Toni made me watch it!

Hey, you listen to me mate! If my Prime Minister, Chancellor, assorted politicians, the great and the good and the whole world and his wife can do it then I don’t see why I should be inhibited by intellectual arrogance from not participating in the most important debate in which this country has been involved. Who should go; Jade or Shilpa?

I am typing this with that infernally irritating northern nasal voice telling me the time in The House and letting me see the inconsequential meanderings of celebrity nonentities. This is an oxymoron which sums up the whole experience of this version of Big Brother.

Although I despise the programme I am waiting for the result of the vote.

So, it’s Jade. Why has the House accepted the extraordinary silence which accompanied the information that the ignorant ‘people’s champion’ ha been chosen by a fickle public to suffer the indignation of rejection. Why did the lack of public response behind the announcement occasion no comment? Toni has opined that the inhabitants of the House are coached a little to ensure smooth broadcasting. This would suggest a degree of duplicity on the part of the programme makers which would surely be out of kilter with the quality of product that they produce.

Enough with the irony already!

I have been trying to work out just how complicated a ‘catch-22’ situation this programme offers. On the one hand it is easy to dismiss as self indulgent pap the whole concept of the show, but on the other its popularity must tell us something about the way that that we are living today: our expectations and our proclivities.

The makers of the show have shown unusual acuity in their selection of ‘celebrities’ and then included ‘one of their own’ as a sort of self referential justification for the show itself. The grotesque parody of deprivation induced stupidity that was Jade defied her failure (after all she didn’t win) and managed, against all the odds to make a career out of her own rejection. She reminds me, in some ways of Maureen from Cardiff who was the ‘star’ of the driving test series and, until the advent of Jade, was seen as monumentally stupid. But I have more respect for Maureen who at least was trying to achieve something, unlike, for example, etc etc.

Did the makers of the show really have the cynical perception to foresee the repercussions of putting bona fide celebrities (who even I had heard of) with a manufactured celebrity known for unthinking vulgarity? How cynical was the editing of the show? Did they calculate the effect of leaving in seemingly racist comments?

How far has the public outcry about the content of the show been orchestrated by the makers? How far can the programme say that any publicity is good publicity? How much can the Great British Public take of pseudo outrage? And I wonder how many people actually noted and watched this episode of Big Brother? In a rare concession to common morality, the makers of BB have decided to donate the profits from this eviction to charity. Nothing like a little fear to promote philanthropy!

I find my reactions to the show conflicting and the more complex they become the more tempted I am to return to my original position and dismiss the whole thing as worthless rubbish.

Sounds convincing to me!

What is far more impressive is that I have managed to put up one section of the fence which was blown down and lightly destroyed by the gales in the past few days. As usual for me when something practical I had to have an entire tool set a complete set of tools; an electric drill; complete incomprehension about the task to be completed; incompetence of a high order and eventual partial success.

Of such is a happy life made.

What a surprise!

During one horrific winter of savage weather we, in Cardiff, had approx-imately 1mm of ‘snow’. It was so thin that the black surface of the road was clearly visible. The entire traffic system of South East Wales ground to a halt. Newport Road was one solid line of unmoving traffic. Traffic filled with incredulous commuters audibly questioning their perception of reality when a mere dusting of snow (during the winter) was able to disable the life of the capital city of a country by its simple unexpectedness. Who would have thought that winter could bring snow? How could anyone predict that snow would fall on roads? What gullible innocent would expect the city council to have machinery to help deal with adverse weather conditions? We have to remember that this is the country that brought you the excuse of ‘the wrong sort of leaves on the track’ to explain our lousy train system and its surrealistic time keeping!

Today was windy. Eight people have died in wind associated accidents. Air, Sea, Rail, Road and Canal have all been affected. Some wind speeds in Wales have reached 80 mph which is strong, but not that strong. We are constantly surprised by our weather and our surprise takes away our ability to cope. But, bad weather does give you the opportunity to stay comfortably indoors and sip a cup of tea and read and pretend that the weather outside does not exist. Just like the council!

In my reading Nickleby has attacked and thrashed Squeers and has decided to make for London with Smike in tow. I am constantly surprised how involved I am in the narrative when I know the book quite well already. Each re reading of Dickens points up different aspects of the story and you notice different details in the writing. Like a Giles cartoon there is always a telling detail which you have missed in the past.

My interest in Ralph Nickleby increases. His pathological hatred of disinterested philanthropy and his terror of emotional claims are fascinating. He is obviously contrasted with Nicholas: the difference between innocence and experience. But the younger man is going to have to depend on the kindness of strangers (the old deus ex machina) and his good looks, while Ralph lives in the world as it is and uses the realities of human frailty to survive. I am aware that I seem to have set off on a course to justify or exonerate his actions.

I will see how far I am able to maintain this stance: allowing the novel to dictate my response.

Of course!

Telephone trauma

Then They Returned!

If yesterday’s opening sounded like a Yeats poem title, today’s sounds like a cheap sci-fi horror flick. Yet the leaden phrase hides something positive – the first viewers of the year are returning for a second view! This is something to think about, even if their second visit is not until next Tuesday. This gives us time to try and repair the broken fence, though probably not tomorrow as we are predicted howling gales (again) and then lots of lashing rain. It will give me time to try and find the screws which have been carefully put away; so carefully that they are now effectively lost. These things are a small price to pay for pay, as it were!

The controversy about Celebrity Big Brother continues to grow with howls of outrage: not, unfortunately about the sheer poor taste which the programme displays twenty four hours a day, but rather in terms of racism. It turns out that the Bollywood film star has been picked on by the gaggle of brainless witches which constitute the majority of the females left in the House. The controversy has reached the sort of level where Brown was assailed by questions about the programme on his trip to India.

Now part of me is delighted that opprobrium is building up against the programme and my first reaction was pompously to state that I couldn’t see how, in all conscience, the programme could be allowed to continue and it should obviously be terminated at once. But, there again, that’s what I used to say about the Conservatives and Margaret Thatcher – so, let’s get a sense of proportion in here. I do think that the programme is pernicious, but all you have to do is turn the bloody thing off. I do not read the sort of papers which make programmes like this the staple for their readers. How, therefore does this effect me?

Closing down programmes or banning content goes against what I believe. I particularly dislike media induced hiccoughs of moral outrage which prompt politicians to start making populist statements which have long term deleterious effects on life in Britain. At best this programme is giving public folk the opportunity to make facile statements about racism, which they are against. Well, that’s a surprise! A gaggle of brainless nonentities thinking themselves significant react badly when confronted with a person who exudes sophistication and articulacy and who is from a different culture. There is another surprise! Thatcher put paid to working class socialism and the women are true inheritors of Thatcher’s legacy.

I will have to buy a quality newspaper tomorrow and see the cultural fall out analysed with flair and panache from Big Brother. I think that I will enjoy the political fall out more than the programme that I don’t watch!

Today has been an elusive day. It has gone with very little to show for it. The morning was lost in pseudo illness. I think that Toni and I are still suffering from the tail end of the illness which stuck us over Christmas. At least I was able to rest for part of the morning and was only woken by the agents informing me about the return of the viewers whereas poor old Toni had to labour on with an extra hour of overtime too!

Better tomorrow. Brave the gales and shame the devil.

Toujours gai! Archie! Toujours gai!

A day in the life of

No second viewing.

Sounds like the title of a poem by Yeats or a novel from the nineteen twenties, or perhaps a film noir; it is, of course, none of these; it merely describes the non reappearance of house visitors and potential buyers. It is not going to be enough that Richard is going to have to go through the same thing as his ‘upside down’ house comes onto the market. Comparison of frustration is no expiation.

However: the sun shone. In this benighted country, who can ask for more?

I have taken my mild preoccupation with ‘World’ British Music a step further. I have pondered on what would constitute orchestra music of world renown which is British and finally managed (with the help of Robert) to come up with a list of 10. It was comforting to hear Alan suggest the Trumpet Voluntary by Jeremiah Clarke, as that was my last suggestion at number 10. So I do have a list of sorts of the top ten British World Music orchestral tunes.

The step further has been to contact Classic FM and suggest an insert or a programme based on my idea. I spoke to someone who sounded in the last throes of a sore throat and cold. I was told that I would be contacted either by somebody who would respond to the idea of a list or somebody who could take it further. I look forward to the contact, but, giving it further thought I might suggest it to Radio Wales or rather to Radio 4. I will work on the ideas and hope that my impulsive contacting of Classic FM has not stymied my chances of getting the more fully worked out ideas for a larger (or more lucrative) audience. As I’m typing I’m getting more ideas for the format of a series of programmes, so I think I should shut up and now and get a different ‘piece of paper’ and be more professional about my ideas.

I am taking part in ‘Something Else’ this Sunday, so it may well be a good opportunity to get some feedback on any idea and format that I might suggest. Some work to do then!

I’ve read a little more of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ and am getting into the narrative. Ralph Nickleby, although presented as a heartless baddie, has some interesting features, especially linguistically. I think he is a character who will be differently perceived by me this reading around. Newman Noggs as a character was front-lined for me by the superb National Theatre production of evil memory – not, I rush to add, through any fault of The National Theatre, but rather through the usual machinations of pupils whose sole reason for existence is to frustrate the best intentions of selflessly professional teachers. I have not thought about this incident for many years, but memory has a way of letting you relive all the fury, frustration and exasperation that pedagogy is heir to! How well I remember the repercussions of that little school trip!

Since memory is in the ascendant I may as well recall the Ultimate Horror Trip. It all started so well and we (the goodies – the teachers) sat in the evening sunshine in Stratford upon Avon having a well deserved light evening meal before the performance by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company in the Memorial Theatre. It was all going so well that we shouldn’t have tempted fate by saying out loud, “Well, this is all very pleasant, isn’t it?” From then onwards terror succeeded horror and catastrophe piled on disaster.

I think I’ll just list what went on and I experience again the character building experience that the evening became:

1 We are a ticket short as we sold the ‘extra’ ticket we had because one of the pupils was hiding under a chair
2 I stand for the first half of the show behind the stall seats
3 One of my colleagues spends the first part of the show running up and down the stairs – don’t ask
4 The kids’ behaviour during the first part of the show elicits complaints from the rest of the audience
5 The kids talk, eat crisps and drink fizzy drinks from cans
6 One psychotic kid makes a break for ‘freedom’ at the end of the show
7 I trust my colleagues to count the kids back on the bus accurately
8 Just leaving Stratford someone asks, “Where’s John?” (The boy who was hiding under seat – see 1 above)
9 The bus returns to the Memorial Theatre and I wander around the steps of the theatre calling, “John! John!” as if the boy was a dog
10 We make contingency plans to inform police, parents, school etc about missing boy
11 I decide I will stay in Stratford for the night to search for boy
12 Teachers join in the increasingly worried search party
13 Boy found wandering around in front of the Hilton, “I don’t follow the herd sir,” was his explanation
14 The bus sets off and stops for a toilet break at a service station where the pupils are herded unceremoniously like animals they are so they can’t misbehave further
15 Psychotic pupil manages to steal motorway cone
16 Male colleague sits next to psychotic pupil (who is clutching the cone) and swears at him (sotto voce) for the whole of the return trip to Cardiff
17 We are late arriving back at school
18 Teachers decide to kill pupils
19 Teachers think again and reluctantly decide to obey laws
20 Teachers sleep.

This is yet another aspect of teaching that I don’t miss!

Can I join your group?

I find those little quizzes in magazines where you have to answer a series of questions to discover which ‘group’ you belong to irresistible. It’s rather like horoscopes, you know that they are a load of utter rubbish, but I would not trust the person who has the strength of character to ignore reading their reading!

The magazines latch on to the fact that everyone likes to belong, to a group even if it’s one like mine, characterised by a poisonous eight legged scuttling creature with a sting in the tail. We manage, of course, to rationalise and use metaphor to point up the obvious (to us Scorpios) positive aspects of our sign: lively, assertive, intelligent with the ability to use language to stinging effect – no one gets the linguistic upper hand with us! Hooray!

No matter how absurd the little quizzes are they are mesmeric in their attraction and also prompt extraordinary feats of imaginative thought to justify their results. I must admit I also have a healthy scepticism about the accuracy of these searching analyses ever since I filled out a sexual habits survey in a magazine when I was in university. I answered every question with total accuracy and discovered in my final points total analysis that I was – wait for it: absolutely normal. This was one of the most crushing personal insults that I have ever had to endure and, although my faith in these surveys obviously suffered a considerable dent, I struggled throughout the succeeding years and bit by bit I returned to my credulous scepticism and acceptance of the Olympian understanding of journalists in the world of popular magazines.

Accepting that the group mentality exists, my experiences today certainly categorises people; not so much via quiz but rather by reaction.

My day started with my being early for a dentist appointment: one and a half hours early. OK, so I was wrong rather than defiantly brave ad it did make the ensuing ninety minutes a little less than satisfactory thinking about what the dentist was going to do.

I trust my dentist; he has shown himself reasonable and, as far as I can work out, he only does invasive work when absolutely essential – but he is not Mr Hamilton.

Mr Hamilton was the dentist I used to go to in Maesteg when I was a kid. My aunt was his assistant and he always gave me a birthday and Christmas present. He let me dress up in his white coat and pretend to be a dentist by welding his instruments of torture; he even gave me, in what would today be regarded as an act of criminal irresponsibility, a little jar with a few drops of liquid mercury in it so that I could push the drop of liquid metal around a smooth surface. The hell with deadly heavy metals, this was the 50s and there was a boy to keep interested! Mr Hamilton was from Ireland and his accent was impenetrable; I understood virtually nothing except for the vaguely recognisable ‘Stephen’ which ended many of his sentences to me! I went to tea with Mr Hamilton and his wife. He was somebody I grew up with and he was what I thought all dentists were like. I never understood why school friends evinced fear and loathing when they went to the dentist. Why was this? Surely their dentists were exactly like Mr Hamilton.

Then Mr Hamilton died. I had to go to another dentist who I did no know; who sent me no birthday cards; with who I did not take tea. I was absolutely petrified. All the fear which I had not understood from previous years I experienced suddenly, in full, at once.

Now that I am at an age where there is greater perspective about my early reactions, I am able to take a magisterial approach and say that people do not have an attitude of indifference towards dentists. They form groups.

Let’s start with The Frankly Terrified: from a general check up to root canal work, the reaction is the same: unthinking, almost uncontrollable, gut wrenching terror. We could go on to The Defiant Liar: this is exactly the same as the above, but this person has enough gumption left to lie about their reaction. The most irritating is Open Faced Acceptance: this is a state where the person really and truly doesn’t really care about going to the dentist. There are at least one hundred and seventy three distinct extra types which you can discover in any reasonable text book, and you can find your own little group.

The other excursion today was with Paul Squared to get his stitches out in the Heath Hospital. Here is another of life’s little experiences which divide humanity: Hospital Visiting. The groups here range from the ghouls to the grumps: the former taking a macabre delight is seeing the sick and the latter resenting every second spent doing their duty to the sick.

My day was spent thinking about the house and the response thereto. The agent phoned up and said that the potential buyers liked the house but were concerned about the level of the back garden. We will wait and see.

Wait and see.

The Waiting Game

This is actually (and really) Sunday’s blog but the time is out of joint and the previous blog committed the ultimate sin of breaching the midnight limit; in BBC terms this would be the equivalent of speaking over the pips!

‘The Times’ (when it was a decent newspaper and not owned by the Dirty Digger) used to print letters whose writers had noticed the first cuckoo of spring. I feel that I should write a similar missive but this time describing the first viewers of the new year.

After an extended period of unnatural activity (cleaning) and perverse behaviour (tidying) the house looked as unlike anything that I would like to live in as I could imagine: everything, as Toni would say, “in his place.” I want to get back to clutter and my books, but that will be ere the set of sun and the selling of the house.

The couple who came to view seemed to like it: the man dwelt on the car parking possibilities and the lady was drawn to the kitchen and the views. We now come to that non-time which is the time between the viewing and the response. As today is Sunday we will have to wait until Monday and even then it is sometimes delayed. Wait and see. Good advice.

The down side of preparing the house for a viewing is trying to find out where you put all those things which you just stuffed into any corner or drawer, telling yourself that you would restore everything to its appropriate place as soon as the viewers had left. What I actually did when they left (apart, that is, from the instant character analysis and pointless worry about whether or not they were likely to buy the property) was make lunch.

There was nothing outstanding about the repast we had, but the feature which interested me most was the colander which I used. At Toni’s behest we bought a new one in Sainsbury yesterday. Now I remember colanders from my youth. They were something which your family bought once and the article stayed with you for the rest of your parents’ lives and then was transferred to you by natural selection or some such process and was something which you used until it broke and then continued to use because a colander was something which distant family bought and handed down, not something which you could buy yourself. The one we had was made of aluminium and came down to Cardiff with my parents from Leeds. It was quite small and couldn’t contain a full saucepan full of potatoes for example. It also had a wonky base, so that it leaned a little to one side. Did we buy a replacement? Of course not! So you can understand my wonderment at actually having the temerity to lash out and purchase an heirloom. And very fine it is too: a professional looking thing in gleaming stainless steel and large enough to take a couple of chopped lettuces! A momentous day indeed, and, as Toni paid for half of it; an internationally significant day!

Perhaps today is the day that I get more fully into the novel of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’. The description of the Muffin and Crumpet swindle which is just about to be perpetrated seems as relevant today as it was in the time of Dickens. Although the fraud is presented in a humorous way the reality behind the scheme is harshly serious and, although this fraud is being carried out in a public meeting with the stock comic characters of Irish MPs etc., all you have to do is reset the meeting to a carefully constructed web site on the internet, and the link to the present is clear and the money making possibilities just as lucrative!

Man's greed never changes!

Grey Days

This is actually Saturdays blog, but the way things work out midnight comes too soon sometimes.

Another grey day in a succession of grey days: no wonder we founded an empire in the sun! What do we do now that we have lost it all? Move to Spain! What a good idea: why didn’t I think of that before?

Tomorrow we have the first viewers of the year for the house. This is something of a surprise as we did not expect anyone this early in the year. It would be silly to get our hopes up as we are used to disappointment so far: at least we are able to sit tight and wait and are not panicking, not yet anyway. We will have to wait and see: again!

I think that I am becoming even more misogynistic. Over the past few months I have got used to shopping when I return from taking Toni to work; so I can be inside Tesco by 8.20 am. Tesco is encouragingly empty at this time, though it is actually too early for the proper bread to be ready, but it does make browsing around the aisles a positive pleasure.

The roads are emptier and, until early lunch time, roads are a delight to travel. The danger of lunchtime is that the aged drivers make a determined foray into the cut and thrust of ordinary life. Their driving often reflects their expectation that the school run is over and the roads ought to be given to the mature: the result being that the driving is ‘individualistic’ – or erratically slow as the rest of us discover.

It is hardly a sociological discovery to state that the process of driving seems to strip layers of superficial artifice constructed by people against the intellectual incursion of the nosy world and leave drivers in their basic, sometimes atavistic state. I know people who say that they don’t like driving; but I have yet to meet someone who says that they are indifferent drivers. If we are all experts then drivers occupy the same zone of irritation as parents. All parents (without exception) are experts on education, and certainly more learned and experienced than any teacher who might be attempting to inflict their pedagogic black arts on their innocent babes. In the same way all drivers (without exception) always do the right thing and behave with decorum and professionalism. It therefore follows that there can be no criticism which is not unwarranted and impertinent. It therefore further follows that all actions taken by all drivers are right and proper at all times. This makes any reasonable analysis somewhat impossible. Any attempt at analysis should, therefore, be resisted with immense contempt at all times.

You might say that very few people would be stupid enough to comment on any one else’s driving in the same way than only a suicidal idiot would comment truthfully on any baby or child offered by parents for contemplation and adulation. It is how analysis is presented that is the issue.

Here are the ways in which analysis is perceived by other drivers, you will notice that 'other' drivers do not actually have to do anything which is against the other driver, just existing is enough, but the list following shows ways in which the threatening analysis is understood:
1 Driving too close
2 Driving too fast
3 Driving
4 Looking at other drivers
5 Not looking at other drivers
6 Using a mobile phone
7 Keeping to the speed limit
8 Talking to a passenger
9 Using hand signals
10 Driving a 4 wheel drive
11 Driving a two door car
12 Driving with stickers on the rear windscreen
13 Driving a vehicle with tinted windows
14 Driving a vehicle with Penthouse bunny stickers
15 Having a sign in the rear window with "Princess on board"
16 Driving with the head lower than the top of the steering wheel
17 Any Porche driver
18 Not wearing a seat belt
19 Smoking while driving
20 Driving a Ford

So, any behaviour, driving style or attitude on behalf of another driver is an implied analysis.

There is no escape.

Computer abuse

This is being written in electronic exile.

My internet connection is not working and it is amazing how isolated I feel. Something has happened to my computer and programs are not working properly. The most obvious reason for this situation is a virus: though I have to say (through clenched teeth) that I do have an up-and-running anti virus program. My frustration is now being expressed in a tight and sullen sort of resentment when, for no reason, the toys of my adulthood are suddenly taken away.

Just as suddenly as it happened: it has reversed itself. There was a certain amount of encouragement by listening to Toni and typing in ‘configsys’ at certain arcane spaces on the computer and limiting this and expanding that; but the most effective procedure which managed to get this cutting edge technology back onto the straight and narrow was actually turning it off and on again. This is actually quite encouraging, because that is the computer equivalent to giving the machine a little tap to get it going again! Nice to see that the old methods are still the most effective!

I’ve now completed reading “Winter in Madrid” by C J Sansom and I can recommend it as a compelling read. My reservations about the implausibility of the plot and the highly contrived twists in it are actually utilised with some subtlety as the action progresses. My further reservations about the use of the setting are also lessened as the story progresses.

There are genuine shocks as the tempo of the action increases. The central character represents a particular view of the typical non-political English man who tries to do the decent thing when placed in intolerable circumstances. That is why the historical and geographical location of the novel is so interesting: a non political approach to Spain at the end of the Civil War was impossible. I do, of course, realise that any ‘non-political’ stance is more presentation than reality. I spent a long time talking to teachers who thought that they could be non political just because they said so. It was always fun pointing out to those colleagues with limited intelligence the oxymoron that a ‘non political’ stance actually was in the profession of teaching! As it was always members of PAT (the professional association of teachers – what a misnomer that first word always was) who twittered on about their inability to take strike action ‘because of the pupils’ but who never failed to take their pay increases when they found their way into their pay packets after the actions of the NUT and NASWT!

The ending of the novel is probably the strongest part of the book, and I’m not totally convinced that the rest of the action matches the strength which is evident at the end. I do admire the fact that Sansom did not duck the issues which his setting provoked. His research is sometimes a little too much on parade and there is a certain amount of historical name dropping but it is woven into the fabric of his narrative.

Having said all that, I think that the most impressive part of the book is at the end of the novel when Sansom gives his references and especially his summary of the conflict in a section entitled ‘Historical Note’. I have not read a more compact, succinct and intelligent summary of the complex and frustrating conflict which was the Spanish Civil War. In three and a half pages he manages to concentrate the complex issues into a readable and understandable format.

Although I had not heard of Sansom before, I understand that his literary fame rests more on the fact that he has started producing a series of historical novels. I can’t say that I am encouraged to read those, even though you are given a chapter for free at the end of ‘Winter in Madrid’.

The photos promised yesterday did not materialise.

Tomorrow.

For sure.

Blow, blow thou winter wind!

Now that the howling winds have lessened in their intensity (well, stopped if I am to be strictly accurate) I can survey my demesne and take stock of the destruction wrecked. Three panels around the garden have been stricken. It is, of course, just my luck that the panels which need to be replaced are no longer made! I dread to think what resources of ingenuity will be called on from my limited stock to repair the seemingly destroyed fence. Two of the panels are now lying on the patio outside the front windows like some giant’s discarded jigsaw set and I have a vague but nagging feeling that a random scattering of nails knocked with enthusiasm in to various rotting pieces of sodden wood is not going to produce a convincing looking replacement section. Well, think what I like, it has to be done to be ready for the Selling Season for the house. I only hope that Cuprinol paint can cover a multitude of minor discrepancies in the surface of wooden panelling!

There is something to be said for viewing a gale from the centrally heated comfort of a secure home. Even though I have to say that the occasional ‘thunk!’ as yet another garden chair is levitated just enough to get itself thrown by the careless hand of the wind into the pond, where it remains, half submerged, like the aftermath of a normal pool party in Malaga, is a little disconcerting.

The wind also converted our street into an almost comical obstacle course because of the disorder brought to the road by the scattered bins which had been overturned. Driving was more of a slalom course, especially where the concentration of wheelie bins from the flats made the course even more perilous. Thank god for a good cup of tea and a decent book; the wind can do what it likes as long as there is literature to facilitate escape!

I am now well into ‘Winter in Madrid’ and I have distinctly mixed thoughts about the book. I am not convinced that the setting of the book adds that much to a rather contrived plot. I get the sense that the setting of immediate post Civil War Spain and the problems of keeping Spain out of the Second World War is more window dressing than an essential element in the effective presentation of the relationships of the major protagonists. Coincidence is playing far too large a part in the action of the novel and its obviousness is unsettling: it points up the mechanistic nature of the emotional ties which link the three school fellows.

I will wait until I have finished before I give a definitive evaluation of the novel – though I have to say the more I read this book the more I am looking forward to starting ‘Nicholas Nickleby’!

I am still looking for suggestions for the pieces of British orchestral music which qualify as ‘world famous’ – I’ve had one or two more suggestions but people are confusing ‘good’ British music with ‘world famous’ British music: not the same thing at all – though we might bemoan the fact that more British music is not known around the world, I’m looking for the reality of fame rather than the earnest expression of what ought to be famous.

Tomorrow: photos. I have neglected my camera, so I will set myself the task of producing a set of three or four decent shots to keep my level of involvement active.

We shall see.

Penury!

I am not one to dwell on imagined or real slights. I scorn to harp on about injustices that I have suffered. I shrug at hardship and adversity and much prefer to get on with the positive aspects of life.

Well, as an aspiration, the previous paragraph sounds OK; it’s just a pity that it doesn’t, even remotely, apply to me.

I am still reeling after paying £700 for my car yesterday: a service; MOT and replacement brakes. Except that the very efficient people in Nationwide Autocentre in North Road in Cardiff didn’t manage to include my new MOT certificate in the “Thank you for choosing . . .” guff that they gave me after ripping £700 from my shocked account. I only hope that they were a little more efficient in the way that they have treated my car!

I was, to put it mildly, pissed off because I had to return to North Road to collect my MOT before getting my tax disc. I have now spent the best part of £1,000 to keep my car on the road: and the insurance is due in a few months time! O tempera O mores!

[I have just moved my position to escape being oracularly involved in “’Celebrity’ Big Brother”. Some things ask too much of a relationship!]

Not that it is playing in my mind; but did your last service bill have separate charges for the disposal of oil, brake fluid and ‘other’ fluids? Did it? Liar! It is, surely, only the grasping mechanics of Nationwide Autocentre in North Road who charge for things like that (including, might I just add, a charge of £10.75 for adjusting the beam of the headlights!) I could weep! I really could!

Anyway, money is, after all, only money.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? It comes to something when I catch myself trying to give myself therapy by vacuous meaningless cliché! Things have reached a very pretty pass indeed when such attempts to soothe my moneyless state misuse words in this way. Let me turn to things real and more important.

Today was the housework day. I cannot pretend that I have found Zen contentment in the quotidian tasks of maintaining a normal household. Hoovering does not calm me; washing does not lave my spirit in balm; polishing does not soothe, and cleaning glass is just amazingly difficult and frustrating.

Indeed I think that cleaning glass and mirrors is the nearest that we come to experiencing a fifth dimension. I have tried using lint free cloths; ‘Windowlene’ impregnated disposable tissues; various unguents whose garish graphics clearly state that their whole raison d’etre is to clean glass; newspaper and a sponge – and none of them actually ‘do what it says on the tin.’ No matter how painstakingly you apply cream, lotion, spray, vinegar, soap, water: none of them leave the whole (that adjective is important) window or mirror clean.

If you look a mirror clean in the face (so to speak) you can tell it is clean; but, move a fraction to one side and the smeary, smudgy, pock marked true surface of the material is cleanly apparent. Clean from that direction, until it is pristine and sparkling, then move back to your original position and, hey presto! everything is dirty again! What has changed? Only your ways of seeing. It reminds me of the Berger book which was so fashionable at once time, and was one of those worthy volumes spawned by the BBC which made you believe that you were an intellectual – I loved them! This is yet another volume safely packed away awaiting shipment in the walk-in wooden packing cases. I hope.

Tomorrow I want to read. I have read nothing today except what has been essential to keep the day going. Tomorrow I want to get further into ‘Winter in Madrid’ and relive the frustration of the Civil War in Spain.

I also, more importantly, have to repair two parts of the fence which have blown down recently. With Brian in Span we do not have access to the van to bring new sections to the house and so I will have to perform magic with what is left to produce something which looks in keeping with what is left. God help us all if I have to rely on my mechanical ingenuity to produce a seamless fence of matched sections. I could do before and after photographs so you could judge for yourselves. It’s an idea and an incentive rolled into one, together with the opportunity to exercise my artistic ability in taking tasteful photos of the destruction.

And its amazing transformation.

Perhaps.

We’ll see.

Bitterness continues!

“What I really miss,” I remarked to Paul Squared yesterday, “by not reading a decent newspaper on a regular basis, is that when a phenomenon like Jade re-entering the Big Brother House occurs, I do not have access to a pseudo sociological analysis by one of the politically correct hacks to keep me happy!”

No sooner said than, when buying The Independent this morning there, within the first few turns, a double page spread on that very topic. Nor only does this give me intellectual permission to indulge my fascination with so-called popular culture, but the article also asked the question, “WHAT does her success say about the cultural life of the nation?”

I just adore seemingly profound questions answered in a self indulgent, self aware, self justifying journalese with condescending, arch humour informing the analysis. I’m a sucker for snobbishness, especially when it’s displayed in such a self deprecating way. Articles like this allow me to indulge my sick fascination with the ignorant loud mouth; feel superior to her unbelievable lack of basic knowledge and feel guilty about all of the preceding. It’s the perfect literary treat for a wishy-washy liberal like me! (And with squirm making pictures too!)

I do not think I can, in all conscience, watch the benighted programme until The Abomination has been taken off. I have not taken to leaving the room (which I do when ‘Coronation Street’ comes on the box) but have satisfied my values by sitting at a table where I cannot see the television (although I can make out what is happening by looking at the reflection of the TV in the sliding glass doors onto the conservatory! My excuse is that the ground floor of my house is open plan, and so there is no separate room into which I can flounce when the programme is aired. And no, I am not sitting in the toilet for an hour!

It is perhaps a credit to the programme that I feel as strongly as I do, and the makers of the pap must have struck a responsive and lucrative chord in their potential audience: even I feel like voting to get The Abomination out of the house. Rest assured I shan’t, but it’s still telling that I feel that way!

I imagine that there isn’t a single section of society or the professions which hasn’t been subject of a reality show. Although, thinking about it, I’m not sure that there has been a show about undertakers. I’m sure that I am merely revealing my ignorance of the programmes broadcast recently that I have managed to miss a whole series devoted to stiffs and their disposal called ‘Body Be gone!’ or ‘Corpses R Us’ or ‘From Body to Bill’ or something equally tasteful, tracing the touching human story of how to get rid of granny at the least possible cost while maintaining some sort of decorum. It is an undisputable fact that people will do anything to get their fifteen minutes of fame on the TV even if it means making a public spectacle of a relative’s corpse. Ugh!

This all reminds me of ‘The Loved One’ the title of Evelyn Waugh’s nasty novel about morticians: a thoroughly good read, which makes you think that there is some scope for a programme. I remember reading Nancy Mitford’s book, ‘The American Way of Death’ which was a revealing and memorable read and, while I was repulsed by the incredible depths that people would go to get a corpse looking right (!) it was an un-put-down-able read!

I look forward to being given details of the series which I have missed which utilised all the aspects of my ruminations. Just to know that it exists will further reinforce my belief that we are living in the most decadent of decadent times.

Ho Hum!

Owning a car is a way of life; a via dolorosa; a Sisyphean burden; a Tartarean experience of misery filled depression; it is an imposition by a cruel god of unmitigated horror to blight your existence. And it is expensive. Very expensive.

Someone once said (probably my Dad) that if you sit down and work out the expenses then you will be able to prove that you cannot afford to run a car. When you are presented for a bill for seven hundred pounds (700 pounds sterling) [7 x £100] {jobseekers weekly allowance times fourteen} then you don’t need to work it out: you can’t afford it. It wasn’t as if the car wasn’t working; it wasn’t as if the engine had seized up; as if the tyres had been ripped to shreds; as if the metal of the bloody thing was riddled with what we ex Triumph Herald Estate owners knew as the reason for the decline of the British car industry: rust. I was always having to have “only a little bit of welding Stephen” before I could get my hands on an MOT certificate. But £700 was more (much more) than I paid for the whole car; in fact for the first series of cars that I owned. But it is best not to think about things like that; never translate from one age to another in terms of money, otherwise you will work out that you are paying 6/- for an apple and your world will collapse and you will have to assume a foetal position before you come to terms with the world again.

Anyway, how important are properly working brakes?


I hate cars.


True!

That Monday feeling!

It’s only the second official time, but I have to admit that it gets better each time. I learned in school that there was something called ‘economics’ and that within this exciting view of reality, there was something called ‘eventually diminishing returns.’ I also seem to remember that I understood what that meant and I was also able to think of examples to illustrate this phenomenon which was not a direct take on what Professor Nevin wrote in his explanatory text book.

My hazy recollection does extend to producing a paraphrase of something like, “the more you do something the less pleasure you get from it” which should mean that every time you experience something, repetition lessens your appreciation.

Doesn’t work like that with not going to school. Each time a term starts and I’m not there, the little thrill of pleasure warms you through. Talking with Hadyn (who said nice things about my photograph of the frost fringed rose) today he mentioned that, in spite of his extended divorce from the noble profession, on Sunday evening and Monday morning he felt a pang of panic. Though I suppose that little feeling of discomfort is more than compensated for by the realization that the reality does not have to be faced!

I have to admit, though, that the actual process of teaching is something that I do miss. Reading through the Dickens I did feel the need for a class with whom to discuss the work. I have always found that discussion is the most efficient method of developing my thought, especially when you can utilize the thoughts of others in a class, and through the processes of highlighting, selecting, paraphrasing, questioning and extrapolation, being able to extend meaning in and from a literary text. I suppose in some ways that it is a form of intellectual laziness that I have an expectation that my outline of meaning will be developed by the contributions of pupils: without their stimulus (especially their ‘stupid’ comments, which more often than not indicate a more positive line of thought for me) and their response. Their questioning often prompted me to a closer explanation of meaning than I had previously thought possible. Long live pupils teaching their teachers!

I have collected my copy of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ from my very wonderful branch library in Rumney (to which all praise!) and am looking forward to revisiting all the characters, especially, following on from what I have not be doing today (ah pedagogy!) Mr Squeers: an example to us all!

Before I start on ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ I will finish the book which Aunt Bet sent to me for Christmas, C J Sansom’s ‘Winter in Madrid’. The ‘Daily Express’ (!) described the book as a mixture of Sebastian Faulks and Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It appears to be a sort of detective love story. It’s most interesting aspect (and I expect the reason that Aunt Bet bought it for me) is that, as the title suggests, it is set in Madrid and, more especially, during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

I have read the first 100 or so pages and the research for the novel is rather obvious with one or two too many telling details displayed for our delectation, but the narrative force of the novel is building up with the major characters being brought together to work out their childhood/adult frustrations and loves. It is the backdrop of a ravaged city which is of real interest and I have to say that Sansom has produced a compelling picture of the city so that it almost becomes like another character.

I always find reading about The Spanish Civil War fascinatingly depressing. I think about what I could offer to the Republican side to give them an advantage against the vile apologies for human aspiration that the triple horrors of World War Two were: Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. For the sake of this argument I will leave my detestation of Winston Churchill to one side and agree that even his monstrousness is outweighed by the sheer inhumanity of the aforementioned trio!

Was there any information which could have made the Republican side more effective, have given them the edge in the inhumanly vicious fighting which characterised the conflict in Spain? From my reading any useful information which I could have given the Republican side would have been used as a football between the Communists and Anarchists. And I imagine that my one concrete suggestion or plea that the Republican Government send their gold supplies virtually anywhere (Mexico for choice) but to Russia would have me characterised as a fascist by the Communists or a bourgeois revisionist by everyone else: no matter what, I’d have been up against a wall and shot before I could explain a tenth of what, inevitably, was going to happen. As I say, it’s frustrating and the British response to what went on in Spain before, during and after the war was little short of disgusting. We were prepared to do virtually anything to ensure that Franco stayed out of the European War and his anti-communism suited us (or at least the Americans) at the end of the war and well into the Cold War. It is one of the great crimes of the second half of the twentieth century that we allowed El Caudillo to die in his bed: albeit bit by bit, amputated limb by limb, but it wasn’t enough. Not enough for that vicious dictator to ‘die a Christian’ encompassed by Mother Church. Sickening! But far more sickening was the attitude of the west that allowed that friend of dead dictators to survive into the seventies.

You can see the sort of attitude with which I am reading Sansom’s novel: ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ will be a positive relief!

Doing nothing!

A lazy Sunday.

It’s a concept that I have, of course, heard of – but rarely experienced. But today I am experiencing it. A long lie in and an eventual cup of tea or coffee. A television filled interval leading to a light lunch and a depth of nothing to fill in the time until evening.

Toni lying comatose on the sofa, now having developed a stomach upset and a thoroughly morose attitude to the world.

A few cups of tea later and I am now able to appreciate fully the true icing on the cake of a real lazy Sunday: the realisation that Monday (tomorrow) is just another day, and not the horror of the restart of work after a holiday!

The spring term (such a misnomer) is an odd one in school. The major learning term is the autumn, and for GCSE the bulk of course work needs to have been completed by Christmas. The early months of the year are wilfully erratic in terms of their length and usefulness: they give the impression of being far before the deadlines of anything, but in fact they are deceptively close to everything important.

The start of the school year, starting in September, makes it appear as though you are starting the struggle with only a few months until the natural break of Christmas and, therefore, it is bearable. It is by such self deception that the profession of teaching manages to survive!

The start of a new term in January is actually more intimidating than in September because you actually look forward to a whole, complete year ahead. The idea of Easter and summer holidays seem almost illusory and are certainly not real enough to keep your faith going strongly enough to make the future stretch of the timetable seem bearable.

All this is now not part of my paranoia for the beginning of the year. I know that some teachers who have retired from school feel a sharp pang of regret at the start of each term and feel a momentary hiccough of guilt that they are not participating in the general gloom before they face the fresh challenges that the year will present.

Actually, that’s not true. I don’t know any teacher who feels anything but hysterical relief at the thought of pupil free days!

If I see another ‘Move him into the sun’ type programme I think I shall scream. Toni has become one of the world’s experts on analysis of value-for-money houses in foreign lands (especially in Spain.) I think that it is his way to join a vicarious move back to his native land – and I can’t blame him. As the rain gently falls it is difficult not to think about drier climates. In some ways, you could actually see our move to Spain now taking place a year later than when we wanted to move: forget the number of months – it’s now 2007!

I’m looking forward to this new ‘term’ so that I can get on with setting out the house again for the selling season. There are a great number of ‘tareas’ to be completed if the house is to be presented in the way that I want it to. I think that I have lost a little of the urgency which I first had when the place was first on the market and that is something which I need to re-find as soon as possible!

The green, green grass of home.

When was it that the phrase, “Oh, but this country is so green!” lost its ability to make the spiteful rainfall we endure acceptable? It was the smiling observation that I used to make as, brown skinned, I was able to watch the cold precipitation gently settle on the verdant pastures of my native land as I returned from some foray to sunnier shores.

No more!

Each new day of rain seems personally directed towards me in a malicious, sneering, damp gesture of wet contempt. I can no longer endure the seemingly endless grey days of sun denied mediocrity; the featureless skies of vapid indistinctness which makes the sky appear to offer some sort of infinity of nowhereness. “Mother! Give me the sun!” [Note: I am just using the quotation here for what it says on the surface, and I do not want any assumptions to be made about the context; and certainly not the context in which Ibsen placed it!]

I’ve just looked out of the window again and have noted a white sky with a white cloud on it, almost as if the local climate was trying to emulate the wonderful description by Adams of the instrument panel on the stolen space craft taken when leaving the Restaurant at the End of the Universe which had black lights blinking black on a black dashboard! By such metaphors am I able to stand the personally directed campaign of moisture that Wales seems to have in store for me. Thank God for literature!

And the rain falls.

Enough!

Having finished the over-long novel ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ I am looking forward to taking it back to my excellent local library and collecting the next novel in the Dickens series ('Nicholas Nickleby') and losing myself in that loving description of education, not to be surpassed until Gradgrind's establishment is described in ‘Hard Times’. You don’t get a lot of ordinary teachers in literature do you? They are either life changing forces of nature, or evil, conniving child haters. The impossible paragon of pedagogic virtues exemplified in ‘Dead Poets Society’ (never mind the one mere fatality, it wasn’t really his fault, was it?) to the bitter caricature of the teacher in ‘How Green Was My Valley (but that also has a compensatory good one too). Seneca was Nero’s teacher: what does that say about philosopher teachers? Perhaps if Nero had not had such a prestigious tutor he might have been worse? Professor Snape in ‘Harry Potter’ is an ongoing problem: his youthful angst directed towards Harry’s father a cause of continuing problems in adulthood and his ‘ambiguous’ position viz a viz He Who Cannot be Named do not make him a likely candidate to replace Dr Arnold in ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ as the kindly understanding mentor! And so it goes on. Still searching for the ordinary!

Toni has decided on a process of replacement for the electronic items which were purloined on our arrival in Barcelona. We have spent an enjoyably unjustifiable amount of time browsing through page after page on the internet gazing in wistful adoration at more and more glitzy and technological attempts to prise money out of accounts by producing ever more luscious versions of the clunky mp3 players that we first bought.

As far as I am concerned the ipod is a design classic, and for once I own it – and not some ‘apparently better value clone’ which never fully lives up to expectations. The ipod is such a masterpiece of sleek miniaturisation that any criticism seems pettifogging and the onus would obviously lie on the shoulders of the consumer requiring him to adjust his life style and values to accommodate such a piece of exquisite electrical engineering rather than expect it to fit in with the requirements of a mere carping human. It reminds me of an aged Punch cartoon (aren’t they all) showing a fin de siecle couple gazing at a ‘modern’ teapot in transports of delight and the man asking his partner, “Dare we live up to it?” We have to fit in with Apple’s view of the world and we should be grateful that we are living at such times that Apple can play such a large part in it. I didn’t realise that when I had my first real computer (an apple mac) that I was making a life choice!

I will be interested to see if Apple responds to Microsoft’s incursion into its territory with the elusive Zune by producing its threatened all screen version of the video ipod with the ‘wheel’ as part of the touch screen. Now that would be something!

At the risk of tempting fate: I do feel somewhat better and I feel that my various infectrions and viral attacks are beginning to abate in their unrelenting hostility.

I think that I will be better by Monday; or at least better enough to be fully able to enjoy not going to school!

Fatal attraction!

Touch pitch, and you will be defiled.
and
The finger that touches rouge will be red.
and
Evil communications corrupt good manners.
and
A rotten apple injures its companions.

These little aphorisms all add up to something like the same thing; the lesson is unmistakable and, let’s face it, I think that it is true, you cannot watch ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ in a comfortably ironic way without getting drawn into the morass of public enthusiasm for this self referential pap.

Now I am prepared to admit that this series of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ does seem to justify its first word because it does have people who even I recognise as well known. What the hell the eighty year old Ken Russell is doing there, God alone knows, but famous he certainly is. That bloke from the A Team, well I remember him from the series that used the greatest number of bullets to the least possible human destructive effect; the series that showed just how resilient the human being was! Leo Sayer: that tousled haired singer who always looked like some sort of trainee clown and bounced around as though he was just about to introduce a jolly educational programme for kids. From the Jackson Five I’ve only really heard of Janet and the white One, this hair conscious peacock is unknown to me.

The others? To be fair I have heard of the bands that two of the others are from, but celebrities? I think not. Well, not for me anyway.

The fact that the ‘twist’ in this Big Brother is that a monumentally stupid loser from a previous series is continuing her ‘fame’ by yet another foray into reality TV is almost too cynically manipulative for belief. Perhaps, for the general (or ‘Great’) British public this manufactured non entity actually represents the triumph of the ‘little’ person finding fame and fortune (which she certainly has) against the odds. Perhaps. But for me JG represents the ultimate triumph of uninspired, undemanding, degrading, mindless television.

Sometimes compulsive though, ain’t it? Pitch and defiled and all that.

This Friday has been a partial reminder of the good old days (or sad old days, depending on your definitions) when every Saturday I used to read a couple of books and listen to a slew of superb Radio 4 programmes.

At least this morning (and parts of the afternoon and evening) I did manage to read a book. Lauren Weisberger’s ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. A deeply unsatisfying novel which would have made a really good short story. It has moments of real humour, but is essentially repetitive and one dimensional. The writing effects are mechanical: lists of designer names used for their almost magical effects in the manner of Dickens or Dylan Thomas; contrasts in terms of characters and situations; the use of brand names; mechanical plot devices; lack of character development in the main interesting character.

That, I think is the main problem for me in the novel. The ‘Devil’ or Miranda is the single most interesting character and for the first few chapters we begin to understand her true monster status – and that’s it. All we get in succeeding chapters is repetition of her unfeeling traits. At the end of the novel she is unchanged: a mythic person, insulted in public once, but continuing as a hate figure and diminished as a literary creation.

I can see that the role of Miranda would appeal to someone like Meryl Streep and I shudder to think what sort of professional performance she turns in, especially as the character in the novel is an English Jewess who has obliterated all traces of her low origin and has become a doyen of the fashion world. How Streep will rejoice in this portrayal!

I can hardly wait not to see it.

Absence makes the . . . ?

What tells you that you have been absent from your home most poignantly? What item by its very appearance sighs absence when you return? What intimate part of your life decays without your presence?

Soap.

A bar of soap is a strange thing: you ignore it by casual familiarity. Daily use makes it almost invisible, especially when the colour is the hardly assertive white in a white bathroom.

But leave this inoffensive rectangle for a week or more and its transmogrification is bizarre. The smooth, pristine surface becomes filled with crevasses tinged with grime reminding you of those slabs of horror than used to lurk on the washbasins of public loos creating the ultimate oxymoron of dirty soap. Also creating moral disequilibrium in young minds when the parental injunction to ‘wash your hands’ leaves them dirtier than before when using public soap!

A process of melding also occurs when a process not unlike that of stalactite and stalagmite formation takes scraps of soap and creates new and exciting forms. It’s about the only time that you notice soap - when you are trying to get it back into the form that you can ignore again. I’m sure that there is a metaphor for something there, but I’m too cold infested to care.

Talking of caring: I wish to record a peon of praise to Cardiff City Libraries.

I am rereading the novels of Dickens and, having finished ‘Oliver Twist’, the next novel in line is ‘Nicholas Nickleby’. So, returning ‘Oliver’ to my local library and collecting ‘The Devil wears Prada’ (a little treat for myself) I put in an order for ‘Nicholas’ when I returned from taking Toni to work at 9.00 am. By half past three in the afternoon I had been contacted by Rumney Library, when a rather startled sounding librarian told me the book I wanted was ready for collection. Now, that is something that I call service!

I know it sounds a little curmudgeonly but the fact that my local library does not seem to possess the major works of Dickens does seem unpropitious. I suppose that I am still thinking of libraries as a centre for the repository of a central core of culture; and for me that culture means the printed word. I know that libraries are not merely concerned with the printed word. They are internet centres and computer access points; certainly the times that I have been inside my local branch the life of the place seems to be dominated by computer fixated kids with a sedate slow procession of people of the third age taking out their books!

The whole process of computer connection does mean that a book in one location is available to another. The inter library loan system of my youth does seem to be something which is more of a way of life nowadays rather than the exception as it was when I was young. I wonder what system they use to get the books from one location to another: that must be the weak spot in the system and the most expensive one.

‘The Devil Wears Prada’ appeared in the form of a tatty paperback with the word ‘donated’ on the sign out page. I wonder about the economics of that: a paperback has a very limited life in a library, but perhaps a momentary fashionable book-of-the-film book has a limited life anyway and a paperback life could see the whole rush of interest and its death, and then the book could be thrown with little real expense.

I would be fascinated to know a little more about the way that local libraries are run now; what their expectations are; what their mission statement is; what their book buying policy is; how they profile their areas; how they judge success. I may look into this a little more closely now that I am more reliant on their services as my library is currently stored tantalizingly close to me but infuriatingly untouchable in its stacked wooden cases near the steel works!

Now to get acquainted with the fashion super bitch!

Prada rules!

A century already!

There are basic lessons that are imprinted on certain middle class children by their concerned parents.

One of these lessons is contained in the information that policemen are our friends and are there to protect us. This is a very different lesson from that taught to the ruling and so-called working classes. It was only when I went to university that I heard what I thought were members of my peer group refer to policemen in very uncomplimentary ways referring to occasions on which they had been held by the throats up against a wall by these defenders of our liberties at the end of a Saturday night. I, of course, dismissed these tall stories as products of fevered imaginations. And continue, stoutly, to do so. Indeed!

Anyway, one of the lessons I was taught by my mummy was to be polite and helpful and to be gallant where ladies were concerned. Thinking about it; that is actually more than one lesson, but the import of the lesson (or lessons) was the same: be nice and helpful (especially to ladies.)

This came to mind, as it were, this afternoon in Barcelona Airport. After a more than mediocre meal we (Toni and I) were walking towards the embarkation gate for Bristol when our way was blocked by a stereotypical Spanish woman (right down to the dark, long dress and the hair done in a bun) in a state of mild hysterics. Although she was sobbing in Spanish, you will be astonished to learn that I found the detail of what she was saying a little difficult to put in English. Toni was spasmodically helpful here, indicating in hurried asides that she had gone to the toilet and had emerged from the loo to find her entire family had disappeared.

So our role was clear: show sympathy; be efficient; get her help; find her family; go on our way with a warm glow of self satisfaction.

Which we did; in a way. Except. Except, on our last visit to Barcelona Airport Toni had had his backpack containing all his electronic equipment (too painful to list) stolen by a two person thieving pair, one part of which was an old lady!

How sad is it that experiences like that changes your perception of reality to such an extent that an old Spanish lady in distress becomes a figure of some threat? Those thieves stole more than electronic equipment.

So back to Britain: damp, cold Britain. I am fed up with returning from a reasonable climate to the sick joke that is my reception back in my native land. When Toni came to live in Britain they couldn’t open the door of the plane because of the tumultuous storm attacking our frail aircraft. Just to make the joke a little more ironic this time round, the spiteful, lashing rain waited until we were the Welsh side of the bridge to unleash itself in its immeasurable wrath.

It is at times like this that the lesson from a contemporary of my parents (my aunt Bet) contained on a postcard serves to put things in perspective:
“OK, so our trains may not run on time,
Our National Health Service is feeling the pressure,
Our schools don’t always get top marks,
But at least we still make
The Best Cup of Tea in the World!”

As philosophies go; or even as statements of national aspiration go, it doesn’t seem to me to be too bad.

On the other hand, I’m not well, I haven’t slept properly in over a week and it’s raining. I don’t think you should expect profundity from a cold ravaged, bitter returnee to these cold shores!

Tomorrow, however, as many have remarked, even thinking it profound, is another day.

Roll on! As indeed is this blog: one hundred 'issues' old today! Gosh! Until you think that, if this is a daily blog (as it mostly is) then you get to your century when you are just over three months old!

Everything is speeding up today!

Dies irae!

The only thing which compensates for a truly awful night of suffocation and mucus was the fact that I had finished ‘Oliver Twist’ and could spend my forced waking hours thinking about the novel.

To my mind the reactions of Sikes and Fagin are the most spectacular in their uncomfortable observation; the first when he has killed Nancy and is responding by living in a sort of pathetic fallacy where everything seems to remind him of his crime; the second in his reactions when in court and listening and observing everything around him. The complete destruction of his sanity also has within its degradation a terrible logic in the way in which he views the world.

The view that the novel gives of the family is a very interesting one. There is no real example of the nuclear family with husband, wife and 2.3 children. There are plenty of grotesque caricatures of the family characteristics: from Mrs Mann the uncaring keeper of the branch-workhouse, he name emphasising the denial of the female, motherly, caring aspects of her character to the Bumbles whose cavalier disregard for the welfare of their charges eventually ends in their sharing their fate: becoming paupers in their own workhouse.

The surrogate families abound: Fagin with his ‘boys’ provides a grotesque parental figure dedicated to his charges degradation yet at the same time providing a sort of stability. Mr Brownlow significantly, is reading at the time of his first meeting with Oliver – not engaged in the world but in an intellectual version, a sanitised version, of it. His household comprises the comfortable Mrs Bedwin (a widow); the irascible Mr Grimwig and himself as confirmed bachelors. The partnership between Grimwig and Brownlow is more on the basis of a marriage than a conventional friendship – the one complementing the other. The Maylies also present a picture of unfulfilment: two women in a household with widowed servants; no stability or normality. Secrets, shames and obstacles to normality abound, and it is significant that the only eventual normality is found in the last chapter of the book when all the loose ends are neatly (!) tied up in a description of a sort of family life which includes virtually all the positive characters in the novel who survive living together or within easy reach of each other. The collection of incomplete figures finds completion in an extended family where all their eccentricities are able to be accommodated literally and figuratively!

There is even a sort of reference of Milton’s version of The Fall in the way that Harry Maylie accepts a low station in life (as a country clergyman) so that the advantages which he could have had are laid at the feet of Rose as part of his renunciation of his future as the price for his love and his attempt to ensure that they stay together: the man choosing to stay with the female even at the price of his prospects.

It is again significant that this chapter does not form part of the action of the novel, but is more of a tidying up process so that a sort of equilibrium is restored and the name of Oliver’s mother is the last item to be mentioned so that the whole of the novel could be seen as a sort of regeneration of the reputation of a woman who, wronged and wronging is able to find salvation through the fortuitous concourse of Dickensian coincidence.

Carmen has come back from shopping with a collection of medicaments which I have been enthusiastically trying.

After moping around in the house for most of the day we finally went out for a promenade on the Ramblas in Terrassa. The full Christmas thing: traditional roast chestnuts; a fair in full luminosity; the Christmas decorations being decorous; people milling around buying things for The Kings; bands playing - and me coughing my way along like an ailing Scrooge. As long as I'm well enough to get on the plane I will delay the full Christmas and New Year spirit until I am back in Blighty.

No doubt in the rain (a climatic condition which has been singularly absent during my time in Catalonia) will do its best in Wales to make me feel instantly at home!

What's new?

There is nothing quite as artificial as a room the morning after the night before: especially if the night before happened to have been New Year’s Eve. The bottles, the confetti, the streamers, the plates, the decaying food and the flat booze – it all seems so contrived; as if the room were a set waiting for the filmic action to occur.

Such a room greeted me when I finally gave in to suffocation and got up rather than lying trying to pretend that not being able to breathe in a horizontal position was better than breathing in a vertical one. There is nothing more satisfying than clearing up easy rubbish: the confetti, bottles etc. were easy to clear away and I kept thinking about the brownie points that I was accruing by selflessly being a mummies’ boy! I have to say that my calculations were a little out, and the clearing took a little more effort than I anticipated but, as a bonus, I was interrupted by Carmen when about my duties and so gained immeasurably by not only being the only person up, but also by being the only person working.

So the day started well and I felt more than justified in settling down with ‘Oliver Twist’ and enjoying sinking into the morass of melodrama which is that novel. Luckily (because I don’t care a jot for the eponymous hero) Oliver seems to have taken something of a back seat and lots of other people are reacting to his existence rather than requiring his mewling character to be part of the action.

The murder of Nancy is much better than I remember and Sikes reactions afterwards so much more vivid and convincing than I probably appreciated in college: Sikes haunting and his attempts to thwart his guilty conscience smack of reality, and a contemporary reality at that. The psychological detail is deeply satisfying and the touch of the tinker offering to take away the stain that he sees on Sikes’ clothes is genius!

Although the leaden dynamics of the plot are well into their Dickensian realm of unreality, with coincidence taken to that height of fantasy that needs a drug induced level of suspension of disbelief to work; I am so much involved in the writing that I will accept anything as long as the situation is resolved. This is also in spite of the fact that I actually know what is going to happen having read the novel before. That, surely, is a sign of the quality of Dickens’ writing that I am still caught up in the relentless flow of his narrative as I read his words. You experience the same sort of participatory awe when reading certain passages in the bible or re-reading favourite poems and experiencing again the thrill of a first reading.

Nancy is a thoroughly convincing character: not so much for her devotion to the idea of Oliver, but more for her devotion to the thoroughly unworthy Sikes. She understands why she should leave and abhor her ‘protector’ but she can no more leave him than desert her idea of honour which is found in the ideal which Oliver represents. Her dual moral system fits perfectly with a modern schizophrenia and the end products are clear.

‘Oliver Twist’ is a novel which disconcerts as much by its thoroughly modern take on human relationships as by its sickening predilection for truly repellent melodrama. Who can ask for more from a novel from a distant time? And if that sounds condescending, then I’ve given the wrong impression!

Suddenly to be informed that we were going out to lunch, threw me into a frenzy of preparation, so that, showered, cologned and dressed in super short time I was not really prepared to take in much on the journey to the place where we were going to lunch.

The destination turned out to be the same place as last year: the place which was so poor as far as service and food was concerned!

I have to say that the meal and service was better this year; but I would not consider going back next year. The salad was tasteless; the botifarra uninspiring and the chips poor. I had to ask for my wine to accompany my music (you have to be Catalan to understand that reference) and the patcharan was watered down. Still, at twenty five euros per person, where else are we going to get so cheap? On New Year’s Day? And I got a few photos out of the location!

Toni has now gone out with his friends, who he has not seen for some time.

Roll on the end of ‘Oliver Twist’!