I’ve got to say very little has been on my mind except looking forward to the day when this perpetual torso itching goes away. Writing it here is intended to help my see the situation more clearly, and if you decided you really don’t want to carry on reading, I shan’t be offended. (In fact, I shan’t even know, shall I?)
Some days are worse than others, but none is better than pretty damn uncomfortable. My GP did blood tests and I was hoping something might be found to be amiss so that some kind of treatment could start, but Sod’s Law, I passed all tests with flying colours. That would normally be good news but it wasn’t. That consultation, at the end of last week, ended with him saying ‘well, there’s nothing more I can do for you. I could send you to see a dermatologists’. I was rather taken aback that he should give up so quickly and that his offer of ‘seeing a dermatologist’ should be made almost as a favour. I said yes, of course, and was hoping the system would have moved so fast that when I got back from London last night waiting for me would be an appointment. Well, what do you think? Nothing.
Last night wasn’t just uncomfortable but downright unpleasant. I woke as some point and itched all over, although as you are half-asleep and probably still dreaming, and as I am starting a cold and as my wife has already put away the heavy duvet for the winter and I was freezing - though still half-asleep - and as, for some very odd reason an iPad and a task I had to get done with the iPad was all a part of it - I spent a few miserable hours until daybreak, half-awak, half-asleep and wholly not knowing what the hell was going on.
I have, naturally, scoured the internet for causes, but nothing I have come across seems to fit what I am getting. Oh, and there’s the usual trick of using a medical word for the condition - pruritis - which spuriously seems to persuade you that, now it has ‘a name’, you are some way along the road
to recovery. Well, you are not.
I shall try to describe the symptoms, by way of trying to get my head around them and in the hope that they might ring a bell with someone out there who found treatment: at different times, I can itch all over my torso, neck, forehead and scalp, though not beneath the waste. Although I have irregular red marks, some tiny, some a little bigger, some of the itching areas show no marks at all. While I was in Rome two weeks ago, the red marks I had became quite prominent, but although still in evidence have faded somewhat. When it is really bad, as it was in Rome, my whole back feels raw and it’s it as though I am wearing a hair shirt.
As a rule I cover my upper torso with cream everywhere (except a spot above the small of my back which I can’t reach) and that sometimes soothes the skin and banishes the itching and sometimes doesn’t (Last night it bloody didn’t!).
My doctor initially prescribed anti-histamine tablets and I regularly take those, though whether or not they are effective I really don’t know.
From my trawl through the net I am pretty certain it is not exczema or anything like that. The closest I have come is hives, except that hives are supposed to come and go in a matter of days, whereas I have had this sodding itching for at least five months now (Christ, that long?).
As I told my GP, I feel rather silly in that many of his patients come to him with rather nastier ailments (my nearest neighbour here up the road was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years ago after successfully overcoming another ailment, and, of course, my stepmother suffered her second stroke just before Christmas) but on the other hand it seems rather silly to put up with something which you might be able to do something about.
I’ve long suspected that I would never have made hero (the past transitional conjunctive tense or whatever it is is appropriate here because at my age I doubt I’ll see many opportunities to prove my mettle), but these past few days in Rome have pretty much convinced me when it comes to cowards I am fully qualified to go for gold.
This bloody itching has continued non-stop and to be honest the last thing I wanted was to be more than 1,000 miles from home in a hotel which had allocated me a shower so tiny, if you bent over to pick up the soap, your arse was already in the room next door (though the rest of the room was fine, I’ll add, to be fair). It was – is – incessant and on top associated red blotches – or I hope they are associated or my GP will most certainly be working for his next pay rise when I see him on Friday – plus areas of dry skin which makes it seem as though I am wearing a hair shirt (though despite being brought up mainstream RC, I never have and I can’t conceive of how folk to it for pleasure) which make every movement unpleasant have pretty much ruined the trip.
Once here, of course, it seemed daft not to go and watch the Six Nations game at the Stadio Olympico, but I wasn’t really in the mood (though in the event several plastic beakers of Peroni did help). My flight – I am writing this an hour and a bit before take-off – isn’t until five minutes to ten (i.e. 21.55) and I had originally planned a trip down to Ostia, the old port of Rome, and have lunch there somewhere. Well, dear reader, I really wasn’t in the mood. All I did was to walk the ten minutes from my hotel to the Termini rail station, jump on the bus to Fiumicino airport and sit out the rest of the day, trying to keep as still as possible. I got here just after noon and it is now just before 9pm (21.00 for all you eurofreaks). Knowing that I had the best part of a day to kill, the first ten minutes dragged as no time has ever dragged before.
Once they were out of the way, I set about getting through the next twenty, then the next thirty. Each minute lasted a lifetime – well, actually a little longer. After an eternity that first hour was out of the way – 1pm, yippee, just under another nine hours to kill, sitting in an airport several thousands miles away from comfort. My mood was for most of that time foul, and it was then that I fully realised, although I have long suspected it, that I would make a completely shitty Arctic explorer, the kind of stout fellow, usually British, Norwegian and Italian who thrive on totally bloody discomfort. (Incidentally, given how cold it is up there and down there at both poles and given that they are swaddled like I don’t know what to keep our the cold, what exactly do they do if when they need a dump?)
Matters looked up a little once I was able to get onto the free airport wifi, free, that is, if you are prepared to give them five euros, and then courtesy of a useful browser plugin, watch the League Cup final between Manchester City and Liverpool. (It went to penalties and turned out to be quite a match after a boring first half).
After that, of course, it was down in the dumps again, and that is where you find me now. In fact the only reason I am writing this bollocks is to give me something to do to take my mind off it.
I’m here nominally for tomorrow’s Italy v Scotland Six Nations match at the Olympic Stadium, but actually the game, although I am looking forward to watching it – and hope that Italy beat Scotland – is pretty much just an excuse to do something different. Really, it was just an excuse to do something different, in this case to ‘have a weekend in Rome, although there is one not quite so small drawback, which I shall come to later. It kicked off 13 months ago when I was discussing the Six Nations with the landlord of the Brewers Arms (no apostrophe, I gather, so I don’t know how many of them there are) and talking about the price of Six Nations games tickets.
He remarked that the prices for the lesser games, i.e. those featuring Italy and Scotland, who in most people’s univers must surely with the best will in the world qualify as lesser nations (each of them sets itself the task of not getting that seasons’ Wooden Spoon) would undoubtedly be cheaper, so there and then I decided to treat myself to a trip to Rome to watch Italy in one of its home games.
I looked up the prices of flights, hotels and tickets and they weren’t too bad. But I let it slide and by the time I got around to trying to book they had risen to such an extent that I really wasn’t prepared to cough up for something which was pretty close to a whim. But I resolved to keep an eye on the fixture dates for the 2016 Six Nations games and book as soon as possible.
o last September I booked a flight, hotel for three nights and a ticket for a game. It was a toss up between Italy v England and Italy v Scotland, but as the latter game came later in the month, and I reckoned the weather would be that less colder, I opted for that one.
The drawback is that for the past six, seven, eight, if not nine weeks, I have been suffering from a curious affliction which consists of my upper torse itching everywhere like fuck. A tripe to my GP two months ago concluded with being given a large tub of cream to smear on my front and back whenever and a course of anti-histamines. That didn’t help at all. A second trip a few weeks later (and this time I consulted his locum, a Chinese GP called, I suppose nevitably, Dr Lee) concluded with being prescribed another tub of cream, a different brand. That hasn’t helped, either.
Two weeks ago I was at the surgery again and this time was told I shall have some blood tests. Meanwhile, the itching continues and continues and continues and it is not pleasant. Some nights I can’t get to sleep, and on other nights (as last night) I get to sleep, only to wake up and having to scratch myself mercilessly. And, of course, that doesn’t help. It doesn’t help that I am of the species home hypochondus, which means I always fear the worst.
Then, in the Daily Mail’s Good Health pages last week came across the case of a woman who had a similar itching problem and was eventually diagnosed, far too late to save her life, with liver cancer. It seems her minute bile ducts had become blocked with cancer and the bile, not having anywhere else to go, for some reason travels to just under the skin where it causes the itching. The upshot is that I am not quite enjoying my break as I might because I have got to the age where when things are amiss all I want to do is be ‘at home’. Well, I’m not, I’m in fucking Rome. But being the – reasonably cheerful sort – I am trying to make the best of it.
This morning just after ten I took off and headed for the Colloseum. I found it – it’s not easy to miss, being quite big – and then carried on with a view to walking to St Peter’s. However, my sense of direction rather let me down and I ended up walking pretty much in circles, or rather as Rome’s streets are pretty straight, though often at a diagonal, in squares. I like walking, but after about two and bit hours I got thirsty and spotted and ‘Irish pub’ – they are everywhere – so I stopped off. For a coke. I really didn’t feel like drinking (apparently another sign of liver cancer, as well as losing your appetite – check – but that is the last ‘joke’ I shall make about liver cancer in case Life takes me to task about it and says, right, sunshine.
. . .
After a great deal more walking, I got back to my hotel, the Hotel Napoleon in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuelle II, and crashed. That was because the walking and the fact that I hadn’t been able to get to sleep until about 2am meant I was bloody tired. Tonight I had planned to find one of the many ‘British pubs’ to watch the Wales v France game, and took myself off to the nearest, the Druids’ Den in Piazza Esquilino, but when I got there it just wasn’t what I wanted, loads of Brits, many in kilts, standing shoulder to shoulder downing pints of Guinness and being very noisy. So it was back to the hotel, except on the way back I came across a small Roman bar up the square which was also showing the game. There I stopped, discovered Vecchia Romana brandy, and watch Wales beat the shit out of France. And I didn’t really notice the itching.
. . .
I am now sitting on the terrace on the sixth floor, the only spot where you can smoke. It is mild. The game tomorrow is at around 3pm. I’ve decided to get to the are early, have a lunch beforehand and get along to the stadium. Sunday, well, Sunday I must leave the hotel by whenever, but my flight isn’t until after 9pm, so I thought I might go to Ostia, the old Roman port, for a late lunch and make my way to Fiumicino airport a little later. Whether there is an direct transport from Ostia to the airport I don’t know, but as I shall have finished lunch by 3/4pm, there’s still plenty of time to cock things up, then salvage the day. Pip, pip.
Later
Had good night’s sleep – who wouldn’t after several glasses of what I had and despite the coffees – but this morning this sodding itching is back with a vengeance and really pissing me off. Does did a quick self-diagnosis on the net and it might be chronic hives. No real treatment except anti-histamines and cream. Doing that already.
The thing is that I’m not really enjoying these few days in Rome at all and am just counting the hours until I can get back to Britain and my usual home/work routine as it’s just a question of getting your head down and biting the bullet. Biting the bullet ain’t too easy when you are in a strange city with time on your hand. Oh, and although the hotel is fine, the shower is tiny, about two and a half feet by two and a half feet. Bend over to pick up the soap and you stick your arse through the Perspex doors.
My apologies to anyone who happens to come across this blog - or even makes a point of visiting it - and who is from South Korea, Australia, Ukraine, Canada, Vietnam, India or Brazil: this blog post will probably interest you even less than last year’s weather forecast. It’s about the European Union, you see. I mention those countries because according to the statistics (‘stats’) visitors from the countries listed have somehow or other washed up here in the past four weeks. They are, of course, perfectly welcome to carry on reading, or they might spend the time considering an issue of their own. Even those visitors from EU countries might find themselves stifling a yawn, as are most of us here in Britain.
Will we or won’t we? would seem to be the issue dividing the country if our homegrown media are anything to go by, leave the EU that is. The trouble is that no one has told the country which remains resolutely undivided. ‘Brexit’, the catchy phrase thought up by the scruffier members of the Press as a useful short term for ‘Britain resigning its EU membership’ - they tend to think in headlines, see - might well elicit a response from many if you directly ask them their opinion, but crucially you have to ask first: it’s not a conversation which will naturally arise. ‘Should Louis Van Gal get the boot from United?’, ‘What on earth is the Government thinking asking Google to cough up just £180 million in taxes?’ ‘That Julian Assange - is he really still stuck in the bloody embassy? Lord, what a wanker! Thought he had died’ - these are topics you might hear touched upon in the friendly banter down the Pig and Whistle of a Friday night. ‘Should we leave the EU or stay?’ rarely, if ever, gets a look-in.
That’s very odd, because if you read our newspaper and listen to our broadcast news, you would think there was no hotter topic.
This state of affairs is causing both the We Must Stay In and We Must Get Out camps to tear their hair out. Both would like us to see the question of Britain’s continued membership as the defining question of the early 21st century and can’t understand why your ordinary Brit apparently doesn’t give a monkey’s either way (much as, it has to be said, your ordinary Brit doesn’t really give a monkey’s about most things).
Yes, there are voices decrying that ‘the country is being swamped by fucking immigrant benefit scrounging bastards because of the EU’, and yelling that ‘we can no longer let ourselves be ruled by fucking Brussels bureaucrats’; and there are other voices - notably a tad more ethereal - who insist
‘Britain’s destiny lies in Europe’ and ‘we must embrace the European ideal’. Both sides warn that leaving/staying in is absolutely vital for the future of Britain’s economy and staying in/leaving will have dire consequences. But at the end of the day it is all for naught: most of us just can’t get excited about the issue.
As it stands, our Prime Minister David Cameron has spent the past five years or so touring the capital cities of EU member states trying to drum up support for a ‘deal’ which would redefine Britain’s membership and persuade the majority of the country to vote to remain in the EU when the referendum is held (now said to be due in June). A day or two ago the terms of the ‘deal’ were announced. ‘Is that it, is that really it?’ the We Must Leave camp snorted in derision, ‘are these the only concession we’re going to get?’. Conversely: ‘Cameron’s done it! He’s won marvellous terms from the EU and there’s no question whatsoever that we can now stay in on our terms. It’s a tremendous achievement!’ (For some reason the We Must Say in gang are far more likely to use the word ‘tremendous’ than the We Must Leave side.)
All of this leaves the ordinary Jill and Joe bemused and baffled. So what was decided? they ask. Well, they can keep asking, for not only is no one going to tell them, but no one can tell them: whether you agree that Cameron has won the day is pretty much down to whether you want to agree or not. And in providing you with a rundown of the details of Cameron’s success/Cameron’s failure all commentators are doing his highlighting their own particular bias.
. . .
Until recently I was all in favour is Britain remaining a member provided the EU was sorted out, it dropped all this ‘ever closer union bollocks’ and it kept far better track of where its money was going (apparently the Italian Mafia has been doing exceptionally well from all the EU projects over the years, though it would be unfair to single out Italian crims as I understand Spanish, Portuguese and Balkan gangsters are no slouches either). Oh, and as a bonus I was hoping it might be persuaded to drop all the posturing that the EU was by far the best thing to happen to Europe since the Renaissance.
Well, that is not my position now, but nor have I gone over to the ‘we must leave’ camp. It’s just I think whether or not Britain stays or leaves is now pretty much irrelevant in that in about five years time there won’t really be much of a functioning EU left. That’s a big claim, I know, but suddenly it’s not looking at all rosy. And it all seem to start coming unstuck when the financial shit hit the fan in 2008.
For many years I used to organise a weekly five-a-side football game. I did so because I, who was the very definition of ‘crap player’, was thus always guaranteed a game as I always got in touch with myself to see whether I could come along. I always could. And organising that game taught me a lot about team playing, and by extension it taught me a lot about who can be relied on to pull their weight (e.g. actually turn up on time so) and who could not. The EU seems to be a similar test of character. The EU and belonging was all fine and dandy while the sun was shining and the EU built marvellous new roads, leisure centres, bridges and I don’t know what else in your country (usually at the expense of ‘net contributors’ - Germany is by far the largest, followed by France, Italy and the UK).
Then when the 2008 crisis erupted (can a crisis erupt?), it all slowly began going pear-shaped when Greece’s euro crisis was discussed. But even then the cracks could pretty much all be papered over - we got lots of rousing EU speeches and pious homilies that ‘there are rows in every family’, the implication being that when push came to shove the ‘EU family’ would once again pull together. Except it didn’t and doesn’t in the slightest look like ever doing so. But the real divisions showed themselves and national interest reared its ugly head again when migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan began pitching up on Europe’s southern border in search of a better life (and who can blame them?).
With quite frightening speed the EU fell into factions, broadly along the lines of the ‘old EU members’ and the ‘new EU members’, who just happened to all to be former Soviet bloc members. It is relevant that at least three of them - Poland, Hungary and Slovakia - have distinctly right-wing governments who don’t go in for all the liberal lovey-dovey crap and are apt to call a migrant, whether a genuine asylum seeker or not, a bloody nusiance.
Of course I could well be proved wrong and the EU will gain even more strength from the ongoing euro crisis - don’t ever think that has yet been solved - and the migrant crisis. But I’m not holding my breath.
It was good while it lasted, I suppose, but I’ve long learned that the great thing about being a cynic is that you are rarely disappointed. As for Britain’s, by now rather sweet ‘should we leave or should we go’ (a bit like a virgin decided whether or not now is the time to give her all), it is becoming pretty damn irrelevant.
As I’ve said before, these soundfiles should play fine on your Mac using Safari, Chrome and Firefox, and on a Windows PC using Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. They don't seem to work on a Mac using Opera. I haven't tried them on Opera on a Windows machine cos I can't be buggered downloading and installing it. There are several other browsers out there - e.g. Maxthon for Mac - but at the moment is usually use an elderly Macbook running Snow Leopard and many of them demand a more up-to-date OS. But I feel I’ve done a my bit and if your browser doesn't play these tracks, it's up to you to sort it out. With the slightly longer last piece, give it a little time - not more than ten seconds, but a little time - to load.
I was thinking about the last but one post and how I discovered new music, and more to the point, new music I liked when I remembered how I came across The Boswell Sisters. The were huge in their time, the Thirties, and it’s fair to say that although spotting their success, many other ‘sisters’ (and I don’t doubt ‘brothers’) formed themselves, but The Boswell Sisters - Vet, Connie (later Connee because, apparently it was easier and faster to write as an autograph) and Martha - stood out.
They were musicians in their own right. Vet played they banjo, Connie (who had to perform and sing sitting down, often in a wheelchair) played the sax and Martha the piano. And all this after a straightforward classical music eduation. But they were born and grew up in New Orleans, and soon
came to hear blues and then jazz, and were smitten by it.
I mention them because of how I came across them. Donald Fagen, of Steely Dan, grew up in New Jersey to parents Jerry, an accountant, and Elinor, a ‘homemaker’ (I think ‘homemaker’ is the modern term I am obliged to use). But before she married and had a family, Elinor had worked as a singer in hotels in the Catskills, and Fagen - Donald, that is - remembers as he was growing up in the Fifties his mother singing Boswell Sisters songs around the house. So I checked them out and immediately liked them a lot.
I can’t say I have a deep knowledge of the Thirties popular music scene, but I should imagine The Boswell Sisters (left) stood out because their arrangements were quite complex. I don’t know whether they played their respective instruments one stage - I doubt it - but their harmony singing is great, and I have always loved harmony singing. So here’s a track, a well-known song covered by many, but for me they give it something special.
The Boswell Sisters/I’m Gonna To Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter
Fagen, it has to be said has what might be described as a ‘singular’ voice. It isn’t one of your common or garden pop or jazz voices by any means. (Other singers I like with ‘singular’ voices are Bob Dylan and The Kinks’s Ray Davies.) But Fagen can sing and sing well, and obviously inherited his mother’s talent. More to the point of this blog is his performance of Maxine, a song on The Nightfly, and one of my all-time favourite songs.
I haven’t yet come across a cover except Justin Morell’s instrumental version, but I doubt few can come close to singing it as sublimely as Fagen. The reason it is included here is because of his breathtaking harmonising with himself. I had read somewhere that he sang all the parts on Maxine, but I double-checked and sure enough although other singers add background vocals on other tracks on The Nightfly, only he is credited on Maxine.
I once bought The Nightfly songbook and tried to teach myself the song on guitar, but I never got further than the first 16 bars. It’s got some great chords, but as usual I give up - I’m an awful weak giver-upper - and then mislaid the songbook. About 20 years later (i.e. in the last few years) I decided to try again, but as I couldn’t find mysongbook I thought I would buy another. Some hope: on Amazon you’ll have to shell out at least £201 for a used copy (though very good - what a relief) and if you want a new one it’ll cost you at least £402. So, do you know what, I decided against it and still hope to find my own copy. Here’s Maxine:
Donald Fagen/Maxine
I know The Eagles are regarded as uncool by some - some few idiots, I should say - but more fool them. They might not write complex tunes like Steely Dan (who famously put them down in their song their song Everything You Did on their album The Royal Scam, but even though I like their music a great deal those two cool Noo Yorkers Fagen and Becker can slightly get up my noise as can quite a few of the Noo York ‘art’ scene, who seem perpetually to carry on a great love affair with themselves - David Byrne and Talking Heads to exactly nothing for me. Maybe I’ve got cloth ears. And maybe not), but - what a digression, eh - The Eagles did what they did bloody well and I still many of their songs. But then that’s me, uncool. And in their first incarnation they harmonised superbly. Seven Bridges Road was a standard at their concerts:
The Eagles/Seven Bridges Road
Before I come on to Take 6, a black soul, jazz, gospel a cappella group (though they don’t sing this one below a cappella), here’s a bit of harmonising you might also like (if you like harmonising). I could have chosen anything from Palestrina and Victoria, but I have chosen this piece by England’s very own William Byrd, merely because he was the most recent of these three I came across. This is the Gloria from his Mass for Five Voices:
William Byrd/Gloria from Mass for five voices
Then there’s Take 6. I can’t for the life of me remember how I came across them, but I am very glad I did. This one, Grandma’s Hands, has been covered by loads of singers, some well, some not so well, but - racism alert - I really think it’s only fair that black singers should sing it. With anyone else it seems to become, as I pointed out a few days ago, just another song in their repertoire. But when Take 6 sing it is seems to grow.
Take 6/Grandma’s Hands
Finally, here’s a piece which has got nothing to do with harmony. An hour or two ago (it’s Saturday night and I am off to work in London tomorrow morning and thought I might have a shave now to have just a few more minutes of a lie-in) I was listening in the bathroom to Lullaby Of Leaves by sax player Illinois Jacquette. (I posted two guitar version of the song in my last post). And them, because my iPhone was on ‘songs’, next up came this: the first movement of Alban Berg’s Lulu Suite. And while listening to it, it suddenly struck me just how much, in some ways, jazz and more recent - good - classical music have in common. I mean, were you told this was a jazz piece and didn’t know any better, you would most probably accept it as such. It’s 14 minutes long, so have that shit first, but then spend 14 minutes listening to a rather beautiful piece. I think if you like jazz, you’ll probably like this.
Alban Berg/Lulu-Suite: I. Rondo: Andante Und Hymne
PS If this kind of music sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because a great many German and Austrian composers, not all of them Jewish, fled Germany and Austria and headed for the US when the Nazis came to power and some found work in the Hollywood film studios. There is some great music in those Thirties and Forties films, especially in film noir like Double Indemndity and Build My Gallows High which is partially ignored because it is just ‘the soundtrack’.
These soundfiles should play fine on your Mac using Safari, Chrome and Firefox, and on a Windows PC using Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. They don't seem to work on a Mac using Opera. I haven't tried them on Opera on a Windows machine cos I can't be buggered downloading and installing it. There are several other browsers out there - e.g. Maxthon for Mac - but at the moment is usually use an elderly Macbook running Snow Leopard and many of them demand a more up-to-date OS. But I feel I’ve done a my bit and if your browser doesn't play these tracks, it's up to you to sort it out. Chin, chin.
I was looking at my most recent post, the one before this one, correcting one or two of the literals which always slip in (me being the conscientious sort eventually, though apparently not immediately) and it occurred to me that the selection of jazz musicians and their tracks I had posted might seem to some a little top-heavy with the jazz equivalent of what some classical musicians describe as ‘squeaky-gate music’. Well, at least to some. And for those ‘some’ it is perhaps not as ‘accessible’ as it might be. (I once knew a double-bass player with the BBC Wales Symphony Orchestra and that’s when I first heard the phrase ’squeaky-gate music’.)
By the way, when I use the word ‘accessible’, I mean it pretty much as close to an insult as you can get without exactly being insulting. Des O’Connor (for real oldies), Adele, Florence and the Sodding Machine and all the other shite they play on BBC Radio 1 and 2 is ‘accessible’, as is the classical excerpts played on Classical FM. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like some kind of stuck-up, snobby prick, but I have to say that - with some very notable exceptions, quite a few actually, for me ‘accessibility’ is in inverse proportion to ‘interest’.
The exceptions, of course, are for me some of the ‘accessible’ black music, lovers’ rock, soul and related genre. To many ears, Alexander O’Neal and Freddie Jackson, say (and I shall include tracks below, just for the craic, so you can see what I mean) is, or can, be pretty bloody ‘accessible’ in my sense of the word and trashy to the point of despair, but I have to say I love them and stuff like that. And I haven’t yet chosen which track to post here but I shall make sure it makes my point. For example, Freddie Jackson does a version of Me And Mrs Jones which I like even better than the original hit by Billy Paul, but I shan’t be choosing that one.)
So here are a few more jazz tracks which I have on iTunes by way of contrast.
First up is this one by pianist Bill Evans and the guitar player Jim Hall. Evans had a heroin habit (and was a few years ago featured on Radio 3’s Composer Of The Week just to show the world that they aren’t necessarily a gang of old farts). Jim Hall didn’t have a heroin habit (though you often get the impression being addicted to smack was pretty much de rigeur for some jazz folk. Chet Baker (below) was another.
All Across The City/Bill Evans and Jim Hall
Then there’s Herbie Hancock’s take on Leon Russell’s Song For You (very beautiful and, in his version very simple). Christine Aguilera sings - bloody well - and until then I, who had not heard a lot by her, thought she was simply some pop diva. I was wrong. I have previously posted about the song Song For You and the different versions of it, some of which are too awful for words, notably ones by The Carpenters and Whitney Houston - crass beyond belief - and some which are good, though for my money Leon Russell’s own version is best, with Herbie Hancock coming, in his own way, a close second.
Song For You/Herbie Hancock with Christine Aguilera
I have about nine different versions of Autumn Leaves, from this one by Chet Baker to a very good one by Eric Clapton and, to my mind a pretty awful version by Bob Dylan. Not everything he does turns to gold. But it is a great song and one which I can play on guitar quite jazzily (it’s basically only six chords, although you can - and I do - and oddly enough the same chords can be used for Helen Reddy’s Angie Baby, which is awful, and I do a mad, disturbed jazzy version. Disturbed? You’ll understand if you know the song and the story it tells.).
Autumn Leaves/Chet Baker
I am not black (and never have been - nice white middle-class chappie, me) but every time I hear Billie Holiday’s version of Strange Fruit, I get a chill up and down my spine. For me this is a unique recording, and at the risk of sounding unbelievably pretentious it’s a song white folk sing at their peril. I have another version by Sharon Robinson (who co-wrote Everybody Knows) which is half-decent, but I have also had the misfortune to have heard renderings of it which make the song just another in the singer’s repertoire. (Just looked the song up on Spotify and see that Nina Simone sings a version, which is good, and Annie Lennox, everyone’s favourite singing feminist, which is, predictably, just another song in her repertoire. White honkies: stay away. Leave this one for black performers who will know a lot better than you might ever what they are singing about.)
I could go on, but I don’t want to sound mad or pretentious or right-on or anything like that. All I’ll say is (and for me the revelation only came after reading Howard Zinn’s account of black life in America in his A People’s History Of The United States) that in recent and not so recent history no one has been more shat upon and fucked up like blacks in white cultures and Jews in every culture. So, you white singers: sing Strange Fruit at your peril. I doubt you will come anywhere more than a million miles close to conveying what it meant to Billie Holiday.
Strange Fruit/Billie Holliday
I got into Steely Dan years ago in a big way and although I think in their most recent CDs they don’t quite have the fire of their early stuff up to Gaucho, though the tunes are still as good, Donald Fagen’s first solo CD, Nightfly, is that rarest of rare things perfect from beginning to end. And Maxine was one of the best tracks from it. Somehow I came across Justin Morell, the guitar-playing son of another jazz guitar player, John Morell (isn’t Google great, eh, makes you sound knowledgable). He had produced a great CD called The Music Of Steely Dan and this is his band’s take on Maxine. Mind there’s a lot more to Morell than this and he is worth checking out.
Maxine/Justine Morell
Stella By Starlight is pretty much a jazz standard and this is Joe Pass’s version. As a rule I don’t like to much fiddle-faddling (like sodding Chopin) in my music and far prefer clean guitar lines, but Pass is my exception and I don’t know why. Well, I do: he makes it all seem so breathtakingly simple. The same is true of Earl Hines who comes after Pass with Stormy Weather, another jazz standard.
Stella By Starlight/Joe Pass
Stormy Weather/Earl Hines
I didn’t get to hear much by Gerry Mulligan until quite recently, although I had often heard the name and, for some reason had assumed he was a Brit. He’s not. He also had a heroin habit. Here he plays The Cat Walk with someone called Ben Webster. I could google Ben Webster, then pretend I knew, but I can’t be arsed.
The Cat Walk/Gerry Mulligan & Ben Webster
Dizzy Gillespie is another jazz name even folk who don’t follow jazz will probably have heard. Usually folk play A Night In Tunisia, but in an odd way that has become so well-known it’s getting close to a jazz cliche. So here you can listen to Trumpet Blues.
Trumpet Blues/Dizzy Gillespie
Then come two version of Lullaby Of Leaves, which is a tune which sounds very familiar and seem to have heard for ever, but which I couldn’t have named for the life of me until very recently. The first is by Billy Bauer, who (thank you Wikipedia) spent most of his career as a sideman and seems to have released only on CD of his own. But I like his playing a lot. Then after that there’s Grant Green’s version, which is just as good. I love his really clean and unfettered guitar lines. The guy playing Hammond organ on Grant Green’s recording is a guy called Baby Face Willette (thanks Wiki) and I can only say I wish I had been called that. I think the ‘Willette’ is important. Baby Face Powell doesn’t quite do it, does it.
Lullaby Of Leaves/Billy Bauer
Lullaby Of Leaves/Grant Green
That’s enough jazz for one day, but posting these here has got my appetite up, and there’s lot more where these came from, Lennie Tristano, Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessell, Swedish singer Lisa Ekdahl when she does jazz (apparently most of her career was a straightforward pop artist in Sweden), Art Farmer, Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Harry James, Roy Eldridge, loads and loads and loads and fuck Michael Jackson (but not Prince. He can be sublime and often has been, although not quite as often as he seems to think).
But, the big but: my Achilles heel which I mentioned above - the schlock I like. Here are two great examples of superb schlock, especially the first Good Morning Heartache.
These soundfiles should play fine on your Mac using Safari, Chrome and Firefox, and on a Windows PC using Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. They don't seem to work on a Mac using Opera. I haven't tried them on Opera on a Windows machine cos I can't be buggered downloading and installing it. There are several other browsers out there - e.g. Maxthon for Mac - but at the moment is usually use an elderly Macbook running Snow Leopard and many of them demand a more up-to-date OS. But I feel I’ve done a my bit and if your browser doesn't play these tracks, it's up to you to sort it out. Chin, chin.
Time was when you got to hear new music by going around to someone’s flat, or being taken by a friend to one of his (or her) friends who would then play music you liked and you asked ‘who’s this’. That was then. Of course there’s the radio, but then of all the good, interesting new music out there it seems to me - going on what I have discovered and got to like over these past 20 years - that just a very, very small amount of it gets played on mainstream radio.
There’s the drawback that I can’t abide (here in Britain) Radio 2, and I get very impatient with all the utterly inconsequenctial and mind-blowingly trivial chatter about fuck-all on Radio 1. But, as I say, what gets an airing there is so bloody mainstream, they might as well collect their knighthoods now and save us all a lot of grief.
Radio 3 is better, not least because it is more or less the only radio station in Britain which plays jazz, and a broad variety of it at that. Then there are the various radio stations you can pick up on the internet and - courtesy of 3/4G and smartphones - listen to whatever is being played around the world. The trouble is that it isn’t just Britain which chooses ‘accessibility’ over ‘oh, that’s interesting’.
There is, of course, a thriving music scene out there, but how to track it down. Again, Radio 3 is helpful by broadcasting several nights a week between 11pm and 1am a programme called Late Junction.
It is while listening to this that I have come across several singers, bands and musicians and subseqently gone on to buy an album of their music. Good examples would be Lake Street Dive (who do a great, jazzy version of Hall & Oates Rich Girl), Anouar Brahem, a Tunisian who plays the oud, and Sevara Nazarkhan, an Uzbek singer. And if the last two sound a bit too achingly right on for your tastes - what with the migrants being in the news and the imperative for all us white honkies these days to value everything and anything even vaguely ethnic - don’t worry, I’m still a million miles of joining a protest march and eating tofu. Both are just great, or at least to my ears (if you like music and aren’t too hung up on the 4/4 beat which makes so much Western music sappy and dull and predictable).
Another way I’ve hit upon of discovering new music is quite simple - look up the sidemen and other musicians the guys and gals you like play with.
It started with Dave Fiuczynski, a ‘jazz’ guitarist of this parish. I play guitar, though by no means to any great standard (though I would trust myself to bullshit my way into the admiration of some gullible souls by the simple expedient of swinging nicely, playing a variety of major sevenths in more or less any order, and - this is crucial - returning to a root note or one related to the root on the eight beat, always). It is a revelation how easily most people are suckered. But - big but, obviously - if I played better the music Dave Fiuczynski writes and plays is exactly what I should like to play.
I came across him - he likes to publicise himself as a ‘jazz musician who doesn’t particular want to play jazz’ - when I bought a cheap MP3 player and as part of the package was given voucher to download 20 tracks from a large selection. I chose 20 jazz tracks and Mr Fiuczynski happened to be one of them. But oddly, it was pretty mainstream stuff. Then I checked him out - probably on Spotify, which is very useful for checking up on stuff before shelling out the shekels - and boy was blown away. The first CD I bought was Amandla, and here is the title track.
Amandla/Dave Fiuczynski
The next guy I came across was John Medeski. I came across him because he played on Fiuczynski’s CD Lunar Crush. I checked him out, too, liked the stuff he and his two bandmates produce and bought in. Here is one of his tracks.
Last Chance To Dance Trance (Perhaps)/Medeski, Martin & Wood
I found the bassist Reggie Washington in the same way, looking up who Fiuczynski was playing with, checked him out, liked it and ... Here’s one of his tracks.
Mr Pastorius/Reggie Washington
That’s also how I came across the Indian/American sax player Rudresh Mahanthappa, although in this case Fiuczynski was asked to play on his CD - he was the session man if you like.
Gopuram/Rudresh Mahanthappa
Finally, and just for good measure, here is a track by John Scofield and his band. Can’t say a lot about this except it is the most ‘accessible’ track on the particular CD it appears on - Up All Night - but I like it a lot. It’s a tune which was a hit in 1971 for The Dramatics (no, I hadn’t heard of them either). I logged onto Spotify to listen to it, and - well, I won’t be buying their, the original version. I understand Britain’s The Beautiful South did a cover, but I’ve not yet heard it.
Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get/John Scofield
And here is a live performance if you are interested:
I don’t think anyone of my family, relatives, friends or acquaintances would describe me as a stylish man, and I must admit I have very little interest in fashion. In fact, I regard those who chase the latest fashions to be seen in it at all cost as on the verge of neurosis. But I do have a thing about flat caps. I started wearing one - though only in cold weather, so I am most certainly off the fashionista hook - many years ago. First, it was one of my father’s, the usual sort of nondescript rural look which, a bit green, a bit brown, a sort of hint at a pattern but not much. And although they kept my head warm, I didn’t much like them as they pretty much screamed middle-aged and getting on so loudly - or at least I felt they did - that only ever wore them when I was alone.
All that changed when it occurred to me that you don’t have to wear one of those awful old-git flat caps and that there is a variety of rather better looking ones.
My first, I think, was a dark green tartan cap with a red woollen bobble on top. But that one I left in a pub between London and Brighton, although to this day I can’t remember why I was visiting Brighton and, more to the point, where I had bought the bloody thing. And I wanted to know that so I could get another like it. But I didn’t. Then a few months, maybe a year later, I came across another tartan hat, one which fitted snugly and kept my head lovely and warm. I had it for about two years before it, too, got lost. Looking for a replacement, I came across a very useful online hat store called Village Hats which carries a variety of different kinds of hats and, more to the point, a wide range of flat caps, or better, flat cap style caps.
The first one I bought there was a grey ‘newsboy’ cap. Like it a lot, but one night walking from where I had parked the car near my brother’s flat in Earls Court, London, to his flat I somehow - somehow - lost it. I wasn’t wearing it at the time.
I spent some time retracing my footsteps, but it was gone. So I bought another or the same style, another grey ‘newsboy’ hat (pictured). But by now I had got the bug. Just as some folk - and a great many women - have different shoes for different occasions and not just for different weather, I have decided that there’s no reason why I shouldn’t do the same with caps. So over the months and recent years I have bought several more hats - an oilskin cap (which my wife says makes me look like a pimp - yippee!), a black corduroy cap (which, come to think of it, I haven’t seen for a while), a blue serge hat, and then my pride and joy, another read tartan hat.
But there’s the rub. I bought it on the same Village Hats website and when it arrived it wasn’t quite as red as I thought it would be, but that didn’t bother me. Unkind colleagues decided it wasn’t red at all, but pink, but
then who doesn’t have unkind colleagues (who, come to think of it, figure quite prominently on newspaper staff). But it was most certainly tartan. It also had a shape and brim which I had seen the former Arsenal footballer Ian Wright wearing and which shape I liked, and if you still can’t imagine what it looks like, take a look that Andy Capp cartoon here - it was pretty much like that. Then I lost it. Or I thought I had lost it.
I looked everywhere. I had once worn it to La Pappardella around the corner from my brother’s where I have taken to having a meal of a Sunday when I work only one shift. I persuaded myself I had left it there. But I hadn’t. No one had found one there. I then decided I had worn it in the outside smoking area of The Brewer’s Arms, in South Petherton, Somerset, where I usually stop of on a Wednesday for a drink and a cigar and to watch whatever football is showing on Sky (and now BT Sports). I rang them, but was told no one had handed one in.
So I decided to buy another, and this is where my story really starts.
I have already reported just how unkind some of my colleagues were be describing my red tartan cap as ‘pink’. It’s not ‘pink’, I told them, it’s red, although I was bound to concede - I’m the honest sort - that it was a very light red and that anyone who might think it ‘pink’ might, at a push, have a point. But I have to say that didn’t bother me. Not one jot. Anyway, I looked on the Village Hats website where I had bought the cap a few months ago, but I couldn’t find it. Nor could I find a facility detailing past orders so that I could track down another. I rang up Village Hats, explained what I was about and could the woman at the other end of the phone look up that order and tell me
the name of the style of hat and the manufacturer. Yes, she said, give her a minute, and she was back not long after: ‘It is a ‘Jodie’ and was made by Jane Anne Designs,’ she told me. It is on the left. Do you have any more in stock? I asked. No, she said. Well, the obvious thing was to look up Jane Anne Designs on the web and I find the firm within minutes.
But what struck me as a little odd was that - er, all the hats on it is website were for women. And it proclaimed itself on its web blurb thus: Jane Anne Designs are located in Manchester and are a leading wholesale supplier of Ladies Formal Hats, Fascinators, Ladies Casual Hats, Cloche Hats, Wax Cotton Hats, Fur Hats and Trappers. Our Wedding Hats, Fascinators and matching Bags are really popular; reasonably priced and they are all exclusively designed in the UK by Jane Anne Designs. Our Ladies Casual range includes Knitted Cloche Hats and Classic Wool Felt Cloche Hats in different colours. Our Ladies Wax Hats are ideal for the wet outdoors, whilst our ladies Fur Hats and Trappers will always keep you warm.
It might strike you as it struck me that there was no mention at all of hats for red-blooded males such as me. What was going on? I rang to find out.
Yes, the woman there told me, we do sell the ‘Jodie’, and, yes, we do still have it in stock. And, no, she told me when I asked, we don’t sell men’s hats. So the Jodie is a woman’s hat? I asked. Yes, the woman told me, didn’t you notice the floral lining? Well, yes, I had noticed the floral lining but honestly didn’t think too much about it.
I didn’t there and then buy myself another - bugger the colour and bugger the floral lining: I liked and like that cap. Google a bit more and found some firm or other in Yorkshire sold it for a couple of quid less than Jane Anne Designs. But I still didn’t buy one, because I planned to drop in at the Brewer’s Arms that night and try my luck again. Who knew, perhaps it had been found and handed in, but the woman I spoke to on the phone didn’t know. Actually, it hadn’t as Duncan, the landlord, assured me.
That’s was it really and there and then I decided I would get another. But thank God I didn’t because what should turn up, tucked away in an Asda bag for life in my stepmother’s kitchen?
So there you have it. But to demonstrate that that hat has a perfectly respectable pedigree and that all kind of men liked and like wearing it, I have gone to some trouble to find photos of them on the web wearing the ‘Jodie’. Stuff you, unkind colleagues.
NB At the end of this post are three soundfiles. Just click start to hear any of them. If you are using a Windows machine, they work (on Windows 7) on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera. If you are on a Mac, they work on Safari, Chrome and Firefox (and also on some obscure browser I have for some reason installed called Stainless), but they don't work on Opera.
Well, hallelujah (or not). Forget Syria, the EU migration crisis, China building new islands in its latest move to dominate the world, Dame Harriet Harman about to be declared a saint by the RC mafia in the Vatican and Manchester United quite overjoyed that they have finally not lost a match (they were 0-0 against Chelsea, who were also over the Moon that they didn’t lose - who’s to say there isn’t a God in Heaven, eh?).
Yes, forget all that rubbish. Forget even the flooding of most of the North of England, a disaster for folk living there, one only partly ameliorated by the Government’s decision to rent all those affected scuba diving gear and, in keeping with the spirit of the Christmas festive season, postpone any payment for four weeks. No, the Really Big News is that The Beatles - well, the two Beatles who are not yet six foot under, Paul and Ringo - have finally consented to make their ‘oeuvre’ available on iTunes and Spotify. Well! Who says God never listens to our prayers!
I must confess that I was a Beatles fan as a kid and can even remember getting physically excited at the imminent release of their soon to be latest album Revolver (and we still called them ‘LPs’, which were preferably CDs because it was easier to roll a spliff on an LP cover. Try doing that on a CD case.) I didn’t get in a ground level because they hit the big time when I was still living in Berlin and I didn’t get to hear them much. I do once remember hearing She Loves You on BFN (British Forces Radio, the rather paler version of AFN, American Forces Radio), but I can’t say they registered.
In fact, I can’t really remember when I got hooked although I was most certainly hooked by the age of 16 when I bought my first Beatles LP (though their sixth) Rubber Soul.
By then the so-called Swinging Sixties was well into its stride, the Beatles were growing hair long (before it had simply been longer, to the disgust of ex-World War II soldiers throughout the land who thought if a short-back-and-sides was good enough for them, it was good enough your you, sonny-me-lad!) I soon had the first five albums though, and great they were too, although the very first did have some weak tracks.
After that came Revolver and, in its time, it did sound different, as even more so did Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. We played that one to death at school, and I tried to learn some of the chord sequences (and failed). And although the songs were catchy - of course, they were catchy - I didn’t quite warm to them as I had warmed to the short three-minute gems on, particularly, a Hard Day’s Night and Help.
Sgt Pepper created a huge hoo-ha and the Beatles were lauded to high heaven, but I suspect it was also the point where they began to take ‘their art’ and, crucially, themselves more seriously, verging on a little too seriously. And that is never a good thing.
Ringo, the drummer, who was always the down-to-earth one, must be cited as the honourable exception. When he was asked on his return from the ashram in India of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (after just ten days. McCartney lasted a month, Lennon and Harrison two months before they, too, sussed him out as just another godwhacker on the make) what it was like, he replied: ‘Just like Butlins’. Ringo calls a spade a spade and has always struck me as having his feet firmly on the ground. He was also a good drummer.
They seem somehow to have lost it when Brian Epstein died. I don’t think Epstein was the greatest or smartest manager, but he was a crucial part of their world until then, one in which they were really just another ‘pop group’, although a hugely successful one. When he killed himself, I think the parts all fell apart. And that was noticeable in their new LP, the so-called White Album.
I remember looking forward to that and being distinctly underwhelmed. Distinctly.
One warning should have been that it included 30 tracks, a great many of which were very ordinary indeed. Yet my feelings weren’t those of the mainstream and everyone seemed to join in and reinforce the Beatles belief that they were pretty much the world’s most talented folk and that whatever they turned their hand to was touched with genius. Well, it wasn’t.
Before that had been their Magical Mystery Tour TV programme and its attendant songs, none of which grabbed me, although I didn’t like to admit it to myself for some reason. But then does anyone below the age of 40 relish admitting to himself that his hero or heroes have feet of clay like the rest of us?
Then came the last two LPs, Abbey Road and Let It Be. Again these were played to death, not at school this time but in the flat I shared in Castle Street, Dundee, and, yes, of course, they were catchy, but by now the magic really had gone.
I actively began to dislike many of McCarney’s songs, far too many of which I thought and still think were horribly twee. Let It Be - ugh! The Long And Winding Road - ugh! And earlier Fool On The Hill - ugh!
Bearing these in mind, the writing was obviously on the wall with She’s Leaving Home on Sgt Pepper and earlier still I’ll Follow The Sun on Beatles For sale. And ever since heart by almost everything he has since done, Paul McCartney has demonstrated, to me, at least, that he is a twee shite at heart.
Lennon last a little longer in my affections, but not much longer. His first solo LP I thought to be nothing but a long whinge of self-indulgent shite, not even redeemed by the one good track, Revolution.
Then came Imagine which I did buy but which underwhelmed me, too, followed by Mind Games. I bought that, too, but I don’t think I played it more than two or three times. And to this day, I want to puke every time I hear Imagine played. Jesus, it’s awful.
I remember being particularly irritated when I caught footage on TV of Lennon playing it in some concert New York concert hall. Lennon was alone on stage, wearing sunglasses and playing a white piano. The camera panned to the audience, which consisted - quite obviously - of the monied and chic of New York, all in their finery and who most certainly wouldn’t give peace a chance if their fucking lives depended on it. As they might say in Scotland: get to fuck John, you big phoney.
Both Lennon and McCartney’s solo output and the reception given to it seem to imply that they were still the musical geniuses from Liverpool and that, including the bullshit about the political activism of the ‘man of peace’ Lennon carries on to this day. Harrison was a half-decent guitar player, but not better than any number of other half-decent guitar players and session men. More to the point he wasn’t a very good songwriter and didn’t have a good voice, although it was useful for some of the harmonies.
Yes, like almost all our one-time heroes, The Beatles did go off the boil, and in retrospect it is rather more obvious to me now than it was then. I mean I did buy the first three Lennon solo albums, although I hardly played them. I didn’t buy any of McCartney’s albums at all. Granted there were still the occasional catchy tunes but . . .
But they really did have their moments and it’s good to remember what was good not what was self-indulgent and mediocre, so here are three songs, coincidentally with Lennon on lead vocals, although all three are very much a group effort and to my mind really do stand the test of time. As for the rest of it, the Sexy Sadies, the Helter-Skelters, the Fool On The Hills and all the rest, leave me out.
The first is No Reply from Beatles For Sale:
No Reply
Then there is I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party from the same album:
I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party
And finally, from a Hard Day’s Night, my favourite from that album of very strong songs, I’ll Be Back:
As I write, it is mid-afternoon on Christmas Day and I am sitting at my stepmother’s bedside in Bodmin Hospital where she has been transferred for stroke rehab now that she is not medically in any danger. In fact, she was not medically in any danger pretty soon after suffering her stroke two weeks ago tomorrow, but had to stay in Truro (an 80-mile round trip) because no beds were free at Bodmin (an 16-mile round trip - guess which I prefer).
For the past few years, my daughter has had a job at the Red Lion, St Kew Highway, to top up her college funds (or, from where I sit, to get even more money to waste on clothes she doesn’t need). The restaurant there is doing a Christmas lunch for I don’t know how many and she was asked to work, and she agreed.
My son has also had a holiday job there for about a year now and although he wasn’t that bothered about working on Christmas Day, he decided to as my daughter’ decision to work has meant our Christmas lunch has been postponed until tomorrow, Boxing Day.
So, being at a loose end this afternoon - and not much being one for watching the Queen’s Christmas message, one of innumerable James Bond reruns or any of the other shite they decided to screen on Christmas Day, I’ve come to Bodmin Hospital to spend a few hours at my stepmother’s bedside and keep her company.
A bottle of champagne - on of her’s so it wasn’t any of the cheap shite I tend to buy - of which I am swilling by far the lion’s share, and a Christmas stollen, with Hymns from Kings College,
Cambridge, playing on Radio 3 means it is all rather pleasant. My stepmother has yet again fallen into a happy slumber, which give me the chance to compose this bulletin from her bedside.
So a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all, even those who haven’t suffered a stroke. Oh, and for about the umpteenth time I have reflected on just how bloody lucky we are here in Britain to have healthcare for each and any complaint utterly free of charge. Totally free. Not ifs, no buts. The sad thing is too many of us take it for granted.
. . .
Christmas has been an odd time for me for quite some years now. I am - perhaps ‘was’ is more truthful - what is called by some a ‘cradle Catholic’. That means that we were born, baptised and raised as RCs.
There’s none of this ‘going over to Rome’ nonsense, whether it is because a deep-seated faith has finally come to the realisation that the Romans have got it right whereas the rest Christianity has got it wrong, however sincere they are; or whether, as is all-too-often the case, they are attracted to Rome because, unlike the bloody, sodding bastards Anglicans, the RCs will have no truck with what are called this ‘women priests’ nonsense and still thinks - thoroughly hypocritically, it has to be said, as a large part of the Vatican play for their own side - that homosexuality is ‘a sin’ and an abomination, and woofters of any stripe, however good and sincere they are, are banned from the kingdom of heaven. (This is usually announced in a tone of heartbreaking regret, that repeating what Rome’s doctrine is hurts them more than it hurts the woofters, but . . . well, but.)
As I say, that ‘doctrine’ - religion’s misleadingly posh word for ‘policy’ - is hypocritical to the nth degree if we are to believe the reports of a gay mafia running the Vatican. (Actually, on reflection the phrase ‘gay mafia’ is thoroughly offensive and I ask any gays reading this to please try to understand the sense in which I use it: members of the criminal mafia are Italian and Italian/American, but that most certainly doesn’t mean Italians and Italian/Americans are all mafioso.)
But it is not that hypocrisy, or better just that hypsocrisy, which I dislike intensely.
As a lad I was brought up to repeat pieces of what were called ‘the catechism’. The only piece I can now remember is ‘a sacrament is an outward sign of inward grace’. I didn’t at all understand what that or any of the other pieces of catechism I was taught to parrot meant, but I was expected to learn it, and crucially, believe it anyway. I attended mass (Mass with a capital M if you are still a believing RC), went to confession and took communion. Because I had to.
If, at first, I was lax in my attendance as I grew into my teens and twenties, it was most certainly not because I was having intellectual doubts. It was because I could think of better things to do on a Sunday morning, staying asleep in bed being one of them.
But those intellectual doubts did slowly grow and then lead on to sheer disbelief that what is taught by the RC church, and other churches, is taken in the slightest big seriously.
I cannot these days hear any religious service or any religious proclamation, as I have been while listening to the carols from Kings, without thinking of Doctor Who or various threadbare bargain-basement sci-fi novels I read when I was in my salad days. When I hear of the mystery of the Trinity or the mystery of transubstantiation - that the host given as communion doesn’t merely ‘represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ’ but is that body and blood of Jesus Christ, I really have to wonder.
A strict Catholic will, as primed, respond that ‘yes, of course, it is odd, but that is why faith is important - faith that although is sounds like just so much stupid bollocks, it is nothing of the kind - it is the truth as revealed by Our Saviour Jesus Christ’.
Well, sorry, I not longer buy it. And nor do I buy the suggestion that ordinary rules of comprehension and logic simply have to be suspended because this is different, this is God’s revealed truth. Ever met a really good carnie, or cardsharp or conman. He will tell you the same: ‘Yes, a 15pc return on investment is, I agree, unbelievable, but we have achieved it. Just hand over you hard-won savings and we will show you - and what could be more convincing evidence than that?’
But at this point I really must insert a caveat: I might think that the various religious ceremonies, services, invocations and the rest are as close to goobledegook as one can get, but many don’t. For many their faith is important to them and gives them great comfort when they need comfort. Please remember that.
So that is why Christmas is always rather a strange time for me. On the one hand, the older I get, the more I abhor the commercialism and rampant sentimentality of Christmas - ‘peace on Earth to all men of goodwill’? Why, of course, but pray tell me, why only now, at Christmas? - and for many years have reminded my children, especially when they were younger, exactly why we celebrate Christmas.
On the other I regard the whole nativity story, the ‘three wise men’, the shepherds coming to adore and all the rest of it as akin to Hansel and Gretel and The Sleeping Beauty. But, as the man says, there you go. As always, it’s horses for courses, you pays your money and you makes your choice, chacun a son gout, whatever floats your boat, an apt cliche is worth hours of thought, that kind of drift. You gets my meaning (and do I really have to add ‘squire’)?
