To suffer for one's art!

Another milestone!

I'm not sure that, when I started this blog, I thought that I would be penning the 200th number while sitting on my sofa securely in Cardiff. I think that I had imagined that the writing of the blog would, by now, have become almost incoherent owing to (due to?) the excessive amounts of rioja and cava that would have been slipping down my gullet having been purchased as almost no cost in the local Catalan supermarket.

Instead, because God is nothing if not ironic, I sit typing to the accompanying tintinabulation of raindrops glancing musically off the roof of the conservatory.

As all the best moral stories say, "This too will pass." My wry smile is safe in the ambiguity of that sentiment!

The trouble with yesterday’s generation is that it lacks application. They pretend that they are au fait with the burgeoning technology which surrounds them but, when push comes to shove, they lack (as it were) the application.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I place myself in that generation. Going to London for just over a day I was accompanied by my PDA, my camera, my ipod, my DAB radio and a spare pair of glasses. I had my multipurpose solar power pack to feed any of the devices that were flagging. I was prepared: technology my servant!

It should not have been too difficult to pen (or pound) my blog. I was going to stay in a house hold were each house member had her own computer linked to the internet. It would have been a simple matter to log on and get writing. But I didn’t. Neither when I returned in the evening on Saturday nor when I rose upon the sunny Sunday morn. The lure of champagne and barbecued food with Pouille Fuisse was more than the temptation of logorrhoea in the ether. Weak, weak man!

Now the penance (or is it the reward) of making up for lost time.

The ostensible reason for visiting London was to take advantage of a rare opportunity to see a good production of Satyagraha by Philip Glass. The reviewer in The Indie dismissed the music and argued that the Opera had had a better production than it deserved. I am used to people being dismissive about the operatic oeuvre of Glass, dismissing it as repetitive rubbish. And even those who should know better have spurned my enthusiasm and forced me to go alone to productions!

This time I had the company of Mary who was as appreciative as I could have wished: all things come to those who wait!

The overpriced programme (£4-50) indicated some of the production ideas which were going to be incorporated into the finished work and gave an outline of the ‘narrative’ of the opera. To put it mildly, the narrative of Satyagraha is not conventional and I think it would be difficult for anyone, without a prior knowledge of what was supposed to be happening on stage, to understand the ‘action’ of the piece. As I have come to know the music from CD and have not bothered to read very much of the unilluminating booklet which accompanied the discs, it was not much of a disadvantage to discover that the dramatic accompaniment to the singing was more of a suggestive gloss on some parts of the libretto rather than a literal interpretation of the words.

ENO has collaborated with Improbable to produce this version of the opera. Improbable added a dramatic content which used stilt walkers, giant puppets, flying, fire, and a mass of newspaper to produce some set pieces which were genuinely moving and emotionally uplifting.

I was particularly impressed with the ‘fantastic’ appearance of Krishna with paper clouds of glory and wands used as manifestations of his refulgence. Paper was constantly employed in the visual and audio dynamic of the piece. The production of the Indian newspaper was simple and effective with sheets being handed from one person to another and pushed across the stage as if in a printing press. The transmogrification of the individual pages of newsprint into a continuous unwinding roll of paper eventually enabled the creation and breaking of barriers and a particularly effective maelstrom effect of thrashing lengths of paper which engulfed and disengorged the central character.

The singing (with the exception of Jean Rigby playing Mrs Alexander who was woefully underpowered) was uniformly excellent with Alan Oke being outstanding as Gandhi.

The music, inventive and engaging, constantly delighted with the intricacy of melodic style and for the first two acts the hypnotic power of the score gripped the listener’s attention. The last act is not as strong as the first two and, although powerful in its own way, it lacks the immediacy of the rest of the opera. Or perhaps it was the eventual effect of the wine in the intervals!

I am delighted that I made the effort to go to London to see this opera, well worth the effort. I have not changed in my opinion that Akhnaten is the stronger piece, but I am enthused enough to search out the final part of the trilogy that I do not have, Einstein on the Beach. More expense!

Clarrie and Mary’s house continues to impress, though the amount of money which is needed to bring this delightful residence to its full glory is daunting. The garden is glowing with colour and potential; the resident bluebells provide a colour base which will be augmented in the forthcoming months with the hidden riches that Clarrie has painstakingly planted as they burst through the chicken-shit enhanced earth which graces the garden (bindweed allowing!)

The lawn that Clarrie has laid is eventful in its topography, but, as they say in the older Oxford colleges, it only takes a little watering and rolling to make the perfect billiard table sward – as long as you are prepared to do it for a couple of hundred years! I am in no real position to speak as I am a devout follower of the Way of the Small Stone approach to flat areas of garden. And it makes weeding a doddle!

The barbecue was an (eventual) triumph with the fish kebabs being particularly fine. I must also admit that I am relieved that there is no branch of Waitrose enticingly near otherwise I fear that I would be living entirely on the micro dressed crab shells and the mini blinis with smoked salmon!

And another one bites the dust!

Isn’t it sad how quickly what in one film is breathtaking and spectacular becomes in another clichéd and banal. Having just watched ‘Eragon’ (Director: Stefen Fangmeier) the vistas that inspired in Lord of the rings here are simply boring and an excuse for lack of narrative.

This dreadful little film has the sort of silted dialogue that even Jeremy Irons finds difficult to say and poor old John Malkovich is woefully outside his competence in voicing the pseudo archaic claptrap that the script asks him to articulate. It put me in mind of The Man in the Iron Mask (1998 Director: Randall Wallace) where the Americans (including, as it happens John Malkovich assaying an eighteenth century nobleman) in the cast made the script appear to be unsayable, while the English character actors made is almost reasonable. Almost.

The story line had all the hackneyed predict ability of a fairy story without its charm. Actors who should have known better frolicked around for what I hope were large sums of money to make at least their bank accounts look respectable if not their curriculum vitas!

Like the Pirates of the Caribbean this film came to no conclusion leaving a clear threat of another film or three.

I trust that the viewing public has given no indication that a continuation of this sorry saga will be necessary.

In the interest of fairness, I have to say that there were one or two set pieces which had moments of vague splendour, but they were not sustained.

A sorry saga of instant forgetability.

Tomorrow London and Philip Glass – as well as Clarrie and Mary.

Who could ask for more?

If at first you dont . . . um . . .

Well! Overweening Man has been put in his place. Again! I wrote a scintillating, witty, provocative, intriguing and seminal blog entry. Microsoft (God bless it) though its program, Word, put paid to it all.

It will now never be written, except in the rogue electrons that have now made their way into the vastness of the uncharted universe.

Somewhere, on the other side of the dimensions, that only Hawking knows, something is reading it.

Not us, however, not now.

More tomorrow?

Microsoft volente!

Another day . . .

Another day, another story of breathtaking horror! Thirty two random murders in America one day, one hundred and sixty murders in Iraq the next. No wonder the parasitic pedlars of the apocalypse feel that things are going their way.

How tempting it is to look to religion and its manifest failure as the reason for the unreasonable actions of so many.

Have you noticed the links between religious apologists and the National Rifle Association? The mantra of the NRA is that, “It’s not guns that kill people, it’s people who kill people.” Religious thinkers who look at the carnage which their religious beliefs so often bring about say, “It’s not the religion that kills people, it’s people’s misinterpretations of religion that does the damage.” No wonder the image of Pontius Pilate washing his hands is such a strong one! And applies to so many situations in the world today.

As the bloody horror in Bagdad seems to be perpetrated by Islamic bombers on Islamic victims, it is instructive to look at the divisions within the faith that allow this murder.

The major division in Islam is between Shia and Sunni.

An informed discussion can be found at: http://islam.about.com/cs/divisions/f/shia_sunni.htm but I was interested to read that the division is more political than religious in its historical basis.

The vast majority of Islam is Sunni and a small minority of some 15% is Shia.

The differences arose from the disputes which resulted from the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Who was to take over the leadership of the Muslim nation? The Sunnis agree with many of the companions of the Prophet who elected the close friend and advisor of the Prophet, Abu Bakr to be the first Caliph.

The Shia, on the other hand, believes that the leadership should have stayed with the Prophet’s family and therefore they believe that the succession should have passed to the Prophet’s cousin and son in law, Ali. Ali was the first in a line of Imams which Shia believes are divinely appointed.

I know that I am simplifying a complex historical, religious, and social mix, but the differences are instructive.

The Shia believes in divine appointment, venerate the Imams as saint-like characters and complete pilgrimages and ask for intercession. The Sunni reject a divinely appointed spiritual hierarchy and the concept of saintly intercession.

It is not difficult to see the parallels between the divisions in Islam with the divisions in Christianity. In both great divisions of religion there is a fundamental belief in the central tenets of the faith, but the differences which have evolved with the different interpretations of authority have made them infuriatingly distant.

As an Anglican atheist I can see some aspects of the Roman Catholic / Protestant split in the Sunni / Shia division, though the numbers are reversed. If you take the veneration of saints and the concept of divine appointment as the Roman Catholic position, and the more democratic Protestant stance then the position becomes a little clearer.

I feel that I am straying well outside my area of competence, but the vicious horror of the religious wars which have torn Europe apart over the centuries by combatants who all prayed to the same God should be a dire warning to other faiths which fail to unite.

The real trouble with religions is that they have to deal with human beings and that invariably brings all-to-human frailty into the equation and, in my reading of history – religion invariably loses out.

On a more digestible note, I had an excellent meal in the restaurant of the Macdonald Holland House Hotel on the Newport Road in Cardiff. The meal was quite pricey with a three course lunch cost £28, with a more than adequate glass of Rioja and a cup of coffee the total was £36.75!

I was the only person in the dining room for the whole of my meal, I felt rather guilty at arriving fairly early for my meal and interrupting the maître d'hôtel having his! In spite of the natural resentment that he should have been feeling, I had excellent service throughout the meal: attentive without being assertive.

The range of food was good with various appetising alternatives. I plumped for the crab tortellini on a bed of wilted etc etc etc. You get the general idea, but what intrigued me was the addition to the various listed ingredients of ‘crab foam.’ This is not something I have come across before and when the dish arrived looking very clean and elegant, the foam looked alarmingly like spit on top of the tortellini, but with rather more adhesive quality. And it tasted good. Nothing on the plate was wasted. I had already been provided with excellent onion bread with two types of butter and a small dish of olive oil. This was used to good effect to mop up the delicious foam and accoutrements!

My main course was medallions of tenderloin wrapped in black pudding and ham, set on a bed of mustard mash with a small lake of jus.

My other vegetables consisted of truncated baby carrots up ended and placed in a row looking like those contrived Chinese islands which you assume only exist in the imagination of Chinese scroll painters and then are astonished to see in reality. Rather like my line of orange incongruity!

Dessert was just as imaginative, but I plumped for the cheese. This provided the only discordant note in the meal, as; when it arrived it was rather chilled. The selection, however, was excellent with an adequate range of bread and biscuits with chutney and half a fig.

Why half? What do they do with the other bit? Does the chef eat it as one of his perks or is it placed to one side waiting another person to order the same? As no one arrived during the whole course of the courses I imagine that it must have been used as an unexpected ‘garnis’ for a startled guest!

As usual I feel a metaphor forming itself using the half fig as its basis, but, rather unusually, I will restrain myself.

Prepare yourself for an outburst later!

Irony is not enough

Blame is like a drug that promises so much and delivers so little.

As someone who enjoys every instance of irony that comes his way, I have been savouring the ramifications of the cash for confessions affair in Britain. How is it that the illegal detention of British sailors by a regime headed by a president who is a holocaust denier has resulted in the denigration of the Senior Service, the humiliation of a country and the near resignation of a minister?

The low comedy of the interviews of the returning sailors and their descriptions of their ‘hardships’ have given an air of unreality to the whole experience. One can well imagine the desperation of a group of Brits who find themselves in the disturbing position of being held by a government which regularly calls for the destruction of Israel and whose descriptions of our government do nothing to help one sleep at night. But their seemingly cheerful complicity in the audacious propaganda coup which the Iranians pulled off was, to put it mildly, depressing.

One could, of course, push the irony a little further by pottering back into the history of the relationship between Great Britain and Iran. Our complicity in ensuring the stability of the government of the Shah and our earlier cavalier behaviour in the modern re-establishment of the country ensure that an observer taking a dispassionate assessment of the country could point an accusatory finger at the high handed approach of Britain and the west. How fitting then that a country historically manipulated to serve the best interests of a country far away should now return the compliment.

How ironic too that that bastion of western idealism should now be rocked by a tragedy which surely must make that country question its very identity. The blood drenched campus in Virginia is an obscenity and the pictures we have seen can only remind us of the horror we felt when death came to another campus in Kent State. Leave aside for a moment that similar senseless slaughter is a daily occurrence in the land liberated from the bloody grip of a dictator by US forces, with the admitted complicity of other countries. Although 30 people dead is a starkly unpalatable statistic, if we are talking numbers then it pales into insignificance when compared with the relentless death toll from conflict throughout the world.

The images of the Vietnam War, thanks to the miracles of modern communication, enabled coverage of American soldiers’ deaths beamed directly into the houses of parents who could watch their sons die on live TV. In Virginia today we have the rough Cinéma Vérité of myriads of mobile phones taking their jerky pictures of an event whose horror can hardly be grasped. The internet was talking to the world from the dorms in the university to the world as the tragedy was unfolding. Students were calling electronically to find an explanation for their world being turned upside-down.

The ironies of this event happening in Virginia today stream from the tragedy like some obscene slinky effortlessly and jauntily flowing from step to step.

I’d just highlight two aspects which strike me at times like this. Gun control in the USA is a problem which for bemused observers in the UK seem to be rooted in the soul of the American people. I have never forgotten the American TV advert which showed national flags being shot through by the number of bullets which corresponded to the number of gun deaths in the respective countries. When it came to the American flag it was totally destroyed by the barrage that represented the appalling statistics which are associated with gun crime in that gun crazy nation.

It has been estimated that there are more guns in the country than there are inhabitants. That is a problem. But we can still expect the apologists to troop out the ever youthful Charlton Heston to voice the platitudes which seem to convince the population to keep their amazingly self deluding belief in the safety which the gun apparently bestows on America. The guns, we are told, are not dangerous; it’s the people who use them.

We can also expect the reiteration of the misreading of the ‘constitutional’ right to carry a gun. Perhaps that is reasonable in a country whose more extreme Christians like to parade their faith by insisting on a literal interpretation of the words of the Bible - leaving aside, of course, some of the more tricky prohibitions in the Book of Leviticus! How often the militant anti-abortionists look to the gun as a natural part of their unnatural world.

It is difficult not to look at the situation with a bitter grimace and realise, as the final irony, that the multiplicity of images held in memory, sound, tape, phone and god knows what other forms of recording material will provide conspiracy theorists enough raw material for generations.

Welcome to information overload where, as in the library which is the Bible, you will be able to pick and choose, cut and paste, and be satisfied with your belief in the Answer.

Cardiff?

The simpering, gyrating ‘weather person’ on BBC Wales has just used a weather map of Wales on which the most obscure places that he could think of are given prominence while the centres of population are ignored. If the News is an informative programme, surely there is some necessity for it to reach and inform the majority of the listeners.

This sort of playful politically correct idiocy with the national recognition of the few at the expense of the many is part of the un-stated policy of some aspects of our so-called national institutions in the woefully misplaced implementation of that most misused of concepts, ‘inclusion’.

I do not, for a moment, believe that the ‘weatherman’ is using odd hamlets on his weather maps as his own weak wave for ‘inclusivity’ (if such a word exists) it’s just his camp take on Andy Warhol’s apercu that in the future, “Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” The weather man is, like some condescending spotlight (secure in his base in Cardiff) giving all the little people in their little villages, their own little moment of prominence as a named spot on his map. “’Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.” Dream on!

For me and the way I see attitudes in Wales developing, it is yet another sign in the fear and terror than some have about the position of the capital city in the life of the country. The carping criticism of Plaid Cymru as spokesperson after spokesperson emphasises the danger of putting any institution, museum or attraction in the City becomes more than irritating, it is directly insulting.

Not content with condemning the National Library of Wales to a location where the vast majority of the population will never see it, let alone visit it is, in my view, a national disgrace. The scandalous treatment of the Industrial and Maritime Museum which was hijacked from its base in Cardiff Bay and given to Swansea is an issue which has never been satisfactorily explained.

I do not begrudge Swansea a museum which demonstrates and illustrates its industrial history, but its foundation in the city is one which is another chapter in the denigration of the Capital.

It is often said that Cardiff is Europe’s youngest capital; with the expansion of the countries in the European experiment that is no longer true, but its status is still something which has to be earned by its constant development and in its role as an iconic symbol for the country something which should be supported by the population as a natural extension of national pride.

I am not so naïf to believe that Cardiff has not siphoned much which should have gone to areas in the country which are much more deprived than many in Europe. It is also true that physical geography ensures that it is easy to show how divided the nation is north from south; east from west, and the centre from everywhere. How often do the majority of delegates to an ‘all Wales’ conference have to trudge up from the south east to the tedious ‘fairness’ of a location in Builth or Llandrindod Wells, only to find that delegates from the north have decided to stay away. I speak anecdotally, but from repeated experience.

On the Gabalfa interchange on the road going towards Llandaff there is an art installation on the walls of the road which consists of simple geometric shapes in primary colours. It has all the hallmarks of a department store’s attempt at something arty. At the time of its installation I welcomed the impetus of the Welsh Arts Council in embracing the concept of public art, but I loathed the ‘cheap’ look of the end result. I did not at the time, regard the money spent on this art as being wasted, even if I did not much appreciate the work. I have come to enjoy the burst of colour and form which characterises this small stretch of otherwise unremarkable road. It has survived and now become a valued part of the colour of city life.

It works. It’s worth the money. Yes, there are other things to spend money on and any hard faced politician could reel off a list of ‘worthy’ enterprises that would command public approbation. But art has its place in something like the same way that the status of a city can have its place in national regard.

The Sydney Opera House was one of the star chapters in the wonderfully entitled book, “Great Planning Disasters” by Peter Hall. If you follow the story of the Opera House it is one humiliating debacle after another, with public loathing and contempt following every stage of the project. Now, the Opera House is a proud symbol of a nation, let alone the city. Wembley Stadium (a worthy successor to the Opera House) will soon become the iconic masterpiece that it looks and the chaos of its construction will be forgotten in national pride.

With the rubble at the heart of Cardiff as redevelopment flattens its way into our sight, the city has a golden opportunity to restate its credentials as a worthy symbol for the country – with the country’s support.

It’s worth it.

It's the waiting!

I am waiting for the Job’s Comforters to start relating their stories of how they (or more likely people they know or knew of) almost got to exchange of contracts when the buyers decided to pull out. I’m not sure that I will be able to listen to their anecdotal horror stories with anything approaching equanimity. I have discovered that my stress levels have exponentially risen now that the process of selling the house has taken another step forward.

I must admit that, like Doubting Thomas, I will not believe even this small step until the sign saying ‘SOLD’ has been tastefully attached to the board outside my home.

With something like an organic appreciation of the pathetic fallacy the (expensive) vegetation in the front garden has decided to burst forth in bloom, as if in relief that another stage has been reached. The woefully mistitled ‘White blizzard’ trailing plant which was bought as an alternative to the missing alyssum is at last living up to its name, albeit in more of a scrappy partial slush drift rather than the torrent of white that I was expecting. The trailing multicoloured lobelia is still getting its roots settled in and has not yet deigned to blossom forth, but its greenness is vigorously encouraging. Wherever I look there are buds or swellings or growth indicative of future colour.

Going on the (optimistic) time scale given by the estate agents the maximum colour coverage should be at completion! Such is the possibility of metaphor exemplified by a garden. I’m sure that, probably in the eighteenth century, some gentleman gardener wrote an elegant little treatise on irony and gardening – with six hand coloured engraved plates.

As is usual at this time of year there is the traditional double (or sometimes triple) bluff played by flowers on the neophyte gardener. This game which plant delight on playing (sometimes at the risk of their own fragile existence) consists of the plant pushing up ambiguous foliage to tempt the nervous gardener into weeding mode and thus consigning it to the green organic recycling bin. Alternatively a plant may suddenly develop multiple shoots which look like precursors of flower stems, thus staying the hand of the enthusiastic and wanton pruner. In one case, speaking from personal experience, this led me to water, tend and nurture a large pot of what turned out to be grass! It was then used an a colour design way as a foil to more colourful pots to make it seem as if it were all planned.

The present plant prevaricator sending out possibly mendacious shoots is a plant in a pot in the front paved area. It is indisputably healthy and has developed what look like tightly closed buds promising a profusion of colourful flower heads. I am, however, beginning to suspect that these promising buds merely hold yet more greenery and the hint of colour in the tip of the bud is merely evolutionary camouflage for the confusion of the urban gardener. I shall pander to its virility and feed it plant food and report back on any spectacular floral developments.

Yesterday to Eleri’s 50th birthday party held in the salubrious surroundings of Cardiff Yacht Club. That title is perhaps a misnomer as my new little device for finding my way around the world did not recognise its existence. I have yet to use this device for any real journey but I bought it as a sort of good luck charm to ensure the sale of the house – buying the version of the machine that had maps of Europe at street level. You see my point.

Cardiff Yacht Club is in the Bay at the Windsor Esplanade. This is near a row of houses that at one time were in a very shady position (and I don’t mean sheltered from the rays of the sun) but now must be very desirably property indeed. The building of the Club House is of that type of modern architecture which looks temporary and designed by sticking together bits of other projects’ plans. The upstairs bar, still smelling of cigarette smoke (so pre-April my dear!) does have the advantage of panoramic windows. The full effect of this sweeping vista was somewhat lessened by the lack of daylight, but the night merely served to open up the view of the bay and surrounding area to an abstract interpretation of light on water. Even though we have summer weather the illumination of the various facets of the city deserving of optical highlighting has not yet persuaded the city fathers to squander the requisite electricity. So swathes of the shore line are dark and churches like St Augustine’s in Penarth are not yet shining out against the sky.

The Yacht Club seems to be situated on the shores of a swamp; which I’m sure is designated as a wet reserve for wildlife. In the darkness however the scraps of light illuminate scraps of vegetation fringed pools while the actual waters of the bay are filled with the reflections of the gaudy life of the restaurants and walkways. At night the view is most impressive, and there is even a balcony so that the nicotine addicts can indulge without infecting the wholesome majority!

A good time was obviously had by all and, perhaps reflecting the average age of the participants, the festivities ended at a more than civilized hour whatever the more raffish elements were intent on doing!

Late to bed and late to rise makes a man lazily content. Who can ask for more?

Small rooms big secrets!

“What,” asks that clever little advert on the TV, “does your toilet say about you?” What indeed!

One is inclined to say that it graphically indicates which room it is that one uses for one of the less pleasant bodily functions, and that there may be olfactory indications which point to this conclusion. The masking ‘fragrances’ that are sold point just as unequivocally towards the reality of defecation; just as the knitted dolly toilet covers (do they really still exist?) emphasise the presence of a toilet roll rather than allowing it to blend in with the rest of the knitted accoutrements of the well stocked smallest room!

We Brits have been chuckling, snigger and downright laughing at toilets since the time that time began. We have it on reliable authority that even than grim dwarf Queen Victoria WAS amused by lavatorial humour: one imagines Disraeli’s weekly audiences with Her Imperial Majesty (Empress of India) talking about the State of the Empire being enlivened with witty little farts to emphasise relevant points of national importance.

The sea side humour of postcard artist Donald Mcgill continues to delight viewers, and the toilet was one of his staples resources on which he lavished his art. The Cheeky Chappie, the comedian Max Miller captivated audiences with jokes from his ‘Blue’ book which also relied on the bathroom for much of his humour. The toilet is a vital part of our national life.

What if it does smell? That is part of its enduring comic appeal: stinks and laughs – that’s what bodily chemistry is all about.

But if the toilet can speak volumes about you, what about the rest of the contents of a normal bathroom?

The world is divided into two camps: those who put away and those who display. This is not necessarily applicable to all aspects of life – though the more I think about it, the more I believe that I might have stumbled on one of the great secrets of life. I am applying the division to the impedimenta that makes a bathroom the interesting place that it is.

I am referring to the oils, the unguents, the balms, the lotions, the pastes, the perfumes, the medicaments, the fluids, the potions, the bottles, jars, tubes, packets, sachets: the evidence which allows you to paint a true picture of the inhabitants who own the bathroom. The bathroom, viewed carefully, tells us more than any guarded conversation can. Here is personality stripped bare (!) where each bottle and jar shouts the truth about the inner personality of the user.

Too often the open display of tasteful accoutrements is only a surface truth which can clearly be discovered when the bathroom cupboard is open to critical view. Do not be deceived by a seemingly artless confusion of bottles and cartons scattered along grubby shelves. Dig deeper in that hard to get at drawer partially hidden by a cunningly draped towel and the truth will leap out at you.

God knows the perfumery companies have spent countless billions in persuading us that the right name on the right bottle is the only accompaniment to socially acceptable smelling. They have lavished obscene amounts of money and talent in producing bottles which are works of art. Take, for example, the sailor’s torso which is the packaging for Jean Paul Gautier. Admittedly the ‘sailor’ is nearer to Genet than Grimsby, but the elegantly homophile kouros-like mini sculpture reeks of style.

I had thought that the toothbrush was outside this area of snobbery. You were either a manual up-down-side-side etc labourer or you invested in one of the many electrical versions. All of the electrical versions of the simple toothbrush are bulky and speak more of the dentist’s surgery than of the artist’s studio. The problem, of course, is the energy. Or, as so many have asked in different situations, where do you put the batteries?

Some electric toothbrushes seem to need their own power station to generate enough power to bring the thing to life, while others seem to have wedded the idea of the garden hose to hi-fi to get the molars clean.

As a self-confessed gadget freak I have worked my way steadily through the (cheaper) range of electric toothbrushes and, stashed away (in one of those hard to get at cupboards) are probably enough dead carcasses of passing electronic fancies to fill a small display case in the V&A. They are dangerous mistresses, and you have to beware of falling to their sensual promise of effortless frottage. You know you have to stop when you teeth become transparent and enamel is a thing of the past!

Imagine my horror when, today, in Boots, I discovered a toothbrush which eschewed the clumsy bulk of a battery operated toothbrush, had no power lead, and yet was svelte as a young manual toothbrush. Behold the ‘Pulsar’ – as thin as a normal brush yet with the power to shudder and probe. This, surely, is the only time in the history of the world when developments in multi-bladed shaving have had a knock on effect on tooth brushing!

This masterpiece of design is even cleverer than one might think. The instructions tell us that, “No need to change any parts. Includes non-replaceable, disposable Duracell battery.” The hell with carbon footprints, this is conspicuous expenditure write large by being so cleverly small.

And because humans are humans and always will be, there is a little diagram showing how to open the device to get at the battery. Because we think that we can break the cycle of disposability by correct thinking and slip in a battery of our own. But, alas, we will not have read the small print which states, “Product is not designed to be opened unless for recycling.”

Our curiosity and parsimony drive us to explore, and that very exploration destroys.

I can’t help feeling that, were I a vicar, there might be a sermon (or two) in “Product is not designed to be opened unless for recycling.”

Amen!

Apostate!

“Stephen,” Mike Ross once said in an NUT meeting, “It’s not that we want you to agree; just don’t speak.” It was one of those times when I found myself in the position (not for the first time) when in the words of the Queen in one of the Alice books, “I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” If not impossible, then at least contradictory. It was the usual debate in the NUT when we went from the national to the parochial. I have been a long time member of CND and passionately opposed to the use, production and flaunting of nuclear weapons. Well in keeping with the most radical ideas of our noble union. The second issue was one of corporal punishment.

Here, I carried the legacy of generations of real teachers and was (at that time) whole heartedly in flogging ‘em till the blood flowed! I spoke passionately on the subject and was well received by the more reactionary elements who had been generally dismissive of my anti nuke attitude. Hence Mike’s despairing ejaculation at the end of the meeting.

Going to get Toni just before five pm today and listening to Radio 3 I had another one of those moments when I could hear some misquoted version of Wittgenstein’s dictum ‘Whereof We Cannot Speak, We Must Remain Silent’ which seemed to be translating itself into a sort of admonition to the effect that ‘You don’t know what you are talking about, so shut up before you make a fool of yourself.’

The occasion was a piece of music which I listened to with growing irritation. It had all the self indulgence of a composer who knew he had a massive number of musicians obeying his baton. It was a mish-mash of disparate musical forms ill stitched together. The portentous gave way to the melodically trite; the simple to the bombastic. Percussion was used with the subtlety of the neophyte orchestrator who felt that everyone had to have his moment of glory. The repeated motifs were ploddingly pedestrian and made one scream for the obvious conclusion that one hoped, yet feared, was waiting at the end of the score.

And I knew that it was Mahler. I didn’t recognize the symphony, but all the tricks of the trade were in tedious evidence.

It was the last movement of the Seventh. And I take back nothing!

I do like Mahler, especially the first and the fourth. The fifth passes me by somewhat, and the eighth is only overwhelming when experienced in concert. But that period in the car really showed up the qualities of the composer which allows others to dismiss him as a self indulgent poseur. I know that listening to part of the last movement of a symphony on a car radio is hardly the fairest way to listen to the work, but surely if the work is great then even under difficult circumstances the essential quality should shine through. And my car radio isn’t bad, you know.

I think it was the sense of virtual blasphemy is thinking these treasonous thoughts against such an iconic composer that livened up the waiting period of Toni to step towards the light and home. The sacrilegious thoughts coursing through my mind and the chuckling frisson of knowing that my dismissal of such a canonical work would case something like physical pain to a number of music aficionados that I know were, I think, a great part of the pleasure.

And what if they knew that I liked (I mean really liked) the music of Philip Glass!

Another little step to the sun!

Have you any conception how many small handprints I found waiting for criminal handprint experts to dust to find the culprit? Let me short circuit this investigation and point the finger of accusation towards the 18 month palm of a certain young Catalan! I think for some of his work he would have had to have jumped or stood on a chair! How inventive are the ways of the less than adult!

The frantic work at removing the legacy of youth was as a result of the estate agent phoning up and informing me that the couple who viewed the house informally yesterday were coming back for a second more serious investigation. Hoovering, polishing, dusting, tidying, sweating – the usual accompaniments of unusual activity. This took me until about one o’clock with the visitation set for one thirty.

Vacating the house and making for the Pauls was but the decision of a moment, because I was hoping that Paul Squared would be able to tell me more about the six monthly interview in the jobcentre. While with the Pauls, one thirty came and went with nary a musical interruption from the Motorola. Depression set in and I eventually wound my heavy way to town. A desultory wander through W H Smith and a weary decision to have a ruinously expensive cup of coffee before the interview settled the slack time before I had to present myself in Charles Street.

The interview was taken by a substantial lady with one of those heavily ‘amusing’ and confiding senses of humour. How I smiled. I was given the exciting information that I had been waiting for: thanks to governmental instruction I was not obligated to go on a three day course to teach me how to write a CV and find a new sense of purpose and confidence. I can hardly wait. I pity the poor teacher who has me in her class.

I wonder how the groups are organised. When I look around on my fortnightly visits to the Jobcentre, I cannot fail to be impressed by the cross section of society that I note milling around telephones, job computers and the Jobcentre employees. It’s not a mixed ability class that I would like to take. The 30th of the month will be day one; I will keep you informed.

While I was talking to my personal advisor the mobile went off. I normally loathe and despise those people who break off conversations (especially when those conversations have been prearranged) to talk into an insubstantial piece of metal. However, I considered what the estate agent had to say of more moment than the platitudes of my advisor. After a little haggling which stretched through the interview, out into Charles Street and was finalized on the central reservation of Churchill Way – I accepted the viewer’s offer and the HOUSE IS SOLD.

I realise that I am tempting all the fates which lurk in the darkness of men’s minds when I state that the HOUSE IS SOLD. I am well aware that the offer of an offer and its acceptance is just the start of another long and drawn out process which is fraught with danger and not a little expense. But, surely, there is nothing wrong with indulging oneself with a little self congratulation that the process of living up to the title of this blog is a step (at least) nearer to completion.

Wish us luck!

Eggs is nice!

Fractured blog writing is a direct result of the aftermath of the Catalan invasion! It was delightful having Toni’s relations and experiencing why child rearing is best left to other people! Today was the Washing Experience – nothing to write home about, I keep harping on about the number of machine loads of washing that I had to complete, but the key and magic word is ‘machine’: sorting and loading is hardly the hard work that I remember my mother completing with the single agitator top loading machine with a wringer. I also seem to remember a Flatley dryer – which was a heated metal box with wooden slats on which to drape washing. Now that was something to carp about!

I have also neglected the garden. The mini daffodils have finally given up the unequal struggle. We cannot complain about our money’s worth, but when daffs have gone, they’ve gone and so we have to find something as flamboyant to replace them. The lobelia is slowly establishing itself and the alyssum is not quite ready for planting. We are relying on pansies and violas for display and, at long last, a new trailing plant called ‘White Blizzard’ has yet to live up to its name.

We have problems with upwardly mobile magpies that see the vegetation of our front garden as a sort of IKEA on demand and are establishing their domiciles at our expense. Their favourite wall basket looks as though someone has been stamping through the flowers with baby boots! I shall replant with holly – that will give their omen laden presence something to think about.

Talking of thought, I was watering the garden (ever conscientious when I finally get started) when a disembodied head drifted along the swell of the garden fence and diffidently asked me about the house. It turned out that the head belonged to a lady who, with husband and child was looking at houses without the benefit of the house agent who was not available for viewing. This is an ominous piece of information which I will need to look into. Invited in, she was all expressions of delight, up to and including the pool in the back garden as it turns out that she has a (named) fish which has travelled with them and they were looking for a home for him too. It’s funny how an element in the house which is usually a negative one suddenly becomes a selling point!

We will have to see whether enthusiasm is translated into an offer. As they have already sold their house and they are under some time constraints to ensure that they have somewhere to live, it could work out very well. We will have to see.

The saga of the Easter egg continues. Toni having made the sweeping assertion with an airy wave of the hand that I could buy myself ‘any’ Easter egg, and with the injunction, ‘Choose one!’ ringing in my ears – I restrained my consumer impulses and said that I would wait for today and the inevitable reduction in prices before squandering his money.

Tesco’s did not let me down and, after a little searching, a disappointingly small selection of remaindered eggs revealed itself to my view. As I was watching, so the assistant was putting up the half price stickers. Rejecting with scorn the cheaper eggs I concentrated my attention on eggs which had originally cost £10 (well, £9.99) and were thus, refreshingly, reduced to £4.99. You were, as lascivious eyes drifted over ingeniously flamboyant packaging, seduced by the sheer show. So I decided to be more scientific about the whole affair.

Some people would obviously look at the different makes of chocolate on display and decide which one gave the greatest taste promise; some might look at what ‘extras’ might be tucked into the bulky packaging; others might be tempted to go for a more exotic make.

None of these is the correct approach. Tesco, very helpfully (and not a little shockingly) show how much per 100gms the eggs cost. I have already noted that the usual cost of chocolate at between 24 and 55 pence in its normal bar form, is magically translated into as much as more than four pounds in its egg form – a triumph of capitalism and commercialism. Hooray! Therefore, the correct approach is to look at the new amounts of price per 100gms and buy for quantity rather than the packaging. Using this criterion good old Cadbury comes out on top; to be specific, the dark chocolate eggs which is stylishly packaged as a cylindrical container containing a purple mesh covering ornamented with ribbon inside which is an egg, containing and egg containing small foil wrapped eggs with a small packet of candy covered eggs as the extra. And very tasty too.

I’m still waiting for my money from Toni to authenticate his grandiloquent gesture!

C’est la vie!

Easter workers!

BBC Broadcasting House in Llandaff was a ghost building this morning with only what appeared to be a skeleton staff enjoying triple time. A rate not enjoyed, I might add, by the contributors to the programme!

The security guard was engaged in a conversation which appeared to be a monologue from a deranged person maintaining that he had been poisoned. Such is the lot of the front of house in broadcasting!

The news room was deserted, apart from Patrick ploughing his way through the verbiage of the Sunday papers. After both of us signally failing to make the thermos devices containing boiling water and coffee work, I started to work my way through the rejects already viewed by Patrick.

‘Wales on Sunday’ yet again took the accolade as the most fatuous of the Sunday papers and you have to bear in mind that it was competing against such heavyweight opposition as ‘The News of the World’; ‘The Sunday Express’; ‘The Sunday People’; ‘The Sunday Mirror’ and ‘The Mail on Sunday’. So a considerable achievement!

I was reminded of Jimmy Porter in ‘Look Back in Anger’ who asked the question, “Do the Sunday papers make you feel ignorant?” Those were the days! Even the so-called ‘quality press’ can sometimes tyrannize by trivia – and that’s after you’ve weeded out the supplements and extras that you have not intention of reading.

The programme went well, especially as we discovered a small (but perfectly formed) cream egg in front of each microphone! Now that’s what I call attention to detail.

The drive back to Rumney was made a little more exciting by the read out on the information panel on the hired Zafira telling me how few miles were left in the tank. It is unnerving to have a precise number of miles indicated together with the inexplicable word ‘Range’ flanked by six exclamation marks and a petrol pump icon flashing ominously – as well as the ordinary petrol tank indication needle reading empty. ‘Twas almost as if the car was trying to tell me something.

I worked out that I might just have enough petrol to get to a petrol station on the Newport Road if the Tesco in Pengam was closed. At a push!

Luckily disaster was averted by the garage being open, though there was a bad moment when the petrol pump that I chose refused to give me any petrol.

Lunch was provided by Toni’s mum and was Paella and Fideuá and we were able to utilize a good old Cardiff tradition and have ‘arf and ‘arf with generous portions of both washed down by an excellent Cava. If only the Catalan meal were taking place in Catalonia!

I live in faith and will put my trust in the opening of the traditionally intensive house buying and selling period which opens with the Easter Bank Holiday and stretches until the summer.

The CRB should be completed soon and I will have to think more seriously about what that will allow me to do. But before that there is an interview with the Job Centre people and a ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ meal.

It’s a hard old life!

Humph!

There comes a time when your city doesn’t seem your own any more.

The redevelopment of the centre of the city of Cardiff is making it at the moment look uncannily like all those depressing pictures of Beirut looking war torn and picturesquely destroyed. Office walls open to the sky; multi-storey car park floors slanting at crazy angles and jutting out into nowhere; piles of rubble; clouds of dust and Christo-like installations of polythene clad buildings wrapped in the way that he would approve.

All the lively, bright and colourful edifices knocked into a sort of subfusc rubble. Just like multi coloured plasticine which when you played with it as a child transformed itself from a bright rainbow of pigments to a muddy brown. That’s what the centre of Cardiff is at the moment: a place reduced to the unremarkable waiting to emerge from its chrysalis of clay into a . . . well, let’s face it, modern civic architecture which is prompted by easy gain is not going to astonish by its ground breaking, innovative and exciting modernity. It’s far more likely to be the sort of thing which subsumes Cardiff into the mind numbing anonymity of stripped down utility building with the odd cheap flourish. Rather like the Capitol Centre which is an ordinary shopping mall with certain Cardiffian features added to the façade like a piece of cheap scenery.

I don’t hold out many hopes for the look of the New Cardiff. I remember and experience of trying to show some friends a piece of furniture that I thought would go well in my home in a little shop in Leicester shopping centre. The only trouble was I couldn’t find the shop! I was reduced to wandering around the area where the shop was last sighted and plaintively bleating that it was there the previous week! It seemed at first like one of those films where someone’s life has been erased by the government and they have moved someone else in to take the place of the original inhabitant. Just before my mind gave in to a complete belief in the Conspiracy Theory of Everything, I realised that the shop that I was looking for was actually in a shopping centre in Northampton. The centres were so nearly identical that my confusion was just about understandable. The identikit approach to shopping in the centre of cities had taken a very firm hold, and that was during my first year of teaching – some years ago.

Now it’s just the order of the shops which interest the jaded shopper not their range. Standing in the centre of any British city it is possible to recite the shops that you can be certain of finding within a ten minute walk of your position with a 90% degree of accuracy. Cardiff’s last bastion of individuality is found in the arcades (which I always assumed every city had) and the small shops which still seem to make some sort of living. Good luck to them. I only hope that the new development will piggy back on the lucrative establishment of John Lewis and the obligatory money making residential development and encourage the establishment of small stores rather than allowing the bland the national chains to anchor another forgettable shopping experience in the centre of a once distinctive city.

Walking through the strangely restricted centre of Cardiff today I also sensed that the demographic of Cardiff has changed and that my age group are not the commanding presence that I thought it would be. Youth is taking over (and I thought that we late baby boomers were the dominant force in the land) comprising pretty (if over made up for my taste) girls and boys who seem to have brought dressing down to new depths as all of them seem to affect drably scruffy imitations of American grunge as their dress of choice!

All the foregoing are a way of limbering up for my participation in ‘Something Else’ tomorrow: the Grumpy Old Man approach is the only one which works on the programme, which is just as well, as it’s the only approach that I’ve got.

I’ll have to learn to be wide eyed and accepting, I’m sure it will make me a much better person.

And it’ll frighten the horses!

Ah, youth!

You know you have family staying with you when not only do you have to use the ‘value’ set of cutlery that you bought as a stop gap measure, but also, you don’t care!

And the plates! You get into a routine of using plates steadily so that eventually the dishwasher is filled up ready to go, but you are still left with as many plates as you need for normal meals. The sequence of washing, stacking and using is soothing in its timeless rhythm. But, suddenly, there are people; all of whom need plates and they use them and there you are (sooner than eventually) with frantic dish washing as the food is being served out!

And it goes on. Spoons, cups, mugs – all being used and things that you vowed that you looked forward to throwing out are all pressed into service in a logistical nightmare that, apart from certain times in the night, never seems to be containable.

And the children. Well, the child.

I remember reading Stephen Hawking’s ‘Brief History of Time’ – to be absolutely truthful, I know that my eye passed over all the words in the book, even if my brain did not always manage to fit the words together into coherent sentences – and wondering about the concept of the black holes. Having been in the presence of a small child for the past three and a bit days, I now fully understand the thinking behind the postulation. How an inchoate human being, weak, inarticulate and totally vulnerable can suck into himself the energy of six adults with seemingly effortless ease day after day is wonderful (if enervating) to behold. I think the fact that he has dimples has something to do with it. Cute always cuts the deepest!

As I am no expert of children under two, he is a constant revelation. Although his vocabulary is confined to a few (and I mean a few, like three) basic words, he seems to be able to understand complex instructions and will suddenly do just as you tell him; if you speak Catalan!

His mood swings are the stuff of casebooks. His appetite is eclectic and bewildering. His manner imperious. His confidence overwhelming. His mannerisms captivating. His capriciousness bewitching. His morality, non existent!

All of this is, of course, old hat to those who have dealt with very young children before, but this is all new to me and drainingly fascinating.

You can see experience begin to dictate responses. He already almost knows what is captivating and will nearly consciously behave in a way which will elicit positive responses. This, you might say, can be said for all of us. But we are more knowing; his knowing is almost entirely instinct with just a flavour of intent!

I now know that parents of young children live for The Depletion. That magic moment when full face manic behaviour gives way in an instant to the comatose. And then the period of quietude when, for the first time that day, a breath may be drawn without the worry of what may happen by the time the exhalation has begun.

My childhood was, of course, exemplary. I remember one time after I had committed some juvenile indiscretion my father saying to himself, although my mother was in the room at the time, “Well, we have to remember that he had to be woken for his feeds.” It turned out that for my first three weeks of existence I did nothing else of note but cry: day and night. At the end of that time after my father had “thrown” (his word to me many years later) me at my mother with words to the effect that I was her child and she would have to do something about me. I then shut up and, as far as I can make out, my parents had a (relatively) easy run as far as being woken up at unreasonable hours was concerned. I will have to authenticate this reminiscence by reference to Aunt Bet: the repository of all family history, dates, lineage and true anecdotes.

I certainly played on that early (and misleading) behaviour throughout my life, leading to my father’s equally revealing observation, “Stephen, I have been waiting for you to say to me, ‘Dad, you’ve worked for me all your life; go out and work for yourself,’ – I’m retired now!” What I say is that he got off lightly!

One thing I do remember was my inclination as a child to be ‘off into the blue beyond’ as soon as the parental hand loosened. I do not remember trying to escape as a point of principle, it was just as soon as restraint, however loose, dropped – I ‘wandered’. My mother was a great believer in reins and adopted them as the only means she ever found to keep me roughly in the vicinity of her, admittedly manic, observation. The time that my mother’s attention drifted for “a few seconds” (her words) from her very young son, I was well on my way to England, periodically being swamped by passing waves, as I left the coast of Wales and the resort of Pendine far behind.

I will not dwell on the aftermath of my cheery (if somewhat spluttering) greeting, “Hi Dad!” as my father broke several Welsh, British and World records in getting out to me, urged on by my mother’s helpful hysteria! I would merely point out that if Childline had been in existence at that time I would have been more than justified in phoning them. Parents can be so unreasonable. I maintain that I was not drowning; I was merely being submerged on an increasingly regular basis. It’s all (as I didn’t get the chance to tell Dad at the time) semantics.

Who knows what excesses will be effortlessly committed before the end of tomorrow?

But, on the positive side, tomorrow is the traditional day of Carmen’s paella.

[Sighs happily!]

It's what's inside that counts!

We are all in denial about something.

Best exemplified by the memorable detail of a half remembered story (or was it fact?) when some wag wrote a note saying, “Your secret is discovered, flee!” to a whole group of people and watched as they all duly panicked.

It sounds like a story by Saki about his elegantly sinister, yet likable anti-hero Clovis. This is the sort of occasion when John Lord would have been able to supply title, author, year and publisher! I do miss his vade macum of a brain – and the series of little books in which he recorded his reading.

Or to take another instance, the time a policeman come to our house when I was about 12 or 13 and to my horror as I opened the door asked for me! I was immediately convulsed with guilt and staggered back to my parents croaking that the police had come for me. The fact that the policeman had singled me out by name because my name and address were printed clearly (by my father) in my glasses case, which he was returning, did not calm my shattered nerves. I was ready to confess. To paraphrase King Lear, I assumed I’d done such things –What they were yet I knew not – but they were obviously the terrors of the earth, and had policemen calling!

From that moment I never questioned the basic reality of stories about false confessions made under duress because I was certainly prepared to admit to having started the Suez conflict if the policeman had suggested it!

Mary Mallon was born in Ireland in 1869 and then later moved, like so many others, to the United States. She made her living as a cook which, as it turned out, was a very bad career choice. Not, you understand, because she was a bad cook, but rather because of something contained inside herself; something fatal. She was no mass murderer: she was not the American version of Sweeny Todd; the thing inside her was typhoid.

Mary was a carrier and became known as Typhoid Mary. She refused to admit that she had anything to do with the trail of case which followed her trade. She was a healthy carrier and she saw not reason to stop working as a cook. It puts one in mind of the old duffer in the television comedy show who refused to believe that the war was over and constantly rejected the more and more pointed explanations of its ending to humorous effect. When you’re dealing with real life and, at that time, a killer disease, it’s not so funny. People died because of her inability to accept reality and she herself eventually died in enforced quarantine.

It’s at this point that I should make a light hearted comment and reveal that the motivation for this writing is some gossamer thread of thought which caught my attention for a nano second before its diaphanous lightness was lost on the chilly breeze of a signing-on day. But Typhoid Mary’s death tally has rather pushed the more serious aspects of my thoughts and the fugitive sparkle of the inconsequential now seems strangely out of place.

Never let it be said that the thought will be wasted, most of us live out our own versions of ‘Groundhog Day’ – even if the ‘day,’ is spread over a rather longer time span. We constantly retread thoughts, so the one that I’ve lost (or suppressed) for this piece of writing will pop up in another alluring guise some time soon, dressing itself in the vulgarity of originality.

And I will, I assure you, be taken in by the display!

Just for Old Times!

For those of you of a younger generation, the name Enoch Powell will conjure up a whole series of memories, thoughts and emotions. Forget his previous career of thoughtful politics; we just remember the notorious “rivers of blood” speech and the ‘right’ thinking (sic) reactions of those impressionable young men as they marched against the tide of immigrants, sorry ‘blacks’, as they threatened to swamp the traditions and the way of life of fascist bigots who disgraced themselves and their country by dressing up their prejudice by actually and literally using the flag!

I am in too relaxed a state to get myself agitated by reliving the furious frustration of those times, I prefer to remember a memorable episode from Private Eye which had a Steadman (of course) cartoon of Enoch as some sort of a spiv feline and under this caricature, a page full of letters purporting to come from concerned citizens all of which started with, “Dear Sir, I am no racialist but . . .” and effectively ridiculed a whole series of bigots from the genteel vicar through to the rough worker and exposed their ‘reasoning’ for what it was. The page has been reprinted in a ‘Best of Private Eye’ and is well worth looking out and reading.

I shall now take the leap of imagination from dear old dead Enoch to Easter.

If you read the whole of Enoch’s ‘Rivers of blood’ speech (as I have) then it is possible to see that old Enoch was quoted selectively and the presentation of the extracts, the sound bites, from his speech emphasised one emotive phrase, whereas the whole speech was much more reasoned.

It is, as I say, possible to read the speech and the situation in that way, but that is to ignore the fact that Enoch was a consummate politician and he knew exactly what he was doing and what would be taken from his speech: it was a nasty, mendacious, conniving and vicious piece of rabble rousing – premeditated and calculated.

So how do we get from Powell to Easter? Well, it’s through selectivity.

Easter is the paramount festival, the resurrection of Jesus proving that he was the Christ and therefore the person from whom all Christians take their name. But what do Christians chose to take as the most important aspect of this time of paramount importance in the sacred year? Easter eggs!

Easter named, of course, after a pre Christian goddess Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. A festival was held in her honour every year at the vernal equinox. The eggs are pre Christian as well and were appropriated by the ever resourceful Christians by the usual method of metaphor (egg, seed of life, resurrection, et voila! Christian already!)

So Easter is downgraded by ever reliable Capitalism from some sort of dangerous numinosity to practical, saleable and indeed edible tangibility. Select what is popular and it will take over from what is real and important.

Eggs are important. You only have to walk up and down aisle after aisle in any supermarket and see the serried rows of elegantly and seductively packaged temptations to see where the real centre of Easter lies.

And there is a sense of pain and guilt and injustice in the whole experience – all of which is provided by the manufacturer by the cunning way in which the customer is outrageously fleeced by the whole experience of the egg and its purchase.

I made the mistake of looking at the prices of these eggs. Tesco helpfully provide the cost per 100 gms so that you can make comparisons and see which is “best value.” Bearing in mind that 100 gms of chocolate in bar form varies from 27p to 55p but with the magic of a little cardboard and silver paper this is increased in one amazing case to £4-71 for 100 gms! And that wasn’t even for best quality Belgian chocolate that was for common or garden Nestle! You’ve got to admire manufacturers who actually get away with this daylight robbery!

I’m not sure about what it says about the punters who actually buy this rubbish. Celebration of the unlikely ‘resurrection’ of the founder of a major religion by paying over the odds to already bloated capitalists for a bit of gaudily wrapped chocolate.

It’s a funny old world, ain’t it?

O Brave New World!

I feel like writing to The Times.

It’s one of those occasions when a hastily penned missive to The Thunderer (in the Old Days before it was bought by the Dirty Digger) seems appropriate.

I’ve long missed the first cuckoo of spring – even if I could actually identify the bird, let alone the song; outraged howls of rage about the increase in council charges would have been lost in the chorus of aged persons demanding preferential treatment; and as a life long European (in spite of an occasion in university when I was prevailed upon by an importunate friend to help distribute anti-Europeans leaflets – on the strict understanding that I was allowed to distance myself from the information if I actually met anyone while posting the leaflets through letter boxes) I spurn to inveigh against the latest piece of Eurocratic nonsense for any one of the floating centres of disinformation in Europe.

Just as a matter of interest: did you actually manage to follow that last sentence all the way through to the end? I’ve just counted up and there are about 120 words in it. And lots of punctuation. There is a reason why we don’t have sentences like this any more; or at least we shouldn’t have sentences like this any more! I put it down to reading Vladimir Nabokov. He is one writer who really does deserve the adjective ‘lapidary’ when applied to his writing!

Anyway: writing to The Times - why? It is to mark one of those changes in the year when you can say ‘This is a significant moment.’ And like the (for me unidentifiable) sound of the first cuckoo or the shy thrusting of a crocus towards the weak smudge of misty light, it is something which indicates to we light starved northerners that hope, in the guise of greater luminescence is becoming more than a rapidly fading folk memory.

As a gadget sort of person the garden did not furnish many opportunities (in the bad old days) for wonton expenditure on conspicuous electronic excess. When I was young the most exciting thing that a garden held (in my young experience) was a bird bath. Gardens were for growing things. Things that took a long time to appear and then died. The gadgets of those days were mundane things like shovels, trowels, dibbers and lawn mowers and unspellable things like secateurs. Electronics were there none.

But the birdbath of yesteryear has been gloriously superseded by something which used to be the preserve only of the very rich. The working water feature. When I was young the only fountains that I knew of were municipal and sherbet. Private individuals who owned fountains also owned swathes of countryside and/or Mayfair. Now the garden without a working water feature is obviously trying to make a post modernist counter culture statement. Now it is almost a way of asserting a sort of inverted snobbery of ostentatious individuality. And that’s not just because I have four!

Nowadays a garden can be a seamless extension of the house with numerous pieces of furniture, cooking facilities, piped music, central heating, sporting facilities, water on tap, different ‘rooms’, aroma therapy and pretty flowers. With all these attractions the garden is sometimes preferable to the house!

But one of the first ways in which a small urban garden could partake of some of the élan of the good and the great was in terms of lighting. One reads of the parties in the past when servants would have been charged with hanging the trees with Chinese lanterns with real candles inside them, or placing torches of real fire at regular intervals, or lanterns. All labour intensive and only the prerogative of the rich and idle. But, with the advent of low cost low voltage lighting every small scrap of semi-detached verdure was suddenly transformed into a wonderland of dim light!

Obviously the practicalities of actually getting the low voltage to the lights from the high voltage mains supply of the house was a tickly problem which often results not in a gleam of light but the glow of conflagration or, alternatively, the complete darkness which comes with the lighting system of the house being shorted by the lack of professionalism of the person who had relied on a comforting memory of confident, competent, friendly Barry Bucknell! The same Barry Bucknell who in his ‘Do-It-Yourself’ series on BBC in the 50’s had talked a generation of house owners to destroy their period features in a bland landscape of hardboard.

So ‘lighting’ was the new black’ for gardening. Then, when the plucky pioneers had achieved the almost unbelievable by getting their garden lit (well, ‘gloomed’) with their low voltage mains connected lighting, suddenly a ‘Tomorrow’s World’ bombshell: solar lighting!

Lighting (of, it must be admitted even less power than the original low voltage type) was available to everyone with no need to court death by tampering with the mains.

And this is where; finally, I get back to my starting point. Almost. Throughout the year during the long dark evenings and nights there is sometimes a strange occurrence. You are sitting in your living room, the windows blank and dark, then suddenly an intermittent gleam of light as if you had a peeping tom crouching in the garden and sending you an incoherent Morse message. This is, of course, your solar light which, having had an unexpected hour or so of unseasonable light has charged enough of the battery to blink and splutter before it sinks back into its dark sleep until the climate in this god forsaken country attempts to get its act together again.

So, I officially announce that something like Convincing Spring has arrived because my solar lights have come on for three nights in succession for longer than two hours!

Can summer be far behind?

[Rhetorical.]