A smashing Christmas!

Someone should look into the phenomenon of the disappearing Christmas tree decorations. I know that some of them disappear because they are wilfully destroyed. In my (youthful) case for something of the same reason given for the arsonist in Tom Lehrer’s immortal song ‘My home Town’:

I remember Sam, he was the village idiot,
And though it seems a pity, it
Was so.
He loved to burn down houses just to watch the glow,
And nothing could be done,
Because he was the mayor's son.

Thinking about it, there wasn’t really that much similarity; I did not burn the decorations and I certainly wasn’t the ‘mayor’s son’ – though in Maesteg I was introduced to Father Christmas in the Masonic Children’s Party as my grandfather’s grandson, rather than my parents’ son: my grandfather having been a past Master of the Lodge!

And it was my grandparents’ decorations that I destroyed. They were glass and hanging on a real tree, which also had real candles in those little crimped circular holders that pinched onto a branch. The tree was in the ‘television room’ and in a corner by the side of an armchair. So, while kneeling on the arm of the chair one could pick off a glass ornament and let it fall behind the back of the chair where it made a wonderfully plashingly sharp sound as the ornament shattered. It was exhilaratingly addictive and, even though the tree looked increasingly patchy the sound was so much more interesting than a dull, static invitation to destruction. So, like Sam, I smashed them just to hear the sound.

I didn’t really consider the consequences or the evidence: the sound was such a self contained moment of pleasure that it seemed to exist only for that moment. It was as if the baubles had been made for that momentary gloriously brittle explosion.

Amazingly my vandalism was discovered and the gentle pile of shards exposed to vulgar view. And then that quintessentially adult question which ignores the fact that childhood is a galaxy away from their experience: “Why did you do it?” Now let’s be fair: Everest had been climbed in 1953 and Hillary had given his famous answer to the perennial question and I remember thinking [this next bit is not strictly true] surely what he said then could cover what I had done now. Try it once, I thought, and you would never ask the question again!

Leaving aside juvenile destruction why do some decorations seem to be swallowed up by the tree? As my artificial tree is in storage (like the rest of my life) I had to buy a token tree. Which I did: three foot in its stockinged feet. At last, I thought, this is a tree where decorations will have nowhere to hide.

Wrong.

I don’t know how it does it but does it has. A value collection of gaudy baubles has been swallowed by this miniscule arboreal monster.

Perhaps we should readjust our attitude towards rubbish disposal and instead of putting it into those plastic sacks we should merely decorate trees with the refuse: I’m sure that they would act like domestic black holes and take many times their own weight and volume of household waste before any further action for disposal need be taken. Then they could be used in power stations as energy efficient fuel.

I have noticed that tasteful red decorations do not give true value for money on a green tree and my basic postulate that, “You can never be too vulgar in Christmas tree decoration” stands.

As I am going away for Christmas I am faced with the perennial question of whether to take down the decorations before I go off to Catalonia or rather leave them up because we will be back well before Twelfth Night and therefore can have a festive boost in the January dark days. Decisions! Decisions!

Meanwhile the work for the BBC goes on. Steve has held out the chance of some work for an arts programme which seems interesting and might be able to utilise some of the rejected ideas from Radio 4. Some of my tentative ideas seem to have legs, so I’m now convinced!

Write on!

Licked by lists!

Chaos in the Middle East; trouble in the Balkans; Africa in its usual meltdown state; Bush in America; repression in China; racism in Australasia; South America being South America.

But. The sun is shining. There is much to be said for the pathetic fallacy when you are living happiness just because the rain has stopped momentarily (in the British sense) and all appears well with the world. The troubles stay just on the other side of your consciousness a vague dark shape on the horizon but not stopping the gleam of the sun.

I’d like to say that there was an appropriate musical accompaniment to this new found optimism from the good folk in Classical FM, but the first piece of music that they played was Holst’s ‘Mars’ from ‘The Planets Suite’. And that, as they say got me thinking.

Some music, for reasons that I have never been able to understand, has an international reputation: it is known and hummed throughout the world. I suppose that every musically literate person would be able to recognize a whole range of so-called Great Music, though it has to be admitted it would be fairly culturally specific. My general knowledge of music is fairly closely limited to generally white dead Europeans and, if I am a little more specific, then I can say that it is more clearly limited to dead white northern European male musicians. There are of course some notable exceptions in terms of gender and continent, but the statement is generally true. World music, both classical and modern tends to pass me by.

But it was while I was listening to Holst that I began to think about specifically British music. What, I thought to myself, would be ‘World Famous’ British music?

Then I began to think about definitions. I realised that what I meant by ‘World’ was not really the world at all. I was thinking about Europe, well, Western Europe; parts of the Commonwealth and past Commonwealth; educated America – including the USA and the elements of the educated elites of South America and anywhere else where they listen to the World Service of the BBC in English. It was a sort of post colonialist’s memory of what the world might have been if the history of the British Empire had borne any resemblance to what actually happened. If you see what I mean.

It all simplified itself down to the realisation that the world I was thinking of was basically defined as lots of me living in various countries around the globe!

But there again some music does have an international life: you only have to listen to a remarkable variety of national anthems to realise that bad Italian opera has influenced the musical expression of national aspirations of a vast number of disparate countries!

Beethoven has provided the cohesive anthem for Europe; Charpontier has accompanied the European television organization and a chorus of French nuns singing for the relief of a French king’s haemorrhoids provided us with the basic tune for the national anthem.

So however you define the term ‘world’ and ‘famous’ and ‘classical’ and ‘music’ and ‘British’: what bits of our musical cultural heritage would make it on to the world stage?

I started with ‘Mars’ so you wont be surprised to learn that it is part of the list, but as soon as I began to think a little more seriously, the more difficult it became.

Who are our great symphonists? Elgar and Vaughan Williams? While their symphonies are well known, they are nowhere near the fame of the nineteenth century Germans. Concertos? Only the Elgar cello concerto would be in the running. There are certainly traditional British melodies from all the home countries and some hymns which are internationally known, but specifically British classical compositions are hard to find in the international repertoire.

If I could use film music then there would be whole section of what Classical FM likes to call crossover music which could enter the list. Walton’s music for ‘Henry V’; Bliss in ‘Things To Come’; Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto in ‘Dangerous Moonlight’ and lots of others. But, one critic described the ‘Warsaw Concerto’ as “almost classical music,” so does it count?

You can make up your own lists and I’d be interested to see other compilations, but, for what it’s worth this is my top ten, though the number merely refers to the order in which I thought of them, rather than their hierarchy.

1 ‘Mars the Bringer of War’ from ‘The Planets Suite’ by Gustav Holst
2 ‘The Hallelujah Chorus’ from ‘The Messiah’ by Handel
3 ‘Greensleeves’ by Henry VIII (?) in the arrangement by Vaughan Williams
4 ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ by Edward Elgar
5 ‘The Water Music’ by Handel
6 Cello concerto (the tune) by Edward Elgar
7 ‘Adiemus’ by Karl Jenkins
8
9
10

There are numbers left to fill in. I know that I could fill them with what I regard as Great British Music, but that is not the point.

Perhaps British Classical Music is just not as well known as other European music.

This is something that I will come back to.

Be kind to the Saudis, they're our friends!

Setting the stock of the rifle comfortably into your shoulder you carefully line up your slowly moving target. It lumbers along seemingly oblivious of the immanent danger. You squint through one eye ensuring that the crosshairs are centred on the target. A slow smile spreads across your face: an easy target. You gently, but firmly, squeeze the trigger. Bull’s eye! A direct hit!

And nothing happens.

So, yet again, the Saudi government (what a misnomer that is) has shown itself above any of the cares of the mere mortals who struggle along without a sea of oil under their feet. Doesn’t matter how many times you score a direct hit: they just walk away.

It’s difficult to know how to categorise that strata of the Saudi population (loathed by its people) which calls itself the government. Since the royal family dominates ministries and offices of state then it tend towards an oligarchy; but, as there is also a supreme king, it suggest totalitarianism and, as it uses the extended family it is also nepotistic. Its corruption goes without saying not only in terms of the overwhelming hypocrisy of the governing classes as they mouth the necessary inanities as befits a family which has charge of the holy places of the Prophet, but also in the cavalier way in which they ignore the irksome restraints of the Koran as soon as they are out of the country.

It is very hard to forget the ham fisted attempts of the Saudis to suppress the television programme ‘Death of a Princess’ which clearly demonstrated the lamentable lack of democratic progress in that benighted country not only in their response to western reporting but also in the savage system it sought to expose.

It is a country built on repression and a ruthless disregard for the values outlined in the UNO charter. It makes its own selfish rules and relies on its oceans of oil money to buy itself out of any situation which may indicate the rotten foundations of that corrupt state.

If money corrupts then oil money corrupts absolutely. The alleged corruption connected with BAE will not be resolved now because of the links of National Importance which connect this country with that of Saudi Arabia.

Do we really believe that Saudi is in the ‘fight against terrorism’ for any other motives than the self interest and self perpetuation of a detested royal family? Do we really believe that anything other that money and power motivates the ruling dynasty of that country? Do we really believe that Saudi is anything other than a pariah state only tolerated for friendly access to oil by a power hungry west? Democratic elections in Saudi would see the royal family swept away in a torrent of Islamic religious parties. No, the west is content for the disreputable bunch of self seeking autocrats to luxuriate in unbelievable wealth because their very corruption ensures the ‘stability’ of a country vital to the interests of the west.

If the west ever deserted their human rights denying oil producers then the Saudi royal family would be torn to shreds by their loyal subjects.

As we plod our way towards Christmas the number of news stories which demand depression seems to grow. I resolve to be more upbeat. If only for my own sake!

A more pressing problem for me than the galloping dissolution of the world is what to cook on Wednesday. It has been decided that the meal will be Spanish. I think that I will make a Fideuá and perhaps some crema catalana ice cream. I will give this some thought!

Food is always uplifting!

Tales we tell ourselves

“Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was perfect and without spot. She smiled where ever she went, and where ever she went she was loved and adored. Because she was so very nice she became a living legend and became the very soul of her people.

One terrible night when wild drink was raging the unthinkable happened and the beautiful princess was dead.

But the people who were made childish by their adoration of their fairy tale princess could not believe that a simple accident could deprive them of the light of her presence and so they built up another fairy story which made it possible for them to accept their loss.

They believed that only an evil ogre could have killed their perfect princess; an evil ogre with a vile horde of black hearted villains who helped him plan the terrible act.

The king sought the advice of wise men that had spent many years searching for the truth, but when the wise men explained what they had discovered, the people would not accept their truth and turned to foreign poltroons who spoke fantasy and turned the heads of the people.”

Once again the fate of royals has presented the British people in a contemptible light. The Princess of Wales’ death has brought out all the moronic conspiracy theorists and they are given validity by the credulous British public who seem unable to accept that their fairy tale was ended by the everyday realities of death by drunken driving.

Like James Dean, Dianna is doomed to be for ever youthful and to live on in that iconic vacuum which she so assiduously created during her publicity fuelled lifetime. It is surely a sign of our continuing infantilism that we seem unable to accept the death of a person whose reality for most was as paper thin as her carefully groomed image in photographs.

It is ironic that the tickets for the anniversary concert planned by Diana’s children has sold out and tickets are now available on eBay to howls of moral outrage that anyone could think of merely making money from the sainted memory of that woman. A woman, one is tempted to add, whose life was defined by conspicuous expenditure and living a lifestyle which predicated easy access to money, and vast quantities of it.

Perhaps the life of Dianna has gone beyond any reasonable or rational explanation. It can only be understood in terms of myth. Give it another couple of millennia and god knows what status the Patron Saint of Self Publicity will have achieved.

Especially when the ravings of Dodie el Fayed’s father fuel the purient interest in squalid yet futile speculation through acres of newsprint and sound bite after sound bite.

I suppose that I am even more bitter at the publicity that the report on Diana’s death has had at a time when the deaths of sex workers in the east should be concerning us and the safety of other women there should be of overriding importance.

Tomorrow will be better and less angst. I trust!

On car parking contemplation

One of the great unread (though not unbought, paradoxically) books of my formative generation was Robert Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.’ Everyone recognised the cover with the cramped column of writing and the flower, but few would have been able to recognize any of the contents. What it said was not important: it was an icon and it had the word Zen written in large friendly letters on the cover. That was enough.

No one knew what Zen actually meant, but we did know that it was ‘cool’; though not ‘cool’ in the same way that Bart Simpson means ‘cool’, I think.

Zen was the way. And The Way. It was popularised in such Eastern Mystical series such as the one with David Carradine called ‘Kung Fu’ (http://www.kungfu-guide.com/overview.html) where gnomic snippets of wisdom were vouchsafed to Kwai Chang Caine (Carradine), a half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin priest, an expert in the ancient Chinese art of Kung Fu ("It is said a Shaolin priest can walk through walls. Looked for, he cannot be seen. Listened for, he cannot be heard. Touched, he cannot be felt.") Ah, the numbers of times that fortune cookie wisdom was given to ‘Butterfly’ – and we all felt it meant something, just beyond our western understanding!

The same with Lao Tzu, (http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/lao.html) a philosopher of existential skepticism, where one must ‘abandon knowledge and discard self’; always a joy trying to work out how it all applies to shopping in Tesco.

But that is the point: what is the use of philosophy if it cannot help you in the everyday situations of life. Take, for example the shop car park. Let’s be fair these are, at the best of times, fairly soulless places; typically acres of concrete with symmetrical lines and occasional huts for the return of trolleys. Who, in their right minds would decide to pass time in one of these rather than in the treasure trove of goodies which comprise our present merchandising outlets? It all depends on the shop and who you are with.

Unless you have a particular fetish, then, as a man, a woman’s clothing department is of limited interest. If you are with Shopping Women in a woman’s clothing department then you are likely to have to extend your meditative capabilities to a considerable extent, because time as you have previously experienced it will be undergoing a Stephen Hawking like extension into an infinity of dimensions. I do not even pretend to know what women find inexhaustibly fascinating about each individual item of apparel so that their progress though a store is as fast as a miser checking each individual part of the output of the Royal Mint. Time, as Forster said, must have a stop; and women’s clothing departments is where it happens.

So, if you have a choice of accompanying three (count them, three) women on a shopping spree there might be a percentage in trying to find something else to do, even if that means doing nothing.

Sitting in a car; watching a sleeping child; silence. Now is the time for Zen and butterfly contemplation. Well, I don’t do that self absorption so I decided to take photographs from a sitting position in the front seat.

Zen and the art of car park photography.

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs upon the slimy sea

The shadows grow longer; I feel the need to draw nearer to the crackling fire. I draw my coat about me and slowly sip from my crystal goblet, the deep vermillion wine gradually warming me. I gaze into the flames and try to remember. To remember those things which used to be so important and which now . . . now, the orange flickers with the yellow in the ever changing patterns in the fire.

See there! There, for a moment a shape, a shape like a woman, a woman I should remember. It was a long time ago, my memory is not as good as I would wish it; the flicker of the flame is like the flicker of recognition. I should remember, but it is difficult.

Then Pinochet finally dies.

Suddenly everything is back in sharp focus. All the bitter memories of the self aggrandising, blatantly bigoted, self righteous, Saint Francis quoting harridan, lurching from her crypt to reiterate her mealy mouthed support for the murdering dictator come flooding back.

A blast from the past, and all the old resentment that has been built lovingly into my political memory stretching from her time as minister of education and enduring to her last days while she was prised out of power whooshes back to the forefront of my mind.

I would have thought it impossible for her pre-eminent position in my pantheon of contempt to be surpassed, but Lord (!) Lamont (that personification of farcical financial fiasco) outdid her in his peon of praise for the dead dictator. All it needed was for Lord (!) Get On Your Bike Tebbit to shed a bitter tear at Pinochet’s departure to encourage my hatred quotient to overflow.

I also realised that there is not another person in modern British politics about whom I feel even a tenth of the passion (for or against) that is reserved for that Dowager Grotesque from Grantham. Of course I admire the fact that she was the first woman leader of a major British political party and the first woman Prime Minister, but the venom that I poured out in impotent fury at the television screen when her expression of sorrow at the death of an evil man was broadcast reminded me of an intensity for the political life of this country which I do not find myself able to express today.

Yes, I did stay up to see Michael Portillo lose his seat humiliatingly to an 'out' homosexual, and I did share the fervid enthusiasm for the hope of egalitarianism that seemed to be promised by the sweeping victory of a professed left wing party.

How naïf seems that hope now. (And even Michael Portillo has reinvented himself as a sort of New Labour Media Person!)

For that I do not blame the Labour party. They were elected: a major achievement. But they were elected by a country that has lost its working class: everyone is middle class now; or at least they have a very real expectation of sharing the material values of what they take the middle class to have.

We live in a country populated by the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of Thatcher. If Tony Benn is the Voice of the Left, then he is a dangerous voice. His vision for Britain is one which will not be tolerated by the vast majority of the population whatever he might make them think by speaking in what Patrick Hannan described as “that famous everyone-knows-this-is-true-so-there’s-nothing-to-argue-about manner which has drawn him so many admirers who look upon him as a toff turned cuddly leftie who ‘talks a lot of sense, you know.’”

Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that the demographic in this country precludes a popular vote for a socialist agenda.

Some members of the Labour party were obviously not listening to Gerald Kaufman when he described the moralistic posturing of the Labour Party Manifesto of 1983 as “the longest suicide note in history” and some of them are not listening today.

Power is the prime necessity for changing anything and people like Glenda Jackson, while totally admirable in their enunciating of moral values will never keep power when people realise that moral principles come with a major price tag!

Anyone who has fond expectations that the Prime Minister in Waiting Gordon Brown will act like Bessie Braddock because he has a passing resemblance to her is kidding himself. Braddock had influence but would not allow herself to be tainted by cabinet responsibility; the compromises of being in government are inevitable and a refusal to accept the weight of the chains of expediency is, in my view, abdicating responsibility by allowing yourself the luxury of behaving with individual ‘dignity.’ Think of Nye Bevan: he demonstrates a full range of responses to the difficult questions that politics pose to the aspiring politician.

I do not envy the politicians in the present Labour party; they are constantly having to square the circle, but, perhaps that is what all politicians in all parties have to do all the time. God help them!

At least my hatred for That Woman has had a seasonal boost, and I will check the wick on her candle so ensure that it is ready to be lit as soon as she chooses to join her dictator friend.

Delayed Days!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday 9th

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

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

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

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

Sunday 10th

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

House of cards

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

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

It comes down to credit cards.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What other aspects of technology are waiting to bite me?

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

Driving with the enemy?

Everyone has his price.

No one is beyond being bought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

See what you like!

And today’s word is: Pareidolia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And there aren’t many blogs which do that!

You must wear yours with a difference!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy cooking!

Kicking the habit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My habit can continue!

Presentation is all!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who could ask for more from an ALP?

O that this too, too solid flesh and all that

Empathy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Point made

How does it work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exactly.

Presenting present presents!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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