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!”

The sound of music!

‘Guys and Dolls’ is a no-fail musical: good story line; strong tunes; show stoppers; clever lyrics. Toni has to like it. Doesn’t he? Surely? And the sets: I remember the sets; the set for Act 2 got a round of applause. The dance routines were excellent and the ensemble work outstanding. See, it can’t fail to impress. I have to add that this is being written at ten past six, before curtain up at seven thirty with the music from the original National Theatre cast playing on the computer. The only reaction to the music has been, “I hope that isn’t the music for this evening.” But do I doubt the power of this musical to grab an unbeliever by the scruff of the neck and turn them towards the true spotlight? No doubt at all, it will work its magic again as it has in production after production.

. . .

Well, it did up to a point. Toni must be the only person in the whole history of the production of ‘Guys and dolls’ who came out singing a musical phrase to the words ‘guys and dolls’ which wasn’t actually in the show. Toni is a man who can listen to the show stopping number, ‘Sit down, you’re rocking the boat’ and come out singing his own composition. In fact he has gone on relentlessly singing that phrase so much that I found myself giving voice to it! Chico malo!

The production itself was fine: a worthy production of one of my favourite musicals. The sets were not as impressive as I remembered from the previous National Theatre production, though I think that I was probably easily impressed by the outline lights which made up the shape of the distant skyscrapers. I expect rather more these days!

The singing was generally underpowered and the male voices lacked character and distinction. This was particularly clear in the number sung by Sky, ‘Luck be a lady tonight!’ where the rendition was poor: the voice lacking in projection and a lack of definition in many parts of the limited register for that song. It was a poor vocal performance, though a cleverly choreographed scene.

The choreography came into its own during the Havana sequence which was a delight throughout. The staging was relatively simple consisting of a series of tables and a board topped bar stage left, but the way in which the tables and chairs were brought on and the way that the bar was utilised for some spectacular dance set pieces was imaginative and exciting.

I’ve seen better!

The Japanese take away at the end of the evening was more of an overall success.

Talking of food, I would like you to consider the simple act of eating yogurt.

I am old enough to remember a ‘Blue Peter’ programme presenter explaining how to build something which used an empty plastic yogurt pot, “if you have them in your area,” and, in Cardiff, we didn’t; except of course in Howells where they could be bought from the food hall, but not in plastic cartons and the yogurt was only live and wholesome.

Anyway, those were the olden days, and this is now. Now we have aisles loaded with different types of yogurt with a bewildering array of additives, some of which you can actually see!

What is it about yogurt that divides people so completely into distinct groups? It is, after all, a fairly simple action (or series of actions) which will lead to the consumption of yogurt.

But consider the decisions that have to be made and techniques which have to be employed before the completion of the eating experience.
First the choice. How do you choose your yogurt? Forget, for a moment about the fat content, the fruit percentage, the type of ‘extras’ etc; just concentrate on the flavour. What influences your decision? This is where the budding sociologist (or nosey parker) comes into his own.

There is a basic division between the ‘I don’t care’ type and ‘I only eat strawberry’ (and it always is strawberry) type. I am of the ‘I don’t care’ type though I do have a problem with banana yogurt. Y problem is that I don’t really like banana yogurt until I actually eat it, and then I am surprise at how tasty it is. And I respond like this all the time; this is one eating experience which I don’t really learn from. Even writing this down, I know the next time that I am offered a yogurt and might be given (because I will have said that I don’t mind which variety) a banana yogurt I will feel disappointment and slight revulsion, I will however start eating it and, yet again, be surprised by the pleasant taste. People who only eat one type of yogurt and like people with no music in their souls and should not be trusted; give me time and I will think up a quotation from Shakespeare to give credence to this prejudice.

The next level of difference is found in the way in which people take off the yogurt top. For the sake of this analysis I am assuming that we are talking about the simple, taut foil covering found on most pots.

There are basically three types of people designated by their chosen method of decapitation of the pot:
1. Careless rip
2. Careful pull
3. Composite
The ‘careless rip’ is the full blooded rending of the metallic covering which results in fragmentation of the lid and sometimes the splattering of yogurt over a greater surface area than would seem to be possible from the volume of yogurt contained in the small pot.
The ‘careful pull’ person looks for the small semicircle of extra lid which is designed for the thumb and index finger to gain a purchase to ensure, through steady pressure, the complete satisfaction of an entire lid extraction in one piece.

The ‘composite’ describes the immature and rushed approaches to yogurt consumption preparation where the person does not look for the little semicircle (see above) and uses heretical methods for removal including; punching a hole in the lid with the spoon; poking a finger through the lid; using a nail to find the edge of metal (painful) or use the nail to cut round the rim like a can opener (painful, bloody and ineffective); giving the pot to someone else with a winsome smile of engaging helplessness (pathetic); squeezing the pot to dislodge the lid (explosive).

Once the lid is in the possession of the potential eater, either in its complete (or ‘correct’) form of its fragmented (or ‘jagged’) form, the next discriminator is what you do with the yogurt on the underside of the lid.

Again there are three types of person:
1. The licker
2. The scraper
3. The waster

You are only a true ‘licker’ if you are prepared to lick the (quite surprising) amount of yogurt which adheres to the under surface, no matter who you are in company with. It becomes a sort of statement of your view of society and a defiant act of individuality.

The ‘scraper’ has obviously been “brung up be ’and” and is still hearing the Voice of Mother in his ear. This is of course no more polite than licking if you take three or four minutes to scrape every particle of yogurt from the lid, ignoring the disbelieving stares of anyone around you.

The ‘waster’ throws the lid away. Such a person is beneath contempt and doesn’t realise that there are lots of people in the world who would have been very happy to have had that and been very grateful for the treat.

Don’t get me started on how people actually eat the pot of yogurt! Especially when they have got all the easy bits out and there are only the ridges of yogurt left in those inexplicable grooves in the pot put there my malicious designers who like to spread misery where they can.

This is longer than usual because for the umpteenth night in succession there is football on the television and there is only so much a person can take. To morrow is Barca against Real Madrid. God help us all!

A place in the sun?

I am typing this to the accompaniment of the voices on the television discussing which house to buy on the Costa Brava. “Brits,” we have been told, “have been coming here for forty years.” A bit longer than that: I came to the Costa Brava with my parents and uncle and aunt in 1958. I think that my (full board) 14 day holiday cost the same as four coffees and two Belgian brownies in Costa Coffee today. Progress, eh?

Progress is the one thing that is not being applied to the house sale in Rumney. I think that the viewing yesterday was the last this season and we will be looking to next spring before any money finally rests comfortably in my bank account. I remain, defiantly, optimistic. In a way. Up to a point. A bit.

The programme on Archie Griffiths was delivered by Ceri today on a DVD. No problem there, not with the number of gadgets that I have which thrive on such gleaming discs. Which machine to use to be given the honour of showing me the life and times of this neglected painter? As it happened all of them. Not one of the bloody drives would even recognise that there was anything on the disc.

Many years ago there was a battle royal between apparently mature electrical companies who both had ways of storing moving pictures on magnetic tape. They both thought that their individual systems were the best, so . . .

Once upon a time there were kind groups of people who ran companies and they really cared about their customers and wanted only the best for them; they didn’t want to waste their own, or anyone else’s resources so, rather than fighting and squabbling they sat down like grown ups and discussed their products and finally said that one way of doing things was the best and that everyone would produce wonderful machines all of which would use the same system and no one would buy anything which would be obsolescent and then soon obsolete.

Now, that’s what I call a sentence! And if you believe that, then you’ll believe what that long winded sentence says and also believe that Apple Macintosh actually thought up their own operating system rather than stealing it from someone else just like the new version of Windows. Or you’ll be what we realists call childish.

Because, of course, the disc did not play because it wasn’t being played back on the system that created it and, in spite of the fact that my laptop plays just about any form of disc, plus or minus, divided or multiplied – it didn’t play this one. So, now I’ll have to go cap in hand to S4C to ask nicely if they can give me a copy of the programme. I look forward to the challenge! I’m sure that they won’t take the fact of my being a monoglot English speaking Welshman as in any way an obstacle. We will see.

Adding to my generally high level of grumpiness was my repeated attempt to try and get in touch with Vodafone – wait for it – Customer Service. I pause to search for the right word to describe the designation of ‘Customer Service’ when applied to 191 on the Vodafone network. ‘Misnomer’ has a good ring to it (pun) but sounds too well mannered; ‘Paradox’ seems to link philosophy to prosaic ineptitude; ‘Irony’ – no, that ascribes a sense of humour to a system which is automated and, when it cuts you off, manages to say, with a bright and cheerful voice, “Thank you for calling!”; ‘Deception’ seems to be on the right track, but too gentle; LIE – yes, that’s it! ‘Lie,’ stinking lie! That has the ring of truth to it! God rot them all to the pits of hell. If anyone out there has phoned ‘Customer Services’ on Vodafone and got through, do tell. I have spent the better part of the day making spasmodic efforts to contact the Masters of Telephonic Deception. It is a good thing that I have discovered the loudspeaker feature on my new mobile otherwise I would have had to waste the whole of my attention on the futile task of trying to GTAH (get to a human) in this automated universe.

Speaking to Gaynor, who was looking for reassurance that she was on the right lines in her approaches to her teaching of English (she was by the way) brought back some of the snap on attitudes of my past life. Odd. Not unpleasant, but not something which tempted me to jump at (more away from) Gaynor’s suggestion that I could find any amount of teaching from the various agencies which exist to keep our rickety system in place. That was shudder making! Not for me, not here, not now.

Cover up

Thank God for friends like Ceri who phones up to let me know that Peter Lord’s programme on Archie Griffiths (the painter) is on S4C, translates the programme blurb for me and has offered to record it for me. Why, you may ask, do I, an eager cultural dilettante, have to have the programme recorded for me? Why can I not record it for myself? I have, after all, a video recorder.

The answer to this situation is to be found in Stamford Bridge – where Chelsea is playing Barcelona. Toni is, at this moment, with shaking hands, making a milk shake with all the nonchalant calm of Attila the Hun trying to decide which burning village to use to roast his marshmallows before dunking them in his sanguine Ovaltine. He is, it must be admitted, a little tense.

For him it is very simple: Barcelona are the Chosen Ones of God while José Mourinho is the anti-Christ and his team a rag bag selection of cheaters and overrated, unprofessional nonentities. The fact that I also have an opinion about this game and the relative merits of each manager and of members of their teams; that I know the colour of Barcelona’s away strip; that I can name and defend my choice of favourite Barca player [Puyol by the way, though I am not unimpressed by the brilliant skills of Messi and Ronaldinho, but Puyol is constantly impressive and dependable]; that I have watched more football in the last few years than I have in the whole of the rest of my life – is more than astonishing, it is, um, uncharacteristic, but, it is something that I will have to live with. You never know, in time, I might even begin to like football. (Only joking, Toni!)

The continuing debate about the wearing of the full face veil is constantly interesting. The quality of debate is not scintillating but the political background and the desperate positioning of various politicians (who are obviously paranoid about being wrong footed on the wrong side of a divide that they don’t really comprehend) is little short of farcical. I can’t help feeling that this question is not the most pressing in Britain today but, being cynical, it does allow a populist twist away from the main debate on the Iraq war so that the essential elements in this wrong headed conflict are swamped by a ‘which side are you on’ debate in which vital considerations are reduced to the bicycle shed/atomic power station level. You know the sort of thing. Parkinson in one of his laws said that the amount of debate on a particular subject is in inverse proportion to the number of people who have any technical knowledge about the matter being discussed. So, everyone knows about bicycle sheds and everyone has an opinion and a strongly held point of view which they express at great length, whereas the complexity of a nuclear power station leaves most of us behind, so the whole complex is passed through committee on the nod.

The Islamic veil for women is obvious and clearly visible. The links with masks, balaclavas, and hoodies: all covers associated with negative sometimes criminal, certainly anti social activities. The choice therefore, for most the population is relatively simple: hiding the face means something to hide means danger.

From what I have been able to glean the full veil is not stipulated in the Koran; it is not a statement of the Prophet it is not an undisputed piece of Islamic tradition. I further understand that there is a considerable amount of debate within the faith about the veil. With an open display in an open society, discussion by non Islamic folk is not prejudice, it is a right.

Like so much of women’s clothing: tight skirts, very short skirts, delicate stockings, corsets, cramped shoes, high heeled shoes, the use of cosmetics, the growing of long fingernails – all of these, seem to me to be yet another way of subjugating women in making their ‘appropriate’ appearance something which limits their movement and freedom. The blatant differences between the dress of men and women in some Islamic dominated societies emphasises the dominant position of men and the subordinate position of women. I do not find it strange that some Islamic women embrace the hajib and burka and paradoxically claim that they are liberating; didn’t some women organise themselves against the suffragettes who were fighting for votes for women when women were lumped with criminals, lunatics and the House of Lords in not having the vote.

I was interested to listen to one British woman who had taken to wearing the full burka in spite of the fact that her own mother did not wear it. One commentator suggested that it was the fact that this woman had grown up in a liberal democracy that had, paradoxically, encouraged her to become more restrictive. A society which allowed her to consider her own sense of identity in a society of multiple identities, where individuality is encouraged, allowed her to assume a more demonstrative version of a position that she felt could be more central and help her respond to the challenge of an open society.

To be frank I find the burka sinister and restricting; it does suggest a complete rejection of a whole way of life and society. It reminds me of the arrogance of the English in India who defiantly dressed as though they were in the Home Counties; a complete rejection of the values and importance of the people they were among. I relished reading an account of a viceregal ball in India where the ladies were in full evening dresses and the men in full evening dress and both sets of them dripping in torrents of sweat almost immediately as the evening commenced. An absurd assertion of irrelevant

How is the wearing of the burka different? A defiant assertion of difference? A provocative rejection of a different version of society? A glaring sexism? A symbol of devotion? This easy-to-join-in-debate will run and run.

I am reading an excellent book called “When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple” (ISBN: 0-918949-16-5) a compilation of writing and photographs of “women living in their later years.” The title is taken from the opening line of Jenny Joseph’s poem ‘Warning.’ It is edited by Sandra Haldeman Martz and has contributions from a whole range of people I have never heard of, but have much enjoyed reading. As an example of the little delights that await in this volume, take the poem ‘In Conclusion’, the last of a series of short poems in a sequence entitled, ‘A Place for Mother’ by Joanne Seltzer.

IN CONCLUSION

Not wanting to be a burden
on your children
you sign yourself into a nursing home.

You become active
in every group
and serve on every committee.

You are voted
resident-of-the-month,
a role model.

Mother would be proud of you.

Fallen Idols

The future viceroy of India, George Nathaniel Curzon, as part of his failed attempt to become leader of the Conservative Party was advised to try some of the things which ‘ordinary’ people had to put up with. So he tried to catch a bus. He hated it because, as he told one of his colleagues, the driver wouldn’t take him where he demanded to go. Didn’t really understand the principles of bus routes and was antipathetic to the whole idea of the common herd. I felt something of the same rejection travelling by bus myself today.

Before you get too aerated about my snobbishness, I am perfectly aware of bus routes and payment and having to stop for other people etc. No, the cause of my discomfort was an elderly gentleman wearing jam pot glasses, with dirty grey hair and whose right arm and hand were grasping a crutch. No, again, nothing to do with disability but everything to do with proximity.

Finding a seat on a bus is a very specialised skill. Not all seats are the same, as Orwell wrote; some seats are more equal than others. Choose the wrong one and you invite people to seat themselves next to you. Some seats incorporate the wheel arch of the tyres into the floor and thereby limit your leg room; some seats are at a different level to others and are not as comfortable; some are narrower, but two seats are excellent. These seats are the ones which are at 90˚ to the rest of the seating facing the luggage storage area. These seats have vertical bars, are elevated and relatively spacious. I took one of these seats at once and, as any boy brought up by a mother like mine would do, looked back along the bus to see if there were spare places which would tempt passengers to sit and not stand, thereby demanding a polite offering of my seat to them. Safe. Plenty of seats, though some of them had people sitting on the outside protecting their inner space.

So, the old guy got on, ignored the spaces further down the bus and parked himself opposite me. What could I do? I offered him my seat at once. And he refused! So, for the majority of the journey I was sitting down with a disabled person standing opposite me.

This is exactly the situation which the phrase ‘exquisite discomfort’ was invented to define. Stop after stop came and went with aged people (it was after 9.30 in the morning so the grey free bus passes were out in force) seeing me sitting down with crutch user swaying gently in my vicinity. He also engaged me in totally incomprehensible ‘conversation’ or monologue as I am used to defining it, to which I smilingly added, from time to time like a Greek chorus of one, the word, ‘yes’. This word has stood me in good stead throughout the version of the world that I have travelled. Thinking about it, it has also got me into some tight spots from time to time, but generally speaking, I come out on top. Which may also be related to some of those tricky situations, to which I alluded, but, let it pass, let it pass? I even pretended to be asleep to avoid eye contact and gibberish translation. It was positive relief when he got off.

The Job Centre person was, as last time, not at his post, so I plonked myself down and waited. He soon bustled in, still wearing that dirty coat, put down his cup of tea, ignored me (again) and went through the lengthy process of changing his glasses, starting the computer and, as a small courtesy gesture today, burped.

Not a penny has passed from the coffers of the state into my humble bank account and, after listening to the only enthusiasm that Dirty Coat Wearer allowed himself (another paean of praise to the Welsh radio personality that he listens to in the morning) and then his only piece of real advice to go to a telephone and press ‘E’ and speak to the disembodied voice. This done and a further telephone call to another disembodied voice in Newport and it turns out that the fault of the lack of cash is to be found in the tardy attitude of my past employers. Though, when they were contacted, they denied any communication with the Newport office; backwards and forwards with myself as the go-between. I think that I have now put these two organisations in touch with each other and I await developments with interest but little hope.

My purchase of The Big Issue was, as usual, a good buy with variety being the spice of life once again. One article that I read with interest and fury was entitled, ‘Battle Royal’ and concerned the ruminations of Jeremy Paxman about the monarchy.

Once a committed republican he now seems to be wavering in his opinions: “Of course I think they [the Royal Family] are democratically indefensible, utterly illogical and a product of history; all these things are true. But among other things, what are we supposed to replace it with if we ever get that far? It seems to me that most of the stable countries in Europe are monarchies. Where is the great model that’s out there? Do you want a president? Do you want the idea of our state wrapped up in a flag, religion or a slogan? Is it not better to have a figurehead that’s removed from the grasp of politicians wanting to satisfy their own ambitions?”

I find this depressing, he is using facile arguments which, as he has already highlighted the element of the illogical he feels that that is a point made and conceded. The Royal Family keeps this country in an almost infantile condition, as exemplified by Paxman’s “what are we supposed to replace it with” a plaintive cry of a frightened child frightened by the dark of a lack of political imagination. I do not take my understanding of whom or what I am, or what my country is by reference to a dysfunctional set of arrogant, overpaid parasites. Whatever their personal qualities their supine acquiescence in the costly charade of monarch damns them irremediably.

He also responds to the nauseating outpouring of saccharine grief on the death of the Queen Mother by suggesting that it is our ‘familiarity’ with the Royal Family that encourages this identification. The Queen Mother never gave interviews, apparently after some impertinent reporter was rude to her in the 1930s, she maintained this breathtaking stance of studied superiority throughout most of her life – and, astonishingly, was loved for it. Going to London at the time that her body (one almost feels that one should capitalize those words, Her Body, sounds so much more appropriate) was lying in state, the sight of the meandering crowds of people waiting to get a glimpse of her coffin made me ashamed to be British. I do sympathise with the family in their loss, but that little woman meant nothing to me or mine, except for the very real symbolism of a false distinction between the adulation given to her generally empty life of sterile ‘duty’ and the world in which the vast majority of her so-called subjects live. As I have always said, much as I hate and loathe Margaret Thatcher (the candle I have of her is waiting to be burnt on the occasion of her death) I have infinitely more respect for her and her real achievements than for any member of the British Royal Family. British people demean themselves by citing spurious justifications for their continued existence.

That’s better!

Tomorrow a viewing: so much depends on what happens in these next few months that, were I to think too closely on it, I would go mad, my masters.

Consumers fight back!

tpsonline.org.uk

I start with this web site address because it is the way that you can stop unwanted telephone calls from companies which are trying to sell you something you don’t want. It says it takes up to 28 days to activate, but if it cuts down on those nagging calls from foreign call centres asking you about you mobile phone. The process is very simple and takes a couple of minutes. Do it!

If only all my other grumps were as easy to foil! I suppose that I am being naïf and believing that it will work. I live in hope – which also goes for the people who are coming to view the house this Wednesday: well, hope on my side anyway! If they buy then I could be in Catalonia by Christmas. I shall gaze at the picture of the sea in Castelldefels again!

In spite of having had to visit the dentist today for the replacement of a chunk of tooth which cracked away from the molar just as the dentist was closing on Friday, I still feel optimistic. Perhaps it’s the drugs, though I am not sure that ‘euphoria’ was one of the side effects listed for blood pressure medicine!

Tomorrow is my ‘sign on’ day again. At least I have (at last) managed to get the doctor’s letter (which was written on the 5th of October) so God knows what it has been doing drifting about the in trays of the administration in the surgery; that grey never-never land in any organization. For me, when I was working in Cardiff Planning Department as the lowest of the low, just before I went to University, I had my own little grey area of administration. As a filing clerk all that I was supposed to do was check the numeric designation in the right hand corner of any official letter and then place the letter in the appropriate numeric file. This was a simple and foolproof system - as long as the people in the office actually used it. Of course, they didn’t. So when a letter arrived in my demesne and my eager eyes lighted on the right hand corner and searched in vain for a clue as to where I should put the bloody thing, I had to make an executive decision about the content of the letter and then place it in the appropriate file. Considering the fact that I had only just joined the Planning Department and knew nothing of what it was doing, having the communications system of the place in the control of the person least qualified to understand what was going on was not, to say the least, the most intelligent piece of placement in the history of the administration of Cardiff.

Not being totally stupid a cursory glance at the heading of the letter might sometimes give a gentle clue so, for example, a letter headed, ‘Car Parking in the CDA’ might, fairly safely, be placed in the car parking file. Others however were not so clear cut and I resorted to photocopying some letters and placing them in multiple files to cover, as it were, my options.

It soon dawned on me, however, that this approach was tripling or in some case quadrupling my work load. A new method was called for, so I instituted, a la De Vinci Code, les dossiers secretes, or the bottom drawer of my desk. So any difficult letter that arrived for me to file went straight into the bottom drawer and I waited for someone to ask if I could work out where a certain letter could be. I would wait for them to leave my office and then les dossiers secrete would be consulted and then the letter would be magically produced. As far as I know that bottom exists still, probably integrated into the new system in a completely new planning department! Probably the whole desk had to be carried to its new venue complete and intact.

I wonder if I will be subjected to the unreconstructed worker again in the Job Centre. I will be fascinated to see if he has developed over the last two weeks. Perhaps he might say hello this time, you never know, he might have had some in service training since the last time. Of such small moments is my life made up now!

Keep or discard?

How much does a wooden spoon cost? Not much, surely? So why does it take such an effort to throw one out when it is cracked or broken? Today I have finally relegated (to the recycling bin) an ancient, blackened, disfigured and frankly slimy wooden spoon. I am not from West Wales, or Scotland or any of the other racist inspired stereotypically mean locations, why do I find it such a major deal to throw away something which is, finally, easily replaceable? God knows.

But, thinking about it, there is a whole series of other domestic necessities which also have inordinately long shelf lives.

Take tea cloths: not a major expense, yet I’ve seen threadbare examples in homes where the owners would think nothing about discarding the tail end of the salmon and the ends of the cheeses at the termination of a meal. Tea towels which seem to have negative capabilities of soaking up water from dishes are treasured by families that throw away Christmas cake before the alcohol in it has allowed them fully to mature – the cakes and the families! Flannels too: surely people can tell that when a flannel is more like the feel and consistency of a flat fish, then it is probably time for a change, but not, the DNA treasuring scrap of cloth is prized in the same way as the Shroud of Turin!

Then we come to clothes. How often to single straight men buy their own underpants? If it was left to them they would probably still be struggling to wear the last pair bought by their mums.

And cutlery: when the stuff that you use day by day would not look out of place in a greasy spoon restaurant then perhaps it is time to consider changing one of the ways in which others judge you. The first and most important way in which you are instantly judged (and inevitably, never forgvien) is, of course, how many and what titles of books you have in your living room. If you have none, then you should be cast into the physical outer darkness that obviously mirrors your already existing spiritual one.

And lastly sheets. I know that, somewhere, there exists either upstairs, or in the possessions now in the careful charge of Messrs. Pickfords, a sheet with the utility mark on it. If you have to ask what that mark actually signifies, then you would be far too shocked to know what it signifies in terms of age. If you too have such sheets then you will be familiar with the, “it may be a sign of age but it is also a sign of quality” argument [a varient on the "they don't make them like that any more" defence] which allows you to keep it proudly as an icon of class and prudence. Isn’t semantics a comforting thing?

I’m sure that you have your own (justified) keepings. I wonder what they are.

I have just watched ‘Geisha’ and have been mightily disappointed with it. If you discard the Japanese setting and concentrate on the basic story line then it is little more than ‘poor orphan girl goes though hardships but eventually gets her prince.’ The sententious voice over did not make the narrative thrust any more convincing. There were elements of almost gritty realism which could have made a much better film, but the cherry blossom was never very far away from this saccharine take on Cinderella.

I phoned the Carphonewarehouse (is it all one word?) about the non gleaming of the required blue backlight on the Motorola phone and was told that there was a ambient light sensor on the phone which will stop the backlight coming on to preserve battery life. A live test in the darkness this evening has proved that the light does come on when the darkness is profound, but I would want the light to come on during twilight too, what with my eyesight and everything.

I am getting nearer to my second ‘signing on’ experience. So the weeks pass and nothing, not a single penny is thrust in my direction. I wonder how long they will take before they come to any decision on my case? The story continues.

For dinner this evening we had as a main course what is usually an accompanying vegetable in Spain. It was delicious so the recipe follows.

Ingredients.
2 tins broad beans
1 small black pudding
pkt of smoked bacon
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
vegetable stock cubes
small onion
four cloves garlic

Method:
Put a little oil in a saucepan and add the bacon cut into smallish pieces. Allow to cook for a short time then add chopped onion, chopped garlic and the fennel seeds. Stir and cook over a moderate heat
Dice and add the black pudding. Cook until the onion is transparent.
Add the stock cubes mixed in a cup of boiling water. Stir the mixture ensuring that the bottom of the saucepan is clear. Add the broad beans and lower the heat. When the beans are fully warmed, serve in a bowl with fresh bread.

Serves two as a main meal, or six as a starter or tapa.

Food and futility

Basque broth: sounds good, especially in a restaurant like Le Monde where the deliberate policy of the place is to push the price up a bit so that the lesser breeds without the law go to the other two places rather than pollute the expenses account eaters of the upper stories.

The basic ingredients of the soup were calamari, chorizo, tomato, onion, celery, pepper. You can’t really go wrong. Except they did. It was supposed to be a starter but we had it as a main. The chorizo (according to Toni) was not Spanish (he suspected German) the calamari was hard and rubbery; the surrounding sauce was bland, though perhaps a hint of smoked paprika. Disappointing. I could make better: fresh calamari, addition of diced potato, a few small shelled prawns and I thought two or three capers. With a glass of white Rioja and French bread we still ended up paying a tenner each. I think we resented it.

We passed the time studying the Christmas menu: how much (How much?) and what you get. The key expense is always the wine. In general, if you compare British with Spanish meals then, because the wine is always included in the price in the Spanish version, you are always better off in the peninsular. And if you drink enough the food is irrelevant. So I’m told.

I’ve been reading ‘The Gods of Mars’ by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of Tarzan etc. I knew that he wrote sci-fi stories as well, but this is the first time that I have actually read one. This is one of a vast series, it was written as a serial in the All-Story Magazine during 1913 from January to May, and published as a novel in book form in 1919. It is absolute rubbish, though I have to admit that I didn’t actually stop reading it and I was actually interested to know what happened in the end. Not so much to find out if the hero survived (the story is told from notes that the hero had given to his nephew before he returned to Mars after he had apparently risen from the dead – don’t ask!) but rather to find out how the plot was resolved.
The hero of the story is John Carter a Viking like superman subject to fits of bloodlust, but deeply moral in a muscular Christianity sort of way. The thrust of the story is of a discovery that people of Mars have been hoodwinked by religion for thousands of years and the redoubtable John Carter is the one to break superstition and bring a new freedom to the population of the planet. The myths are takes on well tried religious stories using Christian and Classical elements to bring interest to the narrative.

The true interest is centred on the approach to the different racial aspects of the protagonists in the novel. The lying priestly caste turns out to be composed of self seeking indolent white supremacists; they turn out to be only one part of a further layer of exploitation by a race of black pirates, who in turn are held in thrall by a hideous black hag pretending to be a goddess; they are also cannibals, eating the white girls that they steal. 1913 – Makes you think. The heroes of Mars are, of course, red – while the original races (formed from the mutated Tree of Life) were white and yellow with the green people being savages. It’s all very complicated and I’m sure reflects more of Burroughs society and mores than any literary influences. All the blacks are wiped out, and the priests and the hideous hag is thrown to the people she has duped. Haggard does this sort of thing so much better and Gagool in ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ is a much more satisfying creation than Issus, Goddess of Death and of Life Eternal! Having said all that, I do want to know what happens when the Temple of the Sun finally revolves for a year to open the cell into which Dejah Thoris, Thuvia and Phaidor have been placed. Did Phaidor manage to drive her dagger into Dejah Thoris, or did Thuvia manage to interpose herself in a particularly selfless fatal act of love? Sad, isn’t it?

Talking of sadness, the much vaunted new mobile of a certain Catalan has not been performing with the correct amount of luminescent blueness that had been expected: the backlight, the blue backlight, is intermittent and does not leap into action with the touching of the keys. We have tried everything and nothing is working. He is ready to give it back: bad news!

Pleasure is based on pain

Teachers are often forced to use the term ‘peer pressure’ to try to explain away to indulgent middle class ostrich-like parents some of the ways in which the blameless fruit of their loins behave when placed in the hell holes known as schools. It allows parents the barrier of hiding their naughty kids behind the excuse which involves the seemingly irresistible effects of evil hordes of other people’s children forcing their little angels into anti-social behaviour which is so different from that which they habitually exhibit at home (sic).

Too often it is an effortlessly easy method of using a reason which satisfies all parties in a disciplinary situation from actually making an effort to discover the real motivations.

I know that I sound a little Manichean and heretical, the thoughts after all do suggest a ‘dyed in the wool’ innate, badness of character in the human (especially in the young human) condition. Far be it from me to bring upon myself the wrath of an anti-Albigensian crusade (the Languedoc has bled enough) but, surely, there is enough imagination left in the world to consider that some folk must just accept their responsibilities and admit that sometimes we just do wrong because we do.

Forget looking for an infinite number of sociological, psychological, physiological, historical, cultural, religious, or any other reasons – we’re bad because we are like that for some of the time; and then we’re not. That is the Human Condition; pure and simple.

All of that has been brought on by mobile phones. Now my linkage with the evil little gadgets goes back some time and, as soon as they were within the bounds of reason to buy, I bought one. Unfortunately, I bought it as a gadget icon rather than as something which was actually useful. I remember that I was pleased with the svelte beauty of the thing (compare with the utilitarian massiveness of the GPO attempts at mobile phones of yesteryear, but I think that I rather thought that they should sort of run themselves and not need any sort of maintenance, or power, or top up, or telling people that I actually owned one of them. The fact that I knew that I owned one was enough. And, I have never lost my detestation for people actually using them in public; for which they were designed. I know, I know: illogical, counter intelligent etc.

But I do believe that the law which states that people cannot use their mobile phone while driving should be extended to all those in the car and all those who are in public. All ring tones of public phones should be banned at once and only the vibrate setting be allowed.

I think that there should be padded, enclosed phone kiosks for those people who, knowing by the vibrations that someone has tried to reach them, feel the need to contact their caller before returning to their domestic havens.

Any public misuse of a mobile phone (that is, any public use) should be punishable by immediate confiscation of the phone and its public burning by a specially appointed Savonarolaesque custodian of morals.

The owner of the phone should also be heavily fined (the fine being the equivalent of the full price of the mobile phone or the full cost of a 12 month contract; whichever is the higher) and be prohibited from owning a mobile phone for five years, or, in the case of a person of over 25 years of age [as they should have known better] 10 years prohibition from ownership. {Not sure about the use of the preposition in that sentence.}

So I am in the paradoxical, contradictory situation of owning a mobile phone while not actually approving their existence. Thinking about it that goes for much of modern life. Consider for a moment the sheer weight of possessions by which we surround ourselves and which we resent: irons, Hoovers, toilet brushes, spare rooms not used as libraries, road tax discs, umbrellas, dinner jackets, fish ponds, washing machines and oxo cubes – the ordinary stuff of life. Yet we put up with it all.

As this screed moves to its conclusion I am finding the strength to combat the almost overwhelming pressure that I am coming under to replace my little Toshiba mobile. Although my phone is unusual, it is, perhaps, prosaic. It does not have the sleek beauty and ergonomic elegance of, say, a Motorola SL7 Red. It also does not have the 5% donation to charity that the previously mentioned phone possesses. I am too scared to look too closely at the range of features that the phone has in case the case for my acquiring one becomes too much. I am resisting now with a supreme effort of will, not helped by the gleeful boasting of my partner who is rejoicing in the flaunting of the phone with a smugness which makes the normal domestic tabby look like Albert Schweitzer. Unfortunately, tomorrow is, as they say, another day and the day after that is also a day in which I will be able to satisfy my gadget longing.

It’s going to be a long, long weekend – not least because I have broken a tooth and the first appointment I can get is 10.30 am on Monday.

Live the Conrad Nightmare!

Thank God for the verities of life in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland! When your train is leaving Cardiff Central at 08.55 and you are in St Mary Street at 08.55 then only a non-native of these benighted islands would despair. Of course First Great Western were late: they’re trains and they’re British. What else is to know? As an added extra the company even provided an apocalypse-like entry into Reading when day was turned into night with the storm lashing the poor train! At least Clarrie had made it to the shelter of the station before the elements pummelled the earth. So much for England!

I was more than impressed with the fish shop to which I was taken by Clarrie: the range of fish available was astonishing. Clarrie, with her usual understated approach to food limited her choice to a few selected items which are illustrated below. Delicious!

The house is prime for development; it is being brought back to life after a sojourn as student rented accommodation, with the ministrations of Clarrie and Mary. I’m sure that, given time, the blank canvas of the house will be glowing with expensive colours: I know that to be true – I’ve seen the paint pots! From the horizontal living style of Brixton they have now migrated to a more vertical style of existence in Reading: three stories of picture space!

It is always a joy when Clarrie makes my financial management look like something straight jacketed by the IMF; she used my looking for the Motorola L7 Red for Toni as an excuse to purchase a very expensive Blackberry phone with e mail capability, full keyboard and coffee making facilities. We developed an elaborate strategy for telling Mary about this purchase but were hoist with our own petard when the time fell through. Mary also was not impressed when she found out that the state of the art photo printer (which she thought I had brought with me) was actually a ‘present to myself’ from Clarrie! Such larks, Pip Old Chap!

The journey home was the usual late night train horror. The train was late (gosh!) and empty but with selected lewd fellows of a baser sort. The glaring oddities this evening were a couple of drunks; a younger and an older. The younger glasses wearing, bleary eyed, slurred speaking disgrace slumped against the older one caressing his bald head and giving him inexpert kisses from time to time. As they were directly in front of me and facing me, it was difficult to avoid looking at them and, more depressingly, hearing them. Thank God for the ipod and short sightedness: the one blanks out inane speech and the other converts all sights into a soothing blur. Of course, given Sod’s Law, they stayed until Cardiff.

It was depressingly late by the time the taxi finally pulled into Rumney and I had that sort of alert tiredness which luckily converts into somnolence as soon as your head touches the pillow.

Up with the lark (as long as you consider larks sluggish and resentful) and waiting to phone Ceri to go to Phil’s exhibition. The same Sod’s Law (see above) ensured that the exhibition was closed by the time we got there for a three hour lunch break: 12 to 3: what civilization!

To make up for this disappointment we went to the Museum to look at Cedric Morris’s paintings to see if they match my flower painting. I have to say that they did. I wasn’t impressed with the paintings but there is a generic similarity, perhaps I should take this further; not sure how.

One of Cedric’s (Sir Cedric’s) paintings showed an industrial scene with dark satanic mills; they were childishly portrayed and the impasto with which he paints is distasteful to sight. I thought of Lowry’s depictions and looked around for the Museum’s example and neither of us could find it. I asked one of the Museum guards and she said that she would take me there at once and walked purposely towards a large Kyffin canvas and it was only when she got there that she admitted her mistake. I must admit that I was revising my knowledge of Lowry before I saw that she was wrong!

Paella for dinner: Toni’s comments? “Too many things and not enough rice.” I’ll keep trying.

Honesty: the best policy?

Once upon a time there was a sort-of-retired-teacher who went down to the centre of Cardiff to look at an exhibition of paintings.

He liked paintings and he had lots of pretentious things to say to the owner of the gallery about the canvases on the walls. When he had seen his fill of the art he decided to go to have lunch in a posh restaurant.

He went to the Hilton and had a very good starter made up of lots of lovely things and then he had a main course which was calves’ livers with Cumberland sausage and crispy bacon with vegetables cut into geometric shapes. He was very naughty and had a glass of red wine as well!

When he had eaten his main course the waiter asked him if he wanted to have a pudding. He knew that the puddings were very attractive, because he had seen them all laid out when he went to get his starter.

He thought and thought and just as he was about to make a decision the hotel fire alarm went off and everyone had to leave the restaurant by the nearest available exit!

He had finished his meal (really) and he was outside on the street. How easy it would have been for him to just walk off and not pay. He even had his bag with him which he had picked up before he left!

What do you think he did? Did he blend in with the passers by or did he go back and pay for the food he had eaten? What do you think?

Well, it was a bloody good thing I did go back, because I had left my mobile phone on the table in the restaurant.

Never let it be said that honesty didn’t have an immediate pay back.

The exhibition was in the Kooywood Gallery in Museum Place and Phil Parry was exhibiting a series of oils on canvas under the title of ‘Horizons.’

Although better known as a portrait painter, these paintings were devoid of people and were all landscapes, most of them seascapes. He had particularly concentrated on the painting of water and clouds. He had chosen a portrait format for the pictures and, as he wrote in the catalogue, “I often use the portrait format to emphasise the sense of perspective and space by moving the horizon line higher of lower.”

The most successful painting, in my opinion, was a portrait format picture of light on the sea: a remarkable evocation of a small breaking wave and the translucence of the water with the light behind it. The far distant horizon is also particularly effective with a glowing sense of light on water. The painting is also remarkable for its price tag: a thousand pounds more that others of its size!

The portrayal of clouds in many of the paintings is very effective, and the interplay with the water provides a very active canvas. The canvas itself is thick weave and plays an important part in the appearance of the paintings. I feel that the texture is quite intrusive and it detracts from the effective portrayal of the subject matter: they have the look of paintings photographed onto the canvas rather than painted!

Most of the paintings were arresting but one example (just be the entrance door) looked rushed and almost sketch like – though the paintings actually designated as sketches looked much more professional. It looked out of place in the context of the other paintings and, in my opinion, should have been held back.

The painting of water is not uniformly successful: one painting where the water was three quarters of the canvas declined from the interesting ripples to an uninteresting and rather blank block of colour. I’m also not sure that Phil makes the most of the line of meeting of water and sky.

Overall the exhibition was refreshing and stimulating and worth another look.

Tomorrow: Reading and the new house. Who knows, perhaps tomorrow will also bring our first Peter Alan viewing? Deo volente!

Any leads?

In the endless hours of peaceful contemplation, which is life without school (that’s not strictly true, but near enough when compared with teaching!) there is time for the consideration of the more spiritual things in life. No matter how much I vaunt my atheism there is always the nagging attraction of numinous speculation. The belief in an all controlling deity was pushed into the forefront of my thoughts by something seemingly trivial: isn’t it, as they say, always the same?

Modern life, for someone of my persuasion is fraught with difficulties. Try as I might to live an uncluttered existence there are elements which seek to complicate my chosen path. I speak, of course, of electrical leads. When you have as many gadgets as I possess then certain drawers are writhing masses of serpentine lengths knotting and gendering and entwining themselves in an inextricable mass of black, white and grey.

What, you may ask, about God? Where does s/he come into it? Well, as far as I can remember, I place each lead in the drawer carefully and as neatly as I can. I do not have a giant wooden spoon to stir up the leads into a plastic stringy soup. Yet, whenever I need to power up a gadget, the extrication of a specific lead is next to impossible without drawing into daylight about fifty of its near neighbours. When gentle shaking has dissuaded some of the fellow travellers to drop back into obscurity, the remaining two or three are locked together in a fiendish way which reminds you of the intricacy of an impossible three dimensional puzzle devised by a sick tormented mind. Trying to separate the strands defies Newtonian physics and you need a mind which is at home in a universe formed as a Möbius Strip lying on an Escher staircase if you want to stand any chance of success in encouraging the lead you actually want to emerge free and usable.

And this is where God comes in. Scorning to appeal to the theological writings of the Early Fathers of the Church to explain the twisting of electrical leads, I turn instead to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe, where the Babel Fish was clear proof of the existence and therefore (as any god worth the name would obviously not need proof) the non existence of God. The Entwined Theory of Leads postulates that inert strips when placed in any sort of conjunction will combine and twist to the negative reciprocal of their root and lead to denial of Humanity, Sanity and Divinity in their attempted unravelling. So there.

All that because I lost my temper in trying to get the earphones separated from the lead of my ipod. (ibid et passim) At least I feel better now, the dispersal of anime by orthography.

Peter Alan, the Estate Agents, are now on the scene: and so far, so good. After a quick check round the house, photos were taken and within an hour of the agent leaving the details of my house were in the shop window with printed details and photographs ready for me to check and OK. The efficiency of the first part of the process has reignited by enthusiasm. Hope is still springing eternal.

Hadyn came for coffee and asked me to phone up the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid which is putting on a Howard Hodgkin exhibition because he was unable to go. I first thought of waiting for Toni to come home and then I thought that I really should do it myself because this will be the way of my future life. So I did and found myself listening to a fast speaking recorded voice which didn’t even give me the option of leaving a message, which I (sort of) did anyway – just in case. My second option was the phone the ordinary reception of the museum. I talked to a receptionist who made no concessions to my halting Spanish, kept me on hold and eventually told me she could no reply from the appropriate person I needed to speak to so I should phone again ‘tomorrow.’ [The only reason I did not put that word is Spanish is that I do not have the correct symbol for the enya.] I eventually got Toni to write an email. Such is life.

Tomorrow visiting an art gallery in Museum Place in town, collecting the tickets for my trip to Reading on Wednesday and perhaps lunch somewhere self indulgent!

Needful things.

Let us imagine a conversation.

“Do you have a job?”
“No.”
“Do you have a regular income?”
“No.”
“Do you own an ipod 60 GB video mp3 player? The most expensive player in the range?
“Yes.”
“Have you just bought another ipod, to be specific an ipod 80GB video mp3 player?”
“Yes.”
“Was there anything wrong with the previous ipod?”
“Yes. It was full up.”

There is a wonderful fin de siecle feel, a je ne sait quoi moment, as we say in Kennerleigh Road, about that. In the same league of thoughtlessness, most would say, with the myth of Nero fiddling while Rome burnt.

Many who know me will be shocked by such a wilfully extravagant, financially inept and gloriously unreasonable gesture of purchasing. I have to say that if they think that, then they know me little. I am particularly adept at the sort of logic that would make an extremist Jesuit baulk; especially when it involves an aspect of any form of retail therapy (it is, by the way, most encouraging to see so many people now accept this treatment, placing it firmly in the realm of therapeutic medication.)

One feels that like Louis Armstrong in a different context, if one has to explain any purchase, the questioners would thereby show themselves not be able to appreciate the answer with the correct degree of dignity.

Suffice to say that this purchase (with another more difficult to justify, though just as expensive) exists and, like the early prose works of Evelyn Waugh, must be accepted as a sardonic comment on the prevailing mores of our decadent society, in whose grip, I am, of course, merely a helpless pawn. Ahem.

The concert last night in St David’s Hall more than lived up to my expectations. Having decided enthusiastically to adopt at least some of the precepts of frugality given my present reduced circumstances [for the sake of the logical flow of this and succeeding paragraphs, please ignore any financial inconsistencies in the preceding paragraphs.] I went down town by bus. By the time that I arrived in the centre, the start of the concert was looming.

I rushed into the reception of the hall and gasped out my need for a ticket. The one that I was given was in the rarefied atmosphere of Tier 13. This was well into the area involving the massive indignity of having to go to ‘The Higher Tiers’ an ignominy that, in my previous incarnation as a Full Subscription Concert Goer, I had never previously had to endure. By the time that I got near to my seat, up seemingly endless flights of stairs, I was breathless and slightly juddery. There was a further schlep to my final destination of an actual seat and I slumped down, that in itself almost being the signal for the orchestra to come out to take their places.

The first shock of the night was to discover that there was another piece of music before the ‘Turangalila Symphony.’ This was Florent Schmitt’s ‘Psaume XLVII.’ I had never heard of either the composer or the piece. The fact that there was a full chorus of the BBC National Chorus of Wales sitting behind the orchestra and the further fact that the light for the organist was on, suggested a full blooded piece of music!

It was extraordinary: full of power and a thoroughly engaging musicality. The realization that I was sitting above the level of the elevated Chorus gave an almost mystical sense of separation with mellifluous voices wafting from the regions below. The piece was full of musical invention and the range of percussion used as an integral part of the experience showed why (according to the brief programme notes) Stravinsky admired Schmitt.

The music was so high powered, especially when sung with such gusto by the chorus, that the introduction of Christine Buffle as the soprano element in the piece, was a period of calm and contemplation rather than further excitement. This however did not last as she lustily joined in with everyone else in some rousing music. It was the sort of music that instantly attracted you and made you want to add it to your ipod (see!) and, in the interval chatting with Mike and Lynne a singer from the chorus joined us, enthused about the music and informed us that though it was difficult to find as a recording she was able to get hold of it by going to a web site called something like ‘crotchet.com’ and pay only £6 to possess it. Something to find out and to add to the ipod now that it has new memory for further music.

The Messiaen was fantastic. When listening to the wall of musical excitement which comprises so much of this extraordinary symphony, my mind is drawn back to the BBC Welsh Orchestra that I used to support when I was still in school. My traumatic memories of the exposed (in every sense of the word) horns in Beethoven’s Third symphony still sear the happy times of hearing famous music live for the first time. The idea of the Orchestra from the seventies even thinking about attempting a work as complex and challenging in orchestral terms, as Turangalila would have been unthinkable. How times have changed! When listening to the BBC NOW means never having to make compromises in your critical judgement.

The conductor, Thierry Fischer, conducted with the enthusiastic support of the orchestra and with considerable gymnastic flair: his pelvic gyrations were particularly ‘giving’! This delighted glances that Fischer gave at the superb piano playing of Roger Muraro and his complete ignoring of the Ondes Martinot player, Jacques Tchamkerten, seemed to be an astute artistic judgement.

As usual I was overwhelmed by the physical presence of this music and yet again found myself delighting in the inventive narrative flow of the piece. I can’t say that I wanted to hear it all again at the end because I knew that Paul was waiting for me to whisk me back to Rumney and dinner made by Paul Squared.

Calamari and home made meat balls followed by roulade and cream with the final course being a vast selection of irresistible cheeses. I felt that my refusal to eat German smoked processed cheese made me almost ascetic in my approach!. Who could ask for better at the end of a stimulating evening.

Oh yes, and a few glasses of wine, after all we are only human.

It’s so refreshing to be with someone who does not cringe instinctively when you complain in a restaurant.

After the concert in the Millennium Centre Alison and I went for a meal in Demiro’s. The menu was divided into three basic sections so you could eat Welsh, Italian or Spanish. The Spanish section comprised an uninspiring choice of tapas with even less inspiring main dishes described in an interestingly macaronic form of the language. The Italian was very much what you would expect and the Welsh, stripped of the descriptions, were fairly basic.

However, by a judicious combination of menus we found a satisfactory meal. I had the Welsh cockles and lavabread with bacon in a small tartlet, followed by Turbot thermidor with rosemary potatoes. Very nice too.

Alison’s choice is circumscribed by her needing food cooked without dairy produce, but olives as a starter followed by duck breast in orange and brandy sauce - once the composition of the sauce was declared safe - seemed fine. The waiter assured Alison that the duck would be pink and moist, so it was disconcerting to see her meal with what looked like a well cooked piece of steak on it. The duck was ‘thoroughly’ cooked to the point of inedibility and it was at this point that the ‘complain or not complain’ process started. Given that Alison had had a number of decent meals in Demiro’s, and also given the fact that the meal was not by any stretch of the imagination, cheap, ‘complain’ won.

It is always annoying when complaining about food to have the waiter ask if you want it changed. What are you supposed to reply to that? “No, no, I was just giving you some information that you can add to your archive.” The second annoying thing is when the food has been taken away and another waiter appears defending the food that you had been given, in this case, “There was nothing wrong with the duck, it was well done as requested.” This, of course, would have been fine if that was what Alison had requested. As she hadn’t, it wasn’t.

By the time her meal appeared mine had disappeared – into my stomach, and the wine was running low. The request from the waiter asking if we required more wine and my witty response of ‘Who’s buying?’ elicited a jovial ‘I am!’ to which my instant rejoinder of ‘We’ll have a bottle then,’ seemed to have produced a most satisfactory outcome after the disruption of the food. We were serious, the waiter wasn’t, but the situation did resolve itself into two free (cheap) glasses of red wine. And we did buy another bottle of the Rioja.

So to the concert: ‘Chorus’, with the chorus and orchestra of the Welsh National Opera. I had expected an ordinary presentation of the famous bits of opera for the plebs. The concert was not like that.

This was a dramatic presentation in a staged form. From the rousing opening chorus from ‘War and Peace’ to the finale from ‘Candide’ there was a very satisfying flow to the evening’s entertainment. I suppose, given time, I could work out some sort of narrative thrust through the very different pieces, but it wasn’t apparent and I don’t think that it would have added much. The important aspect of the staging was that it allowed action to flow, visual interest to be kept up and presented the music to advantage.

The range of music was stimulating, with me receiving a little jolt of pleasure when the surtitles stated that the next piece was to be from ‘Die Tote Stadt’ – though it did not turn out to be the bit with the ghostly procession (or the only bit that I know well!)

The singing was quite presentable, but I felt that there was a surprising moderation in the gusto with which the chorus of WNO usually sing; this was especially apparent in the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves – a piece for which the chorus is particularly famed – but here, there was a distinct lack of ‘singing out’.

The orchestra continues to impress as their sound is well at home in the Millennium Centre. It is a continual revelation to those of us who have had to suffer the appalling acoustics of the New Theatre for so long!

A most enjoyable evening; the National Orchestra of Wales is easily capable of topping this experience with their performance of ‘Turangalila’ in St David’s Hall tonight. We shall see.

America, 'tis of thee!

Someone once called Gore Vidal, “the last living civilized American.” Such a statement is obviously absurd, but in a country that has wilfully elected a man like George Bush as President; refused to accept football as its national sport; has a sizable section of the fundamentalist Christian right propounding the absurd doctrine of ‘Intelligent Design’ and has made a film and its sequel based on a Theme Park ride, it is difficult not to have a certain amount of sympathy with the lonely intelligence of the author of ‘Myra Breckinridge.’

I know that it is fashionable to describe America as an empire which refuses to accept its responsibility; but the stance of America in the world today encourages any thinking observer to want to scream to the Administration that they are an Empire and it would be more truthful for them to behave like one, instead hiding behind the voicing of vacuous platitudes of belief in democracy and freedom to excuse their almost complete lack of true involvement in running the world which they control.

Their mind bogglingly overwhelming insularity, mixed with a healthy dash of sheer ignorance [you try saying you come from Wales when in America and expect any appreciative response!] and their smug belief in their essential cosy rightness makes any ex-colonial power look on in mute disbelief. At least we (the Brits that painted the map pink) had an articulated ethos that accepted and exulted in the fact that colonies were there for the benefit of the mother country. Now America uses the mantra of self-determination for other ‘useful’ (i.e. oil producing) countries as if it actually exists and informs the philanthropic foreign policy of the Administration.

The latest example of this neo colonial arrogance is seen in the demands made by America for the relaying of information (down to the inside leg measurement) of all passengers flying from Europe to the US. The details of what information the Americans require makes ‘Alice in Wonderland’ look like an everyday story of country folk.

Who now, of thinking people, has any real belief in a coherent strategy against the so-called ‘axis of evil’ by any of the western governments, let alone the paranoid amalgam of bigotry that is the Bush vision of America?

So much of the paraphernalia of ‘justified measures’ is for home consumption, a crude political trick to influence, inflame and direct domestic political debate, not to produce authentic, reasonable and effective measures against a culture of violence.

America is rapidly losing friends throughout the world. Its moral basis for existence through the struggle against colonial excesses to the Declaration of Independence is becoming something of a sick joke. Its ham fisted actions to protect its own power base are naked and obvious; its grasping arrogance becomes more and more clear.

Meanwhile back in Cardiff: Monday will see the appearance of yet another estate agent – but this time, we are prepared. God help the poor bugger when he has to listen to our list of ‘suggestions.’

This evening: back to the Millennium Centre for a popular concert called ‘Chorus’ in which the Orchestra and Chorus of Welsh National Opera will provide a programme of all the best bits from a series of operas. As I am going out to dinner afterwards, please do not expect any coherent assessment of the performance!

The Policeman's lot

I am known, universally, as calm, reasoned and sage. I scorn to jump those instant opinions which so limit the arguments of others without that careful balance and weighing of evidence that is, so self evidently, the characteristic of my discourse. But, there again, there is nothing quite so self satisfying as whipping yourself into a deeply comforting rant which is based on knee jerk response.

The news today is full of a Muslim policeman’s request not to guard the embassy of Israel being granted by his superiors. This brings to the forefront all my anxieties about the position of the police in society today and their function and purpose.

One of the more satisfying sights that an old die hard liberal (with a small ‘l’) can see connected with the police force is when they try marching together. Why is it satisfying? Because they do it so badly; and why shouldn’t they? It’s not the be all and end all of their training. They, the police, are not a military force. I resent the use by some senior policemen of the term ‘civilians’ to describe what they used to call ‘the public.’ We are like them, they are like us. They are not soldiers; their relationship with their clients is not that of a military force with civilians. Their function is to defend the public, to ensure that we can carry on our lives in peace and be able to ‘go about our lawful purposes.’

For some people the ideal policeman is that individual who approaches more and more nearly to Sherlock Holmes: the brilliant individual, capable of intuitive leaps of breathtaking intellectual audacity; the person who, with reference to nobody, is able to pursue an eccentric course, scorning procedure, breaking rules, creating his own moral universe and, of course, apprehending the villain in a pyrotechnical blaze of casuistically astonishing logical deductions that leave mere mortals gasping with astonished admiration. Crap!

The Holmesian type of policeman is a dangerously beguiling exemplum; with the emphasis on dangerous. In this country we give our police force a great deal of public support. We automatically assume their probity in a way which is almost unique to these islands. We trust their honesty, their fairness and their methodical approach. We expect a professionalism which is based on proven practice, not on dangerous flashes of uncontrolled genius. PC Plod may seem to be a negative appellation, but, in my view, it is the backbone of the security of this country: honest effort as part of a team.

I am not, in spite of appearances, saying that I want a police force of kind idiots. There is a place for genius within the force, for the unconventional, the inspirational, the thinking-outside-the-box, and the individualistic – for all of these: but the basic policeman should be stolid and calm and follow orders.

Our police force, if it is anything, is a force which ignores differences of race, creed, sexuality, status. It is a police force for the public – all the public. Like doctors they have to treat all equally, whatever their thoughts about the individuals with whom they treat.

This one case has thrown all of this tradition into relief. If this is allowed to be the norm then everything that I have said is in he melting pot, and all the very real forces within our society of politics, religion, caste, status, everything come into play. I am not naïf about what happens now. No policeman has ever been anything than polite to me: they listen to my modulated middle class accents and respond appropriately. I know that they are only human and they do respond to aspects of life which they should ignore. But, and it is a big but, they know that they do not have any official or public sanction for these attitudes. In short, it’s wrong, and they know it’s wrong. They are a force for everyone: everyone is equal before them – like the law, which they embody.

I’m sure that more details will emerge about the particular case of the Muslim (British) policeman. Perhaps they will explain why a man who had obviously volunteered to join a diplomatic unit of the police would not carry out an aspect of his duties. To my mind, if he could not, in conscience carry out an order, then he had only one course of action: resignation.

The publicity given to this case is, in itself, encouraging. It is recognition of the importance of what is at stake here: the whole concept of a force which can police with the support of The Public. As Baldwin said, ‘Wait and see’ there is a whole way of life to preserve. Let’s see if we can do it.

Tax and prizes

Einstein could not do his tax returns. Why should I try to outshine a genius? Especially when the people in the local tax office are so helpful. Why? Well, because the tax office has redesigned itself and you can’t get to the people who used to be so helpful - without an appointment. Tragedy! Then the legendary ‘luck of the Reeses’ (Ha!) started up and an appointment was arranged for the day after tomorrow. We will see if they are still as user friendly as they have been for the last two years when they have guided me, like some sort of emotionally stunted savage who had recently been introduced to the concept of using marks to represent words! They did complete my return though. We will, indeed, see.

Today has been notable for the extraordinary experience that is the Awards Evening of the Cardiff in Bloom Competition. Toni has (again) been awarded (for the third time) second prize in the front garden competition for our electoral district.

During the summer a judge comes along and enthuses about the garden and then later awards us second prize. Blazes of colour in imaginative settings with the sound of astonishing water features – means nothing: second prize. Carefully orchestrated and structured paths through the garden, vistas of engaging vegetative texture: second prize. Bugger it! What do we have to do to win? [Insert your own tasteless, yet amusing answer to that rhetorical question.]

Sitting at out designated table in the Assembly Rooms in the old Cardiff City Hall with those massively extraordinary constructions of metal glass and light bulbs which constitute the chandeliers in that fantasy of marble, stucco, metal and gilding, you look around and think to yourself that this has to be one of the more extraordinary gatherings of civilians that you are likely to be associated with for a long time. The gathering is a mixture of the dedicated (usually very old) gardeners, who actually know what they are growing and are not surprised by what comes up in the spring; those gardeners who are rich enough to ensure that they buy the right plants and the right advice to ensure that their gardens are credits to the money they spend, and us. I am a great exponent of the Don Rees School of gardening. My father had few rules of gardening:
1. If it grows without care, buy it.
2. If it uses Rule 1 and has colour, plant it.
3. If it comes back the next year, encourage it and buy more.
4. Take credit for gardening success with grace.

Don’t knock them: they worked for him and we had a front garden of spectacular colour and interest.

Meanwhile back at City Hall, the evening started with the usual organizational chaos as Margaret Pritchard (she who got me a glass of water when I did my LIVE voice over from the continuity announcer’s kiosk in HTV all those years ago) attempted to announce the winners. As usual the list of winners that she had did not match the bodies waiting to get their plaques and a sense of gentle incompetence continued throughout the evening.

The photo they had taken to put up when Toni went to get his award was not a bad representation of the garden. This year the photographer did not come until we were in Catalonia, so he had to take the picture standing on the wall outside the fence. All things considered we had a much better representation than many, whose gardens looked lacklustre to say the least.

As usual as soon as the buffet had been eaten at half time, half the people left because the only part of the programme left was giving those who had already won prizes yet more prizes as these were the overall winners of the whole of Cardiff.

What, one speculates, will happen next year? Roll on Peter Alan, do your stuff and get me to Catalonia!

Mundane to marvellous

‘Regression.’ That was the word that came to mind when I eventually was treated to the vision that was my signer person when I went to the Job Centre today.

All the personnel that I have come into contact with since the 18th September have been of the new brigade: comfortable with having to explain to ‘clients’ all the ‘user friendly’ facilities packed into the Centre; rejoicing in the ways in which they can facilitate job finding capabilities; delighting in making the client part of the solution, etc, etc. The man today was different.

First of all he was late. Only a few minutes, but during this time I could gaze at the grubby collar of his coat decorating the back of the empty chair. When he finally arrived he ignored me, sat down, fussed with his glasses and started the process of starting his computer. He then failed to find his pen. Changed his glasses. Took the pen found by me. Inserted his card. And punched the keys of the computer. You could tell that he would have been much more at home thumping keys of a manual typewriter and using the return carriage as a weapon, the crank and thump being sonic assaults against the cringing applicant for governmental largess.

He eventually remembered to apologise for his late appearance: ‘took a late break’; ‘we’re well down’; ‘people away’. This did remind me of bygone years. That ‘other worldly’ sense was augmented by the fact that my advisor did not “watch television” and “not much radio” – so much for my broadcasting aura. His explanations were (how shall I put this?) Defeatist. I was glad to get out of there, and only £1-60 for parking. (Ironic.)

After putting the wrong measurements for my living room on the internet, failing to correct the mistake within a day and failing to contact me when they said they would, Halifax have been sacked. Peter Allan tomorrow.

Sigh!

On to more important things: this evening a free concert courtesy of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Studio 1 in Broadcasting House in Llandaff. The concert was part of the ‘Discovering Music Live’ series in which a musical work is introduced with live musical illustrations; then in the second part of the programme, a full performance of the work is given. The work today was Nielsen’s Flute Concerto played by Sharon Bezaly with the conductor being Ken Woods.

The presentation was excellent; I especially liked the idea that Danish, as a language is often spoken in thirds, the presenter matched a simplified sequence from the flute concerto with the cadences of a Danish speaker reading an extract from the tales of Andersen.

At the end of the presentation there was an opportunity for questions. Silence, broken by me! I have to admit that the question I asked was irrelevant compared with the fluency, knowledge and perception of the answer – but the question and response ensured that there were no other enquiries! Indeed, the producer had to ask for more responses at the end of the show, one of which was provided by the presenter.

The performance was excellent: just the right length for a concert!

If it's not one thing, it's another.

In this thrusting, immediate world, you have to get your grouse in as soon as possible. Why wait for more topical moments to vent your spleen when you can do it all now.

I don’t often find myself in the same camp with the Repulsive Religionists of the Ridiculous Right but I feel the need for all right (in the right sense) people to come to the aid of the party, so to speak. It is time for us to march against the tide of clichés and do something forthright and, uh, right.

I speak, of course, of the luridly coloured garbage filling the shelves of supermarkets up and down the country; the latest attempt by the shameless followers of Adam Smith to wrench yet more money out of our depleted pockets. The tons of stuff: plastic, cardboard, wood, cloth, more plastic and sugar which is the merchandising construct of the presentation to this benighted country of the absurd Yankee take on Halloween.

I have to admit, as I made my way along the coast road in Cardiff, I couldn’t help admiring the vast, blossoming and burgeoning fields of swelling pumpkins ready to be harvested so that delightful and fun loving hordes of grasping, avaricious Thatcherite throwbacks can weald them as part of their shameless protection racket which masquerades under the deeply sinister title of ‘Trick or Treat.’

What is this all about? We have no bloody fields of pumpkins! I thought that we were an independent country with a great cultural tradition, not a slavish imitator of a country that thinks it is cool to . . . well; insert your own particular piece of American nonsense to make yourself even more indignant.

At least in America you have the guns so that you can shoot the little buggers before they start their extortion.

Every aspect of life is covered by some tatty, overpriced piece of rubbish. I pity parents (often) but they will be assailed constantly by their free roving DNA banks so buy more and more so that their offspring will be able to disport themselves like some sort of Gothic overstatement that even Vincent Price would baulk at joining.

I think that their unthinking portrayal of witches and warlocks and things that go bump in the night is an insensitive mockery of the religion which was old in this country when Christianity was still waiting for Paul to get the spin right so that unsuspecting gentiles would buy into it. I’d love to see the Druids and New Ageists combining forces and declaring jihad on anyone wandering about on All Saints Night dressed as a calculated affront to their fondly held beliefs. It could be like St Bartholomew’s Eve all over again. A Halloween to remember.

I loathe the whole idea of the night in its Pagan, Christian and Capitalist glory. A vile import which should stay in the country that espouses . . . I’m losing my clarity in an excess of hatred. This is not good and it must stop. Now! Take a breath. Better? Better!

Today has not been good. Neither of the people who viewed the house on Saturday has taken the process further. One wanted a house for renting and this one was not the sort of thing that he wanted, while the second was buying a house for herself and her mother and she wanted separate rooms on the ground floor. I fail to see why, after a cursory view of the specifications of the house people come to look at it, when it is quite clearly not what they are wanting.

Talking of specifications: one of the good things which came out of the viewings was that they told us that they were surprised about the size of the living room as the specs gave the size as 12 foot: only 13 foot out! I think this is one mistake too far; perhaps I should change the agents for the third time.

Tomorrow is ‘sign on’ day. I’m not quite sure why I am doing this as there does not seem to be any pay off, as it were. Still, it will be an interesting experience.

Tomorrow evening a concert that is going to centre on the Nielsen Flute Concerto in a live programme which also has a presenter using the orchestra to illustrate aspects of the music, with a full performance at the conclusion. Something to look forward to!

Our little life . . .

As the most exciting things that I have done today are: go to Asda and Aldi; finish reading Bragg’s book and make lunch, I think it would be inappropriate to expound my world view utilizing some simple element of ordinary life to pad out this piece of writing.

So, I will say nothing more, except, of course, to reserve my right to pontificate, digress, explain and meander my written way though my days at a later date.