Patrick Powell's cake moment (er, he's not French but half Kraut, half English)

As usual down her in sunny Cornwall when it is not pissing with rain or the chilly side of ‘mild’, I sit outside in the garden with a glass of something or other, these days just read wine of cheap port, and read. But I also fall to thinking, and as I believe that 90% of writing is actually thinking (and planning, though planning is essentially thought), I often find myself mulling over what I am going to write.

That now includes what — I hope will become a longer piece for which I only have an outline of the first line and the essence of what it will be. I have now forgotten the original first line as I worded it — and it was perfect, just what I wanted — but that doesn’t matter as I believe if you can’t play the same tune again, that tune wasn’t too good to start with. It was something along the lines of ‘It was just after I turned 40 that I realised that I smelled/smelt’ (NB The ‘smelled/smelt’ is now giving me problems: which spelling will or should it be. Discuss.)

I can’t remember whether or not that was my ‘perfect’ line, the one I thought of yesterday’ but since then I have come up with an alternative which has the advantage of being more than a tad ambiguous and will probably be the one I shall go with: ‘It was just after I turned 40 that I realised I stank.’ See what I mean?

What I mean about going outside and having a drink in the fresh garden air is that I think of all kinds of stuff — stories, first lines, themes for this Hemingway bollocks — but I never rush in to ‘get it down’. I don’t even ‘take notes’. My reasoning is that if it is any good and worthwhile and not a load of crap, it will occur to me again. And also it will have lodged itself somewhere in my brain. And if it hasn’t and if I forget it, well, who give a bloody toss. I’m sure you don’t.

Pip, pip.

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With all my love, Cassandra. See you in the next world

I once came across a comparison (in the Economist, though that is not important) which might at first blush seem obvious, but the essence of it is something we often tend to forget.A great many of our attitudes are large sub-conscious: we take so much for granted that we rarely question what to use seems beyond question. The comparison in the Economist was made in a piece about the – rather swift – demise of the Soviet Union.

If like me you had grown up in the 1950s (my first decade), the 1960s and the 1970s, the notion of the United States as ‘the leader of the free world’ (as ridiculous a claim as that the Rolling Stones are ‘the world’s best rock band’) pitted against the essentially evil Soviet bloc in ‘the Cold War’ was a mainstay of our lives.

Because both sides had a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and because both were intimately involved in proxy wars around the world, there was the constant fear that a wrong move by either could lead to ‘global destruction’.

More to the point that particular geo-political fact of life seemed to be a part of all our futures for infinity and beyond. This inability to conceive of any other arrangement was summed up by the comparison made in the Economist.

Imagine, it said, that you lived at the bottom of a very large soup bowl with very high sides. You cannot see over the top and into the world beyond and if you have been living there for a very long time, you cannot even begin to think what life might be like outside the soup bowl.

Many had lived with the reality of the ‘evil’ USSR for so long that they couldn’t conceive of a world in which there no longer was a powerful USSR. Then, it seems almost over night, there wasn’t.

The point of this entry is not to discuss what led to the demise of the Soviet bloc, but to record the surprise of all those living in that deep, high-sided soup bowl that there is an end to everything. That is a comfort to all those suffering when times are bad, but in good times a reminder to all of us not to take the east, the prosperity for granted.

That, too, might seem obvious, but the trouble is we do: we have very short memories. Fourteen years ago (at the time of writing), the world’s banking system was in crisis (though ‘the West’ being rather self-important might not necessarily constitute all of ‘the world’, and I don’t know how the banking crisis affected countries in, say South America). And it was serious.

Essentially, because of the prevalence of bad debts incurred by some banks and other financial institutions, no one felt able to ‘trust’ anyone else. The financial system froze up, banking business came to an abrupt halt and there was a very real danger of many national economies simply collapsing in on themselves.

As it happens swift action — action which was both brave and potentially very dangerous — managed to avert the worst and what might have been long-term disaster was averted. (The ‘dangers’ of the measures taken include what was euphemistically called ‘quantitive easing’ which — I’m more then willing to be corrected — in practice consisted of what amounted to printing money. 

And in the long term such a practice devalues the money we have and cause inflation. However, it doesn’t seem to have done so at the time.

I don’t want to come across as some poundshop cassandra, however. I am not suggesting that ‘we are all doomed’ (©Pte Frazer), but events in the past 30 months, mainly the global covid-19 pandemic and, more recently the bizarre decision by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, have upset the apple cart in a very grand way. Neither event might have been foreseen and both, in different ways, have led to a leap in inflation in the West.

Most European economies seem to have rebounded from the damage created by ‘covid lockdowns’ surprisingly quickly. But it would is wiser to be less sanguine about the war in Ukraine (which, by the way, I ‘predicted’ would not happen. Shows what I know.

I insisted that the build-up of Russian troops on the northern and eastern borders of Ukraine were just a ham-fisted ‘show of strength’ by Putin. I was wrong, sadly). The conventional wisdom seems to be that Putin is physically and possibly mentally ill and is no longer acting rationally. Mind given that our various newspaper ‘commentators’ are obliged to trot out an opinion at least once a day, all week, it is difficult to know just how seriously we should take ‘conventional wisdom’.

My view is that the intelligence services of the countries making up ‘the West’ which are supporting Ukraine will keep well to themselves what they discover in this way and that and what their analysts forecast simply because it is by far wisest for the ‘the enemy’ (i.e. Putin and Russia) not to know what we know or think we know.

With that in mind, there will be no chance of MI6 and their foreign mates to call a daily Press conference to keep the ‘commentators’ up-to-date. And although said ‘commentators’ might speak of — boast about would be a better description — ‘their sources in the security services’, neither they nor we, their readers, will or can know whether they aren’t being fed a lot of hooey by ‘their sources’, for whatever reason.

I stress: if you cannot know whether what you are being told is ‘the truth’ or just a load old bollocks, it’s best to assume it is complete cobblers.

By all accounts — Russia and its armed forces are making complete tits of themselves in Ukraine, and the persistent fear of ‘the mighty Russian bear’ has been shown to be little more than a nursery nightmare. But what is not a groundless fear is that Putin is able and just might use nuclear weapons.

In view of the underlying philosophy of ‘mutually assured destruction’ which in demotic language boils down to ‘you might be able to fuck us, but we will fuck you in retaliation, so you will gain nothing’, we — the West — hope

 

that Putin, irrational as his decision to invade might now seem, is still not irrational enough to launch his nuclear weapons. But: who bloody knows?

I like to think — that is ‘I’ who confidently predicted that massing more than 100,000 troops on the borders of Ukraine was just a macho ‘show of strength’ — that there is a sufficient number of saner, more rational Russians in the Kremlin who are thinking ‘enough is enough, this bloody loon is damaging our country for no reason at all’.

Certainly, there are a great many nutters and fanatics about, in Northern Ireland, in ISIS, in the US bible belt, among the ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel (who, believe it or not refuse to serve in their country’s armed forces, but don’t at all mind being protected by them), but there is also a substantial number who want little more than a quiet, peaceful and trouble-free life. And I don’t doubt there are as many such Russians as there are Brits, Germans, French, Brazilians and Yanks. 

They will understand that although Russia is not perfect — and no country is — things were running just fine for them and their countrymen before Putin decided to invade Ukraine. That has turned into a disaster, so let’s not compound that disaster by allowing the loon to nuke the West. But: who knows?

Like the guys at the bottom of that soup bowl, until December 2019 when we got our first reports of the covid outbreak in Wuhan, China, much was going quite well for most of us. Yes, we had our niggles, and some more than many, but . . .

We did not think that might change. It did, though. So perhaps it might now be best to fear the worst and look forward to being pleasantly surprised, not to say very relieved, when it doesn’t happen. But: who knows?

Love, Cassandra.

PS It’s worth remembering the advice given to Brits in the 1950s as to what to do if your area is targeted by a nuclear warhead: get under a table. It might not do much, but surely it is better than nothing? Surely.

First post in ages, but a trip to France makes its presence felt

Langon, SW France, May 9.

I haven’t posted here for some time, and I am conscious of it. There’s no reason at all, except that I have nothing much to record here, and as all too often my posts lately have been nothing more than a round-up on current affairs on what I have been reading in the more ‘serious’ newspapers and journals (all things are comparative so ‘serious’ means ‘not quite as fucking daft’), I felt it was a tad artificial and pretentious to post here - though saying nothing - simply because I hadn’t posted here for a while. I have been posting on my ‘secret’ blog, but the entries are far shorter and where I can let my hair down.

I am on a ten-day visit to see my aunt in Illats, with whom you might be familiar from previous entries over these past few years. For about seven or eight year, I would visit in July to accompany her to several of the concerts put on at that time as part of a series of three. The last time was, I think, in 2017, the year before I retired, but the visits stopped when she became too frail to go out much, and not at all in the evenings when the concerts were being held.

She has been in even poorer health this past year. She is now 91, the sight in one eye has gone (though it still itches and irritates irrespective of that), she has one (or possibly even two) new knees, and has fallen badly several times. We kept in touch by email and I was going to visit here in the autumn, but my wife suggested I should make it earlier than that in case - well, in case. So here I am.

. . . 

I arrived last Wednesday, and as always it takes a day or two of acclimatising. I was going to be staying for a little over two weeks, but of her older son announced that he and his wife would be coming this Saturday for the weekend and could not make it at any other time, so I had to re-arrange my flight. So far the routine has been the same - breakfast, lunch (nothing grand but far longer than the usual 13 minutes most Brits or, I suppose, Yanks give over for that meal) and supper.

Well, my routine at home is vastly different: a mug of tea at 9.30 for breakfast, two mugs of cafe au lait (or call it what you will, at 11.20/12, then nothing to eat until supper (tea in rural North Cornwall, but we middle-class lads are addicted to ‘standards’ so it’s ‘supper’ as far as this blog is concerned) which could be at between 5.30 and 7 if not a little later.

The upshot is that I, who eats not a great deal at the best of times, although I love food, felt bloated, fat and just didn’t want so much booze. The crunch came yesterday: we were due to have a good lunch at a local very good, and not very cheap restaurant.

So I had no breakfast and later skipped the early evening aperitif - gin and tonic for me and whisky for my aunt - and then skipped supper. I also had a relatively early night. I slept for ten hours which shows just how much I needed it.

So today I took a day off and went to visit a local 13th century castle, Chateau de Roquetillaide (I think I got the spelling right) which was interesting - I like castles - but might have been even more so if the guide’s commentary had not been entirely in French.

As it happens, the guy on the ticket desk who spoke perfect English (courtesy of an English mother and and education at a Surrey private school) gave me a guide in English which pretty much covered what she was telling all the other, presumably French or French-speaking visitors, about eight of them. When I got there, I realised I had visited before, but that didn’t matte because I could remember nothing about it (except that I had been there before).

. . . 

Apart from that? Well, nothing. That murderous moron Putin is still destroying parts of south-east Ukraine and killing willy-nilly, but there is nothing I can helpfully add. I suspect this is really not the end of of something very unsettling to the ‘world order’, but the beginning, but quite how it will all work out I am not stupid enough to suggest.

The Hemingway bollocks is still on track and thank fully I can see the end of the tunnel. I still enjoy the reading, thinking and writing, but I shall be glad when I can finally get on with something else (and have long had my thoughts about that). The central irony of it all is that this is not about Hemingway at all or about ‘literature’ or writing (about which so many declare themselves to be ‘passionate’) or anything like that.

The prime reasons for undertaking what has proved to be a far greater and longer task than I anticipate were very simple: ‘to do something and complete it as best I could’ and ‘to do something and complete it as best I could’. Secondary reasons were ‘to learn to think clearly’ and ‘not to rush anything’. 

Whether it was about just how (as is the subtitle ‘how did a middling writer achieve such global literary fame’ or ‘do sqirrels dream?’ was irrelevant. It was ‘completing it and not cutting corners’ which drove me on’. And I have to say it could not have been done before I had retired which, oddly, removed an imperative to rush which had not just blighted my life but - ‘he laughed’ - my ‘careeer’.

NB Many and latterly most of those I worked with on ‘Fleet Street’ had ambitions to make a ‘good career’ (are you reading this Andrew Morrod?). I never did. Career? What the fuck are they talking about?

How to waste time completely, utterly and successfully . . .

Lord can we waste time when we shouldn’t be. For the past few weeks I’ve got to a simple place in on of the accounts of Hemingway’s life, but wanted to be sure of certain dates. (His marriage to Martha Gellhorn collapsed and one reason was that she was an independent professional who refused to play little wifey to the old fraud. He took it badly.

They were together, first in an affair, then in marriage (about which she had her doubts from the start) for a total of around years, of which about four/five were as a married couple.

In those years Gellhorn tried to do as expected by she chafed at the bit and took off on journalistic assignments several time for, in one case, about four months. It is the dates of her trips I wanted to be sure off.

Well, after reading and re-reading parts of this book and that, I am now and yesterday and again today I was going to write the few hundred words to move myself on. I did a little yesterday, but today I have been faffing around like nobody’s business. And for the past 70/80 minutes I have been producing this Guardian spoof for no reason but a laugh. Here it is:

Introducing the little-known writer Eugene Mahlzeit and wasting my time as usual and feeling a tad guilty but not too much. And anyway at least I am productive, if not in a very useful way

Here’s a thing: I am concentrating on finishing my ‘Hemingway bollocks’ and I am getting there. One advantage is, of course, that not only do I have no deadline, not even a self-imposed deadline, but it is of absolutely no consequence to anyone in this world whether or not I finish or even whether or not is is even interesting. No one, but no one, except me gives a flying fuck. That is an advantage.

One of my major failings since I was very young was to rush everything. Perhaps it had to do with having an older brother who was good to excellent — or so it seemed to me then — at whatever he turned his hand to. It seemed effortless. He was good at sports, I wasn’t. He was good at school, I wasn’t. I was always — and still am, though now I am proud of the fact — a plodder. Plod, plod, plod.

In my work as a newspaper sub-editor — I was only a reporter for six years — my tendency to rush, to cut corners, to make do and all the rest, was at times catastrophic, though purely in the sense, as George Bernard Shaw pointed out, that newspapers are ‘A device unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation’.

So take ‘catastrophic’ with a pinch of salt, as for many leaving for work without their smartphone is ‘a disaster’. Oh, and (a sub writes) note to Mr Shaw: in the generally accepted sense of the word a newspaper is not a ‘device’. ‘Institution’ might have done the trick, but we take your point.

As for my point, it is that since I retired (four years ago come Monday, April 4) I have simply stopped rushing, simply because there is really no need to rush, none at all. There are no deadlines whatsoever. And that means I give myself all the time in the world to do whatever I am doing to ensure it is just as I want it.

It would be different if, say, I had a publisher who was hassling me for ‘your second novel’. But I don’t, and the chances of that happening are rather slimmer than the Pope taking advantage of new same-sex laws and making an honest man out of Donald Trump.

This is not to say that there is no slight pressure, but it is self-imposed. Why, I have no idea, but concluding this ‘Hemingway bollocks’ so I can get on with other writing and making sure it is not embarrassing is a form of pressure, and I find I feel oddly ‘guilty’ at the end of the day if I ‘have done’ nothing, i.e. not written a bit more (or rewritten and edited with a view to improving it, on it).

I have been very good these past few months and though progress has been slow, it has been steady. Then came yesterday.

. . .

Yesterday I decided to prepare my Sony digital 8 camcorder for sale on eBay. The model is a DCR-TRV 460e. and I bought it about 20-odd years ago because it in that particular range it was one of only two that could also read analogue tapes. And I had a lot of those from my children’s childhood. 

The trouble was it had developed a fault — and I seem to remember somewhere that is was a design fault — whereby on playback there would be three thick horizontal lines of distortion across the picture. By pressing down on top of the camera this could be temporarily remedied and at the time it worked.

However, as everyone and their pussy cat can now take video on their smartphone — and I can (though the quality is not as good) I hadn’t used it in years. I recently took it out with a view to transferring some short clips to my laptop to burn on a DVD, but found that the remedy to ‘cure’ the fault didn’t work. So I decided to sell it on eBay and yesterday set about getting it ready. But this time the remedy did work.

I had only three of the many tapes I recorded to hand and went through parts of them and came across about ten minutes worth of utterly pointless shots of the lane outside our cottage. I could not and still cannot think why I recorded them.

Then at some point I decided to use them with a simple soundtrack I knocked together into a short video about little known American modernist novelist Eugene Mahlzeit (look him up though you won’t find a lot because mainstream he ain’t, but his three novels are worth it).

And this again I didn’t do any work on the ‘bollocks’ and felt guilty. No matter that I enjoyed every second of knocking together the video (below) and no matter that I succeeded in doing what I wanted to do, I still felt and feel guilty. So if you don’t enjoy it, I shall be very annoyed. Here it is:

Something else which interests, no, fascinates me is how much a soundtrack can influence or reactions to a film or video. As far as I am concerned the soundtrack, whatever it is, is crucial to eliciting the reaction the director/producer (I never know who is ultimately in charge) wants to get.

Watch a horror film with the sound off, and it very soon becomes not ‘horrible’ at all. And that soundtrack can be very, very subtle. The ‘piece of music’ I constructed — a more honest word than ‘composed’ — for my video about consists of just four notes and a recording of a clock ticking I found on Freesound.org.

It was made using Mac’s free Garageband software and consists of three tracks, each doubled up and the instrument changed and reverb. Thirteen years ago (I know that because I have just downloaded these two videos from You Tube to which I uploaded them 13 years ago) are a case in point: the exact same video but it creates a different effect merely because of the music chosen for each.

Take a look.

It is the almost identical video (I made one or two slight changes for the second, upbeat version, but nothing of relevance here) but the music used is wholly different. The first is the song Orik Gullaganda by the Azerbaijani singer Sevara Nazarkhan, and the second is (and I had to look this up using Soundhound because I couldn’t remember) Cotton Tail by duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. The first is doomy and the images are vaguely sinister. The second is upbeat but the — same — are just images.

‘Ah’ (I think) I said, ‘Putin won’t invade. He’s not THAT stupid’. Guess what? As for that nice Mr Xi, what is he to make of the antics of his new best friend?

Well, I got it wrong. I think — I really can’t be arsed to read through my last blog entry, but I’m pretty sure I remember correctly — that I suggested it was all some big bluff on Putin’s part, that all he wanted was to scare the shit out of the West and to remind them that he was still around and that in the event he wouldn’t invade, because what would be the point?

Well, to be frank from what we know now there is no point: Putin seems to have shot himself in the foot badly and there seem to be no advantage of any kind he can gain from his ‘special operation’, the phrase the Russians are using in to avoid calling it a war.

I feel oddly uncomfortable referring to ‘the Russians’ in that way as if the bear some of the responsibility for the invasion. They don’t. This is Putin’s war, Putin’s doing, not Russia’s. ‘The Russians’ weren’t consulted, not least the parents and women who have already had a son or partner killed.

And given that, as is the way of dictators, Putin has now shut down every media outlet he does not control, the only ‘news’ a great many Russians are getting, especially those in the back of beyond, about what is going on in Ukraine is what Putin wants them to hear: that the ‘special operation’ was necessary to rid Ukraine of a cabal of Nazis who were perpetuating genocide (on whom is never made clear) and that Ukraine can be returned to the bosom of Mother Russia.

It is also all ‘going to plan’. So please, let’s not lump in ‘the Russians’ as being in any way to blame for the killing and bombing. This solely down to Putin and those around him supporting and facilitating him.

. . .

As for the ‘facts’ of the case, I would not deny that the West is also inclined to put a suitable spin on what is happening, but given the nature of our media it is very unlikely we are being spun a crock of lies simply because to do so is nigh-on impossible.

I shall, though, reiterate that all I can do in these blog entries as far as the ‘facts’ are concerned is repeat — parrot? — what I hear on the news and, to a lesser extent, read in the papers (though I am inclined to give more credence to reports in the Financial Times and The Economist than in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail).

Apart from those facts, there is also the central mystery: why is Putin doing this? Why has a man who hitherto was regarded as supreme pragmatism and rational to a fault undertaken such a stupid operation.

One popular explanation is that he is ill, possibly with cancer or Parkinson’s and being treated with steroids. That, ‘they’ say, would explain his puffy face and, ‘they’ say, it could be the cause of what the tabloids call ‘roid rage’, personality change which makes you more aggressive.

Bodybuilders who use a steroids a lot are known to suffer from ‘roid rage’ (two words which for the tabloids has the useful virtue of being just four letters each and which will fit very nicely in 200pt Franklin Gothic in a splash headline. What would fit was also a consideration when the tabloids arbitrarily renamed (‘dubbed’) Prince William as ‘Wills’ — shorter and more suited to a snappy headline).

We are also being told here in the West, and it is a very plausible explanation, that the pitiful nature of Putin’s invasion is because is intelligence service are so scared of him now that they tell him what they think he wants to hear. The same was true of Hitler.

So he seems sincerely to have believed that his invading troops would be welcomed by the Ukrainians with open arms and there would be very little resistance. That is one reason for his opening strategy, to send in light vehicles in an intended swift operation rather than rumble in with heavy and slower tanks. He seems to have expected to have taken over Kiev in a matter of days.

We are told he was also badly informed about the state of his armed forces. Supposedly a great deal of money has been spent over the past decade modernising his army, but we now believe a lot of the money was syphoned off to pay for baubles and yachts for those able to syphon it off.

One example given is that the original tyres (US 'tires' though I don't know why) on one state-of-the-art military vehicle were substituted with cheap Chinese retreads which would and did not last at all long.

But in a sense all this is just me whistling in the wind. What is going to happen? Will Putin behave in some way which gives the West, as in Nato, not choice but to get involved, (and so far they have been keeping their noses very clean because of the likely consequences)? Could the war in Ukraine spread to other parts of Europe? Will nuclear weapons at some point be launched? Will other states hostile to the West — Iran and North Korea — use the problems the US and the West have on their plate to cause them trouble elsewhere?

One of the tunes we are, perhaps, whistling is that Xi Jinping, China's president (a kind of more upmarkat Vladimir Putin) is getting very worried about the effect the Ukraine war will have on the global economy. It seems that China's wheat harvest this year will be terrible and it will have to import wheat whose price is soaring because Ukraine will not be able to produce as much.

China imports 70% of its oil and 40% of its gas. So it will pay a hell of a lot more than most on oil it uses. Russia will, of course be able to offload some of the oil and gas the West will no longer be getting on China — but, China is not sentimental and given that beggars can't be choosers it will be able to push down the price considerably. It certainly won’t be paying top rouble, besties with Russia or not.

Another dilemma is that in world trade, China does far more business with the US and the EU than with Russia: just $147bn with Russia last year but $828bn with the EU and $756bn with the US. What with sanctions flying around, China will really not want trade with the EU and the US to collapse - and the comparatviely piddly Russian trade wouldn't help.

A related embarrassment for Xi is that at the launch ceremony for the Winter Olympics, his Vlad the Lad came along and Xi proclaimed him to be his best mate. All fine and dandy but . . . Did Putin tell him that he was

 

planning to invade Ukraine? If he did, Xi will look very bad indeed, especially in view of all the problems it might cause China. And bearing that in mind, it we might speculate that tried to talk Putin out of it.

If he did not? If he knew but kept schtumm? Well, it makes the image he likes to portray as the wise, farsighted, all-knowing leader China needs look very silly. Farsighted? Not quite. Xi Will not be a happy bunny and might no longer want to be besties with Vladimir.

So how's it all going to end? Who knows?

On March 9, Russians forces shelled a maternity hospital in Mariupol, in the south of Ukraine, Mr Xi. Several women were giving birth when the shells struck, but they survived because they were sheltering in the basement. Is this really the kind of thing you want the world to see you associated with, Mr Xi?

What’s going on in Russia? Buggered if I know

I am writing this on the morning of Tuesday, February 15, the day before the mooted invasion of Ukraine by Russia. I say ‘mooted’ because that is merely a claim by the US, possibly just another element in the baffling and very odd ins and outs of the whole business.

The US is warning that Russia is now ready to invade Ukraine from three directions: south from Belarus north from Crimea and north-west from the Donbas area (where there has been what is described as a ‘low-level’ are for several years in which 14,000 people are said to have died). Whether the invasion goes ahead tomorrow or this

 

week or even at all remains to be seen. But as far as I am concerned baffling and odd are two very good descriptions of prety much all angles of what has been going on. Nothing is straightforward, not Russia’s — for which read Vladimir Putin’s — motives, not the West’s disjointed response and, to be frank, unconvincing response. And the logic of it all is certainly not straightforward.

As usual for ‘facts’ and ‘opinion’ I can here only repeat what I have heard on the radio and TV and read. I can, though, add my own thoughts. The fact is that Russia began moving troops to the Ukrainian border towards the end of last year, but steadfastly denied it intended to invade Ukraine.

Yet that build-up of troops continued, with more of them moved to the border of Ukraine with Belarus and to the Crimea (which Russia got away with annexing seven years ago and whose seemingly trouble-free acquisition might well have encouraged Putin to try his luck further).

The purpose of these troop movements seemed obvious: Russia intended to invade Ukraine. Well, that at least was probably the impression Putin wanted to give. It might well have been a form of blackmail. Russia has denied to this hour that invasion is its purpose, but it is difficult to believe anything else.

So the next equally obvious questions are: why would it want to invade Ukraine and if, as it claims, it has no intention of invading, why marshal those troops on the border? Well, the answer to the second question might, as I say, merely be to increase pressure on the West. But pressure to do what?

One issue has been Ukraine’s possibly membership of Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). Russia says, correctly I think, that at some point after the fall of the Soviet Union the West promised that it would not expand Nato any further than its then borders. However, it did and the Baltic states, all three of them former Soviet bloc states, are now members of Nato.

Then there’s another oddity: Nato is on paper, in theory, but also in reality a defensive body. Yet Russia’s stance on the matter of implies that Nato is essentially an aggressive body and, by further implication, will at some point in

the future be put to work aggressively. How likely is that? It is certainly far less likely than Nato fulfilling is mission to go to the defence of a member if that member is attacked.

In fact, arguing on purely practical grounds, an aggressive Nato would be unlikely to see action: far too many of its members would veto any such move, even if it meant Nato, in that jokey phrase, was ‘getting its retaliation in first’.

Thus how worried is Putin about Ukraine becoming a member of Nato. If, as I suggest, Nato is essentially defensive not aggressive, why on earth should he be worried. Certainly, if as he claims assurances have been ignored by the Baltic states becoming members he might rightly feel peeved. But is that really a good reason for invading Ukraine? It doesn’t seem obvious.

Another explanation for Putin’s actions are that he is worried that Ukraine, a democracy, is not a good look for Russia which is nominally a democracy but where real political opposition is discouraged. For example Alexei Navalny, a brave man if ever there were one, was poisoned, treated by doctors in Germany, then returned to Russia where he was silenced by being jailed. That, too, is plausible. But how would invasion help?

It might make Putin in the eyes of some a ‘strong man’ but it might equally persuade those who tolerate him no longer to tolerate him (though given that free elections are at present as unlikely as a month of Sundays that is more of the theoretical danger). Aligned to that reasoning is the suggestion that Putin is following the principle that if you have domestic troubles, take the country’s mind off them by causing trouble abroad.

However, in short there is no way of reading Putin’s mind and establishing just what he might be up to.

Another consideration might be — and this will surely have crossed Putin’s mind — that invading the Ukraine might create more problems than it would solven and it is very unlikely that Russia would be in the Ukraine for the long haul.

Invading would be the easy bit, but holding the country and dealing with certain insurgency would not. Putin will well aware of the fiasco that the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan became (and arguably it facilitated the eventual rise of the Taliban).

More likely would be that Putin would set about setting up a government beholden to him in the Kremlin, but that too might not be as successful as he wold like: insurgencies and possibly violent opposition might carry on.

Still, he would have made his point: that Russia is still of consequence in the world and it and its interest must be taken into account. Establishing a new status quo between Russia and the West, one which resembles the status quo of the Cold War, might be his goal. But it still begs the question: why? Is that really worth the hassle.

. . .

In its response to the Russian build-up of troops the West has been — I would like to say ‘predictably’ — at sixes and sevens. The US and Britain say one thing, France quite another and Germany for rather too long decided not to say anything at all.

One explanation for that I heard given yesterday by some bod who is an adviser on international affairs to Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz was that Scholz’s background is more in finance than foreign affairs and that he left the matter to his foreign minister. It doesn’t help the Annalena Baerbock, his foreign minister belongs to the 

Green Party and who likely solution to the crisis is to sing Kumbaya ever more loudly. However, Scholz has since been embarrassed into action.

On the question of retaliation to an invasion of Ukraine, the West is also badly at six and sevens. Military action would be out of the questions (unless, of course, Russia then attacked one of the Baltic states in which case Nato would be obliged to defend them). So far the talk is off ’sanctions’, notably shutting Russia out of the global banking system (which, as one commentator claimed yesterday, although I have no way of knowing whether or no this is the case) overnight ATMs — cashpoints — throughout Russia would cease working and folk would not be able to get ready cash.

Russia would, though, hit back, notably and most probably by shutting off the gas is supplies to Western Europe. That would hit Germany harder than other European countries. Overall, Russia supplies Europe with 40% of its gas, but Germany is more dependent on the supply ever since Angela Merkel, the previous chancellor decided to close down the country’s nuclear power industry a decade ago.

The final plants will shut down later this year. (Many Germans are baffled that although their country no longer produces power from its own power plants, it is quite happy to buy in such nuclear-produced electricity from neighbouring countries.) In the real world it is no surprise that Germany is, or seems to be, dragging its heels.

So, it’s not looking good, but the West must do something. If in time it pretty much allows Putin to get away with invading Ukraine — which, as I say, is not definitely likely to happen — other ‘hard men’ might be encouraged. As it is Viktor Orban in Hungary, who has not shown himself to be much of a man to encourage opposition, has been notably half-hearted in expressing outrage over Russia’s apparent plans. For one thing, Hungary is also dependent on Russian gas and oil, but for another he fears a war in Ukraine would see thousands of Ukrainian refugees flooding into Hungary, and he doesn’t want that.

. . .

As for the prediction from the US ‘intelligence sources’ that Russia plans to invade Ukraine tomorrow morning (Wednesday, February 16) I read that — as I’m sure the Russians do, too — merely as just another tactical move to disconcert the Russians, as in calling their bluff. It’s as though the PR departments of the various Western governments are calling the shots and formulating policy.

For example, the recent visit to Moscow by Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, to see Putin was widely seen as Macron knowing a good photo opportunity when he saw one: France will be voting for its new president in a few

months and although Macron has not yet declared his candidacy, he will run and it doesn’t harm his cause to be seen ‘statesmanlike’ discussing urgent matters with the president of Russia.

One final worry for the West is that if Putin pulls of whatever he is hoping to pull off — suggestions, please, on a postcard address to The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, No 10 Downing St., London SW1A 2AA as Johnson might like a hint for five — and does invade Ukraine, his fellow stooge in the line-up of The World’s Bad Guys, Xi Jinping, might be encouraged to try his luck with annexing Taiwan.

Tricky, eh. And it’s not ‘partygate’.

So, not a complete waste of time

What have I been doing? Well, I have been busy, though not with what I felt I should have been doing. Tomorrow is the January deadline day for the Deadlines For Writers prompt and this month I didn’t as sometimes happens forget about it. In fact, I’ve known about it pretty much since the beginning for the month.

The prompt is ‘Jewel’, but can I think of anything? Can I come up with a story? The obvious ones — a jewel, a gemstones or a gem and, perhaps discovery someone’s worth ‘as a friend’ or as ‘a parent’ blah, blah didn’t excite me. Then it occurred to me I could try a little lateral thinking and write something along the lines of ‘duel’ and ‘dual’. (I have two identities so submit two stories.

But still nothing sparked: I did think of one story, a ‘duel’ between two ultra-rich and snobby families in an exclusive ultra-rich ‘community’ in Vermont as to who was ‘top dog’ (that kind of thing is important to some people’ (and I have quote-marked ‘community’ because there is bugger all ‘community spirit’ there at all). But I just couldn’t get it off the ground.

Thought of this, thought of that, but nothing really convinced me, and so earlier today I decided I wasn’t going to force anything. It would probably been crap if I did. The trouble is that I was and am still feeling guilty about passing this month. It’s as though begging off will be the thin end of the wedge, and I’m proud that I have supplied two stories a month for over two years. But I had to be honest: I didn’t want to force anything and finally ‘gave myself permission’ to cop out this month.

That has helped a little, although not completely, but then life is too short. However . . .

I sat down around noon and started pissing around with Garageband and came up with this. I was trying to recreate a tune I cobbled together quite a few years ago, but in the event it turned out to be something different. I rather like it.

When I say cobbled together, that is precise: the guitar is an acoustic sent through a cheap portable amp (just €25 from Amazon) and the sound recorded through my Macbook’s pretty cheap and crappy ‘internal microphone’. Then I duplicated the guitar track twice and used a different setting for each of the three tracks. Here it is:

And here is the original, recorded as I say about 20 years ago. You can spot the similar bassline:

And I might as well post this one, what with that nice Mr Putin sabre-rattling and hoping to make a name for himself as a strong man. Not quite, Vlad, more of a prize dick, though I doubt I’ll get the chance to tell you to your face.

Abstract this, abstract that — is there anything which can’t be abstract? Let’s have a look see

Here’s a question: we talk of ‘abstract art’ and atonal music (which for the sake of argument might for the purpose of this blog engry be spoken of as ‘abstract’), so might there be ‘abstract writing’?

The term ‘abstract art’ is certainly from a different era, and although the term is still used today, what was once called ‘abstract art’ is now as much mainstream as any of the other ‘plastic arts’. What was once regarded as ‘abstract art’ is now simply ‘art’; and, similarly, these days to single out ‘atonal’ pieces — although the term ‘atonal’ does have a technical use — from contemporary music and thereby to indicate it is less than usual might be veering on eccentric.

So: could there, using the essence of ‘abstract’ as in, say, ‘abstract art’, be ‘abstract’ writing as in an ‘abstract novel’?

I am not here necessarily talking about ‘experimental writing’, although, I suppose, ‘abstract writing’ might be regarded as ‘experimental’. I have read accounts of ‘experimental writing’ — most recently, notably and ludicrously biographer Michael Reynold’s claim that Hemingway was ‘experimental’ and in Green Hills Of Africa ‘took writing to the fourth and fifth dimensions’ (and I have not idea what that might mean) — though I have not attempted to read much of it, and I have not been attracted to reading much more.

In fact, when I see that word ‘experimental’, I inwardly shudder and consider on or two things or both might be at play: here again someone is kidding himself on (or herself, though in this world, himself is far more likely) and that he/her won’t be short of acolytes all keen to praise the ‘experimental work’ and thereby stress their aesthetic chops.

Cynical ole’ me is inclined to see self-conscious claims by a writer that he is now attempting ‘experimentation’ in his writing as nothing more than a bid to cut a dash with the impressionable. As for occasional descriptions in the Sunday lit sups of an ‘experimental writer’, I suspects there’s a little more going one than just ‘talking about writing’.

There’s also this question: does someone with a mind to breaking free from hitherto conventional techniques and trying novel ways of creating her or his purposes and effects differ in any particular from being ‘experimental’? What if that writer doesn’t bother describing his or her work as ‘experimental’ and simply wants to get on with it? It’s a fine point I’m trying to make, but I think it’s a valid one.

Furthermore, the word ‘experimental’ does imply that the ‘experiments’ might or might not succeed. An added hurdle is that deciding whether an ‘experiment’ was a success is rather difficult: given that literary appreciation and judgment are wholly subjective — it’s not a question of adding six eggs to a bowl of another six, counting them up and confirming you now have a dozen eggs in your bowl — the view of one critic, academic or reader that this or that did or did not succeed is of no greater intrinsic value than that of others.

As I point out above, though, I am not here considering ‘experimental’ writing as such but what ‘abstract writing’ might be and trying to distinguish between the two. Certainly, ‘abstract’ writing need not necessarily be experimental, though it would certainly be seen as such, and no doubt the Sunday lit sup hacks would — if the writer is one in favour and has not fallen out with them — gush over ‘this fearless and dangerous attempt to breathe new life into contemporary literature’ or something fatuous along those lines.

. . .

Whether or not writing is ‘abstract’, I suggest there are certain imperatives that would have to be observed. First of all: don’t forget your reader. Don’t leave your reader behind. Keep in touch with your reader.

It seems to me ‘the reader’ is all too often taken for granted, but doing so is not just shortsighted and arrogant, but puts the cart well before the horse.

OK, the writer is crucial — of course he or she is: the work has to created in the first place. But ‘the reader’ is arguably equally, though not quite as obviously, important. Unless a piece of writinf is subsequently read by at least one reader, its existence tends to become a little pointless. Certainly, once completed it will now ‘exist’ — but would that even matter?

Along those lines I can never understand folk who say the verse they write is ‘only for themselves’. I don’t doubt I am missing something here — I tend to miss a great deal — but if that is the case I would quite like someone to tell me what. I write first and foremost because I enjoy writing — it’s pretty much why I do it (and have even written a poem about ‘writing verse’ which you can read below).

But whether one has written a piece of verse, a story (or even just an entry for this blog), there is always the hope that at some point not only will others read what has been written but that they were in some way ‘engaged’ with, or ‘entertained’ by, it.

As for being ‘engaged’ or ‘entertained’, I’m sure you know what I mean by being ‘engaged’. As for being ‘entertained’, that is intended to be understood in a rather broader way than usual. Let me provide an analogy. When we have friends around for a meal or a drink, we are said to ‘entertain’ them, and the meaning of the word in that sense is rather different to what many might take it to mean: some lad or lass warbling a song, performing conjuring tricks, telling jokes and so on. So so a writer ‘entertaining’ a reader is rather as a host might ‘entertain’ a guest.

The analogy is useful in another way: the host and guest both have ‘obligations’ and ‘privileges’ (and if I could at this point use other words, I would — please don’t take those two words too literally and ‘murder to dissect’); and similarly, I suggest, do the writer and the reader.

By ‘being the host’ one is obliged to put oneself out a little, provide, perhaps at some cost, food and drink to treat the guest as ‘honoured’, let him or her feel your home is their home, make sure they feel welcomed and so on.

But the host is also entitled to expect his or her guests — and these are the guests’ ‘obligations’ in return for the hospitality — to behave themselves (not steal the cutlery or get so drunk as to puke all over you carpet and generally not to misbehave). Crucially, both host and guest must make a little effort.

Such ‘entertaining’ is a two-way and symbiotic relationship, and I feel the analogy does reasonable service in describing the relationship between the writer and reader, the composer or performer and listener, the painter or sculptor and viewer and so on.

But please let me repeat: the above is merely analogy, not some sodding holy writ! It is intended as a possible way of looking at the matter in hand, and there are surely many others. I repeat, don’t, as the man said, ‘murder to dissect’.

As regards ‘the writer’ and ‘the reader’, I suggest that in what he or she writes, the writer is obliged in to provide the reader — in some way or other and there are no hard and fast rules — with the necessary ‘means’ or ‘clues’ to grasp what he/she is trying to do, trying to convey, what effect he/she is trying to achieve and so on.

What is intended to be conveyed and what effects are attempted can, of course, be anything, whatever the writer chooses — ‘art’ is surely one of the last areas in life where there are no rules of any kind.

Thus the writer is ‘obliged’ to treat the reader with a modicum of respect; in return he or she can assume the reader will apply a modicum of intelligence, intellect and taste to try to ‘comprehend’ what the writer is hoping to achieve and trying to do.

Thus — the inverse obligations — the reader must be prepared to put in a little intelligent effort and to ‘try a little’, on the assumption that if he or she does put in some effort, the work will ’succeed’.

. . .

Equally as important is that the reader is be carried along, made to feel still ‘part’ of the book and that his or her attention is needed. That is quite obviously as true of conventional literature as it might be of ‘abstract writing’ (and even ‘experimental writing’).

If some bod chooses then buys a thriller, a romance or an adventure yarn in a station bookshop to read on the train, starts reading and soon loses interest, that book might broadly be thought to have failed (and the publisher will duly take note and bear that in mind when the time comes to renew the writer’s contract).

It does, of course, very much depend upon the reader’s expectations and the book’s intentions. Some readers might soon give up and toss the book aside; others might give it more time but then also abandon the book.

Others still might for some reason continue giving the book benefit of doubt and carry on reading, putting a little trust in the writer; and having carried on reading, the book might eventually persuade them they were right to carry on. It is up to the writer to provide such readers with sufficient reason to give him or her the benefit of doubt and to justify the trust given.

As far as putative ‘abstract writing’ is concerned, that ‘trust’ would certainly not just be useful feature but pretty much essential.

Look at it this way: what you have read so far inclines you to carry on reading, even though you do not have the slightest clue as to what is going on. Somehow — and that ‘somehow’ will come down to how gifted (or even cynical) the writer is you have been persuaded you to do so and continue to be so persuaded: you are ‘engaged’ enough and feel you are being successfully ‘entertained’ that continuing to read on is easier and more welcome than giving up.

The longer such a piece of ‘abstract writing’ is, of course, the harder — the far, far harder — it would be to keep the reader on side, however much successful ‘engaging’ and ‘entertaining’ is going on. I can only speak for myself, but there are some books I look forward to carrying on reading. If nothing else, that book has ‘succeeded’ with me. Carrying on with other books might well be something of a chore: not quite as successful.

As for length (and as the lass says, it isn’t everything) we might well be prepared to read 500 words of what seems to us at first blush to be complete gobbledegook; we might even settle for attempting 1,000 or even 2,000 words.

But if the work is the length of a short novel, about 80,000 the task of gaining the reader’s trust and confidence that he or she is not completely wasting their time is immense. But that is not so say it is not possible.

The ‘abstraction’ could take any form, but that is the beauty of it all: there are no rules. The one, the only proviso is if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, well don’t kid yourself — try again and again or take up bricklaying or knitting with yoghurt.

I believe there is a third factor which might be important, not just with ‘abstract’ writing but with all fiction writing. Whatever you do, put the reader centre stage, for that is where the reader puts him and herself.

Whatever they might think, at the end of the day, they don’t give a flying fuck about you and your feelings and your history and your notions and all the rest (or those of your central character which, nine times out of ten is just the writer’s alter ego).

What they care about — and most will not even realise this — is that your feelings, history and notions resemble theirs: THEY want to be who YOU are writing about. Bear that in mind and you are more than halfway there. Each of us is the king or queen of the world as far as we are concerned.

. . .

If — and a huge if at that given that I’ve not even attempted much conventional writing — I ever try my hand at composing an ‘abstract novel’, I don’t yet have a title for it, but do have an opening line, which would also be the opening paragraph and opening chapter: ‘Where to start?’

But I have no idea what else I would write. And — well, I’m still not too convinced I’m not talking out of my arse (subs please check).

NB In 1939, one Ernest Vincent Wright published his novel Gadsby in which, he claimed, no word containing the letter E was used. Me, I can’t quite see the point of that. What I have in mind would be a little less whacky. In fact, I quite dislike gratuitous whackiness. Whackiness should always have a purpose, even though quite what that purpose is might not immediately be apparent.

Of course, there is always ‘abstract cooking’. If ‘abstract writing’ doesn’t catch on, I’ll give that a whirl. My mate tried ‘abstract driving’, but he was killed in a rather bad pile-up.

Some call it poetry

Why write verse (or, as some call it, poetry)?

It’s simpler than you think.

When I was very young,
then not so very young
then less very young than that
I talked a lot and would not, could not shut up
and silence from my corner of the room
was always valued and encouraged,
so rare it was.

‘All right now that’s enough’
was a constant refrain
‘now pipe down, please, just a little’
was another. But I did, could and would not listen.

My father complained more than once
’you’re for ever on transmit, my lad’
and made it very clear
it was not the preferred mode he wanted me to adopt.

But we are young just once,
just the once, then just the twice,
then just the thrice,
until, perhaps, two heart attacks, a little grief,
(some, though not all, of it romantic)
two parent deaths
(and the Lord knows what else)
drop the penny finally, and we wise up.

Wise up? You say ‘wise up’?
Was that ‘wise up’ as in ‘wise up’?

I did and do, but thereby I mean not
the ancient socratic or reputed
Far-Eastern kind of wisdom
of sitting still and staring into vacant space,
but just the simple kind,
the fact of not being quite as stupid
(or aloud) as once we were.

It happens, it does, you know.
It happens quite often, apparently
and it has happened to me.

I am not wise (no, leave wisdom to the fools),
but I am perhaps not quite as stupid as once I was
and I now appreciate
that as Bucolic of Wessex once observed
‘Less is more, dear boy, and more is less’.

Ah, so wise, so wise!
(Or, better, not quite as bloody stupid).

But old ways die hard and never die young,
and the yapping of which my father
more than once complained
when I was six and he was himself still young
has not been abandoned, no, just modified.

So still I yap, but no longer out aloud.
Now I yap on paper (so to speak)
and I write my verse
(or, as some call it, poetry).

To many all that’s left seems to be a right turn, especially in the good ole’ US of A. Concerned? Yes, we should be, even those who do not live there

The original title of this post is/was ‘To many all that’s left seems to be a right turn’ and it was written, unusually, in fact uniquely, before I wrote the body of the post itself. But I had to come up with something to help me focus on what I want to write. I might re-write it or I might stick with it. I don’t yet know, and what I have decided will certainly be obvious to you reading this.

But so far (14.35 GMT on January 5, 2022, several thousand feet up in the air — I’m on my way to Germany for about three or four weeks) though not having access to the internet sitting in a plane it cannot be posted for a while yet) that is the title. I’ll repeat, because such a wordy, possibly quite boring, intro needs some justification, the title is intended to help me keep my eye on the ball.

With that out of the way, let me add another pre-script (and does that word even exist? Well, it’s derived from postscript, so perhaps . . . and it does now, if only as an accidental neologism): I might now be 72 (and will turn 73 on November 21 next), but increasingly — not despite, but ironically because of my age — I dislike the attitude of rather too many over 60 that ‘it’s all going to the dogs, and I despair’.

I am a firm believer in plus ca change, plus la meme chose. It’s not ‘all’ going to the dogs. However, some of it might well be going rather badly wrong. And for a guy of my moral, political and social persuasions an apparent ‘drift to the right’ in many Western hemisphere nations is not encouraging.

Admittedly (and contentiously, of course — I’m not looking to upset people and when I do so, it is usually, although not always, unintentional) not all nations ‘in the Western hemisphere’ are of as much consequence as other.

But that is for another time, and I’m sure we, on both sides of the contention, can agree that the US of A most certainly is of ‘consequence’, not least because of the size of its economy and the role it has — so far — played in world affair. And that is one nation where a ‘drift to the right’ is rather serious for a liberal, possibly even ever-so-slightly-though-not-really-wanting-to-make-too-much-of-a-point-of-it-left-of-centre chap like me is worrying.

Since the horrors of WWII, of which I, born in 1949, have only heard, things seem in Western Europe have been on the up and up.

Go elsewhere in the world at any time in the past 74 years — at random and in no significant order — Chechnya, then Czechoslovakia (though admittedly part of the Western hemisphere but de facto not until the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989), the various nations which make up the Congo, the Middle East, formerly Burma but now Myanmar, Sri Lanka and I don’t know where else — and it has really not been quite as bright, not by a long chalk.

I don’t have the figures to hand, but I suspect the world’s ‘non-democracies’ rather outweigh the world’s democracies. And even in some of those democracies, democracy itself is not in as healthy a state as it might be.

Here, in western Europe things look a lot rosier (notwithstanding that corruption still thrives in Spain, Italy, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and I don’t know where else). One problem is, though, that weWestern Hemispherians have tended, and still do tend, to see the world through our own prism.

Thus we are persuaded that the development of the world seems to us to have been one of increasing enlightenment. Really? Tell that to the Chinese — now far more prosperous but they are obliged to keep their noses clean — the Burmese, the Thais, Zimbabweans and rather to many else.

The world becoming more enlightened? If only. We might now have seen women slowly gaining more confidence after ‘Me too’, but female genital mutilation is still practised in far too many parts of the world. Enlightened? Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Perhaps the bizarre and wholly unprecedented attack — make that invasion — of the US Congress on January 6, 2021, might well get us to think again about just how established our various ‘democratic’ principles are.

For many years — ironically given its past history since the late 18th century and well-documented intrusions into the affairs of other nations — the US has billed itself as the promulgator of democracy in the world. Yet again, if only.

But before I carry on, I must make the point that I wholly dislike, despise and distrust a general anti-Americanism prevalent in far too many bien pensant folk (for that is how they like to see themselves) in the western world. It is a nonsense, but it is a persistent nonsense.

Whenever I hear loud claims made about the US and ‘Americans’ about how awful they are, I immediately respond ‘what all of them, all 380 million of them?’ But that never cuts any ice with — let me call a spade a bloody shovel — such stupid people. It might sound very arrogant, but as a rule, never try to debate or have a serious discussion with stupid people. I don’t, life is far too short.

We simply cannot and must not think and judge in broad-brush terms like that. Yet what we can do, what we must do, is call out the disturbing developments in the US over these past 20 years.

It is a fact that a substantial proportion of American citizens, and their number must be counted in several tens of millions, sincerely believe that ‘the election of Donald Trump to a second term in office as president of the US was stolen’. 

It does not concern them that many investigations into that claim, some by the Republican party itself, have not established any proof that was the case.

Yet each such conclusion is met with the cynical reaction that ‘they’ have cleverly covered their tracks’. Perhaps some reading this might even be inclined to believe that I, too, ‘have also been fooled’.

Well, believe what you want, but I prefer to listen to people who are not inclined to subscribe to conspiracy theories and who are more inclined to judge Donald J. Trump by his past behaviour and the judgment of those he appointed, then fired — John Bolton, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Rex Tillerson to name just a few — and who by no stretch of the imagination can be regarded as Establishment patties or Democrat stooges.

Yet those supporters — I repeat who can be numbered in the tens of millions — who are Trump’s incarnation of those Lenin called ‘useful idiots’ — are of consequence because it is, I fear, likely that either Trump will be elected US president in 2024, or more likely because the orange buffoon will be 78 years old in 2024 and a man who is addicted to Adderall, a similar cynical player will stand and reap all the support Trump might have got.

What is worse is that the Republican party has allowed itself to be hi-jacked by an unscrupulous and mendacious failed businessman. Many intelligent and otherwise respectable Republican politicians have caved in to that unprincipled showman for the simple reason their political lives depends on ‘keeping in with Donald’. The key is

the electoral support Trump has: fall out with Trump, give your honest opinion about his — that he is a charlatan — and your voting support, all those who sincerely believe ‘the election was stolen’ and many of the other big lies Trump has told and tell, will desert you.

Ergo: you want to survive, play Trump’s game! It’s a simple equation. Stop playing his game and you are dead and yesterday’s congressman, senator, state governor.

There are thus very good reasons why many fear for democracy in the United States. To a great extent it depends on Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreeing to the same rules when it comes to battling over that rattle. But they no longer do.

If all it takes is for one side or the other simply to declare ‘we don’t accept the result of this poll’, in a flash democracy — even in apparently super-democratic US — is in dire risk of imploding.

Were that to happen, of course, it is equally possible that states would declare UDI and the US is in dire need of imploding. Fanciful? Not really, no. Who in 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachev became de fact Soviet leader would have believed that within five years the Soviet Union would no longer exist.

A betting man would have been given very long odds on that happening and made mint had he laid his bet. But of course he wouldn’t have done — why not just burn my money, he would have told himself.

Just last week a Canadian political scientist, Thomas Homer-Dixon warned that ‘By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship. We mustn't dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine.’

Aware of just how outlandish his suggestion might strike some people he added: ‘In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.’

What is notable was that Homer-Dixon’s focus was not on the US, but the future of Canada: he was warning that a wise Canadian government would and should plan for every contingency, however fanciful it might seem now.

OK, this is just one prognostication of many and as always happen with such prognostications the author of the one in a 100 which ‘comes true’ is lauded, whereas the other 99 prognostications which did not ‘come true’ are simply forgotten now and forever.

What is pertinent, though, is the subject of this warning: the US a right-wing dictatorship within nine years? Surely some mistake? Well, one hopes so, but that it is even not considered likely is notable.

This is not — or at least this is not intended to be — just another anti-Trump rant. OK, so the guy is, from where I sit the mother of all morons. But that wouldn’t just be unimportant but in the context of the possible demise of democracy neither here nor there.

In that rise, future historians might regard him as a progenitor and bit player: the man’s narcissism made it possible, but what came next was of far greater consequence.

I’ll repeat: in 2024 he will be 78 and who know what the state of his health is. It is who follows his lead, who is equally willing to enlist the useful idiots to turn the US into a dictatorship where dissension is not just frowned upon but punished.