wotiwrote

Kurt Vonnegut is dead

2007-04-12T08:17:00.000+01:00

I didn't discover Vonnegut's books until 1985. I don't remember which once I read first but I guess it would probably have been 'Slaughterhouse Five'. Whatever it was, I then bought all the Panther paperback books of his that I could find. Gollancz did 'The Sirens of Titan' and Penguin did 'Cat's Cradle' but the rest were published by Panther.

He wrote in a way that made reading his books easy. The humour was sometimes wonderfully childish, the plots could be weak, and his politics bordering on the simplistic. None of this really mattered because, somehow, you knew you were getting it straight. He had 'no side', as my mother would say. And he was a master of cutting through the crap. He had a scalpel for shit penetration. He was like a favourite uncle who treats you like a grown-up, who tells you the things your parents find hard to share with you, who knows you're able to accept the truth about anything. In 'Breakfast of Champions' he describes the U.S. national anthem as "gibberish sprinkled with question marks." He could mock the pomposity and hypocrisy of accepted standards of behaviour because he did so, not from a position of superiority, but because he recognised his own human frailities. No wonder he loathed Dubbya and his cabinet of shrubs - a president well worthy of the gibberish of the national anthem.

In 1985 I was working at Waterstone's on the Charing Cross Road. There was a mystery and science fiction bookshop across the way in Denmark Street and Vonnegut was scheduled to appear at a book signing there on the UK publication of 'Galapagos'. I went, eager to get my copy signed. Vonnegut was unwell and had to call off. So it goes.

My war on procrastination

2007-04-07T09:43:00.000+01:00

I've finally got my hands on a copy of Steven Pressfield's 'The War of Art'. It's not fair on Pressfield but I'm putting a lot of faith in him to cure my life.

The foreword to the book is by Robert McKee, author of Story. He writes this:

I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem. I can procrastinate dealing with my problem of procrastinating thinking about my procrastination problem.

Pressfield, in his own preface, writes:

There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.

I'm feeling hopeful.

I shall look out for Jack Gilbert, thanks to Garrison Keillor

2007-04-06T07:59:00.000+01:00

Each morning I receive a copy of Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" in my inbox. It's a short read (you can also get it as a podcast) and comprises a poem followed by a few entries that relate the lives of writers and thinkers to the day in question. It's a pleasant way to start the day and more often than not throws up a quirky fact that's worth holding onto for a while. Today's almanac can be found within the weekly archives here.

Many of the poems Keillor includes leave no lasting impression on me but I found today's notable precisely because it made me want to read it again and because there was an emotional depth to it that seems lacking from a lot of contemporary poetry - where form often dominates at the expense of substance. Jack Gilbert's poem, 'Refusing Heaven', ends

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of triumph.

As one of my favourite poems is Auden's 'Musee des Beaux Arts', this has a welcome echo of that but it also presents a nicely judged reappraisal of failure.

Jane Austen: Persuasion

2007-04-05T22:31:00.000+01:00

I have the old Penguin English Library version of 'Persuasion'. The spins was that peculiar orange that threatened to turn salmon pink in the wrong light and the front cover featured a painting of 'Cobb Gate, Lyme Regis'. It cost 50p in 1974 and I bought it because I had to: it was a set text for my 'A' Level English course. At the time I was interested in Joyce and Beckett - Lawrence at a pinch - so Austen was not an author I found an exciting prospect.

In the end I fell out so much with my English teacher over the syllabus that I refused to write any essays on 'Persuasion' and was suspended from college. Needless to say, I have come to appreciate Austen rather more since those days. This book, though, reminds me of a time that I made a lot of bad decisions and received very little guidance from those who should have been on hand to help me. No doubt I made their job very difficult but that is the nature of teaching: it has to be more than simply repeating only the information necessary to get the best students through their exams.

Not exactly 'Jane Austen ruined my life' but certainly a case of 'I was introduced to Jane Austen in the wrong way'. The 400 pages of my copy, combined with the classic Penguin paperback format of the time, make it almost the perfect dimension for a paperback book. Never mind the text, feel the weight!

I miss the Penguin formats of that time: the black Classics, the red/orange English Library, and the pale almost washed-out green of the Modern Classics.

Richard Ellmann: "James Joyce"

2007-04-04T22:13:00.000+01:00

1976 was the year that I began buying books in great numbers. Much of the spare money I had went into the till of a Birmingham bookshop whose name I have forgotten - did it begin with an 'H'? - but whose layout I can still remember.

In my final year at school, I developed the affectation of carrying 'Ulysses' with me in the capacious pockets of my jacket. Amazingly, this didn't get me soundly beaten at every opportunity by the less pretentious members of the school. A beating then may have saved me from years of believing that I had to compete with Joyce whenever I sat down to write.

On a trip to the Birmingham bookshop - adjacent to New Street railway station and so an easy trip from my Solihull home - I found a copy of Ellmann's biography of Joyce. It was an Oxford paperback in the same format as my Penguin copy of 'Ulysses' but with a cover that was basically white. In fact, the cover was the famous Brancusi 'Symbol of Joyce', which, to an impressionable teenager, seemed a radical departure from the over-decorated covers of so many other books. I had to have it. Over 800 pages of crucial Joyce information. In a book that felt great in my hands, looked good, and smelled of learning and of a life that I dreamed of living.

Unfortunately, it was too expensive. The sticker on the back read £2.50. Back then, when book prices changed, they tended simply to put a simple sticker over the previous price. I removed the sticker. The previous price was £1.25. That was more like it. It showed that the book had been on the shelf for a long time but it also meant that I could afford it.

I have never read a biography to match this one. The combination of Ellmann's writing and his research, his obvious admiration for Joyce and the love of his work, added to the events of Joyce's life and the work he produced, was bound to create something special. Originally published in 1959 - my copy even has a puff from William Empson on the back cover - it betrayed no sense of its age in 1976.

I don't remember how long it took me to read the book but it wasn't long. I read nothing else until I had finished it. One of the book's peculiarities is that the chapters are divided by year and there is a running header throughout which indicates Joyce's age at the time of the events being retold. (I have wished for this simple device to be repeated in other biographies I've read since, especially when I turn to the early chapters to remind myself of the year of birth and try to calculate how many years have passed.) I took careful note of Joyce's achievements in the years closest to my own age and, on many occasions in the years since that first reading, I have returned to measure myself against Joyce. Well, I did for some years. I think I stopped doing that around the age of 30, when it was clear that Joyce and I would not be following similar career paths.

In 1982 Oxford published a revised edition of the biography and I finally bought a copy of the paperback in 1984. The format was wrong and there was a picture of Joyce on the front instead of the Brancusi sketch. I read the preface and took note of where Ellmann said the changes were but I never read the new biography. It felt wrong. Almost as a matter of principle I re-read the original instead.

The spine of the book is creased and broken and is held together by sellotape that is brown with age and crisp and has lost most of its adhesiveness. The page edges are grey with use and the rubbing against the inside of bags and jacket pockets. But something of the original smell remains and it still feels right in the hand. Best of all, it still carries with it something of the hope I felt when I found it in the bookshop. Joyce is long dead; Ellmann, too. But the biography reminds me that I thought serious writing was important and that there were few things in the world more important. A young man's belief and I can't honestly say that I hold that conviction still. But there's a part of me that regrets the loss of that ideal and, will all the usual caveats, I still think there's honour to be found in living a life like Joyce's - and Ellmann's - with a single-minded focus on producing a piece of literature the effects of which resound long after your death.

Books do take over the furniture of a room

2007-04-03T17:11:00.000+01:00

My wife and my bookshelves have had enough. When my wife kicked me out of my old office and took it for herself I had to move upstairs to a room that was nominally a sitting room but was used for nothing but gathering dust - and containing our CDs, old vinyl records, and a wall full of bookshelves. These shelves were already full but I had to relocate another thousand or so books from my study. Every shelf became a crowded tenement, with no logic to the order. Books were stacked, two deep, until my library looked more like a parody of an autodidact's dream rather than a collection of three decades of book-buying. I didn't like it but I put up with it.

But the shelves started to weep with the strain. They began to buckle and the dust was getting thicker as it became hard to get at any books to clean them, never mind find the right one to read.

A decision was made. Well, my wife made the decision and I went along with it. Books must go. We have an attic that is already full of old IT books and old Bass Player magazines and Mojo magazines. You may be seeing a pattern emerge here.

So, finally, I got down to taking the books off the shelves and dividing them into three piles.

charity shops
attic (to replace the books and magazines jettisoned from there)
back on the shelf

I cleaned each shelf as it saw daylight once more and each book as it was separated from its neighbour. As I picked up pace, I was relieved to find that chucking out books was easier than I thought. To be honest, many of these volumes have sat on shelves in my life for nearly thirty years and mocked me. It was time they were shown the door. I was also ashamed to find that there were a lot of books I had simply never read. More than I care to admit.

In less than two hours I had over 1000 books to donate to the local charity shops. Better yet, I'd rediscovered books I had forgotten I had, and I had jettisoned a lot of second-rate books that I would never think of reading again.

The two piles left consist of books I've read and believe I should keep - but this pile is forever in danger of shrinking the longer I leave it lying on the floor before packing up for the attic - and books I just want to see on my shelves - augmented by those classic books left that I have yet to read.

At the moment, my wife is unsure whether she's ahead on the deal because I'm holding back on the transfer to the attic and there are piles of books on the floor in various parts of the upstairs. She's not being too pushy about it yet,however, as I think she realises some of the psychological barricades that the exercise has stormed.

Books have always been more that the contents for me. I love the shape and the feel and the smell of books - old and new - and I rarely read a book I do not own. Paying for a book is part of the experience and, unless the book is simply too dreadful to keep - Digital Fortress by Dan Brown, for instance (no link because I refuse to encourage its purchase) - I'm unwilling to part with it after reading it.

This is unhealthy and I have known that for a long time. Finally, this exercise gave me a way to get over that. I've still got a long way to go and there are books on the floor I can see from here that I could probably part with and feel no lasting pain. This raises the whole question of why I have felt the need to keep them so long.

The only response to that question is to try and answer it. Actually, I suppose I could ignore it but I'm going to start choosing some books at random from the 'shelves' pile and try and examine what they mean to me.

And by the way, although the title of this post may suggest otherwise, I have no Anthony Powell novels anywhere in the house. Go figure.

A Year of Stories

2007-04-02T17:32:00.000+01:00

I've had a long break from the blog and it's time to get back to putting stuff down. I stopped posting because the blog wasn't what I wanted it to be. Now, however, I think I can focus on what's important. Important to me, of course. It didn't have a theme before and that was frustrating for me: I was writing about things I felt I should write about rather than things I wanted to write about.

So, books and writing will no longer appear occasionally in posts: books and writing will be what this blog is about, post after post.

We;ll see how long that holds.

Oh, and there's one thing more.

Not one to see a good idea and leave it alone, I've decided to give myself a huge challenge over the coming year in an effort to overcome my monumental creative writing block. Here's the plan: over the next 52 weeks I shall write 52 short stories. Each Monday - give or take the occasional unavoidable rhythmic blip - I shall post a new story. This starts next Monday - the 9th of April.

The inspiration for this comes from Jonathan Coulton - a talented singer/songwriter - who did an annual stint of creating a new song every week. (I came to Jonathan's blog via an interview he did on The Merlin Show. And if you have ever worked in IT or been any sort of cubicle hamster, I would recommend listening to Jonathan's song, "Code Monkey".) Perhaps it's been done with stories, too. And if it has? I'm not claiming this is an original idea: I'm doing this to get myself writing. I hope there may be some originality in my stories, though.

As a professional writer, I know already that I work best (only!) to deadlines. But that's writing for other people. This will be for me and I need something - like a self-imposed but public schedule - to drive me on.

That's the plan.

I've made some additional rules:

Each story will be a real story - no prose poems or pretentious sketches of mood or place
A story can be of any genre
Each story will be self-contained (i.e. no multi-part tales, although characters may appear in different stories)

I may devise further rules as and when it seems appropriate. Or when I want to make things easier - it's my challenge, after all.

Happy Birthday Isla!

2006-08-04T06:31:00.000+01:00

My daughter Isla is fourteen years old today.

This is extremely scary, mainly because I'm still eighteen inside my head. The body no longer looks eighteen and the mental processes have slowed and, in some places, stuck, but something vital is definitely locked at the eighteen on the dial.

In a few years, then, my daughter will be older than I am.

That aside, Isla has been the beautiful core of the last fourteen years of my life. She is smart and kind and tolerant and funny and beautiful and she is very much her own person.

When she was very young and we still lived in Singapore - where she and her brother and sister were born when I was working there for Reuters - she and I would walk down each Saturday morning to the town centre and visit all the big shopping malls. (Singapore was not an exciting place!) Isla talked early and she talked well and she spent those walks asking questions and chatting. In some ways I find it hard to think of ways she's changed since she was a precocious two year-old. She has grown, obviously, but those early conversations seemed to be as full of as much magic and intelligence as her conversations do today.

Anyway, this is just a public Happy Birthday for a special girl. Thank you for bringing so much joy into my life.

A UserFriendly paper clip

2006-07-25T09:20:00.000+01:00

I read JD Frazer's UserFriendly comic every day. This strip is an excellent example of how he manages to combine humour and breaking technical news. I love the idea that Microsoft's engineers can't find a way to kill off the paper clip. Of course, the paper clip seems to represent the unstated wishes of Microsoft's management: the subconscious desires that make themselves manifest in the software they produce.

Then again, this could just be a funny cartoon.

Straightened Times

2006-07-22T22:10:00.000+01:00

Irony of ironies. The Straits Times, mouthpiece of the Singapore dictatorship, has a journalist facing possible execution in China. A report in today's Independent is here. As a member of the NUJ and a passionate believer in freedom of speech, I abhor threats to journalists and attempts to silence truth. It seems fairly clear that the charges against Ching Cheong stem from his possible support for the Tiananmen Square protest and his connection to Zhao Ziyang.

Singapore's PAP - the ruling party - were, it hardly needs to be said, not exactly vocal in their protests at the time of the massacre of the protesting students. Freedom of speech is not a cherished ideal within the PAP's range of 'Asian values'. They prefer the notion of 'support for the ruling party'. Truth, too, is a frequent victim of news reporting within the island republic, where to stand as an opposition candidate in an election is to risk being sued by the government for libel/slander. For in a perfectly run country, how can the expression of policies that are opposed to those of the government be anything other than gross libels on the existing policies. I kid you not. The fabled banning of chewing gum was an example of the PAP at its most benevelent.

So here is a journalist working for Singapore's equivalent of Pravda facing death in China. The fact that he is not actually Singaporean means there is little chance of anything but the most cursory rumble arising from his employers. (The belief in the inferiority of other nationals is another appealing Singaporean trait.) When a government and its pet paper play so freely with notions of honesty it is hard to feel surprised when the universe rears up and bites it on the arse. The shame is that the victim is probably one of the most honest of the paper's staff - a genuine journalist who honoured free speech above his persoanl safety. The paper he chose to work for did not deserve him.

Seth got sweaty

2006-07-21T14:41:00.000+01:00

A couple of years ago Laura and I watched a BBC programme on the Sidmouth Folk Festival. One of the musicians was filmed in the woods standing on a box, stamping his feet, singing, and playing the violin. This appeared prodigiously difficult but what was most impressive was that the singing was good and so was the song. Laura was even more impressed by the unashamedly masculine appearance of the singer. I was content to listen.

The man in question was Seth Lakeman. A week ago I received an email (presumably because I had signed up to receive such things earlier this year when I was trying and failing to get tickets for the Cambridge Folk Festival) from Seth's record company. It offered me the chance to win tickets for a performance in London in retirn for answering a simple question. I accepted the offer and won the tickets.

Last night, therefore, in a very rare outing for the Stewart spousal duo, we went to ULU and enjoyed a sweaty night in the company of Seth and his excellent band. The only down side was that the heat in the venue forced the band to curtail the number of encores. Laura was especially pleased to note that Seth's pumped biceps and short sleeved t-shirt look only enhanced the musical quality. I concentrated, of course, on the excellent guitar playing of his brother Sean, and the equally talented bass player and drummer.

To even things up, I enjoyed the support act more than Laura did.

The gig was in the students' union building, which took me back to my own student days and the gigs I used to attend. I'm pleased to report, however, that I was not the oldest person in the audience: there was a wide range of ages present, which strikes a hopeful note for the future of folk music in general in the UK.

All in all it was a good night. Good music, especially, but also a chance for Laura and I to get up to London and see a live gig for the first time in many years. And for free, too, which meant I was able to tell the bouncer I was on the guest list. I've always wanted to say that at the door going into a concert.

Here is a video of Seth's new single.

I've updated myself

2006-07-21T14:33:00.000+01:00

In my real life as a freelance copywriter I am in the middle of a heavy marketing phase - trying to increase my client base, in other words.

As part of this exercise I've recreated my business web site, which was a horrible mess until recently. It may still be a horrible mess but at least it now looks a more modern horrible mess and not a remnant of a site best viewed with Mosaic.

The fate of the warm-blooded in summer

2006-07-21T12:11:00.000+01:00

The temperature has finally dropped and sleep is possible once more. In the UK we seem unprepared for weather of any sort that can be remarked upon. For a nation so obsessed with discussing the weather in all its various guises, we are alarmingly hopeless at coping with anything other than 'normal' levels of heat, cold, rainfall, or drought.

Houses and cars are unbearable when temperatures soar because air-con is rare. The travel network grinds to a halt with ice or leaves or water on rails and tarmac melts on the road. Perhaps the British talk about the weather so much as an avoidance technique. Discuss it and we don't actually have to fix things so they'll work in different conditions.

For the last week or so I've been sitting at my desk in a torpid state, with sweat trickling down my forearms and sticking to whichever papers lie beside my laptop. Nice.

Today, I feel I recovered some energy at last.

Emily, shine on

2006-07-12T16:31:00.000+01:00

Following on from yesterday's minor rant about the mealy-mouthed DJ on Virgin, I was pleased to see/hear that Johnnie Walker (standing in for Wogan) on Radio 2 this morning did the decent thing. No earnest phrases. Just a simple intro and then he played 'See Emily Play' and 'Shine on you Crazy Diamond' back to back.

It was before 8am so no doubt everyone had heard of the Emily track.

Techworld on new Firefox beta

2006-07-11T17:28:00.000+01:00

As part of Techworld's report it mentions that Germany seems to be using Firefox for about 40% of its web visits. So, in addition to hosting the World Cup in splendid fashion and providing one of the best teams of the tournament - a team which played in the best match of the tournament - they've also embraced Firefox/rejected IE in huge numbers. It may just be time to emigrate.

Shine on, Emily

2006-07-11T16:55:00.000+01:00

I just heard the most ludicrous remark on Virgin Radio this afternoon. The DJ (one of those anonymous morons who try to sound earnest no whatter what the topic) had said he would play a Floyd track to honour Syd Barrett, who has died. He was going to play 'Shine on you crazy diamond'. Not a Barrett track, of course. A listener emailed to suggest a Barrett track would be more suitable. The DJ:

I could play a single like See Emily Play but those tracks are not well known and this is afternoon radio, after all. And Shine On was written about him.

That's all right then. It's afternoon radio so nobody expects to hear something they don't know. When George Harrison died he probably played the Shirley Bassey version of 'Something'. That's it for Virgin and me.

And I'm not even a Floyd fan.

Habits

2006-07-10T20:03:00.000+01:00

Anyone who's lived longer than the average Mayfly knows that a bad habit is easy to keep and a good habit hard to acquire. That that is so remains one of the proofs that the universe can be cold and unhelpful except when it wants to take you by surprise.

In the past year I have acquired one new habit that can be chalked up on the good side. I have lost none of my bad habits and I may even be evolving some deadly new variations of the latter as I write this. But I'm pleased with my new habit and I'm so pleased with the way I made it stick that I'm going to try to apply the method to some other areas of my life.

Here's the big news. I now floss.

Yup, that's it. Not a great deal if you're from the US, I suppose, but over here in the land of the anti-Hollywood choppers flossing is not de rigeur. Especially when you're of a certain age. Like me.

My teeth are generally in good shape so the poor NHS dentist would have to resort to a bout of scraping and polishing to extract some meagre recompense from my semi-annual visit. To be fair, with my coffee and chocolate consumption, scraping and polishing was only to be expected. So I decided that flossing could be a GOOD THING.

Now I've tried flossing before. The usual sequence of events is this:

Buy floss
Put floss in bathroom cabinet
Discover floss in bathroom cabinet days before its expiry date
Struggle through a painful and bloody flossing session
Swear to floss again the following day
Discover floss in bathroom cabinet months after its expiry date

The problem, as with all my attempts to change my habits or impose some new order on my life, is the all-or-nothing approach. Put simply, this means that any failure or evidence of weakness condemns me as a fool and a charlatan and I must be punished. Punishment takes the form of not letting me try to improve my life. I believe this is quite common and immediately raises the question of how we have survived so long as a species. It may also carry the answer to our future, however: "Global warming? We're so bad we deserve to destroy the planet."

I struck upon this simple ploy. I would ease myself into flossing gently, akin to the careful sliding of a strip of tape between my molars. The plan was this:

Buy floss (I realise there is some overlap here)
Floss Saturday morning
Don't go near floss for a week

And that was week one. On week two I flossed on Friday and Saturday. I did this for two weeks. On the third week I added Thursday and flossed three times a week for three weeks. You get the picture. After five weeks of flossing five days a week I've just added Monday to the rota.

The result is threefold. One; my teeth feel thinner. Two; I feel pretty damn chuffed with myself. Three; when Sunday comes I feel pleased that I can take a day off from flossing. By Monday I'm looking forward to getting the floss out again. The secret, therefore, is to always leave yourself a little leeway. To be tender to yourself. I'll probably just leave Sundays alone. I bet God didn't floss on Sunday.

Next I'm going to tackle something more important. When I can decide what it is.

Forza Italia

2006-07-04T22:44:00.000+01:00

Well, June may have been quit but of course I meant quiet. Still, the sentence had a sort of accidental charm.

I've just watched the best match of this year's World Cup. After 90 minutes Italy and Germany were still 0-0 and there had been less than a handful of chances. It's hard to explian to someone uninterested in football how that combination of circumstances can possibly reflect a fascinating game. But the standard of football was very high and the spirit in which the game was played - abetted by some excellent refereeing - did more than a little to increase the enjoyment of the spectators. After some of the frankly appalling theatricals - by both players and officials - earlier in the competition this has gone a long way to re-establish faith in the sport.

In the end Italy won it 2-0, which saved us from a penalty shoot-out and was probably the right result based on the balance of play. Germany have done so much more than they looked capable of before the tournament began. Any member of the England management team watching must wonder what they need to do to compete at this level, where a collection of players of moderate talent - in the case of Germany, certainly - can produce a performance so much greater than at first seems possible. This is in contrast with England's situation, where a team of capable players manages not just once but repeatedly to turn in performances well below the standard that could reasonably be expected.

At least Sven is now gone, which could herald an upturn in their fortunes. Oh, wait, they appointed McLaren as manager. So, steady as she goes, cap'n. New cap'n, that is.

It's July

2006-07-01T23:22:00.000+01:00

I know June has been quit. Think of it like Paris in August. The blog last month has been my Parisian August. Now it's a new month and I'm back. Louder than ever. OK?

Oh, and Sven is no longer the manager of England. Even England fans must find that a consolation after today's defeat.

Football crazy

2006-06-27T17:07:00.000+01:00

I've been watching the World Cup. A lot. England continue to be lucky. And now Portugal will be without Deco and perhaps even Ronaldo for the quarter-final.

That's more than lucky (with apologies to some insurance company).

Happy Bloomsday

2006-06-16T09:42:00.000+01:00

...to Joyceans everywhere.

Bloomsday?

Classical Jaz

2006-06-09T14:28:00.000+01:00

This month's Mojo magazine has a short essay on 'Jaz', the frontman of Killing Joke. This brought back memories of a year I spent in Crete during the early 80s. Well, not memories of the whole year, obviously, but of a few weeks when Jaz turned up in the capital Iraklion and stayed in our house.

I think we had met him in a bar in the main square one evening shortly after he had arrived on the island. His name meant nothing to me but I had heard of Killing Joke, however vaguely. Jaz had been in Iceland and seemed to be in flight from his record company or the band - or something. The Mojo article clarifies this a bit but to be honest I wasn't that interested at the time. Now? Not much more so, really.

I spent quite a bit of time with Jaz at first. This involved a lot of drinking. His favourite haunt became a piano bar - back on that main square - where he would play extracts from what he called his 'Icelandic Symphony'. Given that he looked for the most part like he was trying too hard to get the part of the evil vampire in a second-rate horror movie, his music was quite beautiful. Again, the Mojo article puts his classical abilities into context. Apparently, he has recently been commissioned to compose an opera.

His presence in our house, however, became increasingly disturbing as my conversations with him seemed to revolve around black magic and blood and the links between Hitler and the occult. This got boring more than anything. In the end he left - but not before a woman friend arrived and joined him in the house for a while. I can't remember whether I plucked up the nerve to ask him to leave or if he just found us increasingly dull and unresponsive to his mission to convert us to blood worship. I suspect it was the latter. I wonder what I would think of that Icelandic Symphony if I heard it now.

Torture by stupidity

2006-06-05T21:54:00.000+01:00

A lot has been written about the blatant lies told by Bush and his shrubbery to connect Iraq to the attack on the Twin Towers. Obviously, those promulgating the lies did not believe them and used them to fool a shell-shocked electorate. What is most odious, perhaps, is that those lies were also fed to the military sent into Iraq, where men and women would die and kill for an exceedingly unholy untruth. The power of this instilled ignorance is brought home by an episode in Moazzem Begg's Enemy Combatant that serves to illustrate the absurd reality in which the US military is forced to exist. The authorities in Guantanamo make a special exception to their general news blackout by making sure that the prisoners learn of the capture of Sadam Hussein. This is done as an exercise in gloating, of course, but to the prisoners the news has no emotional impact at all: devout Muslims believed Hussein an apostate and so greeted the news with equanimity at the very least.

Imagine if you will, however, what effect this would have on the morale of a prisoner once he came to understand that his captors actually thought he would be adversely affected by this news. Until then, he might have expected that there was a hope that reason could prevail, that his protestations of innocence might come to be believed. Faced with the fact that his captors had a knowledge of the world that many reclusive hill tribes might have found shameful, he would have known immediately that he was beyond the reach of truth and what most of us consider reality. Torture, indeed.

My curry has expired

2006-06-02T22:39:00.000+01:00

If you ever want to get a sense of how fast time is passing just take a look in your food cupboards and check the expiry dates on some jars or tins. I do this quite often with items in the fridge and find that I've let yogurt or jams drift out of date. With tins and jars this is much rarer - obviously because they tend to have a much longer life expectancy. Today I was rummaging around looking for a sauce to use with some chicken for dinner. At the back of the section where I keep curry and pasta sauces (shock! - I don't cook them from scratch more than once a month) I came across a jar of Jamaican curry paste. This is something I've been meaning to use for a while but I keep choosing something else. This time, however, I picked up the jar. It was a little sticky around the lid and I checked the expiry date: end of February 2005. This was shocking. For the expiry date to be early 2005 points to a purchase date somewhere before the start of 2004. My mind simply couldn't accept that this jar had been sitting in the cupboard for so long. Time flies when you're getting old - and choosing other sauces.

Tomorrow I'll let you know what I found in my vegetable racks.

Not really; you're safe.

Grumpy old holidays

2006-06-01T22:22:00.000+01:00

The children are on half-term holiday, which, like all their holidays, makes it hard for me to get much work done. (Not that I ever need much of an excuse.) It's not really a case of them pestering me to do things but there is a constant need to ferry one or other of them to a friend's house or pick them up or cook lunch or dinner. And then, when I'm sitting at my desk, I'm conscious that they're all sitting watching TV or playing on the Playstation or playing on their PCs. This makes me think I should be taking them for a healthy walk or overseeing them reading a decent book or at the very least teaching them some facts about the Thirty Years' War. So my mind goes on a hike of its own through a series of brambled diversions and I end up doing nothing more than nagging irritatedly at the kids for what they are doing and offering no alternative. This sends me back to my desk in a foul mood and my work suffers further.

Happy days.