Pretentious? Moi? Or why romantic self-regard has made of me a philistine

I have once or twice in the past alluded to my pretensions to wanting to be ‘a writer’. I have also confessed that for someone with such pretensions, I have produced remarkably little and, more to the point, have very little justification for having them (which rather begs the question as to whether anyone having pretensions is particularly concerned about how legitimate it is to have them. ‘Pretensions’ and ‘legitimacy’ are surely rarely contented bedfellows). I have read many interviews with living writers in which they reveal that they ‘have’ to write, that they have no choice but ‘to write’, and the obvious implication being that if they didn’t write, they would surely go off their heads. When, in the past, I read such claims, I always felt very guilty, because, to put it bluntly, I don’t have a clue as to what they are talking about.
It isn’t just writers who say such a thing: the sheer compulsive necessity to produce ‘art’ is seen as the essential component of the ‘artistic nature’. Composers, actors, poets, painters and sculptors are apt to make similar claims, and who am I to say that they are not being sincere when they do so? It is always possible, and, not to be too cynical, rather probable that one or two (or three or four) rather pretentious individuals will make the same claim in the hope that they sound impressive. But it is also possible that many of those who say these things are being completely sincere. Possibly a little neurotic, perhaps, but sincere: that for whatever reason buried in the complexities of their psyche, they only really feel alive when they write.
(Incidentally, at some point — although not here and not now because that would merely confuse matters — it would be useful to try to establish what ‘to write’ means. I am undoubtedly, at the moment, ‘writing’ but I am also undoubtedly at the moment not doing what people mean by ‘writing’ when they avow that they ‘have to write’.)
I must say that I enjoy writing much as I enjoy talking, but I can’t honestly claim to have a compulsion to write, and would not die in misery if I could never write again. On the other hand I do feel an itch to write which cannot be ignored, which is one reason why I post an entry in this blog every few days or so. Furthermore, where some writers — or artists generally — insist that the need to write (or compose, or paint, or sculpt or versify) comes from a definite need to ‘express themselves’, I can safely say that I belong in the opposite camp: I like the kind of art in which the artist is thoroughly concealed and, ideally, utterly forgotten. I don’t give a flying fuck whether or not the world ‘understands me’. But I do hope that, in some way or other, I am, at least, entertaining and engaging.
That is not the modern view, but then the modern view is to treat ‘the artist’ as something akin to a god, rather than as someone who happens to be rather good at entertaining and engaging using as his or her medium words, sounds, paint, stone, wood or whatever else takes his or her fancy, just as others are rather good at kicking a football, or selling insurance, or teaching or cooking or even organising. I know that makes me sound like a philistine, but, I’m afraid, that’s what I feel.
I think it all started with Beethoven. I would like to call him a genius, but these days that word is bandied about so much that it has been thoroughly devalued. For centuries musicians, as both performers and composers, were regarded as little more than hired help. If they were employed in court — which was almost always the case — they were often required to wear a uniform of some kind (as was, for example, J.S.Bach), eat with the servants and were treated as nothing more than staff. Beethoven,
who apart from being a genius was also a very difficult man with, I should imagine, a pronounced and well-defined ego, would have none of it. When, metaphorically, he was required to eat with the servants, he refused point-blank and insisted that a man of his talents should be treated with far more respect, as something greater than others. Well, in his case that was fair enough, but with his insistence that he, as ‘an artist’, was not as other mortals, the rot set in and, if you follow my drift, here in the Western world it has still not set out again.
As the ‘classical era’ developed — some might say degenerated — into the ‘romantic’ era, the rise of ‘the artist’ as a kind of higher being gathered pace.
Beethoven’s music could not be described as ‘romantic’, but one can hear in it the transition from the classicism of Mozart and Haydn to the music of the subsequent ‘romantic’ composers. The true romantics, the Schumans and the Wagners and the Mendelssohns, produced some great music but for me a little goes a long way. (For the record, I now dislike Chopin quite a bit, and find that listening to romantic classical music is like gorging yourself on cheap chocolate.) Feeling, sensation and sentiment seemed to lie at the centre of their music, but what marked out the ‘romantic’ guys, and to a certain extent gals, was that they were regarded and regarded themselves as ‘artists’ and as ‘artists’ as something rather special. And that attitude is still with unfortunately largely with us. These days we have reached the point where once the arts establishment has sanctified someone as ‘an artist’, everything they produce is, by definition, ‘art’ and must this be revered and held sacred, irrespective of whether or not it is any good. (I am, by the way, supremely conscious of the irony that this is being written by chap who not in a million years would be regarded as ‘an artist’ and who all too often feels distinctly uncomfortable in the company of the art establishment on those very few occasions when I am.) So we are in the ridiculous situation where Gilbert and George can use faeces (or so they claim) in the manufacture of their ‘art’ and we are obliged to take it and them seriously. It’s art, after all.
There has been a development which is related to this: over these past 40 years and in something of an extreme reaction to a world in which too many people were nothing but drones and serfs and were treated accordingly badly, today’s orthodoxy is that everyone is ‘special’ and deserves to be treated as such. Well yes and no. To our families and friends we are possibly more ‘special’ than we are to the anonymous crowd I share a railway carriage with on those occasions when I travel by rail. And surely it depends on context: and if that context is ‘art’, ‘talent’ and ‘ability’, the answer to the question as to whether everyone and his or her work should be treated as ‘special’, the answer can only be ‘no’.
It is a fiction, although a very popular fiction in some quarters, that if you dig a little, you will find that ‘everyone’ is talented in some way. In fact, we now go further and insist that everyone has a right — some would even insist it is a duty — to ‘express themselves’. A consequence of that liberal fiction is today’s orthodoxy that everyone has a right to be taken seriously by everyone else when they express themselves. Now everyone can, of course, attempt to express themselves if they so wish and do so in whatever form they choose, and they should never be discouraged from doing so. For one thing they might get a great deal of personal enjoyment and satisfaction from indulging themselves in one or other of the arts. But whether in expressing themselves the ‘art’ they produce entertains or engages or is otherwise of interest to others is by no means guaranteed. And more to the point, I am in no way obliged to accept as good everything so produced merely because it is the fruit of someone ‘expressing themselves’, although to say so is these days tantamount to heresy. I am to be shot at dawn tomorrow.

I admit it: I am, apparently, a glass of absinthe away from a life and death of meths drinking. Or why it is advisable not to believe the bullshit

I am, apparently, just a pair of piss-stained trousers away from lying in the gutter and drinking meths. That, at least, is my wife’s opinion. I was about to write that it was her ‘considered’ opinion, but the truth is my wife doesn’t really consider anything she is about to say, or she doesn’t appear to. Whoever first observed that ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’ will have had my wife in mind, or, at least, her spiritual foremothers. She shared her opinion with me the other night as I was pouring myself a glass
of a rather unusual drink. Now, there are many less usual drinks, but this particular unusual drink - absinthe - comes with rather a lot of baggage. In the popular mind - although ‘mind’ is, perhaps, too strong a word in context - absinthe is the very essence of a debauched, immoral, wasted life just this side of criminality and acts of sodomy on the hour every hour.
I happened to be preparing for myself a glass of absinthe - there is a certain rigmarole involved in preparing a glass of the drink which draws attention to itself - after I had, over several days, taken an interest in the drink and had been googling it to find out a little more about it. I have always liked Pernod, raki, ouzo, fennel (both the seeds and the vegetable), liquorice and aniseed balls, and I began to wonder whether, given that Pernod was first produced as a substitute for absinthe, what all the fuss was about.
The drink was declared illegal in some European countries at the beginning of the last century after claims that it was driving people mad, and there is an intersting, not to say quite convincing, conspiracy theory as to why. That was when the bad PR started. Absinthe, we were all assured, was for wrong ’uns: absinthe drinkers included - and it is here difficult not to add the word ‘notorious’ - Oscar Wilde, Vincent van Gogh, Verlaine and Rimbaud (who oddly enough, no poetry in the latter part of his life and instead choose to serve in the Dutch army), Ernest Hemingway, Voltaire - the epitome of a wrong ’un - and Alfred Jarry. Modern connoisseurs are said to include Johnny Depp, Leonardo Di Caprio and, to keep alive the link with debauchery, Marilyn Manson.
It wasn’t, in fact, made illegal in every European country, and was, for example, never outlawed in Canada, atlthough in the U.S., that highly schizophrenic country in which everything is both tolerated and condemned, it was outlawed. Since the beginning of the Nineties, however, it has again been legal to
produce it, and after a somewhat shaky start when - so the internet informs me - what was being produced as of pretty low quality and was being manufactured by distillers keen to cash in on the drink’s notoriety, it is now universally available, in both the French/Swiss kind and the Czech kind. (It was always available in Czechoslovakia and was never banned, but as the Communist authorities had a kind of petit bourgeois morality, it was rather frowned upon, and production and consumption were discrete.)
From my ‘research’ - great word that and one used by bullshitters the world over, so why should I stint myself? - I gather that the essential ingredient which took all the blame for absinthe driving one mad is now not present in great quantities. One of the herbs used in the production of absinthe was wormwood, and the active ingredient was the chemical ‘thujone’. Because thujone was deemed to be the dangerous ingredient which lead to the banning of absinthe - see my account of an alleged conspiracy below - some websites claim that the amount of thujone present in modern absinthe is very low compared to what the old stuff had. I am in no position to judge. Over these past 20 years, absinthe production had now come of age, and many, many brands of absinthe are now available, both of the French/Swiss variety and the Czech kind. It is available from 55 per cent proof, which I gather is at the low end, to up to 78 per cent proof. If you google absinthe, you’ll come across all manner of reviews and appreciations of this, that and t’other brand.
I decided I would buy myself a bottle, but then came across a website which sold taster kits: a small bottle of its absinthe (50ml, enough for two glasses), an absinthe spoon and, quaintly, two lumps of sugar. As this cost a cool £11, both the unsure punter and the canny producer benefits from the offer. I am no expert on absinthe, but I gather that some, if not all, brands can be quite bitter, and the idea is to sweeten the drink a little with the sugar. I gather that the way to prepare a glass is slowly to pour ice-cold water over the sugar lumps - sitting on the absinthe spoon which, itself sits over the glass - in order for the subtle aromas of the various herb oils to evolve. The Czechs, who have a different kind of absinthe do it differently. They dunk the sugar lump in the absinthe and then set the lump alight. Once this has caramelized, it is stirred into the absinthe.
So I prepared my first glass and that was when my wife observed that I would be drinkng meths next. But after 14 years of marriage, that kind of thing is water off a duck’s back and could and did in no way discourage me.
So what was it like? Well, I like Pernod, pastis, raki and ouzo and to drink it tasted similar. I liked it. But where was that absinthe magic, the green fairy? I can’t claim the she and I became intimately acquainted on that first occasion, but I can report that after a second glass - I had no more than two because that was all I was supplied with - and later on in bed I did feel rather different. It was, in a certain kind of way, as though I were sitting next to myself, but I must stress that the reader should not allow him or herself to be carried away with the description. Yes, I felt different and different in a way I had not experienced before with any other drink, but I suspect that had I had a third, or even fourth, glass, my account would be a little more defined. But I didn’t.
I enjoyed it, but shall I get a full bottle (and I would go for quality, because not doing so is, in such cases, a waste of money)? Yes, I shall, and I shall drink several glasses in the company of my cousin Gerald (who demanded I remove an account in this blog of our most recent drinking session, but who is far better value than most and, I would suspect, the ideal absinthe-drinking companion).
As for that conspiracy theory: well, the temperance movement was against absinthe as it was against every other kind of booze. Absinthe was first produced in the early 19th century and was something of a minority drink for many years, enjoyed by those who liked a little variation. Then France’s wine industry was devastated in the mid-19th century by an aphid and the drastically curtailed production of French wine pushed up prices enormously. So everyone who had enjoyed a glass or ten of French wine found the could no longer afford it and, it is claimed, turned to drinking absinthe. When, at the end of the 19th century, the French wine industry had recovered, it found it extremely difficult to regain it previous volume of sales. This is where the conspiracy theory kicks in: it is claimed that the French wine industry joined forces with the temperance crowd to attack the absinthe distillers - my enemy is your enemy. The flaw in this theory is, of course, as my more astute readers will have already realised, the question of why the temperance crow should have decided to join in with the wine industry. That’s a fair point, but I really don’t know. But whatever the answer to that question is, both are said to have jointly targeted the absinthe distillers and as part of their campaign quote ‘scientific’ proof that absinthe can drive you mad. It seems a lab full of mice were injected with thujone and went ape shit. The conspiracy theorists point out that the amount of thujone given to the mice - who are a fraction of the weight of a human - has 50 times the amount ingested by a drinker in one glass. But as, for me, the
whole exercise was a PR campaign, I don’t care either way. At the time, it seems, an unemployed man turned one his family and killed them all, a wife and many children. He had been drinking absinthe before he committed his crime. This horrific case was cited by the anti-absinthe group, but what was suppressed by the anti-absinthe lobby - it is said - was that he had also been drinking wine, brandy, beer and other spirits.
These were just two examples of evidence paraded to try to prove how pernicious and dangerous absinthe was. What other evidence was produced I don’t know, but in time absinthe production was declared illegal, and it wasn’t until the early Nineties that is was legal again to make the stuff.

And finally: please note that I have nowhere used the old cliched pun that ‘absinthe makes the heart grow fonder’. I don’t at all mind cliches unless they are so hackneyed and demand so much rewriting in order to be placed that the whole piece is wrecked. And if you have reached the end of this blog entry and are reading this, you will know that at no point might I have introduced that particular cliche without being horribly hamfisted.

What’s sauce for the goose, or how revenge is still the sweetest dish

I am about to recount a tale of an act of revenge which, unfortunately, has not yet been concluded and cannot so far be regarded as successful. But give it time, please give it time. It doesn’t involve violence or anything nasty, but I does involve me getting rather very irritated with another party’s high-handed behaviour and deciding to get my own back.
For many years, it must have been at least seven, I drove to work in London and parked my car for the time I was there directly beneath the Daily Mail in space reserved for I know not whom but certainly not for the poor bloody infantry. Perhaps those who arrived for work after seven were able to park there, but for everyone else doing so was not legal. Staff who were entitled to a car parking space were given permits to use a car park three-quarters of a mile away, and those on higher pay grades were given credit card to allow them to use the NCP car park opposite the Mail on the Young St. side. And at £25 a day, parking there is not cheap, so anyone the paper to whom the paper does grant that privilege must be reasonably valued. That car park, though, is on the other side of the street. I, on the other hand, was parked directly below the building, just a short five-storey lift ride away from my desk. How I got away with it for so long — and what I was doing was common knowledge on the features subs’ table — I really don’t know, but I did. I was able to get in because on Sundays when no civilians worked at the paper (admin, classified ad staff, researchers, that kind of thing), we were allowed to use the car park. I managed to park there for four days by driving in legitimately on Sunday mornings, but then not driving out agian until Wednesday evenings at 6pm when my shift ended.
But as it most certainly would in time, the arrangement came to an end eight months ago. I was rumbled by one of the security guards to whom one legitimate car park user had complained after he couldn’t find an empty space. The guard realised that at least one used was parking illegally and set about comparing the registration numbers of cars with the list of number belonging to legitimate users. It must have taken him some time, and he must be some boring fart even to bother, but bother he did and my game was up.
That lead to a problem: I had to find somewhere else to park which didn’t cost me an arm and a leg. Even better, I had to find somewhere reasonably close where I could park for free. Finding somewhere like that would be harder than finding a needle in a haystack, but eventually I did. One night, after my single Sunday shift, I took off driving ever further into West London, keeping my eyes open for a street not governed by residents’ parking permits. I finally was out as far as Acton Town when I found myself driving down a street where there were no parking restrictions of any kind. I started parking there, about five minutes walk from Acton Town underground station. (For anoraks who are into this kind of thing, it is quicker getting there by the Piccadilly Line than the Circle Line because although follow the same route, the Piccadilly Line stops at fewer stations. It was quite a coup finding somewhere where I could park for nothing, but the trouble was that getting there to pick up my car when I was about to drive home took about more than 45 minutes from leaving the office and getting into my car and was a pain in the arse. Then my brother Mark mentioned that, incredibly just around the corner from his flat in Earls Court was a small piece of land, rather hidden from the street, on which four cars could park comfortably. One space used to be used by one of those companies which hire out cars by the hour and which are becoming ever more popular and the rest seemed to be used by a firm of estate agents. So that is where I started parking my car on those occasions when I drove to London. Everything went well until last week. It would seem that the firm of estate agents had got a but narked that one of the spots was occupied, probably by my car, although I don’t know whether some other drivers had come across it. So they installed rather thick metal chains fastened by padlocks to seal off the small area. Thankfully on the day they did so, they ‘kindly’ did not seal off the area where my car was parked, allowing me to remove it. But last Sunday (I came up by train this week and I am writing this on my laptop with a view to uploading and posting it when I get home later tonight) I went to the spot — it is just three minutes walk from Mark’s flat — to see what had been done and saw that the estate agents have now completely sealed of the area. Had I turned up with my car — and I am due to drive up in two weeks’ time — I would not have been able to park and would have had to fuck off to Acton Town again.
That is what irritated me, or, to put it another way, what pissed me off. There is a very old sign lying around indicating that the small piece of land, which sits behind a 30ft long advertising hoarding, is the property of More O’Ferrall. But I would be very surprised indeed if the estate agents had come to some agreement to rent the land from More O’Ferrall to park its cars. It is far more likely that they are, like me, opportunistic squatters. So it is a bloody cheek to seal of the ground to make sure only they can use it.
What to do? I did consider going along (the estate agents have their office just around the corner opposite The Troubadour where Mark works) and simply appealing to their better nature and informing them that I now only drive up infrequently and could I also use the ground. Well, that’s a non-starter. First of all, who has ever heard of an estate agent with a better nature? Also
(note the image of a car above whose driver decided to do things by the book and rely on 'better nature') there is only room for four cars and I’m sure what with their staff commuting to work and coming and going to show clients around local flats, they would not be too inclined to give me a sympathetic hearing. Finally, if the ground is left open for me, it is highly likely that other drivers will also take advantage of it. That is when I gave up all hope of ever being able to park there again and decided that all I could do would be to take my revenge. If they could seal off the area with chains and padlocks to make it inaccessible to other drivers, well I could do the same. I might even argue that I have the same moral right. So I decided to buy padlocks and double seal off the area, making sure they couldn’t park there, either. I bought them yesterday and on my way to Marks added my two padlocks to theirs. That would do it, I thought. Well, it hasn’t yet quite. It seems that in the dark I had not applied the padlocks to anywhere where it might make it impossible to for them to remove the chains to let their own cars in. Oh, well. But I don’t think they noticed my padlocks, so next week I shall go back and make sure I get it right.
Am I being petty? Probably, but who cares. Bastards.

If you’re really bored, read on. And on. And on . . . Fuses, an insightful trip to Halfords and seafood medley beats the paté on toast.

I’m a great one for sneering at other people, even though as a well-brought up, middle-class sort of chap, more often than not I keep my thoughts to myself, or, at least, I try to, and people are very often none the wiser.
Would it be too, too snobbish of me, for example, to observe that visiting Asda is like shopping on a council estate? Yes, I think it probably would, so I shall keep schtum on that score and try to mitigate my apparent unpleasantness by admitting that if it is batteries you are after, or cheap DVDs, or any number of branded goods, Asda is no worse than any other store. For food I prefer to go elsewhere. I don’t really know why, but I do.
That was something of an unexpected diversion, so I shall get back to what I originally planned to say. Sneering is not nice, so by way of a penance I shall recount a very mundane incident today which culminated in my having an ineffably mundane insight. Were anyone else to have the same insight and go on to articulate it (which is what I did silently) then I would send them up rotten.
It started when I tried to get the DC power supply to my satnav going again. It has been out of operation for several months and I have been using a USB cable with the relevant DC cigarette lighter socket plug (which I bought at Asda for just a few pence. There, am I redeemed?) There was no particular reason why I should try to get it going again, but I decided to do so after my young son Wesley took apart another such DC power supply plug and discovered that once you unscrew the ‘top bit’, you find small fuse. ‘Ah-ha,’ I thought, ‘all I’ve got to do is to replace the fuse with one from another DC power supply I am not using, and I shall get it working again. QED.’ Except that I didn’t. I substituted the fuse, but when I stuck it in the socket, it still didn’t work. Oh, well, I thought, it must be something else.
About ten minutes later I realised that my car radio had stopped working. This is irritating because I have the radio on all the time when I am driving (Radio 4: I’m middle-class. See above). I decided that the radio fuse had gone and as I know where the fuses are in my British racing green Rover 45 (middle-class, again see above. And if that weren't enought, I am, by the way, writing this I am wearing a Guernsey sweater), I took a peek. To get at the fuses, you have to remove a kind of drawer just beneath the steering wheel, and on the back of this drawer is a diagram of all the different fuses and what amperage they are. There I discovered that the cigarette lighter and car radio both run off the same fuse. Even better, Rover supply a spare fuse for every amperage used. The trouble is that not only are they a bastard to get at, they are even more of a bastard to remove, especially when you are on your knees in an Asda car park, bent down almost double, craning your neck under the steering wheel and staring into a dark gloom with long sight. After a lot of pointless tugging with my fingers, I realised I needed the proper toold to do the job and decided to go to B&Q across the road to buy a pair of pliers. Then I realised that I could also get a new fuse at the branch of Halfords just down form B&Q. Outside Halfords, a staff member was wandering up and down having a fag, and I asked him whether the store sold pliers small enough to remove the fuse. Better than that, he told me, they have a special tool to do the job. Just ask in the store for Blake on Riptest (which is what it sounded like, but I don’t have a clue what he meant). In the store I could see nothing remotely like any department whose name might be interpreted as ‘Riptest’, but I told myself that I was grown up now and I would probably be able to find the pliers and replacement fuses with any assistance from Blake. Well, I couldn’t, and wandering around the almost deserted store — deserted is not a good sign for a Saturday early afternoon — I couldn’t at first find any member of staff until after a few minutes I came across three quietly gossiping in a corner. I explained what I wanted and one of them took me down to the fuses and also found me the ‘special tool’ for removing them. It is a small, plastic item, which probably cost no more than a tenth of a penny to make but is immensely useful. I bought it and my fuse (you get two in the packet), went outside and replaced the dead fuse. I then immediately blew it by plugging in the satnav lead with the substituted fuse (I trust all this talk of fuses isn’t confusing — I am talking about different types here). So I removed the blown new fuse I had popped in with the immensely useful plastic tool I had discovered, and popped in the second one.
And where is all this leading to? Well, to here: as I was walking out of Halfords with my packet of two fuses and a similar packet containing the plastic removal tool, I reflected: ‘Isn’t it strange how you seem to learn something new every day?’ My point is, dear reader, that if someone else has said that, I would have mocked them without mercy. Ah, but I said it. Mundane or what?
If you’ve been with me this far, here’s something to look forward to: an account of why I had a seafood medley with vinaigrette for lunch yesterday rather than paté on toast as I had planned. If you have stayed with me thus far, you’ll find it a riveting read. And yes, it is still Saturday afternoon.

Am I retired? No, not yet, but as you can see I’m slowly, gently cruising into an early dotage.

All things to all men: philosophy, Darfur, self-help and why meaning is not so important

The website which religiously informs me of these things has reported that this blog has again been sought out by the guy (or gal) attracted to it using the buzzword ‘philosophy’. And yet again he (or she) will have been disappointed with what they came across had they lingered and read on a little. If I remember, I was in a rather bad mood and used extremely coarse language to slag off several people. Well, perhaps I should try to keep them here a little longer when they next turn up and put my skates on to write something about philosophy, but the trouble is I have absolutely nothing original to say. What I can do, though, is to outline what any would-be philosopher will not find here.
I pointed out a few entries ago that because of the nature of the course I took at Dundee University all those years ago, my slender knowledge of philosophy is further constrained by the fact that the department there was solely interested in what is generally known as ‘Oxford philosophy’. That it offered — and I took — a course in Existentialism which dealt with (naturally) Jean-Paul Sartre, Kierkegaard, Jaspers and Heidigger (and regular readers will already have cottoned on that those are the only four existentialist philosophers I know, which is why I am obliged to repeat the names) must be put down to an innate British courtesy, rather as we might acknowledge that the French and Italians also like to cook. But generally if a school of philosophy’s ideas did not meet the rigourous standards laid down by the Oxford school, it was a little difficult to take them all that seriously.
So the searcher after truth tracking me down to this blog must take that into account.
He or she should also realise that I am not in the slightest interested in trying to understand ‘what life is all about’ or ‘what the meaning of life might be’. In a nutshell, my view is that life, whether human, animal or plant, simply evolved and that it is intrinsically without meaning. That is, however, not to say, that our individual and communal lives have no meaning. It is merely to say that whatever meaning there is for us (and were I a little slicker, I might try to introduce obliquely Kierkegaard’s notion of subjective truth, but unfortunately I am as slick as a coarse metal file) is wholly artificial (in a rather obscure sense of the word, but I can’t, at this point, be arsed trying to find the right one). It boils down to this: life is. What it is, how it evolved, where it is going to, I really do not know, but more to the point, I have no interest in speculating. I don’t intend spending my time beating my head against a brick wall.
It is worth pointing out, of course, that we are most interested in ‘understanding what life is about’ or searching for the meaning of life’ when we are in our post-pubescent years and ‘life’ as we see it all around us is often something of a mystery, if not sometimes a little unsettling. The other time we find ourselves casting about for ‘meaning’ is when, for one reason or another, we are unhappy. (And we are sometimes unhappy without realising it. Regular drinking can often mask an underlying unhappiness. Just out of interest, spend an evening with friends in a bar, but stick to soft drinks while they are getting rat-arsed. You will find yourself wondering just what is so funny about all the things they are laughing at — and it is not you who is being po-faced. One suspect that life wouldn't be so much of a breeze if they had less booze in them.) Of course, none of that is to say that we would otherwise not be interested in the ‘meaning of life’. It’s just that most of us have an unlimited capacity for bullshitting ourselves and if we really were interested in that kind of thing, we would spend a great deal more time and effort pursuing that interest. As it is, all we really want is a few headline facts, a couple of quotable quotes and something to keep up going until Emmerdale or EastEnders starts, or Days Of Our Lives or Neighbours, or whatever soap is now the most popular.
I often, rather glibly, wonder aloud just how interested refugees in, say, Darfur are in ‘the meaning of life’. I should think their more immediate concern is simply with remaining alive by finding food and drink and avoiding violence. Speculating on the ‘meaning of life’ is all too often a pastime indulged in by the leisured classes. That is not, however, to say that the hopes and wishes and aspirations of such refugees are not identical to yours and mine. Last night I heard a news report from a refugee camp in Darfur which has been so longstanding that there are several well-established schools there with pupils keen to learn. There’s little difference between them and us, except that we can be reasonably certain where our next meal is coming from and need not live in fear of being killed. (Incidentally, it is notable that, for example, something like education is most valued by those who have least access to it. One of the lessons I am trying to drum into my two children is to understand that ‘easy come, easy go’, that to achieve what is usually most worthwhile and rewarding in life usually take rather more effort. It is something I wish I had been taught when I was a child, but I don’t think I ever was.)
Musing on the ‘meaning of life’, I should like to mention a cartoon strip I once regularly read in a newspaper. It was a cartoon strip called Hagar the Horrible, which appeared for many years on the back page of The Sun. In the strip I particularly remember (and to be honest I remember no others), Hagar is sitting at a bar staring morosely into his beer. The barman notices his sombre mood and asks him what the matter is.
‘Sometimes,’ says Hagar gloomily, ‘I wonder why we’re all here.’
‘Well,’ says the barman, ‘I’m the barman. I’m here to serve drinks.’
Quite. It’s not exactly deep, but that joke contains a rather important truth. For me at least. Tackled from a different angle, I shall pass on an Icelandic fisherman’s saying I once came across and which I always find reassuring: ‘When in the storm,’ it urges, ‘pray to God. But keep rowing.’
The searcher after truth will also not find here any of the usual gunge which masquerades as philosophy in any number of middle-brow self-help books. If they are intent on going on a ‘journey’ to discover their ‘inner self’ or ‘the child within’ or anything of that kind, good luck to them. But they will find no practical help in this blog. I have not doubt that such books, which I gather sell by the lorry-load all over the world, can provide a temporary respite from whatever ails those who buy them, but the ones I have flicked through in bookshops have been 24 carat crap. The make very little sense at all and remind me all too easily of those ads claiming that they will reveal to you THE secret of losing weight, or of getting rid of that flabby belly, or making a million dollars in three months or of 1,001 other things which concern us. They invariably go on and on and on and on about what they promise they are going to do for you, but never actually get to the point. Ever. Because, of course, by the time you have bought the book, you are of now more interest to the author.
It would be only fair to add here that I did once by a self-help book, but this one was of practical advice and there was not an airy-fairy notion in it. I bought it in the spring of 1990 when I was in the depths of a reasonably severe bout of clinical depression and it was along the lines of explaining what, physically, depression was, and counselling that depressive attacks are self-limiting. It was by a Dorothy Rowe, a respected British psychologist and is full of very good, practical advice. I have never, however, bought a book hoping to become a ‘better me’ or anything of that kind, although I have toyed (and, to tell the truth, am still toying) with the idea of writing one called A Cynic’s Guide To A Happier You, which would consist solely of good advice along the lines of don’t overspend, don’t drink or eat too much, don’t expect everything always to be perfect, always be honest with yourself even if you can’t always be honest with others, avoid telling lies and don’t burn the candle at both ends.
Which is all a long, long way from ‘philosophy’ even if not of the Oxford school. But as I have waffled on for quite a while now, I must pull myself up short and resume these inconsequential musings another time.
By the way, I am writing this sitting on the train on my iBook and shall upload it later. The reason I mention that is that the particular word-processing software I am using is called Bean and it is the most useful I have come across, not least because right at the bottom of the screen is a word count which updates with every word I write. I have now, it tells me written 1,545 with this word, and I feel I should go on to see whether I can’t hit 2,000. However, I doubt that anything I write will be any more interesting — or rather any less dull — than what I have written so far, and the chances are that given that I would merely be padding out a piece of writing simply to hit 2,000 words, it might well be pretty boring stuff. And with that I have still only made 1,621, so I really shall call it a day.
PS As, as usual, I have gone through this a day later to iron out infelicities and spelling mistakes (despite knowing better, I still tend to write ‘to’ when I should be writing ‘too’) so the figures given of how many words I have written are wrong, though I doubt whether any reader has been bored enough to count the words just to check whether I am telling the truth.

Fucking newspapers, fucking execs and a few more choice observations. If you are of a sensitive dispostion, do the honourable thing and fuck off.

I’m in a bad mood, my wife and the two little kiddiwinks have buggered off somewhere (Elsie has football training, I think), it’s 7.15 at night, no one (i.e. my wife) has mentioned what we are doing about supper — should I prepare something for myself or should I wait until they return whenever they are due to return? — I’ve had two modest glasses of wine, but more to the point I’m at the end of my third glass, there’s no more and I don’t want to drink any spirits or anything stronger than wine, so I thought I might rant a little on my blog.
First complaint: who the bloody hell reads this? I had three acknowledged readers, and the relevant gubbins here which tells me how many (if you want technical chapter and verse, you’re on your own) tells me I still have three, but only two are registered in another area of the technical gubbins, and Mr B. Mc. is observing radio silence. Actually, I think that is because he is having rather a rough time finding another job, to which it is relevant to add that were my shifts at the Mail to end, I would be up shit creek, not only without a paddle but without a fucking canoe. So he has my sympathy and good wishes. That last is relevant because — and it would be too, too tedious to go into any depth here but it involves a new page layout system, a changeover from Mac to PCs, me for the past three weeks doing on my own which on a good day is done by two of us — I have had two rather high-profile bust-ups (strictly ‘busts-up’, but anyone reading this who wants to make exactly that point can go fuck themselves) with a chap who was once the Mail’s production editor, then retired, was then recalled on an expensive consultancy basis to see in the new system and who is to geekdom what the Pope is to the Roman Catholic church. I actually walked off the winner on both occasions, but that means nothing. In the whacky world of the Mail, which is to the feudal system what the Pope is to the Roman Catholic church, such behaviour from the poor bloody infantry — I am still a casual, a chap hired by the day and thus a hack in the strict sense of the word — is at best utterly unacceptable and at worst a hanging offence. The only good aspect to it all is that I usually get on with the chap, his geeky nature notwithstanding, and neither he nor I hold a grudge.
So on to other matters: for the past three weeks I have, almost literally, although obviously not quite literally, been working my bollocks off. A week last Wednesday, when I had the car in London, I was due to drive to Bristol and see Ken, the chap rather closer to death’s door than yours truly unless yours truly falls under a bus at some point over the coming weeks. I usually finish at just after 6pm on Wednesdays, but a week last Wednesday, I was still fucking around with this new system until 8.15, which meant that rather than get to Ken’s by 8.45, I didn’t get there until just after 11pm. Mercifully, he was asleep and hadn’t noticed that I was over two hours late.
This Wednesday I didn’t have the car, but was due to catch a train from Paddington at 7.45. That was late enough for me to hang around for at least an hour after I am due to finish and still get to the station on time. I didn’t go to the gym in the morning, but started work on my pages at 9.15 to make sure everything was done and dusted in good time. It was: I had done all the work I had to do, bar making the chief sub’s marks, by 6.15. It should have been a doddle, but it wasn’t. She didn’t start reading the last two pages, the letters’ pages, until just before 7pm and when, at 7.10pm, I announced that I would have to go to catch my train and that someone else would have to do the marks, it was greeted in much the same way the British public would greet the news that someone had raped the Queen. My name was mud. Bugger that over the past three weeks I had stayed on for several hours longer than I am being paid for, all that was noticed that I had the temerity to ensure I wouldn’t miss my train.
All of you out there who, having read this blog so far, still — still — feel that newspapers are populated by professionals and gentleman: you should, and I hope will, be sectioned.

Frederic Raphael insufferable and vain beyond reason: rather like his glittering characters

I drove home from work a day later than usual because I stopped off at Ken’s to see how he was and to give him a little company, and stayed over. So I found myself driving back down the M5 during the day, and it was a little strange because there is far less traffic in the evening when I usually drive. But it allows me to listen to afternoon programmes on Radio 4 and this afternoon Auntie’s Afternoon Play (that’s the BBC’s Afternoon Play — Auntie is just an honorific we use to show how feeble the old broadcaster is getting) was Final Demands by Frederic Raphael, a series of plays in which he brings the characters he first imposed on the world in The Glittering Prizes up to date.

I never saw The Glittering Prizes ‘a BBC drama about the changing lives of a group of Cambridge students first broadcast in 1976. Starting in 1953 with a group of Cambridge students the drama follows them through to middle-age and ends in the 1970s’ (a description from Wikipedia), but at the time you couldn’t but hear about it. It was as though Shakespeare was reborn and had rewritten Hamlet for television. Everyone who regarded themselves as even vaguely middle-class simply gushed about The Glittering Prizes, darling, and wondered why life had been so cruel not to send them to Oxbridge but have them make do with Loughborough.

Raphael was a big noise in literary circles after that and, I should imagine, ever since, no doubt on highly familiar terms with Martin and Hilary and Kingsley and Hanif and Jeanette, but he does absolutely nothing for me. I was first unimpressed with him when I recently watched a DVD of Darling, which starred Julie Christie and Dirk Bogarde and for which he won an Oscar for his screenplay, which baffles me. Everything is in quotable quote. The dialogue was utterly stilted. No one speaks as ordinary folk do. Perhaps Raphael and his clever friends spoke like that at Cambridge but I wouldn’t know — I didn’t go to Cambridge and even if I had and bumped into Raphael and his chums, I wouldn’t have been able to stick around for long enough to find out.

Today’s play, the update on all those Glittering Prizes characters, was just as insufferable: the main character, Adam Morris, so obviously and so vainly based on Raphael himself, is incapable of saying anything without turning it into a quip. Morris us an award-winning novelist and screenwriter — ring any bells — happily married to ‘Ba’ for ever. Everything he says, and I do mean everything, has to be smart and seemingly quotable. All the other characters do, too. How anyone can think this is great stuff is beyond me. I should imagine it goes down very well in Women’s Institute literature groups. Awful, awful, awful and in true Daily Mail style, I shall tune in to hear the second play — there is a total of six — when it is broadcast to be even further outraged.

Philosophy - Pt I. What's it all about, then? With references to Sartre, Hume, Bishop Berkeley, Bertrand Russell and a certain London cabbie.

I notice someone else has visited my blog after finding it by googling ‘philosophy’, and they, too, I should imagine, will have trudged off rather disappointed by the lack of intellectual sparkle exhibited here. So just in case someone else does the same — and I am always keen to avoid disappointing the punter, whatever his or her reasons for dropping by — I shall write a few words and try to clarify exactly what my interest in philosophy is and is not.

First off, I should point out that what one man or woman means by philosophy (in the narrow, academic sense) is something of a movable feast. I took a philosophy degree course at Dundee University in the late Sixties/early Seventies and the department there was definitely signed up to what was then known (and, for all I know, might still be today) as the Oxford school of philosophy, which took a — for want of a better word — ‘scientific’ approach to philosophy, in as far as it was strict on what might be regarded as ‘known’ and, in spirit, firmly adhered to an almost mathematical approach to knowledge. The Oxford school regarded — regards? — itself as the orthodoxy and rather looked down on what, I think, it referred to the Continental school of philosophy, which it thought of as ‘sentimental’ in a literal sense. The Continental school, of course, regarded the Oxford school — if it was in the slightest bit bothered, which is probably was not — as being stuck up and elitist. Now I might here and now throw a few names into the pot and attempt to give the impression that I am au fait with their work, but the truth is that I am not.

I arrived at Dundee a very young 18-year-old, and I don’t think I was sufficiently intellectually mature enough to benefit from a degree course of the kind then provided. (These days, I gather rather to my horror, a gradgrindian emphasis on regarding a degree course as a preparation for life in ‘the workplace’ is the vogue, whereas when I went to college, the philosophy of tertiary education was still that its purpose was to train a mind. Thus a history graduate might well, later in life, find himself in building a career in sales, or marketing, or advertising, or in the Civil Service. Undergraduates studying medicine or engineering, of course, were more likely, although no necessarily, to end up working as doctors or engineers, but even then this was not such a given. More on the changing nature of student life in another entry. Why, for example, are students no longer out on the streets protesting?

The strict Oxford school approach did not necessarily preclude us studying philosophy beyond the pale, such as existentialism, but I should imagine doing so was seen as a kind of charitable ecumenical interest. So what Sartre, Heidigger, Kierkegaard and Jaspers had to say was studied, as were Bishop Berkeley (‘we exist because God is thinking about us’), Hume, Locke, Descartes and various other bods. Studying their work was an exercise in seeing what had lead up to the Oxford school.

I was something of an intellectual scavenger and would pick up a snippet here and a titbit there, which, judiciously and strategically thrown into conversation might well give the impression that I knew what I was talking about. Unfortunately I didn’t. In my fourth year, we all attended a seminar on ‘the Vienna Circle’, many of whom had arrived at philosophy from mathematics and treated the subject in much the same manner. This would explain their doctrine (too strong a word, but what the hell) of logical positivism. To this day, I'm not too sure what it is, except that it is grounded in empiricism. (My French cousin, a professor of aesthetics, who must remain nameless after I named him in a previous, now deleted entry, is firmly in the rationalist school, whereas I rather think all that ‘we can work it all out as long as we think it through and have enough red wine’ is err, on the wrong track.)

In my fourth year at Dundee, we students were all expected to write and read ‘a paper’ and in hindsight I hate to think just how jejune mine must have been. I do, however remember, answering, in response to the observation that there was an ultimate truth out there ‘in reality’ to a statement such as ‘the cat sat on the mat’, that such thinking did not and could never account for outright sarcasm. My comment came towards, although not at, the end of the seminar, and I remember it broke up early. At the time I prided myself on having thrown an intellectual spanner into the works, though I now suspect the assembled philosophy staff simply thought ‘life’s too short. Let’s go off an have a cup of tea’.

There is an apocryphal story told my a London cabbie which might illuminate the varying approaches to philosophy and what different people who profess and interest in philosophy think it is. The cabbie stopped in The Strand and immediately recognised that his new passenger was none other than Bertrand Russell.
‘You’re Lord Russell, aren’t you,’ the cabbie said to the passenger.
‘Yes, I am,’ Bertrand Russell replied.
‘All right,’ said the cabbie, ‘what’s it all about then?’
‘And do you know,’ the cabbie later told his friend, ‘he couldn’t tell me!’

Part II to come when I am a little less tired. Good night.

Where are they now? A meditation on how pointless being famous is. With references to Fred Kite and Joe Stalin

When I read about or hear talk of Martin Amis, I am always reminded of Hugh Walpole. Who he? you might ask. Exactly. Who he? But that is the point I am making. Walpole (you can find a potted biography of the chap here) was, for many years in the Twenties and Thirties, the popular novelist, celebrated by everyone who mattered, made wealthy through his work and generally l’homme du jour. But: who he? Amis fulfils rather the same role. Years ago, when he was all the rage, the Eighties’ l’homme du jour and one of the young Turks of Anglo-Saxon literature, I tried to read a novel by Amis, but couldn’t. Not only did it not grab me — one reason for that might be that I was the wrong demographic, being, in the mid-Eighties, already in my mid-30s, but I didn’t think it was particularly well-written. (Will Self another: keeps using obscure words and I can’t but suspect that all he wants to do is make us sit back in admiration.)
Since then, of course, Amis (see here if you are in the slightest bit interested. I’m not but there’s no harm in being charitable) has remained, for those who take these things seriously, in the literary spotlight, although he is by no means any more a young Turk, but has followed in his father Kingsley’s footsteps to become a voice of modern reaction. I suspect that he us still rather prosperous because when the going was good and he still was a name, he cracked the U.S. market and still has sufficient readers there to pay for the Highgate flat and weekend cottage. The U.S. market is so vast that even an also-ran with comparatively poor sales seems to be able, to a certain extent, to cream it. Amis must be in his 60s (er, like me), and I doubt he will be quoted or remembered 30 years from now.
I thought of Hugh Walpole (‘who he?’) and then Amis because I was looking up a quotation. It is something a character said in the film I’m All Right, Jack, a character called Fred Kite, a Communist shop steward (played by the incomparable and highly neurotic Peter Sellers) who is the foil to Ian Carmichael’s young toff working on the shop floor and who falls for Kite’s very pretty daughter. During a conversation when Carmichael is asked for supper at the Kite household, Kite waxes lyrical about Soviet Russia and his lines highlight the fatuous nature of those benighted folk who continued — and continue — to support Joe Stalin despite knowledge of his murderous ways becoming widespread. “Ah, Russia,” says Kite, “all them corn fields and ballet in the evening.” Or not, as we now know.
Looking up that quote, I came across the name Alan Hackney (which sounds as though it is made up, like my fictitious shop steward Ken Vauxhall, but isn’t). Hackney, according to his obituary in the Daily Telegraph, ‘wrote some 30 screenplays, countless television scripts, half a dozen novels – including an international best-seller – and contributed comic pieces to Punch for several decades’. The film I’m All Right, Jack, was based on his novel Private Life, and he also wrote the screenplay.
And the point of it all? Alan Hackney: who he? Barbara Pym, who she? There was a time, believe it or not, when people were asking ‘Johann Sebastian Bach: who he? Despite his widespread reputation during his lifetime both as a an outstanding musician, improviser and composer, Bach was forgotten and almost entirely obscure until he was ‘re-discovered’ 100 years after his death.
Walpole, Pym, Hackney to which we might add Sillitoe, Lawrence, the Flemings (Peter and Ian) and any number over nameless Victorian writers. Who in his or her right mind would be intent on making their name in literature. A fool perhaps. Someone like me. The only definite outcome is bitter, bitter disappointment.

A quick note - and something of an apology - to those who arrive here after using the search term 'philosophy'. (But don't despair)

A year or so ago, I signed up with some website which ‘monitors the traffic to your blog’. The point of the website, I think, is to get you interested in other — paid for — services it offers which, as far as I can tell, involved ‘directing more traffic to your site’. Well, as I don’t give a tinker’s cuss for ‘directing more traffic to my site’ and as I am loath to part with money for that kind of thing, I have forgotten about the site. However, I am still signed in and I still get an email from it every time this blog is viewed after it is tracked down using one of the ‘buzzwords’ in my profile (I think. As I have said, it is all in the realms of unimportant gobbledegook to me).
Now one of those ‘buzzwords’ is ‘philosophy’ but I should imagine that punters viewing this will be somewhat disappointed to discover that the closest it gets to ‘discussing philosophy’ is pretty damn far from what they might be interested in.
As it happens, I studied philosophy at Dundee University in the days when attending university didn’t cost you an arm and a leg and there are various questions which still interest me (of which more in a future entry). But experience has taught me that all-to-often punters who profess ‘an interest in philosophy’ are simply interested in discovering ‘what it’s all about’, which is not the point of philosophy (or rather is not the point of philosophy in which I was schooled at Dundee — schooled being an acceptable euphemism for attending the occasional lecture, although I was conscientious about attending seminars and tutorials because, well, it interested me).
In fact, I rather doubt you could get any kind of agreement on what philosophy ‘is’.
So: my apologies to all those who look up my blog seeking some kind of enlightenment, but who are rapidly reduced to asking themselves ‘who is this pillock?’ But there is the promise of future entries to come, including one on the stranglehold relativism has acquired on thought, how on earth people can insist on the absolute nature of ‘human right’ but, in the same breath write of any talk of ‘God’ as complete bollocks, why, essentially, almost all philosophical ‘problems’ can be boiled down to an aspect of what, in the area of moral philosophy, can be described as ‘the is/ought gap’, and whether First Great Western provides by far the words inter-city train service in Great Britain. But don’t hold your breath.

On another topic entirely, Manchester United will, I think, be pipped at the post for the Premier League title this season. They keep trailing by one point, then two points, then one point etc, but if they carry on dropping points in silly ways, they don’t deserve the title.