Evelyn Waugh founded Friends of the Neutron Bomb when he heard it wiped out people but left buildings and their contents standing. On balance, he thought that a very good thing.
He would have shared my disappointment when the Hadron Collider in the Cern experiment did not, as promised by some, send our planet scuttling down a Black Hole like some White Rabbit in our increasingly Alice in Wonderland times. It would have been ironic if Switzerland, which has assiduously kept out of European wars in order to collect money from both sides, had provided the force that ended it all.
Instead, in Stephen Hawkins’ memorable phrase, the Big Smash was like two mosquitoes colliding.
My understanding of scientific matters is, to say the least, patchy but I thought that the experiment was meant to replicate the Big Bang that created the World.
In which case, how do we know it didn’t?
How do we know that at this moment a parallel world isn’t forming and its inhabitants beginning the long and weary journey to being US?
I hope they do not send out a team of market researchers. I imagine them with Bristol boards and pencils distributed among their eight arms stopping a passer-by and asking him what he is about.
He might be going to one of the few pubs still open after the Government’s draconian smoking ban.
He will explain he is going to a pub
“???????”
“A pub. A building with a wooden divider,” the passer-by will explain. “I stand on one side and a man stands on the other side selling me drink.”
“???????”
“A drink is a liquid. I have to be careful not to drink too much of it because it will make me sick and cause me to do silly things before falling over.”
“You are being punished??????????????????????????”
“No, no. No. It’s a pleasure and it costs me a lot of money.”
“?????????????????????????????”
“Money. Every day I spend eight hours locked in a building staring at a machine and at the end of the week I am given money.”
“??????????????????????????????Which you give to a man who gives you in return a substance which makes you sick and causes you to do silly things until you fall over………………………Is there a Black Hole we can go to, do you know?”
The other day four of the newspapers I read online carried pictures of Victoria Beckham's new hair-do. The Daily Mirror devoted its entire front page - and three more inside - to the "shock pixie cut" and declared that this was "literally the biggest thing to happen to hair since the Moss Fringe of '07". A smaller story disclosed that doctors and most secondary school teachers will no longer be recruited from outside the EU. But there will be exceptions for sheep shearers from Australia and New Zealand - and ballet dancers.
Black Hole, here I come*****************************************************
******************* +++++++++++++++ ***********************
For my money there is nothing more frightening at the front door than a builder going, “FFFFFFFFFF”. I am sure you recognise the sound. It is the noise a workman makes when he comes into your house for the first time and sees any bit of work at all that has already been done by another workman. “FFFFFFFFFFFF,” they go. “Who put that in for you? Must have been drunk. That cross-piece there. See. Pulling on the contra-levels of the stays.”
“Could you take it down then?” you ask. And have you noticed how they always repeat what you say. Scornfully.
“Take it down? Take it down? No need. Come down of its own accord before the year’s out.”
I have a friend who is a master plumber. And if there was an Eisteddfod competition for the solo “FFFFFFFF” he’d walk it. Not only does he have a “FFFFFFFF” that is the envy of the Federation of Master Plumbers; he can do it backwards. Straight up. Backwards. I’ve heard him.
“FFFFFFFFFF,” I’ve heard him say, time and again. “I don’t like the look of that universal joint.”
He is a man who only has to be confronted with a universal joint to become instantly racked with doubt.
“Can it be put right?” the more foolhardy would ask.
“FFFFFFFFFF. Put right? You’re joking. You’d have to rebuild the bathroom.”
And, do you know, in forty years of admiring friendship I have never once seen his lips change their conformation.
It’s not only plumbers. Motor mechanics, joiners, plasterers and bricklayers, they all do it. “FFFFFFFFF”. I don’t know why. But “FFFFFFFFFF” they go. And a century of Trades Union solidarity bites the dust. Nothing kindred about trades today. There are those workmen who would rather pour scorn than tea.
Saturday, 20 September 2008
Saturday, 13 September 2008
A SPRING TOO FAR BEHIND?
For some time now I have been the victim of a particularly vicious TAFFIA dirty tricks campaign.
I will not go into details. I believe with Marcus Aurelius that to mourn a disaster is to repeat it. I am, however, incandescent, and very voluble, when I consider how the Welsh Establishment has treated Welsh geniuses like Ivor Novello, Howard Spring and Gwyn Thomas whilst lauding indifferent talents, it often seems, solely because their owners speak Welsh.
There was a time when the best way into Welsh broadcasting was through the back door of the Manse. The results were usually abysmal. One, producing an arts show which included interviews with myself and Gwen, the widow of the poet Vernon Watkins, insisted we had a rehearsal. Gwen pointed out we were both reasonably intelligent and well able to handle interviews off the cuff.
“Ah,” said this son of the Manse, “if the interviewers don’t know in advance what you are going to say, they have to listen to your answers.”
Until the sixties Howard Spring was Britain’s best selling author. He wrote 14 novels, three plays, three children’s books, a volume of literary criticism and three autobiographical memoirs. His novels, which were read the world over, were made into films and television series. His books were used to teach English in Japanese schools. When Churchill met Roosevelt to sign the Atlantic Charter, Spring, who was then working for the Manchester Guardian, was one of only two journalists (the other was H.V. Morton) who were chosen to accompany him on the battleship Prince of Wales.
He was admired by such diverse men as Arnold Bennett, A. E. Russell, Einstein, Kipling and Beaverbrook. Most of his novels are well written, run-of-the-mill family sagas. Two, “Shabby Tiger” and “Rachel Rosing”, were as good as any published at that time.
With “Fame is the Spur” he reached another dimension. I have read countless novels but never a better than “Fame”. In it he is Dickens without the caricatures and the dreadful heroines; Tolstoy without the interminable Masonics; Hardy without the gloom. And the only time Thackeray came near him was in “Vanity Fair”. Like Trollope, he shows the good in the worst and the flaws in the good.
He was incapable of creating a character without falling in love with it, warts and all. His gift was to engage readers with the characters he created. You feel his creations have lives before the book is opened and they go on living after it is closed.
“Fame is the Spur” is about a small boy born in the slums who rises to lead a great political party. Clearly he had Ramsay MacDonald in mind when he created his central character. It is a triumph of the writer’s art: a man capable of greatness but with terrible flaws.
It is also the story of the infant Labour party, started by working class people out of a desire to give a voice to the poor.
Some years ago I interviewed Tom Ellis, a Labour MP who defected to the Social Democrats. I asked him why. “Because Labour has met all the targets it set itself” he said.
We live in a Golden Age which was largely the creation of a Labour party of working class men and women, of which Spring wrote so perceptively.
He knew whereof he wrote.
He was born in unimaginable poverty in two rooms in a slum in Chapel Court off Cathedral Road, Cardiff. One of nine children, his father was a jobbing gardener, an irascible, taciturn man who was surrounded by mystery. He never earned more than a pound a week yet professors from the University of Wales came to the house for long conversations. He loved literature and read the classic books he bought for a few pennies by their only light, a tin lamp with no shade and a reflector of polished tin. He made his children read them aloud and punished any flaws in pronunciation.
They had no cooker. To roast a joint Mrs Spring tied it to one end of a length of string and fastened the other end to a nail hammered into a wooden mantelpiece. The children took turns to twirl the string. The family had one bed on which they all slept head to toe with legs folded.
A.L Rowse said of them: “The family had an absolute passion for knowledge.”
Spring wrote movingly of his elder brother whose thirst for knowledge was so great. “Though of wretched physical condition, he drove at learning with a sustained frenzy. I came home at night to find him asleep at a table with a pile of books and a penny bottle of ink upset at his hand. It killed him in a few years.”
Spring’s father died when he was ten and the boy earned money by chopping and selling firewood, and selling rhubarb he picked in a market garden. Every Saturday he worked as an errand boy. His wages were a dinner, a shilling and a couple of herring. He lost the job when he took time off to sit for a scholarship.
He only had one holiday. He and his elder brother decided to go to Bideford. They saved the twelve shillings and sixpence for their digs and a few shillings for expenses. Spring was working as a messenger boy on a Cardiff newspaper. They used the newspaper’s free pass for the ferry from Cardiff to Ilfracombe and set out to walk the 20 miles to Bideford carrying the heavy portmanteau of books without which they never moved. After ten miles, virtually collapsing in the summer heat, they had to use part of the few shillings they had saved for treats on train fares for the rest of the journey.
Whilst he was working as a messenger boy, Spring bombarded the Western Mail with stories and theatre reviews until they gave him a job as a reporter. From Cardiff he moved to Yorkshire, where he worked for three years on the Yorkshire Observer before joining the Manchester Guardian.
He published first a children’s book and then “Shabby Tiger”. One of the characters Rachel Rosing so fascinated him he made her the heroine of his next book. His third book “My Son, My Son” (first published as “Absalom,Absalom”) was a world-wide best seller.
The inspiration came to him on a train journey. At one station his train took on water from a giant trough. He thought: what a place for a murderer to hide in. On a slip of paper he wrote a brief synopsis in the five minutes the train was halted. That night he began writing the book. It took him fourteen months to complete
In Wales this incomparable writer is forgotten and unsung. Over the years I have tried to persuade every “major” Welsh publisher to reprint his works or commission a biography. I have failed.
I met him once. We had a mutual friend, a Guardian reporter called Edgar Ridley who introduced us in a Manchester chop house and told him I wanted to be a writer.
When I asked for his advice he said buy a notebook. When you come across a word you do not understand, find out about it and write it down. In that way, he said, you will never forget it.
First editions of Fleming, Tolkien or Rowling will cost thousands. I have just bought a first edition of “Fame is the Spur”, one of the few great novels of the twentieth century, for £2.50.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The most important thing about tradition and ceremonial is its inherent absurdity. If the Ancient Order of Druids parading in Wales round the twelve stones at the Gorsedd of Bards is absurd; if it is risible that the whole pageantry of the Eisteddfod was devised and first presented in London and that the Gorsedd stones represent the twelve tribes of Israel, then what of the Trooping of the Colour, the military form of “Come Dancing”? Or the procession of the Garter Knights at Windsor Castle? A queue of old men with tea cosies on their heads and their supporters’ club badges stitched on their dressing gown pockets. Let he who is without risibility cast the first hoarse laugh.
I’d hate visitors to Wales to go away thinking that it is a dull place, peopled by small, dark men wearing suits made from the covers of old prayer books. Far from it. Wales may be the only country in Europe not to have invented an alcoholic drink, but, as that great life enhancer Rene Cutforth observed: “The Welsh are Mediterraneans in the rain.”
The army is, of course, the guardian of tradition. I was part of a host of national servicemen called back to the colours for an ‘Extras’ fortnight’s training. Our Commanding Officer called a battalion parade to try to instil in us a sense of our regimental tradition. He told us how our fortnight would be an opportunity to meet again men we had fought with across Europe. This puzzled us because, to a man, we had been at school for most of the war. But the colonel was riding a stallion called rhetoric and nothing could check him. Marching across the square to the front rank, he paused dramatically before a minute Glaswegian cut-throat. “For instance,” he said, “I seem to recognise your face.” And the small, bitter Glaswegian looked up at him and said, “I’ve niver seen ye in ma bliddy life, Jock.”
Reading the Greek Anthology I came across this, written probably 3,000 years ago.
Epitaph for a Dog
Stranger, commemorated here
‘Tis but a dog you see.
And yet I beg you do not sneer
My master wept for me.
Wept as the dusty earth
He pressed above my lifeless head,
And wrote where now I lie at rest
The words that you have read.
From the Daily Mail
Sugar gliders - a species of possum native to New Guinea and Australia - are becoming popular as domestic pets.
"With soft brown eyes, fluffy fur and their amusing acrobatics, they are seen as ideal pets."
Perhaps. But for £150 you are lumbered with a creature that needs to be let out at night to glide around (up to 200ft), craves attention (and is prone to depression should they not receive it) and makes a noise "similar to an electric blender".
I will not go into details. I believe with Marcus Aurelius that to mourn a disaster is to repeat it. I am, however, incandescent, and very voluble, when I consider how the Welsh Establishment has treated Welsh geniuses like Ivor Novello, Howard Spring and Gwyn Thomas whilst lauding indifferent talents, it often seems, solely because their owners speak Welsh.
There was a time when the best way into Welsh broadcasting was through the back door of the Manse. The results were usually abysmal. One, producing an arts show which included interviews with myself and Gwen, the widow of the poet Vernon Watkins, insisted we had a rehearsal. Gwen pointed out we were both reasonably intelligent and well able to handle interviews off the cuff.
“Ah,” said this son of the Manse, “if the interviewers don’t know in advance what you are going to say, they have to listen to your answers.”
Until the sixties Howard Spring was Britain’s best selling author. He wrote 14 novels, three plays, three children’s books, a volume of literary criticism and three autobiographical memoirs. His novels, which were read the world over, were made into films and television series. His books were used to teach English in Japanese schools. When Churchill met Roosevelt to sign the Atlantic Charter, Spring, who was then working for the Manchester Guardian, was one of only two journalists (the other was H.V. Morton) who were chosen to accompany him on the battleship Prince of Wales.
He was admired by such diverse men as Arnold Bennett, A. E. Russell, Einstein, Kipling and Beaverbrook. Most of his novels are well written, run-of-the-mill family sagas. Two, “Shabby Tiger” and “Rachel Rosing”, were as good as any published at that time.
With “Fame is the Spur” he reached another dimension. I have read countless novels but never a better than “Fame”. In it he is Dickens without the caricatures and the dreadful heroines; Tolstoy without the interminable Masonics; Hardy without the gloom. And the only time Thackeray came near him was in “Vanity Fair”. Like Trollope, he shows the good in the worst and the flaws in the good.
He was incapable of creating a character without falling in love with it, warts and all. His gift was to engage readers with the characters he created. You feel his creations have lives before the book is opened and they go on living after it is closed.
“Fame is the Spur” is about a small boy born in the slums who rises to lead a great political party. Clearly he had Ramsay MacDonald in mind when he created his central character. It is a triumph of the writer’s art: a man capable of greatness but with terrible flaws.
It is also the story of the infant Labour party, started by working class people out of a desire to give a voice to the poor.
Some years ago I interviewed Tom Ellis, a Labour MP who defected to the Social Democrats. I asked him why. “Because Labour has met all the targets it set itself” he said.
We live in a Golden Age which was largely the creation of a Labour party of working class men and women, of which Spring wrote so perceptively.
He knew whereof he wrote.
He was born in unimaginable poverty in two rooms in a slum in Chapel Court off Cathedral Road, Cardiff. One of nine children, his father was a jobbing gardener, an irascible, taciturn man who was surrounded by mystery. He never earned more than a pound a week yet professors from the University of Wales came to the house for long conversations. He loved literature and read the classic books he bought for a few pennies by their only light, a tin lamp with no shade and a reflector of polished tin. He made his children read them aloud and punished any flaws in pronunciation.
They had no cooker. To roast a joint Mrs Spring tied it to one end of a length of string and fastened the other end to a nail hammered into a wooden mantelpiece. The children took turns to twirl the string. The family had one bed on which they all slept head to toe with legs folded.
A.L Rowse said of them: “The family had an absolute passion for knowledge.”
Spring wrote movingly of his elder brother whose thirst for knowledge was so great. “Though of wretched physical condition, he drove at learning with a sustained frenzy. I came home at night to find him asleep at a table with a pile of books and a penny bottle of ink upset at his hand. It killed him in a few years.”
Spring’s father died when he was ten and the boy earned money by chopping and selling firewood, and selling rhubarb he picked in a market garden. Every Saturday he worked as an errand boy. His wages were a dinner, a shilling and a couple of herring. He lost the job when he took time off to sit for a scholarship.
He only had one holiday. He and his elder brother decided to go to Bideford. They saved the twelve shillings and sixpence for their digs and a few shillings for expenses. Spring was working as a messenger boy on a Cardiff newspaper. They used the newspaper’s free pass for the ferry from Cardiff to Ilfracombe and set out to walk the 20 miles to Bideford carrying the heavy portmanteau of books without which they never moved. After ten miles, virtually collapsing in the summer heat, they had to use part of the few shillings they had saved for treats on train fares for the rest of the journey.
Whilst he was working as a messenger boy, Spring bombarded the Western Mail with stories and theatre reviews until they gave him a job as a reporter. From Cardiff he moved to Yorkshire, where he worked for three years on the Yorkshire Observer before joining the Manchester Guardian.
He published first a children’s book and then “Shabby Tiger”. One of the characters Rachel Rosing so fascinated him he made her the heroine of his next book. His third book “My Son, My Son” (first published as “Absalom,Absalom”) was a world-wide best seller.
The inspiration came to him on a train journey. At one station his train took on water from a giant trough. He thought: what a place for a murderer to hide in. On a slip of paper he wrote a brief synopsis in the five minutes the train was halted. That night he began writing the book. It took him fourteen months to complete
In Wales this incomparable writer is forgotten and unsung. Over the years I have tried to persuade every “major” Welsh publisher to reprint his works or commission a biography. I have failed.
I met him once. We had a mutual friend, a Guardian reporter called Edgar Ridley who introduced us in a Manchester chop house and told him I wanted to be a writer.
When I asked for his advice he said buy a notebook. When you come across a word you do not understand, find out about it and write it down. In that way, he said, you will never forget it.
First editions of Fleming, Tolkien or Rowling will cost thousands. I have just bought a first edition of “Fame is the Spur”, one of the few great novels of the twentieth century, for £2.50.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The most important thing about tradition and ceremonial is its inherent absurdity. If the Ancient Order of Druids parading in Wales round the twelve stones at the Gorsedd of Bards is absurd; if it is risible that the whole pageantry of the Eisteddfod was devised and first presented in London and that the Gorsedd stones represent the twelve tribes of Israel, then what of the Trooping of the Colour, the military form of “Come Dancing”? Or the procession of the Garter Knights at Windsor Castle? A queue of old men with tea cosies on their heads and their supporters’ club badges stitched on their dressing gown pockets. Let he who is without risibility cast the first hoarse laugh.
I’d hate visitors to Wales to go away thinking that it is a dull place, peopled by small, dark men wearing suits made from the covers of old prayer books. Far from it. Wales may be the only country in Europe not to have invented an alcoholic drink, but, as that great life enhancer Rene Cutforth observed: “The Welsh are Mediterraneans in the rain.”
The army is, of course, the guardian of tradition. I was part of a host of national servicemen called back to the colours for an ‘Extras’ fortnight’s training. Our Commanding Officer called a battalion parade to try to instil in us a sense of our regimental tradition. He told us how our fortnight would be an opportunity to meet again men we had fought with across Europe. This puzzled us because, to a man, we had been at school for most of the war. But the colonel was riding a stallion called rhetoric and nothing could check him. Marching across the square to the front rank, he paused dramatically before a minute Glaswegian cut-throat. “For instance,” he said, “I seem to recognise your face.” And the small, bitter Glaswegian looked up at him and said, “I’ve niver seen ye in ma bliddy life, Jock.”
Reading the Greek Anthology I came across this, written probably 3,000 years ago.
Epitaph for a Dog
Stranger, commemorated here
‘Tis but a dog you see.
And yet I beg you do not sneer
My master wept for me.
Wept as the dusty earth
He pressed above my lifeless head,
And wrote where now I lie at rest
The words that you have read.
From the Daily Mail
Sugar gliders - a species of possum native to New Guinea and Australia - are becoming popular as domestic pets.
"With soft brown eyes, fluffy fur and their amusing acrobatics, they are seen as ideal pets."
Perhaps. But for £150 you are lumbered with a creature that needs to be let out at night to glide around (up to 200ft), craves attention (and is prone to depression should they not receive it) and makes a noise "similar to an electric blender".
Saturday, 6 September 2008
The Sound of One Foot Tapping
Life dances to hidden music and I have only rarely caught the sound. The first time was when a very senior officer in the Courts Service explained how the Establishment had massaged the murder statistics in order to justify abandoning the death penalty.
The second time was more pleasant. My eldest daughter took me to a promenade performance of Shakespeare’s “farewell” play The Tempest in the breathtaking Memorial Park in Lancaster. Set on a hill, it is really a series of parks and each scene of the play was performed in a different area of its 50 acres.
As I watched, entranced, on a lovely summer evening, it became clear in this separation of scenes that buried in The Tempest are echoes of the Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and so many other of his masterpieces.
It became clear that Shakespeare was saying goodbye to his audience with a series of “trailers”, reminders of earlier successes. Shakespeare, the professional writer, recycling his material. If possible, it made me love him even more.
Now I hear the music again. This time it is hard and atonal. It is the sound of a society being driven into obedience.
Councils are seeking volunteers to pry on their neighbours, clerks are being given powers of arrest. It is the overture of the Stasi state in Britain.
At the Buxton Festival some years ago I interviewed one of Mrs Thatcher’s inner cabinet of advisers. Talking of “Yes Minister”, the satirical TV look at Westminster, he admitted that it came very close to the truth about the governance of Britain.
The founder of Welsh Nationalism Gwynfor Evans told me he did not care if a Plaid Cymru MP was never elected so long as he had a cadre of nationalist civil servants.
The rot began, in my view, during the war when the bureaucrats were allowed to bring in all manner of petty legislation whilst their "masters", the MPs, slept. The first post-war Labour government - the only one that thought of the electorate as human beings for whom it had a duty of care - sought control with draconian planning regulations.
Proliferation as policy is the driving force of the bureaucrat. It lives through endless cloning and it has been quick to take advantage of the laziness of our MPs who no longer scrutinise the legislation proposed by Civil Servants.
Another weapon is the manufacture of false fear. Dangerous Dogs legislation has done little or nothing to reduce attack. The Dunblane gun panic succeeded only in closing gun clubs where weapons were handled with respect. A man who altered replica guns to facilitate eight murders will do a year in prison for every life he stole. If I carry a penknife, or sgian dhub in Highland Dress, I risk imprisonment. Our young are slaughtered by the day.
The smoking regulations were supported by spurious research. The World Health Organisation tried for six years to prove there was such a thing as passive smoking but had to admit failure.
We were told there was evidence to prove that more than four units of alcohol were harmful. It later emerged the figure had been plucked from the air.
TWO centres for the European Parliament in Strasbourg and Brussels? Why?
The European parliament exists to control; and its legislation is often harmful. It decrees that each member country must produce a given rate of fuel economy. The foreign owned utilities are offered huge sums to establish wind turbines and farmers paid excessive rents to house them, although it is accepted the entire output of wind farms is less than that of one power station.
We are persuaded there is a vast terrorist army waging war against us. In fact we are suffering from understandable resentments which date from the Crusades. The terrorists are separate entities, like the Afghans who have been fighting us for centuries, the Saudis whose Wahabi beliefs are the product of the self interest of Ibn Saud. Pakistan, that nest of trouble, is an artificial construct that came into being because Ghandi, Nehru and the rest of that self serving crew got tired of fighting for control of a united India. The partition boundaries were decided by a lawyer who did not know the sub-continent and never left his bungalow.
As if being bombed is not bad enough, we are told that our profligate ways are changing the world's climate. Rubbish. Life on the planet has only been possible for 25,000 years, separated by massive natural climate change.
How far are we from emulating the law recently imposed in Japan that requires all adult citizens to have their waists measured? If they repeatedly exceed the allowable limit – 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women – they are subjected to "health re-education" and their employers become liable to financial penalties.
Obesity is still almost a crime in our society. But it is also a commercial opportunity. Oxo are large scale manufacturers of slimming aids. When I puzzlingly slimmed on radio, I discovered the firm financed magazines, slimming clubs, even appetite-diminishing toffees.
In The Independent, Dominic Lawson disclosed that an anti-obesity report from Dr Foster Research was funded by Roche, the pharmaceutical company which developed the anti-obesity drug Xenical.
A year ago, Dr Foster issued a report which complained that "around 3 per cent of Primary Care Organizations do not fund the use of drug therapy for obesity, despite the recommendations of organizations such as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence."
The most blatant twisting of the truth has been in the climate that produced the Drink and Drive legislation.
In 1985 I wrote a column warning that Orwell’s 1984 had been ominously prescient.
The Central Statistical Office’s “Social Trends Survey” disclosed that year that, despite a vast increase in breath tests from 97,000 in 1971 to 245,000 in 1983, the rate of positive tests had fallen steadily from 58 per cent twelve years earlier to33 per cent in 1983. The overall figures for death and serious injury on the roads had been dropping since 1971.
Prompted by this, I discovered that the statistics for drunken driving included all road deaths in which drink was a factor. Including those of drunken pedestrians who walked into the path of traffic and accidents in which drunken drivers were involved, though not responsible.
More and more laws until at last you have a totally obedient population and it is welcome 1984!
**********************************************
Never mind 1984. Remember 1986 when there was this passion for getting machines to talk? Cars, rubbish bins, bus stops. There were even talking sewing machines.
I believe that machines, like small boys, should be seen and not heard. Or, if heard, should provide an agreeable hum from the kitchen as a background to the rustle of the evening paper and the light, rhythmic snore of the head of the house. Carefully employed by the malevolently-minded, the foot pedal of such a machine could be brought into sharp contact with the lino and, if the timing was right, jolt the head of the house out of the deepest slumber, mewing with fright.
On some sewing machines it was even possible to so operate them that the needle in its downward progress and the rhythmic hum of the motive wheel provided a backing group to that haunting lyric which I am convinced all wives learn as little girls at their mother’s knee. You know the one. It goes something like this: “You use this house like a hotel. You only come in to change your socks.” Or “My mother said to me, I’d rather be carrying you through that front door, feet first, than see you marry that man.”
I just hope that they haven’t been teaching sewing machines to make remarks like that. It will be the end of civilised marriage as we know it.
Then there was the talking bus stop. Funny to think that it’s not all that long ago when a person found listening to a bus stop ran a very real risk of being arrested as drunk and disorderly and being returned home some time later and several shillings the lighter.
But we lived in an age of technical miracles. When you could go to ten phone boxes on the trot and couldn’t get a peep out of any of them. But the bus stops talked your head off.
Have you ever wondered why there are so few odes to objects? It is common enough to laud abstract ideas but objects get pretty short shrift. Keats penned a stave or two to his Greek vase and Rupert Brooke did rather go on about cups and saucers, wet roofs and bread crusts.
The reason more people don’t, in my view, is that at this very moment the damned things are probably writing them themselves. The sewing machine in question, by the way, was Japanese and was called “Brother”, an Orwellian coincidence that has not gone unnoticed in this house.
The second time was more pleasant. My eldest daughter took me to a promenade performance of Shakespeare’s “farewell” play The Tempest in the breathtaking Memorial Park in Lancaster. Set on a hill, it is really a series of parks and each scene of the play was performed in a different area of its 50 acres.
As I watched, entranced, on a lovely summer evening, it became clear in this separation of scenes that buried in The Tempest are echoes of the Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and so many other of his masterpieces.
It became clear that Shakespeare was saying goodbye to his audience with a series of “trailers”, reminders of earlier successes. Shakespeare, the professional writer, recycling his material. If possible, it made me love him even more.
Now I hear the music again. This time it is hard and atonal. It is the sound of a society being driven into obedience.
Councils are seeking volunteers to pry on their neighbours, clerks are being given powers of arrest. It is the overture of the Stasi state in Britain.
At the Buxton Festival some years ago I interviewed one of Mrs Thatcher’s inner cabinet of advisers. Talking of “Yes Minister”, the satirical TV look at Westminster, he admitted that it came very close to the truth about the governance of Britain.
The founder of Welsh Nationalism Gwynfor Evans told me he did not care if a Plaid Cymru MP was never elected so long as he had a cadre of nationalist civil servants.
The rot began, in my view, during the war when the bureaucrats were allowed to bring in all manner of petty legislation whilst their "masters", the MPs, slept. The first post-war Labour government - the only one that thought of the electorate as human beings for whom it had a duty of care - sought control with draconian planning regulations.
Proliferation as policy is the driving force of the bureaucrat. It lives through endless cloning and it has been quick to take advantage of the laziness of our MPs who no longer scrutinise the legislation proposed by Civil Servants.
Another weapon is the manufacture of false fear. Dangerous Dogs legislation has done little or nothing to reduce attack. The Dunblane gun panic succeeded only in closing gun clubs where weapons were handled with respect. A man who altered replica guns to facilitate eight murders will do a year in prison for every life he stole. If I carry a penknife, or sgian dhub in Highland Dress, I risk imprisonment. Our young are slaughtered by the day.
The smoking regulations were supported by spurious research. The World Health Organisation tried for six years to prove there was such a thing as passive smoking but had to admit failure.
We were told there was evidence to prove that more than four units of alcohol were harmful. It later emerged the figure had been plucked from the air.
TWO centres for the European Parliament in Strasbourg and Brussels? Why?
The European parliament exists to control; and its legislation is often harmful. It decrees that each member country must produce a given rate of fuel economy. The foreign owned utilities are offered huge sums to establish wind turbines and farmers paid excessive rents to house them, although it is accepted the entire output of wind farms is less than that of one power station.
We are persuaded there is a vast terrorist army waging war against us. In fact we are suffering from understandable resentments which date from the Crusades. The terrorists are separate entities, like the Afghans who have been fighting us for centuries, the Saudis whose Wahabi beliefs are the product of the self interest of Ibn Saud. Pakistan, that nest of trouble, is an artificial construct that came into being because Ghandi, Nehru and the rest of that self serving crew got tired of fighting for control of a united India. The partition boundaries were decided by a lawyer who did not know the sub-continent and never left his bungalow.
As if being bombed is not bad enough, we are told that our profligate ways are changing the world's climate. Rubbish. Life on the planet has only been possible for 25,000 years, separated by massive natural climate change.
How far are we from emulating the law recently imposed in Japan that requires all adult citizens to have their waists measured? If they repeatedly exceed the allowable limit – 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women – they are subjected to "health re-education" and their employers become liable to financial penalties.
Obesity is still almost a crime in our society. But it is also a commercial opportunity. Oxo are large scale manufacturers of slimming aids. When I puzzlingly slimmed on radio, I discovered the firm financed magazines, slimming clubs, even appetite-diminishing toffees.
In The Independent, Dominic Lawson disclosed that an anti-obesity report from Dr Foster Research was funded by Roche, the pharmaceutical company which developed the anti-obesity drug Xenical.
A year ago, Dr Foster issued a report which complained that "around 3 per cent of Primary Care Organizations do not fund the use of drug therapy for obesity, despite the recommendations of organizations such as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence."
The most blatant twisting of the truth has been in the climate that produced the Drink and Drive legislation.
In 1985 I wrote a column warning that Orwell’s 1984 had been ominously prescient.
The Central Statistical Office’s “Social Trends Survey” disclosed that year that, despite a vast increase in breath tests from 97,000 in 1971 to 245,000 in 1983, the rate of positive tests had fallen steadily from 58 per cent twelve years earlier to33 per cent in 1983. The overall figures for death and serious injury on the roads had been dropping since 1971.
Prompted by this, I discovered that the statistics for drunken driving included all road deaths in which drink was a factor. Including those of drunken pedestrians who walked into the path of traffic and accidents in which drunken drivers were involved, though not responsible.
More and more laws until at last you have a totally obedient population and it is welcome 1984!
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Never mind 1984. Remember 1986 when there was this passion for getting machines to talk? Cars, rubbish bins, bus stops. There were even talking sewing machines.
I believe that machines, like small boys, should be seen and not heard. Or, if heard, should provide an agreeable hum from the kitchen as a background to the rustle of the evening paper and the light, rhythmic snore of the head of the house. Carefully employed by the malevolently-minded, the foot pedal of such a machine could be brought into sharp contact with the lino and, if the timing was right, jolt the head of the house out of the deepest slumber, mewing with fright.
On some sewing machines it was even possible to so operate them that the needle in its downward progress and the rhythmic hum of the motive wheel provided a backing group to that haunting lyric which I am convinced all wives learn as little girls at their mother’s knee. You know the one. It goes something like this: “You use this house like a hotel. You only come in to change your socks.” Or “My mother said to me, I’d rather be carrying you through that front door, feet first, than see you marry that man.”
I just hope that they haven’t been teaching sewing machines to make remarks like that. It will be the end of civilised marriage as we know it.
Then there was the talking bus stop. Funny to think that it’s not all that long ago when a person found listening to a bus stop ran a very real risk of being arrested as drunk and disorderly and being returned home some time later and several shillings the lighter.
But we lived in an age of technical miracles. When you could go to ten phone boxes on the trot and couldn’t get a peep out of any of them. But the bus stops talked your head off.
Have you ever wondered why there are so few odes to objects? It is common enough to laud abstract ideas but objects get pretty short shrift. Keats penned a stave or two to his Greek vase and Rupert Brooke did rather go on about cups and saucers, wet roofs and bread crusts.
The reason more people don’t, in my view, is that at this very moment the damned things are probably writing them themselves. The sewing machine in question, by the way, was Japanese and was called “Brother”, an Orwellian coincidence that has not gone unnoticed in this house.
Saturday, 30 August 2008
Beware of Greeks Bearing Medals
I blame the Ancient Greeks who invented competition. If only they had thought of something useful like television the world would not be in the mess it is in now and we would be able to afford drugs that prolong life rather than waste money demonstrating that one man can windsurf longer than the next. Heracles invented the Olympic Games to celebrate having mucked out a stable. When I mucked out my good horse Skipper Jack I used to go for a pint. I wish Heracles had.
Rather in the way that most sports are played in shorts and the ultimate accolade is a school cap, there is a sense of repressed childhood in the excessive use of fireworks in Olympic opening ceremonies; and the prominence given to playing with fire and lighting a bonfire has small boy connotations. Indeed the whole occasion seems to be modelled on a school sports day in a recently co-educational establishment.
I do see the Greeks had time on their hands and wanted to avoid the Agora, in the way the fastidious amongst us avoid Hyde Park Corner. No peace there with that infernal nuisance Socrates and his team of market researchers forever asking perfect strangers questions about the nature of love and other private matters. There was also their unfortunate sexual orientation that urged them to ogle naked men. The sin that in our day, whatever Wilde said, dares to shout its name.
But surely there must have been some Athenian equivalent to that dreadful Trinnie and Susanna who are currently persuading light-headed ladies to expose their anuses on TV?
Parenthetically, I am tired of watching TV adverts for constipated, incontinent ladies who have uncomfortable motions; and I don’t see why a naked backside should be used to advertise tooth paste. I preferred it when women were a mystery. I think they do themselves a grave disservice by admitting they are all bowel bound Dorian Grays until they put on anti-wrinkle paste.
I might add that there is something flaky about a government that tells us competition on the sports field is bad for children and then lavishes largesse on some luckless soul so that they can learn to jump further than anyone else. And does the gold Olympic medal remind anyone else of those tacky medallions which proved that Jim could fix it?
My ancestors were knighted for fighting. Difficult to imagine Sir Elton John or Gielgud fulfilling that criterion.
In my youth the champion cyclist was a very charismatic young man, Reg Harris. He was an amateur who used to train on a cinder track at Fallowfield, a suburb of Manchester, and finance himself with a cycle shop and by endorsing cycles.
There were amateurs like Sydney Wooderson, the four minute miler and the greatest athlete of the day who missed the 1938 Empire Games in Sydney because he was taking his solicitor's exams and could not afford time for two long boat journeys. There was no question which occasion was the most important and, indeed, the most useful to society. Men like that could live fulfilled lives and push the boundaries of sport. Why should billions be spent on the dubious pleasure of pedaling faster, windsurfing, horse riding and spear throwing, proficiency at which latter art has limited potential in an age of guided missiles?
Odd too, is it not, that we limit the number of activities in which it is respectable to excel? We laugh at the idea that in the Twenties we competed in endurance ballroom dancing, pie eating and spotting Lobby Ludd on Blackpool Pier. Are they inherently any sillier than pole vaulting?
We can compete in shooting contests but we must train for the event abroad because shooting is illegal in this country. Can we look forward to dog fighting, bear baiting and cock mains in the enlightened future? Are these activities more cruel than coarse fishing, in which the fish is caught by sticking a hook in its mouth, imprisoned in a state of terror in a keepnet and then released traumatized with a ripped jaw.
Before anyone tells me that these are more humane times, I must point out that banning those cruel sports had nothing to do with humanitarian impulses. The legislation was brought in to prevent the gathering of crowds at a time of great civic unrest.
With a bit of luck I will be dead b y the time of the next Olympics so I won’t have to squirm with embarrassment at the Opening Ceremony when Britain, the country of Kathleen Jenkins, Bryn Terfel, Aled Jones, Sarah Brightman, Lesley Garret, a clutch of world renowned actors, even the bath-chair Beatles; some of the finest orchestras, choirs and military bands and the greatest composers, is represented by a rock singer, a failed England soccer captain and a geriatric guitarist.
Why not a pipe band, a Welsh choir, a Lancashire brass band; a last night at the Proms? Pity about the fox hunting laws. Nothing finer or more English than a parade of foxhounds, bloodhounds and beagles. Though a Concourse d’elegance of British vintage cars and horse drawn carriages, with sporting heroes riding shotgun, would be worth watching.
Or a representation of the Thames with Royal Barges, Handel’s Fireworks Music and appropriate bangers and sparklers? After all, the Mayor of London does descend from George 11, which is all I have against him, apart from his ghastly father.
My own favourite would be the public immolation of Paxman and Wark, with fried.Fry as a extra.
************************************************************
There are raincoats and there is the Burberry, a particular make of raincoat which kept the name of its first maker because Edward VII never asked a servant to bring a raincoat; he always specified his “Burberry”. Perhaps when the dreadful dawn of denim is past and students once again wear clothes, a thesis might be written answering the puzzling question why so many of our clothes – Wellingtons, Raglans and Cardigans – are named after generals. But that is another matter. For the moment I should like to sing the praise of the Burberry, which costs the equivalent of a small mortgage but drapes the wearer in the mantle of romance.
The only time I regretted giving up smoking was when I turned up the collar of my Burberry and, in an instant, became Humphrey Bogart, or better yet Anton Walbrook. Who? Anton Walbrook. And kindly tell me who let those young people in on my blog? I believe it is impossible to have reached maturity and not know that film star who only ever played one role. Whatever the storyline, Walbrook ignored it. He only ever played his improbably accented, deeply romantic self and he was always clad in a spiritual Burberry with the collar turned up and, drifting from the corner of his mouth, a trickle of cigarette smoke which you knew without being told came from a Balkan Sobranie, and almost certainly a BLACK Balkan Sobranie at that.
It is impossible to conjure up Walbrook on the wide screen of memory without him appearing in a Burberry. Unless it be a silk dressing gown. Walbrook only ever took off his Burberry to replace it with a silk dressing gown, which he wore for putting a record of “Dangerous Moonlight” on the gramophone. Dangerous what? Would those young people kindly leave the blog. I cannot talk sensibly to anyone who has never heard of that peerless melody. In my day it had an effect on the Long Haired Bandits surpassed only by a small gin slipped surreptitiously into a glass of cider.
I digress. Even Small Stout Persons of Advancing Years feel dashing, romantic - even, regrettably, foreign – in a Burberry with the collar turned up. Especially when worn with a brown trilby over a navy pinstriped suit. And a silver-grey tie. In such an outfit it is difficult not to sound your ‘w’ s as ‘v’ s and behave in every way like an Austrian aristocrat of reduced means.
As a sartorial corrective, I recommend replacing the Burberry with the plus two or knickerbocker. Nothing can be more British. They are as comforting as Bread and Butter Pudding.
Rather in the way that most sports are played in shorts and the ultimate accolade is a school cap, there is a sense of repressed childhood in the excessive use of fireworks in Olympic opening ceremonies; and the prominence given to playing with fire and lighting a bonfire has small boy connotations. Indeed the whole occasion seems to be modelled on a school sports day in a recently co-educational establishment.
I do see the Greeks had time on their hands and wanted to avoid the Agora, in the way the fastidious amongst us avoid Hyde Park Corner. No peace there with that infernal nuisance Socrates and his team of market researchers forever asking perfect strangers questions about the nature of love and other private matters. There was also their unfortunate sexual orientation that urged them to ogle naked men. The sin that in our day, whatever Wilde said, dares to shout its name.
But surely there must have been some Athenian equivalent to that dreadful Trinnie and Susanna who are currently persuading light-headed ladies to expose their anuses on TV?
Parenthetically, I am tired of watching TV adverts for constipated, incontinent ladies who have uncomfortable motions; and I don’t see why a naked backside should be used to advertise tooth paste. I preferred it when women were a mystery. I think they do themselves a grave disservice by admitting they are all bowel bound Dorian Grays until they put on anti-wrinkle paste.
I might add that there is something flaky about a government that tells us competition on the sports field is bad for children and then lavishes largesse on some luckless soul so that they can learn to jump further than anyone else. And does the gold Olympic medal remind anyone else of those tacky medallions which proved that Jim could fix it?
My ancestors were knighted for fighting. Difficult to imagine Sir Elton John or Gielgud fulfilling that criterion.
In my youth the champion cyclist was a very charismatic young man, Reg Harris. He was an amateur who used to train on a cinder track at Fallowfield, a suburb of Manchester, and finance himself with a cycle shop and by endorsing cycles.
There were amateurs like Sydney Wooderson, the four minute miler and the greatest athlete of the day who missed the 1938 Empire Games in Sydney because he was taking his solicitor's exams and could not afford time for two long boat journeys. There was no question which occasion was the most important and, indeed, the most useful to society. Men like that could live fulfilled lives and push the boundaries of sport. Why should billions be spent on the dubious pleasure of pedaling faster, windsurfing, horse riding and spear throwing, proficiency at which latter art has limited potential in an age of guided missiles?
Odd too, is it not, that we limit the number of activities in which it is respectable to excel? We laugh at the idea that in the Twenties we competed in endurance ballroom dancing, pie eating and spotting Lobby Ludd on Blackpool Pier. Are they inherently any sillier than pole vaulting?
We can compete in shooting contests but we must train for the event abroad because shooting is illegal in this country. Can we look forward to dog fighting, bear baiting and cock mains in the enlightened future? Are these activities more cruel than coarse fishing, in which the fish is caught by sticking a hook in its mouth, imprisoned in a state of terror in a keepnet and then released traumatized with a ripped jaw.
Before anyone tells me that these are more humane times, I must point out that banning those cruel sports had nothing to do with humanitarian impulses. The legislation was brought in to prevent the gathering of crowds at a time of great civic unrest.
With a bit of luck I will be dead b y the time of the next Olympics so I won’t have to squirm with embarrassment at the Opening Ceremony when Britain, the country of Kathleen Jenkins, Bryn Terfel, Aled Jones, Sarah Brightman, Lesley Garret, a clutch of world renowned actors, even the bath-chair Beatles; some of the finest orchestras, choirs and military bands and the greatest composers, is represented by a rock singer, a failed England soccer captain and a geriatric guitarist.
Why not a pipe band, a Welsh choir, a Lancashire brass band; a last night at the Proms? Pity about the fox hunting laws. Nothing finer or more English than a parade of foxhounds, bloodhounds and beagles. Though a Concourse d’elegance of British vintage cars and horse drawn carriages, with sporting heroes riding shotgun, would be worth watching.
Or a representation of the Thames with Royal Barges, Handel’s Fireworks Music and appropriate bangers and sparklers? After all, the Mayor of London does descend from George 11, which is all I have against him, apart from his ghastly father.
My own favourite would be the public immolation of Paxman and Wark, with fried.Fry as a extra.
************************************************************
There are raincoats and there is the Burberry, a particular make of raincoat which kept the name of its first maker because Edward VII never asked a servant to bring a raincoat; he always specified his “Burberry”. Perhaps when the dreadful dawn of denim is past and students once again wear clothes, a thesis might be written answering the puzzling question why so many of our clothes – Wellingtons, Raglans and Cardigans – are named after generals. But that is another matter. For the moment I should like to sing the praise of the Burberry, which costs the equivalent of a small mortgage but drapes the wearer in the mantle of romance.
The only time I regretted giving up smoking was when I turned up the collar of my Burberry and, in an instant, became Humphrey Bogart, or better yet Anton Walbrook. Who? Anton Walbrook. And kindly tell me who let those young people in on my blog? I believe it is impossible to have reached maturity and not know that film star who only ever played one role. Whatever the storyline, Walbrook ignored it. He only ever played his improbably accented, deeply romantic self and he was always clad in a spiritual Burberry with the collar turned up and, drifting from the corner of his mouth, a trickle of cigarette smoke which you knew without being told came from a Balkan Sobranie, and almost certainly a BLACK Balkan Sobranie at that.
It is impossible to conjure up Walbrook on the wide screen of memory without him appearing in a Burberry. Unless it be a silk dressing gown. Walbrook only ever took off his Burberry to replace it with a silk dressing gown, which he wore for putting a record of “Dangerous Moonlight” on the gramophone. Dangerous what? Would those young people kindly leave the blog. I cannot talk sensibly to anyone who has never heard of that peerless melody. In my day it had an effect on the Long Haired Bandits surpassed only by a small gin slipped surreptitiously into a glass of cider.
I digress. Even Small Stout Persons of Advancing Years feel dashing, romantic - even, regrettably, foreign – in a Burberry with the collar turned up. Especially when worn with a brown trilby over a navy pinstriped suit. And a silver-grey tie. In such an outfit it is difficult not to sound your ‘w’ s as ‘v’ s and behave in every way like an Austrian aristocrat of reduced means.
As a sartorial corrective, I recommend replacing the Burberry with the plus two or knickerbocker. Nothing can be more British. They are as comforting as Bread and Butter Pudding.
Sunday, 24 August 2008
SLIP ME A DISC
Making lists is one of the joys of being ancient.
Since I have largely retired from the outside world and the boundaries of my planet are my study and library, I probably don’t qualify; but I have always been a little hurt not to be invited on Desert Island Discs. I spent years making my selection.
In truth I would be happy taking only English composers. My favourites, Delius, Elgar, Butterworth, Vaughan Williams, Purcell, Tallis would remind me of When It Was England. Conductors like Beecham, and Barbirolli. Kathleen Ferrier at the head of the singers, of course.
Since that would not be allowed - though Moura Lympany once sent me a cassette of her Desert Island programme in which every one of the eight were recordings of her - here are my Desert Island Discs:
1. Renata Tebaldi and Carlo Bergonzi in La Boheme. My guru in musical matters, David Mellor, surprised me by saying Act 3 was his favourite in all opera. I suppose Act 1, which is the most played, was always mine. But listening to it carefully, I see his point. Listening to Mellor is my last luxury. Because the moment the programme is over I buy most of the CDs he has recommended with the money I have saved from not drinking, A few weeks ago I bought both “Butterfly” and “ La Boheme” sung by Tebaldi and I have just bought that archive recording of Rostropovich playing the Dvorak Cello Concerto on that memorable night at the Proms when Russia invaded Czechoslovakia. And a hostile audience was converted by his emotional playing, the most beautiful I have ever heard, during which the tears streamed down his face.
2. Madama Butterfly. The problem I always have with this opera is that swine Pinkerton. Absolute sewer. If ever I met him I would dash him to the ground. Come to think of it, Rodolfo’s treatment of Mimi in Boheme leaves a great deal to be desired. And as for that Georgio Germont,.the way he treats poor Violetta is the reason I would have to leave Traviata. on the mainland A favourite opera, but his interference is not to be borne. And his son isn’t much better. There is bad blood in that family, mark my words, and I hope his sister never got married.
3. Du Pre, Elgar, Cello Concerto. The music which started a long love affair with the composer and led to Vaughan Williams and Butterworth and after a long pause Delius. When one thinks of them and Gilbert and Sullivan foreign music pales.
4. Nigel Kennedy, Elgar, Violin Concerto. I have the recording of his debut performance but I would want to take my video of his recent Prom. The playing was masterly but the rapt expression on his face as he played brought tears to the eye.
5. Then I run into trouble. I put down My Old Dutch, September Song and Bring on the Clowns – then I remember the other Sondheims, Merry Widow. Carmina Burana, Fledermaus and Bryn Terfel’s Marriage of Figaro. Or the puppet version of “Magic Flute” I saw in Vienna. Vienna reminds me of Mahler, particularly his fourth symphony.
I am afraid in a review in his early career I called Terfel Pinocchio.so wooden was his acting but I happily ate my words when I saw Figaro. I would also like to sneak in the Enigma Variations, the music to which I intend to be cremated. But in the end it has to be Mahler, which always seems to be heard for the first time.
6. The Black Bear. That is the march the Pipe Band always played when we were within a mile of the barracks after a route march. I know of no other piece of music which so stiffens the sinews.
7. Walton’s Henry V. All history is here, distilled in fine music.
8. Nutcracker Suite. I have a small collection of Nutcracker DVDs, including Nureyev, and most of them are variations on the original Pepita choreography. My favourite is Peter Wright’s magnificent re-telling.
BOOK (Shakespeare is fine but anything but the Bible. I don’t do fairy stories) This is a problem. I would like to take the Harleian Manuscripts, a collection of documents about Welsh history from ancient times. It includes a Welsh genealogy which traces my ancestry back to a sister of the Virgin Mary, via St David. As ancient Welsh history is, to put it mildly, imaginary, it would provide endless fun.
The essay is my favourite reading. It as near as prose gets to music, the highest art. So an Omnibus of English Essayists - Sterne, Addison, Johnson, Lynd and Lamb - is an alternative if the National Library will not release the Harleian Collection.
I would try to sneak in my favourite novel by my all time favourite writer. the sadly neglected Howard Spring, whose “Fame Is the Spur” is a towering achievement and quite the equal OF ANY OF THE “GREAT” NOVELS.
Mind you, if I were technically literate I would ditch the whole lot, music as well, and take my laptop. Download the books on Gutenberg and the music on any one of many generous donors.
LUXURY My Bedroom, with wardrobe, bathroom and study adjoining.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Fortunately there a few bonny fighters left. My cousin Mary Gregory sent me this gem:
This is a genuine complaint to Devon & Cornwall Police Force from an angry member of the public. ..... Dear Sir/madam/automated telephone answering service,
Having spent the past twenty minutes waiting for someone at Bodmin police station to pick up a telephone, I have decided to abandon the idea and try e-mailing you instead. Perhaps you would be so kind as to pass this message on to your colleagues in Bodmin, by means of smoke signal, carrier pigeon or Ouija board. As I'm writing this e-mail there are eleven failed medical experiments (I think you call them youths) in St Marys Crescent, which is just off St Marys Road in Bodmin. Six of them seem happy enough to play a game which involves kicking a football against an iron gate with the force of a meteorite. This causes an earth shattering CLANG! which rings throughout the entire building. This game is now in its third week and as I am unsure how the scoring system works, I have no idea if it will end any time soon. The remaining five walking abortions are happily rummaging through several bags of rubbish and items of furniture that someone has so thoughtfully dumped beside the wheelie bins. One of them has found a saw and is setting about a discarded chair like a beaver on speed. I fear that it's only a matter of time before they turn their limited attention to the bottle of calor gas that is lying on its side between the two bins. If they could be relied on to only blow their own arms and legs off then I would happily leave them to it. I would even go so far as to lend them the matches. Unfortunately they are far more likely to blow up half the street with them and I've just finished decorating the kitchen. What I suggest is this - after replying to this e-mail with worthless assurances that the matter is being looked into and will be dealt with, why not leave it until the one night of the year (probably bath night) when there are no mutants around then drive up the street in a panda car before doing a three point turn and disappearing again. This will of course serve no other purpose than to remind us what policemen actually look like. I trust that when I take a claw hammer to the skull of one of these throwbacks you'll do me the same courtesy of giving me a four month head start before coming to arrest me. I remain sir, your obedient servant ... --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Mr ??????, I have read your e-mail and understand your frustration at the problems caused by youth playing in the area and the problems you have encountered in trying to contact the police. As the Community Beat Officer for your street I would like to extend an offer of discussing the matter fully with you. Should you wish to discuss the matter, please provide contact details (address / telephone number) and when may be suitable. Regards PC ? Community Beat Officer
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear PC ? First of all I would like to thank you for the speedy response to my original e-mail. 16 hours and 38 minutes must be a personal record for Bodmin Police station, and rest assured that I will forward these details to Norris McWhirter for inclusion in his next book. Secondly I was delighted to hear that our street has its own community beat officer. May I be the first to congratulate you on your covert skills? In the five or so years I have lived in St Marys Crescent I have never seen you. Do you hide up a tree or have you gone deep undercover and infiltrated the gang itself? Are you the one with the acne and the moustache on his forehead or the one with a chin like a wash hand basin? It's surely only a matter of time before you are headhunted by MI5. Whilst I realise that there may be far more serious crimes taking place in Bodmin, such as smoking in a public place or being Muslim without due care and attention, is it too much to ask for a policeman to explain (using words of no more than two syllables at a time) to these twats that they might want to play their strange football game elsewhere. The pitch on Fairpark Road , or the one at Priory Park are both within spitting distance as is the bottom of the Par Dock. Should you wish to discuss these matters further you should feel free to contact me on xxxxx. If after 25 minutes I have still failed to answer, I'll buy you a large one in the Cat and Fiddle Pub. Regards P.S If you think that this is sarcasm, think yourself lucky that you don't work for the cleansing department, with whom I am also in contact!! > >> > >> > >> > >> > > > >
ENDS
Since I have largely retired from the outside world and the boundaries of my planet are my study and library, I probably don’t qualify; but I have always been a little hurt not to be invited on Desert Island Discs. I spent years making my selection.
In truth I would be happy taking only English composers. My favourites, Delius, Elgar, Butterworth, Vaughan Williams, Purcell, Tallis would remind me of When It Was England. Conductors like Beecham, and Barbirolli. Kathleen Ferrier at the head of the singers, of course.
Since that would not be allowed - though Moura Lympany once sent me a cassette of her Desert Island programme in which every one of the eight were recordings of her - here are my Desert Island Discs:
1. Renata Tebaldi and Carlo Bergonzi in La Boheme. My guru in musical matters, David Mellor, surprised me by saying Act 3 was his favourite in all opera. I suppose Act 1, which is the most played, was always mine. But listening to it carefully, I see his point. Listening to Mellor is my last luxury. Because the moment the programme is over I buy most of the CDs he has recommended with the money I have saved from not drinking, A few weeks ago I bought both “Butterfly” and “ La Boheme” sung by Tebaldi and I have just bought that archive recording of Rostropovich playing the Dvorak Cello Concerto on that memorable night at the Proms when Russia invaded Czechoslovakia. And a hostile audience was converted by his emotional playing, the most beautiful I have ever heard, during which the tears streamed down his face.
2. Madama Butterfly. The problem I always have with this opera is that swine Pinkerton. Absolute sewer. If ever I met him I would dash him to the ground. Come to think of it, Rodolfo’s treatment of Mimi in Boheme leaves a great deal to be desired. And as for that Georgio Germont,.the way he treats poor Violetta is the reason I would have to leave Traviata. on the mainland A favourite opera, but his interference is not to be borne. And his son isn’t much better. There is bad blood in that family, mark my words, and I hope his sister never got married.
3. Du Pre, Elgar, Cello Concerto. The music which started a long love affair with the composer and led to Vaughan Williams and Butterworth and after a long pause Delius. When one thinks of them and Gilbert and Sullivan foreign music pales.
4. Nigel Kennedy, Elgar, Violin Concerto. I have the recording of his debut performance but I would want to take my video of his recent Prom. The playing was masterly but the rapt expression on his face as he played brought tears to the eye.
5. Then I run into trouble. I put down My Old Dutch, September Song and Bring on the Clowns – then I remember the other Sondheims, Merry Widow. Carmina Burana, Fledermaus and Bryn Terfel’s Marriage of Figaro. Or the puppet version of “Magic Flute” I saw in Vienna. Vienna reminds me of Mahler, particularly his fourth symphony.
I am afraid in a review in his early career I called Terfel Pinocchio.so wooden was his acting but I happily ate my words when I saw Figaro. I would also like to sneak in the Enigma Variations, the music to which I intend to be cremated. But in the end it has to be Mahler, which always seems to be heard for the first time.
6. The Black Bear. That is the march the Pipe Band always played when we were within a mile of the barracks after a route march. I know of no other piece of music which so stiffens the sinews.
7. Walton’s Henry V. All history is here, distilled in fine music.
8. Nutcracker Suite. I have a small collection of Nutcracker DVDs, including Nureyev, and most of them are variations on the original Pepita choreography. My favourite is Peter Wright’s magnificent re-telling.
BOOK (Shakespeare is fine but anything but the Bible. I don’t do fairy stories) This is a problem. I would like to take the Harleian Manuscripts, a collection of documents about Welsh history from ancient times. It includes a Welsh genealogy which traces my ancestry back to a sister of the Virgin Mary, via St David. As ancient Welsh history is, to put it mildly, imaginary, it would provide endless fun.
The essay is my favourite reading. It as near as prose gets to music, the highest art. So an Omnibus of English Essayists - Sterne, Addison, Johnson, Lynd and Lamb - is an alternative if the National Library will not release the Harleian Collection.
I would try to sneak in my favourite novel by my all time favourite writer. the sadly neglected Howard Spring, whose “Fame Is the Spur” is a towering achievement and quite the equal OF ANY OF THE “GREAT” NOVELS.
Mind you, if I were technically literate I would ditch the whole lot, music as well, and take my laptop. Download the books on Gutenberg and the music on any one of many generous donors.
LUXURY My Bedroom, with wardrobe, bathroom and study adjoining.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Fortunately there a few bonny fighters left. My cousin Mary Gregory sent me this gem:
This is a genuine complaint to Devon & Cornwall Police Force from an angry member of the public. ..... Dear Sir/madam/automated telephone answering service,
Having spent the past twenty minutes waiting for someone at Bodmin police station to pick up a telephone, I have decided to abandon the idea and try e-mailing you instead. Perhaps you would be so kind as to pass this message on to your colleagues in Bodmin, by means of smoke signal, carrier pigeon or Ouija board. As I'm writing this e-mail there are eleven failed medical experiments (I think you call them youths) in St Marys Crescent, which is just off St Marys Road in Bodmin. Six of them seem happy enough to play a game which involves kicking a football against an iron gate with the force of a meteorite. This causes an earth shattering CLANG! which rings throughout the entire building. This game is now in its third week and as I am unsure how the scoring system works, I have no idea if it will end any time soon. The remaining five walking abortions are happily rummaging through several bags of rubbish and items of furniture that someone has so thoughtfully dumped beside the wheelie bins. One of them has found a saw and is setting about a discarded chair like a beaver on speed. I fear that it's only a matter of time before they turn their limited attention to the bottle of calor gas that is lying on its side between the two bins. If they could be relied on to only blow their own arms and legs off then I would happily leave them to it. I would even go so far as to lend them the matches. Unfortunately they are far more likely to blow up half the street with them and I've just finished decorating the kitchen. What I suggest is this - after replying to this e-mail with worthless assurances that the matter is being looked into and will be dealt with, why not leave it until the one night of the year (probably bath night) when there are no mutants around then drive up the street in a panda car before doing a three point turn and disappearing again. This will of course serve no other purpose than to remind us what policemen actually look like. I trust that when I take a claw hammer to the skull of one of these throwbacks you'll do me the same courtesy of giving me a four month head start before coming to arrest me. I remain sir, your obedient servant ... --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Mr ??????, I have read your e-mail and understand your frustration at the problems caused by youth playing in the area and the problems you have encountered in trying to contact the police. As the Community Beat Officer for your street I would like to extend an offer of discussing the matter fully with you. Should you wish to discuss the matter, please provide contact details (address / telephone number) and when may be suitable. Regards PC ? Community Beat Officer
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear PC ? First of all I would like to thank you for the speedy response to my original e-mail. 16 hours and 38 minutes must be a personal record for Bodmin Police station, and rest assured that I will forward these details to Norris McWhirter for inclusion in his next book. Secondly I was delighted to hear that our street has its own community beat officer. May I be the first to congratulate you on your covert skills? In the five or so years I have lived in St Marys Crescent I have never seen you. Do you hide up a tree or have you gone deep undercover and infiltrated the gang itself? Are you the one with the acne and the moustache on his forehead or the one with a chin like a wash hand basin? It's surely only a matter of time before you are headhunted by MI5. Whilst I realise that there may be far more serious crimes taking place in Bodmin, such as smoking in a public place or being Muslim without due care and attention, is it too much to ask for a policeman to explain (using words of no more than two syllables at a time) to these twats that they might want to play their strange football game elsewhere. The pitch on Fairpark Road , or the one at Priory Park are both within spitting distance as is the bottom of the Par Dock. Should you wish to discuss these matters further you should feel free to contact me on xxxxx. If after 25 minutes I have still failed to answer, I'll buy you a large one in the Cat and Fiddle Pub. Regards P.S If you think that this is sarcasm, think yourself lucky that you don't work for the cleansing department, with whom I am also in contact!! > >> > >> > >> > >> > > > >
ENDS
Sunday, 17 August 2008
WIND AND PITH
I am not a fan of the Fenland countryside so it came as a surprise to discover that it can be ruined. The instruments of destruction of our long green silence of countryside are, of course, Wind Turbines, the Triffid de nos jours. According to Stephen Mitten in his book on cognitive archeology “Prehistory of the Mind”, our world is a play that has gone on for six million years but all the action is confined to a hundred thousand years. Human life has appeared in 25,000 of them. If this, as he claims, is the last act it has been a tragedy in which the human race has played Feste, the clown.In Afghanistan a drug is freely grown which is responsible for most of the crime in the so called civilised world. We ignore it and fight a mock enemy, which we wrongly called Islam. Islam is not the enemy. The enemy is the Wahabi, a fanatical religious sect which we allowed to flourish when its embers were first blown into flame by Ibn Saud to create Saudi Arabia, the kingdom which now holds the world to ransom. Our rescue services are denuded; our workers are taken from useful civilian life to fight a tribal uprising in a country where the terrain dictates tribesman must always win. At the same time the coasts of Mexico are open to the Columbian drug cartels because the country is too poor to police them. That is where the armies of the West ought to be. Fighting the drugs war which is the greatest threat to our own civilisation. It is a war we could win. The climate has been changing at intervals for six million years. We cannot beat it, so we invent a strategy. The EU imposes laws governing the use of natural resources. We respond by offering energy providers huge sums to create wind farms on land which the farmers are glad to rent to them to ease their own financial difficulties. I was interested in Christopher Booker’s claim in the Sunday Times that the combined electricity output of all the 2,000 wind turbines so far built in Britain is less than that of a single, medium-sized conventional power station. According to Booker, Table 7.5 of the energy statistics on the Department for Business website, which quotes the latest annual figure for wind energy, shows that it contributed 4,225 gigawatt hours. Dividing that by the 8,760 hours in a year gives a total average output of 482 megawatts.Table 5.11, listing every UK power plant, shows that nearly 50 conventional power stations were each capable of contributing more than that. Even if we could build the 7,000 additional wind turbines Gordon Brown dreams of, their combined output would not be much more than that of the single coal-fired power station at Drax, he claims.
One of his readers suggested that http://www.theglobalwarmingdebate.net/ink makes interesting reading. And it does.
*****************************
What would we do if France invaded the Channel Isles? When Egypt took back the Suez Canal we went to war.
Our ownership of the Falklands Islands rests on a dubious claim in the 18th century, mocked at by Sam Johnson. China's announcement that Tibet was part of China was also made in the 18th century. When Argentina claimed the Falkland Islands we went to war, to defend a population whose British passports we had taken away and was, anyway, leased to British Coalite. Should we counter invade Tibet? We made a cock up of the Younghusband invasion of that country and we were the laughing stock of the world when we invaded Abyssinia (see the Barefoot Emperor). What would we have done if the Tynwald had signed up the Isle of Man with the Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War, as Georgia seeks to do with NATO?
For 300 years it was the central plank of British Foreign policy that BRITAIN DID NOT INTERFERE WITH THE INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF OTHER COUNTRIES.
It is one plank we should continue to walk.
PS a pretty girl mimed a song at the opening of the Olympics and China earned the contempt of commentators who also pointed out, with great glee, that the fireworks display was digitally enhanced.Do they think that the actors actually sang the songs in Hollywood musicals or that the countless hordes of soldiers in films like the Lord of the Rings are real people?. It is called show business.
***********
I am so glad that in lovely Cool Britannia we can all abandon the stiff upper lip and explore cowardice as an art form. I have taken to it like a duck to water. I practise it all the time. Although I do say it myself, I am getting quite good at it. The next time I get a headache I am going straight into counselling.
When I think of all those years I wasted pretending to be brave, discovering cowardice is a joy akin to removing tight corsets or changing from shoes that pinch into slippers. The trick is to admit, in a manly way: “I would like to but, frankly, I would be scared stiff.”
None of my contemporaries believes me, of course. They are so used to that dreadful old British thing about putting a brave face on things they do not realise that in this grave new world cowardice is cool. Asteroids miss us by a million miles and humanity quakes; the prospect of duty free anthrax had the headlines shivering (I believe that scare story was a spin doctor’s ploy in support of the EU proposals for a duty free ban). A flu Pandemic and A World of Water wait in the wings with The End of the World. A medical magazine published a report of tentative research to suggest danger in triple injections and British mothers united to ululate on the six o’clock news. Now the prospect of measles injections terrify.
Those silly friends who fought in several wars and a number of marriages think I really have another secret reason for not wanting to climb Snowdon, even in a train. They cannot accept I am so frightened of heights that if I had been born a woman I would not have been able to wear high heels.
When my son suggested I might like to sail with him in a small boat from Anglesey to the Isle of Man, I declined with regret. I pointed out that I am the only father he has got and, since the edition is so limited, I must do everything in my power to ensure it does not go out of print. I got all the seafaring experience I want I told him, pacing the decks of piers.
Alas, constructive cowardice does limit opportunity. I am forced to say a regretful ‘no’ to tempting offers of hang-gliding, water skiing and wind-surfing. Even arm-wrestling can give you a nasty bruise and, despite a long career in the mouth-boxing booths of the BBC, competitive name calling is out of the question.
I claim my B.Sc. (Bachelor of Supreme Cowardice).
ends
One of his readers suggested that http://www.theglobalwarmingdebate.net/ink makes interesting reading. And it does.
*****************************
What would we do if France invaded the Channel Isles? When Egypt took back the Suez Canal we went to war.
Our ownership of the Falklands Islands rests on a dubious claim in the 18th century, mocked at by Sam Johnson. China's announcement that Tibet was part of China was also made in the 18th century. When Argentina claimed the Falkland Islands we went to war, to defend a population whose British passports we had taken away and was, anyway, leased to British Coalite. Should we counter invade Tibet? We made a cock up of the Younghusband invasion of that country and we were the laughing stock of the world when we invaded Abyssinia (see the Barefoot Emperor). What would we have done if the Tynwald had signed up the Isle of Man with the Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War, as Georgia seeks to do with NATO?
For 300 years it was the central plank of British Foreign policy that BRITAIN DID NOT INTERFERE WITH THE INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF OTHER COUNTRIES.
It is one plank we should continue to walk.
PS a pretty girl mimed a song at the opening of the Olympics and China earned the contempt of commentators who also pointed out, with great glee, that the fireworks display was digitally enhanced.Do they think that the actors actually sang the songs in Hollywood musicals or that the countless hordes of soldiers in films like the Lord of the Rings are real people?. It is called show business.
***********
I am so glad that in lovely Cool Britannia we can all abandon the stiff upper lip and explore cowardice as an art form. I have taken to it like a duck to water. I practise it all the time. Although I do say it myself, I am getting quite good at it. The next time I get a headache I am going straight into counselling.
When I think of all those years I wasted pretending to be brave, discovering cowardice is a joy akin to removing tight corsets or changing from shoes that pinch into slippers. The trick is to admit, in a manly way: “I would like to but, frankly, I would be scared stiff.”
None of my contemporaries believes me, of course. They are so used to that dreadful old British thing about putting a brave face on things they do not realise that in this grave new world cowardice is cool. Asteroids miss us by a million miles and humanity quakes; the prospect of duty free anthrax had the headlines shivering (I believe that scare story was a spin doctor’s ploy in support of the EU proposals for a duty free ban). A flu Pandemic and A World of Water wait in the wings with The End of the World. A medical magazine published a report of tentative research to suggest danger in triple injections and British mothers united to ululate on the six o’clock news. Now the prospect of measles injections terrify.
Those silly friends who fought in several wars and a number of marriages think I really have another secret reason for not wanting to climb Snowdon, even in a train. They cannot accept I am so frightened of heights that if I had been born a woman I would not have been able to wear high heels.
When my son suggested I might like to sail with him in a small boat from Anglesey to the Isle of Man, I declined with regret. I pointed out that I am the only father he has got and, since the edition is so limited, I must do everything in my power to ensure it does not go out of print. I got all the seafaring experience I want I told him, pacing the decks of piers.
Alas, constructive cowardice does limit opportunity. I am forced to say a regretful ‘no’ to tempting offers of hang-gliding, water skiing and wind-surfing. Even arm-wrestling can give you a nasty bruise and, despite a long career in the mouth-boxing booths of the BBC, competitive name calling is out of the question.
I claim my B.Sc. (Bachelor of Supreme Cowardice).
ends
Saturday, 9 August 2008
TRAVEL BROADENS THE WAISTLINE
I sat down on what may well be the last milestone on the long, dusty and frequently high road that has been my life and considered the journey.
Although I own neither house, nor car; can boast no gainful employment; no hobbies or, alas, no longer any vices , I seem to have gathered a great pile of luggage.
I have read all the books, heard all the music and seen all the pictures I need. I have visited most of the major cities in Europe and, more important, eaten in them.
Paris? Hostile. Rome, Florence and Verona? Overcrowded. Brussels? Boring and untidy. Amsterdam? Diffuse, unable to make its mind up what it is. Venice? A raddled old Queen of the Adriatic, throbbing with catarrh.
Some good things about them, forbye. All have superb art galleries and fine restaurants. Allards in Paris on the Rue des Beaux Arts for the duck smothered in olives; Ranieri’s at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome for strawberries marinated in good red wine; Sasso di Dante by the Giotto bell tower in Florence, the home of good cooking; Five Flies in Amsterdam for good, no nonsense food in giant portions Red Rum couldn’t jump over and dozens of Indonesian bistros serving exotic delicacies in a bewildering array of dishes. Brussels? Any stall that sells chips, though hold the mayo.
For many years my favourite cities, I thought, were Bruges and Vienna, which both have superb Christmas markets and excellent restaurants. Sacher in Vienna of course for Weiner schnitzel and lovely young green wine, where Franz Josef wisely said: “I am Emperor and will have dumplings.”. The Palace of Schonbrun where my .Hapsburg moustaches were venerated and where in search of the marionette theatre we found ourselves in a conference of Japanese businessmen and were sent on our way with a gift of costly perfume to the Orangerie, where the marionettes were cancelled but we were consoled with another gift - champagne and a video of a puppet Magic Flute. The Rathaus where the stained glass windows become an advent card
The Austrians, of course, are an unsuccessful attempt to make a German out of an Italian. Apart from the Koreans, they are the cruellest race on Earth. In the romantic Vienna woods there is an underground lake which is boosted as a delightful tourist attraction. They show no shame in selling postcards of it from photographs taken during the war when it was used as an aircraft factory where hundreds of slave workers died.
Bruges old town has a happier history. Ice skating on a rink that is set up in front of the Town Hall, my two favourite art galleries, and a bar with a hundred beers on tap. The Golden Basket restaurant, which when we visited was owned by a devastating beauty, serves symphonic variations of mussels
So it came as a surprise to discover that of all the cities I have visited my total and absolute favourite is - Peterborough.
It has a delightful Italian restaurant, a medieval cathedral, in which two queens were buried, with the finest façade in Europe. A wide boulevard runs through the centre of the city, quite the equal of the Ramblas in Barcelona, more parks than London, four theatres, a lovely pastoral riverside and shopping malls of considerable elegance.
Clearly, whatever it does to the waistline, travel narrows the mind
*******************************************************
I do regret not visiting China. The country has fascinated me since, as a young soldier, I read Lin Yutang’s delightful book “The Importance of Living”. That led me to its poets and painters and scholars, to marvellous novels like the Monkey Epic., Six Chapters in a Floating Life, Before Midnight Scholar
It was an obsession shared with my much loved father-in-law Dr Joe, who in his sixties learned Cantonese so that he could deal with his patients in Chinatown.
Through him, I made many Chinese friends. One couldn’t speak English when he arrived in this country, aged 14. By the time he was sixteen he had gathered a harvest of “A’s” in his “A” Levels and at 23 he had a mathematical theorem named after him.
His great grandfather had been a bureaucrat in the court of the Manchus but had fallen under the spell of the opium which the British introduced. As a result, he became so poor that he could not afford to buy the classics which his son needed for school. His solution was to come out of his opium induced semi-coma to write out the entire canon of Chinese classics from memory.
I had another friend who served on the China squadron in the Thirties when public beheadings were a daily occurrence and the peasants were treated like animals.
The Tiger of Chi’n who unified China decreed that the world started with his reign and ordered that every manuscript and painting be destroyed. Nothing changes. Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution had similar aims,
There are four Chinese languages: the ancient style in which the classics are written, the literary style, the business style and the colloquial.
China’s system of law was formulated in the time of Yao (2357 to 2255 B,C.). It has been described as “if not the most just and equitable, at least the most comprehensive, uniform and suited to the genius of the people for whom it is designed, perhaps of any that ever existed.”
To a Chinaman, the civilised world is China. Anything or anyone beyond its frontiers is barbarian. Perversely, they also have a sense that the West wishes to humiliate them.
In 1924, Sun Yat-sen wrote that China had suffered decades of economic oppression by the foreign powers and was being transformed into a colony,
In his 1947 book, China's Destiny, Chiang Kai-shek wrote:
“During the past hundred years, the citizens of the entire country, suffering under the yoke of the unequal treaties which gave foreigners special ‘concessions’ and extra-territorial status in China, were unanimous in their demand that the national humiliation be avenged, and the state be made strong.”
And when the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, Mao Ze Dong declared, "Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We...have stood up."
The Chinese are different.
The Chinese see nothing wrong with slave labour; they believe Tibet is part of China. They are suspicious of the West with good reason. We did our best to wreck the country by flooding it with opium; we invaded Tibet, a country that has suffered under a dictatorship of monks and aristocratic families throughout its history.
Whatever our views, by agreeing to hold the Olympics in China we have become complicit in their system of government.
I am not a friend of exertion. I think the desire to run faster than the next person or to pummel a complete stranger is the harvest of a limited intelligence and the art of spear throwing became redundant at Rorke’s Drift. Certainly I do not wish my world view to be influenced by practitioners in these curious activities. But it does seem to me that if those 40 athletes disagreed so passionately with the Chinese way of life they should have stayed away from Beijing.
Nor do I see why two supposedly intelligent undergraduates should think that by dangling a banner they would change the purpose of the Chinese leaders. That their exploits, which they did not undertake without first discovering they would not be harshly treated by the authorities, should attract such a storm of fawning publicity is beyond me.
It is a pity that equal publicity was not given to the announcement that the Dalai Lama has been invited to Beijing to take part in an important ceremony.
It has taken China twenty years to move from the Middle Ages to leading the 21st century world. Perhaps smog does hang over their capital. Very much like the Potteries in the Sixties, in fact.
Off hand, I cannot remember the Potteries producing a spectacle anything like the Opening Ceremony of the Games.
= **************************************************
One of the few R4 “Flagship” programmes worth listening to is “You and Yours”. Last week it carried an interesting item on the way Llandudno is allowing its links with Alice in Wonderland to decay.
Alice was the daughter of the Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, who had a holiday home on the foreshore. Once a hotel, it is about to be demolished to make way for a block of flats. The statue of the White Rabbit nearby has been vandalised and the Rabbit Hole, a wonderful “museum” of Aliceobilia, is to close.
Predictably, a “save our links with Alice“ movement has been launched which endearingly dismisses the sad truth that Charles Dodgson is unlikely to have visited Llandudno, and certainly the book was neither written nor inspired there
One might just as well celebrate Arnold Bennett who set in Llandudno an exciting part of “The Card” where Denry is launched as an entrepreneur.
The truth is that the Alice link has long been an embarrassment to the nationalists who now run the country.
Quite out of the question for a country where holidaymakers are handed leaflets saying “Enjoy your holiday but don’t buy a house here.”
Without its tourist industry North Wales would collapse. But nationalists are still uneasy that their homeland’s fame rests on an English Second Home as does the greater part of its economy.
Although I own neither house, nor car; can boast no gainful employment; no hobbies or, alas, no longer any vices , I seem to have gathered a great pile of luggage.
I have read all the books, heard all the music and seen all the pictures I need. I have visited most of the major cities in Europe and, more important, eaten in them.
Paris? Hostile. Rome, Florence and Verona? Overcrowded. Brussels? Boring and untidy. Amsterdam? Diffuse, unable to make its mind up what it is. Venice? A raddled old Queen of the Adriatic, throbbing with catarrh.
Some good things about them, forbye. All have superb art galleries and fine restaurants. Allards in Paris on the Rue des Beaux Arts for the duck smothered in olives; Ranieri’s at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome for strawberries marinated in good red wine; Sasso di Dante by the Giotto bell tower in Florence, the home of good cooking; Five Flies in Amsterdam for good, no nonsense food in giant portions Red Rum couldn’t jump over and dozens of Indonesian bistros serving exotic delicacies in a bewildering array of dishes. Brussels? Any stall that sells chips, though hold the mayo.
For many years my favourite cities, I thought, were Bruges and Vienna, which both have superb Christmas markets and excellent restaurants. Sacher in Vienna of course for Weiner schnitzel and lovely young green wine, where Franz Josef wisely said: “I am Emperor and will have dumplings.”. The Palace of Schonbrun where my .Hapsburg moustaches were venerated and where in search of the marionette theatre we found ourselves in a conference of Japanese businessmen and were sent on our way with a gift of costly perfume to the Orangerie, where the marionettes were cancelled but we were consoled with another gift - champagne and a video of a puppet Magic Flute. The Rathaus where the stained glass windows become an advent card
The Austrians, of course, are an unsuccessful attempt to make a German out of an Italian. Apart from the Koreans, they are the cruellest race on Earth. In the romantic Vienna woods there is an underground lake which is boosted as a delightful tourist attraction. They show no shame in selling postcards of it from photographs taken during the war when it was used as an aircraft factory where hundreds of slave workers died.
Bruges old town has a happier history. Ice skating on a rink that is set up in front of the Town Hall, my two favourite art galleries, and a bar with a hundred beers on tap. The Golden Basket restaurant, which when we visited was owned by a devastating beauty, serves symphonic variations of mussels
So it came as a surprise to discover that of all the cities I have visited my total and absolute favourite is - Peterborough.
It has a delightful Italian restaurant, a medieval cathedral, in which two queens were buried, with the finest façade in Europe. A wide boulevard runs through the centre of the city, quite the equal of the Ramblas in Barcelona, more parks than London, four theatres, a lovely pastoral riverside and shopping malls of considerable elegance.
Clearly, whatever it does to the waistline, travel narrows the mind
*******************************************************
I do regret not visiting China. The country has fascinated me since, as a young soldier, I read Lin Yutang’s delightful book “The Importance of Living”. That led me to its poets and painters and scholars, to marvellous novels like the Monkey Epic., Six Chapters in a Floating Life, Before Midnight Scholar
It was an obsession shared with my much loved father-in-law Dr Joe, who in his sixties learned Cantonese so that he could deal with his patients in Chinatown.
Through him, I made many Chinese friends. One couldn’t speak English when he arrived in this country, aged 14. By the time he was sixteen he had gathered a harvest of “A’s” in his “A” Levels and at 23 he had a mathematical theorem named after him.
His great grandfather had been a bureaucrat in the court of the Manchus but had fallen under the spell of the opium which the British introduced. As a result, he became so poor that he could not afford to buy the classics which his son needed for school. His solution was to come out of his opium induced semi-coma to write out the entire canon of Chinese classics from memory.
I had another friend who served on the China squadron in the Thirties when public beheadings were a daily occurrence and the peasants were treated like animals.
The Tiger of Chi’n who unified China decreed that the world started with his reign and ordered that every manuscript and painting be destroyed. Nothing changes. Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution had similar aims,
There are four Chinese languages: the ancient style in which the classics are written, the literary style, the business style and the colloquial.
China’s system of law was formulated in the time of Yao (2357 to 2255 B,C.). It has been described as “if not the most just and equitable, at least the most comprehensive, uniform and suited to the genius of the people for whom it is designed, perhaps of any that ever existed.”
To a Chinaman, the civilised world is China. Anything or anyone beyond its frontiers is barbarian. Perversely, they also have a sense that the West wishes to humiliate them.
In 1924, Sun Yat-sen wrote that China had suffered decades of economic oppression by the foreign powers and was being transformed into a colony,
In his 1947 book, China's Destiny, Chiang Kai-shek wrote:
“During the past hundred years, the citizens of the entire country, suffering under the yoke of the unequal treaties which gave foreigners special ‘concessions’ and extra-territorial status in China, were unanimous in their demand that the national humiliation be avenged, and the state be made strong.”
And when the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, Mao Ze Dong declared, "Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We...have stood up."
The Chinese are different.
The Chinese see nothing wrong with slave labour; they believe Tibet is part of China. They are suspicious of the West with good reason. We did our best to wreck the country by flooding it with opium; we invaded Tibet, a country that has suffered under a dictatorship of monks and aristocratic families throughout its history.
Whatever our views, by agreeing to hold the Olympics in China we have become complicit in their system of government.
I am not a friend of exertion. I think the desire to run faster than the next person or to pummel a complete stranger is the harvest of a limited intelligence and the art of spear throwing became redundant at Rorke’s Drift. Certainly I do not wish my world view to be influenced by practitioners in these curious activities. But it does seem to me that if those 40 athletes disagreed so passionately with the Chinese way of life they should have stayed away from Beijing.
Nor do I see why two supposedly intelligent undergraduates should think that by dangling a banner they would change the purpose of the Chinese leaders. That their exploits, which they did not undertake without first discovering they would not be harshly treated by the authorities, should attract such a storm of fawning publicity is beyond me.
It is a pity that equal publicity was not given to the announcement that the Dalai Lama has been invited to Beijing to take part in an important ceremony.
It has taken China twenty years to move from the Middle Ages to leading the 21st century world. Perhaps smog does hang over their capital. Very much like the Potteries in the Sixties, in fact.
Off hand, I cannot remember the Potteries producing a spectacle anything like the Opening Ceremony of the Games.
= **************************************************
One of the few R4 “Flagship” programmes worth listening to is “You and Yours”. Last week it carried an interesting item on the way Llandudno is allowing its links with Alice in Wonderland to decay.
Alice was the daughter of the Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, who had a holiday home on the foreshore. Once a hotel, it is about to be demolished to make way for a block of flats. The statue of the White Rabbit nearby has been vandalised and the Rabbit Hole, a wonderful “museum” of Aliceobilia, is to close.
Predictably, a “save our links with Alice“ movement has been launched which endearingly dismisses the sad truth that Charles Dodgson is unlikely to have visited Llandudno, and certainly the book was neither written nor inspired there
One might just as well celebrate Arnold Bennett who set in Llandudno an exciting part of “The Card” where Denry is launched as an entrepreneur.
The truth is that the Alice link has long been an embarrassment to the nationalists who now run the country.
Quite out of the question for a country where holidaymakers are handed leaflets saying “Enjoy your holiday but don’t buy a house here.”
Without its tourist industry North Wales would collapse. But nationalists are still uneasy that their homeland’s fame rests on an English Second Home as does the greater part of its economy.
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