Oh Papa Papa

The time draws near. This blog's failing health is plain for all to see, and the burthen of carrying the hopes, dreams and prayers of millions of readers is taking its toll. It is time to leave the stage, to retire to a life of quiet, solemn contemplation. The allegations of financial mismanagement (some of the godless ones might go so far as to call it fraud) totally unfounded as they are, have no bearing on the decision to be taken over the coming days. In my place will come one chosen by the divine finger itself; a man of extreme modesty and humility who will cause the scales to fall from the eyes of those who watch; those who pour scorn on the sanctity of this seemingly endless, ludicrous and discredited pantomime. My fellow secret club members will not in any way influence the destination of the finger, and this I can wholeheartedly vouch for, having received the holy digit on my fundament myself, in those distant days when I was in full health and not having to explain yet another embarrassing incident of child sexual abuse. Amen.

Worried that I am starting to take on some of the characteristics of Jack Torrance in The Shining (it only took King four months to write the first draft of this magnificent book. FOUR MONTHS!) I am still seething over Saturday lunchtime and yet another ignominious defeat at the hands of the cursed Toffees. Despite the 3-0 drubbing in their previous match, I never expected an easy trip up the M62, and Goodison Park is a bastard of a place to go. My Rag mate nailed it I suppose when he said: 'No Yaya, no real rhythm really' - this just after he had returned my taunt to him ('Love a bit of Toffee mate') almost exactly a year ago. No Yaya, no Kun, no fucking hope - all combined with a jammy swerver in the first half and a breakaway goal in the second because we were chasing the game. It was very niggly early on. We were 'a bit slow' as Ratface (much as I hate to say it) rightly said on Sky Sports; rather too predictable and lacking in bite. Only Carlos really looked up for it, and we can really and truly forget the title now.

Fortunately, Spurs seem to be hitting a slow patch themselves, but Chelsea worry me with their players. We can only hope that fixture congestion causes a drain on their considerable resources, although I hope they beat the Rags in the FA Cup replay.

International break time approaches, and the demise of this sorry excuse for a blog draws ever closer. Come here and take your medicine you little fuck!

Oligarchs

My thoughts on the Pistorius/Steenkamp case (as everyone seems to feel the need to express these) are that the whole tragic case has only been compounded by the astonishing way in which every detail of it is being broadcast - almost in real time. No good can come of this prurient desire to splash every morsel of information over every media outlet in the world, and it is depressing in the extreme. That's that.

So next up Chelsea again, shunted aside to a lunchtime kick-off by the ridiculous display of the Capital One cup final (seriously - and I am a football fan let me tell you - who but followers of Bradford and Swansea can be looking forward to that?) The boys from the Bridge are hardly an ideal team to face at such a critical juncture. A few seasons ago, I would have feared the worst; the season before and the one just gone, the tone would have been a good deal more optimistic; this time, it could go either way. They are still a good side, despite their recent minor fall from grace (which is actually only a part of the decline in English Premier League football in comparison to say Italian or German sides - in the Champions League, that is) and capable of giving any opponent a game. Amazingly, Torres continues to endure the purgatory of being Roman's golden boy, but I feel despite the seemingly endless toil and humiliation that he will always carry a threat. In Hazard and Oscar they have two fantastic players, and of course fabulous Frankie Lampard is banging them in to try and reach that record before he heads off to Kazakhstan, or China, or wherever the hell they send them these days. Cech looks a lot weaker than he has ever done, but is nonetheless big and strong with a scary hat on. For us, Tevez ought to be buoyed by some good performances and his goal against Leeds, Kun is hot hot hot, and Vinnie looks as if he may make it back from his calf (or is it foal?) injury. So, hard to predict the outcome of this one. I will say 2-1 City, though fear it could be a draw or even the reverse of that scoreline.

For some reason, I thought the Rags would be playing the second leg of their Madrid tie during the week, but of course they've changed the setup once more, and it's on next week. Zzzzz. They face the Hoops at Shepherd's Bush, most likely without pube head, but that shouldn't make much difference, and I fully expect them to run away with it there 1-0. All of which means we will probably have to pedal like hell just to stand still. But hey - there's pride if nothing else to play for.

Further to my last update, I've just finished Stephen King's On Writing (I also came across a review [well, sort of a review] of Pet Sematary today, and now I feel I must read that one. As my Isness said, it would almost be possible to read nothing but Stephen King) which I've been meaning to read for a while now. Worth the wait, and it's set me to thinking a little about 'the craft' and my place in it. I'm going to take on Stephen's challenge in the book, and aim to produce the fruits of my labour in the final post on this blog. I will say no more on that subject because the door must remain firmly shut.

Long Live the King

I know I've mentioned him before, and I apologise for the repetition, but he's got into my head again. The latest compulsion is a book called Gerald's Game, a nasty yet absorbing piece about a woman who ends up (where else?) in a deserted holiday home in the Maine woods - handcuffed to a bed - while her husband lies dead at her feet. In fact, the eponymous husband is slain by those very feet when he fails to read his wife's stop signals clearly enough.

As always, there's no messing around with Mr King. He's straight into the action and does not stop all the way along (though I haven't yet finished) barely pausing for breath as he goes. Aside from what I think are the book's fascinating themes of sex and sexual abuse, self-loathing and fear, there is the writer's courage at being able to examine in microscopic detail the very worst of human nature we can possibly imagine. And we can possibly imagine quite a lot, unfortunately. There are, it is true, real instances of child abuse, and perhaps also real instances of handcuffed women killing their husbands when bondage games go wrong. However, the ability to take these events and write them down on a page surely requires an unflinching resolve, a firm grasp of one's natural revulsion to persist with accurately (some might say a little salaciously in King's case, perhaps. Though this book is somewhat less fantastical than many of his others, there is still almost a sense of his revelling in the gore and dark stuff) portraying them. Anyone who does not harbour sexual feelings towards minors would surely find it difficult to write down such an episode? Whatever the case, it's a rare book indeed that causes me to gasp on the bus, or to unwittingly cover my mouth with my hand at the horror on the page, and must be praised for that alone.

In the meantime, thoughts turn to the Geordies and the question of whether Bobby will keep his job or not at the Sports Direct.com Stadium/St. James's Park. Certainly I think the stuffing was knocked out of us during last weekend's fiasco, and we need to make a firm statement of our intent. Whether we can or not is moot. Newcastle are looking pretty shaky at the moment it's true, but they still have some dangerous players, and there's no way we can sit on our laurels. I'm opting for 2-1 City, though hoping for a few more in our favour. Howay the Blues!

Wells Wells Wells

It started with The Time Machine, which I downloaded as an iBook. Shamefully, I realised that I hadn't really read any of HG Wells' prodigious and tremendous output, fixed firmly as they are in the imagination of Great Britain and the world, along with Gulliver, Robinson Crusoe and a Bear of Very Little Brain. So I thought I would give The Time Machine a go, expecting perhaps a boy's own adventure story. Sort of familiar with the Morlocks and Eloi and (truthfully) very little else in the tale, I was pleasantly surprised by the poetic, metaphysical course chosen by Wells in his imagining of our Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and - like all good books - it sparked off more questions than answers when I had finished it.

So it was on to War of The Worlds. Yet another story we believe we know so well, but which again I had never read, though of course it lurks in the memory from the days of BBC2 horror movies, the recent (I'm sure) dreadful film with Tom Cruise, and the Orson Welles radio thing. This book is a thrilling, rollicking romp, sweeping from Crawley on through the entire universe and taking in politics and philosophy along with the requisite adventure and science. I found the soldier particularly fascinating, with his revolutionary ideas and his expositions on the frailty of the human character, while the poignant isolation of the narrator after the affair struck a chord for a man like myself about to enter his sixth decade. Great stuff.

By now I had been bitten by the Wells bug, and moved swiftly on to The Invisible Man - another tale so deeply ingrained in our consciousness that there was even a TV series made out of it with David McCallum, and yet the original tale was unknown to me. It is a remarkable read, betraying perhaps its embryonic episodic release in pamphlet form with noticeably abrupt (though ultimately, this adds to the power of the work, rather than diminishing it, as if the very shock of the changes deepens the experience) switches of style: from slapstick humour to shocking violence, to melancholy philosophical treatise. The laughs are real laughs, the violence truly violent, and the philosophy deep and meaningful. All of this told in short, breathless chapters which drive the action relentlessly on, page by page by page. The ending intensely evokes a sense of sombre thoughtfulness - musings on our place in a cold, lonely and infinite universe. Not to mention of course the place of the Invisible Man in City's pantheon of fabulous chants.


The Invisible Man led me to read a little about the author himself, and I was then even more intrigued. It's worth looking up his Wikipedia page to find out more, but he led an extraordinary private life alongside his enormous written output, and was a visionary socialist thinker (I know, I know. Everyone was racist then. And a eugenicist) in tandem with his visionary scientific explorations. So it was that I visited the library, and there took out The Island of Dr Moreau, maybe not quite as fixed in the imagination as the Time Machine, War of The Worlds or The Invisible Man, yet still famous enough I guess, and certainly very well known by fans of science fiction. This was a venture even deeper into the mysteries of human existence, a treatise on god and man and civilisation set - in the best Defoe/Stephenson tradition - on a remote Pacific island. A superb work, where the reader feels transformed almost as much as the narrator by the end, and where surely Maurice Sendak took much of his inspiration for Where The Wild Things Are. The creatures and themes of the book still echo in my mind, some two weeks after finishing it.

My next (and current) book of Wells is The Shape Of Things to Come, which is so far the least familiar of any I've yet read, though it is not obscure, and I remember some pastiches or adverts from years ago. It is, up to the point I've reached so far, a real exploration of history, of the insanity of the economic model, clearly influenced strongly by the horrors of the Great War, and the need to create something meaningful and optimistic out of the carnage of 1914-18. There is a telling swipe at Winston Churchill:

"He displays a vigorous naive puerility that still gives his story an atoning charm. He has the insensitiveness of a child of thirteen. His soldiers are toy soldiers and he loves to knock over a whole row of them."

But, more than this, his critique of the Great War, and of the economic circumstances which brought it into being, which nurtured it through the terrible years of conflict and beyond, is searing. There are many parallels with the insanity of our current situation, a lesson from the past pretending to be from the future, which feels as prophetic as if it actually were written many years hence:

"With difficulty will the student let down his mind into the fantastic world of extinct imaginations in which these strange personifications, as monstrous and incredible as the ancient gods of India, were treated as real and morally responsible individuals, hated, trusted, feared and loved. The war was, in immediate fact, an aimless and fruitless slaughter upon the altars of these stupendous deities, the wounding and mutilation of perhaps twenty million human beings, and a vast burning-up of material wealth. In the crazy fancy of our ancestors it was a noble and significant struggle."

Magic journalism

I have been reading Kapusczinski again. A perfect combination for me, the reportage and lyricism, recalling times of which I had not previously been aware. Names like Ben Bella and Lumumba; conflicts in emerging liberated African states, from the far south to the Saharan north; unexpected similarities between the Polish and South American sensibilities; stories of a world forever lost, yet depressingly familiar in its casual brutality. I think everyone should read his books - should be transported to those far off places, recalling the intrepid foreign correspondent's life. Instantly accessible, yet diving to hidden depths with every sentence.

I started with his book about Selassie, and then after a longish gap read the one about the Shah of Iran. Now, I am near the end of The Soccer War (though this is only one small chapter, and perhaps misleading. There is far more about the Congo and Algeria than there is about the famous conflict which it seems was only a football war by pretext. But then, aren't most wars started and continued on a pretext anyway?) and am rapt to the final pages, clinging on and reading slowly because I do not want to say goodbye to this unique voice. I want him to stay a while longer, want to keep my eyes closed and blot out the mundane reality of the bus and the office, Murray at Wimbledon and the fucking Olympics.

His Wikipedia entry is full of that dense Polish intellectualism, tortured sentences spiralling around some erudite theme, accusing him by proxy of fabrication, fabulism and philandering. But what do I care for that? Anyone who can transport me so beautifully to such other worlds will always have a place in my heart, whether his words are 'true' or not. His star will forever burn bright.

Life is cheep

I’ll always remember it, I think. Time was when I used to ride my bike along the Grand Union canal as far as Camden Lock, and sometimes a bit further, for a spot of R&R. Enjoying the bohemian atmosphere at the Lock, I would sit and sip from a can or two, smoke a couple of fags and just watch the people doing what they do. For a variety of reasons, I don’t do this anymore, but it did used to be a regular event for me.


Anyway, on this particular day, I had stopped as usual at the Lock just behind the market and lowered my bike to the ground. I stood up and looked over the edge at the murky water turning into a shimmering curtain as it gushed through the old teeth and black painted blocks of the mechanism. I noticed a flurry of activity from some small birds (tits, I think, though I can’t be sure) who had made their nest in the sheer bank of the cut. There was a pair of them and they were fluttering their wings madly to stay in a hover and chirruping with all their might. I looked closer and noticed that a chick had fallen into the water, which was now boiling around it as the lock contents emptied themselves. It soon became clear that – whether because it had fledged too soon, or because its feathers were not waterproof enough – the chick was struggling to free itself from the grip of the canal. The parents were desperately trying to encourage their offspring up and out of the clutches of death, but could do no more than twitter loudly and repeatedly fly as close to the youngster as possible. It was a futile endeavour, I could see that, and the chick was clearly doomed.

This terrible tragedy was playing itself out in front of me, and I was as helpless as the adult birds. The nest (and no doubt this was ironically the reason why they had chosen to build it there) was set in such a place that it was very difficult to reach if you didn’t have wings and a body no more than 5 inches long. I looked around, and the usual crew of Goths and punks, rockers and Dutch tourists, were all oblivious to the life-and-death struggle going on so close to their stacked leather boots. Haltingly, a little embarrassed, I tried to draw the attention of those nearest to me, but I was simply ignored. I considered (but only for a moment) getting into the water to help the little bird; I looked around for a stick, but there were none long enough.

Then, in a matter of seconds, the chick was gone for good, buffeted away by the rushing deluge relentlessly cascading towards it, pushed under the water one too many times, finally and cruelly breaking its so recently developed spirit. A great sadness came over me at that point. I had witnessed the frantic efforts of two creatures, animals not credited with any of the so called higher qualities, trying with all their might to save their child; had seen new life struggle to resist the reaper’s scythe – and fail. Perhaps foolishly, I considered the life of the parent bids now that they had lost their chick. Would they (metaphorically) shrug philosophically and carry on, perhaps going through their mating rituals again and laying a new clutch in their precarious home, or would they be thrown into despair, perhaps splitting up and never seeing each other again?

Back to it

All the frantic rushing around to reach 500 posts is now out of the way, and many thanks to Don Cake for his contributions. If he's willing, I would love to collaborate more with him on future spewings. Let's hope so. Maybe a joint writing project, who knows?

So it's back to the grind now, trotting out glib generalisations as I wend my merry-ish way through this thing called life.

Apart from the lingering melancholy over the Euros drawing to a conclusion, and the depressing inevitability of England's poor play (I'm glad that many I've spoken to agree with me that Roy was a victim of player power in not bringing Rooney off) I am of course dumbfounded on an almost daily basis by the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the Coalition. Having just today finished the monumental Under the Dome by Stephen King, I can't help but draw comparisons between the insanity visited on a small town by a cataclysmic event over which the inhabitants have no control as described in the book, and the terrifying, slow, disorderly disintegration of the current world order caused by the financial crisis.

In short, and without wishing to issue any spoilers, the people in the town of Chester's Mill, Maine, in King's book become trapped under an impenetrable glass dome (King says that he had not seen the Simpsons Movie when he wrote the book, and I have no reason to doubt him. In any case, there are significant differences in both plot and tone) and the town slowly descends into anarchy and madness. King has said that the book is a commentary, or wide-ranging metaphor, for the mass hysteria in the US and around the world engendered by the 9-11 bombings, but it can be quite easily extended in my view to encompass the entire world as we now know it. The main difference really is that - even though a psychotic leader - Big Jim Rennie in Under the Dome is at least a leader. Which is more than can be said for the current bunch of losers.

What I like about King (and many decry him as too populist - a view with which I disagree. I don't tell those who sneer at me reading his books that I have also read parts of Finnegan's Wake) is that he stands up for the underdog. He doesn't like bullies, and they usually get what's coming to them, even if they do cause quite a bit of mayhem on the way. And of course, he has recently stood up against the Neocon loons by asking to be appropriately taxed. Amusingly, UTD has been described - due to its sheer size - as a quarter of a Proust, and I think that is how all books should now be measured. Lord of The Rings? Half a Proust. The Prophet? A sixty-fourth of a Proust. I love it.

Febrile

It's a living thing, wrapping its tendrils around my carotid and squeezing gently. Ever so gently, but relentless; cinching closer with every passing second. It will not let me go, will not relax the choking grip until the very breath is driven from my lungs.

I know that I am powerless, know that there is no sense in struggling, but cannot stop myself from fighting the muscular clasp. Hope is not it. Not hope, but grim determination that forces me to clench my teeth and ball my fists against the top of my thigh. Foot to foot. Rocking, swaying, whimpering, crying and snot dribbling.

There are 10 more posts to go till 500.

Rubbish Day

Tuesday is rubbish day in Enfield. The lorries start rumbling before 7 o'clock, and there are two runs - one for the landfill, and one for the recyclables. Folks put their waste outside on a Monday night in anticipation of the Vultures' arrival. My walk up the hill to catch the bus to work starts at around the same time as the collection. Something, for some reason, depresses me greatly about the bits of trash strewn across the pavement. Not so much the fact of rubbish being on the streets - after all, this is hardly Mumbai or any other ravaged Third World city with populated dumps - it's more the lonely, random quality of the items themselves. It's difficult to describe why, but perhaps a simple list of the things I've seen might convey the sense of desolation I feel.

Empty pack of fusilli pasta
Box of 10 dinner candles
Pack of Ülker wafers
Sachet of Felix premium cat food
Müller Rice pot

The sight of these random articles, ever so slightly soiled, lying on the floor before me, fills me with an intense sense of melancholy.

Anger

Came into work boiling today, despite being liberally doused with rain. I wanted to toss off this piece in the heat of that anger, but ended up on the phone addressing the issue for half an hour, so now I'm here, retrospectively annoyed, tapping away.

My thoughts were to experiment with anger and writing, to see how it might come out, and although there is a lingering simmer of pissed off-ness, most of the initial seething has subsided, so that experiment will have to wait another day. The subject of my ire: the boss, of coss! Standing in the pissing rain, waiting for a bus, I checked my BlackBerry, to find there a message accusing me (to cut a long story short) of poor customer service, albeit through a member of my team.

'For fuck's sake!' I hissed, as I slopped through a puddle into the mass of steaming commuters on the 24, my mood immediately sent nosediving by this stupid message. Head down after I disembarked, taking the incessant heavy drizzle full in the face on the short walk to the office, I mulled over my response. Temporarily toying with writing something along the lines of:

'Do you think we're all fucking stupid or something? How dare you accuse me of this, when I only found out about it late last night, and have already told you that I would investigate? How fucking DARE you, BITCH?!', I nonetheless didn't bother, and instead penned an anodyne 'I'll look into it' before making a phone call. I'm glad to say that I was vindicated by the call, and have heard nothing in response as yet, although the danger of course is always that some other attack (and let's face it, everyone has at least one vulnerability in their work. If the powers that be really don't like you, it can be difficult to avoid an inevitable crash) will mount. Let's wait and see.

So now that's over with, time for a bit of football talk. Though not a good win, a win for all that on Monday night against an anaemic Wigan side. Dzeko, despite scoring, still looking more of a donkey than a world class striker. Aguero unlucky again, with a fantastic work ethic, great speed and strength. De Jong alarmingly short of his previous form, and really should have been a more comfortable scoreline, even without Yaya. So it's on to face the magnificent Spurs at the weekend, and do I spy (geddit?) a cracking match? My prediction, 2-2, which wouldn't make me too angry, or perhaps 3-2 City, though perhaps old 'Arry will be taxed (geddit???!!) by events at Southwark Crown Court the following day.

A Day in the Life

No doubt he took the tube/bus/train/bike as he always did. I can't say if he had bacon and eggs, or porridge, or just a cup of coffee and a rueful cigarette as part of his normal breakfast routine; can't know whether he might have popped into a Caffé Nero or a Starbucks or a Fitness First before heading into the office. I don't even know if he had a wife, husband, kids or a dog to give a kiss to as he headed out the door, or if he stared at his reflection with a grin or a scowl while brushing his teeth or letting them stay stained - just for today, or most days - because he was sleeping on a friend's sofa.

There might have been a long wait for the bus in the rain, or a steady walk to the tube station - unseasonably warm as it was; alternatively, he was given a lift, dropped off perhaps with a kiss. Or not. Always a chance that he stood on the train all the way, cramped and pressed against others' sweaty frames, holding his nose or holding in his own foul breath to blot out the smells around him or from him. Maybe there was a raised voice, a small increase in the tension of the commuters from some real or imagined slight that served to changed the tenor of the day. Or else he was blessed with a safe middle seat as soon as he got on, able to read his Metro or his Dostoyevsky - his James Patterson or his Daily Star amid the blissful racket of the clattering wheels against the rails.

Maybe someone who knew him would have detected a difference in his demeanour, something not quite right about him. Perhaps he was sweating, agitated, quick to anger or suddenly sullen. But if no-one on his tube or train carriage or bus had ever seen him before, or had perhaps only glimpsed him on the odd morning - a slightly more familiar face in the relentless faceless crowd, but nothing more - then who could have had a clue that today would be any different to the hundreds of other days which had gone before? Only him, maybe. Unless at home, the significant other fumed or fretted, raged and texted and fruitlessly called, cried and wailed, plotted and schemed, laughed and derided...

When he walked past the security guard on arrival at the office, showing his pass as required, it might have been that a gentle half smile, perhaps a word or two, were exchanged. And it might have been that there was only the almost unnoticeable flash of recognition that the pass had been seen and that he was clear to go through. His co-workers on the 4th floor could have wished him a good morning, chatting about last night's telly amid the clatter of kettles, and milk taken from fridges, waste bin lids opened and closed. Or on an early shift, he might have been alone at his desk, reading emails and answering calls.

As he typed, he may have felt the itch of needle marks in his arms, or the familiar nagging pain of the tumour in his belly, pressing against his ribcage; may have confronted again whatever demon had hold of his mind - debts, disease, religious fervour, loneliness... And the hours would have passed - no doubt - the hands making their relentless circuit around the face until lunchtime arrived.

He took the lift the last two flights up and stepped out to look over the balcony, where he saw the usual hubbub of a Friday passing on the floors below; straddled the balustrade and lifted his leg over the top... Then he pitched himself forward and down the 80ft drop to the hard tiled floor, smashing his body apart in front of the groups who were sitting eating their sandwiches.

My Self

Realising that I have far too much Will Self in my book collection, I nonetheless embarked on The Butt  recently. Not one of his best (he can be patchy, though I love the best - Great Apes, for example. Or The Book of Dave, whilst I found Liver a bit of a drag) it is nonetheless redolent of Graham Greene - it even has an Honorary Consul, as well as plenty of sweaty hat brims - and JG Ballard, creating a dystopian, nightmarish land (Australia? Not quite. Which is odd) with ridiculous, overblown laws and customs, and strangers who bear uncanny resemblances to family members. Yet it is somewhat rambling; does not hold the attention well enough, does not have the same terrifying believablilty of Ballard at his best, the same depth of feeling of Greene at his best, and fails - I would venture to suggest - to strike the right balance of black humour and terror. Needless to say, there is also the obligatory over-use of the thesaurus. Far be it from me to pejoratively cast anyone as 'brainy' for using big words. Heaven knows, I used to go through back issues of the Reader's Digest like a whirling Dervish looking for the 'It Pays To Improve Your Wordpower' section. But still, there's a slight clunkiness about the sprinkling of 'empurplement' and 'ever-ramifying' throughout the text which - I daresay - lessens the narrative power of the tale.

The most unsatisfying aspect of the novel by far though is Self's decision to take on an American voice in his main character, the anti-hero Tom. Will is nothing if not quintessentially English, and I feel that the device (of having Tom come from the USA) in order to contrast the power of this nation with the faded and pathetic post-colonial England as emodied by Prentice hardly seems worth it. Tom does not come across as a real American, despite Self having him use words like 'mall' and 'buddy' and one squirms a little on these occasions, it has to be said. Maybe it wouldn't have been possible for an Englishman to have had the limitless credit facilities which Tom seems able to draw on or some other such consideration, but I must register my protest.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't wish to suggest that this is a gimcrack book. There are some excellent sequences, and Self frequently captures the moment in a few choice words (particularly his descriptions of off-season tourist locales - sad, jaded and corrupt. Wonderful) and there are occasions when - sweltering on the 329 bus as it crawls up Green Lanes with its mad cargo of London folk - like the buildings - thrust haphazardly against one another that I struggle to discern where the book ends and reality begins. An Asian girl chatters non-stop into her mobile phone, a family of fat kids stare intently across the aisle, a baby wails incessantly and the automated voice tells all that 'seats are available on the upper deck'.

Promises promises

I told you! It was worth the effort, wasn't it?

These things take time (and I know that I'm/The most inept, etc., etc...) and you can't hurry love. Excuse me. Mere mention of what Phil Collins did to the Supremes number fills me with the urge to defecate.

In the meantime, a little filler, a small piece of guilt absolution in the blog confessional if you will.

Whilst taking a coffee at the Pret opposite the Chandos near Trafalgar Square the other day, I was approached by a lady who bore a passing resemblance to Timmy Mallett, wearing as she was large white plastic framed glasses and pink tights (though I'm not 100% sure that Timmy wore pink tights, I'm not denying the possibility) if perhaps a slightly shabbier version.

"Excuse me sir," she said in (I think) an Italian accent, "Cen you pliz..."

I impatiently waved my hand towards her, whilst shaking my head and continuing to peer at my BlackBerry. It wasn't the first time I had seen her in operation, and I told her so.

"You've asked me before!" I snapped, my tone a little more aggressive than I had intended and she was clearly taken aback, replying angrily:

"I 'even't esked you! I... I..."

"Yes you have." I said firmly.

Seeing that I was unmoved (also - truth be told - I was hopeful that the scene would not escalate further as the people at tables around me were turning to stare) and would stubbornly gaze at the BB until she left me alone, she turned away and made for someone else.

"Excuse me, sir. My purse..."

Whether egged on by my stern refusal to donate to the lady's cause or not, I couldn't say, but the chap she had approached - sharply shaved head and sharp business suit, on the way to a sales pitch somewhere, I reckoned - took exception to her entreaties and a commotion started. I couldn't make out what the man had said, but the woman launched into an impassioned defence of her dignity. She was an artist, not a beggar. He had not right to treat her like a piece of dirt because she had been unlucky. He was not a worthwhile human being, and she hoped one day that he would understand how hard life can be when everyone tunred their back on him in his time of greatest need.

I had turned from observed to observer in a few moments; glad that the attention had been diverted from me, but sad that I had participated in such a mean-spirited piece of pantomime.

Coming soon

Now that the season's (all but - I've been looking at the giant UEFA balls in Trafalgar Square on my way to work every morning) over, my own very limited and short-lived purple patch is also drawing to a close. Let me explain. This blog has been chugging along with an audience of very few for the past three or four years, and I have been happy enough with that. Most of the time, I am like Rachel, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, although with the odd (very odd) amusing exchange here and there. Like most people though, I'm fairly vain and check the counter every day to see how many views I have had, before proceeding to my Clustr Map page to see where in the world people are reading it (this is usually followed by a check on my Flickr stats). I was getting an average of about 10-12 hits per day until around 6 weeks ago, when suddenly there was an explosion (relatively speaking, of course) and I was getting nearly 30 per day. This went on for about a month, and I have no idea what caused the sudden bubble, but it has now burst again. The previous 24 hours saw a measly three hits. And one of those was me!

So, as I said, with the football season at an end, it's time to get off topic. This blog is no stranger to guest writers, and I am planning a little something for the month of June, which will I hope blow some fresh air through here. I have no idea what may be written about, or in what style, but I am sure it will be an enlightening journey for all of us. I will say no more for now, knowing as I do how to create a sense of tension and draw you all - Dickens-like - into my web.

Zen and the art of making TV programmes

With some interest, I was looking forward to the Zen series on BBC1 on Sunday nights. I have been a fan of the Michael Dibdin (dead these four years. How time flies...) books for quite a number of years, starting with either Cabal or Ratking (I can't remember which, but I think it might have been Ratking). In any case, and as a devotee of crime fiction, I thought the books were very fresh - readable yet cerebral enough; striking the right balance between the mundane and the suddenly terrifying; laced with a nicely understated dark humour, and usually formed around a well plotted and exciting crime story. Admittedly, not every Zen book held up quite as well, and Cosi Fan Tutti in particular was a bit of a stinker. I enjoyed though, most of Dibdin's non Aurelio Zen work as well, and was kind of looking forward (with that ever-present feeling of dread which bodes disappointment, about a book being made into a film or TV show) to the new series starting.

And then Rufus Sewell turned up on one of those Radio 4 shows that seems to meander along (Loose Ends, maybe? Or Broadcasting House) as a blatant bit of puff for Zen. What he was saying sounded fairly promising. At least, it seemed that he had read some of the source material, and he was keen not to overdo the Italian aspect - with the hand gestures and over the top accents. There was, it has to be said, a certain smugness about Rufus, but then he is an actor after all. So, my anticipation of the new series was slightly enhanced.

And the show was... OK I suppose. There were a few disappointments for me and a few irritations. Sewell was perhaps chief among these, as he hummed and mumbled his way through his lines and held overlong portnetous silences on the telephone. He comes across as being nervous of speaking, rather than just knowing when to hold his tongue. His griflriend is sexy enough, a pleasing bit of eye candy and clearly a hook for the gullible male viewer, but I became very annoyed with her accent. Judging by the boards on IMDb, I wasn't the only one. If everyone else (apart from Zen's mother - who is another major source of irritation for me) is speaking in an English accent, why does she say things like:

"Are we guing to ev an efferr?"

Finally, there was that bloke who turns up in so many bloody BBC dramas, usually as some senior Intelligence Officer or something. He has a voice like melting butter, does a lot of adverts, and can't act for toffee. Whatever his name is, he appeared as the villain of the piece, and from the moment I saw his face, I'd begun to lose faith in Zen. The second in the series was unfortunately worse than the first, and I found myself drifting away from the story before it ended.

I was somewhat pleased to read the Facebook status of a Jandrell acquaintance the day after which supported my critique.

Not With A Bang

I've more or less given up now. Ben Carruthers - number 4 in the Back Six - played Glenn Gilpin, who was sentenced to 30 years' hard labour. He died of liver failure at the age of 47, and his son played drums briefly with Megadeth. That is all.

I spent much of my formative years (defined for me as between 16-35ish. Challenge this if you like) angrily railing against the current set-up of the Capitalist military-industrial complex and yearning for some kind of anarchist state.  (Apart from an early, brief, and – as I look back on it now – rather bizarre fixation with Nazism. Please don’t judge me. I was young and foolish, had grown up in a very provincial town where even now the BNP poll double the votes [3.2% against 1.6%] of the Green Party, and knew less than nothing about the world. I discovered socialism at about the same time as I discovered pot and patchouli. In any case, if you read this regularly, you’ll know that I’m as left leaning as they come, so I really don’t need to explain away my spotty 15 year-old self) This I suppose was never explored in any great detail, but rather grew out of the sense of anger and sadness at the inequalities in our world. Things just weren’t (and aren’t – let’s face it) right, and something had to be done. However, what that something was did not take shape, and did not seem in any way imminent. Now, after watching the hundreds of police queue for their free breakfast in the staff canteen this morning, as I listen to yet more helicopters hovering above, and as I keep an eye on the Guardian website for updates on the latest student protest, it all seems just that little bit more tangible.

The other night, while I was uploading a YouTube video, Twitter was keeping me up to date with the anonymous DDoS attacks on VISA, and for a moment I was very conflicted. Here was the potential for real progress at last – a sophisticated attack on one of the very pillars of the establishment in response to government efforts to stem the tide of transparency oozing out through the Wikileaks gash. The power of anonymous seemed quite stunning. Out of the blue, a major financial institution was temporarily brought to a standstill by a group of internet users. And this was a good thing. Something which I could applaud as a demonstration of activism and the ability of ordinary people (who know a fair bit about computers) to strike back.

But then a nagging doubt began to claw at the back of my mind. My cash card carries the VISA marque. I remembered the original financial meltdown as Alastair Darling announced the cash injections to save the banking system, and the genuine fear I felt at the time that it really could go tits up. I was on the verge of withdrawing the paltry sum which resided in my bank account at that time, because it all seemed terrifyingly close. Those DDoSs reminded me of that time. I began to think of those things involving VISA on which I – and those close to me – depend, and it all seemed so terribly inconvenient, so bloody scary if you like. This is obviously related to my advancing years and the fact that I have realised just how vulnerable I am, just how potentially close to a life on the street. All my youthful exuberance evaporated.

Greene King

Is Graham Greene’s The Honorary Consul nothing more than an extended exploration of Pascal’s Wager? It is very well written, as naturally goes without saying, and as always strikes to the core of some of the great dilemmas faced by thinking men.


It is, one might say, a plea for hope; the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Simply because we cannot face the truly dreadful prospect that at the end all there is is darkness and a pile of ashes or a rotting corpse beneath the sod, we have come up with the construct of the reward known as Heaven. Perhaps the ultimate definition of Hell (as somebody rightly pointed out on CiF Belief the other day – there seems to be little mention of ‘down there’ in religious discourse these days. Intriguing in itself I think) is not ‘other people’, but rather the absence of others all together.

In The Honorary Consul, yet another of Greene’s superbly drawn fallen priests – Father Rivas – embodies the struggle between faith and evidence; hope and hopelessness; good and evil, perfectly. He is neatly balanced against the left-leaning, cynical and cold-hearted Dr Plarr, with his quest for an absent father (in this case without the capital ‘F’) and the revolutionary Aquino, who carries his mutilated hand as a visual symbol of his political struggle – the torture he has suffered at the hands of the authorities turning him towards Marxism. These great questions of faith and humanity are not discussed in some dusty drawing room as abstract ideas, but – in the style of a great John Ford Western – are given vibrancy against a backdrop of global politics and the local expression of these forces at work, as the kidnapping drama plays itself out around the almost pathetic protagonists. These men, faced with the reality of the evil which is everywhere – in government, in the media, in us all – turn away from God and strive to find their answers elsewhere. Yet none of this is simple, as I hope is clear from the brief synopsis above. Rivas cannot – despite his best efforts – truly deny his holiness, because those around him simply will not let him, dependant as they are on the comfort a priest provides them.

Greene was famously a Catholic of course, and I always struggle to understand why those who are clearly intelligent enough to produce great works of art are seduced by the surplices and the sacristy. He even converted, while still quite young, persuaded by a priest named Father Trollope to change his atheist ways. Maybe it's that the power of the myths behind the stories of the Bible are so resonant. Or maybe (and Greene clearly had quite a life, travelling to distant places and watching – as well as occasionally participating in – moments of great historical import. So what do I know by comparison?) he did take Blaise’s bet, figuring that he had (literally) nothing to lose. We cannot really know the answer, and it is a measure of the man that he never flinched from exposing the failures of the established church while recognising the virtue of true belief. God, goes the argument towards the gripping climax of the novel, is evolving in the same way we are (not in terms of scientific evolution, but more in the sense of evolving towards a more humane and humanist society) and ultimately his ‘night side’ will wither away, leaving only the ‘day side’ as a symbol of hope for us all. Through our own spiritual redemption, we also redeem God.

Well, I’m not sure about that, but it’s a damn fine book anyway.

Two Little Words

I have taken out a book (Not A Chimp) on evolution from Westminster Library, but have ceased reading it after 2 chapters, and am intending to return it tomorrow. There are a number of reasons for this. First, the cover picture shows a right-looking (from the viewer's perspective) chimp in a Rodin-esque pose, while below a bald man in a striped shirt with very long eyebrows strokes his chin while gazing leftwards into the middle distance.
Second, the back cover blurb says:

ARE WE JUST DRESSED UP CHIMPS?

I can't help thinking, every time I glance over at the bedside table (having turned the book over because the man/chimp picture on the front cover irritates me so much) that it says - or at least should say -:

ARE WE JUST DRESSED UP AS CHIMPS?

This, in my opinion, would be a far better proposition for a treatise, but the lack of these two little letters (yes, I am aware of the title of this post, thank you) rankles.

And then there's the content. The book was written by Jeremy Taylor, who was a broadcaster - not a scientist. I don't pretend to be in any way qualified to assess or peer review any serious scientific writing, having only recently grasped Richard Dawkins (though not in the biblical sense, obviously) but I do prefer my science to come from scientists as opposed to TV people. On top of that, I don't really know what the hell the guy is driving at. His main beef seems to be that we've overdone the whole anthropomorphising thing with our hairy cousins, and that too much sentimentality gets in the way when considering how closely related we are to Pan Troglodytes. The whole issue around granting chimps and other apes 'human' rights - however noble this may be - is a side issue and clouds serious study around the difficult task of understanding the genetics. He may be right, and he may have a valid point, but I do feel that premise is seriously undermined by the fact that he does not possess any scientific qualifications.

Now - to focus my non-simian brain cells on Microsoft Excel...

Thin gruel fat blog

I have long been (I didn't watch enough of Fist of Fun, I suppose, but I really enjoyed the Lee & Herring shows and continue to laugh at AIOTM) a fan of Richard Herring (and have mentioned his material on more than one occasion on here before) so decided to borrow his book - How Not To Grow Up - from Westminster libraries.  I wouldn't have shelled out £12 for it to be sure (in fact, I doubt I would have even paid a far more reasonable £6, child of the internet as I am, and thus contemptuous of any form of entertainment which isn't entirely free, such as AIOTM) but it seemed a reasonable diversion, and something of a mental antidote after ploughing through Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker.

And reasonably diverting it most definitely is.  About halfway through, I have had two or three laugh out loud moments, and considerably more wry smiles of recognition.  He is excellent at pushing ideas to their ludicrous limits, and is not averse to the most puerile gags.  Actually, it would be fair to say that puerility is the major theme of this work (if not of the entirety of his oeuvre - and nothing wrong with that) but there is little more to get excited about.  This will be a minor criticism, as I do generally approve of the book, and only feel that a few minor tweaks would have made all the difference.  Neither is the criticism aimed solely at the writing.  The book itself - despite the high price tag - is poorly produced, nastily typeset, with a good few fairly serious typographical errors.  The humorous quotes at the head of each chapter have an amateurish feel, and don't actually add a great deal to the narrative.

As far as style goes, the relationship with Emma Kennedy is just plain irritating, and the anarchic edge which works so well in the live internet shows doesn't come across at all.  The whole is extremely episodic, piecing together routines from his post-modern shows and providing a thesis on aging which really does not satisfy in any deeper sense.  It reads, really, like loads of blog posts.

I remain convinced that his writing will improve.

Ballardian

Thanks to God is Not Elsewhere for the image.

There is no life any more, is there?

Having just finished Burmese Days by Orwell and then Miracles of Life by JG Ballard (interesting I think that some people I talk to are less than impressed by his writing, though I suspect this is at least in part due to an anti sci fi prejudice) I realise that some of the great British writers of the 20th Century lived full and interesting lives, seeing much of the world and - for good or ill - soaking up experiences. This is something which seems to be denied to us now, even with cheap air travel and television, and I can't help but feel a sense of loss about that, there's no denying it. Will Self (to cite what I believe is the closest relation to these greats writing today) has I think chosen to travel in the internal world - especially when on a jet with the PM - for inspiration.

Although both Eric and Jim (the former in Burma - as was - and the latter in Shanghai - as was, and seemingly will forever be, despite the Mao intermission) were cloistered in the strange unreality of life in the British Empire, with its detachment from local customs and its protection for those lucky enough to have been born in West Bromwich or Bradford, both were very obviously shaped - in terms of their art - by the 'native' people they observed.

It was by chance that I picked both of these books from the library at the same time, and yet there are many fascinating synergies and echoes between them, though one is a 'pure' autobiography (unlike Emperor of The Sun) and the other only draws on personal experience.

[SPOILER ALERT - if you fancy reading Burmese Days (and I heartily recommend it) skip the next bit]

For Orwell, the transition of power from the British Empire is symbolised by the slow and painful destruction - even unto death - of the main character, spineless specimen though he is. His 'enemy' among the Burmans (Orwell's word) meanwhile, who plays an active part in heaping the opprobrium on the pukka sahib's head, is elevated and crowned with laurels in the closing pages. The Establishment, though struggling on, has been irrevocably changed.

[SPOILER ALERT OVER]

Ballard (who BTW mentions reading Orwell as a young man) is more specific in detailing how his work is shaped by the horrendous suffering and - to say the least - undignified deaths of so many indigenous people in WWII era China when he grew up in Shanghai's International Settlement as the Zeros flew overhead and Bushido was followed by the Japanese conquerors. He relates - in this spare yet incredibly moving close-to-death memoir - how he has perhaps unconsciously striven to elucidate the absorption of so much casual suffering and murder through his incredible body of work, as well as through his remarkable journey through life.

I have been greatly enriched by these two marvellous books.