Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
I must come clean and admit that I have an itch to write as alcoholics have an itch to drink and kleptomaniacs have an itch to steal. The problem is, and it’s a very big problem indeed, is that I have absolutely nothing ‘to say’. Nothing whatsoever. And I am really not joking.
All right, then, you might ask, why not simply write to entertain? But that brings another huge problem: I am not a natural storyteller. Certainly I can make things up - can’t we all, especially those suffering from jealousy when they can invent without even trying. But there are those who are referred to as ‘natural storytellers’ and I am most certainly not one of those. And at the grand old age of 61 years, ten months and 24 days I have just one real principle: never, ever, bullshit yourself. Doesn’t really matter who else you bullshit, but leave yourself out. Even you do the most outrageously nasty thing, at least admit to yourself that you are doing something outrageously nasty. You don’t have to tell anyone else - in fact, it’s advisedly best not to, especially if what you have done is very unpleasant - but at least be straight with yourself.
This illusion I have had for the past 44 years, albeit ‘a writer’ who has written virtually fuck all, is ridiculous. I once explained in these pages how it came about. At school I had written a poem, which as I recall was very conventional, although that’s all I can recall. I showed it to Mr Hinds, an English teacher at the Oratory (known as C.T.S. Hinds for his enthusiasm for distributing tracts from the Catholis Truth Society) who diplomatically advised me to carry one. I now know, and have known for many years that he was merely doing what so many good teachers do: he was encouraging me. But in a stupid, though understandably teenaged way, I interpreted his encouragement rather severely. I imagined that he was telling me: you’re good, Powell. And so the illusion was born. It both helps and irritates me supremely that I share my illusion with, quite probably, one million other men and women the world over. It helps because I am not alone it being such a complete fool. But it irritates me because each of us, every last man jack of use, like to think we are unique. The liberals among you will no doubt cry: but you are unique. True, but then in that sense so is fly, worm, traffic bollard and grain of sand. As I said: don’t bullshit yourself.
So what of the plus side? Well, I have no difficulty with words, I feel at ease with them because of my long association with them as a hack, and when I read some of the abortions presented as prose, I thank God that, at least, I have that. But I don’t have a mind. And as I pointed out yesterday, there is far more to ‘writing’ than just getting words down on paper.
My brother Mark claimed earlier today that he had read somewhere that more women read novels than men. Who knows? And does it matter? Then there is the question of what kind of novel do they read. Off the top of my head I can list chick lit, macho lit (Zero Minus One, or something, and all that hard-drinking I’m a man bollocks SAS/memoirs of a SEAL crap), thrillers, sci-fi, ‘literature’ (you know, the kind of stuff which wins prizes), children’s fiction, ‘adult fiction’, pornography and ‘the classics’. The list can go on, but I have run out. Some of its is good, despite the critics, and some of it is crap, again despite the critics. When I first moved to London, suffering from depression, which wasn’t as deep as afflicts some but deep enough for me, I made an effort, conscious that I was pretty badly read for a chap who wanted to be ‘a writer’ to read, read, read. And I did. I read haphazardly, and even if a novel didn’t grab me, with only one exception - which I can’t now remember - I would finish it.
Some of what I read stood out: Lolita, which was better written by a Russian and many a book written by a Brit or a Yank was a special favourite. At the other extreme I read a novel by Jonathan Coe, who was a big noise then, though it wasn’t one of his famous ones. And I thought it was crap. I read Der Untertan by Heinrich Mann in German, which I thought was excellent, and I read, again in German Der Steppenwolf (which made a great deal more sense in its original language). I had previously - that is not as part of my somewhat pathetic period of auto-didactism - attempted Martin Amis and Will Self and thought both bollocks. But who was I to judge? They had a body of work behind them. I hadn’t. I read an utterly bizarre late-Victorian novel called Lilith and I read some Trollope. I read Darkness At Noon, which was OK, and I read A Streetcar Name Desire (which taught me that plays are meant to be performed, not read). I read several other novels whose titles and authors I can’t now recall. Two of those I can’t recall were by two other contemporary big noises, and I was not impressed but either.
I read Oscar Wilde. He could write, and write well, but what stayed with me was how little attention so many ‘good writers’ paid to language. I read, again in German Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll and Ungeduld Des Herzens by Stefan Zweig (whose title in English translation is Beware Of Pity, not a very good title but I must admit I would be hard-pushed to come up with anything better. I enjoyed and admired the latter a great deal.
I was the archetypical Tube commute, novel in hand on my journey to and from wherever I was working a shift. Then, in December 1995, I moved to Cornwall, married two months later and my period of autodidacticism ended. (I have just looked up ‘autodidacticism’ in a dictionary, and apparently it doesn’t exist. Well, it does now.)
Finally - finally - in late 1994 I started writing and eventually completed ‘a novel’. It wasn’t the first, but the third, but it was the first which I felt, while writing it, I knew what I was doing and which I had control over. That is Love: A fiction (which yesterday I urged you to buy). The previous two efforts for which I have no title - well, I can’t judge them, although with the first I was simply happy to complete it and I was quite happy with the second, although, being a little short, it would be classed as a novella.
Not much to crow about, eh?
But still I have this itch to write. And still I have nothing ‘to say’. What is there ‘to say’? That the world can, at turns, be a shitty place and a glorious place? That people can, at turns, be evil and altruistic? What? All of us at 61 know that. Perhaps you don’t at 16 or 26 or 36 - although, unfortunately, far too many do, but by the time your limbs creak in the morning, when getting a hard-on is something of a fond memory, when rudely you end sooner rather than later a conversation you know full well is going to be very dull and chock-a-block with platitude there are rather fewer insights. Or so it would seem. The liberal in me - he does still clamour a little, dear reader, despite my best efforts to get him to shut the fuck up - warns that I might still be surprised, that a chance encounter might bring a fresh insight. The problem is that the insight will not in the slightest be original and that by articulating it as though it were fresh I shall do nothing but make a complete tit of myself. Groucho Marx once remarked that he would never want to belong to a club which would have him as a member. Similarly, I would never crave the respect and admiration of anyone who felt respect and admiration for me.
. . .
My working solution is this: try to write engagingly and try, by writing engagingly, try to entertain and put the reader off the scent: that this joe knows fuck all. And that what he does know is about as original as that revealing that pain hurts. So what am I talking about? Well, nothing. But if I have managed to get you to read as far as this, it can’t be all bad. And by the way, in case you missed it the first time, here’s the link. Buy it and make me happy. Your pleasure is my pleasure.
. . .
For the more prosaic among you who can’t be doing with all this angst, I shall record that it is six minutes past midnight on September 15, I am sitting on the balcony of the apartment Mark and I are staying at drinking - in moderation remarkable - yet more pastis, smoking yet another cigar, which I sholdn’t but what the hell. I spend the evening in Le Petit Auberge in Essert-Romand watching Manchester United hold Benfica to a 1-1 draw in a Champions League fixture in the first round, group, round of the championships.
United were playing away from home so a score draw is no bad thing. The bar was almost empty except for a slightly drunk local who had come for a drink and his supper, and a family of Americans - elderly couple, their daughter and son-in-law. The man was 68 and from Texas and had spent his life working ‘in retail’ for, I think he said, J H Pinney. Four months ago, he and his wife had taken a 15-day cruise from the Texas coast to Lisbon and then stayed at a place his son-in-law owns in the Provence. They were spending a week or two down the road here in Essert-Romand at, I gather, another place his son-in-law owns before, in the next few weeks, embarking on their cruise back home. His son-in-law is based in London and works as a consultant in the ‘supply industry’.
Having just finished reading a spy novel and finished watching two spy films, I like to think that he is, in fact, employed by the CIA station in London. But, actually, I’m pretty bloody certain he is a consultant in the ‘supply industry’. I mean someone has to be, although he must be pretty well paid if he and his wife can afford a property in the Provence where, according to his father-in-law, they spend ‘most weekends’. I chatted briefly in my dog French and he in his dog English to the local who bought me a drink and was engaged in taking part in Maitre de Jeu, a lottery in which a draw takes places every five minutes apparently. He did win - which is probably why he bought be a drink - but he spent a great deal more on the tickets he bought than the measly 62 euros he won overall. And there was me, who has nothing ‘to say’, glad that Manchester United scored a crucial away goal and will undoubtedly win in the return match when Benfica visit Old Trafford.
. . .
I am rambling on now because I still have a little pastis left in my glass and started another cigar a while ago which I am loth to waste. I chatted to my daughter Elsie on Skype, a video call, and yet again was struck by had pretty she is. Unfortunately, she takes after me rather than her mother physiologically and puts weight on easily. But as she is only 15 she is by no means fat and I should imagine that she has a good few years ahead of her before she marries, has children and then gets rather broad in the beam.
Wes was there, too, but at 12 he still hasn’t really started puberty and is still, again rather like me - who has not only started but also completed puberty - was more inclined to play the fool. Mark went to bed when I went across to the bar to watch a film on the internet. I would give you the link to the very useful site on which one can watch full-length, recent, films completely free-of-charge, but as I am certain it is completely illegal I shan’. Oh, and one last thing before I end and post this on my blog: one of the very best things I have done in these past few years was to teach myself to touch-type. It is great to think, compose and type almost simultaneously. Good night, and God bless.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Essert-Romand. Day four - surrounded by clouds so I use the opportunity to plug my novel (which ain't half bad, even though I say so myself)
Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
Our fourth day here in the Haute-Savoie and the clouds have arrived. That sounds worse than it really is, in that it’s not some kind of cloud-covered gloomy day you get all-too-often in Frinton or Chapel St Leonards, simply that as we are more or less up in the mountains - thought they do get higher - the clouds have simply come lower and as I write are drifting past my bedroom window. But there is also plenty of autumnal sunshine, which make it all very pleasant. But I wouldn’t care if it were raining. I finished John le Carre’s The Russia House on Monday and have now started a biography of Stalin when he was just a young shaver playing practical jokes on local chaps in Tblisi involving Mausers, bombs, and general violence. It reads very well but, I’m glad to say, is not a potboiler.
The le Carre was a good read, too, although I was puzzled by its structure: it is sort of kind of kind of sort of (and in-joke that, which only I share) written in the first person, yet there are very detailed descriptions of situations where the ‘first person’ could not have been present. A solution to this conundrum is given in the final page where the ‘hero’ tells his story to the ‘first-person narrator’ or, rather, fills in details the narrator could not have know, but I have to say it is all rather unconvincing.
Another problem (well, a problem for me as I still have my literary pretensions and think about these matters) is that I feel any first-person narration should have a justification i.e. exactly why is this man or this woman telling his or her story? And his or her justification for doing so should be an intricate element of that story. I realise that many might feel I am not seeing the wood for the trees, but it does bother me. The example I always give is this: Consider a man who decides to go for a Chinese meal at his local Chinese restaurant. He arrives, sits at a table and orders, when suddenly a cook appears from the kitchen carrying one of those very large and sharp knives one finds in Chinese kitchens, attacks the front of staff and manages to decapitate one of the.
Now if our customer were to give a first-person account to a friend later that night, surely he would say: Bloody hell, you won’t believe what I’ve witnessed tonight. A cook in the chinkie I went to went berserk and chopped of the manager’s head, or something like that. What he wouldn’t do, at that first encounter, is begin: Well, it was a peaceful, barlmy night, and after I had looked in the fridge and discovered there was nothing in it which grabbed my fancy, I decided to visit my local Chinese restaurant. I didn’t use a coat because . . . Well, he wouldn’t would he? Yet that is what happens all-too-often in first-person narrations, and usually the narrator has no reason to write down (in novel form) what he is recounting.
Yes, I know I’m getting a little bit anal about it. But at least in my novel (more or less my first and only novel so far, if you ignore one or two earlier and not very good efforts - details of how to get a copy below) at least the first-person narrations (there are two) and the third-person narration are ‘built into’ the structure of the novel and I like to think they make logical sense. I mean that is the problem: I don’t find writing, as in getting words down on paper, at all difficult. But there’s obviously far more to ‘writing’ than simply getting the words down on paper: there is though, internal coherence and cohesion, ensuring that characters speak and behave in character. If a first-person narrator simply tells his story and there is no apparent reason just why he should tell his story, well, I find that rather unconvincing. Precious? Moi?
. . .
Here are details as to where you can get my novel, neatly bound and printed courtesy of Lulu.com. If you visit this address, you might see two novels on offer. Don’t be fooled: they are one and the same except that I changed the title and the blurb on the back to make it more attractive to anyone considering buying it, which, to date, seems to be exactly no one. But I boy can dream. I have also been through it once or twice and added or removed a comma here and there, and the most recent is Love: A fiction.
Dig those gorgeous roses - aren't they just so romantic! Granted that this is an unashamed plug, but my view is that a cook doesn’t cook a meal and then throw it away - if he has no guests, he will invite strangers to eat it. His pleasure comes from the cooking and then the pleasure of feeding other in the hope that they enjoy what they are eating. If you get my drift. If you do consider buying it, do remember the old saw of never judging a book by its cover. All is not what it appears to be, although (and several people have read it) absolutely no one so far has cottoned on to what I attempted and, I like to feel, more or less succeeded in doing. Try here to visit Lulu and buy a copy if you have a few spare shekels.
Now I’m off to read all about young Stalin.
. . .
Incidentally, I know I joke about commas, but they are important. The add to the clarity of a piece by indication where in a sentence we should pause. Often they can even change the meaning of a sentence entirely. For example: these two sentences are not the same and what happens varies in both.
1) The police rounded up the doctors who had been dealing drugs and jailed them.
2) The police rounded up the doctors, who had been dealing drugs, and jailed them.
In example number one, the police round up only those doctors who had been dealing drugs. In example number two, the police round up all doctors, because they had all been dealing drugs. So this talk of adding and removing commas is not at all precious (although I’ll stick with my joke). There an anecdote about Oscar Wilde once being asked what he had done all day. He replied that he had spent all the morning considering whether to add a comma to a certain sentence to make it read better. After lunch he had spent all afternoon considering whether to remove it again, and had finally decided to do so. And talking of Oscar Wilde, I once came across a quote from him which no one else seems to have heard. Many know his dictum (which I believe, in fact, he cribbed from someone else - naughty, Oscar): A cynic know the price of everything and the value of nothing. But he also said about cynics (and this explains one aspect of the Nazis): Sentimentality is a bank holiday from cynicism, which in my view hits the nail on the head.
Talking about Oscar cribbing dictums and saying, there is also the story of the American painter James Whistler who settled in England and made it his home. He had a rather sharp tongue and was very witty, but was annoyed that Oscar Wilde would often steal his witticisms and pass them off as his own. One day when Oscar was still up at Oxford, he was sitting at Whistler’s feet at some soiree or other and Whistler made a witty comment.
Oh, I wish I had said that, said Oscar.
You will, Oscar, you will, Whistler replied.
. . .
For years I had it in my head that the plural of comma was commata. It’s not, it’s commas. Well!
Our fourth day here in the Haute-Savoie and the clouds have arrived. That sounds worse than it really is, in that it’s not some kind of cloud-covered gloomy day you get all-too-often in Frinton or Chapel St Leonards, simply that as we are more or less up in the mountains - thought they do get higher - the clouds have simply come lower and as I write are drifting past my bedroom window. But there is also plenty of autumnal sunshine, which make it all very pleasant. But I wouldn’t care if it were raining. I finished John le Carre’s The Russia House on Monday and have now started a biography of Stalin when he was just a young shaver playing practical jokes on local chaps in Tblisi involving Mausers, bombs, and general violence. It reads very well but, I’m glad to say, is not a potboiler.
The le Carre was a good read, too, although I was puzzled by its structure: it is sort of kind of kind of sort of (and in-joke that, which only I share) written in the first person, yet there are very detailed descriptions of situations where the ‘first person’ could not have been present. A solution to this conundrum is given in the final page where the ‘hero’ tells his story to the ‘first-person narrator’ or, rather, fills in details the narrator could not have know, but I have to say it is all rather unconvincing.
Another problem (well, a problem for me as I still have my literary pretensions and think about these matters) is that I feel any first-person narration should have a justification i.e. exactly why is this man or this woman telling his or her story? And his or her justification for doing so should be an intricate element of that story. I realise that many might feel I am not seeing the wood for the trees, but it does bother me. The example I always give is this: Consider a man who decides to go for a Chinese meal at his local Chinese restaurant. He arrives, sits at a table and orders, when suddenly a cook appears from the kitchen carrying one of those very large and sharp knives one finds in Chinese kitchens, attacks the front of staff and manages to decapitate one of the.
Now if our customer were to give a first-person account to a friend later that night, surely he would say: Bloody hell, you won’t believe what I’ve witnessed tonight. A cook in the chinkie I went to went berserk and chopped of the manager’s head, or something like that. What he wouldn’t do, at that first encounter, is begin: Well, it was a peaceful, barlmy night, and after I had looked in the fridge and discovered there was nothing in it which grabbed my fancy, I decided to visit my local Chinese restaurant. I didn’t use a coat because . . . Well, he wouldn’t would he? Yet that is what happens all-too-often in first-person narrations, and usually the narrator has no reason to write down (in novel form) what he is recounting.
Yes, I know I’m getting a little bit anal about it. But at least in my novel (more or less my first and only novel so far, if you ignore one or two earlier and not very good efforts - details of how to get a copy below) at least the first-person narrations (there are two) and the third-person narration are ‘built into’ the structure of the novel and I like to think they make logical sense. I mean that is the problem: I don’t find writing, as in getting words down on paper, at all difficult. But there’s obviously far more to ‘writing’ than simply getting the words down on paper: there is though, internal coherence and cohesion, ensuring that characters speak and behave in character. If a first-person narrator simply tells his story and there is no apparent reason just why he should tell his story, well, I find that rather unconvincing. Precious? Moi?
. . .
Here are details as to where you can get my novel, neatly bound and printed courtesy of Lulu.com. If you visit this address, you might see two novels on offer. Don’t be fooled: they are one and the same except that I changed the title and the blurb on the back to make it more attractive to anyone considering buying it, which, to date, seems to be exactly no one. But I boy can dream. I have also been through it once or twice and added or removed a comma here and there, and the most recent is Love: A fiction.
Now I’m off to read all about young Stalin.
. . .
Incidentally, I know I joke about commas, but they are important. The add to the clarity of a piece by indication where in a sentence we should pause. Often they can even change the meaning of a sentence entirely. For example: these two sentences are not the same and what happens varies in both.
1) The police rounded up the doctors who had been dealing drugs and jailed them.
2) The police rounded up the doctors, who had been dealing drugs, and jailed them.
In example number one, the police round up only those doctors who had been dealing drugs. In example number two, the police round up all doctors, because they had all been dealing drugs. So this talk of adding and removing commas is not at all precious (although I’ll stick with my joke). There an anecdote about Oscar Wilde once being asked what he had done all day. He replied that he had spent all the morning considering whether to add a comma to a certain sentence to make it read better. After lunch he had spent all afternoon considering whether to remove it again, and had finally decided to do so. And talking of Oscar Wilde, I once came across a quote from him which no one else seems to have heard. Many know his dictum (which I believe, in fact, he cribbed from someone else - naughty, Oscar): A cynic know the price of everything and the value of nothing. But he also said about cynics (and this explains one aspect of the Nazis): Sentimentality is a bank holiday from cynicism, which in my view hits the nail on the head.
Talking about Oscar cribbing dictums and saying, there is also the story of the American painter James Whistler who settled in England and made it his home. He had a rather sharp tongue and was very witty, but was annoyed that Oscar Wilde would often steal his witticisms and pass them off as his own. One day when Oscar was still up at Oxford, he was sitting at Whistler’s feet at some soiree or other and Whistler made a witty comment.
Oh, I wish I had said that, said Oscar.
You will, Oscar, you will, Whistler replied.
. . .
For years I had it in my head that the plural of comma was commata. It’s not, it’s commas. Well!
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
Essert-Romand. Day three - an insight
Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
Those who might be craving an additional insight into brother Mark's character (brother Mark, my favourite of two brothers, is the one who lost his passport within seconds of arriving at Geneva airport but refused categorically to return to chase up the loss when, just ten minutes drive away he discovered what had happened) might be interested in this, an exchange which took place less than three minutes ago.
The scene: we are just three days into our holiday with another 11 days of blissless nothing to do - no obligations, no work to go to, nothing - settled into a very comfortable ski apartment in Essert-Romand, sitting on the balcony overlooking a very pleasant valley, a large glass of pastis at our elbows, the temperature falling a little but still comfortable. I am feeling contented and ask:
Are you enjoying yourself, Mark?
He:
Why do you ask?
Why indeed? Just thought I would pass the time of day. Why on earth did I bother?
Supper is Piedmont tomatoes (Delia's recipe) prepard by me, and chicory salad, prepared by Mark. Why did I ask? I do wonder.
Those who might be craving an additional insight into brother Mark's character (brother Mark, my favourite of two brothers, is the one who lost his passport within seconds of arriving at Geneva airport but refused categorically to return to chase up the loss when, just ten minutes drive away he discovered what had happened) might be interested in this, an exchange which took place less than three minutes ago.
The scene: we are just three days into our holiday with another 11 days of blissless nothing to do - no obligations, no work to go to, nothing - settled into a very comfortable ski apartment in Essert-Romand, sitting on the balcony overlooking a very pleasant valley, a large glass of pastis at our elbows, the temperature falling a little but still comfortable. I am feeling contented and ask:
Are you enjoying yourself, Mark?
He:
Why do you ask?
Why indeed? Just thought I would pass the time of day. Why on earth did I bother?
Supper is Piedmont tomatoes (Delia's recipe) prepard by me, and chicory salad, prepared by Mark. Why did I ask? I do wonder.
Monday, 12 September 2011
Essert-Romand. Day two. And to use a cliche: Greek default and the euro - the endgame
Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
Second day here in the Rhone Alps, so I thought I might dribble on a bit and keep whoever is bloody interested up to speed (Sid and Doris Bonkers for anyone who cares to pick up on the allusion, not that it is in any way significant. But I am keen to get underway a literary tradition of ‘insignificant significance’ - see further dribblings, as yet unpublished, for greater insight, although I should warn you that an essential element in the new literary philosophy of ‘insignificant singificance’ is the notion of ‘pointless insight’)
After a train ride to Gatwick Airport, the highlight of which was being buttonholed by a divorced Russian journalist (her claim) who was on her way to Sicily for alone for a 20-day sojourn and who didn’t stop talking about herself from Clapham Junction to Gatwick, Mark and I flew to Geneva Airport where we encountered our first hiccup.
I am vacationing with my younger brother Mark who I have finally managed to winkle out of his hole for what I believe is a much-needed holiday. For two months earlier this year, he was bedridden with an awful case of shingles and, I think, that persuaded him to give in and come with me. I get on well with Mark, and although I am now almost 62 and he turned 53 in June, I still regard him as ‘my little brother’. Older siblings might know what I am talking about.
But Mark can be quiet particular, and that first hiccup - for him at least, I didn’t give a flying fuck - was that instead of the VW Polo hire car he reckons we were promised by Budget, we ended up with a Skoda Fabia. He was rather put out and suggested, whether seriously or not, that we should complain and insist on a Polo. As, as far as I am concerned, I’ll put up with more or less any car as long as it has four wheels, a working engine and keeps me dry, I didn’t encourage him. So the Skoda it was, and is, and, as you will gather I have no complaints.
A slightly bigger hiccup occurred when we approached the Swiss/French border and Mark went to take out his passport in case the border police of either stripe demanded to see it. He could find it. We pulled in and he searched is jacket high and low, then his bag, then the car, but he still couldn’t find it. He last had it, as must be pretty obvious, when we went through immigration at the airport just 30 minutes earlier but between then and now it had mysteriously gone missing. I offered to turn around and drive back to the airport as we were no more than 10 minutes away, but in that stubborn way he was, he would hear none of it (which for me is a subsidiary mystery - returning to the airport and trying to track it down seemed to me the obvious thing to do).
Then is was the winding schlepp through sunny Alpine road to this little hamlet. It is just on the outskirts of Morzine, but we took a wrong turning somewhere and drove right into the town, arriving after dark when everything was lit up and made it all look like a Hollywood Alpine film set designed by someone with more money than taste. After I had finally persuaded him to ask directions to Essert-Romand (he was brought up in France and is bilingual in English and French but is oddly pathologically averse to bothering people by way of asking directions) we reached the little hamlet. There was one last diversion when instead of taking a turning just 30m up a steep hill off the main road, we carried on for anther few kilometres deep into the mountains. We then came across a gang of young men from whom, again at my urging, Mark solicited directions and finally arrived at our apartment.
It is very nice and comfortable. The first day, yesterday, we spent doing absolutely nothing - which is as it should be - and today we visited the local Carrefour to stock up on gin and tonic and all the things that go with gin and tonic (moussaka, kitchen towels, red peppers, crisps etc.)
. . .
What is quite noticeable is how expensive ordinary goods are here in France. Given that the pound is trading 1 to 1.13 euros, prices seem to have gone up quite remarkable in these past few years. I was in France last July, but I didn’t do very much shopping. But my brother and I went out today for a general shop-up and for pretty much very few goods I parted with 46.40 euros. That’s more than £41. Ironcially, the most expensive item - a 75cl - was still cheaper than I could have bought it in England, so the other goods - red peppers, jar of anchovies, milk, break, garlic, nuts and crisps (and one or two other things I can’t be arsed to record at this point) were up in price. This on the day when the shares in French banks are plummeting, given that far too many of them hold Greek bonds. I wonder whether all the futures bods in the City have now laid their bets as to how soon the Greece will default?
The panic started when spokesmen for both coalition parties in Germany talked of ‘an orderly default by Greece’ no longer being out of the question. And bearing in mind the old saw that one should never believe anything until it’s officially denied, a default be Greece in now a racing certainty. About the only game in town is which one of the German government’s tame banks and cronies should be shielded from the fallout. That’s what will be getting hearts racing in Berlin and Frankfurt. Oddly enough, I was also on holiday in September when Britain was turfed out of the ERM (which, in hindsight, was a blessing in disguise).
Second day here in the Rhone Alps, so I thought I might dribble on a bit and keep whoever is bloody interested up to speed (Sid and Doris Bonkers for anyone who cares to pick up on the allusion, not that it is in any way significant. But I am keen to get underway a literary tradition of ‘insignificant significance’ - see further dribblings, as yet unpublished, for greater insight, although I should warn you that an essential element in the new literary philosophy of ‘insignificant singificance’ is the notion of ‘pointless insight’)
After a train ride to Gatwick Airport, the highlight of which was being buttonholed by a divorced Russian journalist (her claim) who was on her way to Sicily for alone for a 20-day sojourn and who didn’t stop talking about herself from Clapham Junction to Gatwick, Mark and I flew to Geneva Airport where we encountered our first hiccup.
I am vacationing with my younger brother Mark who I have finally managed to winkle out of his hole for what I believe is a much-needed holiday. For two months earlier this year, he was bedridden with an awful case of shingles and, I think, that persuaded him to give in and come with me. I get on well with Mark, and although I am now almost 62 and he turned 53 in June, I still regard him as ‘my little brother’. Older siblings might know what I am talking about.
But Mark can be quiet particular, and that first hiccup - for him at least, I didn’t give a flying fuck - was that instead of the VW Polo hire car he reckons we were promised by Budget, we ended up with a Skoda Fabia. He was rather put out and suggested, whether seriously or not, that we should complain and insist on a Polo. As, as far as I am concerned, I’ll put up with more or less any car as long as it has four wheels, a working engine and keeps me dry, I didn’t encourage him. So the Skoda it was, and is, and, as you will gather I have no complaints.
A slightly bigger hiccup occurred when we approached the Swiss/French border and Mark went to take out his passport in case the border police of either stripe demanded to see it. He could find it. We pulled in and he searched is jacket high and low, then his bag, then the car, but he still couldn’t find it. He last had it, as must be pretty obvious, when we went through immigration at the airport just 30 minutes earlier but between then and now it had mysteriously gone missing. I offered to turn around and drive back to the airport as we were no more than 10 minutes away, but in that stubborn way he was, he would hear none of it (which for me is a subsidiary mystery - returning to the airport and trying to track it down seemed to me the obvious thing to do).
Then is was the winding schlepp through sunny Alpine road to this little hamlet. It is just on the outskirts of Morzine, but we took a wrong turning somewhere and drove right into the town, arriving after dark when everything was lit up and made it all look like a Hollywood Alpine film set designed by someone with more money than taste. After I had finally persuaded him to ask directions to Essert-Romand (he was brought up in France and is bilingual in English and French but is oddly pathologically averse to bothering people by way of asking directions) we reached the little hamlet. There was one last diversion when instead of taking a turning just 30m up a steep hill off the main road, we carried on for anther few kilometres deep into the mountains. We then came across a gang of young men from whom, again at my urging, Mark solicited directions and finally arrived at our apartment.
It is very nice and comfortable. The first day, yesterday, we spent doing absolutely nothing - which is as it should be - and today we visited the local Carrefour to stock up on gin and tonic and all the things that go with gin and tonic (moussaka, kitchen towels, red peppers, crisps etc.)
. . .
What is quite noticeable is how expensive ordinary goods are here in France. Given that the pound is trading 1 to 1.13 euros, prices seem to have gone up quite remarkable in these past few years. I was in France last July, but I didn’t do very much shopping. But my brother and I went out today for a general shop-up and for pretty much very few goods I parted with 46.40 euros. That’s more than £41. Ironcially, the most expensive item - a 75cl - was still cheaper than I could have bought it in England, so the other goods - red peppers, jar of anchovies, milk, break, garlic, nuts and crisps (and one or two other things I can’t be arsed to record at this point) were up in price. This on the day when the shares in French banks are plummeting, given that far too many of them hold Greek bonds. I wonder whether all the futures bods in the City have now laid their bets as to how soon the Greece will default?
The panic started when spokesmen for both coalition parties in Germany talked of ‘an orderly default by Greece’ no longer being out of the question. And bearing in mind the old saw that one should never believe anything until it’s officially denied, a default be Greece in now a racing certainty. About the only game in town is which one of the German government’s tame banks and cronies should be shielded from the fallout. That’s what will be getting hearts racing in Berlin and Frankfurt. Oddly enough, I was also on holiday in September when Britain was turfed out of the ERM (which, in hindsight, was a blessing in disguise).
Saturday, 3 September 2011
CIA and MI6 not above doing business with whoever if the results are right
A while ago, I trawled the net for whatever pictures I could find of various world leaders schmoozing the Gaddafi. I came across several and published them. In view of today’s lead news on the BBC News website, I thought it might be worth publishing them again. What was that news? Well, despite our ostensible distaste for the various cutthroats around the world we choose to label as dictators, we are not above getting into bed with them when and if. And it seems that’s just what America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 were doing for several years before Gaddafi’s recent difficulties. You can read more here.
In the meantime, here again are thoses piccies:
Blair greets his old mucker Muammar - God, I've missed you - no, I don’t have a gun in my pocket
Anything Tony can do - well, so can Barak. He manages to look sincere - go team Obama
... and don't forget good ol' Nicolas - can't let those bloody roast beefs steal all the glory
When it comes to reformed characters guys like Putin will yield to no one. How's it going, my old mate Muammar?
Finally, of course, Brown might have come late to the office of Prime Minister - or later than he demanded - but he was just as willing to kiss arse as his predecessor
. . .
Off to France in seven days for a well-earned break, in the Haut Savoie just south of the Swiss border, where loads and load and loads of folk go skiing, but as in the middle two weeks of September there should be no snow whatsoever, I hope to God I don’t bump into any Brits. I don’t know what it is – perhaps it is my German blood – but I do find a great many Brits I meet abroad a complete embarrassment. The middle-class ones get very pretentious as the food and wine, and treat almost everything French as though it were manna from Heaven. ‘Lord, the French know how to live, could teach us a thing or two’. Er, no, actually, if we Brits regarded food as one of life’s pleasures rather than as mere sustenance and if, consequently, we gave a little more care and attention to its preparation, we, too, could eat like the French. As for the wine, there is as much bad wine around in France as in England. The main difference as far as wine is concerned between the French (and Italians and Spanish) and we Brits is that they will drink a glass or two and leave it at that, but we feel obliged to drink the whole bottle, start a second and see just how fast and far we can get off our faces with – the usual Brit touch – for the minimum outlay.
As for – well, I am too delicate to lay myself open to a charge of snobbery beyond the call of duty so I shall restrict myself to referring to this next group as the ‘not middle-class’, all they seem to want to do is to get as pissed as possible as fast as possible. ‘But didn’t you just say that about the middle-classes’ I hear you ask? No, not quite. The crucial difference is that the ‘not middle-class’ don’t get all hoity-toity about drinking wine whereas the middle-class like to imbue it with some kind of spurious cultural significance. ‘Lord, isn’t it great to live a little, I mean really live properly, you know the French could teach us a thing or two.’
I shall carry on doing my puzzles work while on holiday which means I had to dig out a chalet with wireless internet access. So, if I take any nice piccies, I shall post them here on this blog. Oh, and I am going with my younger brother who attended French schools for five years as a lad and speaks French. I , on the other hand, don’t.
. . .
And just for the craic, a picture of my son taken nine years ago which I have been dicking around with.
In the meantime, here again are thoses piccies:
. . .
Off to France in seven days for a well-earned break, in the Haut Savoie just south of the Swiss border, where loads and load and loads of folk go skiing, but as in the middle two weeks of September there should be no snow whatsoever, I hope to God I don’t bump into any Brits. I don’t know what it is – perhaps it is my German blood – but I do find a great many Brits I meet abroad a complete embarrassment. The middle-class ones get very pretentious as the food and wine, and treat almost everything French as though it were manna from Heaven. ‘Lord, the French know how to live, could teach us a thing or two’. Er, no, actually, if we Brits regarded food as one of life’s pleasures rather than as mere sustenance and if, consequently, we gave a little more care and attention to its preparation, we, too, could eat like the French. As for the wine, there is as much bad wine around in France as in England. The main difference as far as wine is concerned between the French (and Italians and Spanish) and we Brits is that they will drink a glass or two and leave it at that, but we feel obliged to drink the whole bottle, start a second and see just how fast and far we can get off our faces with – the usual Brit touch – for the minimum outlay.
As for – well, I am too delicate to lay myself open to a charge of snobbery beyond the call of duty so I shall restrict myself to referring to this next group as the ‘not middle-class’, all they seem to want to do is to get as pissed as possible as fast as possible. ‘But didn’t you just say that about the middle-classes’ I hear you ask? No, not quite. The crucial difference is that the ‘not middle-class’ don’t get all hoity-toity about drinking wine whereas the middle-class like to imbue it with some kind of spurious cultural significance. ‘Lord, isn’t it great to live a little, I mean really live properly, you know the French could teach us a thing or two.’
I shall carry on doing my puzzles work while on holiday which means I had to dig out a chalet with wireless internet access. So, if I take any nice piccies, I shall post them here on this blog. Oh, and I am going with my younger brother who attended French schools for five years as a lad and speaks French. I , on the other hand, don’t.
. . .
And just for the craic, a picture of my son taken nine years ago which I have been dicking around with.
Thursday, 1 September 2011
A silly season? Anything but, my sweethearts. And God rot these aches and pains
Whatever happened to the silly season. Traditionally, hacks and the media obliged to employ them are so hard up for hard news stories in August that they resort to all sorts of crap to fill their newslists. It’s where we get the phrase ‘skateboarding ducks’ from, although I have no doubt at all that somewhere in Tarahoma, Iowa, some idiot is as I write (or you read) fine-tuning his programme to get a troupe of ducks to dance the 
Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies from The Nutcracker Suite. He, or in these post-feminist days even she, was probably spurred on by happening upon this blog and resolving to outdo in wackiness the moron I described a few entries ago who intends to die the fattest person alive. Incidentally, by describing that particular idiot as a moron, I am, make no mistake, skating on thin ice. Here in the Western World in which we lay great stress on ‘individuality’ and ‘expressing yourself’ and the outright insistence that whatever bollocks I write is in no way more important than the bollocks you write, however much it is 24-carat bollocks, it is not just in poor taste publicly to question someone’s intelligence, we are in very real danger of contravening human rights legislation. While many in Libya and Syria are giving their lives in order that their fellow man and woman might in future live in freedom, all we in the West can think of doing with the freedom we take for granted is to see how much more stupid we can be than the next man.
But, as usual, I have digressed. I began by asking whatever had happened to the silly season, and I did so because August has been anything but news-free: there is the ongoing trouble in Libya and Syria, the discomfort of America’s East Coast who were forcefully taught that not being poor and black doesn’t save you from the ravages of a hurricane, the tragedy become farce but now again become tragedy of the imminent collapse of Europe’s economy what with all the tippy-toeing around the problems of the euro, the widespread looting here in Britain, the shock to the U.S. that as far as the ‘credit ratings agencies’ are concerned, that country’s government and how it runs the economy is no more trustworthy than your average Mid-West snake oil salesman. And finally, as it were to add insult to injury, there’s the fact that for the fourth year running summer here in Britain has been a complete washout. So take your talk of silly seasons and shoved it where the sun don’t shine. We should, of course, look on the bright side: after Channel 4 finally canned Big Brother, reasoning that the programme has run its course, served its purpose and that the station was in danger of flogging a dead horse, up popped Five to buy up the rights and carry on regardless. And, I’m happy to report (though I must admit when I tested the waters, I could stand no more then seven minutes of it) it is even worse than it ever was.
. . .
OK, so as I’m not even 62 and shan’t even reach that oh-so-glorious milestone for more than two months, I am being a bit previous as we say here in England (though my father will be turning in his grave to hear me adopt the phrase, once the slang of uneducated ruffians, then a knowing number adopted by educated ruffians, and now not far off what you might well hear in a BBC Radio 4 commentary, still every-so-slightly jokey, but with overtones that the speaker might be a tad dull but he’s most definitely also a tad street. Christ, the petty nuances of modern life. But I was going to rattle on a little about began ‘old age’ and so I’d better get to the point sharpish for fear of being prematurely diagnosed with the onset of dementia. Now why would I consider pontificating about old age. Well, for one, the increasing number of vague and not so vague aches and pains my body suffers daily. And what’s all that about? Lord, there was a time, it seems no many years ago, but was most surely at least 20 when, if needs be, I could shag all night and still go to work after just two hours sleep. I was - this is, I think important - still unmarried and would, admittedly, spend the rest of the day feeling like a rag doll, but that isn’t the point. But now? Now the first steps downstairs for my morning cup of tea are tentative, to say the least, with my heels feeling as though I had spent the previous ten hours running non-stop. Then there is my growing stoop. What’s all that about then? It has got to the point where my son, still only 12 but sadly just as facetious and heartless as I was at that age, feels the way I get up from a chair and walk is worth at least five minutes of remorseless ribbing. And what makes it all the less bearable is that no amount of loving advice along the lines of ‘don’t laugh to much, my lad, you’ll get there, too, one day, mark my words’ makes the not a blind bit of difference. He is just a young lad enjoying the last few months of life pre-puberty when everything is a hoot, and I can’t see him paying any attention at all to my wise advice for at least an other 30 years, by which time I shall be dead, or if not dead, in no state do do much except slobber over my soup and repeat myself till even the most charitable of my nurses loses patients.
So what is it all about? I go to the gym three times a week
and have done for many years, and I don’t just go through the motions but make sure I really do get a sweat up, but still I have been unable to avoid any of that pissy set of aches and pains which will afflict us all. Laugh if you will, but a few years ago I really thought that if I did, as I now do, go to the gym conscientiously, I might somehow avoid them. Some bloody hope. I would like to end this entry on something positive, but, you know, I really can’t off-hand think of anything. Good night and God bless.
But, as usual, I have digressed. I began by asking whatever had happened to the silly season, and I did so because August has been anything but news-free: there is the ongoing trouble in Libya and Syria, the discomfort of America’s East Coast who were forcefully taught that not being poor and black doesn’t save you from the ravages of a hurricane, the tragedy become farce but now again become tragedy of the imminent collapse of Europe’s economy what with all the tippy-toeing around the problems of the euro, the widespread looting here in Britain, the shock to the U.S. that as far as the ‘credit ratings agencies’ are concerned, that country’s government and how it runs the economy is no more trustworthy than your average Mid-West snake oil salesman. And finally, as it were to add insult to injury, there’s the fact that for the fourth year running summer here in Britain has been a complete washout. So take your talk of silly seasons and shoved it where the sun don’t shine. We should, of course, look on the bright side: after Channel 4 finally canned Big Brother, reasoning that the programme has run its course, served its purpose and that the station was in danger of flogging a dead horse, up popped Five to buy up the rights and carry on regardless. And, I’m happy to report (though I must admit when I tested the waters, I could stand no more then seven minutes of it) it is even worse than it ever was.
. . .
OK, so as I’m not even 62 and shan’t even reach that oh-so-glorious milestone for more than two months, I am being a bit previous as we say here in England (though my father will be turning in his grave to hear me adopt the phrase, once the slang of uneducated ruffians, then a knowing number adopted by educated ruffians, and now not far off what you might well hear in a BBC Radio 4 commentary, still every-so-slightly jokey, but with overtones that the speaker might be a tad dull but he’s most definitely also a tad street. Christ, the petty nuances of modern life. But I was going to rattle on a little about began ‘old age’ and so I’d better get to the point sharpish for fear of being prematurely diagnosed with the onset of dementia. Now why would I consider pontificating about old age. Well, for one, the increasing number of vague and not so vague aches and pains my body suffers daily. And what’s all that about? Lord, there was a time, it seems no many years ago, but was most surely at least 20 when, if needs be, I could shag all night and still go to work after just two hours sleep. I was - this is, I think important - still unmarried and would, admittedly, spend the rest of the day feeling like a rag doll, but that isn’t the point. But now? Now the first steps downstairs for my morning cup of tea are tentative, to say the least, with my heels feeling as though I had spent the previous ten hours running non-stop. Then there is my growing stoop. What’s all that about then? It has got to the point where my son, still only 12 but sadly just as facetious and heartless as I was at that age, feels the way I get up from a chair and walk is worth at least five minutes of remorseless ribbing. And what makes it all the less bearable is that no amount of loving advice along the lines of ‘don’t laugh to much, my lad, you’ll get there, too, one day, mark my words’ makes the not a blind bit of difference. He is just a young lad enjoying the last few months of life pre-puberty when everything is a hoot, and I can’t see him paying any attention at all to my wise advice for at least an other 30 years, by which time I shall be dead, or if not dead, in no state do do much except slobber over my soup and repeat myself till even the most charitable of my nurses loses patients.
So what is it all about? I go to the gym three times a week
Saturday, 27 August 2011
And one more, just for the craic, why the misery of others cheers us up and filthy, filthy Brits
It’s Saturday morning, I’m off to London a little earlier this week, I always miss my children so here’s another short, this one for parents and sentimental saps everywhere.
Actually, I could quite get into posting a short video or two on this blog lark. See what I can come up with.
. . .
I'm sure we have all been glued to the television screen these past few days what with the mounting misery taking place in the world. And there's nothing like the misery of others to cheer us up as we realise that however dull, frustrating, uninspired and essentially lifeless our existence is it could be a lot worse. The two major stories for the past few days have been Libya and the threat of mass destruction to the good Yankee folk who have the misfortune to live on the East Coast. Granted there has been untold misery in Northern Kenya and Southern Somalia as millions - I believe it is now millions - have nothing to eat, but for us in the West Somalia and Kenya are just a tad too far away to elicit more than just a resigned 'God, isn't life bloody! Makes you think, doesn't it'. Then there were the dramatic events in Egypt, but Egypt, too, seems rather distant. And anyway, despite the limited viollence earlier this year, their dictator was got rid of apparently quite easily with no incidents of wholesale massacre. But it's a whole different matter in Libya which arouses our interest rather more in that it is actually 'quite close'. Sitting just south of Sicily and even closer to Malta (which ran a ferry service to Benghazi until recently) we can relate to Libya. And many Brits of a certain age - those who are now between 65 and 85 - might well have a certain sentimental affection for Libya as the place where they got roaring drunk for the first time and might even have lost their cherry while serving in the forces during the war and its aftermath. ('Ah, Tobruk Tessa, what she couldn't do with a ... well, better leave it there.') Those feeling a little argumentative might argue that in that case Tunisia is almost 'closer', to which I would retort that that country's revolution also passed off comparatively peacefully and, anyway, the French had and have their fingers all over Tunisia which rather spoils it for us Brits.
But for the horror of revolution, Libya fits the bill neatly, and it's a comfort that we are able to see it all on our TV screens, which is as close to all the misery as we will get, which is just the way we like it. Which brings me to Hurricane Irene and the havoc it is wreaking on America's East Coast. We Brits know a thing or two about rain but this is ridiculous. And rather as the horror in Libya oddly afffects us more than the human misery in Somalia, the scenes of destruction in North Carolina and - heavens! - New York seem curiously more appalling than when we see virtually identical footage shot in Florida and Lousiana. I mean those Southern States have several hurricanes every year and they are geared up for it. But the East Coast? New York? Hurricanes? Surely not? Isn't that where America's intellectuals live? Can't have that can we? Granted that the mainstream news media are apt to exaggerate these days - in fact, I believe it is written into their contracts that everything is bigged up and then some - but I recall hearing the astounding snippet that one million New Yorkers are fleeing their homes for safer parts. But where are those safer parts? All I know is that beyond New York and to the west lie New Jersey, where no New Yorker would care to be seen dead, and the Catskills where - I think I've got this right - numerous Jewish comedians and playwrights honed their talent. Is that where they have gone?
. . .
I have strayed from the path. What brought on this particular sermon/rant/diatribe/delete as applicable is that I am sitting on a train bound for Bristol where I am due to pick up my car and carry on to London. (Long story, but briefly, my brother has inherited all the property, goods and chattels of an elderly bachelor friend of the family who died last year and having no use for a rather smart Vauxhall Astra automatic which was part of the package has given it to me. Yes, that's right, he gave it to me. Lovely chap, my brother. So I now have three cars to my name, and must now decide what to do with one of them. But that's all for another time.)
My journey didn't get off to a good start in that my wife dropped me off at the station one hour and 15 minutes before my train was due to leave for what she regards as 'good reasons' but which I regard as nothing but provocation. In the even it turned out an earlier train was leaving Bodmin Parkway for Bristol and although my ticket specifies that I can only catch the train I am booked for, I decided to chance my arm. When the ticket collector came - officially train manager - came along, a bottle blonde Mancunian, I immediately fessed up and asked humbly that as my wife had dropped me at the station earlier, would it be all right ... Yes, she said, but she was only travelling as far as Plymouth and I would have to ask the next ticket collector/train manager. And, she added, he was new and stuck to the rules, so good luck. And so he did, and so I got off the train at Plymouth (the station is as dreary as the town) and waited for the 18.23 for Leeds, which, as usually happens on these occasions when one detail becomes out of kilter arrived 35 minutes late.
What got me thinking about Libya was the state of the lavatory at the end of my carriage. There was no water, so it couldn't be flushed and it had been used by quite a few others by the time I got around to using it. And its state was not a one-off. I have been driving to London to work for these past few years but for many, many years I used to catch the train at Exeter. And all too often the loo was somehow out of order. But the Brits don't seem to care. How can I make that claim? Because if they did care, the train companies would ensure that their lavatories were always clean, and if they didn't, the public would put pressure on them to do so. But the public doesn't. At the end of the day, the British public would far rather have a good old moan about the state of the loos on the train - and Lord it was late! And Lord the state of the carriage - than actually get someting done.
How did I get to Libya from there? Well, simple really: whenever I've seen coverage of the war, the country seems to consist of God-awful scrubland and desert and the towns seem so down-at-heel that they, too, could be described as scrubland. Certainly, the country, thanks to its oil wealth, had modern hospitals and certainly Gaddafi and his sons and daughter lived very high on the hog. But it would seem the Abdul Public wasn't quite as fortunate.
Years ago, I went to Greece, to Corfu, in September, and it seemed to me that because it was getting towards the end of the season and because its 19th-century sewage system couldn't cope with the 20th-century hordes of, mainly British, tourists, the whole place stank of shit. I spent the second week in a small more or less purpose-built resort on the north of the island - pupose-built several decades earlier, I should add - and running to the sea was a small stream. This stream was thick and grey and stank atrociously, yet not feet away Brit tourists were sunbathing on the grass. Sadly, the Brits don't seem to care.
Actually, I could quite get into posting a short video or two on this blog lark. See what I can come up with.
. . .
I'm sure we have all been glued to the television screen these past few days what with the mounting misery taking place in the world. And there's nothing like the misery of others to cheer us up as we realise that however dull, frustrating, uninspired and essentially lifeless our existence is it could be a lot worse. The two major stories for the past few days have been Libya and the threat of mass destruction to the good Yankee folk who have the misfortune to live on the East Coast. Granted there has been untold misery in Northern Kenya and Southern Somalia as millions - I believe it is now millions - have nothing to eat, but for us in the West Somalia and Kenya are just a tad too far away to elicit more than just a resigned 'God, isn't life bloody! Makes you think, doesn't it'. Then there were the dramatic events in Egypt, but Egypt, too, seems rather distant. And anyway, despite the limited viollence earlier this year, their dictator was got rid of apparently quite easily with no incidents of wholesale massacre. But it's a whole different matter in Libya which arouses our interest rather more in that it is actually 'quite close'. Sitting just south of Sicily and even closer to Malta (which ran a ferry service to Benghazi until recently) we can relate to Libya. And many Brits of a certain age - those who are now between 65 and 85 - might well have a certain sentimental affection for Libya as the place where they got roaring drunk for the first time and might even have lost their cherry while serving in the forces during the war and its aftermath. ('Ah, Tobruk Tessa, what she couldn't do with a ... well, better leave it there.') Those feeling a little argumentative might argue that in that case Tunisia is almost 'closer', to which I would retort that that country's revolution also passed off comparatively peacefully and, anyway, the French had and have their fingers all over Tunisia which rather spoils it for us Brits.
But for the horror of revolution, Libya fits the bill neatly, and it's a comfort that we are able to see it all on our TV screens, which is as close to all the misery as we will get, which is just the way we like it. Which brings me to Hurricane Irene and the havoc it is wreaking on America's East Coast. We Brits know a thing or two about rain but this is ridiculous. And rather as the horror in Libya oddly afffects us more than the human misery in Somalia, the scenes of destruction in North Carolina and - heavens! - New York seem curiously more appalling than when we see virtually identical footage shot in Florida and Lousiana. I mean those Southern States have several hurricanes every year and they are geared up for it. But the East Coast? New York? Hurricanes? Surely not? Isn't that where America's intellectuals live? Can't have that can we? Granted that the mainstream news media are apt to exaggerate these days - in fact, I believe it is written into their contracts that everything is bigged up and then some - but I recall hearing the astounding snippet that one million New Yorkers are fleeing their homes for safer parts. But where are those safer parts? All I know is that beyond New York and to the west lie New Jersey, where no New Yorker would care to be seen dead, and the Catskills where - I think I've got this right - numerous Jewish comedians and playwrights honed their talent. Is that where they have gone?
. . .
I have strayed from the path. What brought on this particular sermon/rant/diatribe/delete as applicable is that I am sitting on a train bound for Bristol where I am due to pick up my car and carry on to London. (Long story, but briefly, my brother has inherited all the property, goods and chattels of an elderly bachelor friend of the family who died last year and having no use for a rather smart Vauxhall Astra automatic which was part of the package has given it to me. Yes, that's right, he gave it to me. Lovely chap, my brother. So I now have three cars to my name, and must now decide what to do with one of them. But that's all for another time.)
My journey didn't get off to a good start in that my wife dropped me off at the station one hour and 15 minutes before my train was due to leave for what she regards as 'good reasons' but which I regard as nothing but provocation. In the even it turned out an earlier train was leaving Bodmin Parkway for Bristol and although my ticket specifies that I can only catch the train I am booked for, I decided to chance my arm. When the ticket collector came - officially train manager - came along, a bottle blonde Mancunian, I immediately fessed up and asked humbly that as my wife had dropped me at the station earlier, would it be all right ... Yes, she said, but she was only travelling as far as Plymouth and I would have to ask the next ticket collector/train manager. And, she added, he was new and stuck to the rules, so good luck. And so he did, and so I got off the train at Plymouth (the station is as dreary as the town) and waited for the 18.23 for Leeds, which, as usually happens on these occasions when one detail becomes out of kilter arrived 35 minutes late.
What got me thinking about Libya was the state of the lavatory at the end of my carriage. There was no water, so it couldn't be flushed and it had been used by quite a few others by the time I got around to using it. And its state was not a one-off. I have been driving to London to work for these past few years but for many, many years I used to catch the train at Exeter. And all too often the loo was somehow out of order. But the Brits don't seem to care. How can I make that claim? Because if they did care, the train companies would ensure that their lavatories were always clean, and if they didn't, the public would put pressure on them to do so. But the public doesn't. At the end of the day, the British public would far rather have a good old moan about the state of the loos on the train - and Lord it was late! And Lord the state of the carriage - than actually get someting done.
How did I get to Libya from there? Well, simple really: whenever I've seen coverage of the war, the country seems to consist of God-awful scrubland and desert and the towns seem so down-at-heel that they, too, could be described as scrubland. Certainly, the country, thanks to its oil wealth, had modern hospitals and certainly Gaddafi and his sons and daughter lived very high on the hog. But it would seem the Abdul Public wasn't quite as fortunate.
Years ago, I went to Greece, to Corfu, in September, and it seemed to me that because it was getting towards the end of the season and because its 19th-century sewage system couldn't cope with the 20th-century hordes of, mainly British, tourists, the whole place stank of shit. I spent the second week in a small more or less purpose-built resort on the north of the island - pupose-built several decades earlier, I should add - and running to the sea was a small stream. This stream was thick and grey and stank atrociously, yet not feet away Brit tourists were sunbathing on the grass. Sadly, the Brits don't seem to care.
Friday, 26 August 2011
Steve Jobs steps down: a good excuse to rant about the smug, smug, smug ‘Mac community’ (Lord, I loathe them). Meanwhile, we stick two fingers up at the UN, more or less. And a short film from nowhere
I have preferred Apple Macs ever since I knew about computers, and although my first PC was a Mac clone, I bought it only because I couldn’t afford an authentic Mac. What I do not like, however, is the ‘Mac community’ as they style themselves with typical self-regard and importance. I mention this because Steve Jobs - I’m inclined to be particularly bitchy and write St Eve Jobs - is now so ill that he has stepped down as CEO of Apple. Predictably, the share price fell and Apple lost $15bn of its stock market value when the news was released. That’s how important Jobs was to the company. As far as the man himself is concerned, I simply wish him well and as much good health as a
man who has survived a liver transplant and pancreatic cancer can expect. There is no doubt that he was Apple, that it was his personality which drove the company and sustained its success, and that it was his vision of what might be which made Appe products innovative and unique. But there is also no doubting that the whole smug, self-satisfied ‘Mac community’ thing also derived from Jobs. The essence of the ‘Mac community’ - such is my loathing for it and its attitudes that I can’t bring myself to drop the inverted commas - is that ‘we are the best, we know we are the best, we are special because we are the best, if you are not one of us, you are not worth bothering with, but the chances are that if you are not one of us, you won’t even understand why we look down on you and don’t bother with you’. Admittedly, the Windows operating system is to the Mac OS what a haycart is to a Porsche and also admittedly Apple’s insistence on quality pays off in spades. So its products might be more expensive at the outset, almost double the price of equivalent non-Apple products, but they do tend to last longer, although that is not to say the Apple hasn’t also produced some clunkers. But none of that, in my eyes, can in the slightest justify the smug self-regard of the ‘Mac community’ and its unshakeable conviction that it is the Chosen Few. Dear soul,
members of the ‘Mac community’ are insufferable and their existence comes dangerously close to justifying murder. In that respect they are rather like Observer and Guardian readers who appear to regard themselves intellectually and morally as several cuts above the rest of us mere mortals, and one’s failure to acknowledge as much is all the evidence needed that they are right and we are wrong. And I’ll repeat that I can’t shake off my suspicion that the whole ‘Mac community’ ethos stems from St Eve himself.
As for the company, I have no doubt that it will survive for many years. Ford survived superbly after Henry Ford’s death. But I doubt whether it will reach the heights it did under Jobs, however much it pains me to say so.
. . .
As for Apple products, I have always bought second-hand (and, incidentally, a mark of the rather nauseating streak which dislike in Apple is that it is responsible for coming up with that horribly twee euphemism for second-hand: ‘pre-loved’. Yuk). There is only one reason for that: they are just so much cheaper, and if you use your nous when buying, you can get a computer (or iPod or whatever you’re buying) in pretty good nick. And as nothing seems to date faster than new technology, you are still getting something very useful. For example, I recently got rid of my two G4 laptops and have bought Intel machines. And one of the laptops was a top-of-the-range Powerbook when it appeared (I bought a refurbished model from Cancom i.e. more or less news but quite a bit cheaper). But when it comes to doing what the vast majority of us do on a desktop or laptop - write letters and surf the web - a G4 or even a G3 will do the job just as well. Yes, I know there are people out there who record music and edit video on their computer, but I think the vast majority don’t - they just surf the net and word process for which any eight-year-old computer will do just as well. One of the more remarkable marketing coups of recent years has been to persuade us saps to part with oodles of moolah and buy a tip-top computing machine hardly any of us needs. And as a chap who has recently bought a neat little eMachines 10in netbook I don’t need and will rarely, if ever use, to add to my line-up of two Intel Macs - a Macbook and a Macbook Pro - a Samsung Windows 7 laptop and a works Lenovo which can log into the the network in London, I must step forward and identify myself as one of those suckers with a great deal more money than sense (which does not acutally mean I am weatlhy. Just stupid). Now how’s that for humiliating honesty?
. . .
The hunt for Col Gaddafi goes on and the latest I have heard is that British jets are bombing the lad’s bunker compound in Sirte, his hometown. Well, I would like to see that back of him as much as everyone else and there’s no doubt that his supporters will carry on fighting until there is firm news that he is dead or has been captured. But wasn’t the UN mandate specific on what Britain and France should be doing and, more to the point, should not be doing in Libya. I seem to remember it was something about doing what it could to protect the ordinary Libyan population. Well, bombing the lad’s bunker compound in Sirte seems to me well beyond that remit and then some. Or have I got it all wrong. Are we, perhaps, defending Gaddafi's human rights?
. . .
A throwaway something:
As for the company, I have no doubt that it will survive for many years. Ford survived superbly after Henry Ford’s death. But I doubt whether it will reach the heights it did under Jobs, however much it pains me to say so.
. . .
As for Apple products, I have always bought second-hand (and, incidentally, a mark of the rather nauseating streak which dislike in Apple is that it is responsible for coming up with that horribly twee euphemism for second-hand: ‘pre-loved’. Yuk). There is only one reason for that: they are just so much cheaper, and if you use your nous when buying, you can get a computer (or iPod or whatever you’re buying) in pretty good nick. And as nothing seems to date faster than new technology, you are still getting something very useful. For example, I recently got rid of my two G4 laptops and have bought Intel machines. And one of the laptops was a top-of-the-range Powerbook when it appeared (I bought a refurbished model from Cancom i.e. more or less news but quite a bit cheaper). But when it comes to doing what the vast majority of us do on a desktop or laptop - write letters and surf the web - a G4 or even a G3 will do the job just as well. Yes, I know there are people out there who record music and edit video on their computer, but I think the vast majority don’t - they just surf the net and word process for which any eight-year-old computer will do just as well. One of the more remarkable marketing coups of recent years has been to persuade us saps to part with oodles of moolah and buy a tip-top computing machine hardly any of us needs. And as a chap who has recently bought a neat little eMachines 10in netbook I don’t need and will rarely, if ever use, to add to my line-up of two Intel Macs - a Macbook and a Macbook Pro - a Samsung Windows 7 laptop and a works Lenovo which can log into the the network in London, I must step forward and identify myself as one of those suckers with a great deal more money than sense (which does not acutally mean I am weatlhy. Just stupid). Now how’s that for humiliating honesty?
. . .
The hunt for Col Gaddafi goes on and the latest I have heard is that British jets are bombing the lad’s bunker compound in Sirte, his hometown. Well, I would like to see that back of him as much as everyone else and there’s no doubt that his supporters will carry on fighting until there is firm news that he is dead or has been captured. But wasn’t the UN mandate specific on what Britain and France should be doing and, more to the point, should not be doing in Libya. I seem to remember it was something about doing what it could to protect the ordinary Libyan population. Well, bombing the lad’s bunker compound in Sirte seems to me well beyond that remit and then some. Or have I got it all wrong. Are we, perhaps, defending Gaddafi's human rights?
. . .
A throwaway something:
Thursday, 25 August 2011
This lad falls in love (her name's Romola) while the euro farce continues
This might not be the place for a review of a television drama series, but I shall give you one anyway. My sole justification is that it starred an actress called Romola Garai who made me wish I was 30 years older and consider taking up stalking. I am not and I shan’t, but a boy can dream.
The series was produced by the BBC and was doomed from the outset by comparing itself to America’s Mad Men. The only point the have in common is that both were set several decades ago – Mad Men in the late Fifties, early Sixties and this turkey, called The Hour, in the mid-Fifties. But where Mad Men was stylish, innovative – it took its time always – well directed, subtle, nuanced, well-acted and interesting, The Hour was just another six hours of BBC drama by numbers of which there is more than enough to last us all a lifetime and then some. I always imagine that when a drama is commissioned by the BBC, the script will not be considered for production until it was been put through the BBC editorial sausage machine whose purpose is to get rid of anything which might prove to be original and to add all the latest stylistic fads and trends. One criticism was that too many of the lines were anachronistic, but quite honestly, that was the least of its troubles.
The Hour deals with what we are asked to assume is an innovative BBC current affairs programme (called The Hour), launched just before the Suez Crisis. Also thrown into the mix are two murders by MI6, a traitor, an MI6 baddie who turns out to be a goodie (neat that, they will have thought, that will keep the punters guessing0, a suicide (I think - it wasn’t very clear whether or not it was that or an accident), a Soviet mole in the BBC, a Soviet list of possible agents, and affair between the attractive producer of the innovative current affairs programme and its well-connected presenter, a convoluted MI6 plot to persuade Gamal Nasser’s dentist to assassinate the Egyptian leader, a debutante engaged to a gay actor, a closet gay Downing Street press officer, a Lord and Lady of the Realm (we can be fined here in Britain if we don’t cap up those three words - who said the age of deference is dead) and it is all played out against the Suez crisis. Furthermore, all these rather lurid plot strands involved a total of - if I’ve got my figures right - about 16 characters, many of them minor.
If you think all that amounts to a F minus of a dog’s dinner, you would be charitable. On so many different fronts it failed and failed badly. I shan’t go into detail here (i.e. I really can’t be bothered), but, as usual, the BBC set itself up for a pratfall by trailing it as something like the Second Coming.
But then there’s Romola Garai: swoon. Then, swoon again. At first I thought she was a newcomer and this BBC dog’s dinner was her debut, but it turns out she’s a well-established trouper and even got most of her kit off playing a prostitute in some other piece of BBC drama. I shall do my utmost to track down a DVD if one is available. One more time: swoon.
. . .
I have just been googling for images of la Garai and have found, rather pleasingly, that she has one of those faces which can change rather dramatically. Here is a selection:
I've just realised that she reminds me of Annette, a woman I went out with years ago. Oh well. That's enough swooning, you'll all think I'm twp.
. . .
The eurozone car crash is working out quite nicely. On any reading the Germans are damned if they do and damned if they don’t: if they pull the plug on Greece, their banks are in the shit, and if they don’t the government is on the shit. Already, it seems, leading CDU politicians, with no doubt an eye on the elections in 2013, are burnishing their eurosceptic credentials and drafting a future script along the lines of: ‘I warned about it from the outset, but no one would listen.’
Germany’s Constitutional Court is due to rule on September 7 on whether what has been going on with the bailouts is legal according to German law, and they don’t ever pull their punches. Everyone, especially the Brits, are reverting to type. Given that one mooted solution would be a ‘fiscal union’ with Germany in charge, the sillier newspapers, of which unfortunately the Mail is one, have been claiming - not seriously, of course, but . . . - that this is the ‘rise of the Fourth Reich’ and that Germany is about to achieve economically what it failed to achieve militarily. The French, of course, are playing along, but I don’t doubt they have one or two nasty surprises up their sleeve, and there is outrage from the bailed out states that over the suggestion that it would only be right and proper if the offered their gold reserves as collateral for the bailout dosh.
Which ever way you stack this up, it is not going to end nicely.
The series was produced by the BBC and was doomed from the outset by comparing itself to America’s Mad Men. The only point the have in common is that both were set several decades ago – Mad Men in the late Fifties, early Sixties and this turkey, called The Hour, in the mid-Fifties. But where Mad Men was stylish, innovative – it took its time always – well directed, subtle, nuanced, well-acted and interesting, The Hour was just another six hours of BBC drama by numbers of which there is more than enough to last us all a lifetime and then some. I always imagine that when a drama is commissioned by the BBC, the script will not be considered for production until it was been put through the BBC editorial sausage machine whose purpose is to get rid of anything which might prove to be original and to add all the latest stylistic fads and trends. One criticism was that too many of the lines were anachronistic, but quite honestly, that was the least of its troubles.
The Hour deals with what we are asked to assume is an innovative BBC current affairs programme (called The Hour), launched just before the Suez Crisis. Also thrown into the mix are two murders by MI6, a traitor, an MI6 baddie who turns out to be a goodie (neat that, they will have thought, that will keep the punters guessing0, a suicide (I think - it wasn’t very clear whether or not it was that or an accident), a Soviet mole in the BBC, a Soviet list of possible agents, and affair between the attractive producer of the innovative current affairs programme and its well-connected presenter, a convoluted MI6 plot to persuade Gamal Nasser’s dentist to assassinate the Egyptian leader, a debutante engaged to a gay actor, a closet gay Downing Street press officer, a Lord and Lady of the Realm (we can be fined here in Britain if we don’t cap up those three words - who said the age of deference is dead) and it is all played out against the Suez crisis. Furthermore, all these rather lurid plot strands involved a total of - if I’ve got my figures right - about 16 characters, many of them minor.
If you think all that amounts to a F minus of a dog’s dinner, you would be charitable. On so many different fronts it failed and failed badly. I shan’t go into detail here (i.e. I really can’t be bothered), but, as usual, the BBC set itself up for a pratfall by trailing it as something like the Second Coming.
But then there’s Romola Garai: swoon. Then, swoon again. At first I thought she was a newcomer and this BBC dog’s dinner was her debut, but it turns out she’s a well-established trouper and even got most of her kit off playing a prostitute in some other piece of BBC drama. I shall do my utmost to track down a DVD if one is available. One more time: swoon.
. . .
I have just been googling for images of la Garai and have found, rather pleasingly, that she has one of those faces which can change rather dramatically. Here is a selection:
I've just realised that she reminds me of Annette, a woman I went out with years ago. Oh well. That's enough swooning, you'll all think I'm twp.
. . .
The eurozone car crash is working out quite nicely. On any reading the Germans are damned if they do and damned if they don’t: if they pull the plug on Greece, their banks are in the shit, and if they don’t the government is on the shit. Already, it seems, leading CDU politicians, with no doubt an eye on the elections in 2013, are burnishing their eurosceptic credentials and drafting a future script along the lines of: ‘I warned about it from the outset, but no one would listen.’
Germany’s Constitutional Court is due to rule on September 7 on whether what has been going on with the bailouts is legal according to German law, and they don’t ever pull their punches. Everyone, especially the Brits, are reverting to type. Given that one mooted solution would be a ‘fiscal union’ with Germany in charge, the sillier newspapers, of which unfortunately the Mail is one, have been claiming - not seriously, of course, but . . . - that this is the ‘rise of the Fourth Reich’ and that Germany is about to achieve economically what it failed to achieve militarily. The French, of course, are playing along, but I don’t doubt they have one or two nasty surprises up their sleeve, and there is outrage from the bailed out states that over the suggestion that it would only be right and proper if the offered their gold reserves as collateral for the bailout dosh.
Which ever way you stack this up, it is not going to end nicely.
Saturday, 20 August 2011
Lord save me from bureaucrats
I’ve spent the past 24 hours nursing bad toothaches and coming to terms with the fact that the dictum ‘better means worse’ is, unfortunately, true. I’m referring to the increasing bureaucracy which permeates much modern life and whose function is ostensibly to ‘facilitate’ but, in fact does anything but. (Incidentally, I can claim to be the author of the above dictum, which I came up with after I read another - ‘more means less’ - in the Daily Telegraph. Here’s another, which I also feel sums up aspects of aspects of the 21st century: ‘bullshit is the new bollocks’).
I had my tooth looked at a week ago by my very attractive 27-year-old Spanish NHS dentist (and, Maria, if you are reading this, I can tell you I wish to God I were 30 years younger). In fact, I don’t think it is the same tooth which is giving my gyp, but
the one behind it, probably playing up out of pique that it got no attention last Friday.
Anyhow, my wife told me that my niece had been taken to Bodmin Hospital which has an emergency dental service, so at 8.30 this morning I rang the hospital and asked to be put through to the service. I was told I had to ring my dentist. But they are not open on a Saturday morning, I told them, which I why I am ringing you.
Do you have the emergency dentist at the hospital? Yes, the woman said. Well, can’t you put me through? No, she said, you must ring your dentist. But all I get is a message telling me to ring back on Monday morning, so would you please put me through.
At this point, the woman claimed she was physically unable to do so, though I flatly refuse to believe that a part of the hospital is telephonically completely isolated from the rest of it. She told me to ring the NHS dental helpline. I did this and was given the number of the emergency dental service at Bodmin. I rang it, and was told by another woman to ‘ring your dentist’.
I told her I had and that the surgery was shut. Well, take paracetamol and ibrufen, she said. Can’t I see someone, I asked. We only see emergencies, she replied, people with an abscess and chronic pain. Chronic pain? That’s me, I told her. Well, take ibrufen. But can’t I see someone. It’s not protocol, she replied. (Great word ‘protocol’, it makes whatever is being talked about sound far, far more important.) Have you got anyone coming in now, I asked. Yes, she said (and I thought she sounded rather triumphant - that most certainly put persistent old me in my place.)
Well, can I ring back later? And she agreed, I thought pretty reluctantly, so the arrangement is that I am due to ring at 12 to see whether they can fit me in, although the unspoken threat - quite obvious from the tone of her voice - was that the chances were that I would once again be sent off with a flea in my ear for even daring to suggest I should receive treatment. Fuckwits.
I agree that my difficulties with NHS bureaucracies is as nothing compared to what several million Somalis are currently having to put up with in Northern Kenya and what millions of Indians have to put up with daily year in, year out in India, but then this is my blog not theirs and I am a lily-livered Westerner for whom ‘tragedy’ is if the car battery’s flat on a nippy winter’s morning.
I had my tooth looked at a week ago by my very attractive 27-year-old Spanish NHS dentist (and, Maria, if you are reading this, I can tell you I wish to God I were 30 years younger). In fact, I don’t think it is the same tooth which is giving my gyp, but
Anyhow, my wife told me that my niece had been taken to Bodmin Hospital which has an emergency dental service, so at 8.30 this morning I rang the hospital and asked to be put through to the service. I was told I had to ring my dentist. But they are not open on a Saturday morning, I told them, which I why I am ringing you.
Do you have the emergency dentist at the hospital? Yes, the woman said. Well, can’t you put me through? No, she said, you must ring your dentist. But all I get is a message telling me to ring back on Monday morning, so would you please put me through.
At this point, the woman claimed she was physically unable to do so, though I flatly refuse to believe that a part of the hospital is telephonically completely isolated from the rest of it. She told me to ring the NHS dental helpline. I did this and was given the number of the emergency dental service at Bodmin. I rang it, and was told by another woman to ‘ring your dentist’.
I told her I had and that the surgery was shut. Well, take paracetamol and ibrufen, she said. Can’t I see someone, I asked. We only see emergencies, she replied, people with an abscess and chronic pain. Chronic pain? That’s me, I told her. Well, take ibrufen. But can’t I see someone. It’s not protocol, she replied. (Great word ‘protocol’, it makes whatever is being talked about sound far, far more important.) Have you got anyone coming in now, I asked. Yes, she said (and I thought she sounded rather triumphant - that most certainly put persistent old me in my place.)
Well, can I ring back later? And she agreed, I thought pretty reluctantly, so the arrangement is that I am due to ring at 12 to see whether they can fit me in, although the unspoken threat - quite obvious from the tone of her voice - was that the chances were that I would once again be sent off with a flea in my ear for even daring to suggest I should receive treatment. Fuckwits.
I agree that my difficulties with NHS bureaucracies is as nothing compared to what several million Somalis are currently having to put up with in Northern Kenya and what millions of Indians have to put up with daily year in, year out in India, but then this is my blog not theirs and I am a lily-livered Westerner for whom ‘tragedy’ is if the car battery’s flat on a nippy winter’s morning.
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