A joke-free, far more personal entry this morning, and I should add that I am rather glad that this blog is occasionally read by at least two people. One of them knows that my marriage was not made in Heaven, and each morning that sad fact is underlined yet again by my wife. To put it bluntly, she hardly ever speaks to me and hasn't done so for quite a few years. In a strange way I am a kind of non-person, a semi-detached member of this family and in odd, subtle ways - which might just be me being paranoid - she even seems to exclude me. It doesn't help that, more or less by necessity, I work in London and am away for four days a week, but it would be simple thing for my wife to include me in things . However, she chooses not to. Last night was an example: my young son will be leaving primary school next July and starting secondary school in September, so yesterday was an open evening at the school we hope he will be able to attend. This has been arranged for several weeks, yet the first I knew about it was when my wife and my children disappeared out of the door. There is absolutely none of that chit-chat which I am accustomed to elsewhere, she is silent, grim presence who only speaks to tell me not to do this or not to do that or to inquire whether this or that bill has been paid yet.
I grin and bear it and try to keep things normal, but - and here's the very personal bit - each morning when I yet again I am virtually invisible to her and am ignored as a non-person, my heart breaks quietly. I don't want to sound pathetic, but that is a good way of describing it. And I don't know what to do about it.
I have spoken to my sister-in-law several times and after my heart attack I was finally in touch with a counsellor. But there is only so much talking you can do, and if my wife doesn't show any willingness to want to change things, there isn't a lot I can do.
I won't pretend that I love her any more, and the circumstances of how we eventually ended up getting married are not the most romantic possible, but I do know that two civilised adults who two children together should be able to rub along together for the greater good. The trouble is that in several quiet ways my wife is odd. Often she doesn't respond like a 48-year-old woman, but like a 7-year-old on a primary school playground. Several years ago, when there was a very stupid feud in her family and it was split down the middle, she took sides (her two sisters didn't) and just cut her father out of her life. He more or less became a non-person. She has done something similar with my stepmother, who has now returned from her nursing home and lives barely four minutes walk away. She has not visited her in more than two years, but no one knows why. It is very odd behaviour. In the early days when it was apparent that we were quite different people and weren't getting one very well, I would try to persuade her to talk things through. But as I think I have recorded here before (possibly in this blog's first incarnation) her family are emotionally illiterate, and my wife seems to be the worst sufferer. She finds it impossible to talk about herself or her feelings, not just with me but as far as I know with anyone else.
There is much, much more I could write, but there is, in fact, little point. I as moved to make this entry after yet again coming downstairs in the morning to find her one communication with me being a short shopping list. But it is good to have the chance to let of a little steam and I also know that both the readers I know of have experienced the downside of marriage, so I am grateful that they indulge me and that I know this entry will, sooner or later, be read by someone else.
Friday, 16 October 2009
Sunday, 11 October 2009
The Nobel Peace Prize, and my reaction were I informed I had won it
This has nothing to do with me personally, but I thought I might record how baffled I am that Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What on earth for, for God's sake? I know I'm not along in being puzzled and tonight I heard on the radio that when first informed of the award by phone, the White House thought it was a hoax.
The whole Nobel Prize thing is anyway rather strange and utterly arbitrary. Several years ago, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin shared the Peace Prize, and look what good that has done anyone. The whole thing is a joke.
If I were awarded the Peace Prize, or, for that matter, any of the Nobel Prizes, I would haughtily inform the Swedes that they could take one guess as to what to do with the award. This is one Englishman (with German blood - never forget that) who cannot be bought. No sir! Damned foreigners!
The whole Nobel Prize thing is anyway rather strange and utterly arbitrary. Several years ago, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin shared the Peace Prize, and look what good that has done anyone. The whole thing is a joke.
If I were awarded the Peace Prize, or, for that matter, any of the Nobel Prizes, I would haughtily inform the Swedes that they could take one guess as to what to do with the award. This is one Englishman (with German blood - never forget that) who cannot be bought. No sir! Damned foreigners!
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
The curse of The Nerds, whether left-liberal, Yankee smug or any other kind. But never underestimate them - ever
What is it with nerds? We've all met them - passionate committee members, rule sticklers when playing any sort of game, often humourless and, as I know to my cost, inveterate and self-important Wikipedia editors. I have made one or two contributions to Wikipedia over the years, although not very many. Initially, they were additions to the entry on my old school, the Oratory School, which had an interesting section on school slang. I added to it, informing the world, for example, of a small tuck shop we used to visit outside Checkendon called Blossom's and run by a Mrs Cox (ring a bell, Barry?). This entry marked my first run-in with a Wikipedia nerd, this one based, as it turned out, in deepest Arizona. Did I mean 'Blossom's', 'Blossoms' or Blossoms' ' he demanded to know (I assume he was a he, as curiously nerds are invariably male) because if you can't get it exactly right, the entry would have to be deleted. I asked him when he had attended the OS and which house he had been in, and that was the last I heard from him.
Later, I had a run-in over my additions - qualifications, really - to a hostile Wikepedia entry on St Paul Dacre. Now, I cannot claim to 'know' him, but I see him almost every day I come to work, I have spoken to him quite a few times and, despite his ferocious reputation and a tendency which Private Eye refers to as a 'vagina monologue' (very true, I must admit), in my small way rather like him. He is, however, a bete noir of the British left-liberal - make that the self-regarding, smug British left-liberal - and my edit was very unwelcome.
I said, broadly, that Dacre was a tall man and that like many tall men was, in fact, quite shy, and that like many shy men in positions of power, his man-management skills were pitiful and that he often overcompensated for his shyness and social discomfort with a rather forced laddish bonhomie. I didn't actually say it in those ways, but you get the drift. I wanted to redress the balance a little from the general tone of the entry which more or less suggestion Dacre was a rapid right-winger for whom burning alive would be too charitable.
(Sounds, exaggerated, I know, and in this instance it is, rather, but just a perusal of any left-of-centre forum - the Guardian, for example, will furnish proof in abundance that your average caring left-liberal is not about a bit of thuggery, all in the interests of progress, of course). I also added to my edit that Dacre's recreation was gardening (and in my experience, gardeners are never wholly bad. Could you see J. Stalin or A. Hitler with a trowel? No, not can I. QED.)
Anyway, my Wikepedia entry on Dacre was along those lines, suggesting that quite possibly he didn't necessarily eat three young children for breakfast every day. Well, left-liberal Brit was having none of it: Dacre not a complete and utter bastard? No way, the man must burn in hell. So my edit was removed on - annoyingly - technical grounds, and despite my reinstating it and trying to satisfy 'the rules' - nerds just adore 'rules' - several times, I finally admitted defeat. Most recently, my addition to the Wikepedia entry on the Spanish-American War is annoying the nerds, tho' now it is not the left-liberal nerds, but those who feel that we who were not born on a white picket fence with an appe pie stuck up our arse and whistling the Stars And Stripes are somehow sub-human.
My edit, well-sourced this time, to comply with 'the rules' pointed out that several respected US historians do not agree with the party line that the Spanish-American War was started to help the Cuban independence fighters throw of the Spanish yoke but was fully intended to find new markets for American goods.
(Incidentally, just as civilian casualties in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have been extremely high while the US fights the good fight - to introduce or preserve democracy, apparently - more than a quarter of a million Filipinos met their maker because of American action.) Well, several Yankee nerds were having none of this and removed my edit wholesale. Last night I re-instated it and shall now see how long it remains as part of the entry. I am not holding my breath. For reference you can find it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish-American_War) and as of 10.05am on October 7, 2009, it was still there.
Beware nerds. And never underestimate them.
Later, I had a run-in over my additions - qualifications, really - to a hostile Wikepedia entry on St Paul Dacre. Now, I cannot claim to 'know' him, but I see him almost every day I come to work, I have spoken to him quite a few times and, despite his ferocious reputation and a tendency which Private Eye refers to as a 'vagina monologue' (very true, I must admit), in my small way rather like him. He is, however, a bete noir of the British left-liberal - make that the self-regarding, smug British left-liberal - and my edit was very unwelcome.
I said, broadly, that Dacre was a tall man and that like many tall men was, in fact, quite shy, and that like many shy men in positions of power, his man-management skills were pitiful and that he often overcompensated for his shyness and social discomfort with a rather forced laddish bonhomie. I didn't actually say it in those ways, but you get the drift. I wanted to redress the balance a little from the general tone of the entry which more or less suggestion Dacre was a rapid right-winger for whom burning alive would be too charitable.
(Sounds, exaggerated, I know, and in this instance it is, rather, but just a perusal of any left-of-centre forum - the Guardian, for example, will furnish proof in abundance that your average caring left-liberal is not about a bit of thuggery, all in the interests of progress, of course). I also added to my edit that Dacre's recreation was gardening (and in my experience, gardeners are never wholly bad. Could you see J. Stalin or A. Hitler with a trowel? No, not can I. QED.)
Anyway, my Wikepedia entry on Dacre was along those lines, suggesting that quite possibly he didn't necessarily eat three young children for breakfast every day. Well, left-liberal Brit was having none of it: Dacre not a complete and utter bastard? No way, the man must burn in hell. So my edit was removed on - annoyingly - technical grounds, and despite my reinstating it and trying to satisfy 'the rules' - nerds just adore 'rules' - several times, I finally admitted defeat. Most recently, my addition to the Wikepedia entry on the Spanish-American War is annoying the nerds, tho' now it is not the left-liberal nerds, but those who feel that we who were not born on a white picket fence with an appe pie stuck up our arse and whistling the Stars And Stripes are somehow sub-human.
My edit, well-sourced this time, to comply with 'the rules' pointed out that several respected US historians do not agree with the party line that the Spanish-American War was started to help the Cuban independence fighters throw of the Spanish yoke but was fully intended to find new markets for American goods.
(Incidentally, just as civilian casualties in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have been extremely high while the US fights the good fight - to introduce or preserve democracy, apparently - more than a quarter of a million Filipinos met their maker because of American action.) Well, several Yankee nerds were having none of this and removed my edit wholesale. Last night I re-instated it and shall now see how long it remains as part of the entry. I am not holding my breath. For reference you can find it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish-American_War) and as of 10.05am on October 7, 2009, it was still there.
Beware nerds. And never underestimate them.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
One last throw of the dice to see if I can't yet filch one of those Arts Council sinecures
As title. I feel that the name Sir Patrick Powell, knighted for services to the arts and crafts and what bloody else is a damn sight more evocative than plain old Pat Powell, remember him? He was OK, bit of a nutter, tho' don't get me wrong, I don't mean mad or anything like that, you know, just a bit wacky, a bit unpredictable, bit of a loose cannon, know what I mean?
Er, no. As far as I am concerned it is the world which is a bit 'wacky'.
Blathering on while I wait for YouTube to work its magic so I can embed the film here. Hurry up, for God's sake.
What does it all mean? Er, nothing.
Er, no. As far as I am concerned it is the world which is a bit 'wacky'.
Blathering on while I wait for YouTube to work its magic so I can embed the film here. Hurry up, for God's sake.
What does it all mean? Er, nothing.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
One more day to go...
Well, there is one more day to go, I'm doing fuck all else, so I thought I might dribble on a bit more. It is a bit sobering to know that only two other people are reading this, but what is the cliche everyone trots out when talking of a huge task (in my case getting the whole world to read my pointless meanderings)? A journey of a 1,000 miles starts with just one step. Quite. And you wonder why I am employed in the cliche industry and have so far not seen any reason to attempt more honourable employment.
The hotel is fine for food and accommodation and spotlessly clean. I am, at heart, a simple chap, so that is basically all I want. What I haven't really liked is the lack of ineresting company. True I have made several slight acquaintances - the couple from Bradford on Avon, Patrick and Jean from Basingstoke, a Brummie couple (well, Black Country, actually) and the three from Canary Wharf for which read Isle of Dogs. But there is such a thing as conversation and of that there has been none. My book, which I have only one day left to finish the last 100 pages or I shall be obliged to steal it, has been a bonus, and in more ways than one. When, for about 14 months, I was a paid up member of the Conservative Party (only because I decided I didn´t want to be just another pub bore sounding off, should get politically active and felt the Tories were the party I least disagreed with), I never felt 'a Tory', mainly because I am not 'a Tory'. But it also has to be said that however well I got on with individual members, I was still regarded as something of a pinko by almost all of them. But here is not the place to outline my views, still confused as they are, but I shall briefly say that, generally, I cannot rid myself of the conviction that things are stacked against a lot of people and in favour of a few. The few would have us believe that it has to be that way in order for everyone to prosper. And persuading most countries that is the case has been their salvation. A useful, effective and tried and tested technique for keep the status quo - and keeping those who do live in misery down - is gradual reform, reform which blunts the main thrust of discontent but which otherwise does very little except stabilise the status quo. We all might like to think that merely because a lot more people can apparently afford a lot more things, everything is hunky-dory. Not quite. We might no longer have an out-and-out 'working class' but we most definitely have an underclass which we keep in line with copious welfare payments and a large amount of antidepressants. Let´s not kid ourselves. Ian Duncan Smith is a chap on the right lines on that score, despite being 'a Tory' for which no one will forgive him.
I shall do some more reading, with the proviso that I am not in the slightest bit interested in any kind of propaganda. I want intelligent analysis, and PHUS was that in spades.
I have been joking about how enormously fat a great many Brits are, but in truth they a great many are enormously fat. That is not an exaggeration, and I should like my two readers to accept that I, who invariably exaggerates for effect, am here being deadly serious. It is a problem. A further problem might be that not only have we Brits become flabby physically, but, I suspect, we are also flabby morally and intellectually. This is perhaps the gripe and criticism of sixtysomethings through the ages, but it is nonethe less valid for that. I like to think that, as a rule, I don't jump on the nearest reactionary bandwagon and slag of everything and everyone more than ten years younger than my age group. But it is a real cause for worry.
What I have enjoyed these past 13 days have been my walk to Eularia, my short walk alone up the mountainside and my trip today to the old town of Evissa. It is being alone I like. At first it is difficult, but as the days more on it becomes easier. The trouble with going on holiday is finding somewhere where one can be alone. My next holiday, or rather my holiday after that because I should dearly like to take Elsie and Wesley on holiday which means Celie and her continual griping must come, too, will be somewhere quite remote. Organising it will take a lot of reasearch but that is what I should like to do. In the meantime, I think I should make more use of the fact that I live in a very pleasant part of Britain where a little solitude is also available.
A week tomorrow I am due to go out for a drink with Denis, my brother-in-law, an Irishman from Cork who I like a lot. I know I sound crass talking about my wife, but believe me whatever my faults, a change in attitude, a more positive view of life, a more embracing view, less of a parochial view and stopping her eternal criticism of me would go a hell of a long way. Jesus, I get on with 99 percent of people I meet, so why can't I get on with her? Answers, please, on a postcard.
The trouble with entries such as this is that being a talker and finding it not too difficult to write, I can talk - write - the hind legs off a donkey (cliche alert). It is the activity of writing I enjoy and, if the truth be told, I am still half in love with now being able to touch-type which makes typing so much easier.
Getting my last drink of the evening - I am writing this in the bar which has free wireless internet access - I have just been - talking to Isabel, a 14-month-0ld girl, and she, and all the other children in the world make that world go round for me. Yet what do they get? In Britain they run the risk of being shortchange on education, if they live in a town or the wrong end of town they run the risk of knife crime, Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. What has young Isabel to look forward to. I know this all sounds rather dramatic, but these problems do exist.
Shit, the drink is showing. Blathering on. Perhaps I have been working for the Daily Mail for too long. Anyway, I'd better stop as I am running out of laptop battery.
The hotel is fine for food and accommodation and spotlessly clean. I am, at heart, a simple chap, so that is basically all I want. What I haven't really liked is the lack of ineresting company. True I have made several slight acquaintances - the couple from Bradford on Avon, Patrick and Jean from Basingstoke, a Brummie couple (well, Black Country, actually) and the three from Canary Wharf for which read Isle of Dogs. But there is such a thing as conversation and of that there has been none. My book, which I have only one day left to finish the last 100 pages or I shall be obliged to steal it, has been a bonus, and in more ways than one. When, for about 14 months, I was a paid up member of the Conservative Party (only because I decided I didn´t want to be just another pub bore sounding off, should get politically active and felt the Tories were the party I least disagreed with), I never felt 'a Tory', mainly because I am not 'a Tory'. But it also has to be said that however well I got on with individual members, I was still regarded as something of a pinko by almost all of them. But here is not the place to outline my views, still confused as they are, but I shall briefly say that, generally, I cannot rid myself of the conviction that things are stacked against a lot of people and in favour of a few. The few would have us believe that it has to be that way in order for everyone to prosper. And persuading most countries that is the case has been their salvation. A useful, effective and tried and tested technique for keep the status quo - and keeping those who do live in misery down - is gradual reform, reform which blunts the main thrust of discontent but which otherwise does very little except stabilise the status quo. We all might like to think that merely because a lot more people can apparently afford a lot more things, everything is hunky-dory. Not quite. We might no longer have an out-and-out 'working class' but we most definitely have an underclass which we keep in line with copious welfare payments and a large amount of antidepressants. Let´s not kid ourselves. Ian Duncan Smith is a chap on the right lines on that score, despite being 'a Tory' for which no one will forgive him.
I shall do some more reading, with the proviso that I am not in the slightest bit interested in any kind of propaganda. I want intelligent analysis, and PHUS was that in spades.
I have been joking about how enormously fat a great many Brits are, but in truth they a great many are enormously fat. That is not an exaggeration, and I should like my two readers to accept that I, who invariably exaggerates for effect, am here being deadly serious. It is a problem. A further problem might be that not only have we Brits become flabby physically, but, I suspect, we are also flabby morally and intellectually. This is perhaps the gripe and criticism of sixtysomethings through the ages, but it is nonethe less valid for that. I like to think that, as a rule, I don't jump on the nearest reactionary bandwagon and slag of everything and everyone more than ten years younger than my age group. But it is a real cause for worry.
What I have enjoyed these past 13 days have been my walk to Eularia, my short walk alone up the mountainside and my trip today to the old town of Evissa. It is being alone I like. At first it is difficult, but as the days more on it becomes easier. The trouble with going on holiday is finding somewhere where one can be alone. My next holiday, or rather my holiday after that because I should dearly like to take Elsie and Wesley on holiday which means Celie and her continual griping must come, too, will be somewhere quite remote. Organising it will take a lot of reasearch but that is what I should like to do. In the meantime, I think I should make more use of the fact that I live in a very pleasant part of Britain where a little solitude is also available.
A week tomorrow I am due to go out for a drink with Denis, my brother-in-law, an Irishman from Cork who I like a lot. I know I sound crass talking about my wife, but believe me whatever my faults, a change in attitude, a more positive view of life, a more embracing view, less of a parochial view and stopping her eternal criticism of me would go a hell of a long way. Jesus, I get on with 99 percent of people I meet, so why can't I get on with her? Answers, please, on a postcard.
The trouble with entries such as this is that being a talker and finding it not too difficult to write, I can talk - write - the hind legs off a donkey (cliche alert). It is the activity of writing I enjoy and, if the truth be told, I am still half in love with now being able to touch-type which makes typing so much easier.
Getting my last drink of the evening - I am writing this in the bar which has free wireless internet access - I have just been - talking to Isabel, a 14-month-0ld girl, and she, and all the other children in the world make that world go round for me. Yet what do they get? In Britain they run the risk of being shortchange on education, if they live in a town or the wrong end of town they run the risk of knife crime, Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. What has young Isabel to look forward to. I know this all sounds rather dramatic, but these problems do exist.
Shit, the drink is showing. Blathering on. Perhaps I have been working for the Daily Mail for too long. Anyway, I'd better stop as I am running out of laptop battery.
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