Machine Aid!

While the deep rumble of a passing slag train blended with the metallic thump of a high pressure hammer and the sharp acidic smoke of a tall chimney was wreathed at its base with wisps of steam from the coke furnaces, a small group of platelayers was gathered round a hapless student working during his summer vacation.

He was the only one working. The sun was strong for once and the murky depths of the steel works gleamed in the unexpected radiance and the air glittered as the airborne coal dust reflected the light like tiny diamonds.

All eyes focused on the student as sweat slowly trickled down his forehead and dripped with increasing rapidity from his chin. He was trying, for the first time, to use a pneumatic drill. Part of the permanent way was set in concrete and, during an intensive period of woks restoration this piece of the rail network was being replaced.

The student tried vainly to manipulate the unwieldy piece of machinery to gain some sort of purchase on the smooth concrete and then to direct the force of the metal spike to break up the seemingly indestructible stone. As he struggled and fumbled he was acutely aware of the contemptuous looks of the other men as they waited for what they saw as an effete interloper cynically tasting their work until he was able to brush off the dust and dirt and return to the physically undemanding world of academe.

As my more perceptive readers will have gathered, the embarrassed student was my good self working as a platelayer in the (now defunct) East Moors Steel Works. This was a place which was able to terrify me on a fairly constant basis as I frequently came into contact with machinery and situations which could not only kill you, but do it without effort or even noticing your demise.

To be fair to me, I did make an effort and one worker actually gave me the grudging commendation that I was better than most of the damned students that they had had. Except he didn’t use the word ‘damned’; I have to admit that, up until that point in time, I had never heard the f-word used so much and in so many grammatical forms. No sentence was complete without the f-word; no phrase was uttered without the accompanying expletive. There was no emotion, aspiration, frustration, achievement, horror, pleasure or incisive political comment which could not be conveyed by the f-word alone. Chinese is an inflected language where the same word has a variety of differing meanings depending on the tone in which the word is spoken. The Chinese could have learned a thing or two by listening to the tonal nuances in the language of steel workers whereby they were able to restrict themselves to a single f-word yet, by tonal inflection alone, convey whole novels of meaning with a vocabulary of one word.

Out of sheer devilment I made an executive decision not to use the f-word myself, which was noticed by my fellow workers with a sort of grudging astonishment. I preserved this linguistic oddity right up until I dropped a steel bar on my foot. The only person near me was a fellow student who gleefully told me that my linguistic purity would be denounced to our colleagues as soon as there was a break. Which he did, and I (bless me!) stoutly maintained that I said no such thing and that the student was just being malicious. And they believed me! And mocked my fellow students as a scoundrel. Ha!

Meanwhile, the pneumatic drill: in spite of dripping with sweat and using all my strength to keep the bloody point of the drill on the same spot to penetrate the concrete, it remained stubbornly whole and without crack. The other workers in my gang watched with restrained hilarity until they could stand it no longer and urged a young lad to take over from me. This muscled school leaver picked up the drill with easy nonchalance and then by apparently resting the pulsating tip of the drill on the concrete caused the material to crumble. It is my personal belief that he (luckily) found the ‘sweet spot’ of the slab and used the sympathetic vibrations of the drill to do the work for him.

One member of our gang was an older worker who had been a gang leader himself when younger and was now working his way towards an easy retirement. He had the undemanding task of greasing the points on the railway system in the works, which he did with quiet dignity. However, sometimes the work load of the gang was so heavy that he was encouraged to help us in the more physical stuff that we had to complete and then you saw the experience of years of work. I was young and active and enthusiastic and yet, with all my effort, I did not actually achieve as much as the methodical, ergonomic method of working that he had developed over decades. He used directed effort to achieve more, whereas my effort dissipated itself in all directions!

So I’m not au fait with mechanical equipment; especially equipment that is electrically driven and is dangerous. So the de grouting machine has been something less than convincing in my hands. I hope to God that Paul Squared will be able to inject some sort of common sense and mechanical aptitude into the disaster area that is the shower cubical; has to be re-grouted by Thursday.

House viewing is tyranny!

Always learning!

Never too old to learn.

A lesson which is ever tripping off tongues which are too old or too young and which have not been asked to learn too much too soon. Learning is actually very hard. Especially learning those things which others find important or culturally significant. What is this all amounting to? What learning is bugging me now? Not the Spanish today. That is not just a language more a whole culture: you are allowed to find the acquisition of that a tad difficult.

The real learning difficulty I am encountering is to do with my eyes. This is not a John Berger way-of-seeing sort of looking but something much more practical; seeing the world in something approaching focus.

As my optician tries for the umpteenth time to find the right prescription for my eyes by varying the strength of the contact lenses to compensate for my long and short sightedness, I have now, graciously, decided that I can live with contact lenses and glasses for reading.

To optimise the level of sight my poor old brain is expected to learn how to see using the differentiated strengths of lens allocated to each eye which, by their combination, should allow greater flexibility in my sight. Does that actually make sense? I hope it does to my brain, because I am wearing the contact lenses to drive and to complete various other important tasks.

The addition of reading glasses to the contact lenses is another level of brain decoding expectation. It is too wearing for me to work out how my actual sight, compensated by contact lenses, modified by glasses moderated by a confused brain is all supposed to work. I look on it like those wonderful pictures which were so popular a while ago which looked completely non specific but, when viewed in a certain way, lo and behold! a three dimensional image would loom out of the multicoloured surface.

I remember these pictures because, after the initial phase of asking why a jumbled mass of markings was called ‘Elephants in the Serengeti,’ the images would snap into focus almost immediately for me.

There was a glorious incident in an arty shop in Albany Road where there was a whole series of these pictures. One customer was flicking through them and asked the sales assistant what they were. The assistant replied that they were those digital pictures with hidden images. When the customer asked where the images were, the assistant replied that he had no idea and he had never been able to see them. At this point I butted in and said that I could usually see them.

There then followed a bizarre period when image after image was shown to me and I told the pair of them what they were supposed to see. I can remember one of them was an eagle returning to its nest on a mountain side and I even tried to point out to them where the shape of the image was with a vague finger pointing.

This was not as easy as you might think because to see the image it was important not to use both eyes to focus, so it was in fact impossible to point to one specific point in the picture as it was composed of two areas of the surface for it to work.

I think that the reason that I found it easy was that the focus of my eyes normally was not exact and it was easy for me to slip out of focus and find the image.

This is one of the few times that faulty eyesight has been an advantage, and even that has been limited as the magic of those digital 3D images has faded into obscurity.

I have conducted a search for these magic 3D images and have managed to find some which I will scatter through this blog. I wonder how many people will be able to see the images hidden in the pictures. I hope that I can spread a little frustration and, just as you gnash your teeth, I might point out that I have not lost the old skill and the images popped out straight away for me!

Take credit where you can find it, I say!

If you get really desperate, you can always ask me what images are hidden (not for me!) in these pictures.

Happy looking!

Time for Culture?

An infection on the wrist (who is surprised, this is 2007, what good happens in this year?) precludes my wearing a watch and I have been depressed to discover just how much I need a timepiece strapped to my body. I had thought that the loosening of the stranglehold of the demands of a school timetable would mean that time would become a little more malleable. That has not proved to be the case.

I think that the only thing which still ticks to the school clock is my bladder! It seems that my urinary system is geared to ‘first break’ for the ‘empty and refill’ which is the toilet break and a cup of tea. The other significant time markers are lost in a normal non-school day where the pace of living and the organization of events do not fit the highly artificial ‘day’ which is the modern school time allocation.

From time to time I idly wonder what I might have been teaching based on my last timetable: but as my timetable was never hard wired into my memory even when I was in school, it is hardly likely that it will spring to mind when the necessity for paying lip service to remembering is not even remotely present. What I do recall are vague lesson times, and from my experience, I can remember virtually any class in any position in the timetable! Monday mornings and Friday afternoons are usually particularly memorable; especially in that never-to-be-forgotten year when I was free for both. Though, as I recall, the reality of staff absence meant that the mythical double never actually happened in my case!

For me, thinking about school is like translating the cost of things in 2007 into pounds, shillings and pence – good old Lsd. It’s superficially interesting, but more frightening than illuminating and, eventually, an empty exercise.

When I spoke to Gwen about her coursework poem a few days ago I could feel the old pedagogical juices begin to flow; but that was one receptive pupil, not a class – so I am not romanticising my feelings of loss at having a receptive class in front of me to snuffle around to find the pearls of wisdom amidst the acorns of digression! But I do sometimes feel the need to learn by explanation: it’s my way!

The book which I might discuss with a class is the one that I’ve just finished, ‘The Sound of Laughter’ The Autobiography of Peter Kay. The book was a present to Paul 1 which has been loaned to me, and I have to say that I am glad that I didn’t actually spend any money on it. This ‘autobiography’ is intermittently funny in a formulaic way. Kay’s writing style is faux amateur, with some cringe making asides to the reader and you feel that this is more the substance of his stand-up shows rather than a real attempt to create a comic life story.

Kay’s writing is undemanding and he rarely develops the funny situations he describes: he creates types and no real characters. His understanding of himself is carefully regulated and this is one of the least revealing autobiographies that I have read in a long time.

He does have an eye for the absurd ordinary situation, but he spotlights this skill and it lacks the guilelessness that would make this technique particularly effective.

This is the sort of read which is perfect for the doctor’s waiting room: you can pick it up and put it down with equal ease. It is beach reading, and none the worse for that.

The other delightful cultural experience today has been a viewing of the British film, ‘Severance’ “SEVEN COLLEAGUES. ONE WEEKEND AWAY. IT’S TIME TO GET SLAUGHTERED.” That pun is an accurate touchstone of the quality of the film.

It starts well enough (in a way) and seems to be developing into a nice little blackish comedy in the British Style. Absurd caricatures with quirky traits set on a bus going to a team building weekend in Eastern Europe; unoriginal, but a good enough vehicle for humour. With nice judgement this could have been a sort of slapstick, zany, unsettling but funny film. As it turned out the balance of the film was hopelessly skewed, and the different elements of humour and horror constantly juggled for prominence, not in a productively artistic struggle but as a woeful series of misjudgements.

The humour is basic and the bloody horror gratuitous. There are a few funny moments, but the tenor of the film leaves you feeling both guilty and slightly dirty because of the confusion of style.

‘Severance’ was a thoroughly unpleasant watch in a way in which ‘Sean of the Dead’ wasn’t. There the humour was subordinated to the narrative comedy of the piece and laughter was sometimes shocked, but never shameful.

The film was made with money from The National Lottery and the British Film Board – they should both look to their funding policy.

My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen!

What reserves of human endurance does it take to be the Secretary General of the United Nations? I ask this after seeing Ban Ki-Moon addressing the gathered talent which made up the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The television coverage showed Ban Ki-Moon arriving in the conference hall, progressing through the ‘dignitaries’, mounting the podium and looking out at his audience. There was then a ‘point of view’ shot of his listeners, with the camera lingering on some of the more choice specimens, sitting in sharp designer suits or colourful local dress or splendid military uniforms. And that brings me back to my opening question.

As he looks at the smug, murdering, callous, hypocritical, vicious, inhuman, and whatever other unappealing epithets you can apply to the men (mostly; exclusively?) who lead Africa’s nations, what sort of despair must grip his soul?

It’s easy to feel this way when we are constantly bombarded with the failures of Africa: from the relentless famine seemingly policed by AK47 toting gangsters; the interminable wars fought with hi-tec weaponry watched by starving civilians; the stark contrast of high rise buildings juxtaposed with squalid shacks; basic medical conditions exacerbated by bizarre local prejudice; religion in all its inhumanity being vaunted as a panacea, to the oleaginous faces of corrupt politicians sending their children to western finishing schools.

But it’s too easy to feel like this. My generation has grown up with our shouldering the burden of guilt in the form of Africa since our earliest schooling. Africa has always been the continent of need, the convenient depository for charity, the perennial black hole of deprivation.

Since that black hole can never be filled, it is a useful way of throwing away a few spare pence, confident in the knowledge that it will be just as black and just as empty tomorrow. Futility can have its uses: you pay a little money to assuage your guilt and, since nothing ever really improves, you don’t need to pay in a more realistic way. Corruption, nepotism, bribery, theft – all the abuses we used to list in history lessons for the pre-Reformation Catholic Church are alive and well and thriving in Africa.

But let’s put this another way. What does the Secretary General of UNO think when he speaks to the European Union? Does he feel any better? Is there any reason he should do? How is his view different? Fewer black faces? Fewer uniforms? The same suits, the same haute couture, and, the same corruption? Plus ca change, plus C’est la meme chose?

Well, no – I think that’s ridiculous. I am not one of those bleeding heart liberals who think that all our western systems, conventions, institutions, politicians, laws and parliaments are irredeemably and post colonially evil and no good can come out of them. But the idea that looking at the leaders of Africa and looking at the leaders of Europe are ‘the same’ is simply unhelpful.

I remember looking at a book about Africa (I think about Ghana) when I was in primary school and being genuinely shocked at a picture of a judge in full wig and gown; not so much because of the incongruity of the transplantation of western legal dress conventions, but rather because the judge was black. I couldn’t understand how it could have happened. How could a black man achieve the status of a judge? There were certainly no authority figures in my Welsh childhood who were black: no teacher; no policeman; no doctor; no dentist; no clergyman; no shopkeeper – and so the list goes on.

Hardly surprising that the childhood sense of wonder at any mimicking of the achievements of civilization by emergent African nations [please feel free to pepper the preceding statements with as many quotation marks as you think necessary] should, and must, inform and help explain my present day attitude.

A telling counterpoint to these ruminations occurred when I read the ‘Indie’ when sitting alone in the living room during the early hours when coughing in bed prone had lost all of its attraction. When you can’t sleep and the only thing you have to hand is a newspaper then you tend to read it all – from beginning to end. It was during this marathon sitting that a small photograph of a pair of feet caught my eye; sad feet, with socks, with two big toes poking out.

They turned out to be the stocking feet of a gentleman who had removed his shoes because of his visit to a mosque. He, it emerged, was the director, head, emperor of the World Bank. The head of the World Bank cannot afford, or doesn’t care, or has different imperatives, or . . . no, holes in his socks. Like the black judge, how could it have happened?

I am constantly unsettled by the incongruities of my understanding of life. The paradoxical basis of the use of ‘constantly’ in the previous statement is not lost on me either.

The constant tug of cynicism, the easy waving away of idealism, the depressing recognition of sad, bad scenarios continually playing themselves out could depress a more receptive person than myself, even without the constant tickle of an incipient cough to remind him of old mortality; but I think that I lack that necessary imagination to be a true depressive.

So I’ll smile instead.

And smile, and smile and smile.

Contact! The prodigal returns.

If I had discovered my erring tortoise before six pm on that fateful Sunday then my life would have been, if not necessarily different, then at least differently paced.

As my mother and I (not my father, never my father) got ready for evensong I discovered the devastating truth that Timmy, my beloved tortoise, was missing: he had made a bid for freedom, escaping from the back yard of 25, Dogfield Street into the scary veldt of endless Cathays. My take on the situation was simple: no tortoise – no God; therefore no church. I refused to move from my prone, weeping position on my bed and my mother had to trudge to the evening service alone.

Search parties were dispatched to Malefant Street, Twkesbury Road, and Monthermer Road and even towards Whitchurch Road. For Timmy to have made it anywhere near some of these locations he would have to have had some form of motorized personal transportation a damn sight quicker than the scaly legs which he sometimes deigned to move, sluggishly, when whipped up into a frenzy by a succulent piece of greenery wafted directly in his eye line.

Eventually my father interrupted my wailing misery and told me that Timmy had been found. My take on the situation was simple: Timmy found – God exists; therefore to evensong!

I arrived in the middle of a hymn and, fully (and enthusiastically a member of the congregation now that Timmy was restored) asked my singing mum for the hymn number. She did not stop singing, but gestured to the front with her right hand. I asked her again for the hymn number. Rather irritated my mother told me that the hymn numbers were listed on the column by the pulpit as usual and couldn’t I see them? No, I couldn’t. I asked again for the hymn number. My mother’s reaction to my lack of vision was so strong that we almost left the church immediately.

I realise now, of course, that my mother’s mind must have gone into a series of flip flaps of the “if he can’t see the numbers, his sight must be faulty; how bad is it; how long has he been short sighted; how does he see in school; o god how have I missed this?” sort of thing.

For me of course this was nothing out of the ordinary. I sat towards the back of the class and assumed that it was just a normal part of school life that you had to ask the kid next to you to show you the sums you were supposed to be copying into your book. Some things you could see, others you couldn’t. Wasn’t it always like this for everyone?

No it wasn’t, and within days I was in an optician and tested for my first pair of National Health glasses which, as my father delighted in recounting, made me look like ‘the owl of the remove.’

And the world sharpened up: gravel was made of small stones; houses had roofs made of individual slates and trees had lots of separate leaves. Only the short sighted with progressive sight loss know the wonder of having the world and the artefacts in it suddenly crisp out of their blur status with each new prescription for lenses!

I wore glasses until I was eighteen, when with money that I’d saved and with generous grant aid from the parents my first pair of contact lenses was bought. They were the old fashioned hard type lenses; ones you had to take treat carefully and handle with fastidious hygienic attention. No, of course I didn’t. Neither did anyone else I knew who wore them. One other thing I can guarantee is that every contact lens wearer will have an ‘impossible’ coincidence story to tell about the loss and subsequent finding of a rogue lens. Everyone, without exception!

Until, that was, the advent of the ‘single use’ lens: the daily disposable. The lenses designed for real people in the real world. In the disposable world, coincidence is irrelevant; you can always break out another one. And another source of myth is lost.

I’ve always hated wearing glasses and contact lenses; they served a purpose but perfect sight was something which I would have paid a fortune to have restored - and before you ask, laser treatment was not a possibility for my type of sight.

My contact lens wearing was a compromise between long and short sightedness with one eye dedicated to reading and the other eye dedicated to distance and the brain being asked to order the information to make it work. It was never quite satisfactory and therefore, when work slipped away, so did the use of contact lenses and a greater reliance on glasses. Rejection of the lenses that I had sworn by for years. An apostate falling away from the True Faith of the lightweight plastic circle!

Today: a reassessment.

Eyes tested, new prescription and another step to senility: contacts for distance and a pair of old man’s glasses for reading.

I am a living Dickens illustration!

Be nice!

To be fair, it doesn’t actually take a great deal for a Cardinal in the Roman Church to unsettle my equanimity. Most of the time I can luxuriate in the Jesuitical sophistry of the Princes of the Faith and be quite jocose about their sheer hypocrisy and callous disregard for actual life experience but, sometimes, the joke wears a little thin. One of those thin times was while listening to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor talking about the new single sex parental adoption legislation not being waived for Roman Catholic and other faith adoption agencies.

I am more than prepared to believe that the Cardinal is a decent person. I have heard him speak on various topics and he seems to be quite reasonable for a clergyman: not enlightened, that would be to expect too much, but (allowing for the burden of faith) at least slightly in touch with the verities of modern living.

My previous response evaporated listening to his explanation of the response of his church to its political impotence when trying to change the government’s mind about the inclusion of faith organizations in the anti discrimination legislation.

One of the many reasons for despising fundamentalist faiths, especially the Christian fundamentalist sects, is for those aspects of the human condition they choose to identify as the litmus paper of their beliefs. Before I list the two most ‘popular’ moral issues for unscrupulous faiths; a digression.

My father was a very gifted rugby player. According to family belief, and my reading of contemporary newspaper accounts, he was denied a place in the Welsh team by sporting politics. His talent was, however, widely recognised and he was asked to play for a number of teams. At the time that he was at his prime, just after the war, Rugby Union was an amateur sport: players played for the love of the game not for any cash that they might want to make from the sport. If they wanted money then they could ‘Go North’ and play professional Rugby League for a northern English rugby team. Indeed, such was the attitude of the governing body of the amateur sport to the commercial aspects that, any suggestion that a player might have been paid any money other than expenses, would result in an immediate ban from playing Rugby Union games.

How clean! How pure! Except, of course, it wasn’t. Many good players were paid ‘boot money’: a cash amount deposited in a player’s boot, no questions asked. And sometimes without even that subterfuge. But the public line was that the sport was purely amateur, and if there were ‘rotten apples’ taking money, then they were the corrupt few. Pious duplicity! Wilful self deception. Payment was widespread and everyone who mattered knew it happened. My father was a decent, honest man who believed that a good workman was worthy of his hire.

Although there are few similarities in content to ‘boot money’ there are many comparisons in attitude when I think of the less enlightened churches’ attitudes to homosexuality and abortion.

I do not deny that there are moral questions which need to be addressed about any person’s response to these two aspects of human life. They pose immense ‘problems’ for some people who regard the ‘issues’ of almost equal ‘quality’ and their ‘resolution’ being almost a basic entry requirement of the faith.

I have no intention of exploring the ‘issues’ (and I’m getting tired of using quotation marks), though I would say that the equation of an aspect of human sexuality with a woman’s right to choice is somewhat mystifying.

The two do seem to polarise conservative opinion and allow the more bigoted elements in congregations to concentrate belief in two easily appreciated ‘problems.’ Abortion is murder and homosexuality is perversion. Easy! No grey areas; easy judgements; excellent rallying points. And, of course, the churches have no ‘experience’ of the ‘problems.’ Homosexuality and abortion happen outside the faith, not in it – and we are back to the ‘boot money’ attitude of denial.

It would be facile (if entertaining) to enumerate the number of Popes who were covertly or extravagantly homosexual, but, on the other hand, without the proportion of the present clergy who are hardworking gay Christians, the Church would find it very difficult to survive. The Church knows it has homosexuals as an essential working part of its structure, but finds itself unable (or unwilling) to acknowledge that fact.

The Cardinal tried, in his comments to differentiate his attitude towards gay couples and a straight couple, by talking of an optimum family situation which, to him, would entail a mother and a father, which in turn would, of necessity, predicate a man and a woman. He emphasised that he meant no disrespect to homosexuals, but in this case there was a justification for differentiation. Unfortunately, saying it doesn’t mean that what you’ve said is true. It is disrespect and it does denigrate a gay relationship. It is unfortunate that the Cardinal is forced to tailor ideas to make paradoxes seem palatable.

The Cardinal Archbishop is a public personality; he has a high profile and is not reticent about placing his views on the record, but he is by no means the most objectionable of the demagogues who spread division by offering simplistic judgements to the howling delight of their followers.

‘Boot money’ happened, and now Rugby Union is a highly commercial and lucrative money making organization with individual players getting handsome remuneration for their sport – and quite right too. I wonder if Rugby might indicate a sort of lesson for his Eminance.

Ever the optimist, in spite of the cough!

Hydro literacy

The world divides, quite neatly, into three groups based on their attitudes towards reading in the bath.

Firstly, there is the group that enjoys reading in the bath.
Secondly there is the group that enjoys the idea of reading in the bath, and thirdly, and lastly, there is the group that thinks that a bath is solely a way of getting clean.

Let us take it as axiomatic that we can ignore and dismiss the last group as being composed of unimaginative poltroons of a baser sort and fellows unworthy even of contempt. As Shakespeare so tellingly almost wrote in ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ “The man that hath no bath reading in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet volumes, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.”

The members of the first group are the masters of the universe. They have surmounted all the obstacles to literary perusal while immersed and have become adept at such mysteries as regulating the temperature of the water by big toe adjustment of the tap; moderating the suds level so that it does not threaten to deckle edge the book; maintaining a dry hand to ensure the preservation of the book; never resting the book on damp flesh, and always having a water free resting place for the volume when actually deciding to wash (optional).

I place myself firmly in the second group: the one which enjoys the idea of reading in the bath. I even go to the extent of finding a book I might read while soaking myself and making sure the towel is near so that dry hand will handle the precious volume, but it never works out. I have an inordinate fear of the hundred page wrinkle.

I dislike anything which detracts from the virgin page of print. I detest the American habit of augmenting the page numbers with decoration, or producing some sort of design feature on the top of the page. Indeed, I dislike page numbers altogether. When reading a novel for the first time you should use a book mark and there should be a way in which all page numbers could be removed or suppressed. After the book has been read then there should be some sort of process which turns the numbers on, so that discussion of the book can be made easier by reference to specific numbered locations for textual evidence.

With this sort of puritan fastidiousness you can imagine that an ink blot on the edge of the volume which squats on page after page until the blot has worked itself out is torture to me. A rip or a ruffle in the pages is irritation and a water wrinkle which creates ridges and valleys for letters and words is an intolerable invasion into my suspension of disbelief as I try to commune with the pure text. With this neurosis waiting to pounce on any blemish in the text, you can understand my reluctance to risk the disfigurement of the book by water.

But I like the idea of reading in the bath so much that I sometimes spend an inordinate amount of time searching for the appropriate volume to accompany the immersion! You never know; the moment might arise when The Read becomes a possibility; and without The Book, The Read could never occur. It is a gentle sort of literary Catch-22 situation.

These thoughts came to me as I hunted around in my depleted stock of books (my library being in the commodious pallets of Messrs Pickford in storage) for a volume to accompany my soak after my less than convincing ‘help’ given to Richard and Sue as they packed the van with another load of furniture and other oddments to take to France.

Most of my energy was obviously given over to my rigorous system of cough training which has been the focus of my physical exertions for the last few weeks. The world class racking coughs which I am producing are not mere vocal arabesques which can be bestowed on a germ filled world without considerable preparation, delivery and professional follow through. You know if a cough has achieved an international star rating by the extent of complete physical prostration which is its aftermath. Devotion to one’s art obviously precludes total participation in less demanding activities like loading a van.

As I type this, Sue and Richard should be at the boat and are, I hope, settling down to a decent meal on board, secure in the knowledge that the cuisine is French!

It will be interesting to see how their odyssey to sell up and get out goes. I do not envy them the depersonalisation of their home: an essential element in the presentation to future buyers. The advice to ‘de-clutter’ will start to seem like an insult, then a threat, then an impossible dream, then a moral imperative, then like a glorious release. If I have any advice to give (and believe me I gave plenty!) then it can all be compressed into one clear mantra: “You always need a bigger skip than you thought.” They have happy times ahead!

My happy times over the next two days are confined to visits to the dentist and the optician.

Happy days indeed.

Coughing to victory!

I do not suspect vicious intent on the part of our doctors in our local surgery. They have set up shop in a pair of semi detached houses and the waiting room on the ground floor is a strange shape meandering past the receptionist’s window and working its way to the back of the houses and into the next one. This means that leg room is at a premium. There are very few spaces that a patient waiting can actually stretch his or her legs. Now, given the waiting time that ensues before a patient is seen there must be a need to stretch and find something to do.

As is usual in doctors’ waiting rooms, dentists’ waiting rooms and hospital waiting rooms, there are the ageless magazines that you find nowhere else displaying a studied tattiness that you only see on period sets on television drama series! They are also the sort of magazines that no one anyone knows ever buys. Where do they find them? These grubby pages clinging forlornly to rusting staples are reminders of the interests of a class far removed from that enjoyed by the majority of inhabitants in Rumney!

So with nothing to read and no space to spread out the only thing that you are left with is to have recourse to conversation; but the layout is not conducive to easy linguistic interchange and so the usual mode of talk is actually whispers, giving the atmosphere in the waiting room more of a church like mood.

It is always a relief when your name is called, though you have to run the gauntlet of the people left waiting as they assess the appropriateness of the name called out to the person walking towards one of the consulting rooms.

Luckily, given my chesty cough, there was no problem about being prescribed antibiotics so I am now taking nine tablets a day. That it should come to this!

On a more positive note: ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’ was handed back to the library this morning and by the early evening the very excellent Rumney Library had managed to get me a copy of ‘Barnaby Rudge.’ Superb service! Though I was hoping for a little respite before I had to plunge into another 800 page novel, I am eager to re-read (yes, re-read, I read it first on my handheld!) this relatively unpopular novel by Dickens.

Coughing should be recognised as an art form, or possibly a sport (and thinking of London 2012) surely, an Olympic sport, at that. I say this in all humility because I could now be a major competitor with a realistic chance for the Gold. Again, being realistic, we stand a very good chance of being, with Canada, one of only two countries to host the Olympic Games without actually winning a single gold medal. Or indeed, if you scratch gently at our raw neuroses, any medals at all. All of our metal ware is going to be made cheaply in China, flown over to London, only to be re-exported to China at the end of the Games. Let’s hope that the National Mint in Llantrisant has won the contract to produce the medals for the Chinese Olympics, ‘cos that’s the only way that we are going to see any medals in Wales.

But perhaps I am being too pessimistic. Perhaps the awarding of the Games to London in 2012 was not, as I now suspect, a dastardly plot by the French, in a typically Gallic game of triple double-dealing, to humiliate us by not only forcing us to host the most expensive two weeks in the world in the 80% of a lustrum from 2008 to 2012, [Note: this is a tediously pretentious way of saying four years; a lustrum being an obscure word for five years, therefore 80% of it being four years. Ed.] But also an empty achievement which will trumpet our lack of sporting talent to the world. Damned cunning those Froggies! [Remember Jade! Ed.]

Enough of this self defeating pessimism: Vivat! Britannia! What if Spain won 13 (Dear God!) Gold medals when they hosted the Olympic Games: we can do that. Can’t we?

I’m too ill, practising my chest rattling cough, to be any more positive.

I’m going to bed!

Leave the kids alone!

Mrs Nickleby still retains her accolade as the Monster of the Month from the novels by Dickens that I have read so far. Quilp in ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’ is more of a grotesque than a monster and the grandfather at least has the good grace to die decorously on Nell’s grave; he is not allowed to live on with his crimes of selfishness unpunished!

For me the real interest in the novel, apart from the apocalyptic descriptions of industrialisation, lies in the descriptions of infantile sexuality. There is a thoroughly unpleasant series of questionable relationships. Nell is constantly described as Little Nell, but her position as a child is constantly compromised by the burden of adulthood which she is forced to bear because her ostensible protector cannot fulfil that role. People’s responses to her emphasise her physical attractiveness and there is often a sexual tone in the way in which she is positioned in the novel: often the narrative allows a sexual responsiveness on the part of other adult characters to the child. Her grandfather’s confusion takes the idea that Nell’s mother and grandmother all have a physical similarity, which almost encourages sexual confusion.

Other examples of child sexuality are found in Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness, where the proprieties are preserved by Dick paying for the education of the Marchioness until she is of marriageable age, though it is obvious that he entertains more than platonic feelings towards her when she is still the very small servant. His naming of this unattached female is interesting, choosing the appellation of Sophronia Sphynx which makes the girl into an object, almost like some form of dramatic act, while the surname Sphynx emphasises the danger inherent in Dick’s views of women: part lion, part woman.

Kit in his responses to Barbara undergoes a ‘ripening seed’ experience as Barbara encourages him to think in sexual terms about their relationship rather than in terms of friendship. Kit, like Nell is forced by circumstances to adopt the role of an adult so with his mother, he often appears more like a husband than a son.

Quilp has the most amoral approach to his relationships, though given his hatred of ‘everybody’ his actions are understandable, in a way you could even say that he is true to himself! His bullying attitude towards his wife is expressed in physical abuse as well as verbal contempt. Quilp often accompanies his diatribes against humanity with physical blows. Although Quilp is an adult, as a dwarf he shares his size with children and his wife constantly is in fear of him, but at the same time is fascinated by him and wants him as a husband. Her sexual reaction to this hideous dwarf is incomprehensible and compellingly realistic. Tom Scott too, although constantly attacked by Quilp has a sympathetic reaction when his master dies. Whatever the reader might think about Quilp, he is physically vital and exudes a sort of raw animal power.

The one unalloyed success in terms of marriage is the partnership of the Garlands, but their happy marriage produces a fairly vapid son who, amazingly, falls in love, “How it happened, or how they found it out, or which of them first communicated the discovery to the other, nobody knows.” This is an unconvincing relationship manufactured by the author to tie up loose ends at the end of the novel, and another relationship where the sexual experience is questionable, to say the least.

The ambiguity of relationships is taken to a different level with the brother and sister partnership of Sally and Sampson Brass. The masculine appearance of Sally and her strange dress constantly confounds strangers and, while we can appreciate a strong woman held back by convention from taking a full part in the profession in which she is expert, her lack of morality is depressing. Her brother is outwardly expected to be the stronger, but as his name suggests, he can be easily tames by a woman. Their surname also suggests the emptiness of their enterprises, the sounding brass signifying very little. That Sally is not immune to male attention makes her even more grotesque as in the flirting between Dick and herself, he constantly refers to her as a man! The sexual ambiguity there is too complex to contemplate with equanimity!

The schoolmaster with his obsession with his favourite pupil which is then transferred to Nell is an uneasy portrayal: his dedication is clear but his concentration on the physical melding of his dead male pupil and his live young friend suggests that this androgynous pedagogic creation is fulfilling a particular physical need in the schoolmaster’s life.

At the end of the novel I think that I am most impressed with the portrayal of a gambling addiction and the lengths to which the old man goes to satisfy his physical need to gamble and also the literally fatal convoluted justifications that he needs to find to allow him to continue in his destructive path.

Although there is the usual Dickensian ‘happy ending’ at the
end of the novel you are left with a heavy burden of misery and the intolerable burdens that some of the characters have had to bear. I know that this novel was immensely popular when it was published with Americans meeting the boat which brought the next instalment of the story, and crying out to the crew about the fate of Little Nell. Its obvious sentimentality is not to the modern taste and I think that many readers will and have shared Oscar Wilde’s naughty observation that, “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”

An uneasy read.

The next novel is ‘Barnaby Rudge’ not one of Dickens’ most popular novels, though taking the Gordon Riots as the basis for its major action it keeps alive a most discreditable incident in British history.

Don't keep it to yourself!

In the switchback ride which has been our experience of 2007 the equilibrium of illness has now dipped in my direction: Toni is getting better while I am getting worse. The incipient cough which I managed to restrain last night in Alison and Bryn’s has now developed into something which cannot be ignored. So I’ll ignore it.

I am ashamed to admit that Emily and I did not struggle unduly at the picture quiz: we preferred to sit down and drink and chat rather than join the scrum of ‘keenies’ who not only exerted every little grey cell in dredging up names to faces, but also they engaged in furtive forays trying to catch a glimpse of other people’s efforts. In a sad moment some unnamed people even picked up Emily and my effort to see if they could glean a few extra names! Now that is my definition of desperation!

The Dickens reread continues with my first (shame!) reading of ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’. I can see why the title is perhaps the most impressive feature of this novel. It’s full of questionable aspects: the use of an ugly dwarf as an evil character; the whole sexual identity of Little Nell; the presentation of the legal profession; the presentation of industrialisation; the presentation of the teaching profession; the ever present paternalism in Dickens; the over use of coincidence (again!) and the unconvincing narrative.

The ‘problem’ which Nell’s grandfather has is quite modern given that Britain is trying to decide where to site the first Super Casino. His infatuation with gambling is presented in a totally convincing way and his schizoid self justification is chilling in its reality. He is another of Dickens’ true monsters: justifying his destructive selfishness in a continuing whining parody of disinterested mawkish self justification. At this stage of the novel, and given Dickens’ ideas of justice, the old man should expire pathetically with some degree of self knowledge surrounded by grieving family. Little Nell should be matched with Kit and the Solitary Gentleman turn out to be a long lost brother/uncle/son/brother or whatever appellation that this particular deus ex machina cares to carry!

Quilp is another of those Dickensian baddies who delight in their badness and he is an example of ‘motiveless malignity,’ a phrase used by Coleridge to describe Iago. Quilp hates everybody and his hatred is expressed not only physically by his constant attacks on his boy and wife, but also in the way in which he continually acts up to his physical deformity – a typical example being his constant playing up to his impish image by hanging upside down and grimacing through the window at the unfortunate mother of Kit on the return journey. For Quilp, his raison d’etre is to frustrate anything which he perceives as positive and normal: his life is one long perversion in which he delights, but what you see is what you get – he looks bad and, surprise! Surprise! He is! Whereas with Nell’s grandfather, he appears to be a sad old man bowed down by grief working constantly for his grandchild, but in reality is someone consumed by a passion which is able to pervert his sense of morality – a much more convincing baddie than the misshapen Quilp.

In spite of my debilitating cough I am looking forward to finishing the novel and seeing just how far Dickens is prepared to push his penchant for coincidence to provide a suitable ending. However much you think Dickens can go, he always shocks you by how much he actually demands of the incredulous reader.

Shock on Charles!

Raise the standard high!

Looking at the history of the crusades, there is very little about which to be complacent when you consider the motivations behind many of the participants. The basic premise of the first crusade was a just a tad un-PC and, as the crusades progressed they became less and less justifiable; culminating in the very wonderful Fourth Crusade which resulted in good Christian folk indulging in the Sack of Constantinople – the seat of the Eastern Christian Empire!

And we worry about the excesses of Islam!

Anyway George Bush Junior, the most powerful man in the world and defender of democracy . . . hmmm . . . seem to be veering towards modern day Fourth Crusade territory here, the irony is too poignant!

What I’m trying to say is that a crusade which is based on faith issues seems to me to be doomed to failure. A modern day crusade needs to be based on reality rather than the diaphanously fatal fantasies of religion! Unfortunately, all the best issues have been taken over by cranks and do-gooders, leaving very little for the ordinary bloke to claim for himself.

I, however, am charged with all the enthusiasm of an obsessed neophyte in the crusade lark. As in all the best crusades, the motivation is based on a soul searing personal experience.

A blocked external drain is not something which adds noticeably to the wealth of human happiness. It is a humbling experience because the problem is, quite literally, you – or at least, should I say euphemistically, aspects of your body!

You could of course blame the Victorian Drainage System, though for a house built in the 1960s on a green field site, it’s pushing it a bit!

The Man from Dynarod gave as his considered opinion that the major culprit in the cloggage was moist wipes. They are described as flushable, but according to the Man Who Knows, they take about ten years to disintegrate! “They allow the water to go through,” he said, “but then they act as filters and start to block.” Let us not dwell too long on the image that that statement conjures up!

So, the Crusade Against the Flushing of Indestructible Wipes is officially instigated. I will ask his Holiness the Hitler Youth Pope to bless and sanction the struggle against cheap and cheerful personal hygiene and I will entreat the date-expired Prime Minister to institute a subsidised programme of emergency bidet installation.

To be utterly frank, given the past record of historical crusades, I feel that mine has the advantages of being practical, achievable, and cost effective. The advantages in terms of personal satisfaction, health and happiness are in marked contrast to the interracial hatred, death and misery that resulted from any of the previous outings.

I will have to phone up Stewart and ask him to formulate some portentously appropriate motto in Latin so give my crusade that cachet that any mass movement against a readily apparent evil needs. With motto in hand I am right to go!

I will, I think, adopt one of the proven techniques from past crusades and offer indulgences and pardons for contributions (in strict cash terms) to further the cause. All payments to my Cayman Island Off-Shore account please.

Apart from watching, with fascinated horror, the machinations of the Man from Dynarod I have not been outside the house today, so a little foray into the world of commercialism is called for in order to purchase a reasonably priced book of watercolour technique for Toni.


At least it gives me an opportunity for a little retail therapy!

The truly excellent local library in Rumney has come up trumps, yet again, and magicked two practical books on the methods of waterpainting. Toni and I have now taken to artistic production with startlingly unprofessional results. With my knowledge of the history of art, I do have at least a glimmering of the mind numbingly massive artistic failure that our efforts amount to. There again, there is something to be said for getting in touch with the inner child: that certainly is what is indicated by the 'maturity' level of the 'paintings' which we have produced.

But, in the immortal words of the bard, 'the only way is up!'

It is finished?

In ‘Ghosts’ the orphanage is not insured because the clergyman involved in the building of it says that insurance is a denial of the grace of God. It burns down of course. Well, what would you expect from Ibsen? Not exactly slapstick.

In spite of the clear lesson from ‘Ghosts’ we (Paul Squared and I) decided to adopt the approach of the clergyman in ‘Ghosts’ in our attempts to repair the wind ravaged fence. We measured one panel and assumed that the grace of God would ensure that the others were of the same size. It wasn’t of course. Well, what would you expect?

We now have a slightly overlapping fence. I think it is an exciting feature of the garden that makes it stand out from the more quotidian examples surrounding us with their level, matching and smoothly continuous fencing. It’s a selling feature.

The rebuilding of the fence has been a revelation about the ways of builders. Paul and I have spent more time going from shop to shop buying some essential item in the reconstruction, then, a little later going back to get some more because we had not estimated usage correctly. We found that drill bits are frisky little things which constantly strive for freedom and shyly hide away from humans. We now know that paint, whatever its consistency, whatever claims are made for it; does not cover in one coat and always drips. Newtonian physics does not apply to paint drops. The parabolas that they can describe bear no relationship to the force with which the paint brush is applied to the object to be painted. They have an affinity for cloth, especially cloth which retains foreign colour in spite of instant washing. We have also discovered that whatever drill bit you have in your drill at any time, it will need to be changed for another before you can use it.

We have discovered that we have spent more time on the road than on the project. This has not been entirely our own fault. Which other group of builders has set off on yet another odyssey to find some sort of metal strut and bought a set of watercolour tubes, artist’s paint brushes and other accoutrements necessary to produce delicate works of art and really good value kit kat bars? We lacked the single minded professionalism that characterises the normal British workman. (sic.)

Toni continues to suffer; he has now been generally unwell for about five weeks and is thoroughly fed up. He languishes on the sofa during the day and then, in the switchback ride that is his illness, subsides into morose sickness during the evening and coughs his way through the night. I thought that he was allowing himself a comfortable margin for recovery on Tuesday when he told his work that he would not be returning until Monday, but I am now beginning to wonder if he is going to be fully back to his old self by then. We will see. A miserable time for him!

My list of 'tareas' grows and grows: the latest is a drain. As we slogged away putting up the final (non-fitting) piece of fence, Paul Squared noticed a thin stream of evil smelling liquid emanating from a metal cover. Paul, being Paul, and not being content to ignore things, dislodged the cover and discovered a miasmic conglomeration of nastiness which had me phoning for dynarod in short order.

I await their coming with a hand over the nose!

I have a little list!

‘The Old Curiosity Shop’ is the next in the Dickens series and another of the novels that I have convinced myself that I have read because I know the characters and the narrative; but I’m not sure that I really have. We will see when I re-enter the Dickensian world.

The last novel was dark, and the characters in this one promise to be equally sinister. I wonder if, on this re reading, I will find a character who I can despise so completely as Mrs Nickleby. Out and out baddies I can take; they are at least interesting in their own assessment of their deviation from the weak norms that their fellow characters use to limit their development, as they slavishly subordinate their desires to the publicly accepted morality of society.

As Ralph Nickleby says when attracted by the obvious attractions of Kate Nickleby’ face, “There is a grinning skull beneath it, and men like me who look and work below the surface see that, and are not its delicate covering.”

I think that the real horror of a character like Mrs Nickleby is that not only does she publicly, and vociferously advocate the mores of her society, but she also convinces herself that she is the living embodiment of those values while, at the same time, she is a monster of self obsession, delusion and destructive selfishness.

For me, she is the “grinning skull.”

The Old Curiosity Shop will have to produce a pretty vile character to take over from Mrs Nickleby.

However, before I go down to my more than excellent local library in Rumney, I would like my reader to think of letters in literature.

This was prompted by the letter from Fanny Squeers to Ralph Nickleby describing the attack by Nicholas after his rescuing of Smike from the clutches of the sadistic Yorkshire schoolmaster, Squeers. Her wonderfully misspelled letter stays in the memory through the bizarrly humerous line, “I am screaming out loud all the time I write and so is my brother which takes off my attention rather, and I hope will excuse mistake” together with the postscript about Nicholas, “P.S. I pity his ignorance and despise him.” A truly character revealing missive!

So taking this letter as the first in my thoughts I wondered how I would fill out a list of five – I only hope I do better than my attempts to complete a list of British World Music!

Letters in Literature

1 Fanny Squeers letter to Ralph Nickleby concerning the assault of Nicholas on Squeers in ‘Nicholas Nickleby.’

2 William Boot’s telegram to The Daily Beast from Africa in Evelyn Waugh’s, “Scoop.” The startling telegram which starts: “NOTHING MUCH HAS HAPPENED EXCEPT TO THE PRESIDENT WHO HAS BEEN IMPRISONED IN HIS OWN PALACE BY REVOLUTIONARY JUNTA” and which end with, “LOVELY SPRING WEATHER BUBONIC PLAGUE RAGING”

3 Pinky’s viciously, inhuman recorded message to Rose at the end of ‘Brighton Rock.’

4 The servant girl Win Jenkins to Mary Jones in ‘Humphrey Clinker’ by Tobias Smollett in the misspelled letter towards the end of the novel which starts, “O MARY JONES! MARY JONES!”

5 Henchard’s profoundly depressing will at the end of ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge.’

I admit that I have interpreted the meaning of letter somewhat freely so that it covers different forms of communication, but all of the above have lodged themselves in my memory some because of their fantastic implausibility, others because they perfectly suit their contexts, others because they touch a deeply human chord.

Anyway the books are worth reading (even if my second year tutor dismissed ‘Humphrey Clinker’ as first rate journalism, but second rate literature); Hardy is the only major British writer whose novel (‘Jude the Obscure’) I have thrown against a wall; how can one have respect for a writer like Graham Greene who, thanks to the Byzantine politics of the committee, was never awarded the Nobel Prize for literature; Dickens was not exactly noted for his respect towards women and Evelyn Waugh was a thoroughly unscrupulous, vindictive, curmudgeonly grump.

What does anyone expect from a group of talented British writers?

The long day's task is done, almost!

Completely unaided (except for extensive help from Paul Squared) the ravages of the storm have been somewhat mitigated. The fences which were put up previously have survived the absolute calm which is the vicious weather of Wales now that it has smashed my fences. The new fences are in place and are painted. I (with extensive help from Paul Squared) intend to assay an attempt to fill in the two difficult spaces vacated by fences in the back. Here, even the locating fence post has rotted and broken, so I (extensively helped by Paul Squared) will have to start from scratch and actually do something which takes a real measure of technical ability. All is lost!

On firmer ground, ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ is read and a remarkably dark novel it is too. Once again the eponymous hero is one of the least interesting characters in the book. His smug morality shining in its self effacing spotlight is nauseating. When he finally does something ‘reprehensible’ by not admitting his admiration of Madeline Bray to the Cheerybles he shows his true priggishness by his rejection of her presence later in his mother’s house as being unbecoming. He’s inhuman! Just like his intolerable sister. Can you imagine going for a drink with those two: what a delight that would be!

The view the novel gives of sex is thoroughly disturbing. Sir Mulberry Hawk is a truly repulsive character and his assault on Kate is vicious and deeply sensual. Ralph Nickleby’s reaction to his niece is also ambiguous. The similarities between Nicholas and Kate are constantly emphasised: loving one is loving the other; sexual confusion is a natural concomitant of the physical link between the siblings. Marriage (although the easy way out at the end of the novel) is not seen as something which is positive through the course of the novel. Partnerships are shown to be destructive, dysfunctional, unequal, vicious, and vacuous: the Mantolinis; the Nicklebys; the Squeers; the Kenwigs; the Lillyvicks. The working marriage of the Crummles is histrionic rather than emotional: the only happy couple are the Browdies. Generally speaking the happy people are those who are single and who are still single at the end of the novel. The marriage of Tim and Miss La Creevy is perhaps the apotheosis of a happy marriage of two single people with no real hint of the sexual between them – they are ‘old friends’ reunited.

This novel is full of monsters: the gargoyle Squeers; the reptilian Gride; the coldly inhuman Ralph Nickleby; the predatory Hawk; the empty Lord Frederick; the pathetic Smike; the relentlessly philanthropic and completely unbuisness-like Cheerybles; the manic Newman Noggs; the camp pripiasm of the affected, sexually ambiguous Mantolini, and so the catalogue of Dickensian grotesques grows. For me, however, one grotesque stands head and shoulders above all the others in the novel: Mrs Nickleby!

She has a pernicious ignorance which makes Jade Goodie look like a PhD student. All the others at least admit to themselves their weaknesses: at some point the ‘real’ character emerges, they dissimulate no longer and rejoice in their own frailty (or strength!) Mrs Nickleby is an exception; she is well matched with lunatic in the small clothes except no one comes to take her away and lock her up as she well deserves to be. She is wilfully small minded, bigoted and selfish to an astonishing extent: she is the female version of Homer Simpson!

I enjoyed reading the novel more this time around; a macabre experience, but one I would recommend to anyone who has a spare moment to read the 800 pages it takes to get Nicholas and Kate married.

The Hoods!

I’m sure that it’s something to do with living in a predominantly protestant country that makes the wearing of the hoodie so sinister and threatening. It’s the built in fear and distrust of those hooded figures from the Middle Ages who, in literature at least, are presented as unscrupulous, selfish and hypocritical: Monks!

It has to be said that for an English teacher the earliest reference to Monks that students of literature meet are probably in The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. The Monk is ‘a manly man’ and a good hunter, but as a man of God, a disaster. He even rejects the precepts of the founder of his order and jokes, ‘lat Austyn have his swink to him reserved’ and lives his life as an affluent country man of leisure. He becomes the precursor of the eighteenth century rollicking country squire: local importance with an overriding interest in field sports, and not much else. A sort of upper class hoodlum.

I seem to remember reading that French Kings lived their lives in public – even their toilet (and I mean that quite literally) was in public. In great houses the aristocracy were used to the Great Unwashed peering in through the windows: the lesser breeds without the law could watch but never participate in the life of their betters. So, although the differences were clear, they were visible; you could always see what you couldn't live.

The rich now make sure that they are hidden from view: riches mean invisibility; if you can be seen you are obviously not wealthy enough. Even the aspiring middle classes are paranoid about their privacy (or their assumed privacy) and seek the Walled Enclosure to keep the masses away from their life style and they rest easy because the police are always there to protect the only class which actually fears them.

The wandering friars of the middle ages were hated by local priests who realised that their finances would be adversely affected by silver tongued holy fraudsters who could talk money away from parishioners and into their own pockets.

Nowadays wandering bands of dispossessed youth swagger their hooded way through areas of deprivation with a complete disregard for the straightened circumstances of their fellow citizens and are able to plunder from those least able to sustain the loss of property with easy negligence and an easy conscience. Like scheming individuals such as the holy friar in The Canterbury Tales, they ‘would have a farthing ere they went’ from anyone who appeared to be an available victim.

All of this has been occasioned by the mini drama which flowed past Paul Squared and I, as we attempted to repair the wind damage to the fence before the second (non) viewing (don't ask, because I am not strong enough to tell) which was supposed to take place tomorrow (but now won't.)

A hooded group of assorted miscreants sloped past us as we were working assiduously away to be followed in almost a parody of a fifties British comedy by a slightly overweight older person gesticulating and articulating spluttering threats with some considerable venom. He disappeared, only to reappear almost instantly in a white van which drove over the grass to follow the trail of the (obviously guilty) hoodies.

Amazingly the Hoodie Group reappeared, almost instantly, from the opposite direction to that which they had used to disappear and then dispersed with extreme alacrity when the Man of the White Van made a dramatic reappearance which encouraged two youths to cycle frantically into a hedge and also the general dispersal of the marauding pack.

Much three point turning by the Man of the White Van, noisy acceleration, and then silence for a while.

As a rather disturbing interlude a man walked slowly over the grass carrying a chain saw. Our imaginations lurched a little here: hoodies are naturally the personification of the principal of evil in the universe, yet to dismember them with a chain saw is perhaps a little bit of an overreaction. Possibly.

Much later a disreputable youth in yellow and white moving shiftily, disappeared down the gully, surreptitiously looking around the corner before scurrying across Ridgeway Road and melting slyly into the trees by the side of the school.

Then, eventually, the police; driving furiously in all directions.

Never dull in Rumney.

And we had put up a single panel in the fence. With this extreme achievement we felt that we were the living antithesis of the group of degenerates who had done, god knows what; gone, god knows where and been dealt with, god knows how.

But its nice speculating!

What do we know?

In yet another twist of time: this blog is actually Sunday 21st Janaury's effort. Does time move this much if you are not actually writing a blog? I think Stephen Hawking should be consulted!

What do the following have in common?
a) Psychedelic
b) Al-Qaeda
c) Carbon footprint

An unlikely little group; though those of you who were brought up in the 60s might possibly link ‘psychedelic’ with ‘carbon footprint’ as both being linked in some ways with the hippy do-gooder lifestyle – but that leaves out ‘Al-Qaeda.’ Some might link ‘Al-Qaeda’ with ‘psychedelic’ as being types of mind set which have fatal results – but that leave out ‘carbon footprint.’

Let me put you out of your misery: they are all terms which were well known as words before people knew what those words actually meant. For at least two of those terms the impossibility of spelling them correctly is also a linking feature.

Psychedelic became associated with the so-called permissive society (which passed me by, let me tell you) of op-art, Oz Magazine, recreational drugs, and the special visual effects of ‘Top of the Pops’ on BBC. I was never really convinced about the mind expanding elements of flares for example, so the whole concept of the ‘psychedelic’ was problematic for me.

Equally problematic, though for very different reasons, is Al-Qaeda: its foundation shrouded in the usual political corruption which always results when western governments come into contact with the almost laughably corrupt and corrupting regime of Saudi Arabia. The risible aspect of Al-Qaeda is its supposed leader, Osama bin Laden, the spoilt Saudi prince who plays at terrorism like a schoolboy with his model train set bought by a wealthy parent. The, ‘who what and how’ of Al-Qaeda, if answered, would be a disturbingly bitter condemnation of the foreign policy of most of the so-called civilized world. The operations of this fanatical organization, with the misguided responses of its opposition, end in fittingly bloody tributes to the moral bankruptcy of both sides in this conflict.

And now the ‘carbon footprint!’ Most of us have some awareness of the concept of global warming and have a hazy idea that it is somehow linked to the increase in carbon dioxide. We also have the moral imperative to cut down on our carbon emissions and work towards being carbon neutral. These are pious resolutions; what do they mean in reality?

Who knows? It’s not like wearing your seat belt or using lead free petrol, this is something where what we do has to be “offset” by something else. So, when I take a cheap flight to some European city for a weekend break, my petrol quota must be balanced by, by . . . what? Perhaps it would be easier for me if I was a Roman Catholic, as it sounds very much like some concept of Pardons: those interesting documents issued by an inventive church which promised remission of sins in the afterlife for the price of good works in this life. Inevitably this was devalued into a monetary payment in lieu of the person actually completing good works. How different from the present day where rich western companies buy quota from other less fortunate organizations to compensate for their carbon sins!

What do individuals do? Should we buy cylinders of oxygen and let their contents diffuse gradually into the atmosphere, turning up the speed of diffusion when we have committed sins like buying petrol? It seems to me that this is a golden opportunity for those of us in the affluent west to indulge our guilt feelings by giving a little extra to Oxfam to placate those troublesome twinges of morality.

This morning another vist to BBC Wales and participation in 'Something Else.' This time the subjects ranged through the wearing of suits; the Archbishops texting people in Lent with good things to do; how to be happy; power couples; the effect of 'Little Britain' in Wales; Swiss bank accounts; the usual sort of variety. It was a lively show and enjoyable. Patrick was in good form and looking forward to visiting America with the BBC NOW and his wife.

Some people have hard lives, eh?

The Looking Glass World

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'

I’m sure that I will not be the only writer to remember this exchange between Alice and an animated egg as a way of thinking about the continuing controversy about what Jade did or didn’t say in the Big Brother House and whether what she did or didn’t say was racist.

I was speaking with Paul 1 yesterday and he, without endorsing what Jade said, was impressed by her performance as a sort of ‘damage limitation’ exercise as she saw her future career as a non-entity celebrity evaporating like her withdrawn perfume.

The one thing that she did, time after time, was apologise. That was clear enough. She also, in spite of continually denying that she was doing it, did attempt some form of justification. She kept asserting that what she said was not said in a racist way and was not in itself (presumably in her mind) racist.

This is an interesting situation. Her continual statement and restatement that she was not a racist and what she said was not racist is to be commended for the number of times that she managed to get this simple message into a fairly gentle interview; but it is irrelevant how many times you say something if what you are saying is simply not true! By almost any standards what Jade and her cronies did was to indulge in bullying in which one of the most telling weapons they used against a foreigner was aspects of her foreign culture. Now to me, if something foreign is used to spice up prejudice it is simple racism. Denial doesn’t change that judgement.

I am prepared to believe that Jade doesn’t have the intellectual apparatus to think out elegant racist taunts and that she would have used any aspect of someone she disliked: the intellect (!); their body shape; their sexuality; their class; their accent; their eating habits, anything. What is different can be used as a weapon against the weakest; the more obvious the difference, the more likely to be used by a person motivated by ignorance and prejudice. Jade used the ‘weapons’ she found to hand; that they were racist was possibly no more than that they were available rather than motivated by deeply held racist bigotry. This doesn’t, of course, alter the fact that what she said was objectionable, vile and undeniably racist.

I hope and trust that the maw of the media machine that made her will have the good taste to vomit her forth with the justified, self satisfied moral loathing that is so easy for a seemingly amoral press to dress itself in when a suitably vulnerable target presents itself.

I merely pause to wonder if the vapidly sentimental taste of the Great British Public will now recover from its spasm of moral outrage and suddenly discover that it has a maudlin bout of sympathy for the poor little rich girl who is being unfairly hounded by the cynical pack of press hounds; and Jade retains her status as an ordinary, but ‘real’, girl who can hold her own with the best of them. Plucky little (well, perhaps not ‘little’) busty Jade; we love you!

From the country that idolised ‘Eddie the Eagle’ anything is possible!