I am the proud owner of three laptops. In fact, I have a fourth laptop in the house, but that belongs to work and is set up for me to be able to access the feature pages so I can set about slapping the puzzles on their pages. (Incidentally, during the spat I had with all the bright sparks from The Archers, it was suggested that I ‘set the puzzles’ which is why they were so dull. Quite apart from that being rather a lame insult, it’s not true. Not for me the glory of ‘setting’ the puzzles – by which I understand ‘making them up’ – but my role is about as mundane as could be. I call up the pages, and from a store of puzzles which are submitted by their various compilers I simply place the puzzles on the pages. It is quite repetitive work, but I do it on a freelance basis and am paid reasonably well for doing it. So I don’t care. It means that when bills arrive, I don’t fret quite as much as did. But back to laptops and other gadgetry.) Our household also has a total of, I think – I’ve just made a quick tally – 15 mobile phones, several of which are years old and quite inert and of no use to anyone except, perhaps, a design museum desperate for exhibits of any kind. That collection is something of a standing joke at work, but in all honesty there is full set of completely rational explanations as to why we – which should read ‘I’ – have accumulated that many, and furthermore I am quite prepared to outline them. Almost all of them cost less than £10, so it’s not as though I were wasting money. It is, perhaps, ironic that none of us uses our mobile phones very much. My daughter who is off the texting age, does a lot of textin, or rather did, for I’ve noticed her phone has been sitting in the same place in the kitchen for several days. My son, I now owns two of my old phones, doesn’t use either. My wife and I only use them briefly to ring from or to the supermarket with last-minute request. All are pay-as-you-go phones, so it’s not as though £50 is being spent each month for no very good reason. In fact, I am often amazed at how people with spend that amount each month on a phone contract but when you hear them talking to each other, it is invariably such inconsequential crap that it is hardly worth the bother of eavesdropping. I am even tempted to go as far as to say that I regard people who take out such contracts merely to waste money as certifiable idiots, but as I have just admitted to being the owner of 15 mobile phones of which just three are occasionally used, I am on rather thin ice, so on this occasion I shall withhold judgment. There is a similar set of rational explanations for my three laptops. In fact, as I am in confessional mode, I should come clean and tell you that until about three months ago, I actually owned four laptops, but I sold the oldest and least reliable because – well, what was the point. I have been a Mac man all my computing life, which started in March 1998 when I bought a Mac clone. But I am writing this on a Windows 7 laptop, a Samsung, which is my latest acquisition. I still think Windows are horribly round the houses, utterly unintuitive – or better, even more unintuitive than Mac – and I dislike them almost as much as I dislike the ‘Mac community’, that self-regarding bunch of conceited fuckwits who really do think they are a cut above everyone else. I should also admit that Windows 7, visually, is now halfway decent and a 100pc improvement on XP, which was itself a 100pc improvement on whatever abortion Microsoft was flogging before. Buying this particular laptop was almost a mistake. I don’t mean that it’s a bad laptop – it’s rather a nice one. What I mean is that I wasn’t really going to buy one, but . . . What with the extra dosh I had in my pocket every month, my mind had turned to considering buying a Windows laptop for a while, for two reasons. First, I knew from using my brother’s Windows laptop that BBC iPlayer seemed to play more smoothly on Windows than on any of my G4 laptops (at the time I had two iBooks and a Powerbook). Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the iPlayer code is more suited to Windows. And perhaps more recent Intel chip-driven Macs play iPlayer more smoothly. I don’t know. Then there is the small matter of internet backgammon which you can play online courtesy of Microsoft from XP on. And I must admit I do enjoy playing backgammon a great deal. So with the idea of possibly buying yet another laptop became a half idea in my head and I began to haunt eBay with a view to seeing what was there. That was, of course, the kiss of death, because a small, but very dangerous part of me is a shopaholic. So within weeks of adding several possible purchases to my watch list, I spotted a possible bargain. It was a new Samsung 540 with an Intel dual-core chip. What made it particularly attractive was that no one seemed to be taking an interest, but, more important, the auction was set to end at an ‘unfashionable hour’, by which I mean something like 9am when fewer people can be bothered to get their act together to bid online. So courtesy of one of the ‘we bid for you’ website – I shan’t say which one because for some reason or other it still hasn’t charged me a penny for using its service even though I’ve been doing so for almost two years – I put in my, comparatively low bid, being more or less certain that I would be outbid. But, dear reader, I wasn’t. And I bought that brand, spanking new Samsung 540 with a 500gb hard drive for around £120 less than they were commanding elsewhere on eBay. There was, of course, they ticklish task of obliquely acquainting my wife with the fact that our household was now the proud owner of a third laptop (she didn’t know about the fourth, ever) but I did that sooner rather than later just to get it over with.
. . .
I seem to have rambled on rather more than usual, and I began merely to record how odd it is that so many people on the Microsoft internet backgammon site are bad losers. Of so I assume, because more often than not, if, in a best of five games match, the opponent realises he or she – though I should imagine it is invariably he – is going to lose, they simply bow out with even the courtesy of resigning. When you play, you can set your standard as beginner, intermediate or expert. Well, for the past few months I have set myself as expert in the hope I would get some more challenging games, but the only difference I have seen between expert and intermediate status is that more people who class themselves as expert players bow out early without even resigning if it’s pretty certain they are going to lose. I have many, many faults, but I can, at least, honestly claim to be a good loser. I know that cuts no ice in the US, but her in Blighty we good losers are thought of as the salt of the earth.
Friday 7 January 2011
Tuesday 4 January 2011
Synchronicity, or another way of talking bollocks. What, you were just thinking that, too? Spooky!
There are many out there who are in thrall to coincidence and ‘synchronicity’, which is a kind of coincidence for new age freaks. If I have got it right – a big if, as I regard it as just so much claptrap – ‘synchronicity’ is coincidence with a kind of added significance. So someone will say something along the lines of: ‘I was just thinking of my twin sister in Sydney and how I had called her for a while for a chat, when the phone rang – and it was my twin sister in Sydney! Spooky! What do you think of that!’ Well, not a lot, really. In fact, nothing. It’s just a coincidence and there’s no significance at all.
In fact, researchers (who seem to be everywhere – if you want to make a tidy living doing very little, just find yourself a topic to research and sooner or later you’ll find some fool to finance your work) have delved into ‘coincidence’ and concluded that to establish whether there is any significance in ‘coincidence’, one would have to establish on how many occasions no coincidence was involved. So, in the example I give, one would have to compare how often twin one was thinking about twin two and at that moment twin two decides to ring twin one with how often twin one was thinking of twin two but twin two didn’t ring and how often twin two rang but at that point twin one had not been thinking about twin two. If you get my drift. And the conclusion was that that there is no cosmic significance in coincidence.
Coincidence is simply, well, coincidence and chance.
Being an honest sort of chap, I have to admit when I was younger – I am now 112 years old, so that was some time ago – I was a little more prepared to believe in bollocks such as synchronicity. But then something happened which rather sobered my up.
Like many hacks, I suffered a kind of professional mid-life crisis when I was in my 30s. It happens to many, if not all (interestingly never the ones destined for high office). Some fuck off to a Greek island ‘to write my novel’, others ‘retrain’ as something of other. One hack I knew, a half-Polish chap who would get very drunk indeed given half a chance but who was always excellent company, jacked it all in an started an antique stall.
It failed after just a few months - how could it not? - but buggered that he would give in, he soldiered on for a while, getting further and further into debt until he finally saw sense and came back to earning his daily crust working for newspapers. Life was much as it had been before, except that now he owed the banks several thousands pounds, on which, nice chaps that they always have been, they also imposed a swingeing interest rate.
When I was in my early 30s, I had developed an interest in photography, so I eventually left the extremely boring, job subbing on the CEGB staff newspaper I had at the time and started a full-time photography course at West Bromwich College in Wednesbury. We all – I stress all – eventually drift back into a life on a newspaper, slinking back with our tales between our legs, chastened, possibly a little wiser, but most definitely far more jaundiced than we were before.
I am still interested in photography, but started in the days before Photoshop and then digital cameras, when doing it properly involved not just taking pictures and then dropping off the film at Boots, but developing the film and printing the pictures, and a lot of skill was needed for both. It was element of hands-on practicality combining with the more creative side which I enjoyed.
So off I went to college, on the strength of the promise of working regular subbing shifts on the Birmingham Post to see me through and lump sum our father gave all of us. I lasted two terms of a two-year course before I ran out of money and had to leave to find work. I did, as an assistant in an advertising studio in Harborne, Birmingham, one of reasonably big ones outside London, but the truth was I was too old for that kind of existence and left after two months.
My next job was a subbing job in South Wales, but after dropping one too many bollocks (subbing in the provinces it as close to shovelling shit as any job can get and boring just isn’t the word. Subbing on the nationals is far more enjoyable, not least because the standards are far, far higher), I was sacked. That was in September 1989 and I decided that the time had come to try my luck as a ‘freelance photographer’. I also did whatever other jobs I could find, working subbing shifts on the local morning paper and writing feautures. And it didn’t go badly. Then, come the turn of the financial year at the beginning of April 1990, everyone, but everyone battened down the hatches and I simply wasn’t getting enough work to exist. But I am getting ahead of myself.
On November 21 the previous year, I turned 40 and went off to Paris to spend a few days with my then girlfriend. On my way back, via the boat train, there was some sort of storm and I and an elderly couple were told that if we hurried, we could get on the last Hovercraft to be crossing the channel that day. It was either that or wait until the following morning. So the three of us agreed to share a taxi to travel the 10 miles or so to the port where the Hovercraft would be leaving. During the journey, naturally, we chatted, and I discovered that the chap, who was well into his 80s was one of the founder members of the world-famous photography co-operative Magnum Photos. Unfortunately, I can’t remember his name, but he was either David Seymour or George Rodger.
So there was I who intended forging a new career for himself as a photographer in a chance meeting with one of the greats of photography! God, how significant is that! I told myself. Just think how interesting it will be when, as an old man, I come to look back on my career in my memoirs! Or when someone else comes to write my biography tracing my illustrious career as a photographer! Coincidence, synchronicity? Yes, and then some.
Or not, as the case may be. For, as I pointed out about, my illustrious career as a photographer came to an abrupt end five months later, and like all the other hacks, I found myself slinking back to the second oldest profession, in my case working shifts on the nationals in London.
The moral of this story? Stuff significance and synchronicity.
. . .
I have to admit that I don’t think there is any intrinsic significance in life. Or, to put it another way, life is intrinsically meaningless. The God squad will, of course, disagree, but I am inclined to see us humans as just another life-form which evolved into what it is, and that’s the end of the matter. We are a life-form more complex than some, and I don’t know of too many crustaceans who get there knickers in a twist debating the basis of morality (or writing blogs, for that matter), but I do believe it is hubris of the worst kind to think that we humans are in some way marked out as being special. (For one thing, if we were so special, would be really treat each other so badly?)
Having said that, there is much in our lives that does have meaning or which gives our lives meaning. And I hasten to add that, not only because that is what I sincerely believe and because it is the necessary second half to my opening statement, but because otherwise, as a species, we would undoubtedly behave even worse than we do now.
So, for example, my two children, the love I feel for them, their company, the love they show me and the care I am glad to give them until they are old enough to take care of themselves form, as far as I am concerned, the meaning of my life. I am aware of the irony that, just as you and I did when we got older, they will grow apart from me as they become ever more self-aware of their own existence, and that I will probably mean a lot less to them in times to come than they mean to me, but then (to use a cliché) that’s life. Once they have flown the nest I shall have to cast around for other ‘meanings’ with which to sustain my spirit until the time comes for me to pop my clogs.
It doesn’t just have to be family which gives a man or woman meaning. For many, a kind of their life gains a kind of ‘meaning’ from their ability to lord it over others, or their capacity to get ever richer, or, to give a less horrible example, an altruistic capacity they have to spend their lives helping others. But I stick by my central point, that life has no intrinsic meaning or significance.
...
I am writing this while lying in bed with the ‘flu, though whether it is bird flu, swine flu, man flu or common or garden flu, I couldn’t really tell you. All I know is that I feel very grotty indeed and only perk up for an hour or two (in which time I can lie here bending your ear with my inconsequential bullshit) after swallowing doses of Day Nurse (available at all good chemists and many bad ones, too). But the point of this entry is that I should like your prayers for a speedy recovery, or, if you are not the praying kind, at least your best wishes.
Emails from you assuring me that I am constantly in your thoughts during this difficult time (for me) would be more than welcome. And a private message to the chap with the lumpy sofa about whose comfort the police are especially concerned: tell me some of your almost unbelievable stories. I need something to cheer me up.
In fact, researchers (who seem to be everywhere – if you want to make a tidy living doing very little, just find yourself a topic to research and sooner or later you’ll find some fool to finance your work) have delved into ‘coincidence’ and concluded that to establish whether there is any significance in ‘coincidence’, one would have to establish on how many occasions no coincidence was involved. So, in the example I give, one would have to compare how often twin one was thinking about twin two and at that moment twin two decides to ring twin one with how often twin one was thinking of twin two but twin two didn’t ring and how often twin two rang but at that point twin one had not been thinking about twin two. If you get my drift. And the conclusion was that that there is no cosmic significance in coincidence.
Coincidence is simply, well, coincidence and chance.
Being an honest sort of chap, I have to admit when I was younger – I am now 112 years old, so that was some time ago – I was a little more prepared to believe in bollocks such as synchronicity. But then something happened which rather sobered my up.
Like many hacks, I suffered a kind of professional mid-life crisis when I was in my 30s. It happens to many, if not all (interestingly never the ones destined for high office). Some fuck off to a Greek island ‘to write my novel’, others ‘retrain’ as something of other. One hack I knew, a half-Polish chap who would get very drunk indeed given half a chance but who was always excellent company, jacked it all in an started an antique stall.
It failed after just a few months - how could it not? - but buggered that he would give in, he soldiered on for a while, getting further and further into debt until he finally saw sense and came back to earning his daily crust working for newspapers. Life was much as it had been before, except that now he owed the banks several thousands pounds, on which, nice chaps that they always have been, they also imposed a swingeing interest rate.
When I was in my early 30s, I had developed an interest in photography, so I eventually left the extremely boring, job subbing on the CEGB staff newspaper I had at the time and started a full-time photography course at West Bromwich College in Wednesbury. We all – I stress all – eventually drift back into a life on a newspaper, slinking back with our tales between our legs, chastened, possibly a little wiser, but most definitely far more jaundiced than we were before.
I am still interested in photography, but started in the days before Photoshop and then digital cameras, when doing it properly involved not just taking pictures and then dropping off the film at Boots, but developing the film and printing the pictures, and a lot of skill was needed for both. It was element of hands-on practicality combining with the more creative side which I enjoyed.
So off I went to college, on the strength of the promise of working regular subbing shifts on the Birmingham Post to see me through and lump sum our father gave all of us. I lasted two terms of a two-year course before I ran out of money and had to leave to find work. I did, as an assistant in an advertising studio in Harborne, Birmingham, one of reasonably big ones outside London, but the truth was I was too old for that kind of existence and left after two months.
My next job was a subbing job in South Wales, but after dropping one too many bollocks (subbing in the provinces it as close to shovelling shit as any job can get and boring just isn’t the word. Subbing on the nationals is far more enjoyable, not least because the standards are far, far higher), I was sacked. That was in September 1989 and I decided that the time had come to try my luck as a ‘freelance photographer’. I also did whatever other jobs I could find, working subbing shifts on the local morning paper and writing feautures. And it didn’t go badly. Then, come the turn of the financial year at the beginning of April 1990, everyone, but everyone battened down the hatches and I simply wasn’t getting enough work to exist. But I am getting ahead of myself.
On November 21 the previous year, I turned 40 and went off to Paris to spend a few days with my then girlfriend. On my way back, via the boat train, there was some sort of storm and I and an elderly couple were told that if we hurried, we could get on the last Hovercraft to be crossing the channel that day. It was either that or wait until the following morning. So the three of us agreed to share a taxi to travel the 10 miles or so to the port where the Hovercraft would be leaving. During the journey, naturally, we chatted, and I discovered that the chap, who was well into his 80s was one of the founder members of the world-famous photography co-operative Magnum Photos. Unfortunately, I can’t remember his name, but he was either David Seymour or George Rodger.
So there was I who intended forging a new career for himself as a photographer in a chance meeting with one of the greats of photography! God, how significant is that! I told myself. Just think how interesting it will be when, as an old man, I come to look back on my career in my memoirs! Or when someone else comes to write my biography tracing my illustrious career as a photographer! Coincidence, synchronicity? Yes, and then some.
Or not, as the case may be. For, as I pointed out about, my illustrious career as a photographer came to an abrupt end five months later, and like all the other hacks, I found myself slinking back to the second oldest profession, in my case working shifts on the nationals in London.
The moral of this story? Stuff significance and synchronicity.
. . .
I have to admit that I don’t think there is any intrinsic significance in life. Or, to put it another way, life is intrinsically meaningless. The God squad will, of course, disagree, but I am inclined to see us humans as just another life-form which evolved into what it is, and that’s the end of the matter. We are a life-form more complex than some, and I don’t know of too many crustaceans who get there knickers in a twist debating the basis of morality (or writing blogs, for that matter), but I do believe it is hubris of the worst kind to think that we humans are in some way marked out as being special. (For one thing, if we were so special, would be really treat each other so badly?)
Having said that, there is much in our lives that does have meaning or which gives our lives meaning. And I hasten to add that, not only because that is what I sincerely believe and because it is the necessary second half to my opening statement, but because otherwise, as a species, we would undoubtedly behave even worse than we do now.
So, for example, my two children, the love I feel for them, their company, the love they show me and the care I am glad to give them until they are old enough to take care of themselves form, as far as I am concerned, the meaning of my life. I am aware of the irony that, just as you and I did when we got older, they will grow apart from me as they become ever more self-aware of their own existence, and that I will probably mean a lot less to them in times to come than they mean to me, but then (to use a cliché) that’s life. Once they have flown the nest I shall have to cast around for other ‘meanings’ with which to sustain my spirit until the time comes for me to pop my clogs.
It doesn’t just have to be family which gives a man or woman meaning. For many, a kind of their life gains a kind of ‘meaning’ from their ability to lord it over others, or their capacity to get ever richer, or, to give a less horrible example, an altruistic capacity they have to spend their lives helping others. But I stick by my central point, that life has no intrinsic meaning or significance.
...
I am writing this while lying in bed with the ‘flu, though whether it is bird flu, swine flu, man flu or common or garden flu, I couldn’t really tell you. All I know is that I feel very grotty indeed and only perk up for an hour or two (in which time I can lie here bending your ear with my inconsequential bullshit) after swallowing doses of Day Nurse (available at all good chemists and many bad ones, too). But the point of this entry is that I should like your prayers for a speedy recovery, or, if you are not the praying kind, at least your best wishes.
Emails from you assuring me that I am constantly in your thoughts during this difficult time (for me) would be more than welcome. And a private message to the chap with the lumpy sofa about whose comfort the police are especially concerned: tell me some of your almost unbelievable stories. I need something to cheer me up.
Monday 3 January 2011
Ah, the joy of a free Press: which can (apparently) hang, draw and quarter us at will; Estonia goes for broke - it would seem literally
Like most countries, England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland has its own legal system) try to ensure that those who come before its courts get a fair trial. And one way they do so is to enforce an aspect of the ‘contempt of court’legislation: once someone has been charged with a crime, the media can only report that fact and his or her name and address. This rule was once very strictly observed. and anyone straying beyond those bounds was severely bollocked and could even be jailed for contempt of court.
In the U.S., and for all I know other countries, they have a different tradition and even before a trial has started, the public can be assailed from all sides with lurid accounts of why the accused did it, how he did it, when he did it and what sentence he can expect when, as the media fully expect, he is found bang to rights. Furthermore, those same media feel no shame whatsoever when their lurid prognostications are found by a jury to be just so much bollocks. But as I don’t know too much about the legal system in the U.S. and other countries, I shall leave it at that.
I was a reporter for six years and attended a great deal of magistrate and Crown Court hearings, and the one rule we had to observe was that, in the phrase which we all know, the accused, who was only ever ‘the accused’, was ‘innocent until proven guilty’. So we had to be very careful what we wrote. One way of keeping to the straight and narrow was to stick that very useful word ‘alleged’ in front of everything.
That all changed, or rather I personally noticed that that had all changed, when The Yorkshire Ripper was caught. Peter Sutcliffe had murdered more than ten prostitutes in a number of years, and had slipped through the police’s hands more than once after being questioned. When he was finally arrested, the police said – whether informally or not – that ‘they were not looking for anyone else in connection with the murders’.
The message was broadcast loud and clear well before any possible jury would be allowed to consider the evidence: Sutcliffe did it. The irony is that had Sutcliffe chosen to plead not guilty at his subsequent trial, his lawyers might well have been able to claim the publicity ensured he would not get a free trial. In the event, he pleaded guilty. (One conspiracy theory claims the deal he cut with the police was that – as he was going down for life, anyway – he would be ensured to be sent to the far cushier Broadmoor, our hospital for the criminally insane, rather than a common or garden prison if he admitted to murdering several prostitutes he hadn’t actually done in. This, so the conspiracists claim, because the cops wanted to clear a couple of other murders from their books they knew Sutcliffe had not committed. The theory goes on the claim that there was not one but two ‘Rippers’, the second simply copying what Sutcliffe started.)
I was reminded of this by The Sun’s coverage in these past few days of a woman called Jo Yeates, who disappeared a few days before Christmas and whose body was found just over a week later. Jo and her boyfriend rented a flat from a retired English teacher who, it seems, was something of an eccentric. And within a day of telling police that he recalled hearing three people leaving her flat on the day she disappeared, Chris Jefferies, who is 65 and unmarried, was arrested ‘on suspicion of murder’. Crucially, he was only arrested for questioning. He was not charged. The Press, of course went to town: on December 31, The Sun had him bang to rights, not actually claiming he was Jo’s killer, but hinting broadly in that former pupils described him as ‘weird, posh, lewd and creepy’. It didn’t help matters that he ‘blue-rinsed’ his hair. (To be fair, other papers also pushed out the boat. The fact that I am only giving examples form The Sun doesn’t mean all the other papers behaved impeccably in this matter. It was also a stroke of luck that Jefferies had taught English at the nearby public school Clifton Colleger. Red top readers always like a ‘posh’ angle.)
A day later, The Sun produced further proof fingering Jefferies (pictured). It seemed he had ‘followed a woman’
who was a former acquaintance of the murder victim. Well! (was the implication), he’s your man! What sort of murdering weirdo does that! Except that perhaps he isn’t. He might be of course, but the police have now released him and warned that whoever killed Jo is ‘still on the streets’. That could, of course, also included Jefferies, but The Sun was careful not to make that connection. Jefferies, it admitted, had been released without charge, and it went on to quote a police chief superintendent: ‘Jo's killer is still out there somewhere. We will find them and bring them to justice. At the moment we don't know who killed her but we are determined to find out.’ Determined, eh? That’s good news, but it if very unfair to be snide about the cops who are doing their best and don’t give up. It would be far fairer to be snide about The Sun and The Mirror and all the other papers, the ‘serious’ papers included, who are only too prepared to hang, draw and quarter a man because he is odd, unmarried and blue-rinses his hair.
Naturally, I have no idea who killed Jo. It is as likely to be Jefferies as anyone else, and we could see him re-arrested and charged with Jo’s murder. And we could equally see someone entirely different arrested and charged. My point is this: why are the Press being allowed to drive a coach and four through established contempt of court legislation? In a way, the courts only have themselves to blame, in that they didn’t crack down on it sooner. Give them a yard and they will take a mile. I am not at all in favour of any legislation to curtail the Press (as many MPs who have been caught with their pants down or their fingers in the till are), but equally important as Press freedom – in which we take the rough with the smooth – is that our media should not act as judge, jury and hangman when it suits them, for which read when it is likely to boost sales of their rags.
. . .
I, for one, always admire courage, even of the foolhardy kind. There’s something noble about the knight who shoulders his lance, waves farewell to his damsel, then urges on his steed to gallop ever faster into certain death. So, I think we should raise a glass to plucky Estonia which on New Year’s Day ditched its old currency, the kroon, and embraced the future which is the euro. Not for them the safer waters of ‘well, given what’s been going on, wouldn’t it be wiser to slow down and see what happens?’ Apparently not.
I am obliged to be a little fairer, however, and concede that not all of Estonia is happy with the move. Just, it seems, the politicians. Those opposed to ditching the kroon in favour of the euro plastering Tallin with posters proclaiming: ‘Estonia. Welcome to the Titanic. Whether or not the hoi polloi are happy with the move depends on whose survey you read. The Estonian government reckons around half of the population support adopting the euro, while a survey commissioned by opponents claims only 34.3pc favoured the move, while 52.8pc opposed it.
This morning, the news from Estonia was gloomy. Estonians are finding it hard to come to grips with the new currency. Oh, well. You can't say they weren't warned.
. . .
The big news of the week – well, for some perhaps, although not me – is that Agnetha Whatever (the blonde one) would ‘not say no’ to an Abba reunion. To which the only sane response is: don’t do it. If there is one thing I have learnt, it is that one of the few principles worth a candle is: Never Go Back. Don’t go back to girl or boyfriends, don’t go back to an old company, don’t go back to live where you were once glad to get away and, particularly relevant for bands, don’t reform. Certainly, there will be more than enough old fans who will make it worth your while financially, but unless you are on your uppers and the taxman is breathing down your neck, stick to the principle and Don’t Do It. Ever. There is no sadder sight than some bunch of old farts, both men and women, bald, jowly, fat, paunchy, reliving their past glories and making a complete hash of it. Yes, they might be persuaded that ‘the return’ was a triumph, but that is usually by the promoter who makes a tidy bob or two and the manager who has had enough and wants to build up a nest egg.
There is a line in The Who’s song My Generation which runs: ‘Hope I die before I get old’. Well, two of them did – Keith Moon and John Entwhistle, but Daltrey and Townshend are now respected elder statesman and there is no sadder sight. Well, there is: the bloody Rolling Stones, still inexplicably billing themselves as the greatest rock band in the world, parading as though they can still cut it.
In the U.S., and for all I know other countries, they have a different tradition and even before a trial has started, the public can be assailed from all sides with lurid accounts of why the accused did it, how he did it, when he did it and what sentence he can expect when, as the media fully expect, he is found bang to rights. Furthermore, those same media feel no shame whatsoever when their lurid prognostications are found by a jury to be just so much bollocks. But as I don’t know too much about the legal system in the U.S. and other countries, I shall leave it at that.
I was a reporter for six years and attended a great deal of magistrate and Crown Court hearings, and the one rule we had to observe was that, in the phrase which we all know, the accused, who was only ever ‘the accused’, was ‘innocent until proven guilty’. So we had to be very careful what we wrote. One way of keeping to the straight and narrow was to stick that very useful word ‘alleged’ in front of everything.
That all changed, or rather I personally noticed that that had all changed, when The Yorkshire Ripper was caught. Peter Sutcliffe had murdered more than ten prostitutes in a number of years, and had slipped through the police’s hands more than once after being questioned. When he was finally arrested, the police said – whether informally or not – that ‘they were not looking for anyone else in connection with the murders’.
The message was broadcast loud and clear well before any possible jury would be allowed to consider the evidence: Sutcliffe did it. The irony is that had Sutcliffe chosen to plead not guilty at his subsequent trial, his lawyers might well have been able to claim the publicity ensured he would not get a free trial. In the event, he pleaded guilty. (One conspiracy theory claims the deal he cut with the police was that – as he was going down for life, anyway – he would be ensured to be sent to the far cushier Broadmoor, our hospital for the criminally insane, rather than a common or garden prison if he admitted to murdering several prostitutes he hadn’t actually done in. This, so the conspiracists claim, because the cops wanted to clear a couple of other murders from their books they knew Sutcliffe had not committed. The theory goes on the claim that there was not one but two ‘Rippers’, the second simply copying what Sutcliffe started.)
I was reminded of this by The Sun’s coverage in these past few days of a woman called Jo Yeates, who disappeared a few days before Christmas and whose body was found just over a week later. Jo and her boyfriend rented a flat from a retired English teacher who, it seems, was something of an eccentric. And within a day of telling police that he recalled hearing three people leaving her flat on the day she disappeared, Chris Jefferies, who is 65 and unmarried, was arrested ‘on suspicion of murder’. Crucially, he was only arrested for questioning. He was not charged. The Press, of course went to town: on December 31, The Sun had him bang to rights, not actually claiming he was Jo’s killer, but hinting broadly in that former pupils described him as ‘weird, posh, lewd and creepy’. It didn’t help matters that he ‘blue-rinsed’ his hair. (To be fair, other papers also pushed out the boat. The fact that I am only giving examples form The Sun doesn’t mean all the other papers behaved impeccably in this matter. It was also a stroke of luck that Jefferies had taught English at the nearby public school Clifton Colleger. Red top readers always like a ‘posh’ angle.)
A day later, The Sun produced further proof fingering Jefferies (pictured). It seemed he had ‘followed a woman’
who was a former acquaintance of the murder victim. Well! (was the implication), he’s your man! What sort of murdering weirdo does that! Except that perhaps he isn’t. He might be of course, but the police have now released him and warned that whoever killed Jo is ‘still on the streets’. That could, of course, also included Jefferies, but The Sun was careful not to make that connection. Jefferies, it admitted, had been released without charge, and it went on to quote a police chief superintendent: ‘Jo's killer is still out there somewhere. We will find them and bring them to justice. At the moment we don't know who killed her but we are determined to find out.’ Determined, eh? That’s good news, but it if very unfair to be snide about the cops who are doing their best and don’t give up. It would be far fairer to be snide about The Sun and The Mirror and all the other papers, the ‘serious’ papers included, who are only too prepared to hang, draw and quarter a man because he is odd, unmarried and blue-rinses his hair.
Naturally, I have no idea who killed Jo. It is as likely to be Jefferies as anyone else, and we could see him re-arrested and charged with Jo’s murder. And we could equally see someone entirely different arrested and charged. My point is this: why are the Press being allowed to drive a coach and four through established contempt of court legislation? In a way, the courts only have themselves to blame, in that they didn’t crack down on it sooner. Give them a yard and they will take a mile. I am not at all in favour of any legislation to curtail the Press (as many MPs who have been caught with their pants down or their fingers in the till are), but equally important as Press freedom – in which we take the rough with the smooth – is that our media should not act as judge, jury and hangman when it suits them, for which read when it is likely to boost sales of their rags.
. . .
I, for one, always admire courage, even of the foolhardy kind. There’s something noble about the knight who shoulders his lance, waves farewell to his damsel, then urges on his steed to gallop ever faster into certain death. So, I think we should raise a glass to plucky Estonia which on New Year’s Day ditched its old currency, the kroon, and embraced the future which is the euro. Not for them the safer waters of ‘well, given what’s been going on, wouldn’t it be wiser to slow down and see what happens?’ Apparently not.
I am obliged to be a little fairer, however, and concede that not all of Estonia is happy with the move. Just, it seems, the politicians. Those opposed to ditching the kroon in favour of the euro plastering Tallin with posters proclaiming: ‘Estonia. Welcome to the Titanic. Whether or not the hoi polloi are happy with the move depends on whose survey you read. The Estonian government reckons around half of the population support adopting the euro, while a survey commissioned by opponents claims only 34.3pc favoured the move, while 52.8pc opposed it.
This morning, the news from Estonia was gloomy. Estonians are finding it hard to come to grips with the new currency. Oh, well. You can't say they weren't warned.
. . .
The big news of the week – well, for some perhaps, although not me – is that Agnetha Whatever (the blonde one) would ‘not say no’ to an Abba reunion. To which the only sane response is: don’t do it. If there is one thing I have learnt, it is that one of the few principles worth a candle is: Never Go Back. Don’t go back to girl or boyfriends, don’t go back to an old company, don’t go back to live where you were once glad to get away and, particularly relevant for bands, don’t reform. Certainly, there will be more than enough old fans who will make it worth your while financially, but unless you are on your uppers and the taxman is breathing down your neck, stick to the principle and Don’t Do It. Ever. There is no sadder sight than some bunch of old farts, both men and women, bald, jowly, fat, paunchy, reliving their past glories and making a complete hash of it. Yes, they might be persuaded that ‘the return’ was a triumph, but that is usually by the promoter who makes a tidy bob or two and the manager who has had enough and wants to build up a nest egg.
There is a line in The Who’s song My Generation which runs: ‘Hope I die before I get old’. Well, two of them did – Keith Moon and John Entwhistle, but Daltrey and Townshend are now respected elder statesman and there is no sadder sight. Well, there is: the bloody Rolling Stones, still inexplicably billing themselves as the greatest rock band in the world, parading as though they can still cut it.
Saturday 1 January 2011
Sicily, The Leopard, food, Burt Lancaster, Visconti and was Dirk Bogarde merely ham or just a very bad actor?
There was an interesting programme on TV the other night (and I watched it on iPlayer) by the Italian food bod Antonio Carlucci about the novel The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) by (Prince) Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author, the novel’s emphasis on food and the meals eaten in the novel.
The novel is about the passing of the old order in Sicily with the invasion of the island by Guiseppe Garibaldi and the slow decline of a noble family, personified by the central character, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina. One of the points made in the novel (which I haven’t read) was that the way of life carries on as before in Sicily with the middle class and gentry taking over the leading role of the nobility. Despite Garibaldi’s invasion to make the island part of a greater Italy, nothing changes. The Prince opposes Garibaldi, but his nephew supports him, although
cynically observes that ‘there has to be change in order for things to stay the same. Lampedusa (left) was also a scion of the Sicilian nobility, which also declined and whose various palazzi were destroyed or partially destroyed in the war. He wrote the novel, his one work, in the years before he died in 1955 and lived only to see two publishers reject it for publication. It was finally published in 1958 and became a sensation in Italy and has not been out of print since. As I say, I haven’t read the novel, but I have seen seen Luchino Visconti’s film starring Burt Lancaster, which I enjoyed. The casting was odd in the Lancaster, who didn’t speak Italian well enough to act in the language, spoke his lines in English and was then dubbed. The producers wanted a star name to justify the budget and when Visconti’s suggestion proved unavailable, Hollywood cast Lancaster (below) without consulting Visconti, 
who was rather pissed off about it. Alain Delon, though, who played Tancredi, does speak Italian (I think). It’s rather a good film, though very long and not one for action fans. The only other two films by Visconti I’ve seen are Death In Venice and The Damned. I also rather liked Death In Venice, but - well The Damned? What on earth was that? A charitable but honest judgment could go no further than observing that it, and everything about it, is complete bollocks.
I thought it was perhaps the worst or, at best, one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. It is - and I’m obliged to add, in my opinion - simply terrible, terrible, terrible. I suppose it underlines the danger of reputation: Visconti had an excellent reputation as a filmmaker and, I should imagine, no one had the heart to tell him his new filmd The Damned (in Italian La Caduta Degli Dei) was complete crap. It must have been something like the Emperor's New Clothes.
Everything is wrong about it, the story, the acting, the direction. In its depiction of the Nazis, it struck me as being like one of those really hammy TV movies which are churned out on a budge to fit around the adverts.
. . .
Then there was Dirk Bogarde: why he is generally thought to be a good actor is beyond me. He was OK in all those light ‘n frothy Doctor films, but then he decided he wanted to be taken seriously (nothing wrong in that, though) and went for ‘serious’ roles. But as far as I am concerned the man couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag. There is a publicity
still from the film The Singer Not The Song in which Bogarde stars as a cowboy kitted out in black leather which sums up that man and his talent for me. Ham isn’t the word.
I have just searched on the net for it, but all I can come across are the one above and the one below. The shot of him lying down on the ground - why lying down on the ground? - is particularly ludicrous and gives a further dimension to the word ‘camp’. He seems to be truly unaware of just how ridiculous he looks. What was the man thinking?
. . .
Since writing the above, I did a bit more hunting and have come up with a third still from the film, which is quite possibly even more ludicruous than the one above.
In most careers, the manage, who is generally thought to be a little more grounded, not to say saner, than the artiste he or she represents, warns about the possibility to looking ridiculous. But as in Bogarde's case his manager Tony
Forward was also his partner, perhaps he wasn't as alert as he might have been to the possibility that the film, from which these stills are taken, could kill Bogarde's Hollywood career stone dead. Which it did.
I don't have a down on Bogarde, it's just that I don't think he was half as good an actor as he apparently did - he and several famous directors it has to be said. In the second half of his career - the 'serious' half - he did seem to make a pointt of acting in films with a gay theme, for example as the lawyer about to be outed as gay in Victim, of The Servant, which has marked gay undertone.
I find him especially ludicrous as Julie Christie's lover in Darling, a film which has definitely not stood the test of time. What makes it all the sillier is that his character leaves his wife and family for Christie, who then does the dirty on him, and, in some way, we are supposed to feel sorry for him.
The screenwriter was Frederic Raphael, who thought - thinks, he's still alive - awfully clever and tried to make every second line a quotable quote. (I've heard some things by him on the radio, and in them he did the same thing.) Unfortunately, all those lines did was to make Bogarde out to be something of a hissy queen. Mind, my stepmother use to fancy him like fury when he was younger. Shame he batted for the other side.
But that's enough Borgarde for the day.
The novel is about the passing of the old order in Sicily with the invasion of the island by Guiseppe Garibaldi and the slow decline of a noble family, personified by the central character, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina. One of the points made in the novel (which I haven’t read) was that the way of life carries on as before in Sicily with the middle class and gentry taking over the leading role of the nobility. Despite Garibaldi’s invasion to make the island part of a greater Italy, nothing changes. The Prince opposes Garibaldi, but his nephew supports him, although
cynically observes that ‘there has to be change in order for things to stay the same. Lampedusa (left) was also a scion of the Sicilian nobility, which also declined and whose various palazzi were destroyed or partially destroyed in the war. He wrote the novel, his one work, in the years before he died in 1955 and lived only to see two publishers reject it for publication. It was finally published in 1958 and became a sensation in Italy and has not been out of print since. As I say, I haven’t read the novel, but I have seen seen Luchino Visconti’s film starring Burt Lancaster, which I enjoyed. The casting was odd in the Lancaster, who didn’t speak Italian well enough to act in the language, spoke his lines in English and was then dubbed. The producers wanted a star name to justify the budget and when Visconti’s suggestion proved unavailable, Hollywood cast Lancaster (below) without consulting Visconti, who was rather pissed off about it. Alain Delon, though, who played Tancredi, does speak Italian (I think). It’s rather a good film, though very long and not one for action fans. The only other two films by Visconti I’ve seen are Death In Venice and The Damned. I also rather liked Death In Venice, but - well The Damned? What on earth was that? A charitable but honest judgment could go no further than observing that it, and everything about it, is complete bollocks.
I thought it was perhaps the worst or, at best, one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. It is - and I’m obliged to add, in my opinion - simply terrible, terrible, terrible. I suppose it underlines the danger of reputation: Visconti had an excellent reputation as a filmmaker and, I should imagine, no one had the heart to tell him his new filmd The Damned (in Italian La Caduta Degli Dei) was complete crap. It must have been something like the Emperor's New Clothes.
Everything is wrong about it, the story, the acting, the direction. In its depiction of the Nazis, it struck me as being like one of those really hammy TV movies which are churned out on a budge to fit around the adverts.
. . .
Then there was Dirk Bogarde: why he is generally thought to be a good actor is beyond me. He was OK in all those light ‘n frothy Doctor films, but then he decided he wanted to be taken seriously (nothing wrong in that, though) and went for ‘serious’ roles. But as far as I am concerned the man couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag. There is a publicity
still from the film The Singer Not The Song in which Bogarde stars as a cowboy kitted out in black leather which sums up that man and his talent for me. Ham isn’t the word.
I have just searched on the net for it, but all I can come across are the one above and the one below. The shot of him lying down on the ground - why lying down on the ground? - is particularly ludicrous and gives a further dimension to the word ‘camp’. He seems to be truly unaware of just how ridiculous he looks. What was the man thinking?
. . .
Since writing the above, I did a bit more hunting and have come up with a third still from the film, which is quite possibly even more ludicruous than the one above.
In most careers, the manage, who is generally thought to be a little more grounded, not to say saner, than the artiste he or she represents, warns about the possibility to looking ridiculous. But as in Bogarde's case his manager Tony
Forward was also his partner, perhaps he wasn't as alert as he might have been to the possibility that the film, from which these stills are taken, could kill Bogarde's Hollywood career stone dead. Which it did.
I don't have a down on Bogarde, it's just that I don't think he was half as good an actor as he apparently did - he and several famous directors it has to be said. In the second half of his career - the 'serious' half - he did seem to make a pointt of acting in films with a gay theme, for example as the lawyer about to be outed as gay in Victim, of The Servant, which has marked gay undertone.
I find him especially ludicrous as Julie Christie's lover in Darling, a film which has definitely not stood the test of time. What makes it all the sillier is that his character leaves his wife and family for Christie, who then does the dirty on him, and, in some way, we are supposed to feel sorry for him.
The screenwriter was Frederic Raphael, who thought - thinks, he's still alive - awfully clever and tried to make every second line a quotable quote. (I've heard some things by him on the radio, and in them he did the same thing.) Unfortunately, all those lines did was to make Bogarde out to be something of a hissy queen. Mind, my stepmother use to fancy him like fury when he was younger. Shame he batted for the other side.
But that's enough Borgarde for the day.
Friday 31 December 2010
Stay interested to live for ever: the man who disagreed but the Guardian thinks it's worth a punt
The big news of the week is that, quite apart from not being able to retire at 65, the government is now insisting that we all live to be at least 100. I can’t see the point myself. Reporting the news on Radio 4 yesterday, some hack managed to dig up an 108-year-old woman who said being over 100 wasn’t at all bad as long as you still managed to ‘take an interest in life’. To my ears, that sounds rather like establishing that staying alive is not particularly difficult ‘as long as you keep eating food and drinking water’. I once knew an old codger (I should write ‘older codger’ because the young things at work regard me as an ‘old codger’ these days) who lived to be 92. You can say he ‘still kept an interest in life’ because he carried on writing a newspaper column until more of less the week he died. It had appeared four days a week for the first 33 he worked on it (he didn’t actually establish it, although he took over were soon after it was established), and then weekly for the last 15 years. I shan’t say who it was, because that might strike some as name-dropping (and over these past few days I am becoming very sensitive and have become aware that my every jot and tittle might well be minutely scrutinised for any sign of flawed humanity - see below), but I include a cartoon from the chap’s column (tho’ as it’s in colour, I wonder whether it actually appeared, because
columnar illustrations were always in black and white) which, as it happens - I think be design - bears a marked resemblance to the chap himself. This guy was extremely well-read, known for his dislike of cant of any kind, sharp and very, very funny. I only knew him in the last 20 years of his life and towards the end he did rather lose interest in what went on. This puzzled me at first until I realised that by the time you have reached your 90s you will most certainly not have heard it all, but you will most certainly have heard a great deal of it. And as many of us have a very bad habit of repeating - regurgitating would be more accurate - what we have read and largely misunderstood, hearing some piece of mangled wisdom or a misquoted mangled witticism for the umpteenth time must get more than a little tedious. So he did get a little morose in his final years, although he and his wife managed two annual trips go Cornwall until the year he died.
. . .
Most certainly there are enough lively and quote-worthy centenarians to go around - more than enough for most industrious hacks to track down to obtain the necessary quote - but I feel that does put a rather phoney gloss on the issue. For example, almost four years ago, my stepmother suffered a very severe stroke and is now housebound. It happened when she had just turned 70, and the irony of it all is that compared to many her age, she was extremely active, spending all day gardening in the gardening seasons and taking her two dogs for a walk twice a day - one walk always being a long one, usually on the moor. She didn’t smoke, she didn’t drink a lot and she eat healthily, but suddenly had a stroke.
. . .
I’m sure we all know ‘old Jim’ or ‘old Susan’ who put man and women half their age to shame, they’re so active. But then I’m sure, if we’re honest, also know among our acquaintance many who, in attitude and outlook, have rather more than one metaphorical foot in the grave. I personally get thoroughly fed up with those around my age, and even younger, who wallow in nostalgia and bemoan how it’s all gone to the dogs and why, oh why, can’t they right a good tune these days! More acerbic - for which read wilfully critical readers - might now ask in that case, what on earth am I doing earning my daily shekel in the employ of a certain newspaper, to which I would reply: it’s very simple - I’m earning my daily shekel, and their shekel is as good as any one else’s shekel. And anyway, all that ‘golden age’ bullshit is nothing but an extremely successful marketing strategy. (Incidentally, it has occurred to me more than one: was there ever a golden age of golden ages? Is so that must have been a hell of a time.) As for successful marketing strategies, isn’t it about time the Guardian came up with one. I read the other day that it had sold off the Manchester Evening News to the Trinity Group, which strikes me as extremely daft beyond the call of duty, given that the Guardian hasn’t turned a profit in over 300 years and was wholly subsidised by the MEN and other local papers in GMG Regional Media. I have just looked it up and note the sale last March was for ‘£7.4m in cash and £37.4m in the value of a printing contract from which Trinity Mirror’, which I, who admittedly knows nothing about these matters, would have thought was pretty cheap. The remaining part of the Guardian Media Group is said to have ‘a strong portfolio which has to be in the right shape to achieve’ the goal ‘of securing the future of the Guardian in perpetuity’.
By the way, many cite ‘the Scott Trust’ as proof that at the heart of the Guardian beats a liberal conscience which eschews turning a profit as its prime motivating principle. The Trust itself claims the Trust was set up to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian’. Well, not quite: it seems the Trust was established as a means of avoiding pay death duties which the then owner of the MEN felt could cripple the company. It has since been wound up and a limited company, The Scott Trust Limited, is now in charge. So bullshit isn’t just the sole preserve of the right-wing press.
columnar illustrations were always in black and white) which, as it happens - I think be design - bears a marked resemblance to the chap himself. This guy was extremely well-read, known for his dislike of cant of any kind, sharp and very, very funny. I only knew him in the last 20 years of his life and towards the end he did rather lose interest in what went on. This puzzled me at first until I realised that by the time you have reached your 90s you will most certainly not have heard it all, but you will most certainly have heard a great deal of it. And as many of us have a very bad habit of repeating - regurgitating would be more accurate - what we have read and largely misunderstood, hearing some piece of mangled wisdom or a misquoted mangled witticism for the umpteenth time must get more than a little tedious. So he did get a little morose in his final years, although he and his wife managed two annual trips go Cornwall until the year he died.
. . .
Most certainly there are enough lively and quote-worthy centenarians to go around - more than enough for most industrious hacks to track down to obtain the necessary quote - but I feel that does put a rather phoney gloss on the issue. For example, almost four years ago, my stepmother suffered a very severe stroke and is now housebound. It happened when she had just turned 70, and the irony of it all is that compared to many her age, she was extremely active, spending all day gardening in the gardening seasons and taking her two dogs for a walk twice a day - one walk always being a long one, usually on the moor. She didn’t smoke, she didn’t drink a lot and she eat healthily, but suddenly had a stroke.
. . .
I’m sure we all know ‘old Jim’ or ‘old Susan’ who put man and women half their age to shame, they’re so active. But then I’m sure, if we’re honest, also know among our acquaintance many who, in attitude and outlook, have rather more than one metaphorical foot in the grave. I personally get thoroughly fed up with those around my age, and even younger, who wallow in nostalgia and bemoan how it’s all gone to the dogs and why, oh why, can’t they right a good tune these days! More acerbic - for which read wilfully critical readers - might now ask in that case, what on earth am I doing earning my daily shekel in the employ of a certain newspaper, to which I would reply: it’s very simple - I’m earning my daily shekel, and their shekel is as good as any one else’s shekel. And anyway, all that ‘golden age’ bullshit is nothing but an extremely successful marketing strategy. (Incidentally, it has occurred to me more than one: was there ever a golden age of golden ages? Is so that must have been a hell of a time.) As for successful marketing strategies, isn’t it about time the Guardian came up with one. I read the other day that it had sold off the Manchester Evening News to the Trinity Group, which strikes me as extremely daft beyond the call of duty, given that the Guardian hasn’t turned a profit in over 300 years and was wholly subsidised by the MEN and other local papers in GMG Regional Media. I have just looked it up and note the sale last March was for ‘£7.4m in cash and £37.4m in the value of a printing contract from which Trinity Mirror’, which I, who admittedly knows nothing about these matters, would have thought was pretty cheap. The remaining part of the Guardian Media Group is said to have ‘a strong portfolio which has to be in the right shape to achieve’ the goal ‘of securing the future of the Guardian in perpetuity’.
By the way, many cite ‘the Scott Trust’ as proof that at the heart of the Guardian beats a liberal conscience which eschews turning a profit as its prime motivating principle. The Trust itself claims the Trust was set up to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian’. Well, not quite: it seems the Trust was established as a means of avoiding pay death duties which the then owner of the MEN felt could cripple the company. It has since been wound up and a limited company, The Scott Trust Limited, is now in charge. So bullshit isn’t just the sole preserve of the right-wing press.
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