When does a good read become a bad life?

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I resisted for as long as possible, and then I gave in and bought it.

And what’s more I didn’t go for my daily swim so that I could read it.  I haven’t finished it yet, but I have decided to limit my indulgence so that it can be spread over a longer period than my usual reading speed will allow.  It also gives me time to take it in.

I am talking, of course, about “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff.  I bought it legitimately via one-click for my Kindle, though I note that there are various ways of downloading it illegally on the Internet too.  I take the view that a workman is worthy of his hire and therefore, even though I do not have the physical book in front of me, I have the words and therefore I suppose that I have paid a fair wack of money to the author.  That last sentence stands as a sort of accusation to the subject of Fire and Fury who would regard me as SAD for not taking advantage of someone when the opportunity arose!  I spurn him as I would a rabid dog!

The only volume to which I can compare Fire and Fury is another book that I read with equal incredulity, “Imperial Caddy: The Rise of Dan Quayle in America and the Decline and Fall of Practically Everything Else” by Joe Queenan.   But the difference between Dan Quayle and 45, was that Quayle was only the vice president, not the incumbent sitting at the desk in the Oval Office.   

For those of you unacquainted with the idiocy and ineptitude of Quayle then allow your fingers to take you on a magical journey where the Internet preserves some of his finest pronouncements for posterity.  I would urge you to start your visit with https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Quayle

and if that whets your appetite, you could do worse that purchasing Joe Queenan’s book.  The worthless Quayle stayed a heartbeat away from the Presidency, but now we have Grade A garbage as President and a frightening bigot fawning in the background ready to take his place!

Back to Fire and Fury.  It is difficult to read this book as political analysis, not only because sources are not acknowledged and there is a certain amount of literary leeway in describing meetings in which Wolff did not participate in the manner of fly-on-the-wall reportage, but also because I simply do not want to believe that what I am reading is a remotely accurate description of how the most powerful nation in the world is functioning - or rather not even remotely functioning.

In some ways the petty infighting, scheming, rivalry, lies, corruption, deceit, mendacity, incompetence, arrogance, contempt and narcissism could be seen as an eloquent critique of capitalism and democracy.  They don’t work.  But, on the other hand, the book could also be seen as an even more eloquent testimony to the strength of institutions in the United State as they are still surviving in spite of the complete odium with which the President of that country regards them.

In my history classes in college I was taught that the Great Man or Woman of History approach to the past was outmoded, far more important were the social and political movements that produced those people or allowed them to flourish. 

It may be perversely comforting to think that a monster like Hitler was somehow uniquely ‘evil’ and that the abstract malevolence contained inside his damned soul corrupted all around him, but how did the figure-of-fun Hitler hawking his writing round the Bierkellers of Berlin get to be the dictator of Germany?  How did his pernicious doctrines find acceptance?  For an answer you have to look at the past history of German, the social conditions pertaining and the way that the political situation opened the way for the Brownshirts and Nazism.

In the same way Wollf’s book shows a completely dysfunctional White House with virtually no one with any idea of how to run the country.  The ultimate authority is a child-like narcissist with the attention span of a Homer Simpson (but without Homer’s endearing features) and he is clearly more interested in playing golf and being nasty about Clinton and Obama than getting to grips with the useful operation of power.

Since Wolff’s interest centres on eighteen months in the life of 45’s campaign and tenure in the White House, Wolff does not (so far as I’ve read so far) go into the reasons for his being there - just how did he do and she fail it?

I must admit that I am convinced by the description of the whole Trump Election Campaign, the whole shebang, being a play for what happened after he lost the election.  In his wildest dreams he never expected to win, but was looking forward to the billions of dollars of free publicity in giving him greater leverage in the media so that he could become an ‘even greater’ star.  All his ‘people’ worked with him so that they could find good jobs when the campaign failed.  This would explain why they didn’t bother to divest themselves of questionable financial links - after all, these would only pose embarrassing questions if 45 was successful and, as that couldn’t possibly happen, all the skeletons would stay safely in the cupboard.

Let’s take another view of the election.  Forget running for president, imagine this instead.  Suppose that Michelangelo died before completing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and that a crazed Pope announced a competition for its completion with a prize of absurd importance and a guarantee of worldwide fame for the successful artist.

Some artists would be cowed by the immensity of the undertaking, some would feel that they were unworthy of the commission, some would think about it and then think again, and some of the best artists would also put themselves forward citing past work as evidence that they could do it.

And then imagine that I decide to throw my paintbrush onto the palette, so to speak.  Although I am fascinated by the history of art, I am, alas, no painter.  My greatest artistic achievement in the plastic arts is a series of drawings in a small sketchbook that I did as my mother’s birthday present from a holiday I took in Turkey.  And those drawings are only acceptable when viewed through the accommodating critical maternal eye!

However, let me take a leaf out of Trump’s approach and apply it to my application.

 

Hi everyone!  What a fantastic crowd, this is the largest crowd ever assembled to hear an artist speak.  True!

Everyone knows that the Arts in Rome are fixed.  There is a swamp of artists in the city who manage (what a surprise!) to get all the best commissions.  They are wealthy and out of touch and don’t care about you.  It’s got nothing to do with skill, but with who you know.  If you have a Cardinal in your family, or better still a Pope then you are part of that charmed circle which deliberately excludes new, exciting and popular talent from showing itself.

And what if I don’t know the techniques of fresco?  Is that really so important?  Is that the only way?  What are we not being told about this commission?  We need to know the truth about this and many other things!  A truth that has been kept away from the ordinary people, the people who matter!  There was a time when Rome was respected throughout the world, when the word Rome meant something.  Rome is more than a few daubs on the ceiling.  Rome is you, the people; you are the shining glory of what we once were and what we can be again.

I do not paint for myself, indeed if I give myself over to this commission I will suffer financially, but I do not count the cost.  I think only of you and of how we, together can Make Rome Great Again!  Run Raphael Out of Town!  Give Veronese the V sign!  My art is your art, and your art is our art: together we will Make Rome Great Again!

Thank you!  Thank you very much!  Thank you!

As I read through Wolff’s destruction of Trump’s White House, I think about what might happen next.

It is very dangerous to assume that just because Trump is uniquely unqualified socially, politically, educationally, morally, sartorially and every other -lly that you can think of, that he will actually resign or be impeached or be otherwise removed, but say for a moment the tenure of the 45^th president was ended.   

This is the succession:

1         The Vice President                                        Mike Pence

2         The Speaker of the House of 

           Representatives                                             Paul Ryan

3         President pro tempore of the Senate      Orrin Hatch

4         Secretary of State                                          Rex Tillerson

5         Secretary of the Treasury                           Steven Mnuchin

6         Secretary of Defense                                     Jim Mattis

7         Attorney General                                           Jeff Sessions

Hardly a glittering list. 

Mike Pence terrifies me; Paul Ryan is spineless; Orrin Hatch is very old and on the point of retirement, and that someone like Jeff Sessions is on any list for any post of responsibility is depressing to put it mildly.

Right I’ve depressed myself sufficiently to go back to Fire and Fury and switch on my ‘fiction’ button in the brain and have a good read!


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Nothing is easy

“Computers make things easier!”

There was a time when that little mantra might have been a source of fond hope.  There was, who knows how long ago, a sort of tipping point where the manifest failures of new technology were offset by the promise that after a few tweaks everything would be button pushing easy!

I remember as a smallish child I was given a Maths Computer to try out by a friend of the family, no, bugger that designation, he was my uncle in all but name.  He was a maths lecturer and was able to get his hands onto all the newest technology and I was privileged to try it out.  And it was, indeed exciting to feel that one was in the vanguard of modern education – well, more playing around with a gadget, even if that gadget was to do with maths!

As this ‘computer’ was in the late 1950s you might wonder what it looked like.  It was basically a long metal box with a little Perspex window in the centre with a coin-shaped cut out on the bottom right edge, and with a large button to be pushed along a notched groove parallel with the right hand side.  To work the machine, it had to be pre-loaded with a series of cards on which there were maths questions.  You used the button to load up a card which then presented the viewer with a maths question that you read through the little Perspex window and there was a space underneath the window for you to write in your answer.  After the answer was written, you pushed the button up a notch; your answer was now behind the window and the official answer was revealed and you could put a tick or a cross in the little coin cut out and push the button on to get a new question and a new space for your answer!

How cute that now seems!  And there were design flaws as the mechanism rucked up the paper and the whole thing had to be disassembled to get it going again.  But the excitement of being a pioneer never left me and unfortunately dictated my technology buying infatuation for the future.

As soon as they became available for general consumption I bought calculators, digital watches, handheld computers, personal assistants, computers, radios, cameras – you name it and I bought it, as long as it had electronic thingies making it function.

And most of them failed or crashed or simply let you down.  One computer, my Sinclair QL, actually reduced me to tears after the keyboard froze and, in spite of my plaintive pleadings with it to work, it steadfastly did not.  I retired to my bedroom and sobbed into the pillow knowing that I would have to work all night to get the work done that I had to do by the morrow.  Those were the days when ‘saving’ a document could take a couple of minutes and the computer would be inoperative during this time.  I hadn’t saved and I had to redo.  I went to bed at 6.30 am and got up at 7.30 am for a full day in school!

And that was not the only time that faith in computers was misplaced.  How many program failures, software failures and messages like “FATAL SYSTEM ERROR!” with a digital bomb fizzing on the screen have seared themselves into my technological memory.  I can remember buying programs where the developers encouraged users to report failures so that the inevitable bugs could be ironed out.  Bug free was the impossible dream; bug ridden was the everyday reality.

But when things worked it was like magic!  And that remembered ecstasy was enough to get one through the difficult times when nothing appeared to be working, nothing would print, nothing would load up properly and the screen was blank.  But we were encouraged to think that all the machines (all the expensive machines when you compare them with what you get for your money now) that we used were John the Baptist Computers, all of them preparing the Way for The Computer that would truly be The One!  I’m still waiting!

Where, you might ask, does all this come from?  What has prompted this remembrance of technological pain past?  The simple answer is, buying a ticket on line.

For the first time in a long time I am not going to the opera alone.  I have a fellow enthusiast accompanying me!  As I am a season ticket holder I can get a small discount on extra tickets and I offered to purchase a ticket in the hope that the discount would be able to buy us a cup of coffee at the interval at least.  As it turns out the discount may stretch to a couple of small beers, if we are lucky.  But that is not the point; the point is that simply purchasing the thing was a bind.

Buying a ticket has to be thought of in terms of how easy using the computer is to purchase it compared with picking up the phone and doing it via a real person at the other end of the line.

It took me two attempts and to complete the operation (in spite of the fact that I am a registered season ticket holder) and necessitated re-setting my pass word for the boking site; using the details on my credit card; using details on my season ticket; taking a code from my mobile phone; taking a further code from my email account; filling in part of a form; deciding just which of the many reductions I was entitled to; other bits and pieces and, finally, printing out the ticket myself on my own machine – and for all this I was charged a €1.50 fee for -  what exactly?

Would it have been easier on the phone?  I think the answer is probably yes, it would have been easier, but my ticket might have been waiting for me in the theatre, rather than being in my hot little hands. 

And, as usual, I will know what to do the next time round.  This is the ‘Billy Bookcase Syndrome’ based on the famous bookcase of the same name in IKEA.

The Billy bookcase is one of the basic pieces of furniture that is sold in the millions.  Countless people have unpacked the bits, looked at the illustrated page of instructions and thought to themselves, “Well, this can’t be that difficult!”  Then they try and make it and find that, yes, the basic principles are fine and easy to understand, but then the ‘why didn’t they mention’ element creeps into the creation: the unstated assumptions of the obvious that neophytes need to know, nay, need to be told.  And as you make the first Billy bookcase you know that the second and succeeding ones are going to be so much easier.  In reality, of course, that attitude is one of the ‘saving lies’ by which we live our lives.  However, the general principle holds true: the second time is easier than the first.

The real tragedy of this shared experience is that the results of that experience are not shared and therefore do not appear to inform a reworking of the instructions to include the things that you thought you didn’t need to point out.

Remember, we live in a world where someone bought a mobile home and when the owner went on a drive they put the home into ‘automatic’ and then went to make a cup of tea, as they assumed that ‘automatic’ meant that the thing would drive itself.  After the inevitable crash, the owner of the van sued the manufacturer for not making it clear what ‘automatic’ would and wouldn’t do!  And won. 

If that story is any reflection on the standard of public understanding then it is difficult to imagine any set of rules for anything like building a pre-fabricated bookcase being smaller than War and Peace!

But in my specific case I say, bring on the next person who wants me to buy a ticket for the Opera, I’m prepared!  I think.


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If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to:                                                smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

Shitholes I have known

Before the small-handed orange fart had expressed himself so freely about black, foreign countries he despised, while shouting in a semi-private meeting about immigration, I suspect that a title to a blog like that above would have raised entirely different expectations of a more, ahem, fundamental nature than you are going to get here!

At least the world response to Trump’s extraordinary, foul mouthed tirade does not deal in euphemistic descriptions like ‘prejudiced’ but goes all out for the much more accurate description of ‘racist’.  The leader of the free world is a small minded, bigoted, racist.

God knows the bar for possible semi-presidential acceptable behaviour is set ground-huggingly low for the present occupant of the White House, but the reptilian Trump burrows ever deeper into the miasma formed by his base.

The sick fascination that I have for the antics of Trump leave me breathless with amazed disgust the more I read about him and the coterie of brazen opportunists with whom he has chosen to surround himself. 

I feel the same degree of contempt for Dianna, so-called Princess of Wales (I shuddered inwardly when I typed out the name) and more particularly for the unthinking adulation that she provoked merely by being alive during her fairly useless life as a potent symbol of an anti-democratic, hierarchical structure that continues to emphasise the fundamental un-egalitarian nature of British society.  I am not inhuman, and in her death I do recognize a real human tragedy for her family, but the outpouring of hysterical grief by sections of the British public and the rotting field of flowers that were left, were symbols of much that was, and still is, deeply wrong in a fractured society.

But what does shithole mean to me?

My examples are, probably, going to be unfair and prejudiced, but they are, oddly, based on fact.  But, as is the way with such things, based on facts that are old, or seen from a narrow personal set of experiences.

So, in chronological order.  My first example comes from a holiday in my youth.  We used to set off in the Ford Prefect, just the three of us, Mum, Dad and me, point the car east from Cardiff, go a bit north to see my aunt in Gloucester and then motor down to the South West of England and stay in B&Bs, eventually ending up in St Ives.

On one holiday on a wet and depressing Sunday we made the basic mistake of deciding to call in and experience the delights of Burnham-on-sea. 

Everywhere was closed.  No, not true, the sky was open and it was raining.  The sort of rain that is not heavy but which soaks you through in minutes.  And all we had was our basic summer (sic.) holiday wear of Pak-a-macs, those thin plastic coverings with undoable plastic buttons and with a distinctive smell when wet to protect us from the elements.

We wandered the shining streets walking past closed shops and cafes.  It was a ‘holiday resort’ with a beach.  But it was beach on the Bristol Channel and the Bristol Channel has the second largest tidal range in the world (after the Bay of Fundy in Canada) so when the tide goes out, it really does go out.  The sea becomes more of an image in the mind of god than a touchable reality, at least when seen from the road!

With a grey sky and drizzle the sand had taken on the colour of wet mud and to say it looked uninviting was something of a vicious understatement.  We veered from the bleak sea towards one of the few uninviting cafes that was open and had the sort of cup of tea that a badly treated condemned man might have had before his execution.

It was our intention to find somewhere to stay, but our enthusiasm was rapidly ebbing, much like the sea.  We followed a few groups of people and found ourselves outside an attraction.  A model railway exhibition.  We were so desperate that we went in and what I remember is not so much the railway layout but the faces of the people who, like us had found the only source of ‘fun’ that was to be had.

We left, fleeing further south in search of anything that wasn’t Burnham-on-sea.  And found it!

In future years, if any one of us wanted to give an example of true horror, we would speculate about those unfortunate who had decided (obviously based on ignorance) to splash out on an actual holiday, possibly lasting a week in Burnham-on-sea, or worse yet, a fortnight!

This image of Burnham is 60 years away and, as I have never gone back, I have no knowledge of what the place is actually like.  It may be an absolute delight for all I know, indeed I hope it is, but the image of ‘shithole’ will stay with me for ever and will be for ever linked to that sea side town.

My second choice of ‘shithole’ is Atlanta, Georgia.

This too is historical.  On the occasion of the marriage of Charles to Dianna in the summer of whenever it was, I was able to leave the nauseating sycophancy of much of the mesmerised population of Britain and wing my way to the US of A for a five week holiday!  Courtesy, I hasten to add, of my ever generous parents!

I flew over with Pan Am and my internal flights were with Eastern Airways and there were lots of them, because I could write my own tickets – it was that sort of open option, and believe you me, I winged my way over the face of the US, surviving on complementary milk and airline meals.  The hub for Eastern Airways was Atlanta and I went there a lot, sometimes staying over.  So my vision of Atlanta is the airport and one grotty pseudo Youth Hostel.

You may say that to judge an entire city on such flimsy and unrepresentative evidence is entirely unfair.  And I would agree.  But I still feel an instinctive repulsion whenever I hear Atlanta mentioned.

Atlanta airport is the world’s busiest or with the most flights or something, but it is big and sprawling.  My experience of the place was Kafkaesque, with the highlight of my disorientation being ‘The Eastern Airways Shortcut’ between two terminals which turned out to be a completely deserted series of corridors with the occasional picture to make the experience even more surreal.  That particular airport was one where reality seemed to be flexible and I resented every second I stayed there.

The automatic electric trainway between terminals was another story entirely, and on one visit to the airport the automatic recorded announcements failed, only to be replaced with a soulless Darlek-voice version, that somehow seemed to be more than fitting!  There is more, but it depresses me just to think of it!

My last example is a private school in which I worked.  My teaching colleagues were excellent.  The buildings were modern.  The kids were responsive.  The owner was a complete, utter and definitive bitch.  With no teaching qualifications.  Her maleficent, corrosive, vicious ineptitude turned what could have been a mutually enriching educational experience into a constant battle for normality. 

There is a happy ending for this shithole, as her grasping, deadly hold has been broken and what was a institution not-fit-for-purpose has now become a real school.

And I like to think that the same goes/has gone for Burnham-on-sea and Atlanta.

I am, after all, an optimist.

I think.

Lost!

Sometimes a harsh reality can break through the façade of domestic tranquillity.

 

It did tonight.

We had both just suffered through an evening meal of such unrelenting austerity that a cup of tea or coffee appeared to be an absolute luxury.  I was shuddering my way through the tales of terror that make up the stories in The Guardian nowadays, lurching in despair from the lunacy of 45, through the on-going self-harm of Brexit, via the laughable ideas of democracy and justice in Spain to various natural and man made disasters, when the front gate intercom buzzed into life.

We do not usually have unannounced visitors at night time so picking up the intercom to answer is usually tinged with concern.

It was our next-door neighbour who had found a small girl wandering the streets, lost and without a parent.  She wanted to know if anyone spoke Russian, as the little girl appeared not to speak anything else.  We could only offer Spanish, Catalan and English, with a smattering of French.  No use!

But after, regretfully putting down the phone, I thought of the large detached house opposite, which has, in the past been occupied by Russian speakers, so I slipped on my coat and went down to the street.

Our next-door neighbour was walking along with a very small child taking one hand and carrying a small scooter in the other.  She was accompanied by another neighbour from a few doors down with whom we had yet to speak.  The little girl was distressed and close to tears but she was comforted by my next-door neighbour with motherly hugs.

Obviously the police had to be informed, but my suggestion of trying to get someone from the big house on the corner to speak to the kid was taken up and, as I had seen lights there from our kitchen window which is at first floor level, I knew that there were people at home.

We buzzed through and we were greeted with an entire family exiting and our discovery that the kid did speak Russian and so did they, but they did not know who she was.  The son of the household was obviously asked if he recognized her and he replied in the negative.

Although the Russian family offered to take the girl in and contact the authorities, I felt that as the police had already been called, it was important to wait for them and a neighbour went to the outside of our houses and eventually brought the police back.

It then appeared that the police knew where the mother was and that the kid had wandered off and managed to put ten blocks between her mother and herself before she was taken into protective care by my neighbour.  Neighbour and girl were asked into the police car and with much happiness and thanking on all sides, they slipped away into the darkness.

Throughout this incident, I kept thinking how my own mother would have reacted.  And then stopped myself because it was too distressing to contemplate.  Even in its hypothetical state and allowing for the fact that my mother is no longer around to be concerned.

My parents told me that I had to be watched at all times when I was smaller as, given any opportunity, I would be away like (as my father used to say confusingly) “a long dog”! 

My crawling ability was legendary and my mother told me that I had to be “attached” to the sides of my crib to keep me in it.  This didn’t always work, as on one occasion I was found to be out of the crib, crawling along with a side still attached to me.

As soon as I could walk I was put in reins in a desperate attempt to keep me in the same locality as my parents, but again, my mother said that letting the reins slip from her hands or putting them down for a moment to pick up and examine some article she needed to buy in a shop was an opportunity for escape that I never rejected.

The only time that I can recall that I “escaped” by mistake was when I was too small to see over the counters in M&S.  As a six foot adult I find it difficult to think back to a time when I was so small, but I know I was because my early memories of M&S were of the wood veneer of the sides of the counters, of nothing interesting to see, and of light in the store that was far too bright.  On one occasion I was standing next to my father and when his trousers moved so did I.  I must have been in a mood of mildly sullen obedience as I traipsed around with nothing more than featureless material to keep my attention.  Eventually I got bored with this textured landscape and looked upwards towards my Dad’s face.  And it wasn’t him.  I had been following a strange man’s trousers!

I can still remember the bemusement I felt, but not how quickly the situation was remedied.  Knowing my mother, and her constant observation and monitoring of my potential fugitive propensities, it must only have been seconds.  But seconds are not what the event felt like.  I can remember no panic.  Which is interesting.

When I was a small child in the 1950s in Cathays in Cardiff, I was allowed to play out on the road with my friends - and this, remember, was with a mother who was close to paranoid (no, make that clearly paranoid) about my safety.  But I was allowed to play, and nothing much happened to me apart from the usually scratches and cuts.  There were also very few cars around then and the streets were generally empty.

I could be playing streets away from home, but I was trained to listen for my father’s distinctive whistle and reappear in double quick time.  Which I did, sometimes disappearing from a friend’s house in mid-sentence at the sound of the whistle!  

When we had a dog, the same whistle was used for her, but I have to say that I was much more responsive than she ever was.  Well, she was a pedigree Labrador!  And everyone knows what they are like!

So, the small girl is now reunited with her mother.  How will the kid think about this experience in the future?  As an interestingly confused experience with a group of people she saw once, with police and people speaking different languages, something to think back on and giggle?  Or something altogether more serious: something that threatened her worldview that showed her just how fragile what she thought she knew was?  Who knows?  Nothing happened, but what might have happened is too awful to contemplate.

And what of the mother?  As I’ve said, thinking of my mother sends shivers of horror down my spine.  I know that my mother would, instantly, have thought the worst and suffered indescribably until my return, and then she would have blamed herself and . . . well, you get the idea.  The delight of reunion would have been overshadowed by the dark imaginings of what might have been.

But let’s be positive.  The girl is safe and has been returned. 

And who knows what memory will make of what has been?

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If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to:                                                smrnewpoems.blogspot.com