If I never hear of Julian Assange again will still be too soon, especially as young Bradley Manning is getting a far rougher deal. And Pussy Riot will get to know their fate today

So that stupid little prick Julian Assange has managed to get himself in the headlines again. It’s a shame that Bradley Manning, the source of all the embarrassing stuff Assange published under the guise of striking a blow for freedom and democracy, isn’t getting an equal amount of publicity to highlight his plight. I suspect it is because, whatever else might be the case, Assange is essentially a publicity-seeker whereas Manning is a rather naive idealist. And in the great scheme of things that means the score so far is Assange 1-0 Manning.

I’m prepared to accept the truth of Britain’s claim that they have not struck a deal with the U.S. to get Assange into the Yankee clutch, although it will no be lost on them that once Assange is in Swedish custody - make that if Assange ever gets into Swedish custody, because that is by no means certain - the U.S. will exert enormous pressure on Sweden to extradite him further into their hands. I should imagine that as far as Britain is concerned, Assange is just an irritating problem they want to see the back of.

It will not help his case when it is discussed over sherry and Bath Olivers at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office that Britain was one of the many countries he made a fool of by publishing confidential memos and emails. But unlike the U.S., the Brits aren’t particularly vindictive and all they want is to see the back of them. It would also seem they are on solid ground when they plead that all we are doing, squire, is our duty under various extradition laws. I honestly don’t think the Government give a flying fuck what happens to Assange as long as they can get him out of their hair.
Another intriguing aspect is whether Assange is all that innocent as far as the sexual assault charges which the Swedes are bringing against him.

We all assume that all his shenanigans in holing up with the Ecuadorians to escape extradition is all to do with his fear that the sexual assault charges are just a front to get him into U.S. hands in the long term. That, it seems to me, is to do the Swedes something of a disfavour. Any suggestion that Sweden is in some way the handmaiden of the U.S. really does not square up with its past as a refuge for U.S. soldiers either escaping the draft during the Vietnam War or deserting and heading for the country believing it to be a safe haven. Nor can I think of any ‘hold’ the U.S. might have over Sweden or any leverage it might have.

Then there’s the rather obvious point that as the Swedes have brought charges of sexual assault against Assange, they sincerely believe that he has at the very least a case to answer. That, of course, present all right-thinking lefties with a dilemma: could it really be true that one of their more recent heroes is quite possibly a male chauvinist pig. Well, yes it could, actually.

What Assange chose Ecuador and what might be in it for the country is also something of a puzzle. William Hague, the British foreign minister, has already made clear that Britain - and few other countries for that matter - accept that there is a concept of ‘diplomatic immunity’ and that despite Ecuador granting Assange ‘political asylum’, they will arrest him at the earliest opportunity and that the chances of him getting out of the country are pretty slim.

And Bradley Manning? Well, let me say it again: the poor chap seems to be getting to raw end of the deal whichever way you look at it, irrespective of what he might or might not have done. I would be a lot happier if more agitation were being done on his behalf. From what I have read, he is something of a mixed-up kid, but the crucial detail as far as I am concerned is that he doesn’t strike me as a publicity-seeker. Actually, when Julian Assange is around there doesn’t really seem any room for another. So spare a thought for young Bradley.

. . .

It would be rather disingenuous to describe Russia’s Pussy Riot trio as publicity-seekers because that’s exactly what they are but in a rather more, comparatively, admirable sense the Jules Assange. The essential point is that the publicity they were seeking was not for themselves but for the ‘cause’ they want to highlight, whether or not you agree with it.

But their case, too, is perhaps a little less straightforward than many would have us believe, for we must, in all honesty, accept that for many church-going Russians what the trio did was blasphemous, irrespective of their cause. They might argue: OK, we accept you have a legitimate right to express your view, but doing so on an altar and on what we regard as sacred ground is really not the way to go about it. (In fact, it is worth asking the question here why, apparently, atheism likes to be seen as going hand in glove with ‘right-thinking’ and that ‘believers’ are automatically thought be ‘right-thinkers’ as being something of a sandwich short of a picnic. Certainly, that’s a generalisation, but it does seem to be one which holds to a great extent.)

I mention Pussy Riot because the world and Woking will know their fate tomorrow. Will the go to jail for several years or will the get a suspended sentence?

Olympics: a grumpy old sod sounds off . . .

Well, it’s all over bar the shouting, as they say, and I’m sure many more backs will be slapped this week as Britain congratulates itself on having staged ‘the most successful Olympics ever’ (until the next bunfight, of course). I have held off adding my two ha’porth worth because ... well, basically, I couldn’t be arsed. Good luck, of course, to all the athletes who have trained hard and had success and commiserations to all the athletes who have trained hard and haven’t had succes, and an especial mention to the doughty Saudi Arabian runner who was forced to perform more or less fully clothed, but still didn’t let that put her off. In fact, the sight of her, although last by a country mile, approaching, then crossing, the finishing line almost melted this frozen heart of mine. But it didn’t, and I shall tell you why.

Every four years we have been getting this jamboree, and every four your pompous pricks and prickettes in their hundred drone on about ‘the Olympic ideal’, ‘bringing nations together’ and similar crap, when the truth is that these days the Games primarily serve two puroposes: for the host country to show off as much as possible and stick one in the eye of its rivals, and for the successful sponsors to make as much moolah as his humanly possible in 16 days (which, in case you were wondering, is a fuck of a lot). And it is the joint offence of rancid commercialisation allied to the hypocrisy of spouting so much idealism which puts me off big time. I can’t remember which of the two cola giants ‘won the contract’ - Pepsi or Coke - but if you dared even breathe the name of the one which didn’t get that contract within ten miles of the Olympic site, you risked being sued to kingdom come. The same was true of whoever won the ‘cashpoint franchise’ (although they didn’t call it that because it doesn’t sound upbeat and life-enhancing enough). It was either Visa or Mastercard, but if your credit and debit cards were with the outfit which didn’t have the concession, you were stuffed big time. And woe betide anyone who thinks the food served up by McDonald’s is pure cack: the firm had ‘won’ the chips franchise, and if you wanted to get a packet of chips which weren’t McDonalds’, tough titties.

Then there is the cost of the whole shooting match: I have nothing against anyone wasting as much of their own money as they like, but when it is my money they decide to waste, I do get a but itchy. I think the figure for the cost of staging the Games is £10 billion for everything, but it could well be higher, and we are assured that the ‘Olympic legacy’ will balance the books and that Britain will not end up out of pocket. Well, allow me to hold fire on popping the champagne corks in celebration of such great news for a few more years yet as I am firmly persuaded hindsight is a rather more valuable guide to the truth than prediction. For one thing, no buyer has yet been found for the stadium itself.

On a personal note what did rather irk me was how everyone and his dog suddenly became an instant expert on the the intricacies of sports of which they hadn’t heard of barely five minutes earlier. And I understand China informed the Games organising committee very clearly that the could be no - repeat no - reference to Taiwan and that the Taiwanese flag could not be shown or it would boycott the Games. So there was and it wasn’t and China was good enough to grace the Games with its presence.

But I am, I know, sounding like a grumpy old cunt, so let me outline what I would like to see: I would like to see a return to something a damn sight closer to ‘the Olympic ideal’, with athletes competing for the glory of it all, not because a gold, silver or even bronze means an advertising contract with some bloody shampoo or deodorant firm which will see them rolling in money by the end of the week. I should like to see an end to the obscene multi-million opening ceremonies in which each host nation desperately tries to outshine its predecessor. And I would like to see an end to all this Olympic Village lark where we build a new bloody town which will be inhabited for 16 days. Nations should pay for the upkeep of their own athletes and lend a helping hand to those poor nations who don’t even have the resources to do that. In short, forget the bullshit razzmatazz and get back to sport.

There, I’ve had my say. Now I shall go and lie down.

I do so hope that Draghi, Monti, Merkel, Samaras, Rajoy and the rest of that sorry bunch realise whose future they are dicking with: I take these things personally. And I’m a Scorpio. Then there’s a new kid on the block, one Alexander Bastrykin: hello, Alex, and what to you to for a living?

I have a 13-year-old son and in many ways he seems to take after me. I was rather facetious as a lad, and so is he. Naturally, he is, to use the phrase metaphorically rather than literally, his own man I and I would hate to find that I am somehow manipulating him into my own image. I always think it rather sad when fathers try to mould a son or mothers a daughter into their own likeness. It is as though, having batted on a bit and no longer being the fresh young things they once were, they are somehow trying their hand at having a second youth. That kind of thing can always end in tears or, at best, stymy the development of our offspring so that it doesn’t take its natural course sooner rather than later. And the sons and daughters so treated rarely, if ever, thank you for it. So I am at pains to avoid that particular pitfall, and if I say he seems to take after me in some ways, I merely mean that, almost by chance, we seem to share one or two similar traits.

But one thing he does do, or rather one thing his presence on this earth as my son does - he is not actually ‘doing’ anything - is to remind me of what I thought and felt growing up. So, for example, if he and I are driving anywhere, it always takes me back to when I was sitting in the passenger seat and my father was driving. But I am not about to write some quasi sentimental piece about ‘growing up’ or ‘like father, like son’, but - apropos the whole bloody ‘euro crisis’ - to try to recollect the slow process by which I became aware of the world, its problems, its wars, its silliness and the making of history.

The first time I became aware of ‘world events’ was when I was less than ten and kept hearing about ‘the Baghdad Pact’. Without looking up what it was, I can’t say I know what it was (although once I have written this I shall spend a few minutes googling it and finding out. I suspect it must have come after the Suez crisis because I was not aware of it at the time, unsuprisingly as I was just six years old. I also have vague memories of the Cyprus Crisis, someone called General Grivas and Eoka and a certain Archbishop Makarios, but I had no idea what was going on.

Incidentally, what I do remember is that the crisis lasted for several years and was very bloody, with Makarios being an especially recalcitrant negotiating partner, but that when the settlement came, it happened very fast and Makarios suprisingly caved in to a certain extent. Several years later, and again I can’t remember when, my father, who had obscure links with Britain’s security services - it might well at that point have been merely that one or two of spooks were drinking buddies - told me that the end came when MI6 established and gathered proof that Makarios was a homosexual paedophile and informed him that unless he started playing ball, this information would be made public. Makarios suddenly played ball.

I became a little more aware of ‘world events’ during the Cuban missile crisis and the building of the Berlin Wall, though as a 13-year-old, the age my son is now, I was oblivious to any subtleties of what was happening and still, as I and many others had been brought up to believe, thought of the West as The Good Guys and the Reds/Communists as The Bad Guys.

So when this afternoon my son was looking at a new wall chart showing the map of the world which my wife has bought, started looking for Syria and asked a question or two about the conflict there, I tried to convey that ‘all is not quite as it might appear’. I informed him - I hope correctly - that Iran supports Assad for its reasons, the US supports the rebels for its reasons, Israel would dearly like there to be no resolution of any kind for as long as possible for its reasons, and Russia and China are opposing the West’s view of the conflict for their reasons and concluded by telling him that at a national level different states always do what they think is in their own national interests irrespective of their public declarations. How much of this he understood, I don’t know. And I might well be completely adrift in my analysis. Again, I don’t know. My point is that, at 13, he is beginning to realise that there’s more going on in the world than Lego and Fifa 12, and I should like to make sure that his able to grasp sooner rather than later that, at best, what goes on at that level is not black and white but a rather nasty and very murky monochrome.

I must confess that although I undoubtedly had opinions as a grew older - who doesn’t? - it wasn’t until I turned 40 that I began to take more than just a passing interest in ‘world events’, but that since then that interest has grown considerably. I have also become very aware of the importance of what can only be called ‘the facts of the matter’ and that what is really going on is rarely what we, we the public, are led to believe is going on - as someone once said ‘news is what doesn’t appear in the newspapers’. What has added to my interest is that I know have two children, one 16 next Tuesday and the other 13, and that were once I didn’t really give a flying fuck about the future - of this country, of Europe and of the world - I do now. For example, I should like both of them to have pretty uneventful, though, I hope interesting lives. I want them both never to have to face need - if they decide to try to become rich, that’s their business: all I want is that they don’t face need - and, all things being equal, I hope they lead contented lives. So when various fuckwit politicians play fast and loose with the British, the European and the world economy for now discernibly good reason, I do get very irritated.

All this was brought on by tonight reading a comment piece in The Economist along the lines of August being the calm before the storm as far as the euro, the eurozone, Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and who knows what else is concerned. The only peace of mind I have is that at this point my son, at 13, doesn’t have a clue as to what is going on and that just as I survived the Cypris Crisis intact, so will he survive all the silliness about the euro. The problem is that if, as I fear, Britain, Europe and the world is in for a very torrid time economically - and all that it will entail: political instability is always more likely the less stable an economy is - he and my daughter might not enjoy the contented life I wish them for quite some time.

. . .

In the interest of balance, I have been playing Devil’s Advocate and trying to see the euro crisis from the side of those who hope and believe it will all work out. And with the best will in the world none of it adds up any longer.

I fully understand the argument that the eurozone must be preserved because the economic consequences of a break-up would be catastrophic. But I simply can’t understand why several millions of young people, sick people and elderly people should be made to lead miserable lives in order to avoid a catastrophe which would see them lead miserably lives. Can no one else see the lunacy with which the whole euro problem is now shot through?

Then there’s the argument that if debts were ‘mutualised’, the markets would be calmed and it would become easier again for Spain and Italy to borrow money. But why on earth should the Germans and the Dutch and the Finns and whoever else shoulder the burden of others and pay off the debts of others? And that is a question they are asking themselves. In a way it makes perfect sense that they should insist that debtor countries should cut back drastically on their spending if they want to be lent more money to tide them over. But as those cutbacks entail - see above - misery for millions of young people, sick people and the elderly, is that really a viable solution? As for ‘European solidarity’ the Dutch go to the polls this September and the Germans in September 2013, and I do wonder quite how attractive the electoral slogans will be if they are meant to convey: work harder and enjoy life less, the Greeks need your money.

Not a euro problem as such, but a problem for the European Union are the increasingly undemocratic ways of the prime ministers of Romania and Hungary. What with the best minds Europe can find dealing with finding a solution to the euro crisis, just how much thought is being given to waking up to the news one morning that either or both countries have taken a leaf out of the Communist book and locked up the opposition. Fanciful? Oh, I really do hope so.

. . .

I read two things this week, one of which just has to be complete bollocks. I first read that both Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox church is calling for clemency for those three members of Pussy Riot who held an impromptu punk concert in a church and called for Putin’s removal. Well, there you go, I thought.

A day or two later, I read that both Putin and the Russian Orthodox church have called for the sternest sentence possible the courts can sentence can impose on those unfortunate three women. So which is it.

Then I read of Alexander Bastrykin, the of head of ‘the Investigative Committee’ - Russian committees always give me the willies - and the arrest he sanctioned of one Alexei Navalny. This chap happens to be a blogger and an anti-Putin activist, but apparently his arrest was not as a result of cruel things he said about Putin but for allegedly running a gang which has stolen a great deal of timber. My first instinct is that the charge is so

Who are you looking at, mate? A word of warning, sunshine . . .    utterly outlandish, so far beyond the realms of fantasy, that there must be some truth in it. But this being Russia, I swiftly decided to hold judgment until my second, third and fourth instincts make their presence felt.

Mr Bastrykin is, apparently, the coming man in Russian security circles in that business is doing rather well for the FSB and they are rather disinclined to rock the boat. So, step forward Mr Bastrykin. See if you can’t do better. Just a few days before his arrest, Mr Navalny accused Mr Bastrykin of ‘fraud and corruption’. That was apparently not a very good move, especially if, like Mr Bastryki, you have a very natty uniform.

According to the Guardian, Mr Bastrykin is something of a card. He was rather put out by the activities of a Sergei Sokolov, the then deputy editor of a newspaper called the Novaya Gazetta (the New Gazette? Just a wild guess) and last June had a one-to-one meeting with him in a forest where he is said to have threatened to have him killed. It’s all probably stuff and nonsense and nothing but a misunderstanding, although Mr Sokolov would not be convinced by such an innocent explanation and has since left Russia for greener - and possibly less dangerous - pastures.

Greatest film ever made? Not quite. But Mr Vidal must surely come close to top of a list of wits

The great and good of the film world have spoken and now we know: after a survey of 800 odd of those great and good, their bible Sight & Sound has pronounced Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo is ‘the greatest film of all time’ - at least until the next time they vote and Vertigo is unceremoniously knocked off its lofty perch. That is what has happened to Orson Welles’s film Citizen Kane, voted by the same bunch of great and good as ‘the greatest film of all time’ for many years, until this year when they decided it was no longer ‘the greatest’.

A number of things occur to me, not least whether it is at all possible - in keeping with that rarefied bunch of cineastes I should, perhaps, introduce a note of pretension and write ‘whether it is at all ontologically possible’ - to be ‘the greatest of all time’ one  minute and not the next. Surely being ‘the greatest of all time’ presupposes an absolute state which can, by definition, not be altered? Well, of course, it does, but I am myself being a little fey here: what the film world’s great and good mean is that this year the majority of us prefer Vertigo to any other film but - who knows? - next year it might well be Adventures Of A Window Cleaner starring the inimitable Barry Evans (inimitable largely because no one actually wants to imitate him. On second thoughts, is rather uncharitable to laugh at the chap, because his life ended rather sadly: he was found dead of alcohol poisoning at his home with a bottle of whisky and a pack of aspirins nearby, and for a while there were suspicions that he might well have been murdered, though bumping someone off using a bottle of whisky and a pack of aspirins does rather strike me as unnecessarily taking the long way round).

I saw Citizen Kane many years ago and liked it, but I could never quite see how it could be ‘the greatest film of all time’. I suspect that the film techniques developed and used by Welles, which were undoubtedly novel at the time, lent Citizen Kane an air of leading the pack, though how that reputation survived until last year - 71 years after it was made and by which time cinemagoers were accustomed to techniques lightyears ahead of Welles’s - rather puzzles me. For many years, however, I suffered from a variety of mild inferiority complexes and, in this instance, was inclined to accept that Sight & Sound and its coterie of cineastes knew what they were talking about whereas I didn’t and if they declared Citizen Kane to be a film of genius beyond compare but I didn’t quite see it, the failing was mine, not theirs. I am now more than a little inclined - inferiority complexes or not - to adopt a more contrarian view and stick my neck out: it’s an entertaining enough film but - work of genius? Better than a great many other films I’ve seen which impressed me more? I really don’t think so.

As for Vertigo, the whole ‘greatest film of all time’ schtick gets even sillier. I had never seen it before so, courtesy of one of the many websites which allow you, most certainly illegally, to watch films online for free, I watched it last night. And to say I was underwhelmed doesn’t even begin to describe what I felt. ‘Greatest film of all time’? Up to a point, Lord Copper. My judgment would be: an entertaining enough hotch-potch of cod psychology and melodrama which I would only recommend for viewing if you really have nothing better to do. But then what do I know? I don’t even use the word hommage, let alone pronounce it as the French do (’ommage). For my money Hitchcock’s film Lifeboat is far better but far less known.

. . .

What is it with all these ‘greatest of all time’ lists anyway? Why do we bother? Why can’t we settle for simply naming a whole load of films, boxers, composers, cars, novels or whatever it is you are interested in and telling the punter: if you like watching well-made films, enjoy watching a great boxer fight, like listening to music, take an interest in cars, like reading fiction or whatever your bag is, you could do worse than checking out . . .

But there is something about humankind that wants its No 1s. I find it all rather tacky and, in the case of the Sunday Times’s annual Rich List, downright embarrassing. The only thing such lists are good for is to allow those who haven’t got an opinion to have an opinion. So, no doubt, after hearing or reading about the result of this year’s Sight & Sound’s survey a good number of folk are already going around confidently telling their friends, as though they knew what they are talking about: ‘Hitchcock’s Vertigo - it’s marvellous, absolutely stunning and most certainly the greatest film ever made!’

Well, it’s not. And as I am apparently in full contrarian mode: Once Upon A Time In The West with Henry Fonda is not half as good as it is said to be, with Sergio Leone rather parodying himself by the time he made it; and On Golden Pond - although this is admittedly a more subjective judgment - is a load of sentimental, saccharine cack.

. . .

‘Contrarian’ is rather a useful word and one which, even though you might never have come across it before, you have a fair chance of knowing what it means without looking it up. I came across it again over these past few days in obituaries and appreciations of Gore Vidal who has died at the age of 126 during (I read rather incredulously) an over-vigorous act of sodomy. Actually, that is rather a cheap gibe, but as it is well in keeping with the general tone of this blog (‘Never Knowingly Undersold’) I’ll keep it in.

Many years ago, I read a novel by Vidal and didn’t think much to it, though I am now prepared to concede that my judgment might - I stress might - not necessarily have been up to much at the time. It was the only one I read, so I long had the impression that what with his public persona of a Grand Old Man Of Letters, he was something of a nine-bob note. On the other hand Vidal’s witticisms entertained me a great deal, not only because they were genuinely funny, but because they each had more than a kernel of truth in them. So when he said, for example: ‘It’s not enough to win, others must lose’, he goes a lot further in describing his fellow man than most of us would be comfortable with. In a similar vein there is ‘When a friend succeeds, a little part of me dies’ and, if we are honest, we tell ourselves: it isn’t nice of me, but, well, he does rather hit the nail on the head. Here are two more for good measure: ‘When anyone says to me “can you keep a secret?” I say “why should I, if you can't?” ’ and ‘A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.’ There’s no arguing with those.

There are other of his pronouncements, those about his fellow Americans, for example, which I am in no position to judge. So when he said ‘Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half’, I am obliged to keep my mouth shut.

I trust that over the years and since reading and then dismissing that novel by Vidal, I have matured just a little, so I must admit that of the many things I admire in people, one is industry and application, and Vidal had both. He wasn’t a gadfly, he worked hard, turning out novels, essays and screenplays. And I also admire his courage in being perfectly candid about his homosexuality in an age when gays were pilloried and punished and given a very rough deal indeed for no very good reason I can think of (‘I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.’) Not any less admirable is his dislike of William F Buckley and Norman Mailer. While writing this and seeking out the exact wording of Vidal quotes on various websites, I came across this gem: after some TV talk show, things became so heated between Mailer and Vidal at an after-hours party that Mailer got up and punched Vidal to the ground, to which Vidal responded, ‘I see words fail Norman Mailer again’.

So might I beg your, and Mr Vidal’s, pardon and drastically revise my original and very callow judgment of the man and (my cheap gibe above notwithstanding) admit that I now find him to be a very admirable fellow and may his soul now rest in peace. I have included a picture of the man and, to honour him, I have

not chosen one of him in his dotage (who of us looks, or will look, good when we are old, lined and 80?) but one when he was in his prime. Should you want to read more about him and his wit, many papers have carried reams of memoirs, but if you are too lazy to do the googling yourself, you could try here, here and here.

Who's wearing the White Hats in Syria? (Or why the West’s attitudes towards the toppling of Assad and his regime remind me just a little too much of the Cisco Kid and Hopalong Cassidy). And just how soppy can a grown man get?

When I was a kid and regularly watched the 30-minute Westerns which were screened every weekday for us young ones – Rin Tin Tin, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry (who I didn’t really like), Roy Rodgers, Annie Oakley, The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid – it was pretty easy to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys: the good guys usually wore light-coloured hats and had the trousers outside their boots, and the bad guys usually wore dark-coloured hats and tucked their trousers into their boots. The good guys invariably also had a well-shaven chin as smooth as a baby’s bottom, whereas the bad guys had several days of growth on their chins and gave the impression that bodily hygiene wasn’t top of their list of priorities. The good guys always won and the bad guys always lost, and our side were always the good guys and the other side were always the bad guys.


That was then and this is now, and I like to think I’ve rather grown out of such a monochrome view of the world. But apparently much of the rest of the world hasn’t, and nowhere is this more apparent than in coverage of the fighting in Syria which we should now acknowledge is a civil war. No one would, I think, disagree that Assad and his regime are a thoroughly bad lot, but it all gets rather murky when one takes a look at those trying to oust him: who are they and do they really deserve our support.

As usual, I have no special insight into this matter and I shan’t pretend that I do, but I can still make several observations about it all, based on what I have read and heard in the media. For one thing, several million Christian Syrians who wouldn’t, as a rule, cheer on Assad and his regime are faced with a hell of a dilemma: who do they support? There are now several well-documented accounts of what more or less adds up to ethnic cleansing by some of the Syrian rebels, except that it is not your ethnicity which determines whether you will be chased out of your home and told to make yourself scarce, but your religion. All is fine and dandy if you are a Sunni Muslim, but things are not getting extraordinarily bleak if you profess to be a Christian.

It is the fundamentalist Muslim element of the Syrians rebels which is giving many second thoughts: what are the chances, many are asking themselves, that if Assad and his regime are toppled those who follow him in power will be any less repressive or, to put it another way, any more enlightened and democratic. Under Assad, for example, women and homosexuals apparently led more or less free lives, a freedom homosexuals were granted – at least in the big cities – on the proviso that they kept a low profile. If Assad is toppled, will those freedoms continue?

Yet in the Dick and Dora world of Western diplomacy the Syrian rebels are the good guys in white hats and Assad and his henchmen the bad guys who can’t even be bothered to tuck their trousers into their boots. I am prepared to accept that such a stance is merely one for public consumption and that behind the scenes more sophisticated minds are at play, but there is scant evidence for such optimism. The conventional wisdom is that the West is mainly concerned with ensuring that it’s supply of oil remains unaffected and can be relied upon, but even that seems to me a tad simplistic as analysis.

I got to thinking about it all, although by no means for the first time, when I read a report on the BBC News website of the summary execution by Syrian rebels of four Syrian loyalists. But the good guys aren’t supposed to do that are they? Aren’t they? Perhaps they are. Perhaps, given Western certainties about the virtues of democracy and the rest of it, we should be resurrecting the notion of ‘a just war’, in which death might be horrible blah-di-blah and regrettable blah-di-blah and should if at all possible be avoided blah-di-blah and killing only resorted to as the very last resort blah-di-blah-di-blah-di-blah, but at the end of the day We are The Good Guys who are doing The Right Thing and They are The Bad Guys who deserve whatever they get so take your liberal conscience, sunny jim, and stick it where the sun don’t shine. On the whole I think I prefer my 30-minute Westerns: at least it was honest-to-goodness fiction not fiction masquerading as virtue.

. . .

I am one of those poor unfortunates who only has to have one drink and the ideas come crashing in. That, in itself, is not a boast because the lifespan of each idea is very short, far too short, in fact, to be of any consequence and far too short to be of any worth whatsoever. It goes like this: sometimes I drive up to London for my four days of shifts on the Mail and sometimes I take the train.

If I drive, I have taken to stopping off at the Brewers Arms in South Petherton in Somerset for a pint and a half of cider, a bag of nuts and a cigar or two. I leave around ten and listen to the World Tonight (available on all good radio receivers if they receive Radio 4) and ostensibly acquaint myself with the latest goings-on in the world. But, of course, I don’t.

Instead I ‘get ideas’: ideas for stories, for novels, for plays, how to write stories, or novels, or plays, what style I might try to adopt, what style might work, the relationship of style to a particular story and then what kind of story or novel might find favour in today’s ‘modern’ world. Each of those ideas flit into my brain and rapidly flit out again as the next idea crashes its way in. But that is just the half of it. I also listen to the World Tonight and dwell on what I hear and expand on that a little. And again each new ‘thought’ - I’m not being modest by putting the word in inverted commas, merely (I hope) refreshingly honest - is again very, very soon crowded out by some upstart newcomer of a ‘thought’ whose lifespan once more must be measured in milliseconds before a new ‘insight’ makes its way in - and then rapidly out - to my mind. The rapidity of arrival and departure of each new idea and thought seems to be in proportion to the amount of cider I drink. You know what I am talking about, because you have been there, too.

What to do? How do regiment those thoughts? How to hang onto them? How to evaluate them? How to discard the dross, the trivial, the commonplace, the universal from what might, just might, be worth remembering? I really don’t have a clue.

A few months ago, I wrote of arriving back home here in Cornwall and appreciating, each and every time I get out of the car just after midnight. sniffing the fresh, peaceful air of Higher Lank and reflecting just how lucky I am to be living in so pleasant a part of the country where others are condemned to live in a noisy city - at best - or, apropos the Book Of The Week on Radio 4 this week in some godamn-awful slum somewhere. Tonight was the same, but  I shall expand on that a little.
The drive from London takes me down the M3 and then along the A303 which is partly dual carriageway, then from Exeter onto the A30 which is almost wholly dual carriageway. But near somewhere called Temple on Bodmin Moor, I turn right off the dual carriageway (which, for a brief few miles becomes a single carriageway, but what the hell, I shan’t let that bother me at this point) and drive for just over five miles straight across Bodmin Moor. It is a part of the journey I really like, not least because although it takes me around 15 minutes to complete, I know I shall soon be home. But that journey is sometimes quite magical in one particular way.

Bodmin Moor is home to a great many ponies and a great many sheep and several thousand rabbits. And at this time of year many of those ponies have young ones with them. And those young ponies, some barely a week or two old, take my heart and almost make me want to cry in their innocence. My daughter will be 16 in five days time and my son turned 13 just over two months ago. Neither is the sweet young thing they once were, but both are still most certainly the sweet young thing they once were, the difference being that now I can no longer let them know that that is how I feel about them.

Now I am obliged, quite rightly of course, to treat them as older, to acknowledge that they are becoming people in their own right. They would not thank me - as you and I would not have thanked our parents when we were their age - to be reminded that in many ways they are still babes in arms. But every time I see one of those young ponies, all long legs and shyness and all of them sticking as close to their mothers as they can I am taken back in an instance to Elsie being just a babe and Wesley being just a babe. It gets worse: every time a rabbit runs across the lane in front of me I have to brake sharply and do brake sharply in case I inadvertently run it over. For I could not kill one of those rabbits, even accidentally, as I could not kill one of my children.

Soppy? Not a bit of it. I really don’t think I knew anything about anything until my children were born.

Official: Vladimir Putin doesn't like punk songs. And there was MS, a sweet, sweet girl who I was too stupid to appreciate. And in some obscure way Evelyn Waugh lives!

Pussy Riot are a Russian feminist punk band. So far, so unimaginative. On a scale of 0 to 10 of original names, Punk Riot don’t even register. But they are interesting in another respect. Pussy Riot is made up of up to ten members, of which three young women - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina, and Ekaterina Samutsevich – are due in court tomorrow (July 30) and if things don’t go well for them, they each face up to seven

Well, in British eyes not a lot. Their crime lasted less than a minute and consisted in entering Moscow’s Russian Orthodox cathedral of Christ the Saviour wearing neon-coloured headbands and bursting into song. This was, according to the Russian authorities, a lewd ‘punk prayer’ called ‘Our Lady, Chase Putin Out’, Russia’s president not being flavour of the month with many of his country’s more Westernised citizens. But, it has to be said, many others, especially those doing OK under the current regime, aren’t that bothered. On the face of it, of course, official reaction to Pussy Riot’s action is not encouraging. The official line is that they are blasphemous, which a devout Russian Orthodox believer might well claim. But that doesn’t really wash does it?

Russia (and China’s) support for Assad and his regime is widely believed to come down to the principle of self-preservation: if it is allowed to happen in Syria, they ask themselves, could we be next. Well, actually, not they couldn’t, given that the ‘opposition’ in Syria is not one coherent body, but is made up (according to my reading – need I remind readers that I am not on the Foreign Office reading list for internal confidential papers, so in the main I am merely repeating what I have gathered from the media, mainly the more or less impartial BBC. But I rather think that on balance arresting – and keeping in jail since the incident last February – does not bode well for anyone in Russia who wants a more democratic system, which all things considered is a rather lame conclusion. Russia’s real problem is that however much many of its citizens do want a more democratic system, it is not something which can be instituted overnight.

All that Western bollocks about ‘free and fair elections’ is all very well, my establishing a true democracy would entail a fundamental realignment in Russian thinking. They have no history of democracy. They went from Tsarism to Communism to more or less a non-Communist one-party state because the those nominally Communist in charge realised the economy was going tits-up under the old system and a new one was needed. They now have it, but it’s still just one man and his supporters in charge. The most vital change would be an independent – let me stress that word again: independent – judiciary. And that they haven’t got. You can have all the ‘free and fair elections’ in the world but if your judges do the state’s bidding it is all very silly indeed. I came across the story in the latest edition of The Economist and you can read it here.

Interestingly, there were 14 comments appended to it, and the first points out that it’s all very well for the West to get on its high horse, but there are several things which can also get you up before the judges here in Britain, for example calling someone a ‘nigger’, disparaging ‘queers’ and generally fulminating against various other groups. My instincts tell me that the objection is invalid, though off-hand I can’t yet day why, especially as I believe that we in the West are very guilty of an awful lot of hypocritical double-think. I’ll keep an eye out for further reports on Pussy Riot and pontificate a little more at a future date. Mayne Putin’s taste in music tend more to the conventional and he doesn’t have that much time for feminist punk songs

. . .

I haven’t given up on my plan to detail my romantic history, but it has already hit a snag. My idea was to give a chronological account, but on reflection it already seems to have gone slightly awry. When I wrote about SH, the lass who dropped copious tabs of acid while carrying Ian Hunter’s child, but not only seems not to have been affected by it but went on to do a Phd at Lancaster University (Lancaster? Now there’s a surprise), I might have got the timing mixed up. When we moved in together in the little urban cottage in Taits Lane (although as I pointed out we were merely sharing a house rather than living together), that was at the beginning of my third year at Dundee University and she was starting her second. Maybe I didn’t make that clear. I think I pointed out that by the time I had split up with young SH – for which read she called time, not me – I didn’t ‘go out’(such a quaint phrase) with anyone else for the rest of that year and that was when the pattern was established in which I would lose my heart and be desolate when it all came to naught, then would treat the next girl rather badly.

As far as I remember my next ‘relationship’ – and sorry for the inverted commas, but they do seem rather appropriate under the circumstances in as far as I am sure I wasn’t the only young thing on the block who had no idea what a mature relationship was and how to conduct one. Mature was not a word one might associate me with for many years to come, but in mitigation I can honestly say I was not the only one.I have wracked my brain and as far as I can remember my next relationship – i.e. the next time I went out with a girl full-time –was with MS. And MS was one of the sweetest girls on God’s earth. She fell for me hook, line and sinker but I was, unfortunately, in ‘don’t get involved mode’. Not only that, but for some reason or another I ‘jacked her in’, although I can’t for the life of me remember why, and she was heartbroken.

MS was a dark-haired girl from Bath. She was quiet and had a good sense of humour. She shared a two-bedroom flat with two other girls on the further reaches of Dundee, and one of whom was going out with one of my flatmates. So he and I would go around there, but as I was the only one to stay the night and MS and I got the single bedroom, he always had to spend an hour or so walking home again to our flat in the centre of Dundee. That never put him in a good mood. And I’m ashamed to say that although I can still picture MS and shall repeat that in the ranks of sweet-natured women she took a prime position, I did not appreciate it or her. I trust she finally met a more worthy man than me and went on to have a happy life.

. . .

I can’t but spend just a few minutes extolling the virtues of this Lenovo and especially it’s keyboard. It is a lovely machine. Might not be a Mac, but then who cares? I don’t. Since my entry in which I detailed my long list of laptops, I have put the 10in eMachine netbook on eBay and have reconciled myself to selling at a loss. The first time I listed it, I stipulated a buy-it-now price of £150. In the event, the highest bid was only £128 and I didn’t sell it. So then I listed it again with a buy-it-now of £130. This time it only got as far as £98. Now I have simply listed it, and I don’t know what I’ll get for it. One thing is certain though: it cost me £179.99 and I won’t get that. As for the Acer, a useful machine for someone, I was also going to list that, but have held off as I am in two minds whether or not to sell it. I can think of no reason why I should keep it, but …

. . .

It’s one of those when there are two of us doing the early turn, but as it’s a Monday there is not as much to do as usual, so I’ve fallen back on that old – and pretty boring – standby of surfing the net and trying to think up websites which might, just might, be halfway interesting. There are fewer than you might think. So I googled the name Evelyn Waugh, one of my favourite writers, in fact, my only favourite writer, and came across The Evelyn Waugh Society , which sounded reasonably interesting.

Unfortunately, there is not really a lot going on, just snippets of news and announcements. Then I noticed ‘EW forums’, and decided to take a look, wondering what info about Waugh might be interesting people out there. But that, too, was a disappointment: the forums were divided into ‘Forum Announcements, Comments & Questions’, ‘The Author’, ‘The Books: Fiction’, ‘The Books: Non-fiction’, ‘Short Stories, Essays, Article & Reviews’, ‘Diaries & Letter’, ‘Adaptations: Film, Television Radio & Stage’, ‘Miscellaneous’ and ‘The Society’.

Between them, those nine sections have so far – and I don’t know when exactly the society was formed or the website set up, but ‘internal evidence’ means it was at least 141 days ago – attracted a rather less than grand total of 36 topics and 46 posts. Of those sections , ‘The Books: Fiction’, ‘The Books: Non-fiction’, ‘Short Stories, Essays, Article & Reviews’, ‘Diaries & Letter’ and ‘The Society’ have so far not attracted a single post. Most popular by far – comparatively – was ‘Forum Announcements, Comments & Questions’. It has attracted 29 topics and 36 posts, so I decided to take a look. What I found would have tickled Waugh pink. He would, I’m very sure, have laughed his head off. For the net being the net and fools and idiots casting about for business being the name of the game, the topics, apart from a routine announcement that the ‘Evelyn forums are now live!’ (their exclamation mark, not mine), so far consist of:

Die Enstehung von Android
If there is no wind woods will win the good weather to match charm faded decreases
British open by the third round woods hold: JiuSanZhi bird before two bogies
Discovering Android
Tablet PSc – Arten und ihre Vorteile Exploring
No-Hassle Plans In Car Transport
Thoughts on Standard Elements In Cool Story Bro Clothes
The Alternatives For Important Requirements in No No Hair Removal
No-Fuss No No Hair Removal Tricks – Where You Can Go
Finding Simple Ideas Of Floor
Vital Aspects For Safelink Wireless
Fundamental Components Of No No Hair Removal
Men’s Professional Challenge second round of Cao a leading Fredric two behind
2012 the McAllen Cup Golf Tour SauHainingEagle’s Nest Station is a complete pars
and finally
May cases match All-Star golf team fell apart more than 40 stars participating.

Just thought I would share that with you and with Evelyn himself if spirits do exist and he takes a look in from time to time. No, I don’t know what it all means either, except perhaps that someone with some new technique for removing hair is hoping for extra business.

(From left) Ekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina. ©Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty years in jail. Given that a spot of bad driving which involves the accidental death of someone else can earn a drive –if things go really badly – a similar spell in jail here in Britain, you must ask yourself what terrible thing these fillies have done.

Are we (were we) in for another bout of expensive Olympic kitsch? I rather think we are (were). And Apple shareholders are disappointed with record profit. Corrupt fuckers, I say. And - sorry - but another teensy bit about the bloody euro: just how patient are the Germans? Finally, I discover Thin Lizzy (about 60 years too late)

Now that I seem to have got back into my stride writing this blog after a rather embarrassed few weeks when I gave it a rest until a felt able to write something which was not about the euro, the EU, the eurozone and related matters, I thought I might tell you all about my fascination with kitsch.


As I first came across the word, and concept, when I was growing up and living in Germany, I still think of it first as a German word and concept. But, like many other German words and concepts, it has been enthusiastically hi-jacked by the Brits and the Anglo-Saxon world so that I’m sure most people think it is an English word. Other German words and concepts similarly hi-jacked by the bloody Anglo-Saxons are Weltanshauung, Angst and Schadenfreude. They are invariably used by rather trendy types, and when they are used in English. I can never quite rid myself of the suspicion that that user is, consciously or not, showing off a little, rather as they will use a French or Italian word and attempt to pronounce it as the French and Italians do. In fact, using a French phrase which is now solidly part of the English language presents a problem: making it sound too French merely shows that you are a pretentious. Giving it a completely English sound merely proves that your a thick twat. The secret is to give it a slightly French pronunciation, but not too much. Tricky that one.


When this happens, the speaker always - always - sinks a little in my estimation, thereby achieving the opposite of what he or she hoped to achieve. The practice has reached rock-bottom in my view with such speakers sticking the German prefix über before words. Such usage always makes me want to puke though I am

well-brought up enough never to do so immediately but to wait until the speaker is no longer present. Unsuprisingly, the Germans (as far as I know) don’t use it in that way at all, which is not, however, to say that they don’t also have a fair proportion of pretentious fuckwits. But back to kitsch.


I think we all know what kitsch is - Kitsch in German - though one man’s kitsch is often nothing of the kind to someone else. I thought of kitsch watching the news on TV a little earlier on when there was speculation about what Danny Boyle would produce to mark the opening ceremony of London 2012. The item previewed what we already knew and commented what might take place by showing footage of similar opening ceremony events at previous Olympic Games. And that’s when I realised that as far as I was concerned every last example shown was kitsch in its purest form. Olympic Games opening ceremony kitsch is, if you like a kind of überkitsch. There, I’ve now done it, too.



I am at a disadvantage here in as far as, apart from the Rome Olympics in 1960 when I was ten and attending a German school in Berlin which meant I was back home every afternoon by 2pm, I have not taken any interest at all in the Games and have not made a point of sitting down in front of the TV with a crate of beer and tray of sandwiches to watch ‘the opening ceremony’. It simply doesn’t grab me, and I still don’t know whether I shall bother watching tonight’s ‘Games event’, due to start in exactly one hour and 35 minutes. (UPDATE: I didn’t.)


But kitsch does fascinate me, and I have often promised myself that if I am ever rich enough to afford a big house with several more rooms than I might actually need, I should like to furnish

one of those rooms in pure kitsch: leopard skin-patterned furniture, pink lights, puky neon-coloured pictures of the Madonna and Child and the Sacred Heart of Jesus,  utterly horrible wallpaper, lava lamps, ducks flying along the wall, more pink, mauve and lime green than you might find in a tranny’s wardrobe, that kind of thing. It would be quite challenge - a rather enjoyable challenge - to try to ensure that absolutely nothing was in good taste. It would also be a challenge to try to ensure that everything was bought as cheaply as possible.
 
After seeing the 5pm TV news and its round-up of previousOlympic kitsch, I listened to the 6pm Radio 4 news in which Danny Boyle spoke - or someone - spoke about what would be intended by the London 2012 opening spectacular and I was a little heartened. He - or the speaker - said that it would

be futile to try to compete on a scale of grandeur and spectacle and that the idea was to give to the world a sense of what Britain was today, and furthermore that it ranged far wider than the usual cliches of the Tower of London and the Queen. Modern Britain was also all about the Sex Pistol and Mr Blobby (he added, thereby showing he is most definitely over 40. So perhaps it won’t be all bad.


Perhaps I should psyche myself up to watch it. We are told that it involves 1,000 participants and - bizarrely - 80 sheep. But I cannot but ask whether as a true reflection of ‘modern Britain’ it will also include scenes of inner-city drunken binge-drinking, looting and riots, widespread public fornication by under-age girls and litter. On balance, I probably think Boyle will have resisted the temptation to give too accurate a portrayal,


. . . .


We all have our concept of ‘corruption’, which can range from anything from police and state employs accepting bribes to the devaluation of moral standards (though here I must confess that I have long been convinced that moral standards are as relative as everything else and what is acceptable and unacceptable today is not necessarily acceptable or unacceptable tomorrow. For example, the news that in a year’s time people of the same sex can marry in church would have struck many less than 60 years ago as the stuff of vicious satire.


Then there is the news I have just spotted on the Telegraph website that ‘brain-dead patients might be kept alive so that their parts can be used’. Or then there is the creeping acceptability of official euthansia which, I suspect, will in time - though not for a long time yet - lead to policy of culling our old folk to help manage our care bills. But let me suggest another instance of corruption.


It is not an obvious one, but it demonstrates and attitude which is very widespread: the computer firm Apple, which last year alone sold more than 25 million of its bloody iPhones has seen its share price fall by, under the circumstances, are rather large 6pc. Why? The firm has made record profits but the rise in profits was lower than what was forecast. Oh dear.


. . . .


Despite my repeated promise to keep away from all things euro and EU, I have just come across a report in the respected Der Spiegel magazine about the latest wheeze the European Central Bank has come up with to try to ensure the tide doesn’t come in. (Astute readers will note an oblique reference there to our very own King Canute, who didn’t, as if all-too-often assumed, think he was powerful enough to command the tide not to come in, but who wanted to put in their place fawning courtiers who suggested as much. To show them what dumb wastrels they were he commanded that his throne be positioned on the beach while the tide was out and sat in it as the tide came ever closer and finally closed in around his throne. His point: no one can conquer the tide (which might also, if I could be arsed, which I can’t, serve as a useful link to a discussion of the Tao).


The Spiegel points out that German savers will be hard hit by the latest clever-dick financial manipulations of the ECB, which leads me to wonder just how long the patience of the average German will last. Not quite as long as their idiot political leaders hope, I suspect. And when they do finally lose patience - which will be before September 2013 at the latest, for that is when their idiot political leaders will present themselves for re-election - they will have all my sympathy. Pensioners who will see their savings shrink alarmingly and savers who will realise there is no point in saving will want to know why exactly they are being asked to agree to a course of action which more and more people think is doomed. And they will increasingly realise that no one, but no one can command the tide not to come in.


. . .


One last thing. I’ve just watched a BBC Four documentary on Thin Lizzy. I had - obviously - Whiskey In The Jar and The Boys Are Back In Town but for some very odd reason I’ve never realised quite how big they were. It was a fascinating documentary, but it has to be said that surely, apart from the great guitarists in the band at different times, of whom Scott Gorham seems to be the standout, if only because he was the longest lasting member (and by all accounts fundamentally a very down-to-earth guy - this is something of an outrageously simplistic account, but the way he says it, he overcame a very debilitating heroin addiction by taking up golf) Phil Lynott’s voice and lyrical talent were the key to their great work. I decided to buy an album and finally opted for Nightlife after hearing part of the song I’m Still In Love With You.

In which I make a confession, hang my head in shame and pray my wife doesn't discover my appalling acts

This entry is only to be read on the strict understanding that my wife is not informed of its contents. I shall not, however, be detailing some mad, passionate extramarital affair: it is far more serious than that. So, you have been warned. Any transgression will be viewed very dimly indeed, and all transgressors – there can be no exceptions – will be crossed off my Christmas card list. There will be no possibility of appeal. Right, now I have got the official stuff out of the way, as the Germans say, zur Sache.

One of the standing jokes at work is the number of mobile phones I own. I actually only use one, and that one rarely, but I do have quite a collections. I shan’t go into detail here, because that would not only bore you, but, more to the point, it would bore me, and I hate being bored. I shall only say that the situation is not quite as alarming as it might sound and there were sound and rational reasons for acquiring each of them (i.e. some once belonged to my daughter etc.) But this entry is not about mobile phones but about laptop computers, because something rather similar has occurred with laptop computers,  viz I now own seven and have eight – the eighth is one I have been lent by work to ‘do the puzzles’ (of which more, perhaps or perhaps not) another time. In mitigation I should add – swiftly, to avoid any suggestions that I am quite mad or rich or both – that almost all of them were bought secondhand on eBay. However, three weren’t, and it is about those three which I shall now write.

But for background I should tell you that I have a Macbook Pro, a nice clean one, which never leaves the house, and a Macbook, nice but not quite as clean which I take with me on my travels. Then at my stepmother’s I have another nice clean Macbook Pro, of which I can only say that for the life of me I can’t think why I bought it, but it, too, was something of a bargain. I leave it at her house because quite often she likes watching racing events on TV – the Gold Cup, Ascot and the Grand National, that kind of thing – and I am then on hand to place her bets for her with Ladbrokes online.

This time last year, I was in Bordeaux for my visit to my aunt’s for the concerts, and with me I had the works Lenovo (to do the puzzles). Somehow, I fucked it up and couldn’t use it any more. I had, by then done all the relevant puzzles work for the week and didn’t actually need a laptop any more, but as we computer addicts know – Marianne – there is a kind of withdrawal process which takes place when one no longer have access to the net. So off  I went to L Leclerc in Langon to see what I might pick up cheaply. And there I found are rather neat little 10in netbook produced by Acer in their eMachines which had exactly the same chip, hard drive and memory as netbooks produced by ‘name’ brands such as Sony, Samsung and HP, but which was far more attractive as it was selling for around  40 euros cheaper. And, dear reader, I bought it. It was only when I got back to my aunt’s house and unpacked it that I realized I hadn’t thought matters through sufficiently. The problem was that everything was in French, a language of which I know next to nothing. Worse, the keyboard was a French layout, with, for example, Z where the W should be and Lord knows what else. I struggled.

The thing was I rather liked that small netbook. It was neat. So back home in Old Blighty I put it on eBay and got a good price for it. And then I bought the same netbook but with an English OS and keyboard layout. However – there’s always a however- I realized that it was – um, rather slow and, more to the point watching BBC iPlayer was something of a chore. This was because the graphic chip was integrated and nothing rang very smoothly.

I decided to get another netbook and after a lot of research opted for an Acer 722. This had a faster chip and all-round was a better investment. But it, too, had a flaw: the keyboard. As far as I was concerned the keyboard is useless for typing and as I had specifically bought it for writing, I had another problem. So – deep breath – I have bought another, and it is on this one that I am writing this entry.

So far, so utterly irresponsible and mad, but there is a silver lining. This particular model is not sexy and as it is a Lenovo, it is intended for business. It is a Lenovo X121e. But now to the important bit: there are two versions. One has an AMD C60 chip (like my Acer) but Lenovo also produce a more expensive version with an Intel i3 Core chip. And that is the one I have. New the AMD version costs around 345. The Intel is on sale for about 530. But, dear reader, I struck lucky, very lucky: on eBay I found an Intel version which I managed to nab – brand new and still sealed in the box – for just 355. I shan’t go into details, but everything is well above board: I simply struck very lucky indeed. And the keyboard is perfect. And as I have just installed a solid state drive (i.e. no spinning disc, no moving parts) it simply zips along. Lovely. If only I actually needed it. Now just to get rid of the eMachines and Acer, both of which are still in tip-top condition, at prices which will go some way to assuaging my feelings of guilt. Remember: not a word to my wife who isn’t as enlightened on such matters as I am.

In which I let my hair down a little, go out on a limb and offer a little advice (but the cheek of it)

The usual: I'm driving up to London on a Sunday morning, with nothing else to do but keep my eye on the road, and I think of all kinds of things I should like to write about (which - crucially - don't involve the bloody euro: you're fed up with reading about it here? Not half as much as I am about writing about it here. For one thing, I have nothing original to say and merely repeat what has been said 1,000 by everyone else who think it's a dog's dinner, and for another, like the weather, there is bugger all I can do about it, bugger all you can do about it, and bugger all he/she/it can do about it.)


One of the things I could do is to use this space as a kind of note pad and sounding board. I have found, curiously, that I sharpen my ideas far more when I am debating something with someone rather than just mulling something over on my own, and I often find that I sharpen my ideas more if I try to set it and related matters down on paper. Which  brings me to the first thing I might record: a few truths about writing I have garnered over the years, either from reading or hearing someone else's view or from personal experience. So, in no particular order:


1 It doesn't have to be perfect from the off. It is quite crucial to realise that. The trick is to get started, then to carry on and then to finish. Revising can come later, once it is all down on paper. And what you initially put down on paper - writing this on a laptop word processor means obviously that 'putting it down on paper' is meant metaphorically - doesn't even have to be 'good'. It just has to 'be', it has to exist. It might sound like an outrageous truism, but a flawed, quite awful completed novel, short story, script or play is 1,000 times better than an incompleted piece of work. And far, far better than one 'you have in your head'. That is worth nothing, but once it is down on paper, it can be improved, then improved again, then again, until you get it to the point where you think it is reasonably worthwhile.


2 No one, but no one, is in the slightest bit interested in 'your work'. Years ago, I came across a piece of wisdom whose provenance (i.e. where I heard it and how I came to hear it) is so banal, I would hate to tell you and so I shan't. But that piece of wisdom, obvious once you have understood it, is all-important. It is this: just as you are the centre of your world, everyone else, without exception is the centre of theirs. Crucially, that means you are not the centre of their world, you never were and you never will be. So your work is of know interest to them whatsoever, especially when you are still completing it. They just don't want to know. They might be too polite to tell you, but they aren't in the slightest bit interested. Not one jot. Once you have completed it, they might, just might, be interested if it amuses them or entertains them in some way (and I mean 'entertain' in a far, far broader sense than you might at first think. More of that, perhaps, later).


3 This might well be summed up in a coarse, but highly truthful observation: we all love the smell of our own farts. The corollary is, of course, that others don't, and however much you point out the positive points of that fart, how others have rather missed the point of it, they still won't. Think about it: when were you utterly disgusted by the smell when you have farted? The answer is: never. That's the odd thing about our own farts: we don't mind them and so we lose all proportion about them. To expand that thought, when you produce anything, and I'm sure this goes for piece of music of any kind, a painting or a sculpture just as much as a piece of writing, you might think it is a piece of genius or, at worst, rather good. It is, of course, nothing of the kind. What is even more dangerous is that you probably think it is excellent or reasonably good for one reason: you produced it. But it's not.


4 Another observation I came across years ago and which strikes me as being eminently true is that 'sloppy writing betrays sloppy thought'. If you sit down to write anything and find the task rather difficult, it is only because you haven't thought about it. I would even suggest that all writing takes place and is often completed in the mind long before any words are set down on paper (OK, clever dick, tapped out on a computer keyboard). The more you think about what you want to write and how you want to write it, the greater chance you have of producing less than awful work.


5 Having made those four points, I should stress that they are merely points I have made for others, perhaps you, to consider. They are not rules, because and, this is both the easiest and hardest point to get over: there are no rules. Whether you are writing something, painting something, composing something or doing whatever you are trying to do - there are no rules. You can do what the hell you like. You can do anything you like. Now here's the catch: whether anyone is in the slightest bit interested in what you have produced is quite another matter. Your 'novel', for example, might consist of writing the word 'love' 60,000 times.

Fair enough, but I would bet my bottom dollar that anyone would ever bother to carry on reading it after 20 seconds, and no amount of explaining 'what you were trying to do' will spark any further interest whatsoever. When I was still doing a lot of photography, I would often visit photographic exhibitions and see some great pictures. But what always put me off in some exhibutions would be an A4 sheet of paper next to a quite ordinary photo 'explaining' explaining what it is all about. As far as I am concerned those photos should stand on their own. If they need some kind of longwinded exposition about why they are good and worthwhile, they are simply nothing of the kind.

There's is, what is, if I have got this right, something called The Intentional Fallacy. The debate centres on whether a work of art should stand alone without us knowing the first thing about the author, composer or painter. Some argue that knowing some details can - and I do hope I have got this right and am prepared to be corrected - somehow 'add' to that work. I'm sure there's far more to it than that, but I am firmly in the camp that each and every 'work of art' (and Lord how I loathe that phrase for being woolly and vacuous) should stand and fall on its own intrinsic merits, that everything needed to 'understand' what it was intended to be conveyed is given, that no more should be needed. Certainly, I must admit, that subsequently coming across certain biographical details can somehow enhance our experience. But my point is that such an enhancement is a bonus.

6 There are 1,001 different kinds of novel, painting, pieces of music or whatever it is you are producing and there will be 1,001 different kinds of people who will appreciate some but not others. So, my warning about farts and self-love notwithstanding (and unless, of course, you are simply writing like a journeyman and being hired to produce a certain something), it would seem obvious to me that you should first and foremost write for yourself. If others are also interested, all well and good. But don't go about trying to please others. Not only will you most probably produce pretty mediocre work, but the chances are you won't even impress those you are hoping to impress.
I've run out of steam on this one and if I carry on, I shall merely be wasting your time as well as mine. But there is one last thing I should like to advocate:


7 Learn to touch-type. First of all it is not half as difficult as you might think and you don't have to reach a particular level. PAs and secretaries might be expected to reach a touch-typing speed of whatever is the norm - 100 words a minute - but you don't. Forty words a minute or even slower is perfectly adequate. But what you will gain is the ability to write as you think. If, like me for years and years (and like almost all the hacks I know) you use the two, three or four-finger system, you are interrrupting your train of thought several times every few seconds and suffering because of it. The chances are that you will type in such manner, make quite a few mistakes and go back and correct them before you carry on. Or, like me, you will carry on regardless and then go back once you feel you have finished to correct all those mistakes. That is not only excessively boring, but the chances are that you will start re-writing what you have written and ensure that what was more or less a coherent train of thought becomes anything but. That's what happened to me, but a few years ago I bought the Mavis Beacon touch typing program and taught myself and the benefit is enormous.


8 Perhaps I should restate my first point and expand on it a little: quite apart from what you write not having to be perfect from the off, don't take on too much in one session. It only gets worse. Set yourself a target, reach it, then get up and do something entirely different for at least a few hours, but preferably a day. You will then come back to what you have written and see it with a far clearer, far more objective eye. So you revise it and try to improve it, discarding, more often than not, those bits you first thought were quite magnificent because in a rather colder light they are nothing of the kind.

Oh, and I have only written a few short stories over the years, two short novels and one what would be called a novella. Of those I will only stand by the second novel as - perhaps - getting there. Everything I wrote before then was, I'm sure, shite, because I had no idea what I was doing or even wanted to do.

Lesson for today: Never Trust A Grown-up, especially if you elected him or her or they deal in money. The chances are he and she find it impossible to distinguish between their arse and their elbow

Let me take you back to your childhood, to the days when there were still ‘grown-ups’. These ‘grown-ups’ were initially like gods: when you were 3 or 4 they were simply always right because the were ‘grown-ups’. Later, at 7 or 8, you might well have become a little more rebellious, or not, but you usually felt rather overawed by these ‘grown-ups’. In those days, too, people of 17 and 18 were quite simply ancient and could quite easily be put in the same category as the ‘grown-ups’. (These days, I find I can’t even treat men and women in their late teens and early twenties as though they have much of a clue of what’s going on, and even feel ever-so-slightly guilty if I find a woman of 19 or 20 sexually attractive, knowing just how emotionally vulnerable she still is. But, ssh, don’t tell anyone, especially not anyone in their late teens and early twenties, who do so like to think they have reached the winning line.)

The point about ‘grown-ups’ were, among other things, was that if something went wrong, a ‘grown-up’ could sort it out and there was an end to the matter.  ‘Grown-ups’ were seemingly all-powerful. Naturally, as we get over, we wise up. As I have told my two children over and over again since they were quite young, in many ways ‘grown-ups’ are just older children: they, too, squabble and bicker and lie to each other in just the same way as children do, but unfortunately they are not amenable to the same kind of sanctions. (As recently as three years ago, when my daughter was, 13, she misbehaved and I ordered her to ‘go to your room, now!’ And off she went, admittedly protesting, and meekly stayed there for the next ten minutes until I came upstairs to tell her ‘not to do it again’ and ‘you can go downstairs now, if you like’. I could not believe I got away with it.)

I also tell them that when ‘grown-ups’ squabble, bicker and lie to each other in it far more serious than when children do it, because they know better. But although we wise up, aspects of that attitude still remain with us. So, for example, we have what can only be described as a naive belief that those engaged in the law and medicine know what they are talking about, and crucially, more than we do. To a certain extent that’s true, but at the end of the day a lawyer and doctor can only give you his or her informed opinion, one based on extra training and experience. But it can still be a bloody awful opinion, and of you get more than three or four lawyers or doctors together and present them with the same problem, you will get at least three or four opinions and, unhelpfully, at least two will contradict each other totally.

Then there are the ‘money men’, the big businessmen, our politicians and others of that ilk. Most certainly we all wise up in time and realise that not only do a great many of them have feet of clay but their brains are also exceptionally suspect, but such realisation does come rather later in life than would be sensible. And that brings me to my favourite topic: the euro crisis. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, lads and lasses: we all assume that at the end of the day our politicians and their advisers know what they are doing, however obscure and daft it might seem to us. We tell ourselves that if we can’t quite follow the logic of it all, it is our fault for not being bright enough or lacking a sufficiently knowledge about certain matters.

But have none of it: they haven’t a bloody clue. And those who DO have a clue, simply haven’t the backbone to do what they know to be the right thing. It’s politically impossible, they say, so instead they almost willingly lead not just Europe but the rest of the world into an economic depression the like of which none of us has seen in his or her lifetime.