy of Paul Squared) for our late, late lunch.

Consider: the carton has a frame of plastic with a layered plastic and absorbent base for the meat with a taut cellophane covering the top. Having extracted the meat by making two cuts in the cellophane the problem is not the cooking, but the disposal of the rubbish. Given the Draconian edicts which now govern the lives of most hapless subjects in the Fiefdom of Cardiff, you take your life in your hands when you make the possibly life changing decision of where to place each individual piece of detrius produced during the course of the day.

The rules as laid down in the wording of the Refuse Decree, which was issued just before the Donation of the Double Bins, seems simple enough but, as is so often the case in so many aspects of life, the devil is in the detail. And this is where the significance of the Council of Nicaea and its snappily named participants becomes so relevant to modern life. Constantine called the Council ostensibly to consider theological points so abstruse as to be ridiculous to the vast majority of modern minds, but which were essential to the future development of the religion and the continuation and augmentation of imperial power. The point is that hundreds of theologians came together and worried the essential meaning from questions which seem abstruse to the point of idiocy today.

Those are the guys who we now need at the end of a telephone line in a call centre to give authoritative judgements on the worrying cruces of everyday life. They are the ones who would be able to tell me: given that the plastic frame of the meat container is clearly for the green bin while the plastic sheets are for the black bin; what bin is the correct one for a container which still has the cellophane sheet linked to one side of the container and in which the plastic pad for the blood is still on the bottom.

I don’t think it will be too long before the incorrect placement of rubbish will be seen as a major crime and the dilettante approach which governs most of Britain today towards the problem of waste disposal will be seen as an unbelievably feckless approach by people who, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, seemed to think that they could get away with tinkering with the system instead of root and branch reform. I know that there have been prosecutions for the wrong placement of rubbish, but it is only a matter of time before the jokey, quirky response of most people is replaced by a very real concern and relish as malefactors are justly punished.

A similar situation governs the use of mobile phones by car drivers. Taking Toni to and from work I have never counted fewer than two drivers using mobile phones on each trip and, as I do sometimes look at the road rather than stare malevolently at evil phone users, I must be missing lots of others. White Van Drivers and Male Drivers Under 25 are the usual offenders which makes the implementation of instant decapitation of offenders all the more desirable. This, together with the ignoring of the 30 mph speed limit form the foundation of contempt for the law which permeates the whole approach of the majority of the population of these benighed islands. And then we come to insurance fraud, which is not even remotely perceived as a crime by most. Link that to the mealy mouthed chatter about the war in Iraq! Bah humbug!

I think that this pondering has been brought on by the constant rain today which seems positively vindictive in its intensity. I feel the need to voice the same sentiment as Osvald at the end of ‘Ghosts’ by Ibsen (though, I hasten to add with vastly different motivations and in greatly different circumstances!) “Mother, give me the sun!”