The Queue is a State of Mind

Paranoia takes many forms, but I think that one can safely assume that the condition is not distant when one begins to formulate a Tao of Queuing.

The sequence I remember best from ‘The Truman Show’ is the one where Truman tries to get somewhere in his car and is constantly blocked by queues of cars which magically appear to block his progress. Although Truman does not realise it, these motorised irritations are actually being orchestrated by the television company which has total control of his life.

It is hard not to believe that a similar controlling producer is placing Difficult Customers ahead of me in queues to provoke the characteristics of impotent fury that must make good television for some audience in another dimension which finds barely controlled aggression amusing.

Consider the last few occasions on which I have had to queue; these are the sorts of ‘puppets’ that invariably get in font of me in queues:

1. The Quick Check Out for “10 items or less.” (Every time I see that it riles me. “less” is wrong. It should be “fewer” on the “‘less’ for quantity and ‘fewer’ for number” rule. I think that designers of check outs do things like that to get us into the right state of mind for aggression so that later in the day the security camera operators can compile ‘best bits’ of infuriated customer reactions when things go wrong.
The woman in front of me had two items in her hand and therefore could be expected to move quickly though the till and not hinder my purchases. When she arrived at the till she leaned over and produced a whole range of further items, including a bottle of Champagne with a security tab on it. Needless to say the tag was impervious to any attempt to remove it and eventually the assistant had to resort to brute force. During this titanic struggle a substantial number of people waltzed through the other tills.
2 All people in front of me seem to find the demand for payment for the goods that they are purchasing a total shock and scrabble about in their bags or pockets as if this was the first time that they had ever had to do it. Time passes and gradually the red mist begins to colour my sight.

3 People who forget their PIN numbers and then joke about it should be shot. Shot slowly if they then decide to pay by cash and build up the total amount by seeing how much change they can get rid of from wallet, purse, bag, pockets, and vacuous smiles.
4 People who don’t really seem to have grasped the idea of the new money and who find the concept of using paper and metal as pounds and pence as an insurmountable mathematical problem on a par with Fermat’s Last Theorem.

5 People who buy clothes or small electrical equipment in Tesco’s or comparable stores. These items have security tags (sometimes cunningly hidden) composed of two plastic parts (one of which is supposed to explode in a fountain of indelible ink if tampered with) and which are supposed to be easily removable by the assistant by using a simple magnetic device. It always fails and time ticks on as I wait with fixed smile.

6 People who have accumulated obscure coupons from strange places all of which have to be checked individually to ensure that the 10p deduction is within the date limit and of course the bar codes do not read and all the numbers have to be typed in individually by hand.

7 Customers, who wait until they get to the till to ask how much an item is, then ask for a smaller or larger pack which needs the cashier to call for a supervisor who then goes off and . . . time passes.

8 Friendly customers who engage the cashier in mindless phatic conversation which is unedifying, platitudinous, vapid, anodyne and time eating!

9 Customers who think that cashiers are well connected executives with intimate friends on the Tesco Board of Directors who are able to explain wide ranging company policy and enter into a ‘fascinating’ debate about policy directions instead of getting out of my way.

10 People who can’t pack without examining each item to see how it could fit in the three dimensional puzzle which is the interior space of the plastic bag, or people who cannot get their cards or money before all items are securely tucked into bags.

It is hardly surprising that one is able to list people with ease when one spends so much of one’s time in supermarkets. I shudder to think just how much of our significant social contact is conducted under the fluorescent lights of Tesco or Sainsbury. More amazing 'mathematical' ideas about supermarket queues may be found at: http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/Statistics/Probability/MurphysLaw.aspx

On a more pleasantly retail note, we had lunch in Mimmas Restaurant on Churchill Way. Toni liked the ambience and I was left wondering when I last experienced that particular ambience. I decided that Mimmas is one of those restaurants that in my previously life I had only visited in the hours of darkness! In the light of the subterranean gloom in the small restaurant the a la carte was much more interesting than the ‘Lunch time special’ so we ended up paying £30 each for our meal rather than the £7-95 that we had set out expecting.

The whitebait to start was unexceptional, but a welcome reminder of what used to be one of my favourite starters.

Toni stuck to what he knew and opted for the mussels which were cooked in a slightly spicy sauce and which were delicious (he did allow me to sample one of them) whereas I went with the chef’s special which was fresh tuna stuffed with apricot and cheese. I ate it but would not order it again as the tastes were strong and confusing and they worked against the taste of the meaty fish steak.

The bottle of Faustino Rose was ludicrously overpriced at almost sixteen quid, but drinkable. I cannot remember the last time that I paid over a tenner for a bottle of wine in real life; we have to do something about the iniquitous mark up by shameless restaurants.

I shall calm my spendthrift nerves by watching Barca play Sevilla in the tranquil setting of my living room with the silent contemplation of Toni (ha!) and then, perhaps, 'Saw III', the everyday story of psychotic folk.

And so to bed.

To read, or not to read?

World Book Day has come and gone with barely a rustle of turned pages, but it has produced something which my rag bag mind loves: lists.

The lists are derived from the rather paltry figure of ‘over two thousand’ people who logged onto the World Book Day web site and produced their lists for 'the ten books the nation can’t live without.'

Before getting to what the people thought, here is my list (without, as the lawyers say, prejudice) – in alphabetical order of author:

1. Old Saint Paul’s – Ainsworth
2. The Foundation Trilogy – Asimov
3. Emma – Austen
4. Jane Eyre – Bronte
5. Heart of Darkness – Conrad
6. Great Expectations – Dickens
7. Catch 22 – Heller
8. Stalky and Co – Kipling
9. Winnie the Pooh – Milne
10. Lord of the Rings – Tolkien

This compares with the national list which was

1 Pride and Prejudice – Austen
2 Lord of the Rings – Tolkein
3 Jane Eyre – Bronte
4 Harry Potter – Rowling
5 To Kill A Mockingbird – Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Bronte
8 1984 – Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Dickens

I’m not quite sure of my reaction finding three of the national choices are mine exactly and another choice is my choice of author. Now say I lack the common touch!
You can access the web site and find lost of other lists which are broken down by sex, age and region at: http://www.worldbookday.com/documents/10%20books%20wbd%20news%20story.pdf

One has to wonder about the sort of people who access these ‘minority’ cultural websites and (if you check the lists) actually choose some fairly unreadable books as their absolute favourites.

I always distinguish between Books Which Should Be Read and Books You Actually Read.

Foremost among the former is the exquisite example of Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’; a classic, no doubt, but absolutely unreadable by normal human beings. The only other creature that I have met who said that he had read that foetid book all the way through (and I believed him) was a Mechanical Engineer. ‘Nuff said.

In the latter category you find books like one of my choices: ‘Old Saint Paul’s’ by William Harrison Ainsworth. I’m not sure that I could make a convincing case for this author to be regarded with the same veneration as his contemporary Dickens, but for Old Time’s Sake and the wonderful chapter headed, “What befell Chowles and Judith in the Vaults of Saint Faith’s” I am prepared to waive my full critical judgement and just enjoy!

Another of my choices, “Stalky and Co” by Kipling, is a book I have enjoyed since I was a child. My copy is falling apart through re-reading and, according to one of my more perceptive students who read it after I had told her it was one of my favourites, “explains a great deal about your character Mr Rees!”

In the national list, how the hell does “To Kill A Mocking Bird” get into the top ten? It’s a good book and full of ‘important’ themes, but I think it’s more a function of the book having been chosen for GCSE English Literature that it gets into the top ten, than for any real literary merit. In the same company as Charlotte Bronte? I don’t think so!

In my list, if I had to choose one to recommend to someone as ‘A Good Read’ then I would probably choose the one written by a Pole in his third (third!) language: Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness.’ It’s a jewel of a book, beautifully crafted and, although ‘only’ a novella, it packs more of a punch than many novels of ten times its size.

Of the top 100 books (of the ten thousand suggested) I had not read twenty five of them. One quarter. I’m sure that some of the classics (especially the Russian classics) had been put down as image-boosting examples of the Books Which Should Be Read kind, rather than books which have actually been read and enjoyed. It was the same sort of cultural snobbery that a while ago managed to produce the unlikely finding that ‘Ulysses’ was the most valued, or popular book in Britain. I think that is an example of aspirational thinking rather than reflecting the reality of what is actually enjoyed asl the eye peruses all those pages which it takes to describe that single day!

The programme for ‘Discovering Music’ at the concert hall in Broadcasting House, Llandaff was a performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto Number 1 (which was actually his second, but, you know what these talented musicians are like!) with an encore of a Nocturne.

The programme was introduced by the same presenter who introduced the Nielsen flute concerto and, once again, I was more than impressed with his musical knowledge and his ability to answer and develop audience questions and comments with effortless intellectual rigor.

The performance was exceptional with the soloist’s fingers flashing up and down the keyboard: I know, I had the best seat in the house and was able to look at his hands directly from the front in line with the keyboard!

The orchestra was less than impressive. The acoustic seemed dead with the sound of the orchestra flat and lacking resonance. The exposed strings were weak and the ensemble was poor. Once again the principal horn was lacking in confidence and created tension every time there was an extended note.

It was just as well that Chopin's 1st Piano Concerto is the almost exclusive property of the soloist with the orchestra being very much the accompanist after they have had their moment of prominence with the extended prelude which introduces the pianist in the first movement.

I enjoy these informative, illustrated performances like "Discovering Music" - programmes after Sir John Reith's heart, I would have thought! This one provided an insight into the effect the type of piano that Chopin used had on the way the music was written. It turned out that the period pianos were less able to sustain high notes, which was one of the reasons that Chopin used octaves together with decoration to emphasise and extend the notes. The popularity of bel canto in opera also had an effect with the piano mirroring the human voice and providing a sort of decorated sung musical line.

I realise that what I’ve just written sounds like pretentious rubbish; you really have to be there for it all to make sense. Honestly!

Tomorrow, more planting. If the weather allows. Some hope!

Roll on Spain!

Just listen!

What a sad reflection on national identity it is that it was only after I had completed my self indulgent blog that I realised that I had done nothing to celebrate the Welsh National Day of Saint David's Day.

It was therefore with something approaching panic that I went to that every ready photographic repository, my garden. There, at least, were lurking the national flower.

You would think that flowers are particularly good subjects for photographs because, unlike birds and animals, they do not tend to move around very much. That of course is generally true, but in gusty wind, flowers can be quite frisky! However, I strapped them down and have produced a few pictures to salve my Cymric conscience!

What is it that makes jazz so irritating?

That opening sentence reminds me of the title of Richard Hamilton’s picture “Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?”

[You can find more information that you ever wanted to know about his collage at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_What_Is_It_that_Makes_Today's_Homes_So_Different,_So_Appealing%3F]

And the picture sort of expresses my view of jazz too. I know that this is the iconic picture that uses ‘Pop’ (as on the lollypop) to reinforce the establishment of ‘Pop Art’ as a distinct genre, but I’m not really concerned about that. I’m much more interested in the unsettling effect that this work has had on me.

The image is engaging, but at the same time disconcerting. The clash of colour and black and white is dislocating and the collage technique shares that same sense of nearly professional: it lack the inhuman perfection of Mondrian, but doesn’t have the freedom of Rauschenberg, so it remains in an uneasy no-man’s-land of contrived spontaneity, and it’s that “contrived spontaneity” that I find so maddening in Jazz.

I know that my lack of appreciation of this musical form, and the way in which I am talking about it will be enough to convince any Jazz aficionado that I am a person of no note (ha!) and I know not of what I speak. I am using the term Jazz as if it defines a single style, whereas Jazz is as wide ranging a musical denomination as the loose term Classical. This I know. I also know that some Jazz performers are consummate musical professionals and great musicians – but they still irritate the hell out of me!

I writhe with impotent fury when Radio 3 includes Jazz as part of the morning programme as I feel it has no right to be juxtaposed with Mozart and Rachmaninov. Some friends who I’ve persuaded to listen to Radio 3 tell me that they listened with amazement to the (as they said) unbelievable, snobbish, arrogant exclusivity exuded from the lightly confiding presenters of music programmes. They felt as if they were eavesdropping on a select club to which they did not have membership. I feel the same when I hear Jazz; there’s something going on which I don’t really understand or appreciate, and I don’t like it!

Some might say that the key to my problem is contained in those words “understand and appreciate”; if I learned more, opened my mind and my ears, did a bit of homework then my increase knowledge and experience will, inevitably result in my increase understanding and appreciation: I’ll like it.

But I don’t want to spend any more time on Jazz. I don’t feel inclined to listen more. Life, as they say, is too short.

Returning from taking Toni to work, I listened, because it was on the radio, to a three or four instrument jazz combo playing an arrangement of The Beatles’ track ‘Blackbird.’ It was very professionally done, but I could feel my skin crawl as I listened.

I am used to variations on a theme from Mozart’s ‘Ah, vous direz-je Maman’ to Elgar’s ‘Enigma’, but they do not irritate me. I do question my own responses: is it the instrumentation; the loose sliding rhythms; the diffuse orchestration; the louche melodic line; the sheer self indulgence of it all? I don’t know.

But, to paraphrase Dr Johnson, I am willing to love all mankind, except a Jazzman."

And Rap. Obviously.

My loss, I know, but I am willing to live with it!

Bring on the Beethoven! (And not the ‘roll over’ kind.)

Medical Matters

Jean Paul Sartre is, as everyone knows, eminently quotable – and his quote is, “Hell is other people.” There may be others, but I’m buggered if I know them.

[In the interests of research I have just been to a web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jeanpaul_sartre.html which lists 27 {Is that a Sartre-like number} quotes and, yes, I only knew the one above.]

Anyway.

I was thinking of Jean Paul Sartre (as you do) when I accompanied Paul Squared to his hospital appointment. I have been to hospitals reasonably frequently over the past year and have become something of a connoisseur of those ante rooms of Hell: The Hospital Waiting Room!

Whatever the style or period of the building there is a similarity in the appearance of the rooms.

They are always just that bit too small for the number of people waiting in them. They are all (apart from children’s waiting rooms) painted in ‘restful, pastel colours’ which are difficult to give a name to.

They all have magazines which are irritatingly out of date and are not what you’d choose to read. This is of course an improvement on what they used to be when they were woefully out of date and from another parallel universe (or The Tatler together with Horse and Hound.)

They have chairs made by the same people who manufacture seating objects (to call them chairs is an insult to comfort) in airports – you know, those devices which seem to be constructed to ensure that no traveller falls asleep, or indeed, ever feels comfortable.

There is, also, the Colourful Image: the picture or poster designed to Brighten Up The Whole Room. I have tried to link the image to the subject of the room, but have signally failed: large shark and neurosurgery? A cute creature merry go round and dentistry? Medicine has reasons that only medicine knows!

But it’s the people; it’s always the people that tell you that you are in a Hospital Waiting Room. I have never been alone in a waiting room and that usually allows the full range of types that are essential to the waiting experience.

There is always one person who does not look as though they should be there. Indeed so incongruous do they look that they disturb all the other people waiting who did not realise that they were quite as ill as that, if such a medical disaster is waiting for the same people that you are waiting for.

There is the monologue chatterer. This is the sort of person who can speak on the in-breath and keeps up a sotto voce one sided conversation of stultifying inconsequentiality.

There are the lost: who? why? what? how? The ones who don’t really understand what’s going on.

My favourite is the Past-timer, the person way into his or her pension but clearly indicating what they used to be like in their youth; with men it is evidenced by a tendency towards Brylcreem and inappropriate jumpers and a vague look of wondering if all the fuss is actually worth it.

Well, people watching always passes the time.

What next?

Sometimes displacement activity is the only action in town; the only thing that keeps you sane. Marking used to drive me to hoover; to brush my teeth; to clean my shoes; too play the keyboard badly and, in extreme cases, in an example of reversal psychology – marking!

Writing is both a chore and a release; for it to be coherent it demands, of necessity, structure in the form of grammar; the rules; full stops and capital letters; agreement of cases, person and sense. On the other hand it offers release in the form of the universe that the very language creates, and you create by your input and your imagination.

So where now? What imaginative leap will this writing allow me, where will it go?Disappointment invariably follows. Let it go where it will!

During the snatch of the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Beyond Belief’ that I listened to while driving to fetch Toni from work, it transpired that a selection of representatives from a selection of world religions were talking about the importance of music in their respective faiths.

In was while listening to this programme that it struck me how like communism was Islam. I do not mean that they are exactly synonymous; that would be a ridiculous statement, though I’m sure that it would be possible to talk about authoritarianism and faith and hierarchy and a number of other aspects and link them with some degree of convincingness. As I listened to the truly disturbing reasonableness of the Scottish Muslim and his description of his faith, I was struck by the difference between what he was saying and what you can see in the world of the Middle East. Appearance and reality. And that is what reminds me of the ideology of Communism in relation to Islam.

Having read the Koran (in English) there are many aspects which are easy to identify with from a Christian perspective as well as others which are much more problematical. But, in essence it seems to me that Islam is a very ‘reasonable’ religion which seems to be ‘reasonably’ egalitarian and encourages the development of male and female with a degree of equality.

But where do we see the religion operating according to the Book? How many democracies are Islamic? Where are women given true equality in the Middle East? Where are the human rights of citizens protected in Islamic states? How many Islamic states allow the promotion of Christianity? The so called halcyon days of the Caliphate of Spain where the faiths coexisted seems far in history. The great advances of Islamic scholarship are far in the past and we are more likely to hear of oppression and repression from those fundamentalist Islamic states which vaunt their orthodox allegiance.

The faith is in favour of equality and freedom of worship and all the other positive aspects of a liberal faith; it’s just that there isn’t an actual country in the world in which an Islamic faith is practiced in this way. Just like Communism: all the positive aspects, but, unfortunately, no actual, real country in the world, ever.

The Islamic contributor in the programme was explaining the Islamic approach to music: he rejected the use of music which might be inclined to deprave and corrupt; that the use of music which encouraged the worship of god was fine, but music which, in the worship of god tended towards entertainment and a sort of self indulgent pleasure was wrong. Although he seemed reasonable, there was a steely sort of Puritanism in what he said which, I thought, was self defeating and self contradictory.

Ii think that music underpins the whole of our existence. Janacek used to listen to the speech of his fellow countrymen and in the notebook which he carried around, he would sometimes write down the ‘music’ of their voices in musical notation. We do not speak in monotones, so when we communicate we communicate in music. We cannot and surely would not want to escape it. And all the mealy mouthed apologies for an emotional response to music in terms of twisted religion are truly repulsive.

Why did music raise itself into my consciousness? Roads.

Roads. And more particularly the noise a car makes when it travels over roads. And why the music is different.

When I went to New York on my one and only visit to escape the grovelling television coverage of the Prince of Wales and his first wife, I ‘enjoyed’ the rampant success of capitalism but I was astonished at the state of the roads. It was during a time when New York was described as ‘dying from the roots up’ as the sewers, roads and essential services were neglected. There were potholes and noxious wisps of steam oozing from ill fitting and noxious manhole covers.

The roads of Cardiff are a metaphor for the world. (Oh god, I’m beginning to sound like a vicar!) Driving a normal journey through the streets of Cardiff you pass through a range of ‘countries’ from the affluent first world smoothness of a certain part of the Newport Road, where the sound you make is a whisper of the normal noise that surface noise makes to the third world experience of Widdecombe Drive in Rumney where every service seems to have cut the surface and left an uneven patchwork of bumps which makes driving an eventful experience and the music of the tyres more experimental. Even on a seemingly smooth road there are always undulations which create their own series of asymmetrical rhythms.

The rhythms of the road and a constant music to confound narrow ideologies.

The allure of gardens!

The spiritual presence of my father was vividly present today. Given that we are trying to sell the house, presentation is all important, so the winter denuded pots in the entrance have had to be rejuvenated. Rejuvenated suggests that what I have done is, in some way, to have encouraged the existing plants to flower suddenly and out of season, to bring them on so to speak.

I have not.

I am my father’s son and if he taught me nothing else (and I assure you he taught me lots, he was, after all, a teacher) he taught me that the only gardening is instant gardening. If you need colour in a garden, buy it in. Let it thrive. Take the credit.

He took his inspiration from Capability Brown who was well known for giving nature a helping hand. If Nature had not placed a lake and mountain in the requisite position then Brown would rectify God’s mistake and provide them exactly where the client would have wanted them if they had had the sensibility of Brown himself.

I feel it incumbent upon myself to continue this grand tradition and go to the garden centre and buy established growing plants and use my aesthetic sense to place them in intriguing juxtapositions causing the eye to rejoice in the exciting collage of shape and colour that is a well planned garden.

Or, to be more truthful, working erratically through trays of potted plants and putting them wherever a blank piece of earth presented itself.

It is amazing how much colourful vegetation is swallowed up in quite a small space in a garden. I am almost convinced that I need to purchase a small greenhouse to start some of these plants from seed or bulb. If following the Rees Family is so ruinously expensive, then god knows how denizens of country houses ever managed to fill their gardens!

For all the expense though, it is amazing how a blank space leaps into life with the addition of flowers, especially as they all now look as though they have grown there naturally and not been located there less than five hours ago!

I even remembered to scatter mini slug pellets on the freshly turned earth (all of which is in pots and baskets) though I’m not sure that this is the season for slugs. Do they hibernate or lurk elsewhere; this is after all is winter and the pickings for slugs in the form of luscious greenery should be limited. Global warming makes me less confident that the slimy devourers of my delicate plants are disinclined to obey the past definition of the seasons and stay away from the garden – so I erred on the safe side and spread snail death with reckless abandon.

Tomorrow a reassessment of what is to be done to compensate for the lack of colour in the rest of the garden. I discovered in my enthusiastic ploughing up of old pots that I was actually destroying growing plants – but growing plant bulbs beneath the surface of the earth! No good for me; but for the sake of honest decency I re-covered the nakedly exposed bulbs and hoped that I replaced them the right way up!

Ah, the wonders of informed horticulture!

Fickle fortunes of Art

How fortunes change.

When I was growing up in the fifties there was really only one Welsh artist who lived the artistic bohemian life and had a reputation which reached well beyond the borders of Wales. He had painted the imperious cellist and iconic portraits of Dylan Thomas: he was the Grand Old Man of painting and revered as a Master. Augustus John.

The Indie has been issuing a series of posters of Art Treasures in Britain. The painters they included were: Manet, Van Gogh, Raeburn, Millais, Palmer, Gainsborough, Blake, Turner, Gauguin, Constable, Poussin and the Welsh artist. And the choice of Welsh artist ticks a lot of boxes for the Independent!

Poor old Augustus is confined to his past reputation, but the rising star and much more interesting painter is, of course, his sister, Gwen John: a member of an ethnic minority; a woman; a ‘used’ woman; a better painter – all the things that the Indie respects!

It’s too easy to make cheap comments about the list; after all any list is an open invitation to Outraged of Pseudsville to decry the omission of an essential art work, though, personally, I have nothing but praise for a list which includes Samuel Palmer, together with another great eccentric (euphemism) Blake. If they had included Fuseli, Dadd, Danby and Martin they could have had a bit of a theme of eccentricity going there; as well as some more than decent paintings. I am available as a consultant at any time.

The Indie seems to have taken over the education role of the newspapers that provided my grandparents with the collected editions of Dickens. I rather enjoy the educationally paternal stance of the Indie in bringing educated selections to its readers. Great Art having been ‘done’ it is now the turn of literature with a series of ‘banned’ books which have commenced with ‘A Clockwork Orange.’ I like the concept which drives this collection which allows for an astonishing selection of works, most of which, I realise I have read – but read in ageing paperback editions where the perfect binding is gradually exploding in a cloud of dry glue dust. You might have guessed that those last few phrases are my justification for buying all the succeeding novels; at less than four quid for a hardback, how can I resist?

Except. There is always an ‘except.’ I have made two abortive attempts to find a newsagent who will deliver my copy of the Indie. And I have failed to find one. I do not think that my area is actually served by a newsagent! I refuse to believe that this is true and I will continue, diligently to search for a deliverer.

We watched the film version of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ directed by David Frankel and I thought that the telling changes from the novel were not an improvement. This film is basically a vehicle for Meryl Streep, and she obviously had fun making the film, but I don’t think that the fun is commensurate for the viewer. I found the moments when Streep broke down mawkish and too much the great actress giving gravitas to the role. Having said all that, I enjoyed the film for what it was; a fairly harmless little fairy tale.

We also watched ‘Right at your door’ directed by Chris Gorak. I was astonished that a film with such a relevant and exciting premise of a dirty biological bomb being exploded in Los Angeles was so tedious to watch. It lacked pace and interest: a boring waste of a fascinating idea.

I much preferred the animated cartoon feature “Hoodwinked” an American take on the Little Red Riding Hood story. Although the animation was not what one has come to expect from films like ‘Finding Nemo’ it was more than rescued by the script which was full of self indulgent detail. At the end of the film I was not clear for whom this film was made: there were many phrases in the script which could only have been appreciated by an informed adult, but it also had twee little songs for kids. What the hell I always like films with clearly understood morals; it’s such a relief from real life.

Watch on!

Floating worlds!

As a symbol of frustration of futility, a small black toad riding hopefully but statically on the rear end of a floating wooden frog caught in the reeds of a garden pond, has to be fairly potent.

The inscrutable but visible (I love these Taoist enigmas) life of the pond continues in its diurnal cycle only impinging on my consciousness when the cold of winter finally clears the green floating algae and allows a deeper (literally) perspective of the hidden waters.

As far as I can see and know, none of the gardens in the immediate vicinity has a pond. Mine is alone. Isolated. A tiny speck of aquatic life in a patchwork of pondless gardens. So where do the frogs come from? Have they come from the reens (local name for drainage ditches) which are relatively near but only accessible via a forbidding (to a hopping toad) barrier of houses and pavements and streets?

The temptation is to type something into Google and pass off the information as my own, but I’m not sure that I want to know the prosaic reason for the repeated annual return of frogs (or toads) to my small pond.

I like to think of my toad (or frog) behaving rather like Landseer’s animal in ‘Stag at bay’: noble, silhouetted against the skyline, turning its noble head and sensing the sweet tang of escape and new pond water! Then the heroic struggle to surmount the almost impossible obstacles of hard unyielding surfaces; thundering mechanised monsters; high fences; hostile householders and domestic scavengers. Then slipping into the calm, fish filled and sometimes illuminated waters of my pond!

A Shangri-La of deeps and shallows; of rain refreshed waters with a kinky frogalike floating serenely and impassively on the surface to whet the appetite of the most jaded toad.

The goldfish, the permanent denizens, have already had their Saturnalia, evidenced by shoals of new citizens waiting to have their innocence shattered by the graphic cycles of life of which they are now part.

I have to say that the frustrated frog (or tortured toad) which has been humping the floating wooden reptile is a most repulsive creature and has been probably shunned by the rest of his kind, which explains his retreat to the inanimate to satisfy his amphibious lusts.

I only hope that the water being graced with frog spawn, the fish do not regard it as an extra source of food and devour it all before it has had a chance to mature. Going on past experience the spawn does actually produce tiny black creatures which look exactly the right size for a casual snack for the goldfish. Those are not fed so regularly that they can afford to ignore any passing food source with impunity.

I used to feed the fish on a daily basis until I was informed by the fountain of all wisdom (the man in the water section of Blooms) that they did not need this type of sustenance and that I would be better in not feeding them at all during the winter. You can see my problem: with global warming, the definition of winter (especially in the mild climate of Cardiff) is becoming more and more difficult to define, so the exact date on which I should start feeding the fish on a more regular basis becomes more and more problematical. I had the unnerving experience a few days ago of venturing out into the back garden and, standing on the top step and looking down towards the pool, I was struck by a row of fish seemingly looking up at me!

I then, fully, realised my status as divine to the fish. Imagine: every so often a shadowy figure appears and hovers and stays at the side of the pond universe; there is a movement and suddenly, the cornucopia is opened and foison is scattered along the upper limit of the watery world; the shadowy figure then retreats into the mystical distances above the world as the fish know it.

The row of fish was obviously waiting for the Umpteenth Coming! Goodness knows what strange piscatorial ceremonies they enact beneath the surface to ensure the reappearance of the Hand of Plenty, and much must be the finny worry during the hard winter months when the shadowy figure comes no more.

I wonder what part the frog (or toad) plays in their religion.

The temptation to write some sort of ironic pastiche of the theological basis for the Religion of the Pond and make snide parallels with the truly appalling religions with which we surround ourselves in our fragile lives is almost irresistible.

Almost, but not quite. Perhaps I am learning to ignore the more obvious and vulnerable targets.

Such consideration!

Equal pay for equal work!

It doesn’t take much to strip away the self control of prejudice denial for the beast to stride forth in all its unreformed glory.

I blame Francoise Durr.

Francoise was a French lady tennis player. Over the course of her career, Durr won 26 singles titles and 60 doubles titles. She was ranked World No. 3 in 1967 and was nine times ranked in the world's top ten from 1965 through 1976. She finished second to Billy Jean King in annual prize money won in 1971.

And I loathed her style of playing which, for me, summed up the absolute and total horror that was women’s tennis.

Durr served by throwing the ball through the troposphere, passing the tropopause and somewhere well into the stratosphere. When the ball finally re-entered normal space, she then had a sort of extended arms windmill approach to the serve which ‘bonked’ the ball, seemingly in slow motion, towards her opponent.

Her opponent had, by this time, committed suicide rather than endure the horror of subjecting herself to the slow torture of the tedious baseline return that was the basis of her ‘game’.

For me (in my unregenerate form) Durr’s tennis, stood for all women’s tennis, and anyone actually paying to watch such a third rate travesty of a world sport was incomprehensible.

Maria Bueno and Billy Jean King showed the way forward and women’s tennis soon developed into a more attractive alternative, especially when the men’s version developed the ‘killer serve’ which, in its way, was just as tedious and game destroying as the Durr destructive approach. I grew to enjoy and sometimes prefer women’s tennis!

Then, today, the announcement from the organization which has, through its ineptitude, ensured that we have not had a men’s Wimbledon Champion since Fred Perry, has pronounced that this year women will have the same money as men in the Championships. And, at once, the Neanderthal sexist took over my body.

This is where the title comes into force: “Equal pay for equal work.” But this, apparently, does not apply to the tennis players. In a game of tennis in the forthcoming championships the men can win with playing in a minimum of three sets and the women can win with a maximum of three sets. With men, even with the straight sets win, they must play at least three sets; with women a straight sets win is two sets.

This is not equal, this is not fair, and women should not have the same money. The logic to me is unmistakable. A man who is two sets up is in a strong position to gain that final set, but anything can happen, and part of the fascination of the male game is what happens given the complexity of a possible five set game. For the women; two sets - you’ve won. The same money? For what?

Equal pay for equal work!

This little diatribe is surprising given the fact that I was out to lunch with Dianne today which should have left me feeling mellow and at peace with the troubled world.

How do you tell the worth of a restaurant? You look inside and, if it’s full, you assume that it’s popular because of the quality of the service and food; if it’s empty – the opposite.

Our first choice of restaurant in Canton was closed so we drove on and ended up in Da Castaldo, which was empty; as we discovered when I stopped trying to get in through a window and used the door instead.

We were greeted with restrained enthusiasm by the waiter and allowed to settle in any place we chose. The service throughout the meal was attentive without being obtrusive and allowed us to talk and chatter and gossip and discuss to our hearts’ content!

The set lunch menus was small but more than adequate and, when I asked for cheese instead of the sweet selection, it was provided without fuss and was exactly what I wanted.

A sea food starter was followed by pan fried haddock with potatoes and carrots. My cheese was accompanied by coffee and the meal by a couple of glasses of wine.

As a lunch it was almost perfect: excellent company in our own private eatery! With good food too!

I must lunch more and more widely: there are places in Cardiff I have never been – and I should!

Sky watching

When you are a glorified taxi service the horror of early morning overtime by your partner is only deadened by the fact that you are half asleep when the reality of having to move about comes home to you. The darkness of night convinces you that you should be tucked up snugly in bed and not stumbling ineptly towards the finicky business of contact lens insertion. Multi tasking shaving and brushing your teeth is not a convincingly combined activity when sharp and fully awake; it is merely a recipe for disaster when still emotionally in the Land of Nod.

There are few advantages in being up and doing before you have to be. There is the malicious pleasure in returning from taxi duty and swiftly passing all the stolid commuters resignedly crawling their way to work. There is the realisation that your tareas can be completed almost before the day has started.

But the real pleasure of early morning driving at this time of the year is the sky. Whatever develops during the rest of the day, it is often the case that early morning is one of the best parts of the day when you consider the weather. We have seen some wonderful skies on the early morning run.

This morning the sky was absurdly spectacular. The cloud was relatively low and the rising sun bathed the bottom of the clouds with bright orange, tinged with liquid gold with a few burning rays escaping though the clouds into the darker reaches of the higher sky. The picture was so beautiful that it almost became kitsch: a painting of what I looked at would have been dismissed as unimaginative and chocolate box Romantic. It was the subject matter of technically inept amateurs, but it was actually real and in front of me as I drove.

As I was driving someone to his work rather than going to work myself, I was able to indulge my aesthetic sense, but I wonder how many others were lost in the deadening effect of their immanent work rather than able to appreciate the wonders all around them?

Believe you me, the splendour of the skies didn’t last long. By the time the bread had been bought from Tesco’s on the return trip, the clouds had closed in and the dull skies of a Welsh February had re-established themselves with the courtesy detail of a wet windscreen from a sharp shower!

The one thing that being brought up in a damp island does for you is to encourage the ability to find positive in depressing negativity. The dark, grey wet days of winter do many things: depress the population; nip flowers with frost; confuse vegetation by not being consistent; rot wood; create puddles in irritating places and deny us the sun.

On the positive side the cold kills certain suspended vegetation that lurks in my pond. The water, magically, clears and loses its deep green tinge, or rather colouration and clears, revealing that, once again, the fish have survived.

Having a pond with fish in it is a constant source of worry. During what I refer to as The Verdant Months when the water of the pond is an opaque viridian, the complete lack of visible finny activity convinces me that the entire fish population of the pond is dead and rotting on the floor of the pond, each cadaver gradually filling with light organic gas prior to the entire tribe’s zombie-like resurrection as they float shimmering with putrescence to the surface – dead torpedoes of guilty accusation leaving a vivid message of neglect for the RSPCA.

It never happens! The clear water shows that The Verdant Months have hidden all sorts of knots and genderings of the finny folk and lo and behold! multitudes of small fish have appeared as if by magic! The large orange goldfish not only have survived but also have thriven and grown more stately.

It’s amazing!

As I type this Barca has just been defeated by Liverpool in the Champions League. I have never seen Barca play so badly (and over the past few years, I really have seen Barca play on a number of occasions) and give such a poor account as a team. There seemed to be no cohesion, no understanding of team mates positioning on the field, no finish.

I am still astonished that I feel so involved in a game of football; Toni has a lot to answer for!

Roll on the next round in Anfield!

Take care of the little things

That well adjusted friendly madman, William Blake, wrote that you can see “a world in a grain of sand.” Let’s assume that he hadn’t been at the laudanum (so he wasn’t having a Salvador Dali moment) and that he was actually saying something with the clarity of his humanist vision in the simplest and most direct way he could. Perhaps he would have been sympathetic with the title of Arundhati Roy’s novel, The God of Small Things (1997).

I’m sure that William would have been joyously enthusiastic to endorse the sentiment which led to the title – though I’m sure he would have interpreted it in a more than individualistic way.

In some ways it is an unsettling observation: if something as inconsequential as a grain of sand can effortlessly contain a world, then why is it necessary to strive to create something infinitely more complex like the intricate painting on a roof in a chapel in a very small city? Was Michelangelo wasting his time completing all that back breaking illustration when the smallest particle of his paint pigment could, apparently, have contained all of his artistic vision and much more?

Blake himself completed drawings, paintings and prints, but I suppose that many of them (all of them?) are imbued with his own mystical appreciation of the world around him, so he never produces a prosaic representation of the world, but indicates the numinous in the quotidian.

In fact in a painting like his depiction of Newton at the bottom of the ocean he consciously rejects the attempts to circumscribe Nature by Science. Nature, according to Blake, can only be truly appreciated by much more than the intellect, hence the way in which he paints and writes.

It is now either an anti climax or a complete justification of the sentiments of Blake that I reveal that the inspiration for the preceding piece of writing is something tiny and domestic.
White sinks in the kitchen obviously look more stylish than clunky old stainless steel ones, but they do demand a more rigorous regimen of cleaning than a swirl of water which cleans the metal version. Bleach and soaking is necessary for the pristine whiteness to shine.

It reminds me of the disastrous plain red carpet in my parents’ house which covered the floor of the hallway and the stairs. A wonderful choice of carpet if you live a light footed singular life, but not the sort of carpet which lends itself to everyday life if you have a family and, more importantly, a molting yellow Labrador who liked to sleep in the sun on the red carpet in the hallway!

Constant hoovering would have preserved its integrity, but as Shirley Conran remarked about stuffing mushrooms, life is just too short. For moments after hoovering the carpet looked superb and then the dog would meander out into the hallway and collapse and shiggle about leaving a yellow haired impression on the now grubby carpet. They eventually got rid of the plain red and bought a multi coloured modern carpet which showed nothing until you got a shovel and dropped the dirt on it in conspicuous piles!

Back to the sink. I had run out of bleach and so took whatever was to hand and splooshed it with reckless abandon in the optimistic hope that quantity would obviate the necessity for specific directed work.

It was what I used that caused me to think. The cleaning liquid (courtesy of ‘Flash’) was truly and startlingly fluorescent! It looked like liquid yellow light – and smelled of lemons. It was so distinctive that I actually stopped cleaning (not difficult for me) and watched as it dripped down the draining board and formed fiery rivulets of light slipping down the plug hole. How in the name of god does yellow fluorescence equate with cleanliness? My alternative cleansing liquid was gel with a wild orchid scent. I could have used wipes with orange zest. Who decides the flavours of clean? And why are we so conservative about the selection of what sprays from the nozzles of our cleaning bottles?

I think that Dettol should be produced with the scent of fine Rioja. After all, we are not so naïf that we actually think that anything natural has produced the scent in the cleansing material. And we constantly see the good and the great sniffing fine old wines, so it must be a positive fragrance. It’s all just a factory produced amalgam of chemicals which tickle our olfactory organs in exactly the right way, and our wonderful scientists can produce the scent of anything. So why not Chardonnay table polish – at least the factory version would never go off, it could preserve that ‘just opened’ fragrance to give personality to the home. Why not espresso scented window cleaner? Mown grass toilet paper? Supple hide toilet cleanser? Burnt wood car freshener? The possibilities are endless and so much more interesting than the present pedestrian alternatives.

I think that by their disinfectants may ye know them. The way that a society defines ‘clean’ probably says more about it than the arid impenetrability of economic statistics and descriptions of political institutions.

What percentage of dead germs is acceptable? If a liquid kills 99% of germs, what about the other 1%? If everything else dies then doesn’t that give an incentive for the other one percent to flourish and multiply and take over the world? Perhaps it would be safer to leave a few more percent of germs alive so that they can form antagonistic groups and keep their numbers down by natural selection. Who knows what harm we are doing by upsetting the natural ecosystems of germkind with our thoughtless decimation (times 9) of their delicate hierarchical organisations?

It is said that there are more germs on a kitchen table than on the top of your toilet. What does this mean?

I think it probably says more about the fanatical British abhorrence of bodily functions and our natural revulsion to bodily waste resulting in a demented determination to eradicate all sights and smells and microbes and anything else associated with defecation than with the dirtiness of the kitchen table. All things are, after all, relative.

We should never ignore the small scented secrets of a sweet smelling style of survival!

Listening . . .

Two heaped teaspoons of instant coffee together with four sugars make a distinctive drink and not one that I could easily imbibe. While I sipped my gentle cup of tea I listened with growing admiration to the reminiscences of the coffee drinker as he chatted about his life almost seventy years ago. He made the stories he was telling me seem as prosaic as the description of an outing by charabanc to Porthcawl during Miners’ Fortnight.

What he talked about in an unpretentious way took in his being parachuted into enemy territory; blowing up a military base; inadvertently putting the army, navy and air force on alert; being part of a small group or airmen who took over a thousand enemy prisoners; being taken prisoner himself; sleeping next to the second pillar on the right of the Parthenon when it was used as an Axis prison camp; walking miles through snow drifts shoeless in tropical kit; being in the same prison camp as the Great Escape; being smashed in the face by a German guard; breaking away from the German guards in the face of the Russian forces advance; not getting shot; being rescued by a British tank driver; borrowing fifty quid from the Vice Principal of the college he went to when he was a mature student, and . . . well, you get the basic idea. A conversation when what you do is listen because you are hearing oral history, your history; a history that helped ensure you (well, my, at least) birth and safeguard your heritage.

In a wide ranging conversation I was acutely aware that my contributions could only be those of a concerned and interested commentator; a participatory outsider looking in to history – first hand history!

It was an exhilarating conversation and one that I will remember with respect.

My respect has been working overtime today as I started my morning by taking my camera to Ceri’s to photograph the paintings that he is thinking of sending to the London gallery for the forthcoming exhibition. The photos will be inserted into the catalogue and they have to be digital so they can be emailed to the gallery for inclusion.

Ceris’s paintings are growing in confidence and he is using his landscape inspiration with greater freedom. Some of the tonal experiments he has completed are remarkable essays in colour and use the layered depth of colour that tempera can give to achieve an intensity that is astonishing. His draftmanship is assured and his charcoal studies are silkily alluring. I always find it difficult to visit his studio as I feel like taking most of what I see back with me! I would very much like to own his sketchbooks as the quick drawings with written notes always give me a sense of the immediacy and excitement that must come when you are applying obvious skill.

Seeing what is possible with pen, brush and charcoal stick at close hand is not something which pushes me to emulate; the difference between my embarrassing efforts and what a professional is able to achieve the gap is too depressing to contemplate.

This makes the watercolour that I have done even more surprising.

The witless way in which I applied the paint and the growing depression that I felt as I witnessed the general failure of artistic ability, intention and technique detracted from the sense of achievement that I expected to experience from the whole artistic enterprise. What is the surprising thing? Well, it’s not the wonderful revelation that, as it dried, it showed its real genius; but rather that when I took a photo of it, it didn’t look half bad! I reproduce it here so that you can share the wonder of the artistic effect of miniaturisation which has altogether compensated for my lack of skill! It almost encourages me to try another! Or is that another example of vaulting ambition which o’er leaps itself etc etc?

My resolution to deny myself the self indulgent frisson of peril my fixing my seat belt while in motion and steering past other cars has held for one day. I have started to move the car without being strapped in, but I have remembered my intention to turn to the paths of righteousness just before I hit the road: thank god for a small but memory jogging driveway!

My second resolution is to get back into swimming. This will mean making a rapprochement with the Eastern Leisure Centre from which I have turned in recent years, succumbing to the middle class lure of The David Lloyd Centre. Having rescinded my monthly payment to the David Lloyd I will now have to retrace my penitent steps to the local leisure centre and negotiate for a Job Seekers’ Allowance holder’s reduced price membership to encourage me to swim with the regularity which was once an essential part of my normal daily routine. I will have to do this step by step and set myself realistic objectives, so just getting the membership card will be sufficient!

The chlorinated water calls!

I am resolved!

It is now far enough through the year to be able to think about New Year Resolutions. One can assume that the common herd has made (and disregarded) the rules made at the woefully unfashionable period around the start of the year and it is now time for the more individualistic and fashionable to venture into the realms of Life Change.

I suppose that it would be more in keeping for a citizen of an ostensibly Christian country to utilize the festival of rebirth at Easter to affirm a new path in life. But I for one have never been fully convinced by the gnomic posturing that has accompanied the calculation of the date of Easter. I fear that much of our present confusion about the date for Easter may be traced to the deliberations of the Council at Nicaea. And we all know what that little committee led to. It really does put one in mind of the worst excesses of the French Revolution; but a French Revolution carried out by Sufis riding on the backs of Jains thinking Zoroastrian thoughts and mouthing tantric inanities. So Easter is out and Now is in.

Monday the 19th of February seems as good a time as any to resolve to resolve. Whatever that means.

In English essays which pretend to be of a factual nature, it should be a pen blocking procedure to start any essay with a opening like, “The Oxford English Dictionary defines “resolve” as . . . “ It is one of those clunking introductions that give you a very clear indication of what the rest of the essay is going to be like. And if the essay is written in light blue pen and you are marking it at night then you know that it is going to take the whole of your concentration to stop the words drifting into translucent nothingness beneath your sightless eyes. Or, alternatively you will feel the need to become a Super Hero Teacher wielding the red pen of truth and the literate way. But dictionaries have their uses.

I did wonder, in a casual sort of way, about the derivation of the word ‘resolution’ and lo and behold, it turns out to be a 14th century word derived directly or via French from the Latin resolvere to 'loosen up' and from solvere to 'loosen or dissolve'.

I do like the counter intuitive derivation which, ironically, seems to be the opposite of what the word has come to mean. However, I also like the idea that ‘resolve’ needs a dissolving of previously held concepts or perceptions; presumably to get back to a pristine state where the negative had been falsely added to a basic purity and the ‘resolution’ allows the superfluity to be excised and also allows a better life to proceed.

The idea of ‘loosening’ is also interesting which almost suggests that a ‘resolution’ is not an imposition, but rather an ordinary state which can be achieved by allowing the natural processes to take their true effect by a suppression of the more negative actions which bring the need for a resolution in the first place.

It follows, therefore, that resolutions should not be difficult because they should be actions which you want to complete anyway, elements that your essential personality should find naturally congenial.

All of this, of course, is pseudo intellectual justification and an attempt at bolstering my already fading resolution to effect changes in my behaviour – the hell with ‘dissolving’ and ‘loosening.’ What I find natural is the behaviour which calls forth the need for resolutions and any other interpretation is a wilful ignoring of self evident truth.

Years ago I made a conscious decision to be influenced in my everyday life by Jimmy Savile. Not everyone can say that, and indeed, not everyone would admit it! In 1971 Savile ‘starred’ in an advertising campaign to urge people to ‘clunk click every trip’ and ensure that they used their safety belts. I thought at the time that the campaign should have used a more ‘acceptable’ person that Jimmy Savile and I felt that the ‘face’ of the campaign should have been someone more ‘respectable.’ So, it was with a post modernist sense of fun that I decided that in spite of/because of Jimmy Savile being the personality I would be influenced by him and ensure that I wore my safety belt for each trip and I duly clunked and clicked.

And this brings me to my first resolution. As someone who clunked and clicked long before the wearing of seat belts was made compulsory I find that I now have to make a further logical adjustment to my precautionary driving skills.

If you live in urban area surrounded by numbers of commuters who all go to work at roughly the same time then you have to run the gauntlet of the equivalent of a motorised Scylla and Charybdis. As drivers leave the curb then, and only then do they decide to belt up, using both hands to secure themselves and leaving their cars to veer across the road at their own sweet will. A couple of male drivers attempting this complex multi tasking problem create a more perilous journey than ever Odysseus had to attempt.

I know that driving and putting on the belt simultaneously is stupid. I resolve not to do it any more.

And without the help of Jimmy!

Now say that I haven’t grown up!

Fragile!

What is the fascination with crockery?

For those of you who have no understanding of or suffer no visceral jolt of identification with crockery, I dismiss you as I would a rabid dog. You (and you know who you are) are lesser breed without the law, lewd fellows of a baser sort and contemptible beneath a Conservative.

I say this by way of justification for the falling away from the paths of parsimony into the slippery chutes of spendthrift indulgence.

I can trace the path of my own destruction and there is, as you will see, a terrible yet justifiable logic behind the inexorable slide to penury.

I am not one to slum it by drinking espresso from the wrong cups. I am also not one to pass by a reasonable buy to fill a perceived need. So, when a person like my good self finds himself in a designer outlet and sees cut price Royal Dolton espresso cup in a classic design reminiscent of early Josiah W in stylish white at a more than reasonable price: there is only one possible outcome. The fact that I ended up with more cups than saucers was merely a note to the power of serendipity to ensure that sooner or later the requisite saucers would ‘turn up’ at some point.

Needing two small saucers, of course, meant that there was ‘purpose’ in all future visits to the designer outlet – a mission, a rugged determination.

Today was no exception. Shops for Toni: shops for me. And one of them of course was the Royal Dolton shop. Here I was presented with my first challenge or temptation. My dinner service is in a now discontinued pattern by Wedgwood called ‘Aztec’. A year ago I had given myself over to an orgy of ‘sensible’ buying when the prices of the Aztec service fell to prices when it is a certifiable crime to pass by bargains of this almost insulting nature. It didn’t have all the sensible pieces that I wanted, but what was there I purchased, assuring myself that, if necessary, I would devise new and strange forms in the presentation of food which would necessitate the use of the odd dishes that I had bought.

This time there were mugs. I had been waiting for mugs to appear at a reasonable price for months and had officially given up hope because the last sale had been of the end of the range. Now, as if by magic, mugs! It transpired that another store had shut down and the stock had been transferred to the one outside Bridgend and was now displayed for me delectation.

I am not entirely convinced that I do not have a selection of mugs in storage, but at half price, surely too good a bargain to ignore? But I resisted and drifted (feeling like a traitor to my mother’s shopping memory) towards the back of the shop and there was a single cup and saucer of the espresso type I was looking for. And the saucer was only £1! Half way there! Another one and I could get away only spending £2! A positive record! But this is where things began to go wrong. ~there were no further saucers at cut price, only at full (half) price (if you see what I mean, this was a designer outlet after all.)

At this point the shop assistants leapt into action: the discussed, planned, searched and gossiped and finally produced not only another saucer at £1, but also a multitude of cups at 50p! They also took 20% off the saucers. It would have been churlish not to have bought an extra half dozen cups and saucers and then in the general euphoria of buying I was moved to buy six mugs as well.

The paths to destruction are paved with porcelain.

Growing beauty

There is something immensely sad about buying your own flowers. I don’t mean the sort that you plant out in the garden, I mean the cut sort that grace various tasteful vases (how do you YOU pronounce that word?) around your home.

A man who admits to liking cut flowers and their arrangement is risking his public sexual persona because a man enthusing about a well selected bouquet of flowers is a Huysmanesque stance, a number of steps down towards the green carnation world of the man given wholly to sensual pleasure, and therefore, of course, not a real man.

Though it is worth noting that most of the truly great horticulturalists were men, and on television the garden makeover programmes are almost always led by men (with the signal exception of that strapping refugee from water features. Ms Dimmock) and the great illustrators of flowers were men and, so on.

You’ll notice the complete lack of illustrative detail of male nomenclature to give substance to my statements and the only real person I mentioned by name was female!

The rose as a symbol is positively Jungian: our responses hard wired into the very people or species that we are. You can trace the use of the rose through music, paining, illustration, tapestry, poetry, prose, photography, horticulture and wallpaper through hundreds of years, or more like a millennium, it is omnipresent part of the fabric of our lives. So why do men get uneasy if they are given a bunch. Is the rose so associated with the female that a bunch of the flowers is an embarrassment of riches an open invitation to deny the moral myth of monogamy on which our society is built?

I salute our Eastern European brothers who have been flaunting their use of flowers as an essential male accessory for ever. Who can forget (well, not me for one, I’ve only seen the newsreel footage) the first visit of the Moscow Dynamos to Great Britain for their series of football matches in the last century just after World War Two where part of the opening formalities consisted in the Russian players presenting their opposite number with beribboned bouquets before the start of the match? Or the cringing embarrassment of the British players as they took their unexpected gifts. But were our Eastern Brothers dissuaded from this un-masculine practice? No, they went on doing it, handing out pretty and strikingly arranged posies to weightlifters and hammer throwers and shot putters through all the various forms of athletic competitions that they staged.

They have now, to all intents and purposes, won. All competitions seem to be bonanzas for local florists as first, second and third placed competitors are all presented with their obligatory bunch of flowers which they can use to wave at adoring fans so much easier for them than yanking up their medals and almost garrotting themselves with the ribbon.

Competitors in major competitions now expect their floral tributes and all possible sexes accept them with grace and uneventful looks, a far cry from the expressions of earlier male athletes who always looked as they grasped their flowers in a studiedly casual way, as if they had just been presented with a dead duck billed platypus.

So, if it’s ok for muscle rippling male athletes to disport themselves with garlands gay, why has it not translated itself into a different attitudes displayed by ordinary male folk? Because it hasn’t. If you watched men buying flowers in advance of Saint Valentine’s Day it was painful beyond belief. What most men wanted to do was grab the first bunch of conventionally ‘Romantic’ looking flowers they could find. There was no debate, no mixing and matching, no holding the flowers at arm’s length to judge the overall effect. It was look, grab, go. Pure and simple.

Of course Tesco, where I do most of sociological research, does not encourage invention on the part of flower buyers. The bunches are ready-made for ease of sale. The most that you can do is buy a selection of bunches and then make up your own display, but the one or two more expensive blooms become ruinously so when you have to buy more than you need to create the tasteful melange you are striving to achieve. This is one more occasion when the economies of scale and the stripping away of assistants with an interest in selling more than the ready made units of consumer consumption that supermarkets supply works against the inventiveness of the individual punter.

It is only in the area of vegetables (and not always a full selection of those) that the purchaser is in some sort of control. With vegetables you can (should you so choose) buy a single potato, carrot, swede, parsnip, brussel sprout, green bean.

There’s a thought: Arcimboldo shows what you can do with an over active imagination and a supply of vegetation. We could tone down the wild extravagances of Arcimboldo and using a quiet methodology and flamboyant spatial awareness produce a vegetative display that would delight any man (or woman.)

Vegetables are beautiful too!