Deutschland deine Engländer (© Stern), a waffle on national identity, my Onkel August and Der Stahlhelm and what exactly did the pater do for the security of his country?

Well, this very English but also very German chap didn’t get to write that last day entry, and is now back in Old Blighty, with a replenished stock of cigars – cheap as chips on the Continent – and a pound or two in extra weight.

I don’t usually eat much bread, if any at all, or biscuits or cakes, but while I was at my sisters I joined in breakfast, and although I stuck to pumpernickel, I did have the occasionally fresh Brötchen. Then there were the snacks and the gins and tonic, beer and several Brazilian caipirinhas courtesy of the bottle of cachaça (sugarcane spirit – don’t worry, I didn’t know what it was, either, until about 13 days ago) I found Lidl selling for a very attractive price.

In fact, like the price of halfway decent cigars (which in my book is everything which isn’t a Castella), boozes prices on the Continent – except Scandanavia of course, which chooses to plough it’s own furrow when it comes down to getting pissed – are also a damn sight more rational, not to say more acceptable, than here in Britain. And although the Germans don’t actually drink less than the Brits, cheaper booze has not yet led them to drinking more, either. My niece’s boyfriend prepared the caipirinhas and they were very nice indeed. I recommend them, though it has to be said they are more of a summer drink. I can’t imagine they would go down too well in sunny Scandanavia.

Calling myself an English German might sound — and undoubtedly is, sadly — ever so slightly pretentious, but it also happens to be true. I was chatting with my sister last night and she told me something which echoed what I have long ago felt: that she belongs somewhere in the middle of the English Channel (or ‘The Sleeve’ as we rootless, though gentile, cosmopolitans like to call it.) And I know exactly what she means.

Years ago I was chatting to a guy who was half Burmese, half English and he confessed he didn’t know what he was and in the long run felt neither Burmese or English. Our case is not quite as marked in that the English and the Germans have a great deal in common, but we both, my sister and I, know what he feels. In some ways my sister’s and my histories are different: born to the same German mother, we moved to Berlin when I was nine and a half and she was just under three. I was almost immediately packed off to German schools with my older brother, learnt the language and then returned to England four years later, more or less a German.

She would have been seven when we came back and although she had been to a German Kindergarten, whatever German she learnt she (I think) forgot and didn’t learn to speak the language until she married a German. But our histories differ in that in 1965 our father was posted to Paris by the BBC, and she and our younger brother were enrolled in a French school and learnt French, whereas I and our older brother were locked away in a Roman Catholic boarding school, the Oratory School. (We’d both already been there for, respectively, two and three years, but for a year we were ‘day boys’, as we only lived eight miles away and, I should imagine more to the point, it was also a damn sight cheaper. To this day I wonder exactly how my dad was able to afford the Oratory’s fees, unless he had something of a second income packing a Gestaetner 404 dual action for the ‘security services’.

Actually, I think the BBC helped out with fees while we were in Paris, and Oxfordshire County Council helped out with my brother because he had passed his 11-plus, but was not taking up a grammar school place.) So my sister and our younger brother grew up in France, spending their formative years there, to the extent that my younger brother feels more French in many ways. Me? Well, I can’t say I ‘feel German’, but nor do I ‘feel English’, and like my sister I ‘feel’ I belong somewhere in-between.

At my advanced age - 109 in November, but without, I hope, coming across as too vain, I know I could easily pass for 102 - and knowing myself a little better than I did when I was younger, I suspect my character is more German than English, but as I speak English without a trace of a foreign accent, no one ever notices. For example, as a rule the Germans are not ones for fannying around with euphemisms and polite replies, which, together with the fabled ‘guttural accent’ they are all by statue law obliged to adopt when they speak English - and none of them has a ‘guttural accent’ when they speak their native German - makes them come across to we British shrinking violets as ‘arrogant’.

In fact, all they are being is ‘direct’: ask a German what he thinks of something and he’ll tell you. But what he tells you is not always what the questioner wants to hear. That is not to say Germans are not polite, it’s just that their politeness manifests itself in different ways, not all, it has to be said, to my liking. They are not shy of giving you advice, a trait which might, in German, be described as Überheblichkeit.

So, for example, you might find yourself doing something — folding together a folding-together bicycle or using a spade — and, often a perfect stranger will come up to you and announce ‘Das machen Sie aber falsch!’ and proceed to tell you how to do it correctly. My point it that he is sincerely trying to be helpful — usually — and has no other motive at all, whereas for many foreigners he simply comes across as an interfering Kraut.

Indeed, he would probably be rather taken aback at the suggestion that he might well care to mind his own business because as far as he is concerned all he wants to do is to help you get things right: you’re not doing it as you should and he, gracefully, has decided to show you a better way of doing it. It does not occur to him that you might not want his advice because his fellow Germans, in fact, appreciate his concern.

As for ‘not having a sense of humour’, well forget it: the Germans, or most of them — remember that your North German is as different to your South German or East German as your Scouser or Tyke is to your average (and, to be honest, they are very average) southern jessie have a great sense of humour. Not all of them, certainly, but then there are as many po-faced Brits as there are po-faced Germans. Take it from me, the Germans have a great sense of humour.

I’ve got to say that I prefer by a long shot German food to English/British food. A very cheap shot would be to add that as seaweed is regarded as the national dish of Wales, the Scots make a great deal of a concoction of sheep’s intestines and stomach lining mixed with oats call haggis, and the English are immensely fond of offal of any kind as long as it is served with a pastry crust, it might not be difficult to understand why. But, as I say, that would be a cheap shot.

There are, of course, some very tasty British dishes. The only trouble is far too few folk here in Britain can be bothered spending more than the few seconds it takes to turn on the microwave as it cuts back dangerously on TV-watching time, so they put up with shite and pigswill. Another giveaway that Britain’s relationship with good food is remarkably flexible is that when, as does on occasion happen, a gastro-pub or restaurant does push the boat out and offer good food, it invariable costs you an arm and a leg even to take off your coat and sit down to enjoy it. Every so often I take my family and the occasional friend to a gastro-pub a few miles away, the St Tudy Inn. It is by no means exceptionally expensive, but picking up the bill for the four of us does mean the treat is necessarily an occasional one.

My week’s stay brought home to me yet again something I have long suspected: that although I speak English with an impeccable English accent and, at the moment, my German is not as good as it was (though I am confident I could again become truly bi-lingual if I spent a little more time there again), I am, as I said, in character more German than English. (NOTE to pedants: this entry is being written in stages, and most of the above was added after what is now to come, but I can’t be arsed to go through it all and make sure it reads coherently. Sorry, but this isn’t a PhD treatise.) But I should add the proviso that were I to live in Germany again, I am certain I would, sooner or later, come unstuck a little.

A German cousin who is spending the next year or so living in St Leonards and has sent his truly bi-lingual daughter – her mother is English – to a boarding school in Cambridge (his extended family is not short of a pfennig or two tells me that there are aspects about living in Britain he prefers, not least a certain free and easiness which can often be lacking in Germany. And he was not the first to tell me that.

Life can be very sweet in Germany if you follow the rules, but not quite as sweet if you step out of line or exhibit a certain bolshiness. And that’s why I suspect I might in time come unstuck a little. I can be very polite when I need be, but I like to be courteous and polite because I think it makes the world a more pleasant place for everyone and because I choose to be, not because I have to be. Germany is, of course, not just ‘Germany’ like England, Scotland and Wales are as different as they are the same.

My mother’s family and my brother-in-laws family all come from the North-West of Germany (although her children all grew up in the Rhineland), and the folk in Ostfriesland are very different indeed to the Bavarians, or Swabians, or Berliners. And what is ‘German’ in me is the traits found there, I suspect. Ideally, I should like to spend half the year living in Germany and the other half in Britain, just for the crack, although it would not be for the television, which is as dire as a lot of British TV.

. . .

While I was in Germany, I again looked up two elderly aunts, two sisters, though if you met them, you would agree that despite their ages – 80 next week and 90 quite soon – ‘elderly’ most certainly isn’t a good way of describing them. Both, especially the 90-year-old have more life in their little fingers than a great many folk I’ve met 30 years younger than they are. Both are now widows, though the younger sister was only widows a few years ago, whereas her sister, who lives in a village about 20 miles south lost her husband more than 26 years ago.

She was always lively and sociable and is still lively and sociable, but over the years many of her friends have died. I found it rather sad that the two substantial tables in her large living room are both decked out as though there is to be a party in a few hours time, though, of course, none is to be held. She also showed me what the large garden ‘hut’ which also had two tables laid out as for a party, and in which she and her husband did a great deal of socialising before he died. But no party is on the cards for the hut, either.

It was her father who would have nothing to do with the Nazis during the 1930s and who refused to allow is daughters to have anything to do with the Bund Deutscher Mädel, a decision rather resented by his daughter, who felt she was missing out on all kinds of sports and activities and, as a ten-year-old, couldn’t understand why her father was so against her joining. She told me all this last August when I saw her again after something like 47 years, and I rather admired the old man for what I thought was a brave and principled political stance.

This time I wanted to find out a little more about my father’s dealings with him after the war and during the late 1950s and 1960s. All I knew was that he had been recruited – by whom I am no longer sure – to be part of an ‘underground’ government should the Soviets invade what was then West Germany. Although he was a cousin of my mother’s through her mother, my father’s interest involved his activities – well, as I don’t know: just how close were his links with MI6? I’ve touched upon the question before and I still can’t suggest and answer.

As for Onkel August, as we called him (my father called him August) what I thought was enlightened opposition to the Nazis was nothing of the kind. Irmgard, his daughter, now 90, who I was pressing for more details had few. She remembers my father coming round and having long discussions with her father from which everyone else was excluded and the last time I saw her she told me of some mysterous Brit who regularly used to visit her father in the 1950s. She also remembers (who was it her sister Helma who told me this?) that once on a trip through the Emsland, which is still pretty rural, flat and remote, but was even more so then (can it be any ‘flatter’? Answers on a postcard, please) that it would be ‘good guerilla fighting country’.

Well, that comment would make sense if the Allies were preparing for a possible invasion of Western Europe by the Soviet. But to get to the point about ‘Onkels August’s’ opposition to the Nazis (he was apparently arrested and locked up in Hanover for six days at one point) it had nothing to do with being either enlightened or liberal as I had supposed. For Irmgard told me he had been an active member of Der Stahlhelm.

Hearing the name rang half a bell, but even without knowing much about the organisation at all, something told me it wasn’t a club dedicated to making jam and getting more folk interested in barbershop four-part harmony. Then I looked it up (on Wikipedia, sorry, I have vandalised the site often enough myself to take what appears there in its pages with more than a grain of salt. Der Stahlhelm, or to give it its full name Stahlhelm, der Bund der Frontsoldaten, was (and I quote from Wikipedia, which offers a succinct description was ‘one of the many paramilitary organizations that arose after the German defeat of World War I.

It was part of the ‘Black Reichswehr’ and in the late days of the Weimar Republic operated as the armed branch of the national conservative German National People's Party (DNVP), placed at party gatherings in the position of armed security guards’. In short a more right-wing equivalent of the NSDAP’s Sturmabteilung (SA), although describing it as such is not quite the smartarse comment it might appear to be, because many in the SA and the NSDAP were avowedly socialist (though they didn’t like the communists, and one of the factors which lead to the Night of the Long Knives in June/July 1934 when a great many of SA leaders were murdered was the growing disenchantment of some in the SA which felt Hitler and his NSDAP had abandoned the socialist underpinnings they favoured.

Der Stahlhelm, in the other hand, was monarchist and backed and funded by industrialists. Here’s another revealing quote from the Wikipedia entry: Although

the Stalhelm was officially a non-party entity and above party politics, after 1929 it took on an open anti-republican and anti-democratic character. Its goals were a German dictatorship, the preparation of a revanchist program, and the direction of local anti-parliamentarian action. For political reasons its members distinguished themselves from the Nazi party (NSDAP) as ‘German Fascists.

When looked it up, I discovered to my surprise the sheer number of Freikorps there were in the Weimar Republic, of which, I suppose, Der Stahlhelm might be regarded as one. Even the saintly socialist party of Germany had its Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold and the communist party, the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, had its Rotfrontkämpferbund.

So Onkel August was not who I had so far assumed he was: he was anti-Nazi for all the wrong reasons. My father’s job after World War II was to vet folk who, for example like Rudolf Augstein who found Der Spiegel, Axel Springer, the future newspaper magnate and Henri Nannen, who founded Stern, to see whether they had any kind of Nazi past. So he was surely well aware of Onkel August’s political stance and must surely have known about his previous membership of Der Stahlhelm. On the other hand he most certainly wasn’t a Nazi, and given, as I assume, my father was engaged with organising a potential resistance in West Germany among Germans should the Soviets, as was feared, invade, August Löning’s anti-communist sentiments were most certainly useful. What a strange world it is.

But it’s getting cold (this is, after all, England, and there, dear reader I must end until I next feel called upon to pontificate at length, sorry, write my next blog entry. Good night. (Lord, almost 3,000 words according to the word count. A brief 144-word Twitter synopsis will shortly be available, though there will, sadly, necessarily be no room for jokes.) Oh, and just for the craic, a picture of fishing boats in Ditzum:

. . .

And finally, again just for the craic, another piccy. The woman on the right was German, the woman on the left is one-quarter German and half-Cornish:

Day Three (a little late, so it’s strictly Day Four) at Heinitzpolder

Heinitzpolder Day Four (was going to be Day Three, but hassling around with photos, I forgot to post it.) And it’s a little local exploring of Ostfriesland, first to a little former fishing village to the north of us, now a little tourist village to the north of us called Ditzum. It was pretty empty when we got there today, a not at all sunny

 Monday late morning, but my sister assures me it gets very busy at weekends and in the holiday season.

What is almost immediately obvious is just how clean and tidy it is, but that is not for the sake of tourists and their shekels: this part of Ostfriesland is deeply Calvinist country where cleanliness and the rest are deeply prized and you ignore them at considerable cost. (The Emsland next door to Ostfriesland, where my German grandparents came from, is or was deeply Roman Catholic, though equally neat and tidy. One major difference between the two is that although the good folk of

Ostfriesland, who were Lutheran where they weren’t Calvinist, did drink the occasional beer and Schnapps — or maybe not quite so occasional — their Catholic cousins to the East in the Emsland did so to a greater degree. Then, after establishing beyond all doubt that the shop where one can buy Krabben almost straight off the boat was shut and is shut every Monday, it was onto Leer, one of the local big towns.

After a look around and a pot of tea — the folk hereabouts, unlike more or less the rest of Germany, have tea as their main drink, which this little Englander is very pleased about (I like my tea) — and once I had bought my Fehlfarben cigars (Fehlfarben is the equivalent of seconds — the cigars are exactly the same, but rejected on cosmetic grounds, which brings down the price nicely for what are still very good cigar — it was back here to the Ponderosa to — well, to do absolutely nothing to be honest, and kill time until the Germany v Portugal match tonight at 6pm (local time).

Tomorrow or the next day or even the next it’s off to the Moormuseum which I am looking forward to. It’s just what is says on the tin (an allusion surely lost on anyone not British and/or who hasn’t seen British commercial TV at some point in these past 20 years): it’s a homes and farms as they were 200/300 years ago in this neck of the woods.

That’s enough waffle, so here are a few piccies, none particularly good, and one in particular which could have been taken almost anywhere in the world. But rest assured, it was taken in Ditzum.

Day One of my stay here at Heinitzpolder in which I do very little in the run-up to doing even less, as the sun shines, the birds sing and the landscape is reassuringly flat. And will England, against all odds, prove us wrong? (Er, probably not, at least not against Italy, though they might, perhaps, take Bosnia apart. Trouble is Bosnia are in a separate group. Damn!) And why houses need children

Heinitzpolder Day One

In the grand tradition of a week off, I’ve done little today, which is, though, a little more than I intended. My brother went off with our niece and her boyfriend to check out some builder’s merchant because she wants to buy planks to install some skirting board. Where, when and why she wants to install skirting board I don’t know and as I’m not particularly interested, I didn’t ask.

I was going to go with them and we were going to return via Bunde, the nearest town, well big village really, to get several of the little things we always forget or leave behind (a razor, shaving gel a toothbrush, toothpaste and deodoroant if you’re interested). But I then decided to take off on my own and I’m glad I did. I headed straight to Bunde while they took off in the opposite direction and, I was later told, spent 40 minutes in a motorway jam caused by an accident.

I, on the other hand, didn’t. So I slowly mosied there, enjoying the very flat and very empty Ostfriesland countryside, visited Lidl, then Aldi across the road, then back to Lidl because for some odd reason (and this might well merely be a local quirk of Bunde’s Aldi) its selection of personal grooming products (I think that’s the phrase – ‘hygiene products’ makes it sound as though I have reached the age where I need incontinence pads, which I don’t) was piss-poor to non existent. On the other hand its selection of beers, wines and spirits would put Oddbins to shame.

After leaving Lidl, the items bought – as well as a 70cl bottle of Campari for €10.99 (£8.77 at today’s rate, which is must be great value in any Brit’s book, unless, of course, he our she doesn’t like Camari), a bottle of Brazilian Cachaςa to make caipiriniha for the football later on (oh, don’t be so sniffy, it’s the bloody World Cup, isn’t it, and anyway, I had to look it up, too) and a bottle of ready mixed mojito, it was a slow mosey back to the homestead here, a mile from the nearest small village, several hundred yards from the nearest neighbour and just a quarter of a mile from the Dollart.

The farmhouse is just half a mile from the Dutch frontier. The land around here is all below sea level and was reclaimed from the sea over the years for farming. It might be flat and for some boring (here’s a picture) but I love it, nothing but birds

Flat and gloriously empty

singing, a breeze in the trees, tranquility and the sun shining (plus the internet and World Cup football, of course – mustn’t get too carried away.)

Incidentally, I’ve just found out where the skirting board is being installed. My sister and brother-in-law bought this old farmhouse for his retirement and it is huge, with their own living room, bedrooms and bathrooms, and kitchen at the end here, two self-contained two-bedroom flats upstairs, and then further down the place, towards, the (cavernous but now unused barn) there are several more rooms which are being slowly converted into yet more bedrooms and living space. I shan’t reveal

(The light green bit is not a road but a standing shallow pool covered in algae. I should not admire it too much)

how much it cost my sister and brother-in-law, but it was an absolute bargain. At three times the cost it would have been a steal. I suppose its relative isolation (in European terms, of course) might not be to everyone’s liking, but that I think is as much part of its appeal as everything else.

Today and tomorrow, that nearest small village, Ditzumerverlaat, is staging it’s own East Frisian fete and we are off to sup their beer and take part. The highlight is several rounds of competitive straw bale hurling, and that is not something I have invented.

After that, it’s the football. At this stage it’s impossible to say whether England can beat Italy tonight, but even if they do and on the showing of Brazil and the Netherlands so far, they strike me, even at their best as very much a second-tier national side whatever the national delusion is today. England will be lucky to get through to the second round.

. . .

I’m baffled by England’s ongoing delusion that its national football side is up there with the great. Yes, on a good day, in atrocious conditions, and with a great deal of luck, England can often show the national squads of Bosnia and Morroco who’s the master and who’s not, but as rule they are en embarrassment. The football is pedestrian and unimaginative, and it is always accompanied by us, the punters, wondering how soon they will fuck it all up.

My heart always sinks when they take the lead within 15/20 minutes of the game starting, because invariably that early goal leads to a dull, lifeless game ending in 2-2 with England snatching a draw with a last-gasp 91st minute fluke. The wonder of it is that without doubt England has the most interesting Premier League in the world, consisting of quite a few sides who play entertaining and exciting football. Italy, Spain and Germany, on the other hand, who’s national sides as a rule see off England more often than not, have premier leagues which have two or three outstanding sides competing with a pool of far more mediocre teams. I mean forget Bayern, Real, Barcelona, PSG and Milan and what other sides can folk reading this mention who are known for their football.

Yet on the national stage it all comes apart. Given the the England squad has some excellent world-class players, I don’t doubt that they might win the odd game or two. But invariably and inevitably it is all done in such a dull, dull, dull style. Well, that’s my view, anyway.

. . .

We are sitting (or we were until half-time and I took the opportunity to come next door to write this next utterly fascinating part of this ’ere blog) in the living room of my sistere’s Ostfriesland farmhouse and I was thinking just how nice it was. It’s not as though it is particularly ‘elegant’ – in fact given that they haven’t actually moved in and that the only pieces of furniture are three chairs, a sofa and a TV (with lots of wiring) and Kachelofen, there is not a lot there. But it is welcoming and comfortable and, the point of this bit of the blog – crying out for people.

My sister (from where I sit, i.e. we can all be wrong) is lucky: she has often spoken of this house – house, given the size of it (three-quarters empty barn space) being something of an understatement – as being a place for grandchildren. In that respect she is lucky. She has two daugters and two sons. One daughter got married last year and, I should think, God willing, will in time have children. The second daughter (my godchild) has been seeing the same guy for years (they are both staying for the weekend, too) and I rather hope they, too, will settle for each other and have children together. Then there are my two nephews, and both are going steady and, I assume (this being Germany, he said inelegantly, will also stick togetther. So as far as grandchildren are concerned I trust (and sincerely hope) my sister will be lucky. And that will mean that Heinitzpolder, as the farmhouse is always referred to, will be full whenever at least one person is in residence. The bonus will, of course, be that the noise of that ringing will be children.

Which brings me, again in the horribly convoluted way I have unfortunately made my own, to the point of this part of the entry: houses are made for people, usually people we are close to and love and, at worst, people we at least like. I cannot for the life of me understand why people buy a huge house which remains empty except for those few occasions when they choose to fill them for a party. Just a thought. The last three words of that last paragraph were written several hours, several drinks and a World Cup match after the preceding words. If they don’t make sense, you’ll understand why.

NB Strictly Day Two, but . . . Well, we lost, but I'm glad to say England otherwise proved me wrong. They played well, and did none of that interminable pfaffing around passing game they all too often resort to. The equaliser was great.

Our trip to the Fatherland starts with a very, very boring delay. Read on if you really have nothing better to do. Unfortunately, at present I don't and am at a bloody loose end for the next seven hours. And then there’s ‘bitcoins: what the bloody hell are ‘bitcoins’?

Well, what should have been a joyous occasion, a triumphal entry into Germany via Düsseldorf airport, and then a brief two-hour journey up the motorway to a neck of woods in North-West Germany that is more Dutch than German has become anything but. As I write (there’s bugger all else to do at the moment, as you will realise when you read on) my brother and I are mooching around Gatwick airport doing nothing more exciting the killing time.

We were due to fly out at 6.15 this morning. I had booked all the tickets, booked us into a car partk, checked us in online and printed the boarding passes and we were up by 4 to take off at 4.30 for the one-hour drive from Earls Court where he lives to Gatwick.

So far not one hitch. The first hitch, in retrospect and in the overall scheme of things the briefest of hitches, although it didn’t seem like that at the time, was my brother breezed through security with no bother, but they decided my case needed full investigation. Perhaps they were searching for illegal emigrants, I don’t know. But what I do know is that it delayed us by about 15 minutes and when we hurried through to Gate 45A and arrived with barely five minutes to spare until take-off, Gate 45A was deserted and a distinctly unhelpful easyjet employee (rather pretty, but that cuts no ice under the circumstances) informed us with a complete lack of sympathy that we had missed the flight. I pointed out that the flight wasn’t due to take off for another five minutes, to which she pointed out that the ‘gate closed’ 30 minutes before take-off at 5.45.

That’s, of course, strictly true, but given that no flight in the history of aviation has ever taken off on time and given that a few years ago I similarly arrived late for a flight but as I had only cabin luggage (as we did this time) and was let on with minutes to spare, I feel easyjet might have shown similar consideration. But they didn’t. I didn’t bother bitching and arguing, and given that I can bitch and argue and be rude for Britain if and when I put my mind to it, that was and is notable (and thus duly noted).

There was, to be frank, no point at all and although I don’t mind making a scene if there is a good reason for making a scene – in this case still being allowed on the plane – in this case there was absolutely no chance that would happen. I was also aware that it was wholly my fault, that had I been a little more diligent in planning

A dedicated an award-winning security bod examines one passenger for a possible bomb and shows how it should be done. It is selfless folk such as him which keep our country safe, but also make people like me miss our flights

it all, we could easily have left 30 minutes earlier and even with some officious security bod trying to track down in my suitcase what evil folk try to smuggle out of the country when they take off for a quite seven days in the back of the German beyond, we would have made it. So it was back to ‘landside’ – how quaint, but that’s apparently what they call it – to rebook. As it turned out easyjet were able to book us both on the next flight to Düsseldorf, but that doesn’t leave until 3.45 and doesn’t get in until 6. And arriving at 6 on a Friday evening at Düsseldorf will ensure a fun few hours negotiating the Poet’s Day traffic of the Rhineland as we make our way north.

As it was my fault – I didn’t even try to excuse myself but simply apologised to my brother –  I have paid for his new ticket and have also just now bought him a ‘full English’ (he likes them, and although I do, too, I really can’t face any food before lunchtime). It has taken me about 15 minutes to write the above, and it is now 9.25. We have decided to check in as soon as possible so we can go through security (again) and wile away the last few hours exploring the duty free shops and looking at all the stuff which is way to expensive to buy.

Altogether now: Bollocks! But I only have myself to blame.

. . .

It’s long been a staple of attempts at humour for a writer to ramble on about an ‘old fogey like me is too old to learn new technology, ho, ho, ho’. Well, I am most certainly not young, but I like to think I am also not yet an old fogey. And I enjoy new developments in whatever and look forward with real curiosity to what might be around the corner (though it has to be said that 3D mobile printers which allow you to ‘build your own model of the Eiffel Tower’ and that kind of thing do strike me as essentially asinine and just another low attempt to get the punter to part with a few more of his hard-earned shekels). So please believe me that I am not looking for cheap laughs when I confess that the notion of ‘bitcoins’ has so far defeated me.

The odd thing is that there are aspects of it I do undersand. It’s just when I put together all those aspects I somehow lose the plot. I mention ‘bitcoins’ because a recent edition of an always interesting BBC Radio 4 called The Bottom Line hosted by the always engaging Evan Davis was all about bitcoins. I listened intently (and as I was listening to a podcast, I was able to rewind and listen again to those parts I didn’t get my head around the first time, though in this case it didn’t help much.)

For example, I get the idea of credit and thus credit cards. I get the idea of ‘money’, and the fiction behind it that if push comes to shove the Bank of England is obliged to present me with whatever were I to march in and demand they cash in my pounds doesn’t trouble me much, either. I even think, of think I think, I understand ‘quantatative easing’. Well, perhaps on a good day. But bitcoins? Where do they come from? In theory, there can be no leeway for fraud because, according to three guests on The Bottom Line accounts of who has bought what from whom for how many bitcoins are kept on several thousand volunteers’ computers around the world and each of those accounts would have to be amended to enable fraud. To that my response is ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper’. If crooks worldwide smell the chance of an easy buck, you can bet they will find some way of getting at it.

But that doesn’t have much to do with my inability to ‘get’ bitcoins, especially as it – they? – are a software program written by a Japanese guy who prefers to remain anonymous and who might not be one guy at all, but several all under the guise of the one guy.

NB Still at fucking Gatwick but this is being written an hour or two after the first part of this entry.

I’m not saying ‘I’m humbled’ because that would be a cliché beyond the call of duty even for this tacky blogger. But I’m bloody glad I wasn’t called upon to prove myself. And a certain Sgt Alexander Blackman: how’s about you cast the first stone?

Ok, so I’m a day late and that I didn’t post this yesterday on the anniversary itself is simply down to good intentions ruined by a mind like a sieve. But as the cliché goes ‘better late than never’. (There is, incidentally, an old gay joke I heard years ago which is a pretty obvious play on words which runs ‘better latent than never’, but I can assure folk who might be disturbed that I bat for the same size that I don’t, never have and have never been tempted to. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t pass on a silly joke.)

What anniversary, you might be asking yourselves? Well, the anniversary is all I can say, the 70th anniversary of D Day which took place on June 6, 1944. I suspect that you have to get to my age (112 in six months time) to wholly appreciate what took place then, although I like to think that younger folk – that is folk of exactly the age of those who took part, which was around 21 – in their hearts also appreciate the sacrifice of those who took part.

In TV coverage, there was, as is usually the case, total overkill (‘The seagulls are swirling and diving and ducking and weaving over the beaches casting about for some fish or other to swoop down on and devour as surely they did on that momentous day 70 years ago’), but that is, in this case, completely understandable.

The people I felt for were those who took part, who are now – the ones who are still alive – in their late eighties and early nineties. My father took part as young – he was just 21-year-old – company commander, and I remember he once told me that he was supremely conscious that the lives of 30 other men depended upon him making the right decision at the right time. So burden of responsibility for what at my age I still think of as a youth. He never otherwise spoke of the war or what he saw and did, except once when he was dying of the cancer which eventually killed him 22 years ago and told me that after surviving the war in which he saw so many good friends die, every day since then had been a bonus.

I can quite vividly remember that when I was 21 with little on my brain except growing my hair, getting laid as often as possible and finding a little more dope (cannabis, not heroin), even then I was rather jacked off with those of my peers who used to laugh about – ‘sneer at’ wouldn’t be to harsh a description – our father’s generation. Even then I felt it was just a tad unfair. And you can perhaps understand how they, who never had the time, in their salad days, to grow their hair, get laid as often as

A quiet day at the office

possible and try to find as more dope, but were instead engaged on a purpose rather more serious, got rather irritated with us young ones, especially those who wore a military uniform as a fashion item. But then that’s just what it is to be young: silly, thoughtless, self-absorbed and self-important  (I am almost inclined to write that that is the very purpose of being young, just as I get very worried indeed if I come across a child of seven who is not noisy). But rather than condemn my and other generations for being just that, I would prefer simply to wish my father’s generation had been able to avail themselves of the same luxury. But they weren’t.

For them it was quite simple: kill or be killed. And that, I’m sure, tends to focus the mind a little. I shall leave it at that except to ask all of you who are reading this and are of that age simply to do one thing: don’t make a big song and dance about the sacrifice of those men, a great many of them who gave their lives (and a great many of whom might well have died a virgin), just, quietly, in your heart, ask

Crying? At his age? Maybe he’s thinking of all is friends and comrades who didn’t make it to 91 but died 70 years ago

yourselves whether you could - or possibly even would - have made the same sacrifice. I believe that almost all of you could have done, but I sincerely none of you is ever obliged to prove it.

 . . .

Just as I got, even at 21, a little annoyed with those unthinking sorts who made a joke of their fathers (for example, on joke going the roungs in the Sixties was ‘old soldiers never die, they simply smell that way’), I still get bloody annoyed by those who have the gall to criticise soldiers, airmen and sailors for the wars they take part in. No, don’t criticise them, save your anger for the smug, sanctimonious politicians who send them off to war from the safety of their expense account. As it happens, the World War II and the invasion of Europe was a necessary war. A great many others, almost all of them, in fact, aren’t at all necessary. For example World War I.

. . .

Several years ago I came across the admission by a very brave man, and I can’t rememer who, who had been awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery. ‘Weren’t you afraid?’ he was asked. ‘Of course I was bloody afraid,’ he replied, ‘I was scared shitless.’ And that seems to me the essence of real bravery: men and women don’t do something brave because they are not afraid, they are remarkable because they do something despite being afraid. I rather think when push came to shove I would prove to be not quite as brave.

. . .

Fighting and being a soldier does throw up some horrible situations. A few months ago here in Britain a Royal Marine sergeant, Alexander Blackman, was sentenced to life in prison and must serve a minimum ten years, for ‘executing’ an injured Afghani. He shot him at point-blank range, though at his court martial he claimed he thought the man was already dead. You might think that is a clear case of murder, and you might well be right. Yet Blackman’s action can, perhaps, be explained if not justified. You can read more about Blackman and the case and hearing here, here and for a useful take on life as a soldier here.

You and I, as we sit in our cosy and comfortable homes, with tea, coffee and booze readily to hand, with a flushing loo just a minutes walk away, with a clean bed just a walk away in which to lay our heads when it is time to sleep; you and I whose major dilemma of the day might be whether to meet one set of friends for a drink in the Kings Head or another set in the Prince of Wales; you and I who can switch off the TV if we are getting bored or switch on the TV if we are getting bored; you and I who take for granted the safeties and comforts of modern life might find it difficult to imagine the daily life of someone serving in Afghanistan such as Sgt Blackman.

This was a man who would be chatting inconsequentially to a friend one day and be told the next that his friend had been killed. This is a man who was daily subjected to pressures most of you reading this – although most certainly not all – will never know anything about. This was a man who might well have gone to sleep to the sound of gunfire and woken up to the sound of gunfire. I am not condoning or excusing Sgt Blackman’s actions or even trying to excuse them, I am just trying to give context to what happened and the decision he made to take another man’s life. The dilemma the judges at the court martial faced was: find Sgt Alexander guilty and perhaps do an injustice; or acquit him and perhaps do an injustice. Reflect: what was the last dilemma of that kind you faced?

If I were a christian I might be inclined to quote Jesus Christ. I happen not to be a christian, but I shall still quote Jesus: ‘You who is without sin cast the first stone.’

Good night and God bless. And although I have no idea who that ‘God’ might be and nor, perhaps, do you, I think you might still appreciate the spirit in which I say it.

As the EU votes in its latest gang of expense fiddlers, matters in Ukraine – not ‘the Ukraine’, please! - and Egypt carry on as planned. And just how far will the Far Right carry on rising? Is it curtains for social democracy?

While we here in Britain, and, of course, the rest of Europe, await the results of the European Union parliamentary elections and some get themselves into a lather over not just how many seats UKIP might grab, but how many euro seats rather less savoury right-wing parties might snaffle, two other elections were taking place to day which should – but, of course, won’t – put our belly-aching into perspective. One is in the Ukraine, which I now understand I must simply call ‘Ukraine’, because in the original Russo-Silesian-Polish-Crimean dialect once spoken in those parts, ‘the Ukraine’ simply meant ‘the borderlands’ and is, apparently, offensive and upsets a great many living there, especially when they are tanked up on vodka. The other election – and I gather inverted commas are in order as it is something of a stitch-up, so make that ‘election’ is taking place in Egypt. But to Ukraine first.

This is an interesting ‘election’: those inverted commas again must be utilised again because

1) only voters in the west of the country are voting, as ‘pro-Russia elements’ in the East, especially in Donetsk, are making sure that no election takes place, simply by destroying polling stations and intimidating any voter foolhardy enough to brave their wrath and attempt to cast his or her vote;

2) Petro Poroshenko, the main candidate, or rather the only real candidate as far as I can tell, is a billionaire chocolate magnate, and, bugger me, for all I try, I simply can’t see a chap with billions of roubles to protect and possibly several more billions to acquire, going out on a limb to protect and promote the interests of the country as a whole. What is likely, though, is that he’s the chap the EU and the US would like to see in power. (NB He has now claimed the presidency, apparently garnering 55pc of the votes of those who were able to vote. Oh, and here’s the surprise: he has promised to forge tighter links with the EU. Well!) The EU has extended its sanctions by the way and is clamping down on imports of Russian caviar, champagne and furs (More here.) Damn, and just as I was considering stocking up on just those items. It says this is in retaliation to Russia meddling in the Ukraine election though pertinently – and not unexpectedly – it has nothing to say about its own meddling.

However sniffy we democrats might get about Petro’s democratic credentials, and no one can get into quite such a hugh dudgeon as Western democrats when they put their mind to it, we are decidedly unsniffy about the power grab (why not call a spade a spade?) of Field Marshal Abdul Fattah al-Sisi who seems likely to be the next president of Egypt and whose rise and rise is proof – though no proof was ever needed – of the observation that ‘plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose’ or as that chap said in The Leopard ‘everything must change for everything to stay the same’.

Yes, there has been violence and several deaths in Ukraine (see, I’m learning fast), but it is as nothing to the widespread rape, murder and wholesale imprisonment which has taken place since the legitimate president Mohammed Morsi was overthrown in 2013. What makes it all the murkier, of course, is that half the country – the nicely spoken half who know which fish knife to use and undoubtedly

Egyptian police democratically articulate the government's views on Morsi and his supporters

use an Amex card – are rather glad that ‘a strong man’ is back in charge who promised to ‘sort out the economy’ and get the country back on its feet. Whether or not that will be as easy as he would like depends on whether the reputed 40pc of Egyptian industrial and business interests controlled by the Egyptian army will play ball. I rather think they will now their man is calling the shots.

The other half, the far poorer half, the rural-dwelling half, the half which put Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood in charge in 2011, are assumed not to be in favour. And why should they? They will undoubtedly once more be reminded that it will be business as usual, ‘same shit, new broom.’ I can’t and won’t compare Sisi or his predecessor but one, Hosni Mubarak, to Adolf Hitler, but we should never forget that although Hitler gained power be semi-legal, dubious means, for quite a few years he had the support of a large number of the population. But that doesn’t mean he was one of the ‘good guys’.

These my bletherings on the two elections are, of course, no better informed than the bletherings of any other local neighbourhood pub bore. All I can do is read pieces in the serious end of journalism as well as the links given in those pieces to acquire as many ‘facts’ as I can about the personalties involved and add my own thoughts. But on one thing I am very clear: the attitude of the West – the US, the EU, Britain, France and others in that sorry ‘democratic’ bunch who voiced not a peep in protest when Morsi was toppled in an coup and now when Sisi, Mubarak’s heir, comes to power - is worse than despicable. Their stance, is mainly, of course, governed by the fact that Sisi is a man they can do business with – sell him weaponry and act in concert in the ‘war on terror’, and Morsi wasn’t. But all in all, the West can stick its promotion of democracy, the rule of law and all the rest up its arse.

A good rule of thumb is ‘Don’t judge people by what they say, judge them by how they behave’.

Sisi (here’s a useful profile of Egypt’s new ‘strong man’. Apparently he’s rather dull) has said he wants to get Egypt back on its feet by establishing stability and rebuilding the counry’s tourist industry. Well, one way of establishing stability is to silence any opposition, by locking it up and, if necessary killing its leading figures. As for getting the tourist industry back on its feet, I understand Germany was a very pleasant tourist destination between 1933 and 1939, though Jews were advised to choose some other country in which to see the sights.

. . .

Meanwhile, back in Europe and our own EU elections – but I really can’t be bothered. Banal and trivial might be the best two words with which to describe our political pre-occupations.

But say what you like about Ukip, the Tories, Labour, the Lib Dems and, as far as I know, the various right and far right groups whose candidates are vying with each other to get on the EU Parliament’s expenses list: rape, violence and murder are not yet an intricate part of their electoral strategies. A little more reading down the line – about the EU elections – and the following thought occurred to me: arguably Western Europe has politically been in thrall to a general liberal democratic/social democratic enlightened mentality since World War II.

All the major political parties seem to share a set of common principles and although they might disagree on ways and means, there are often complaints that the established right-of-centre and left-of-centre parties can all too often hardly be differentiated. For example, one of the gripes of the new Alternative Für Deutschland party is that there is a consensus among all the parties in the Bundestag that the EU generally and, more specifically being part of the eurozone, are Good Things, that to disagree that they might not be is somehow irrational, and so any German voter who does disagree simply doesn’t have a voice in the Bundestag which articulates his views. But whatever your views on the euro and ‘austerity’, they are small beer compared to a growing resentment throughout Europe against ‘immigrants’ and immigration (oddly enough in the wealthier member states).

You’ll certainly hear just as many arguments that ‘immigration is economically good for the country’ as arguments along the lines of ‘enough is enough, no more immigration’. But the sad fact is that most folk aren’t persuaded by argument: they have their view (‘I know what I think’), aren’t in the mood to be dissuaded and cast about for the relevant argument to justify them in and reinforce their particular prejudices. ‘Facts’ can be debated until you are blue in the face and then very easily, if necessary, be ignored. And a growing number of folk in France, Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Greece, The Netherlands, Belgium and Britain are becoming increasingly vociferous in their opposition to immigration because of the ‘fact’ that it is harming their country.

Please, for the moment, put aside your own views on that matter, and for the record I am not against immigration,a growing number are vociferously against immigrants and immigration. And a great many of them are not at all nice folk, not the kind you might like to have round one evening for several rounds of cribbage. I was rather surprised, for example, to read on the Economist website about a Czech called Adam Bartos, leader of the “No to Brussels—National Democracy” party in the European elections this weekend. The piece carries on: ‘A former journalist, he is fighting against what he says is a malign superstate in Brussels by appealing to nationalism and anti-Semitism. He keeps a list of 220 prominent Jews whom he accuses of dominating Czech public life’. Altogether now: what? Thinking that various countries are allowing in too many immigrants is one thing. Using the sentiment to take a nasty potshot at Jews is quite another. The Economist writes that Baros is unlikely to have any electoral success, but many parties which hold similar views are.

Next door in Hungary is the deeply unpleasant Jobbik party which also holds anti-semitic views. Oh well, you might say, some folk do. Well, at the most recent Hungarian general election Jobbik gained 21pc of the vote – so almost one in five (of those who turned out – a useful caveat) think Jobbik might have a point about

A Jobbik fan demonstrates the latest anti-semitic fashion accessories

Jews. In The Netherlands, Geert Wilders and his far-right Party For Freedom has made hay ove these past few years by attacking Islam. There are admittedly as many Islamic nutters as there are Catholic, Protestant and, I shouldn’t wonder, Jewish nutters, but let’s be vere clear: they make up a minute percentage of Muslims worldwide. But that doesn’t seem to bother Wilders and his supporters. Not, ‘let’s attack Islam’ goes down a treat.

Denmark, for the past 60 years or more seen as a bastion of liberal thinking, also has its far-right Danish People’s Party led by Pia Kjaerksgaard, Portugal his its Popular party lecd by Paulo Portas, in Greece the very nasty Golden Dawn has taken to beating up African immigrants in the street.

There have always been folk on the extreme wings of politics, you might say, and, of course, you are right. My point is that support for them, for whatever reason, is growing, and I do wonder whether the socially enlightened liberal consensus in Europe these past 60 years might slowly be coming to an end. The real problem is that under ‘the democratic rules’, your voice and your vote have as much right to be heard as my voice and my vote, and we were all able to accept that when our individual voices more or less congregated at the centre and the biggest disagreements we had were whether the new bus station should be painted red or blue. But the game might well be changing.

I don’t know what the EU election results are and so far can only go on reports of exit polls. But if, as some predict, one-third of all EU parliamentary seats are held be folk who think ‘hanging’s too good for the bastards’, we are in real trouble. Not that Brussels shouldn’t have seen it coming. But, of course, it didn’t and now we have this mess. European political union anyone? I don’t actually think so.

PS The claim has often been made – far too often in my view and a phoney claim it is at that – that the EU ‘has kept peace in Europe for the past 50 years. To which I say: Are you sure? Are you sure it wasn’t Eurovision which has kept us from attacking each other and slaughtering our womenfolk and children as in the bad old days?

. . . 

By the way: I’m always rather puzzled by demands that governments should deliver ever higher living standards. Just how many bloody plasma TV screens and laptops does the average household need? I would have thought it would be better to raise the living standards of those at the bottom of the pile to those enjoyed by the majority rather than to ensure that a household which now runs two cars can soon run three. But that’s enough pinko nonsense for one night.

What is it with the ‘distinction’ between ‘modern classical music’, ‘modern contemporary music’ and ‘jazz’? And I give a well-deserved mention to guitarist Justin Morell (who might not yet have been made a peer of the realm, but, well, you know . . . plus ça change and other utterly irrelevant cliches). Check him out

The soundfiles don’t work in the Opera browser. Don’t blame me, blame Opera.

UPDATE: Jun 14, 2014. Actually, they do seem to work in Opera on Windows. This post was created on my Macbook, but I am reading it - and listening to the soundfiles - in my Lenovo laptop, so . . .

A few years ago I was chastised, gently it has to be said, but nonetheless chastised, for being rather too discursive in these blog entries, of being too oblique in the opening paragraphs. My response was simply that it’s my bloody blog and I’ll bloody well do in my bloody blog what I bloody well want to do; and if I want to be discursive, I’ll be just as bloody discursive as I bloody well please. If someone happening across these scribblings takes exception to my oblique, discursive approach, they can find themselves some other less oblique and less discursive blog. Except that I was rather more forthright in my reply.

If you, dear reader - my dear, dear, dear reader without whom this blog wouldn’t stack up to a row of beans - want something less oblique and less discursive, the choice, courtesy of Google Blogger and Wordpress, is impressively vast. Try the thoughts of ‘One girl's feeble attempt to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with her God. And there is never a dull moment...’ here. Then there are the views as ‘A Baby Boomer looks at health, finance, retirement, grown-up children and ... how time flies’. If that sounds like your bag, this must be your next port of call. If, however, you are prepared to settle for my dyspeptic views on the irritating snobbery of those who feel ‘classical music’ is where it’s at and who look down on ‘jazz’ as the vague tootlings of often very talented but sadly delusional folk who simply don’t get it, read on.

Although I still work in London (for four days a week and, if nothing else, the money’s better and the work is more interesting), I have lived down here in North Cornwall since Christmas 1995 and have attended the St Endellion Easter and Summer Music Festivals for quite a few years. I have to say the occasion, rather like the Hay Festival and Latitude, is something of a middle-class wet dream, but the music is always good and always varied, and attending give me the chance possibly to hear a piece I’d not heard before or discover a composer. The audience is almost always grey-haired and nicely spoken, and the chaps are obliged to turn up in green cords and a navy blue sweater (and a Barbour if it’s rainy).

It’s all very, very, very informal and ad hoc in the way the British like their arts (the might privately envy any kind of artistic expertise, but publicly always regard it as ‘showing off’. The attitude is generally ‘I might be passionate about the arts and music, but it doesn’t pay to be too serious, does it, which is all far too American’). Our current Prime Minister David Cameron, whose most recent child was born while he and his family were on holiday here in North Cornwall - Rock is known hereabouts as ‘Kensington-on-Sea’ - had her baptised Florence Claudia Camilla Euphrates Emma Rose Kylie St Endellion Miranda Cameron in honour of the festival. And if you are British and don’t regard that as a seal of approval, it’s off to another blog with you, smartish kiddo.)

The performers at the two festivals, one held at Easter, the second at the end of July, beginning of August, are all professional musicians who, I gather, perform for the love of it and are not paid a fee, although they get free board and lodging (and, perhaps, for the lucky ones, a shag or two). It did occur to me a month or two ago when I was last there that being able to write on your CV when applying for a newer, more prestigious gig ‘I’ve spent a week playing in the St Endellion Festival every year for these past few years and even knew Richard Hickox before he popped his clogs’ must be worth several Brownie points.

About two years ago, I was at a concert when I noticed that a certain Michael Berkeley was part of the gang organising that year’s bunfight. Now, I was at school with Michael Berkeley, who as Berkeley I, was in the year above me. His brother Julian was in my year (and is now, for those who like detail, a gay landscape gardener somewhere in Surrey, Sussex, Kent or Hampshire, and, as the smarter ones among you have undoubtedly already worked out, was known as Berkeley II. I was, incidentally, Powell II, aka Kraut II and/or Jackboots II, and formerly in my early years, because of the rather distended stomach I had when I first joined as I weighed about 10st but then only reached around 5ft 4in, known as Preggers Powell. Oh, and to demonstrate just how useful that system of nomenclature was, we had at the Oratory School while I was there a Stillwell I, Stillwell II, Stillwell III, Stillwell IV and Stillwell V. Neat, eh? Who says the Brits can’t be just quite as efficient as the Germans when they put their mind to it?)

Berkeley (we never, if ever, used Christian names) was an affable enough chap who always played the organ at servicesd, as we were all shuffling out of the barn which was then the school chapel after once Sunday Mass had ended used to play - I don’t know the technical term - organ ‘continuo’ into which he would incorporate whatever occurred to him. (If was rather like the kind of taped organ muzak played at cremations as the coffin disappears for ever). I remember noticing how he cunningly concealed well-known toons in his performance for the first time when The House Of The Rising Sun was part of the mix. His father was the, now rather obscure, composer, Sir Lennox Berkeley, and his godfather was Mr Twink himself, Benjamin Britten. I next came across Berkeley when I heard his name mentioned as an announcer, and then as a presenter, on the BBC’s Radio 3. I also saw him once or twice on TV in some capacity or other.

Most recently I discovered that he had been ennobled - why I really have no idea at all, except that for some very arcane reason it must have been politically expedient for someone or other in government to do so - and is now Lord Berkeley (technically Michael Fitzhardinge Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of Knighton, but that means that if I - don’t worry, non-Brits are exempt, something to do with European Union regulations, I think - were ever to meet him, I would be obliged to courtesy three times and sing the National Anthem.

The last piece on the programme on that particular night was an organ piece by the great man himself. And that, dear reader, brings me right back to the issue in hand: I remember just three things about Berkeley’s organ piece: it was exceptionally loud, it consisted of a great many discordant notes and, most to the point, it was bloody awful. Quite bloody awful. It was unashamedly noisy, a cacophony. Furthermore, there was nothing about it which might have alerted even a dumbwit musical fuck such as me that there somewhere in its indiscriminate and brutal cascade of chords was something, that some intricate part of it - a schemata, clever, witty musical juxtapositions, perhaps, quotations - somehow justified (I think the modern phrase is ‘validated’) that awful, awful noise and made it ‘music’. Here I must defend myself: I am not one of those who insists that music ‘should have a tune, don’t you know’. There are a great many pieces I like which to many might well sound like indiscriminate ‘noise’.

One of my favourite guitarists (and here I am addressing you, Mr Morell, quite directly, as I think you will certainly know his work - and the rest of you must read on to understand why) is a certain David Fiuczynski. He is, I’m sure, not to everyone’s taste. But he is most certainly to mine, as are Shostakovich, Janacek and Bartok, none of whom, many might agree, comes up with ‘tunes’ you might care to hum to yourself as you make your weary way home after a hard day selling insurance. The important point is this: Berkeley - Lord Berkeley - had composed a piece of ‘modern classical music’, noisy or not, and thus, for far too many, all bets are off. It was ‘modern classical’, see, and who are we mere mortals to quibble and risk showing ourselves up as tasteless plebs?

Putting on my cynical hat, I might even suggest that some of my fellow concertgoers who heard Berkeley’s piece might well have concurred with me, but told themselves that although they didn’t really think much of what they heard - it went on for about 15 minutes - ‘that piece by that chap Berkeley, you know, the loud organ piece right at the end of the concert, you know the really noisy piece on the organ, well I can’t say it did much for me at all, did it for you, dear? but, well, you know, it’s modern music, isn’t it, I mean it is, isn’t it? And who are you and I to understand modern classical?’

One day, many years ago, I was listening to Radio 3 (Classic FM for more ‘serious types’, the kind of stuck-up folk who poo-poo the idea of buying ‘The Best Bits Of Mozart, Chopin, Brahms and Mantovani’ at Wal-Mart - me? Snobbish?) when I heard a glorious piece of solo piano. It was a beauty, just the kind of thing I like. Pure, simple, unassuming, honest (but I don’t want to write more or else I’ll come across as pretentious0. It was quite simply lovely, and as it went on, I consciously made an effort to concentrate so that when It ended I could hear who the ‘composer’ was. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Bach, but, well, was it one of his contemporaries? Certainly, I thought, untutored then as now, that is was a piece written in the late 17th or early 18th century. Finally I found out. It was a guy called Lennie Tristano, which didn’t sound too 18th century to me. And who, some of you might now be asking, as I was asking when I first heard the name, was Lennie Tristano?

This was before the internet, so finding out stuff wasn’t half as easy. But I discovered that Lennie Tristano was a highly respected jazz pianist, blind (from the age of six, I found out later), and who after a career playing with many of the greats had given up performing, to the surprise of many, to teach. What was crucial, however, in my first encounter with Lennie Tristano was that the first recording I heard was not with the usual jazz set-up of piano, bass and drums, but the man playing on his own. So there was, as it were, no ‘clue’ that this might be ‘jazz’. It was simply music. And at that first hearing, because of the radio station playing it and because of the time of day (that is it wasn’t part of a programme dedicated to jazz) I thought it was ‘classical music’.

(Trying to track down that first piece, I found, on Spotify, G Minor Complex which is here (you can find it below), though whether it was the piece I heard on the radio I don’t know. Perhaps, but it now sounds to me far jazzier than I might have heard it. But then, dear, dear - dear - reader, I was younger, a mere stripling, much perhaps like you. But if it was this, you’ll understand what I mean. If not, off to another blog, now. On second thoughts, it might have been C Minor Complex (also below). I think it might be. In fact, I think it was. Pianists the world over, please listen to this, then give up. Then stop giving up, and try to be even better. You might, who knows? But at least try.)

I’m sure among ‘jazzers’ that Lennie Tristano is well-known and well-respected, but as far as I can tell his is not a name you much hear bandied about, like that of Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Earl Hines, Bud Powell, Art Tatum and the rest (i.e. this sucker’s knowledge is a tad limited. More to the point at that first encounter over 30 years ago, I first began to wonder about the bizarre, and to my mind, snobbish and quite phoney, distinction made between ‘modern contemporary music’, ‘modern classical music’ and ‘modern jazz’. I must - and ‘must’ is the pertinent word - make an admission: I am just your average punter. My knowledge of music is pretty much restricted to knowing that a C chord on the guitar has a different shape to the G chord. I do know - or I think I do know - that there can be an architecture to a piece of music which helps sustain (i.e. stops it collapsing in on itself) a ‘classical’ concerto or sonata or symphony. I also ‘know’ that composers can have different keys and parts of a piece relating to each other, that they can, in fact, get up to all kinds of technical stuff and that if you know what is going on, it can well bring you an greater level of appreciation and enjoyment. Unfortunately, my cloth ears are deaf to any of that.

Our own Thomas Beacham once said that ‘the English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes’. Well, substitute ‘understand’ for ‘like’ (and for ‘noise’ substitute ‘sound’) and that is, more or less, me. OK, over the years I have come by far to prefer the subtle chords of a jazz pianist and guitarist and the progressions he (or she) make to the block solid and exceptionally dull C, G and D progressions of, say a Neil Diamond or John Denver, but at this point I’m not about to bullshit and claim that I have much musical knowledge. For me the pleasure is in the hearing and the listening. And I get just as much pleasure from the subtleties of jazz as of ‘classical’ and ‘modern contemporary’ music. . . . And so, pretty inelegantly it has to be said, I finally get to jazz guitarist Justin Morrell (who must have the patience of a saint) and to the piece I have posted below.

I first came across him when I came across his interpretations of various tracks by Steely Dan on his album The Music Of Steely Dan (bet you didn’t see that coming). I used to love Steely Dan, but as I got older, I became increasingly irritated by the fact that they, two guys who obviously love jazz, never cut loose. Yes, I know they operated in the pop world, and rather like folk who go to McDonald’s and would be mortified to be offered anything but a McDonalds’ Crapburger with Cheese and Fries, Becker and Fagen fans would be mortified to be offered a rendition of one of their songs live which did not slavishly reproduce the records; but there seemed to me to be a glaring and disappointing lack that, when they toured and played live, they didn’t put their jazz chops where their ostensible souls lay. To be blunt, I would far prefer to go and hear a small, unknown, and possibly even not particularly good jazz band than attend another Steely Dan concert.

I have only heard them live once, in Wembley in whenever it was (NB Google tells me it was September 10, 1996, and when, sitting in the second row, I demanded, to Donald Fagen’s obvious irritation, that they play Hotel California0. I was pretty disillusioned when Walter Becker, one half of what until then I had regarded as the kings of cool, greeted the audience with that hoary old, corny old pop concert line ‘Hello, London, we love your fish and chips’. Oh, God, give me a break! (I once heard Miles Davis play in the St David’s Hall in Cardiff and he didn’t – thank the Lord - come out with ‘Hello, Wales, we like your rugby/daffodils/prostitutes/coal’.)

The final straw was when Donald Fagen, the other half of what until then, or almost then, I had regarded as the kings of cool, recently published a kind of autobiography and called it ‘Eminent Hipsters’. Well, for this Steely Dan fan, Mr Morell and his band did with the music of Messrs Fagen and Becker what those two should have been doing long, long ago. He turned them into jazz. But Fagen and Becker seem to prefer swanning around from one New York art scene to another to playing jazz. OK, I don’t doubt that Fagen, a pianist, and Becker, a guitarist, try their hand at it in the privacy of their own bedrooms (although as a guitarist Becker seems to do nothing much but noodle), but that is a long way off getting on stage and playing live for all its worth. I never chased up Justin Morell’s music until a few weeks ago when I took was listening to his Steely Dan takes and took to wondering what he had been doing recently. So I came across (and I’m sure I’ll get the names wrong) one of his latest recordings with Dectet. Here is his Fugue in E. (Allow it, and the two Lennie Tristano pieces further below, time to load.)


 Courtesy of Justin Morell.

My point, given the rambling above about the, to my mind, offensively phoney distinction between ‘modern classical music’ and a great deal of ‘jazz’ music being made today it that if Morell’s Fugue in E were introduced on, say Radio 3, as ‘modern classical’ or ‘modern contemporary’ music, it would be taken wholly at face value. Some might comment that it ‘has quite interesting jazzy overtones’, but they would not, if told it was ‘modern contemporary’, disagree. I have listened to it many times since I came across it, and one echo I hear is the music of Kurt Weill. Whether or not Justin Morell is conscious of it (or is even at all pleased with the reference) I really don’t know. In the next few days I shall give you a few more tasters of Justin Morell’s music. For one thing he has the nous (US ‘know-how’?) to choose some very, very good co-players.

Every year for the past few years, I have spent a week in the Bordeaux region in France accompanying my 80-year-old aunt to a series of concerts held during July. I have several times told her how dishonest I think is the distinction made by some between ‘modern classical music’ and ‘jazz music’, but unfortunately she is old school and insists it is a valid one. And she always reminds me of when she heard Daniel Barenboim once being asked in a TV interview what he thought of jazz. He didn’t reply, she says, he just gave a rather dismissive smirk. Oh well.
I can’t for the life of me remember what the Lennie Tristano piece was I heard all those years ago. But to give you a flavour or the man’s playing and his work, here are two solo pieces:


 Lennie Tristano’s G Minor Complex.



 Lennie Tristano’s C Minor Complex.

. . .

Speaking of noble gents, Lords, and diffidence untainted by EU interferecne, there’s a good story about the late Lord Hailsham, who was once one of our Lord Chancellors in the 1970s. and was once crossing a public square outside the House of Lords, dressed in all is traditional Lord Chancellor’s finery and quite possibly surrounded by flunkies. The square was full of tourists at the time (though I should imagine it is now crawling with armed police, such is our faith in the good will of our Muslim cousins). Hailsham spotted some yards away an old friend from his days in chambers called ‘Neil’, so he raised his arm to attract the man’s attention and bellowed out: ‘Neil!’ Upon which a group of American tourists a few feet way who had been taking photos of him in his ceremonial gladrags dutifully got down on their knees. Aaah, sweet)

You can lead a horse to water . . . I begin the task of trying to wean my son off Total Bollocks III on his Xbox and introduce him to something which might in later years give him more lasting pleasure. And you, too, might like some of these pieces

NB Have a bit of patience when loading this page. These soundfiles seem to load and play in Safari (on a Mac laptop) , Firefox and Chrome (on Macs and PCs) but don’t seem to on Opera on either platform. After spending a lot of time trying to find out how I can post soundfiles directly to the blog rather than create a video, use the soundfile as the soundtrack, upload it to YouTube, embed then embed the bloody video in the blog (around the houses or what?), I have now discovered that browsers which ‘know’ HTML5 (and, no, I haven’t a clue either, but there you go) can use a simply code. Opera obviously doesn’t. Also works on Internet Explorer on a PC, and also on my Android smartphone.

I’m sure every parent is apt to magnify what they regard as the talents of their children, while at the same time being rather blind to their faults and shortcomings. My daughter, 18 in just over two months, listen to a lot of music on her phone and the radio, but it is the usual crap played on phones and radios. Furthermore, and by her own admission, she can’t, as we say kindly ‘hold a tune’. She once put it to me with admirable candour that she ‘couldn’t sing for toffee’.

Actually, I don’t necessarily think she has tested her potential musical abilities as much as she might and, who knows, she might be a late developer. Her brother is rather different, and although he has now given up on the drums and hasn’t been near ukulele he asked to have for Christmas in what seems like eight years, I rather suspect that he does have a certain musical ability which might be worth nurturing. I first thought so several years ago when he quite astounded me in la-la-la-in to me two quite intricate theme tunes to two drama series which were showing on TV at the time.

My father showed no interest in music, and I can’t remember him ever listening to it. He reminded me of the anecdote of some US president or other who was said to know only two tunes: Yankee Doodle Dandy and all the tunes which weren’t Yankee Doodle Dandy. On the other hand my mother did like music and when I was younger went to concerts with her when we lived in Berlin because my father refused to. I even saw the late Otto Klemperer conduct, sitting in some kind of high chair because he was pretty incapacitated.

My older brother (the schizophrenic) had a certain musical ability, playing piano and guitar reasonably well, but as far as I know my sister (sorry, M.) (Later, May 29: Apparently I have been a tad unkind to my sister. She has been happily singing in a choir for these past 15 years, which, now I think about it she has told me about quite often. So, sorry, M, but for a different reason) and my younger brother lost out on those particular genes. I can’t claim to have much musical ability and my guitar playing is basic. I could, at a pinch, bamboozle someone who knew little about guitar playing into thinking I ‘wasn’t bad’, but a good guitar player would quite rightly have me down as a nine-bob note with 30 seconds.

But I do love music and listen to a lot of it. And it occurred to me that were I to try a little, coax a little, drew out a little, I might somehow be able to spark a similar interest in my son. I suspect our tastes become a little more sophisticated as we grow older: young children go a bundle on sweets and such which would disgust the palate of an older man or women. But young children don’t as a rule go for olives, or chicory, garlic, the foods which are known as something of an acquired taste.

When I was my son’s age – he is 15 in five days – I went a bundle on The Beatles, The Kinks and other groups, but whose music, when I listen to it now, seems to me rather thin gruel. As I have got older, I have grown to like ‘classical music’ and jazz more and more. Both seem to offer more substance, more body. But to try to spark an interest in my son (which, I’m sure, just needs elucidating) needs a little tact and guile. I think it would be counterproductive to introduce him at this point to, say, a Shostakovich symphony or Shoenberg or Vaughan Williams.

When I was ten, I began to attend a Jesuit college in Berlin. School was, as they do in Germany, six days a week from 8.30am until 1pm. I would be home at just before two, have my lunch, then dawdle around for a while before sitting down to going my homework. And every afternoon while doing my homework I would be tuned into AFN (the American Forces Network) to listen to the Don Ameche Pop concert. I can’t remember a single tune or song I heard except one, his signature tune, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto.

I now gather that among snobby types, you know, the sophisticated sort for whom it is as important to be seen at a concert as well as hear the music, Tchaikovsky is a tad infra dig, rather too ‘accessible’ for polite society. Well, more fools them. And that piece, with its striking opening bars is surely one of the best ways to be quietly introduced to the beauty of some classical pieces.

My idea was to buy a small MP3 player and load it with ten shortish pieces which I think might interest my son. And, yes, they are ‘accessible’, but at this stage that would be no bad strategy. And for the sake of writing this post I have also added nine of those pieces below. I couldn’t unfortunately include the Tchaikovsky because the method I used to post MP3s of the pieces so you can listen to them didn’t allow me to upload it.

All the pieces are, in my view, very beautiful, although, of course, beauty is by no means a prerequisite of interesting, satisfying music. But I’ve chosen them because I think – I hope they might appeal to my son and encourage him in later years to do some exploring. There is no Bach, because ironically Bach needs listening and is not as ‘accessible’ – what an awful word, but I am obliged to use it – as other pieces. There is a predominance of second movements merely because a great number of them have a melody with a certain immediate attraction.

So go on, listen to them. Don’t bother listening to all at once. Listen to one, possibly two, then come back another time.

PS I was planning a post on why I think the distinction between ‘classical’ music, ‘modern’ music and jazz is essentially phoney and snobbish, but that will have to wait.

 
Stabat Mater - Pergolesi Giovanni Battista


Second movement of Beethoven's Piano Concert No 5


Second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No 21


Scarlatti Keyboard Sonata In F Minor, K 466


Claire de lune - Claude Debussy


Second movement Symphony No 7 - Beethoven


Second movement Piano Sonata No 14 - Beethoven


Requiem In D Minor, K 626 - 8. Sequentia, Lacrimosa - Mozart


Second movement String Quartet in C - Josef Haydn

In which my son asks for a dog for his birthday and I say No, and my name is now mud

Going through a slight ‘Dad is a bastard’ phase here in Powell Towers, because I have vetoed the suggestion that my son should be allowed to have a dog for his 15th birthday. I am, when push comes to shove, pretty much of a softy when it comes to my children, but in this instance I think I’ll be standing my just don’t think it would be a very good idea at all, even though I rather like dogs.

Previously, about four years ago, my son developed an enthusiasm for playing the drums. So he had drum lessons and got a secondhand set from his cousin, which though not cheap at £70 was a damn sight cheaper than getting a new set. Carried

on with his lessons, and would often call me through to his room to admire the latest technique he had mastered (although at the still simple level he was playing I wonder whether the word ‘technique’ is rather overstating it).

But bit by bit I noticed his playing sessions were shorter and shorter and shorter until he wasn’t playing at all. I did mention this to him and he admitted he had lost interest. I told him that many a lad (or even lass) who was still enthusiastic but without a drum set would give his or her eye teeth (‘eyeteeth’, ‘eye-teeth’? Suggestions, please, on the usual postcard addressed to: Pedant’s Corner, Powell Towers, Middle of Nowhere, Cornwall, Great Britain) for a set like his and why didn’t he sell them on? But he wasn’t keen. And, to be honest, nor was I because I was hoping, and still rather forlornly hope, that his enthusiasm will be rekindled.

The acid test is quite simple: if you are interested, you play, if you aren’t you don’t. I have played guitar, not outstandingly well, it has to be said, although lately I am finally - finally - putting a bit more effort in by learning different scales, since I was about his age. I bought my first guitar when I was 22. Until then I would, at school,

You wish. Yeah, for about ten minutes

play whatever guitar was knocking around in someone’s study, and then at college, the flat I lived in for several years had a - bloody awful - guitar. That did me fine for many years. Then I bought an electric guitar, and when that was stolen in a burglary, another.

More recently I bought myself what I’ve discovered is called a ‘parlour’ guitar, and I also have a bass guitar. My point is that I have willingly and enthusiastically played guitar for close on 150 years, and never had to force my self to pick one up. Indeed, I can be one of those bores who will pick up and play a guitar if I ever come across one in someone’s house, although in more recent years I have curtailed that, rather bad, habit, as not everyone is that keen.

The there was my son’s enthusiasm for playing the ukulele. He got it into his head that he wanted to learn and asked for one for Christmas and I also went to the effort of googling ukulele chords, printing some out and laminating them. And he did play it, for about a week and a half. Since then he hasn’t touched it. He says he has wanted a dog for years, and that is true, but I have pointed out to him that a dog is a living being, not just another possession. His cousins who live in the farm on the other side of the lane have a small mutt called Oscar and he and his cousin regularly take Oscar for a walk. I tell him he should try to satisfy his ‘love of dogs’ or whatever it is with Oscar.

As we live in the depths of the countryside, there would be no danger of the mutt being cooped up in the house for hours on end, only to be let out to have a crap, the results of which are then carefully scooped up and slipped into a pocket (which is

What happens after about ten minutes - and goes on for the next 12 years

what folk have to do in towns and cities). Here, he or she would be able to shit where the bloody hell he likes, though quite how my wife would square that with her rancid dislike of local cats who have the temerity to beard her and shit in our garden I really don’t know. The think is that I actually like dogs.

Our cottage is not big and my wife is - was - talking about getting a puppy, but I don’t think she realises quite how boisterous and destructive puppies can be until they grow up, mature and settle into dull complacency like the rest of us. Nor do I want to get lumbered with a daily duty of taking the dog for a walk.

My daughter is 18 in August and off to college in September, and my son will, I trust, be off to college in three years. But dogs tend to live a lot longer than that. When the idea was first mooted a few years ago, I suggested we could compromise and get a cat.

Cats are far less hassle. Cats don’t have to be taken for walks. Cats don’t mooch around sulking if you don’t ‘play’ with them’. Cats need to be fed and have access to the outside world for pooing and peeing and that kind of thing. Cats really are a lot less hassle. But my wife doesn’t like cats, although why I don’t know.

So there you have it. Yesterday I put my foot down and said there would be no dog in this house and ever since my name has been mud and my presence barely tolerated.

My suspicion is that I shall be overruled and that either next Wednesday night or the following Wednesday night when I roll in home from London (his birthday is on Sunday, May 25), I shall find some bloody cute bundle of puppiness lying in a basket next to the Rayburn. If so I shall take it like a man. I shan’t make a fuss and accept a fait accompli. But what I shall not be doing is taking the bloody think for walks or paying a penny in vets’ bills. Forgot to mention those, didn’t I. Ever wondered why vets drive around in spanking new sports cars with gold bumpers and seats covered in calfskin while you and I have to put up with a secondhand bicycle? So have I.