Song for you: a comparative analysis of different versions, with reference to what is crap, anodyne and pointless (Whitney Houston, The Carpenters and Michael Buble) and two - Donny Hathaway and Herbie Hancock/Christine Aguilera - which at least do the song justice. Oh, and Russell's original (which I like best of all). And then just a little bit about gay marriage, to keep you buggers on your toes (bad joke not intended)

NB (24/05/21)

I’ve just looked up this entry because I want to send a link to it to someone who has been in touch (hi, Miz Walky Talky), and gave the different versions another listening, and I have to admit I was perhaps a bit harsh. 

It’s just that the Whitney Houston, Carpenters and Michael Buble stuff just isn’t my bag. I do prefer something just a little more edge and, frankly The Carpenters and Buble couldn’t and can’t interest me in a millions. But liberal ‘ol me is bound to admit some people do like it and my tastes are no better than theirs just different. 

But I will add, if you do like soul, why not go for the real thing rather than Buble and Simply Red’s ersatz crap. There is plenty of it about. Ok, the trumpet solo on Buble’s version is neat enough, but to my ears it still sounds too much like the soundtrack to a cinema ad for Martini.

I can’t remember when, why or how I first got to like the music of Leon Russell, although I was familiar with his name as one of the many knocking around when I was in my salad days. In the late Sixties, early Seventies he was best known for organising the Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour of the U.S., but apart from hearing songs from the eponymous album when I was in someone else’s flat and it was played, I knew nothing about him. ‘Leon Russell’ was just one of those names, and to add to the confusion there was an English folk singer knocking about at the time who was also called ‘Leon Russell’. But for some reason I bought one of his LPs (as they were in those days) called Carney and he immediately, just on the strength of that, became one of my favourite singers.

I’m the first to admit that he doesn’t have a conventional good voice, but then nor do several of my other favourite singers, for example The Kinks’ Ray Davies and Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, to say nothing about bloody Bob Dylan. Yet all four, in their own way can knock spots of the more vanilla types, your Michael Buble (see below), that fuckwit from Simply Red (I really can’t bring myself to write his name, I loathe him so much. He reminds me of TCP) who is to soul music what KFC is to fine dining. Russell never really registered as a ‘star’ in his own right, but made his name as a session musician, playing piano, guitar and bass, and sought-after arranger in Los Angeles. Another of the singer/songwriters I like, JJ Cale, was in his band when they were both knocking around Tulsa, Oklahoma, and trying to make a name for themselves.

Russell also wrote some great songs, notably the one I am writing about here, Song For You, as well as This Masquerade, which was a big hit for jazz guitarist George Benson - a great version - and the bloody Carpenters - the usual soft-edged crap. (Edit Oct 25, 2019: There is also a great jazz cover by the pianist Gene Harris.) You can tell I’m no big Carpenters fan (and, again, see below). Their version sounds like the kind of schmaltzy muzak you hear in lifts (US: elevators) from here to Dubai via New York and Rio, as does Helen Reddy’s and Kenny Rogers: great song, appalling interpretations.

Below are three cases in point. Song For You is a great love song. Play it to your girl, and she’ll forgive you anything for the next few days. But it does, it really does depend on interpretation. So here, apart from Leon Russell’s original, are five other versions, in reverse order. (Amy Winehouse also did a version, but I only found out after preparing the six below for upload to this blog, and I really can’t be arsed going through that again. And, anyway, although she sings it in her inimitable way, she doesn’t actually try to sing it as a love song, which as far as I am concerned rather misses the point.) The first three versions are an object lessons in how to kill something stone dead.

First off is Whitney Houston’s version. It starts of OK - well, OK if you like her middle-of-the road stuff which I don’t, but after one minute 30 seconds it completely loses the plot and is turned into ersatz middle-of-the road disco and becomes truly awful. In fact, I was obliged to fade it out as I can’t expect anyone reading this blog to be subjected to that kind of crap while enjoying my hospitality. But by all means listen for yourself just to reassure yourself that I’m not talking bullshit.

Next comes the version by The Carpenters, which if you are familiar with the kind of dross they used to turn out, will come as no surprise. I’m liberal enough to admit that some - deluded - people get their rocks off listening to The Carpenters (or what passes for their rocks) but I find them downright embarrassing. But give them at least a minute of your time and then, I trust, you’ll agree with me.

Next up is that arch tit Michael Buble, second cousin to The Carpenters and various other ersatz emotion merchants, who is another idiot who couldn’t resist taking a lovely song and turning it into accessible garbage. Let me speak my mind here: Michael Buble music is safe, white soul for safe white middle-class dinner parties given by the kind of fuckwits who think living life on the edge is leaving the house without their mobile phone (US ‘cell phone’). It, too, is - in my ever-so-humble opinion - quite awful. But give it a minute of your time, too, and then reflect on how not to do something. And if you listen to it all and tell yourself ‘what’s he talking about, it’s not that bad’, you are officially banned from reading this blog.

That’s the worst of them out of the way, and now for two versions which are half decent. I’m not too sure Donny Hathaway has all that much street cred (UPDATE: Actually, I’ve discovered he has quite a lot, but mainly among pensioners and baldy soul ‘buffs’ for whom ‘R&B’ is something entirely different, not that today’s R&B is all that bad. In fact, some of it is rather good. Trouble is I daren’t say so for fear of coming across as some kind of Medallion ‘Who, Me Old?’ Man. Sadly, Donny topped himself. He had mental issues and jumped out of a window). But at least he doesn’t make a pig’s ear of Leon Russell’s Song For You. You get the feeling, when he sings it, that he is at least singing of someone he loves or loved and isn’t just fulfilling a contractual obligation. The arrangement is, for me - at least from the 2.55 min/sec point, just a bit iffy, the kind of arrangement you might hear in an advert selling life assurance or a mortgage. But though it’s by no means the best, it is firmly this side of the fence where bloody Whitney Houston, The Carpenters and Michael Buble are well and truly the other side. Donny makes it.

This version is, in my view, a good one: Christine Aguilera sings it and Herbie Hancock plays keyboards and, I should imagine, arranges. This works, not least because the jazz is so good. And until I heard this, I always thought - never have heard much by her except various tracks while working out in the gym - that Christine Aguilera was just another pop chick. She’s obviously a lot, lot more.

Now for the one which knocks all the rest into a cocked hat, what this whole blog entry is all about: the version by the guy who wrote the song and who most definitely had someone in mind when he did so. This one is for me the tops by one million miles, a complete different song to all the rest. I don’t really like admitting this because it makes me sound a bit of a tit, but listening to Leon Russell’s version - each time - sends a chill up my spine. And I feel deeply in love with I don’t know who. Sadly, not my wife. It just reminds me of the days when I still felt such strong emotion. (Sorry about that last bit, but it would be dishonest not to add it.)

If you have the time to spare, play Herbie Hancock/Christine Aguilera’s version then Leon Russell’s one after the other. Then you’ll realise just what a great song it is and why Whitney Houston, The Carpenters and Michael Buble should be hauled before the International Criminal Court in The Hague and charged with crimes against humanity.

Oh, well, I suppose you deserve a photo of the man, so I have looked up two. Below is a very recent one - well, he is almost 71 -, and then below that as I like to remember him, not least because for a moment or two I can still persuade myself that I’m not yet an old fart. Not yet, but sadly, like the rest of you, slowly getting there.

PS: There’s got to be a PS to all this: looking up something related, I’ve come across the fact that a damn sight more people have recorded this song than I thought, including Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, The Wanker From Simply Red (surprise, bloody surprise), Neil Diamond, Celine Dion (oh dear), someone called ‘Leon Jackson’, someone called ‘Jim Brickman’ and Willie Nelson, who manages to ruin it in a totally unexpected way and ruins whatever good impression I might inadvertently have had of him. I think his major claim to fame is that he hasn’t yet died.

To hear these version (or not - I wouldn’t blame you) use Spotify. I haven’t heard the Aretha Franklin and Dusty Springfield versions and I would like to. The rest of them are equally as awful as Whitney, Michael and bloody Karen Carpenter.

. . .

This blog likes to stay up to date so let me add my two ha’porth on gay marriage. In Britain they are now allowed to enter into a ‘civil partnership’ which gives them the same legal rights as far as inheritance etc are concerned. And Amen to that. Why not? But I really, really can’t get my head around ‘gay marriage’. What more do they get that civil partnerships don’t give them? I did actually ask a gay acquaintance that very question and he gave me the very sensible answer that gays like to be treated equally. And I can’t disagree with that. Yet it still doesn’t answer my question: what do gays get which a civil partnership doesn’t give them?

It does, of course, come down to definitions. And definitions, like much else, not least our moral values, are not quite as set in stone as many like to believe. Yes, of course we can redefine ‘marriage’. For many it means the union of a man and a woman. So why not redefine it and make it ‘the union of two people who love each other, irrespective of sex, and want their union publicly sanctified’? That would surely do the trick. Yet I can’t get away from the feeling that we are chasing down some blind alley ever faster for no very good reason.

I think, perhaps, that that word ‘equality’ is in part to blame, given the explanation my gay friend gave me. We all seem to think we know what it means, but in fact it is a little vaguer than we might like. For ‘equal’ doesn’t mean ‘the same as’: it does depend on context. So when it comes to pay and conditions, I believe utterly that a man and a woman who do the same job should be treated ‘equally’: that they get the same pay and conditions. Full stop. But patently a man is not ‘the same as’ a women. Each is unique.

The issue here is that both should get ‘equal treatment’ when it matters (in itself far too vague a statement in the circumstances, though in my defence I should say that it’s almost 11pm).

I think much difficulty, and many difficulties, derive from the spurious equation of ‘equal’ with ‘the same as’. When we are talking of gays and heterosexuals, we should naturally point out that a gay couple is not able to produce offspring, whereas a heterosexual couple - in theory - can. (They might not fancy each other, hence the ‘in theory’). So in that sense a gay couple is not the same as a heterosexual couple. At this point you might, naturally, argue that ‘marriage need not necessarily imply the imperative to reproduce’. And to that I would be obliged to agree.

So it does come down to definitions. Unfortunately, the result of that is that morality is thus necessarily relative. And if that is the case, the various modern, current, Western moral imperatives - that racism is evil, that we should all be treated equally etc - are also relative, that is to say (at the end of the day) negotiable and might not necessarily be true always and forever. The trouble is that we don’t want them to be negotiable: the technical word for all this is ‘dilemma’.

But it is far too late to carry on now. All I can do is leave you with this one thought: once ‘God’ was the ‘fixed point’ which gave reference to everything else. Then in time we did away with ‘God’, although moral philosophers realised that without a ‘fixed point’ of some kind, some universally acknowledged imperative, all moral philosophies - i.e. ethical systems - fell apart. Today, rather dishonestly, we liberals ignore the philosophical incongruities of our reasoning and argue that our ‘liberal values’ are right and that is that! And if you don’t agree, you are a fascist, reactionary pig! And gays should be able to get married if they want to! And if you don’t agree, you are well beyond the pale! (And in the very same breath many of us liberals are apt to argue that all this talk of God is superstitious stuff and nonsense!)

But as I pointed out almost ten minutes ago, it is late and I am buggered if I can think as straight as I should to attempt to make the kind of points I am making. Although I will admit that having started this entry writing about a love song called Song For You, I am bound to admit, accept, acknowledge and all the rest that a man might feel the love it conveys for another man, and a woman for another woman just as much as a man can feel it for a woman or ... blah, blah, I’m sure you get my drift.

God bless you all. (Did I really say that? Well, wash my mouth with soap and water!)

. . .

PPS: I’m watching a BBC documentary on Mark Knopfler, and the thought just occurred to me that I would be more sanguine watching such programmes and such like if those being featured being interviewed didn’t all pretty much look like bloody retired geography teachers, retired social workers, retired and still recovering alcoholics and retired paedophiles.

. . .

PPPS (if that’s at all possible) Will the good Lord please save me from nostalgia. Please. Always. Nostalgia is The Beast we have all been warned of time and again.

. . .

I keep and eye on ‘the stats’ of this blog (should that be the ‘stats’ or ‘the’ stats? I don’t know. Suggestions please and all silly ones will be acted upon) and I am astounded to discover that one particular entry (this one) has been viewed more than twice as much as the next most popular entry — 4,031 times. At the time of writing this — March 2, 2013, at 10.06am, this blog as been views 38,128 times, so more than 10 per cent of those viewings are of that one entry. Why? Well, when I delve deeper into ‘the stats’ and look at ‘referring sites’, a great many of them are visited by people tracking down a well-known picture (left) of Mandy Rice-Davies (‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he’). So it has occurred to me to include that picture (and this preamble explaining what I’m doing) in every blog entry in an attempt to drum up visitors and encourage them to take a look at some other entries. It helps that when the picture was taken, she was a rather attractive woman.

How to lose money quite quickly: an easy-to-follow guide involving cheap Chinese tablets, Hong Kong-based crooks, Chinistore and Paypal

Those loyal readers visiting this blog whose sole thought every morning is to log in and see what else has been happening in my life might be interested to hear that after my cackhanded foray in becoming a ‘tablet middleman’ - buying up cheap tablets and then selling them on for a modest profit - will be dismayed to hear that I have recently come very unstuck in some such deal.

I should, however, first tell you that my relationship with tablets has now settled down into a staid and unexciting marriage. I now own a 7in Google Nexus and a 9in Samsung Tab and am happy with both. Not that I need either, and not that anyone in their right mind actually needs a tablet, let alone two, who also owns two desktop computers - a Mac and a PC - as well as five laptops (one of which is used exclusively by my daughter) and has use of a sixth provided by the good folk at work to allow me to access yet another PC at work in London to do ‘my quiz work’. Not that I use it at all, because as you can see I am spoilt for choice. But before I bought the Samsung and Nexus, I dabbled with buying a cheap Chinese tablet.

The first hit the rocks very soon because the mini USB connection was flaky and I sold it on eBay for more or less what I bought it for. The second was another cheapo Chinese effort, and it was that deal which has proved to be disasterous. I bought it from an outfit based somewhere in South China called Chinistore. The tablet and delivery set me back £158, and I also had to pay £11 in import duty. It arrived speedily, but when I unpacked it and turned it on, it was obvious that it was rubbish: the wifi didn’t work. So I emailed Chinistore and asked them what I should do.

They suggested downloading extra firmware and sent me a link to the site where I could download it. I went there, but as it was all in Chinese, I had no idea what link to click. And all the links I did click didn’t take me to what might - to confident Mandarin speaker and reader - be a firmware download link, but to either a soft porn site or a gaming site. So I emailed again and was sent a screenshot with an arrow helpfully pointing to the link I should try. I did try it, but merely got to the same succession of soft porn and gaming sites. Well, I had had enough.

I am reasonably good-natured and didn’t in principle object to downloading extra firmware to get the bloody thing to work, even though I take the view, not unreasonably, I suggest, that the tablet should have worked straight out of the box and that there should have been no need to hunt to a spurious firmware download link on a Chinese website in the forlorn hope that I could get it do do what it was supposed to do. When I bought it, I had paid through Paypal in the - as it turned out very naive - belief that I was ‘covered’, that I could return it and get a refund courtesy of Paypal’s ‘you’re safer than houses, squire, buying anything online using our service’ promise. So I opened a case requesting a refund on Paypal resolution centre and sat back.

A day later I received an email from Chinistore telling me they were very disappointed that I had already resorted to Paypal as they liked to believe their relations with customers were based on ‘mutual trust’ and that had I just asked, they would most certainly have refunded the money. But as it was would I please return the tablet. And they gave me an address in Shenzhen City (which is on the Chinese mainland opposite Hong Kong). I did as asked and sent it off at a cost of £28 in the box in which it had first arrived - and waited for my money. My money, of course, never turned up.

Eventually, Paypal informed me that they had considered the matter and would send me a refund once I had returned the tablet. And they sent me an address to which to send it back. Crucially this address, undoubtedly given them by Chinistore was a different address, on in Hong Kong. I replied saying I had already returned it. And then I sat back once again to await the arrival of my money. The next thing I heard was that Paypal had decided that as I hadn’t returned the tablet to the address they had specified, I wouldn’t be getting my money from them after all. I pointed out that I was in no position to send it to that address as I had already sent it to another address given me by Chinistore. I also sent them a copy of the email Chinistore had sent me and a link to the Royal Mail tracking service which showed the tablet had been safely delivered to Shenzhen City.

Tough titties, was Paypal’s response. Rules is rules, aren’t they sunshine, and I hadn’t sent it to the address they had specified. If I wanted my money back, they added helpfully, I should get in touch with Chinistore and ask for it. I have done so - about eight times so far, but Chinistore seem to have crossed me off their Christmas card list (except for a brief email asking me to ‘rate their service’). And that, dear friends, is that current state of affairs. I don’t have the crappy wifi-less tablet they sent (which I don’t want anyway) and I am a total £197 out of pocket. I have left out a few less relevant details, such as the several phone calls I made to Paypal’s resolution centre in Newcastle which led absolutely nowhere, and you are now fully in the picture. My question is: what do I do now?

My first thought was to take Paypal to the small claims court, but I somehow suspect that I won’t get much joy there and that some friendly judge or other will merely inform me to follow Paypal’s advice and chase Chinistore up for my money. So that to will lead nowhere.

Which only allows me one to suggest that you join me in a chorus of ‘fools and their money ...’

Exactly how bad is Quentin Tarantino? Well, pretty bad - in fact, even worse than that, but as long as he rakes in the dollars, Hollywood ain't going to tell him: kill the golden goose? Come one. And don’t accept Tarantino’s version of slavery. Try Howard Zinn’s account instead

Every industry and art form needs its new blood, whether it is a fresh way of cooking the books in accountancy, dreaming up new scams in banking or telling the same joke in such a way that it is not so obviously the hoary old chestnut which has been knocking around since Moses. Originals are rarer, and true originals - that is those who haven’t been expertly packaged by a PR agency to look like the real deal - are even rarer still.

So when Quentin Tarantino turned up, there was a good deal of rejoicing. The legend is that he was a passionate cineaste - actually, I’d prefer to use inverted commas as in ‘passionate cineaste’ as I find both words when used seriously to be pretentious and both words used in the same two-word phrase to be doubly pretentious - who was working in a video store and writing film scripts in his spare time. Finally, one script was so good - that for Reservoir Dogs - that he not only got to have it made, but was even allowed to direct it himself. And not only did he get to direct his film, but several ‘name’ actors - Michael Madson, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth - agreed to take part. (If you buy the legend, you really will buy anything, might I interest you in a beaten-up, broken-down car I’m selling which isn’t even worth scrapping?) But that was the legend and as Reservoir Dogs wasn’t half-bad, the legend, as they say, got a pass, and young Tarantino was the new kid on the block.

It has to be said that Tarantino did have something. The dialogue was witty without being forced and the set-up was intriguing. The film was also a box office success, and there’s nothing in any walk of life which impresses those who call the shots more than someone who can make them a mountain of moolah. So our Quentin, the video store clerk who made good, got to make a second film, Pulp Fiction. That, too, was good, and though one criticism of it might be that, in essence, it was the same film as Reservoir Dogs - great dialogue, intriguing set-up (three interweaving stories) and more name actors (John Travolta, Samuel Jackson, Tim Roth and Bruce Willis), it still had the same freshness as Tarantino’s first and, metaphorically, the lad was invited to even more Hollywood parties. And surely enjoyed it all.

At this point I should point out that although Tarantino went on to direct or write the scripts for several more films, I have only seen five others in which he was involved: Jackie Brown, True Romance (for which he wrote the script but which he didn’t direct), From Dusk Till Dawn (for which he wrote the script and which starred, in my view inexplicably, starred both George Clooney and Harvey Keitel, neither of whom would be thought to be on their uppers and so must have been doing the film for the dosh), Inglourious Basterds (starring one Christoph Waltz and Brad Pitt) and, most recently, Django Unchained (with Christoph Waltz again as well as Leonardo Di Caprio and Samuel Jackson). And of those five my view is that just one - Jackie Brown - was a ‘good film’ (not least because it wasn’t a Tarantino original but based on a story by Elmore Leonard) and just one - True Romance - although not particularly ‘good’ had some kind of merit. The rest were, again in my view, dreck (a word I know from German but which I sure I am using more in a Yiddish way).

Let me be very clear: not only did I think the other three were ‘not very good’, I thought they were total bloody stinkers, fucking awful, complete shite. Ironically, though, they did the biz at the box office so young Quentin’s star is still shining. Take a look at the user reviews on IMDB and you will see that the most recent, Django Unchained, is rated very highly - an average of 8.7/10. Loads of people rate it. But I don’t. So what does that say for my judgment. Well, I honestly don’t know. All I can do is to repeat that the two Tarantino films I have seen most recently - Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained - are quite simply terrible. Total and utter shite.

Both follow, for the viewer (or at least this viewer) a similar path: both are technically rather well made and both elicit a certain curiosity: where will this film go, where will it take me. But at the same time a number of elements jar. In Inglourious Basterds is was the pristine wooden hut (with a cellar, by the way - a necessary plot point) on a pristine Alpine meadow. And everything about it - that scene comes at the beginning of the film and goes on rather too long - is not just artificial but has nothing to redeem its artificiality. I hope that makes sense - it will do to some - because that’s what great art is: it imposes itself on you to such an extent that it redeems itself and you forgive its faults and accept it totally on its own terms.

Deadwood, which I mentioned a few weeks ago, did that, as did Pan’s Labyrinth. Great art succeeds against all odds. Inglourious Basterds did nothing of the kind. It simply failed. But, oddly, given the quite good dialogue, you grant Tarantino a little more time so that it fails a little more slowly. All the while you get just a little more nervous that there is, at the end of the day, a lot less to what you are seeing than meets the eye. Then comes the final scene, the explosion and fire in the Parisian cinema in Inglourious Basterds and the Southern mansion being blown to smithereens in Django Unchained, which helps you realise that what you have just seen is complete dross, total dreck, the work of a chancer who will, sooner or later be found out. It is a minority opinion, of course, but one which I shall stand by until my dying day.

Let me spell it out: Quentin Tarantino is really not very good at all, a one-trick pony who will, one day, be found out. I had thought that, perhaps, Inglourious Basterds was the exception which proved the rule, that everyone deserves a clunker now and then. After seeing Django Unchained I’ve realised that the opposite is true. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were the exceptions which proved the rule. Perhaps they were just beginner’s luck.

There are, of course, dissenting voices, with, according to IMDB, many more who consider Tarantino’s latest something of a masterpiece. But accepting that the majority opinion can’t be wrong reminds me of the advice I heard years ago: ‘Eat shit, 12 billion flies can’t be wrong!’ So here are the summaries to the many IMDB reviwers who think our lad walks on water: ‘Tarantino at his finest’, ‘Amazing formally, and with a moral complexity that will work on you from within’, ‘Quentin is Quentin. Highly entertaining and perfectly written’, ‘Spot-on characterization of internalization of corrupt values’, ‘Django Unchained is simply a BLAST from start to finish and a new epic of Quentin Tarantino!’ and ‘Tarantino Back To His Best!!’

BTW There’s is an unmistakeable camp element to Django Unchained, all that leather and sadism. If, despite reading this you decide to watch it, pay particular attention to the scene when some dude or other arrives to torture Django but is then seen off by the Samuel Jackson character and leaves. If his leaving isn’t a fully blown mince (possibly intended, but if so, why?) I’m a Dutchman.

. . .

There’s another reason why I disliked Django Unchained so much. The studio PR guff, happily and gladly replicated by the fucking press, as eager as Hollywood to turn a dishonest buck printing whatever the fuck will turn that dishonest buck, makes out that the film is some kind of re-evaluation of the master/slave relationship and some kind of examination of slavery in 19th-century America. No, it’s not, it’s just another Hollywood potboiler. It’s just another Hollywood potboiler which has, rather belated it has to be said, cottoned onto the fact that the black US dollar has the same 100 cents as the white US dollar and that ‘aspirational’ blacks, whether in the US or elsewhere, might care to part with several of their hard-earned dollars to in widescreen technicolour how a black dude - Jamie Foxx in leathers - blasts the living shit, and then some, out of loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of white folk. All this, it has to be said, under the ineffably spurious guise of evaluating - or possibly ‘re-evaluating’ - the  master/slave relationship of 19th-century America.

Several years ago I came across, just by chance, Howard Zinn’s People’s History Of The United States. I read it and was exceptionally surprised by what I read. I have already written here in this blog about the book. Howard Zinn is admittedly politically left-of-centre and admittedly something of a socialist. But there is nothing wrong with that in my book and especially nothing wrong with that if a man or woman comes clean from the off about where he or she’s at.

Howard Zinn’s main point - with which I am obliged to agree - is that most history is written top down: what kings and queens and lords and ladies and presidents and parliaments and prime ministers and leaders did. Zinn decided to redress the balance when he set out to write his history of the United States: he showed how quite apart from those who came over to colonise the new world, there were those who were apprenticed and indentured to the colonisers, but to such an extent that they were more or less slaves.

He showed how the apparent emancipation of the slaves after the Civil War was a complete sham, how the ‘emancipated’ slaves were duped into continued servitude and slavery by means of the company store and the rest. And this was all news to a white, middle-class, public school educated lad like myself. So when Tarantino arrives with his blood-fest featuring a leather-clad black cowboy getting one over the whites by blasting them all to kingdom come, I recall history and don’t just puke once but several times.

Salmond and Farage: unlikely kissing cousins but they have a lot in common

A question, although only those of you in the UK should bother trying to answer. Those of you dipping into this ’ere blog who live abroad are certainly entitled to try, but once you know the question, you might well be baffled as to who I’m talking about. So here’s the question: what do the SNP’s Alex Salmond and UKIP’s Nigel Farage have in common? Well, at first blush not a lot, but in an odd sort of way they do.

Let me start on what I perceive as their plus points. In my view both are capable men, politically astute and, crucially, they stand head and shoulders among their party peers. I might well be wrong, of course, but without Salmond the SNP would – and will be – half the force it is now and, similarly, without Farage, the UKIP would – and will be – the same. A few years ago, Salmond stood down as party president and more or less retired and the SNP ground to a rather embarrassing halt. The SNP might well deny that’s what happened, but that’s what it looked like from where I sat at the time. Whatever the truth of the matter, the call went out to Salmond, and the great man returned to salvage his party and, as we now know, lead it into government for the first time in its history.

Something similar happened to UKIP: Farage stood down, the party began increasingly making a fool of itself, Farage was implored to return and now it is riding high(ish) in the polls. For me that matter is pretty clear: without either man the party each leads would wither and die and become nothing more than a footnote in history.

What they also have in common – and again I’m certain both parties would deny the claim – is that they are essentially one-issue parties. In fact, ‘one-party pressure groups’ might be closer to the mark. For the SNP that issue is independence for Scotland. For UKIP its making sure Britain – or the UK or whatever the technical term is these days – leaves the EU. Both claim to be bona-fide political parties whose policies go far beyond the one which is the raison d’etre, but as the saying goes ‘tell that to the Marines’.

If the SNP achieved its goal and won independence for Scotland, it would be only a matter of time before the Scots Nats splintered into left and right-wing factions, which would largely mirror the current left-right split in Scotland of Labour v Lib Dems. (The Tories don’t have a look in up there, and even though the party has elected an out lesbian as its president, I believe that is mere coincidence and not a cynical ploy to try to persuade the electorate that it is now ‘modern’ and ‘good lord, we don’t even mind having a lesbian as our president’.) Once

that split occurred – in a by then independent Scotland – it would be the same old political game all over again, although I do feel, somehow, that the soul the SNP is rather to the left of centre.

That cannot, of course, be said about UKIP. David Cameron once described the party as ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’ and although I don’t accept that they are all like that, it must have been for many uncomfortably close to the mark. I’ve often thought that some of them would throw in their lot with the BNP if the BNP did not so obviously consist of – to use a popular phrase – plebs and oiks you wouldn’t ever want to see in your golf club. As it is, UKIP will have to do.

Were UKIP ever to achieve its aim and see Britain (or the UK – see above) leave the EU, it would, I think, be curtains for UKIP. Yes, they claim to have policies on education, health, the economy, the environment, the Teletubbies and fizzy lemonade, but as far as I’m concerned that is just PR bullshit for the masses, or at least for those of the masses who like to imagine UKIP really is a bons-fide political party and not just a one-issue pressure group in clean underwear and cricket club ties.

As it happens I am no great fan of the EU. I think that what started out as admirable idea has become thoroughly corrupt in far too many ways and, if it is not reformed, could well be the cause of a great deal of bloody conflict in Europe. And that would be ironic given the EU’s proud and all too incessant boast that it has ‘brought peace to Europe’. But unlike UKIP I think it would be outright folly to leave the EU. While Britain is in, it has a sporting chance of shaping and institution which has a great influence on its future. Once out, that influence has gone.

But back to Salmond and Farage: perhaps they should get together for a drink and compare notes. Oh, and both have can be rather funny. Not that it really matters.

The Deadwood stage stops here: why after David’s Milch’s Deadwood we should never put up with anything but the very best. (Oh, and hats off to casting directors the world over)

Let me start on a very obscure note. Some people, surely a small minority, stay behind a little when a film has finished and the credits roll to take a look at the names of some of those who made the film possible. Incredible as it might seem to some, the director and his actors - his ‘cattle’ as Fellini liked to observe - aren’t the only ones part of ‘the creative’ process. There’s the role played by the cinematographer (as important as the director in my opinion) and the director really is nowhere if a film’s various producers aren’t up to scratch. But even they don’t exhaust the list: the soundtrack - note ‘sound’ not just ‘music’ - will often make a film. (And by way of illuminating that, you might care to read this entry made after this was posted.)Take away the soundtrack and your average viewer really doesn’t know what to feel. In too many films a scene is only full of suspense because the soundtrack tells us so. So keeping an eye out for the ‘sound designer’ or whatever he or she is called, then looking out for other films he or she has worked on is a good, although means infallible, way of rooting out other films it might be rewarding to watch.

Somewhere on that list of credits you’ll find out who was responsible for ‘casting’. Now, I’ve never made a film and the chances of me ever doing so are in minus figures. But were I ever be required to do so (and I should prefer to be a producer rather than a director), I would make damn sure that whoever was hired to help with the casting damn well knew his or her job and was damn well the best or close to at casting. Each different film will have its own production dynamic, with the director and the producers having a greater or lesser say in who is hired and who isn’t and whoever is responsible for casting is, I should imagine, only able to suggest for and against and give advice. The final decision will rest with the producers, unless the director is so ‘great’ he or she (invariably still ‘he’, but we all live in hope) as to have the final say.

Why, I hear some of you mumbling, grumbling even, is this chap going on about ‘casting directors’ and ‘casting agents’. Is he really so fed up with watching paint dry? Well, no I’m not. I’ll explain why, unusually, my thoughts recently turned to casting directors and agents. But before that I shall point out an irony: we only become aware of casting (or heating a room or seasoning a dish) when something has gone horribly wrong. If, on the other hand a film is well cast (or a room is heated exactly right and a dish is - OK, you get my drift, no need to labour the point) none of us, I’m sure, reflects: well, isn’t this film well cast!
But that’s what occurred to me recently when I started watching Deadwood online. The casting of that was spot on, impeccable.

. . .

Some might have heard of Deadwood, some might even have seen it on TV (on Sky here in Britain). It was the brainchild of one David Milch (no, I hadn’t heard of him either before I started watching the series and stars, among others our very own Ian McShane). You can find out more about Milch here and here. Some might only know it because of newspaper reports of its shameless use of obscenities and profanities, but to judge it according to what our strait-laced Press choose to believe will upset their strait-laced readers would, at best, be wholly misleading and, at worst, a travesty of judgment. Deadwood is, in my view - there will, of course, be others - one of the very best, if not the very best series to have been screened on TV (and it’s no surprised that it was brought to the small screen by America’s HBO).

It deals with life in the small Dakota settlement of Deadwood in the mid-1870s, when Deadwood was an ‘illegal’ settlement established after gold was found nearby. In fact, the discovery of gold was the sole reason why the ‘camp’ Deadwood was established. Naturally every scurvy version of humanity found his and her way to Deadwood in the wake of that

discovery as well as rather less scurvy individual. Deadwood (above) was illegal because it was an ad hoc settlement established in land the US government had signed over to the native Americans under the Treaty of Laramie. You can find out more here. And because it was ‘illegal’, it did not come under anyone’s jurisdiction and was literally beyond the law. Several people were murdered daily and were murdered with impunity. And it Milch’s TV series portrays life in that settlement in gory, shocking, disgusting detail.

According to my reading, Milch, who had made his name with the series Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blues (neither of which I’ve yet seen, but I shall look most certainly chase up after being so enthused by Deadwood) and then wanted to make a series about the gradual establishment of civilisation and the establishment of the rule of law. He had planned to set it in ancient Rome. HBO were interested in such a series, but as they already had a series about Rome in production, Milch was asked to think again and came up with the idea of charting the slow, painful crawl of a society towards civilisation and the rule of law in Deadwood.

But a bland description of his TV series as ‘a society’s crawl towards civilisation and the rule of law’, although essentially true, does not do Deadwood (the TV series) justice whatsoever. If anything, such a description might well turn a potential viewer off, but that would be a shame. Deadwood, the western, is unlike any western you are ever likely to have seen. It is about people, not stereotypes. The camp is filthy, the people are filthy, their morals are filthy. They don’t dress in the way Hollywood’s costume department for so long tried to persuade us ‘cowboys’ dressed, they wear the same clothes as folk dressed in further east, except that everything was filthy and ragged. Mud is everywhere. Death is everywhere.

Milch admits that the way many people use the foulest language in his TV version is not verbatim in that the obscenities and profanities in use 136 years ago were not those we are accustomed to hear today. But, he argues, using their language would sound so archaic as to detract from the dialogue and all he has tried to do is to update Victorian obscenity and profanity to what we - at least, what some of use (guilty, m’lud) use today. But I shan’t carry on. All I can do is to urge the scrupulous among you to buy yourself a DVD box set of all three series or, as I have done, seek it out online. I hope you will not be disappointed. In my experience it is unique.

A postcript: only three series of Deadwood were made and then, inexplicably, HBO pulled the plug. So far I have not been able to find out why. There was talk of two film-length episodes to ‘wrap up the story’, but negotiations came to nothing and there seems little prospect that they will now ever be made. If anyone knows quite why HBO pulled the plug - as far as I know viewing figures held up well and never flagged - I should be keen to find out, so get in touch.

For me not one single performance hit a wrong note and it would be unfair to single out any actor. But I shall be unfair and state that as the immoral, murderous, cynical, sarcastic saloon and whorehouse proprietor Al Swearengen Britain’s Ian McShane (above) is superb. And casting McShane, who I understand was initially reluctant to take the role and had to be persuaded to do so by his American agent, was casting of genius. That’s how and why I first came to consider the role of the casting agent: I’ll repeat that we never really realise how good these man and women do their job when they get it right. It’s only when an actor is utterly miscast (as, in my view Robert Redford was when he played Gatsby in The Great Gatsby) what they come to our attention. By the way, if you like Deadwood, take a look at Justified. It’s different, but it also stars Timothy Olyphant.

What would Christmas be without a heartfelt plea? So here's mine: think of those who aren't as lucky as yourselves

Let me be frank: I like Christmas, though I must add that without children (which, for me is any young person up to and including the age of 23) Christmas isn't all that important. I was brought up by an English father and a German mother in an observing, though not overly strict, Roman Catholic household, and we always celebrated Christmas as the Germans (and many other northern Europeans do) on Christmas Eve. To this day - Christmas Eve, in fact - I would prefer to celebrate Christmas as we did when I was young, but almost all families take their lead from the female figurehead, and my wife is English (well, actually, Cornish and from Methodist stock to boot).

And although I don't regard myself in the slightest bit Christian, religious or denominational, though I do choose - choose being exactly the right word - to believe in God (but don't even think about trying to tease me out on that one, as such a belief is so intensely personal that it might make no sense whatsoever to anyone else and just lead to a colossal waste of time, much of it, no doubt, taken up with unwelcome proselitysing and none of it on my part) I do abhor how in Britain Christmas is all-too-often reduced to a booze and gift fest of the crassest kind. I know that contemporary wisdom insists that December 25 was chosen as the 'birthdate of the saviour' by the fledgling Christian churches (not 'churches', not church) to soak up the demotic 'pagan' celebration of the winter solstice, but that rather misses the point.
When we in the West celebrate Christmas, we are, whether knowingly or not and willingly or not, following a Christian tradition. So I feel we should, at least, do one of two things: either acknowledge the fact or drop the pretence completely. At the moment most of us do neither. We choose to pronounce 'goodwill to all men' and attend decide, in a cloud of boozy nostalgia, to attend a carol service, and then congratulate ourselves on how sensitive we are to the mood of the occasion. And that is that.

As a young RC lad growing up (and who thought he wanted to become a priest for a short year or two before he sprouted pubic hair and discovered girls) our family Christmas celebration more or less started after lunch on Christmas Eve when my older brother Ian and I were sent off to confession at our parish church, as much to get as out of the house for a few hours for our mother to prepare for the Christmas Eve jollitites as to prepare ourselves for taking communion at midnight mass. (A real catholic - sorry Catholic) would write Midnight Mass. I don't.) We arrived back home as it was growing dark after making our confessions (and in those purer, pre-pubescent days I was not yet obliged to think up a working euphemism for wanking as, dear reader, I did not yet wank - that came later) and were exiled upstairs to change into 'good clothes' until we were finally called downstairs for supper and then die Bescherung, which was heralded by the tinkling of a bell supposedly rung by das Christkind to summon us into the living rooms with its Christmas tree and presents.

A casual reader might assume I am trying to make fun of the whole occasion. Well, the casual reader should realise that he or she is quite, quite wrong. I loved it then, as a child, and I would love it now, as an adult attempting to create the same occasion for my children. At the end of the day, Christ this and Christ that, as far as I am concerned one meaning of Christmas is to try to demonstrate to our children just how much we love them. Yet ironically, because we love them so, so much we always fail to convey just how much - it is, children being children and not yet parents, a quite impossible task.

Writing this, I am fully aware that there are many - far, far too many - children out there who will not, tonight, experience the childish joy of Christmas, children who might, instead, experience an unremitting misery knowing that they are, for whatever reason, excluded from that joy. That they exist should not tempt us to deny the joy to others. But we should remind ourselves that they are out there. So as I publish this entry at almost the stroke of midnight (here in the UK, Greenwich Mean Time and all that, of course) I wish you all a happy Christmas, but also urge you to consider, if only for a moment of two, all those children, from the age of nothing to whatever, who are not able to celebrate a loving, warm and familiar Christmas and not to forget that most of us are a damn sight luckier than others. And to remember them not now, on Christmas Day, but every day for the rest of this year, and every day for the rest of your life.

Apart from that, God bless you all.

A gadget queen writes: Not so smart with phones and as a capitalist something of a bloody loser

Not posted here for a week or three, but encouraged by a glass or five of brandy and lovage on ice (my new drink, beats the shit out of scrumpy. And sophisticated? Yes, and then some - I could have sworn Simone de Beauvoir has just walked through the kitchen) I have decided to put digit to keyboard and churn out a few hundred more words while I can still remember my name.

A good joke was made as I was making my farewells from work last Wednesday. As I pulled out the plug of my phone charger from the socket, someone remarked that there would probably now be a power surge as all my gadgets were turned off. An exaggerated claim, of course, but one unfortunately just a little too close to the truth for comfort. I am, I have to admit, something of a gadget queen. Or, to be a little more honest and a little fairer to myself, something of a gadget princess (as in princesses being queens in waiting).

It all started with my penchant for hoovering up cheap mobile phones when and if I ever came across the opportunity to buy one. I like to think, and I often claim, that my collection is not quite as irrational as it sounds, and I can, indeed, recite chapter and verse as to why a particular phone was bought at a particular time. So, for example, a year or two ago, my car broke down in the car park of Asda, Bodmin. And as Sod’s Law always operates on such occasions, I didn’t have my phone with me. So off I went into the store and bought the cheapest pay as you go phone I could find in order to summon the RAC to help me out of the shit.

So far, so rational. But if I count up the number of mobile phones in the house, most of which belong to me, it does sound just a tad wacky. My daughter has a Blackberry, and when I organised it for her - she got a half-price deal on a 12-month contract which was more ‘cost-effective’ than remaining PAYG - she gave her old Blackberry to my son. And because he now has a Blackberry (which he never uses - in fact, I think he has yet to make a mobile phone call in anger as they say), he gave up ‘using’ the Sony Ericsson I had passed on to him. That’s three.

My wife has a Sendo (one of those obscure brands who briefly went into making mobile phones several years ago when the future looked brighter, but quickly lost interest and went back to making wheelbarrows or whatever their particular field of expertise is). I had given it to her for Christmas. That’s four mobile phones accounted for. Now comes the difficult bit.

I own two Huawei G300 Ascends, one Samsung and one Nokia. Then there are knocking about the house somewhere about six other phones, all except one owned by me at some point. The two Ascends are useful (and a damned sight more useful than the Samsung Galaxy Ace one of them replaced) because they are rather fine phones which can hold their own against any smartphone twice their price. I have two because I like to use one hitched to the car radio to listen to Five Live on the net (3G) when I drive home from London to Cornwall on a Wednesday to listen to football. Five Live is still on medium wave and if you don’t live in London reception is bad to atrocious, especially if you are speeding at 70mph on the A303 down to the West Country. On the net it is far better. However, in Britain the Ascend G300 is restricted to Vodafone whose 3G coverage is not as good as 3’s. So I bought another (a snip at £99, honestly), got it unlocked and slipped in a 3 sim card, and now I don’t lose a signal half as quickly.

So you see ‘owning several hundred mobile phones’ isn’t quite as mad as it sounds. But that, dear reader, is not even the half of it. All the above is just a preamble to a confession I am about to make. And I shall be revealing details which do make me feel every so slightly foolish. But get yourselves off and put the kettle on and make a cup of tea before you settle in to Part Two: The Tablets.

. . .

My love affair with tablets has not been going on for long but even in that short time has been decidedly rocky. It’s like falling for a woman who is a bloody good shag, but otherwise a pain in the arse, and you just can’t make up your mind what to do: to ditch or not to ditch, that is the question. That observation, however true, might offend some, so my apologies in advance to all new men and male feminists who feel it is beyond the pale and that I should be ashamed of myself for making it.

Several years ago, I bought an iPad. I rated and still rate them, but I didn’t need it. What could I do on the iPad what I couldn’t do on a laptop and iPod combined? (That is a rhetorical question, so no emails, please.) So I sold it again, and as my timing was, as usual, quite atrocious, I sold it just as the iPad 2 came out and sent prices for second-hand iPads tumbling. But that was it for a while. I managed, quite successfully, to live without a tablet. And even sitting here now, concentrating, I really can’t remember why I bought a 8in Ployer Momo8 IPS.

Somehow, of course, the seed had germinated. I know that because I spent some time ‘researching’ Android tablets (Android being more or less the only viable alternative to Apple.) I settled on the Momo8 because - well, I can’t really tell you why. It is one of what seems to be several thousands Chinese iPad clones, none of which is as good as the iPad, but some of which, on paper at least, are better than others and all share the virtue of being a damn sight cheaper than an iPad (and then some). So I ordered one and a leather case to stick it in from a site called Ebellking and waited for it to arrive. And waited and waited.

Finally, after a week or two, I emailed the company asking whether or not it had been sent off. They said, no it hadn’t, because they were having trouble getting hold of a case to send me. That struck me as odd, but I gave them the benefit of doubt and emailed back saying to send the tablet anyway and either to send the case when they found one or two forget about it completely and refund the money for it. Then I came across a website ‘reviewing’ Ebelking, and it didnt’ make happy reading. So I decided to play it safe and as I had paid for the tablet and case through PayPal, I asked for a refund, pointing out reasonably enough that as nothing had yet been sent, the matter should be simple: just refund my money. And they did.

By now, of course, the bug was well and truly in my blood and I ordered the Ployer Momo8 from another site, iPadalternative. It, too, was based in China. Within days I received a cheery email informing me that my tablet had been dispatched. A day or two after that I decided I wanted to track the progress of the tablet from East to West and asked iPadalternative to give me a tracking number. Ah, they said, we can’t do that because we haven’t actually sent it yet. So I said they had 12 hours to dispatch the bloody thing and send me a tracking number or I would ask PayPal to refund my money. Twelve hourse wasn’t long enough, they said (although they didn’t explain why) so they would simply refund my money. And they did. So I wasn’t actually out-of-pocket, but I didn’t have a bloody tablet either.

To make matters worse, my brother had bought himself a Google Nexus 7 and just couldn’t stop himself from showing it to me and demonstrating just what a fabulous gadget it was.
The third Chinese website I used to get my Momo8 was Chinistore. And to be fair, they were as good as gold. I bought one online on Nov 26 and it arrived in London a week later. And it was not a bad little tablet. The build quality wasn’t up to Apple standards (or for that matter Samsung standards) but it was nippy and did the biz.

Or rather it did half the biz: it came with (this might get a bit technical for the girls, so why don’t you take five and do your nails or something?) Jellybean aka Android 4.1. It is a great operating system, but not all the apps I wanted to use on it - especially BBC iPlayer - yet work on it. What was worse, though, was that the micro USB port (not yet, girls, I’ll give you a shout) packed up rather suddenly. It worked a treat and then it didn’t. I suspect that I had somehow - somehow - damaged it by putting in the USB cable the wrong way around before realising my mistake, but to be honest I was not aware ever of using force, and I rather think the port was just a tad too flimsy. I took a look at it and it seem to have been pushed back a bit. Confirmation, if confirmation were ever needed, of the wisdom passed down from parent to child through the ages then promptly ignored that ‘cheap means cheap means cheap’.

I could, of course, have lived with it, but I didn’t want to live with it. And as I decided the 8in was just a little too small, I sold it again on eBay (and didn’t take too much of a hit as it happens.) So then the hunt was on to replace it and scrutinising Chinistore’s site, eliminating this and that tablet - and believe me there are almost 100 different brands - I hit upon the 9.7in ‘Cube 19UT’, not least because it still uses Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich). I use the same OS on both my Ascends and know that it will work the BBC’s iPlayer. I paid up, received my tracking number, and it arrived last Monday afternoon.

It looked OK coming out of its box, if again the workmanship was not quite up to pristine Apple and Samsung standards. But, dear reader, it was fucking hopeless. The wifi was quite simply bloody awful. If I was able to connect to the router - if! - and if I was able to keep the connection for more than two minutes - if! - the speed of transmission was slower than the worst bloody dial-up connection you have ever had the misfortune to use.

I googled the problem and found an American site which pointed me to a ‘firmware update’ (almost there, girls, promise) on the Cube website. I followed it but found the site was all in Chinese. Needless to say (though I’ll say it anyway as does everyone else who uses that utterly pointless phrase) I didn’t have a fucking clue as to what was what. I mean, you can’t even guess. I like to think that had the site been in French or Italian or, at a pinch Spanish, I might have had a sporting chance of sussing out what was what and downloading the ‘firmware upgrade’. But it was in Chinese. I clicked this and I clicked that, but all I could do was open new windows taking me to either sites selling online games or sites selling online soft porn.

Enough was enough. First, I emailed Chinistore and told them about the problem. They were very understanding - why wouldn’t they be as they now had £150 of my money - and emailed back a link to the same Cube website were I should be able to download the firmware upgrade to make the bloody thing work. But not an hour later I had had enough. I asked myself why, after paying 150 good, honest British pounds, I was doing all the pfaffing about trying to get a tablet to work as it should when it should have worked as it should straight out of the bloody box. And I decided I shouldn’t be doing the pfaffing around. So I applied to PayPal for yet another refund (they must surely by now have filed me under ‘fucking loser, why doesn’t he give up?’).

Chinistore were offended by this (though I understand it ain’t that difficult to offend and East Asian) and said I should have given them more time to sort out the problem. To which I replied they weren’t doing anything to sort out the problem I was. The one slight irritation is that I shall have to fork out between £30 and £55 to ship the bloody thing back to Shenzen before I get my refund, and I also run the risk that some bloody-minded herbert in Chinistore will decide the tablet didnt’ come out in the condition in which it was sent and try to refund less. But what the hell.

There is, however, dear reader, even more to this saga of ‘tablet or no tablet, does the guy have no shame?’
. . .

You see, in the meantime I got my regular emailed newsletter from Lidl (the German chain like Aldi which sells German food and other goods in Britain and elsewhere) that one of its ‘specials’ last week would be a 7in Versus Touchpad for just £79.99. Ooh, I thought, ooh, and bought one. Examining it, I realised that an iPad it wasn’t and would have a long way to go before even using the same toilet as an iPad, but notwithstanding several - OK, many - drawbacks, it was at least useful.

But then came my downfall. I had googled the tablet for further info and come across several sites selling it for between £109 and £129. Why, I asked myself, the stout  little capitalist which slumbers in every man’s heart coming alive, why didn’t I buy up another three and sell them on eBay? If I charged £10 for ‘p&p’ and £99 for the tablet I could make a tidy profit of more than £60.

I hoovered up the three last Versus Touchpads for sale in North Cornwall - literally - I was in Launceston and wanted three, but the only had one, which I bought and they phoned through to Bodmin where they still had another two, so I drove down Bodmin and bought those. I then listed them on a three-day auction eBay. And had no takers at all. Finally, I panicked at reduced the price to £79 and sold two. I relisted the last and that auction is due to end at just after 5pm tomorrow. The way it looks, I shall not make £79. Moral: Don’t Get Clever. And if the stout little capitalist slumbering in your heart does wake up, slip him a Mickey Finn.

. . .

Now the postscript: I have been using the first Versus I bought and, after a fashion, it works. To say euphemistically that ‘it’s not the best’ is an insult to euphemisms. It works OK if you make sure that only one app is running at any given time. But it has a tendency to  go off at a tangent and ignore you, the user, completely. If it were a person, one could even describe it as ‘other worldly’. It somehow drifts off, does its own thing - and you have no idea what it is doing - before it rejoins your company and then carries on as though nothing had happened. It is, in short, a deeply bloody irritating tablet. And that is why, dear reader, I have bought yet another, a brand-new Samsung Tab with wifi and 3G.

The price is quite low and even though the listing claims it is new in a sealed box, I don’t know. At the price I bought it? Once I have it - and have survived the inevitable spat with my wife about why I I keep buying such electrical trinkets when we need the money to feed and clothe the children who are runnng around in rags and are starving (women do go on so, I keep telling her to look at the bigger picture) - I shall kiss the Versus goodbye and sell it, and I don’t care for how little.

 There is just one last lingering concern: once I had bought the Samsung - brand-new in sealed box - and paid through PayPal, I checked my PayPal account. And I found that payment had been made to a ‘Ricky Ching’. Hmmm.

One final point: between us in our household we have (I won’t say ‘own’ as one is from work) six laptops, four of which are ‘official’, that is my wife knows about them. Sounds bad, doesn’t it? But look at it this way: we are living in the 21st century and if it were not for spendthrift fuckwits like me, the electronics industry would be on its knees, thousands would be out of work and, no doubt, the country would grind to a halt. It’s always useful to put things in perspective.

A father writes (though not this one), and parents the world over might understand

It is by no means the world-stopping story of the month and most certainly few people living outside Britain will have heard about it and even fewer living outside Britain, but it is worth mentioning here, not least because it might ring a chord with parents throughout the world.

It concerns a retired Royal Navy submarine commander, Nick Crews, who lost patience with his three children and told them a few home truths. And having written that, I can already sense that some readers might already be jumping to conclusions: reactionary old buffer goes ballistic because he is out of touch with modern life. But it was nothing of the kind. Crews has three children, two daughters and a son, and feels all that, given the start they had in life, all three failed to make anything of themselves. But again what I have just written might well give the wrong impression.

Crews didn’t rant and rave at them, but, by his own admission, bit his lip and told himself that it was not for him to interfere. He says his own father had been rather remote and that from the start he had decided to - in his own words - be a friend to his children and not be as remote. Each went to boarding school - not necessarily the advantage it is made out to be by many here in Britain but it cannot be denied that it does give many an additional step up in life - and given his career in the Navy, it is reasonable to assume the they didn’t want for anything while growing up. What did for Crews was the misery he saw his children put there mother through: they would ring her up and moan, moan, moan about their lives and their lot in life. One day he snapped and sent all three an email in which he finally spoke his mind (you can read it below). It didn’t go down well.

All three had been married and divorced, one daughter had remarried and the son was about to marry again. All three had been to university, but professionally had not achieved much. But Crews stresses that it was not their lack of success in life which got to him, but how - as he points out in his email - they would dump all their woes on their mother, who was getting more and more unhappy. All three were upset to get the email, but then home truths do usually upset us, and so far Crews is only reconciled with one, his eldest daughter, who now admits she feels he has a point.

In follow-up pieces in the media, I came across this by Crews which I feel resonates far beyond the matter in hand and sums up rather neatly - at least for me - much of the ethos of the western world. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph columnist Christine Odone (which you can find here) Crews describes ‘contemporary society’ as offering ‘a cancerous cocktail where on the one hand everyone is supposed to be free to do whatever they wish, but on the other we all expect protection from the consequences of our actions’. Anyone who reads this blog regularly will not be surprised that I agree completely with that description.

OK, so Nick Crews is a Brit, a reasonably prosperous middle-class chap from a certain background - he went to Sherbourne - but I am sure parents, from whatever ‘class’ and from other backgrounds, throughout the world might understand his frustration and disappointment.
The text of his email:

Dear All Three
 
With last evening’s crop of whinges and tidings of more rotten news for which you seem to treat your mother like a cess-pit, I feel it is time to come off my perch.
It is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the bitter disappointment each of you has in your own way dished out to us. We are seeing the miserable death throes of the fourth of your collective marriages at the same time we see the advent of a fifth.

We are constantly regaled with chapter and verse of the happy, successful lives of the families of our friends and relatives and being asked of news of our own children and grandchildren. I wonder if you realise how we feel — we have nothing to say which reflects any credit on you or us. We don’t ask for your sympathy or understanding — Mum and I have been used to taking our own misfortunes on the chin, and making our own effort to bash our little paths through life without being a burden to others. Having done our best — probably misguidedly — to provide for our children, we naturally hoped to see them in turn take up their own banners and provide happy and stable homes for their own children.
Fulfilling careers based on your educations would have helped — but as yet none of you is what I would confidently term properly self-supporting. Which of you, with or without a spouse, can support your families, finance your home and provide a pension for your old age? Each of you is well able to earn a comfortable living and provide for your children, yet each of you has contrived to avoid even moderate achievement. Far from your children being able to rely on your provision, they are faced with needing to survive their introduction to life with you as parents.
So we witness the introduction to this life of six beautiful children — soon to be seven — none of whose parents have had the maturity and sound judgment to make a reasonable fist at making essential threshold decisions. None of these decisions were made with any pretence to ask for our advice.

In each case we have been expected to acquiesce with mostly hasty, but always in our view, badly judged decisions. None of you has done yourself, or given to us, the basic courtesy to ask us what we think while there was still time finally to think things through. The predictable result has been a decade of deep unhappiness over the fates of our grandchildren. If it wasn’t for them, Mum and I would not be too concerned, as each of you consciously, and with eyes wide open, crashes from one cock-up to the next. It makes us weak that so many of these events are copulation-driven, and then helplessly to see these lovely little people being so woefully let down by you, their parents.

I can now tell you that I for one, and I sense Mum feels the same, have had enough of being forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children’s underachievement and domestic ineptitudes. I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about. I don’t want to see your mother burdened any more with your miserable woes — it’s not as if any of the advice she strives to give you has ever been listened to with good grace — far less acted upon. So I ask you to spare her further unhappiness. If you think I have been unfair in what I have said, by all means try to persuade me to change my mind. But you won’t do it by simply whingeing and saying you don’t like it. You’ll have to come up with meaty reasons to demolish my points and build a case for yourself. If that isn’t possible, or you simply can’t be bothered, then I rest my case.
I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed.

Dad.

I have no idea about any of those, around 30 a day these days, who read this blog (except three). I don’t know whether you are a man or a woman, young, middle-aged or old, what your ‘background’ is and whether or not you have children. But I’m pretty certain that those of you who do have children will feel for Crews. Of course it would be easy to make him out to be some kind of snob who feels his children are letting him down in the eyes of his friends - his son works for a taxi service and one daughter works in a ship chandler’s.

But, rightly or wrongly, that’s not the impression I get. One thing almost all of those who, like Crews, have gone to sea, is a lack of airs and graces. The sea is a great leveller. Crews is not being snobbish, he is speaking from the heart.

Let’s hear it for the Fourth Estate or why Kim, Kourtney, Jen, Em and Jess are keeping democracy alive. Then there’s the rekindling of a love affair: me and Don

Here are some spiffing items of news you might well have missed over these past few days. But be reassured that throughout the Western world dedicated man and women are beavering away around-the-clock as I write to make sure you are always up-to-date. So did you know that Jennifer Garner has a bit of trouble carrying her child and a rather heavy handbag? Bet you didn’t. Well, there’s another reason to read this ’ere blog.

Here are some further items which it is essential you should know if you are planning on meeting a friend for coffee or considering having your hair done: Kourtney Kardashian takes her son shopping to Hamleys in London; her sister Kim - remember her? - wears a jumpsuit in rather chilly weather; Pippa Middleton - remember her? - has the same hat and dimple as Cheryl Cole and a rather similar dress; Helen Flanagan - no, I don’t have a clue who she is, either - vows to eat anything during he stint in an Australian ‘jungle’ for a TV show; Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez might have split up! Lordy, can it really be so? Rihanna wears a flame-coloured jacket on a night out; Van Diesel takes his daughter to the beach; Rose McGowan - no, I don’t have a clue who she is, either - decides to wear rather warmer clothes as the weather in Los Angeles gets a tad nippy; Jessica Alba goes shopping in patterned trousers; Miranda Kerr and Alessandra Ambrosio relax (separately, apparently); Emma Roberts - no, I don’t have a clue who she is, either - buys three iced coffees; Ashton Kutcher holds open a door for Mila Junis.

To put all that vital stuff into some kind of perspective, since the beginning of the year 21 journos have been killed in Syria, 12 in Somalia, five in Pakistan, three in Brazil, and one each in Thailand, India, Nigeria, Lebanon, Ecuador, Phillipines,  Bahrain, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Cambodia and Indonesia. That’s 52 altogether, all of them, one hears, rushing around getting the latest lowdown on the Kardishian sisters, Ms Garner, Ms Kerr, Ms Ambrosio and the rest of them.

You thought only fuckwits in the West can’t breathe without knowing how many iced coffees Ms Roberts likes buying. Well, think again: in 2012, 52 hacks and hackettes gave their lives trying to find out and bring you the latest ASAP. Or not, as the case may be.

LATER UPDATE: Anyone really anxious to hear the latest about the Kardashians, you can find out what happened when Kim and Kourteney went shopping in London.


. . .

I was planning to write a piece on how we, almost inevitably, fall out of love, whether it’s girlfriends, boyfriends, gobstoppers, sherbet lemons or, in this case, our former music heroes. The hero in question was to be Donald Fagen, who has just released his fourth solo album, Sunken Condos. He might be better known to many as the other part of Steely Dan, and they were - are I suppose - one of my fave bands. The trouble was that after his first solo album, The Nightfly, which he released in 1910, his next two didn’t really set my loins alight. Each - Kamakariad and Morph The Cat - had one or two good tracks, but the rest . . .

Then, a few weeks ago, I was in touch with a friend who asked whether I had heard Fagen’s most recent solo album. Well, dear reader, I didn’t even know he had realeased on. So I bought it and had Amazon deliver it and listened to it. And I was exceptionally underwhelmed. Many pieces of music take a while to grow on you, but I didn’t even think that was going to be the case. It seemed to me that Fagen was almost parodying himself, what with those ‘sophisticated’ (I think that’s the word they use) chord changes and cynical lyrics. In fact, I happened to go for a drink with the friend who mentioned the new release and I said as much.

Well, last night, for some reason, I decided to listen again. And I am glad to report that this particular story has a happy ending. I now think it’s rather good, better, in fact, than solo albums two and three.
On the lines of falling out of love, though, I must admit that where Prince was also once a big favourite of mine, he does, of late, seem to have lost the plot. Once he was original and interesting. Now he just seems to settle for interminable funk workouts. Now, I happen to like those, but if it’s funk workouts you want, it has to be said you are spoiled for choice.

Four pieces of music you might enjoy (and absolutey nothing about the bloody euro, the EU or anything of that ilk)

It’s odd when you hear a piece of music and, although you have never heard it before, you seem to know it, it seems to be far more familiar than is at all possible. To put it another way, if you were able to compose and perform music in the the same idiom, this would be it. If I can go out on a limb and risk some of the more cynical among you who might happen to be reading this thinking me as the pretentious pillock you always suspected I was, I would say that the music ‘speaks to me’. It’s uncannily as though it were my music.

I have had that sensation several times over the past years, and it happened again a while ago with a piano sonata by Scarlatti (Domenico - there seems to be a whole tribe of them, his dad, his granddad, his brother, two uncles, a chap down the road, old Guiseppe who used to run the bar and compose in his spare time, loads of them, but the one I am referring to his Domenico). The piece is K466 in F minor. I was idly listening to Radio 3 one Saturday morning (and having just written that, I’m beginning to wonder whether one really can ‘idly’ listen to the radio, but there you go) and it was played by some Japanese pianist or other. And it was as though I had known the piece all my life. I ‘understood’ it immediately. It was as though I had composed it. It seemed to describe me and what I felt.

Then there is the music of David Fuiczynski. Same story. I first heard his playing when I bought my first (or second, I can’t remember) MP3 player and with it came a voucher for 20 free downloads. I opted for some jazz guitar and Mr Fiuczynski was one of those playing. And it has to be said that the piece he played was utterly atypical of the the work I later came to know. But on the strength of that one track, I looked him up and, on spec, bought an album called Amandala and exactly the same thing happened: if I were a good guitarists that was exactly the kind of music I would like to create. (As far as I am concerned, Fiuczynski’s music is indefinable - not jazz, not rock, simply itself.)

Most recently it has happened with a composer called Kenneth Leighton. I really can’t remember where I was or how I came to hear it, but I heard a piece by him on Radio 3 and I was hooked. So far I have bought his second and third symphonies.

Similarly, but not quite, is a piece by jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans called Young And Foolish. There is something about it which goes right deep inside me and then towards the end seems to touch a part of me which I feel no one had ever seen for the simple reason that I have tried not to let anyone see it. Sounds like a load of wank, I know, but what the hell.

Here are four pieces, one by each of the above. First up is the piano sonata K466 in F minor by Scarlatti. If it doesn’t sound too daft, I should like this piece played at my funeral.



Then there is a piece by David Fiuczynski. Given his varied output, all I can do is simply choose one of the many pieces by him I have on iTunes, and one of the main reasons I choose this is rather banal: it’s not too long and a good-quality Quick Time movie of it would not be too big to upload.



Here is the fifth movement of the Symphony No 2 by Kenneth Leighton. There is just something about this music I - ahem - adore. Sorry, for that, but that’s how I feel. And it shouldn’t be Sarah Cox, but Sarah Fox. I didn’t realise until a few seconds ago while listening to the piece once it was here on the blog and it’s too bloody late to do anything about it. Well, actually, it’s not too late - I could go back to the original iMovie movie, correct it, re-save the Quick Time movie, upload it again and get it all square but, dear reader, I at this point I really can’t be fucking arsed (and if there are any virgins reading this, make that bloody arsed. Can’t upset people, can I?) So an apology to Sarah Fox will have to do, though I doubt she will ever find her way here. But if you do, Sarah, sorry.



Finally, here is the piece by jazz pianist Bill Evans called Young And Foolish. UPDATE - Feb17, 2013: No it’s not, it’s called Peace Piece. Sorry about that. My mistake. It is also posted on You Tube and some punter called Geoff Rowe put me right. Oh well, lose some, lose some. It is quite simply beautiful, though not exactly in the way you might originally think. I would also like this piece played at my funeral. When I hear it, I feel someone is looking into my soul, especially the discordant bits towards the end. Thing is, that’s me and everyone else who was once young and foolish. More wank, I’m afraid, but there you go.




I trust you like some, perhaps even all of them. If you are interested in other videos, you can find them here.Oh, and as I have gone out on a limb in this entry and laid myself wide open to ridicule in some of my descriptions, I might as well add that apart from the Scarlatti sonata and the Bill Evans track a third piece I should like played at my funeral is Mozart’s Symphony no 41, and if time is a little short and the undertakers are getting restless to get me down under sooner rather than later so they can bugger off and get home before dark, I should at least like that symphony’s last movement played.