Byron etc.

A short ditty from Byron caught my eye in the newspaper:  'A little she strove, and much repented, / and whispering, 'I will ne'er consent' - consented.'  Followed shortly after by several quotes from a review of 'Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What it means to be Human' by Scott Atran.  The book's author ends by saying that, 'permanent peace is about as improbable on Earth as unending day', but before he gets there, as the reviewer adroitly notes, 'In a passage that should be framed and hung above the desks of every world leader, he writes: 'Until Barrack Obama's election, US relief for the Indonesian victims of the December 2004 tsunami arguably was the only significant victory since 9/11 in the struggle to prevent enlistment of future terrorists for jihad'.  Scott Atran also makes the (hopefully obvious) point that parents of suicide bombers feel neither satisfaction nor pride in the actions of their sons (or daughters): 'I have yet to meet parents who would not have done anything in their power to stop their children from such an act'.  Indeed.  Surely only crack brained far right-wing gainsayers and anti-Semites would disagree.

Food for thought

Is there anything better than a roast chicken for dinner on a Sunday?  Well, yes, naked group sex in a jacuzzi is better, but if you restrict the choice to food I mean.  Pizza in Naples.  Ok.  No, well, that is better. Tapas in Seville washed down with local wine.  Fair enough.  Bratwurst and beer in Frankfurt.  Stop already, you made your point.  There's a whole lot that's a whole lot better than roast chicken on a Sunday.  But if you're stuck at home and the shops are closed and the restaurants are full and you lack the energy or inspiration to open a cookery book then nothing beats a roast chicken for Sunday dinner.  And yes, I do think that vegetarianism is a lifestyle choice sensible eaters should pay no heed to.  They have no word for it in Mandarin.  Don't think Inuit culture shelters many nut roast nibblers either.  On an associated point,  I wonder how the government's latest food fascist diktat on the maximum quantity of red meat people should eat squares with evolutionary science (for are we not descendants of carnivores)?  And is it true that vegetarians have a lower incidence of bowel cancer, as surely they must since they eat no meat at all?  Food for thought.

Mud

Mysteries of Married Life #2 involves the accretion of mud.  When I go walking, anywhere, my lower legs are quickly covered in mud.  If the ground is wet and boggy the mud reaches to my lower thighs.  In extremely wet conditions it can splash my upper back.  I have even been known to get muddy walking along a tarmacadam road. But my wife attracts no mud, at anytime, in any terrain, whatever the climactic conditions.  Even her boots remain mud free.  It's a muddy  mystery of married life for I guarantee that even in a historical re-enactment of the battle of Passchendaele she would attract no mud . As for my illustrative choice, is it mud or is it chocolate that covers the fiery eyed young woman?  Do I lick or do I wallow?  Flanders and Swann would know what to do.

Too easy to snigger

I do like the idea, written about most persuasively by Kathryn Hughes in today's Guardian, of the value in trying to 'inhabit the opposition's  mindset'.  The article was a review of a book on Cavaliers of the English Civil War by John Stubbs, 'Reprobates'.  The context was a discussion of the Edinburgh lawyer Archibald Johnstone, a man who spent his wedding night with his fourteen year-old bride (sic) 'testing her on her catechism'.  She died eight months later and Johnstone's eventual, if painful rationalisation of the tragedy, was that it marked 'God's special favour'.  Hughes writes, 'It would be easy to snigger, but Stubbs watches over Archibald's unlovely Calvinism with something approaching tenderness.  Here is a man already in a hell of his own making: who would begrudge him the capacity to wrangle darkness from light'.  I like too her saving of the essayist Aubrey who, 'With his crashing snobbery, his fussy antiquarianism and loose way with a fact, he has long been consigned to the status of historical mediocrity.  But Stubbs reminds us of Aubrey's better qualities'.  Yes.  I sometimes worry that it is too easy 'to mock' colleagues and to forget or deliberately ignore their 'better qualities'.  Something to remember on Monday morning.  Along with the story of the poet William Davenant who, ingesting mercury to cure his syphilis, 'had his head sown into a medicated hood to protect his ruined features.  It didn't work:  once the hood was off he found himself cupping the remains of his septum in his hands'.

The baldy bloke

Our son tells us that customer service in Germany is inherently different to customer service in the UK.  Not so fawning.  Longer eye contact. Can't say I've noticed but it's an interesting thought.  On this morning's shopping jaunt in town I was certainly struck by the warm and friendly manner of the various shop assistants I spoke to.  Most especially the lovely young lady in a charity shop who had me laughing out loud listening to her instruct an elderly volunteer on the use of the electronic payment card machine. 'Now', she said, 'Ask the gentleman nicely for his card.'  Meaning me.  And when I smiled and said that it was good to be called a gentleman, she said, 'Well, I could have said that bloke with the glasses.'  Then, at the end of the transaction, which had taken some time to complete, she delivered a devastating smile, a wink, and said to the volunteer, 'Now give that bloke with the baldy patch his receipt.'  What could I do?  I roared with laughter.  Now that's what I call customer service - make 'em leave with a smile.

Caveat emptor

'The retention of capital punishment in many of the states in the USA is partly a result of local democracy.  Local people exercise democratic choices and vote to retain execution as the ultimate punishment.'  An interesting thesis and another fascinating 'Thinking Allowed' programme presented by Laurie Taylor on BBC Radio 4.  Would people in the UK vote in a referendum for the return of capital punishment?  Perhaps. Or perhaps attitudes have moved on apace.  I certainly hope so.  But I have a new idea for a programme for Laurie, if he's interested.  'The difficulty of recommending books, films or music to friends.'  It is a stratagem fraught with difficulties and should really only be attempted if you are more than halfway sure that the tastes of your friend and your own coincide closely.  Otherwise there is the possibility of recrimination, bitterness, perhaps even anger.  Even more so when it comes to recommending a holiday destination. Just  imagine spending all that money on a vacation somewhere only to find when you arrive that you hate it.  Who do you blame?  Your friend of course.  Not so bad if it's a paperback book or a cd, especially if you lend it to them first.  Restaurants are ok because you can always blame the chef or the service on the night they go.  Films too. 'You didn't enjoy it?  But the reviews were so great.  Are you sure you understood the narrative twists? / the underlying leitmotiv? / the director's extended metaphor? / and etc.'  Your friends have a responsibility too of course and are free to act or not on the advice you proffer.  Back to the idea of democratic choice.  If you chose to purchase anything on a recommendation please be aware that the recommendation is inherently flawed in that it  comes from another.  Caveat emptor, says I. The doggy cartoon is only tangentially relevant to all of this but it made me laugh.  A bit like the spoof tv ad that purports to advertise doggy dentures.  It's silly but I always smile when I see it.

A learned rabbi

There's an old Jewish joke about a man searching for the meaning of life.  He travels for hundreds of miles in search of a famous and  learned rabbi.  The man climbs mountains and fords rivers.  He gets sick and almost dies.  Eventually after many years travelling he finds the learned rabbi and asks, 'Rabbi!  What is the meaning of life?'  And the rabbi says, 'Come back a week Tuesday.  God didn't tell me yet.' 

Actually, it's not an old Jewish joke at all, I just made it up.  Which is to say it might be an old joke surfacing from my sub-conscious but I didn't copy it directly.  And I quite like it.  It's not a great joke, but it's an ok joke.  Maybe I should start writing jokes for a living.  Then again, maybe not.  At least with my current job I get  a pension.

Ogden Nash

I first became aware of Ogden Nash on a cassette tape version of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with Hermione Gingold narrating and the Vienna Philharmonic providing the music, conducted by Karl Bohm (whose LP box set of Beethoven Symphonies I received for my 16th birthday).  The filler was Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, enlivened by Nash's wonderfully acerbic verses.  And I just love this poster.  But who listens to cassette tape versions of anything these days?  Well, me for one.  I still have a Sony machine and hundreds of tapes, although the amount of wow and flutter seems to increase at an alarming rate when I play them now.  I'm sure there is a technical reason for this, but c'est la vie.  As they die on the cog wheels of the tape deck the cassettes are ceremoniously unspooled and binned without regret. I never did take to them and only persisted in buying cassettes because they were cheaper than the newly arrived cds.  Yet another false economy it seems, even when the cost ratio comparison of cassette versus cd was better than 2:1.  As a postscript, the Hermione Gingold recording was bought by my wife and buying music of any kind is still a rare event for her.  I wonder why?

Live in the moment

Can you have too much cake and beer?  Unfortunately yes.  Please see expanding waistline.

However, if there is excellent beer to be had and fine cake to be eaten, why not live in the moment?  Please see accompanying cartoon.

Besides, should my sense of guilt and lack of will-power when it comes to moderating intake help drive the bakers and brewers of the world out of business?  No, says I!

And so a compromise is necessary.  No more cake and beer until at least the end of the week and in between times plenty of exercise, fresh fruit and vegetables, and nothing to drink but black coffee and water.

hooded beauty

Define beauty - and no, it is not in the eye of the beholder.  How craven an answer is that.  No, my definition is an adaptation of one that I came across recently.  Beauty in my lexicography is now something that combines aesthetic pleasure with grace, something that 'charms the intellectual or moral faculties' (as my Shorter Oxford would have it) that is also elegant in form, elegant in movement and - when speaking of a person - of kind character.  The 'water drop' (courtesy of a Google search) meets those criteria.  A further refinement would insist that beauty is temporary, fleeting and here too the water drop merits the accolade.  I'm not entirely sure about the 'hooded beauty' below (also courtesy of Google), but it is such an arresting image I chose to include it.  And here I also choose to contradict myself because it is suddenly apparent that my reaction to these images, as to all works of art, is entirely personal, subjective, and a product of my own social and cultural environment.  So that yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  How could it not be?

Completely barmy

The state of the roads in the UK is shocking.  This is no secret.  A combination of extreme weather conditions and cuts to public spending has resulted in pot holes that are clearly doing damage to the vehicles that use our roads.  I would imagine that the cost of the repairs to the  cars and trucks is probably greater than the savings made in  the nation's road budgets, but the government will shrug that off as something that results from a free market capitalist economy.  Just as they shrug off the growing number of people made redundant by unnecessarily savage cuts to public spending, and the increasing pressure on families dependent on benefits.  And in a supreme piece of arrogant and unabashed condescension, the Tory politicians talk about 'difficult times and having to make tough decisions'.  Yeah, but not for you mate!  The cabinet is clearly cocooned in a fuzzy blanket of self-righteous ideological certainty made all the more comfortable by their substantial private fortunes.  The disconnect with the general public being made to pay for the errors of government and the greed of bankers and capitalists worldwide is broad and still growing - a bit like the holes in the roads. Presumably Cameron's completely barmy Big Society will result in diy road fixing by motorists, as illustrated.

Old habits die hard

 Please read Robert Fisk in The Independent.  If you want sharply focused, trenchant journalism and a better understanding of the current situation in Egypt and the wider Middle East, you have to read Robert Fisk.  From today's newspaper he writes, 'it is remarkable that just as Arab protesters mimic their successful counterparts in Egypt, the state security apparatus of each Arab regime faithfully follows the failed tactics of Mubarak's thugs.  (But) Another irony has dawned on Egyptians. Those Arab dictators which claim to represent their people – Algeria comes to mind, and Libya, and Morocco – have signally failed to represent their people by not congratulating Egypt on its successful democratic revolution. To do so, needless to say, would be to saw off the legs of their own thrones.'  The article also rings alarm bells about the role of the army and reminds us that the roots of such a repressive and long-lasting regime run deep and will not be easily removed.  Too many people have prospered for too long under Mubarak not to have a stake in the retention of at least some part of the state apparatus of repression. Fisk again puts it best: 'old habits die hard in young men wearing uniforms'.

Have you eaten yet?

Am I over-eating due to illness (a head cold)?  Breakfast involved fresh fruit juice, espresso, a bacon roll and a roll with butter.  Lunch was spicy chickpeas and tomatoes, honey and yogurt, and figs.  Then herbal tea and a pear.  My mid-afternoon snack was a bagel with butter and an espresso.  Dinner was a cassoulet of duck legs and haricot beans with pumpkin bread, followed by local cheese, oatcakes and then ice-cream.  Dinner was washed down with a bottle of wine shared between three.  No supper and plenty of mineral water throughout the day.  Not so bad now I look at it, but almost no exercise and much laying about on the sofa listening to music.  So, probably a tad too much on the ingestion side and a little light on the calorie burning.  But that's what happens when you don't feel well.  Besides, there's always bedtime.  And that cat looks so pathetic.  There surely has to be a moral about dipping your paws where they're not wanted. 

My wife's edge

Do hobbies help you live longer?  It seems to be a received wisdom that retired folk live longer, happier, healthier lives if they actively pursue a hobby.  A hobby that involves social contact, social interaction, and communication with other retirees.  A hobby that is not only creative but also active, involving the 'doing' of something.  Passive pursuits such as reading or listening to music are in of themselves inferior and ill suited for the purpose.  I wish I knew where the received wisdom originated and on what evidential basis such a dramatic conclusion was drawn.  I presume something epidemiological was the starting point and surely it is more of a hypothesis than an established scientific fact.  Worrying all the same.  I have a stubborn anti-social streak when it comes to my leisure activities, largely based on the huge number of social interactions I have during my working day.  I frankly cannot be bothered being sociable when I'm not at work, except on rare occasions when having dinner with friends.  I wonder if that will change come retirement?  Certainly my wife has the edge there in terms of active hobbies that may possibly prolong her life span, not even taking into account her gender.  I think that I need to join a reading circle.  A reading circle that is vigorous in its social interactivity.  A reading circle as much energetic as intellectual.  A reading circle perhaps that combines erudition, discourse and calisthenics - with a yoga class offshoot for readers of short stories.

Pussy law

Cats have rights.  Principally they have the right to roam freely across gardens and other domestic borders, excluding entry inside houses, without let or hindrance.  This ancient feline freedom is dependent neither on the cat's age, breed, colouration nor character. There is no aesthetic caveat in pussy law and it is not the case that cute kittens have carte blanche to roam at will whilst decrepit and smelly old toms must endure restrictions on their peregrinations.  Cats are entitled to freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom to meow.  Simply put, cats can come and go as they please.  It's all there in the thirteenth century Magna Cat Charter.

Never trust a man in uniform

Events in Egypt have overtaken my occasional blog, although I am disturbed to learn this morning that the Egyptian army is 'helping demonstrators dismantle their tents' in Tahrir Square.  Since when has any army in any country proven its democratic credentials?  The Egyptian army has spent the last thirty years propping up the Mubarak regime.  It stood by while the regime's thugs attempted to smash the pro-democracy movement in Tahrir Square.  The Egyptian army is not to be trusted with governance even for a limited transitional period, but then nor is any uniformed hierarchical organisation in any country, and certainly not the police. They are by nature authoritarian and anti-democratic, even in the UK where 'kettling' is the euphemism now used for forcibly preventing free speech, freedom of movement and the freedom to peacefully protest.  Can you imagine the headlines if the Egyptian army had 'kettled' protesters in Cairo, so why not similar howls of outrage when the British police do the same here?  And the role of Europe and the USA in this still unfolding story is shocking in its hypocrisy, at best pusillanimous, at worst cowardly.   Obama in particular has been a gross disappointment.  Do these people have no moral compass, no moral fibre?  Realpolitik is all very well but are there no limits to the cynicism and duplicity of politicians?  It's embarrassing to note that we are the ones who claim to live in a democratic society and yet for too long we have been giving succour and material support to tyrants and repressive regimes in the name of our 'broader, strategic interests', most especially in the Middle East.  For shame!

A feeling in my bones

Is it time for me to retire?  It's getting closer, I can feel it in my bones - they ache at the end of a day's work and my tiredness is such that I barely make it past 10pm before it's time for bed.  Even with all of the economic gloom and heavy job losses in the UK the life/work balance is shifting.  I can now more easily foresee the day when I dislike my job more than the financial rewards can compensate me for.  So, assuming it is sooner rather than later, what would I do with my retirement?   Walk, especially long-distance footpaths.  Read.  Listen to the radio.  Listen to music.   Paint.  Cook.  Probably look for a part-time job, perhaps in Tesco.  Explore Scotland which, to my shame, I have not yet done to any great extent. And then the rest of England and Wales, but hopefully not on a bicycle which is my wife's great ambition. Catch up on dvd boxsets.  Relax.  Enjoy the garden as much as my anti-gardening instincts allow me to - briefly consider cultivating vegetables but then abandon the scheme to read my newspaper instead.  With my feet up.  And an espresso coffee. Listening to Radio 3. Sounds great.