Actually the news on the domestic front here in Cowyn is all good. It’s a lovely little town. Blustery winds at the moment, but bracing in a positive way.
I’m thinking more of the news that gets in the papers. So much of that of late has been on the dark side - but when is this not the case? The dreadful events at the Christmas market in Germany, for example. Difficult to grasp what motivates such madness from our happy, cosy retreat in North Wales.
Still dealing with a cottage that’s only mildly warm when I would prefer something in the way of detectable heat. Noi isn’t so bothered though, so it’s fair to say we can live with this.
Can’t help but think of what the rough sleepers we encounter must endure. They’d most likely regard us as having access to a version of paradise. Which, in many if not most ways, is true.
There’s a deep wisdom in the notion of making the best of things.
11.30
We're off to North Wales for the weekend and are now packing accordingly. Will miss nattering in the evening with Jeanette & John but are looking forward to pastures new.
19.30
Easy journey to Cowyn and reasonably settled in, to a very nice cottage, but worrying issues with my laptop which keeps freezing. Since I’ve got a couple of jobs to complete and I can’t access email this isn’t optimal. But it doesn’t rise to the height of an actual crisis. Yet. So fingers crossed.
Also we can’t figure out how to raise the temperature on the thermostat. But we’re not exactly freezing, so, again, not a crisis but the old brow is mildly furrowing.
Gave Dylan's Christmas in the Heart a spin yesterday evening, with John & Jeanette as a somewhat appreciative, somewhat bemused audience. It felt like a relief from the barrage of seasonal music we're sustaining in these parts. Something meant.
Spent a sad hour or so in the Clarendon Square shopping centre in Hyde yesterday. Despite the attempts at Christmas cheer it felt drab and sad. The last time we were here, in December 2019, the indoor market was still a going concern - warm and welcoming, in its way. This is no longer the case. Can't be pleasant to be amongst the few stallholders when the heart has gone out of the place. Not to mention actual customers. Hope those in there are still earning a reasonable living.
The budget airline Ryanair gets a bit of a bad press over here, but we were well chuffed with our flights to and from Dublin. Easy and cheap. A most satisfactory combination.
We'll also look back on our time in Ireland as time spent in a highly satisfactory manner. To mention just two features: some of the best busking I've ever heard, and wonderful bookshops in which to browse. There's a huge one on Dawson Street called Hodges Figgis with three units of shelves, prominently positioned, dedicated solely to James Joyce. A fitting tribute to the great writer.
And on another musical note relating to words, it was a delight to hear so much of the Irish accent - though sometimes Noi found this impenetrable. Mind you, such is the nature of globalisation in relation to big cities everywhere that we probably heard more Spanish accents in the city centre than the Irish lilt.
Spent some time walking around Stephen's Green yesterday afternoon. It was pleasant to step out of the urban landscape for a short while, even though we were not exactly enjoying summer weather.
There was plenty of information available on signboards as to the history of the space, especially relating to its role in the Easter Rising. So incongruous to think of gunfire raining down on the rebels from one of the large hotels adjoining. I don't think Noi has any real grasp of the idea that Ireland is a separate nation from the UK and suffered a sometimes brutal occupation, and I can understand why. It just doesn't chime with the peaceful present.
There are plenty of ghosts of that past, conjured especially in the bookshops, and rightly so. And I suppose the ghosts still walk. But only in dreams now, fading, I hope.
Came up close to the Book of Kells yesterday at Trinity College in the well-designed and genuinely informative exhibition centred on the tome. Astonishing in its way that such a severely beautiful object could survive the centuries.
Will our benighted age leave anything as lovely behind to survive as long? (I suspect the happy answer is Yes. Hope it is.)
There are so many bookstores here, said Noi, as we walked along O'Connell Street and passed the very large Eason's shop there; More than in Manchester. A fair judgment. Especially taking into account the second-hand bookshops that seem to pop up everywhere. There's one on the road we take into the city centre called The Last Bookshop which has books piled up in random fashion in every corner. I reckon I could spend an exploratory four hours in there quite easily. The city has a distinct sense of literariness about it, and a self-awareness of such.
Yet for some reason I haven't felt any great desire to buy anything. No temptation at all. I suppose that holding back on buying stuff for the last two to three years or so has built a certain discipline in me. The only purchase I've made on this trip has involved Simon Schama's Citizens, which I've been reading rather fitfully in spare moments here & there. Add to this my purchase of Antony's Beevor's Stalingrad at the back end of November and I suspect that will be all I'll have added to the shelves until this time next year. Neither of these were bought on impulse, by the way. I've been sure for quite some time they were necessary reading for me.
It's surprising just how much difference it makes to be blessed with a ready supply of hot water. And warmth. And food. And tea.
Went shopping at Grafton Street yesterday where there much on offer. We didn't need to make too many purchases to feel satisfied though, having quite enough already.
We've now in Dublin's fair city, struggling in our temporary accommodation from a lack of hot water - so no showers or shaving so far. But the place is warm enough and if we get the necessary water then all will be more than well. (Actually, the television isn't working either, but we can happily live with that lack.)
I was a bit worried as to how we would get to the place we're in from the airport, but in the event the taxi ride was a highlight of our December. The driver was incredibly helpful and awesomely loquacious. He gave us a kind of quirky guide to the city on the way in and didn't charge the full amount on his clock as he said he'd taken a slightly longer route through the centre to pass the two cathedrals and key monuments. Following that he was absolutely determined to track down the exact location at which we're staying which involved him getting on the phone to the people renting it out and cruising up and down Rathmines Lower Road until he was sure of the place. I told him as we alighted it had been the best taxi journey of my life, and I wasn't exaggerating.
Just as a matter of interest, the driver who took us from our car hire return to Terminal 3 at Manchester Airport was also very chatty and good-natured. I'm not sure that the idea that there's been a decline in people's manners over here has much foundation in reality. Nearly everyone we have met in shops & eating places has been pleasant and helpful. It makes life so much easier.
We'd been puzzled as to why David Hoddle hadn't replied to my email about coming over to see him in December and to why I hadn't been able to get through on the phone from John's. We feared the worst but decided it would be worthwhile driving across to Hoylandswaine to see if we could make contact. It turned out that our fears were not misplaced. He died last month, the helpful neighbour informed us.
Sad, but he'd lived a full and accomplished life to his late eighties, and had passed away peacefully. Which is something. And balanced against that is the relative good health of other friends and family we've met here. We had a fine old time catching up with Simon & Judy the other night, for example.
But nothing lasts forever and this time round we're seeing a lot of changes in the places we thought we'd grown accustomed to. The little Chicken Hut in Hyde is still there and we popped in last night when we got back from Barnsley. But the lady who owned it, and who we'd come to know quite well, has gone, we were informed. She sold up and left for Dubai in 2023. Hope she's got a good and fulfilling life out there.
It was a considerable relief to chat with Maureen and find her in good spirits. She seems baffled by her memory loss - not knowing where she lives, having to be reminded of just how old she is - but accepts this with a kind of amiable good grace, approaching wry humour at times: Well, I never had a good memory anyway. And I was never clever like you.
And I don't get any sense of a rapid deterioration of her faculties. She can roughly cope with the demands of the world around her, with the support of her carers, and there's a hard-won peace in that. So our meeting was happy-sad, but a lot more happy than I expected, and a lot more happy than sad.
Looking forward to seeing my sister Maureen later today. According to Cheryl & Caroline she's in a much better place than she was when we last talked, five years ago. Although her short-term memory is gone this hasn't left her angry. They reckon she feels content and seems to connect primarily to life when she owned the shop on Guide Lane and the kids were toddlers. It will be interesting to see if she has any awareness of who I am, though she does remember me as her little brother. The great, great thing is that she has stopped drinking completely and shows no awareness of her former addiction. This is both faintly astonishing and wonderfully heartening.
Yesterday we spent some time with my nieces and re-acquainted ourselves with my Great Niece Imogen. She's now nine years old and utterly delightful. But a doting Great Grand-Uncle would say that, I suppose.
I made no efforts to secure tickets for any of United's games ahead of our visit here. That looks like a wise move in view of yesterday's result from Old Trafford. But I gladly accepted the offer of a ticket for the Stockport County game against Exeter City and duly went along for a Saturday afternoon at Edgeley Park with John and his mates Andy & Dave. I can't honestly say it was a great game, but County rightly emerged victorious after a dominant second half, dealing with cold, wet & windy conditions more than adequately. And the atmosphere at the ground was excellent. A bit rickety but a welcome respite from the corporate atmosphere at the so-called Theatre of Dreams.
It felt like footy used to feel when I was a kid. A genuine sense of the local. A lot more real.
Enjoyed a cracking gig last night out at The Globe in Glossop. We were part of a small but highly appreciative crowd packing out the upstairs room where The Guilty Men were playing. The capaciously talented Clive Gregson (of Any Trouble fame, amongst other musical adventures) was a contemporary of John's at school more than five decades ago and played a wonderful set of beautifully crafted songs, mostly from a recently recorded album from the combo. Being up close to five master musicians cranking it out with love & enthusiasm felt like a rare privilege. Spot-on harmonies with no fewer than four great voices on stage and some gorgeous slide work from Mr Gregson were the stand-outs for me, but there was much else to wrap your ears around. Definitely a highlight of our December jaunt!
We've experienced a bit of rain here since arriving, but probably less than we were getting in Singapore in November. And we've been well wrapped up so the drizzle hasn't been a real problem - until last night, that is. Walking down to a near-by restaurant with John & Jeanette and Ray & Di we found ourselves in the middle of a major squall and, goodness me, it was unforgivingly cold. Fortunately the meal was excellent and the warmth of all the company helped us deal with sitting in damp jeans with wet feet. Indeed it added a kind of piquancy to the occasion making it that bit more memorable. But I'd be quite satisfied not to make too many more memories involving this degree of clammy, creeping wetness.
We went to Ashton town centre yesterday afternoon, checking out the The Arcades, a place we've enjoyed going jalan jalan in previous visits. It's still there, but not quite the same somehow. Over the years it's become that little bit more run-down with each visit, that little bit less happening, that tiny bit more drab. And the downwards trajectory seems to have continued. There was no sense at all of seasonal bustle. It felt as if the coffee places and shops were doing their best, but could only just manage to keep ticking over. It didn't make one feel optimistic in any sense.
Possibly it's just me, looking through jaundiced eyes, projecting my own mood about the country onto the place. But I suspect I'm looking at a real change. And not for the better.
Watched an episode of Fawlty Towers along with John & Jeanette last night after consuming an impressively hot keema put together by The Missus with ingredients purchased from shops in Longsight. Excellent way to spend an evening. Laughed immoderately at John Cleese et al. None of the magic lost despite the passage of years.
Safely installed at John & Jeanette's and feeling the warmth of hot radiators and splendid company. Lots of happy catching up on-going.
We took to the tram yesterday in order to get into the town centre, and back again. Bit odd never to have ridden the system before, but we've never had a reason to. All in all it was reasonably user friendly, and gave us the opportunity to gaze out at the suburbs round Wythenshawe. The houses All look old, according to Noi. To me they looked typical Manchester.
Lots going on at the Christmas markets in the centre. Very much happening, as they say - or used to say. In fact, a bit too much for us with big queues for food & drink at most stalls. We ate inside where it was a fair bit warmer.
Now clearing our rather chilly hotel room and hoping to be more warmly situated soon. I certainly need it.
Enjoyed a seven-hour stop-over at Doha. We'd rather take longer arriving and have a chance to stretch our legs and grab a nice cuppa (and muffins and ice cream) along the way. And the airport there is spectacularly green (and a bit fake, but nicely so, in the modern fashion.) Tried to watch a couple of movies on the two flights, but sort of failed. Managed twenty minutes of Oppenheim and thought it was portentous tosh. Quite unfair of me, but there it is. Watched the whole of Alien: Romulus (or is it Romulus: Alien?) and wondered why I was watching. Couldn't follow any of the plot details - if they existed - and got tired of not being able to see very much in the darker bits, of which there were plenty.
Did rather better listening to Neil Young's After the Goldrush which struck me, as it always does, as being both mysterious (in a good way) and lovely.
Holmes and Watson seem to be constantly on the move, don't they? A client arrives and fifteen minutes after his or her plight has been unfolded off go our intrepid heroes to some far-flung corner of the kingdom to look for the necessary clues (or something like that.) Well, it takes Noi and I a good deal longer than just a quarter of an hour to settle pressing affairs and get prepared to move on. And we're in the final stages of doing the necessary as I write - with plenty still to settle.
Can't help but think of Dylan's meditation upon the act of getting going as he contemplates how he has stayed in Mississippi a day too long:
Everybody movin' if they ain't already there / Everybody got to move somewhere.
When I embarked on a read-through of The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes back in early September I vaguely wondered if I might get through all the 1100+ pages by Christmas. But this was not to be. I'm at roughly the halfway mark now and I've decided the tome is too chunky to bother taking it with me halfway across the world. I'm also ready for a break from Holmes & Watson. The magic tends to wane somewhat when you move on relentlessly through tale after tale.
Another problem I'm finding is that for all his many virtues as a storyteller Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a very clumsy writer in quite an irritating way. You start to notice how over-written so many of his villains are.
I suppose I'm rereading out of a sense of nostalgia and sometimes the rosy glow of the past proves not quite so glowing. Which leads me to a bigger conjecture: Real literature gets better on being re-engaged with after a decade or two. And Sir Arthur fails that test.
I really shouldn't be able to relate to early Radiohead at their most emo. But I can.
This doesn't say much for my character, unfortunately.
Another packed day. Got stuck into the admin job I most detest and, predictably, detested it. The trip to the gym that followed felt like sheer comfort in comparison. At least it's possible to see the point of what you're doing when suffering on the elliptical trainer. Pointless paperwork aggravates precisely because of its supreme pointlessness.
I thought things might get busy in relation to work-related tasks as the year ends, but I've been surprised at just how busy that is. Just checking on the well-being of some of our newly-arrived students has involved a lot of walking about and climbing flights of stairs at the end of each day. This is no bad thing in terms of keeping this old body moving around. Indeed, it occurred to me last night that it's this aspect of business as usual that's gone a long way to restoring my faculties after the bruising they took in late 2022. I can vividly recall the challenge back then of negotiating a single flight of stairs and being forced in rehab to climb a structure of four steps pretty much against my better judgement. It's not so much a challenge now as an act of late-night drudgery. But one to counter-intuitively embrace.
Spent three quarters of an hour this evening in the big Kinokuniya bookshop at Takashimaya. It's the first time I've been in there for quite a while. I was checking out what is available ahead of our trip back to the UK to avoid unnecessarily bringing back from afar what I can pick up on these shores with no trouble.
I was struck by just how colourful so many book covers are these days, even of stuff that purports to be quite 'serious'. I suppose this is in the interests of sales, but I prefer my texts looking staid and sober. The coloration should be on the inside and left to the mind of the reader.
I've listened to Pierre-Laurent Aimand performing Messiaen's L'alouette lulu three times over the last three days, and would happy to continue doing so for several days to come. I'd hesitate to say this is something by my favourite composer played by my favourite pianist, but it surely comes close. What astonishes me about this piece is the sense of music operating in three dimensions. I hear the depth of the wood the bird sings in. And then there's the sense that the bird is somehow more than a bird, its song transcending time. So the whole becomes an eternal truth.
I first read Marlowe's The Jew of Malta in 1975, in my first year at university. I grasped the flavour of the play, but not the detail. I just didn't have a clue as to how it would work on stage.
Some five decades on, after having just completed a second reading, I have a much better idea as to how the drama might play out. I suppose having a bit more direct theatrical experience helps in visualising various scenes. But I still feel the need to see the thing on stage to make it real.
The flavour remains the same, though. Simple really. A bracingly bleak look at humanity at its considerable worst. Gloriously, disturbingly amoral. And very, very funny. Plus, fizzing with cheerfully manic energy. To be honest, I much prefer Marlowe to very early Shakespeare. And I suspect it's a lot more fun to play Barabas than it is Shylock.
I want to stay here forever, said this little lass this morning as we got to the end of our second VIA session with the kids from Heartfriends. My basketball guys had just done a stellar job in keeping a bunch of primary school children occupied in the physical sense, sort of teaching them the skills of the game, but mainly just getting them running around mindlessly and having great fun.
What is it about children and running? Watching their obvious exhilaration when they are chasing the ball, each other, or outsize basketball players twice as big as they are, is a reminder of kids' capacity for simple, sheer joy, coming into being out of nowhere.
Good to read an article on the Channel News Asia website relating to poetry. Even better to find it's about the value of memorising the stuff. When I was at school setting memorisation as an exercise was still fairly common. By the time I became a teacher it was unusual, but always effective. The article seems open to the idea it might become a fashionable strategy in education again, but I doubt that will happen. It's so obviously straightforward and deeply powerful that it will never appeal to those who want anything 'progressive' to sound pointlessly complex.
It's that time of year when I endeavour to clean-up all the books & mags & sundries at home and at work. Given the lassitude I surrendered to over the weekend I knew it might prove difficult to get going today. And so it did. But I did.
In the event it was only a beginning as this year I'm making the exercise extra-meticulous. So progress was slow, which suited my mood, but steady, which it had to be to ensure all gets done in reasonable time. Given the fact I've got a fair amount of work-related stuff to do, the next few days will demand some planning.
Better than just snoring through the days, I guess.
Have enjoyed a very restful weekend featuring plentiful sleep. Yesterday I nodded off any number of times in the afternoon and evening as well as getting to bed early and sleeping soundly. And then I somehow managed to nap this morning despite getting up quite late. It was a good thing we went out this afternoon otherwise I suspect I would have further luxuriated in the land of nod - and added to a mild headache I developed from over-sleeping (I suspect.)
Am now planning to make myself get up and doing stuff tomorrow to avoid another thick head.
Had an appointment with my back doc this morning and am happy to report that my spine seems to be in pretty good working order. I can't recall a single problematic episode in the second half of the year (so far) which is a bit of a record. I was also pleased that the doc expressed surprise (in a positive sense) at the results I recorded on blood pressure & weight & stuff recorded when I checked in at his new office space. Previously this kind of check wasn't carried out so I don't think he had much of an idea as to what I usually score. It seems I have the pulse rate of a much younger man and, since it's definitely my rate & not someone else's, this suggests that my little work-outs at the gym are having a positive effect.
When people - those who are aware of how just touch & go things were for me in late 2022 - inquire about my health I'm apt to say I've never felt better, and today's numbers appear to back me up on this. Of course, all this could easily fall apart, and quickly so, as past experience proves, but I'll happily take the results for now.
We went to pick-up a new set-box from Singtel this afternoon to enable us to actually access the channels we pay them for. The previous box failed about two weeks after installation and we just couldn't be bothered to renew the thing for a couple of months. We made the arrangement for a new 'plan' to go with the box before Noi went on her Norway jaunt, but for reasons that escaped me we needed to get the necessary from a different shop on Orchard Road. Anyway we found the place tucked away at the back of one of the big shopping centres and duly picked it up.
But here's the thing. In a large slogan emblazoned on one of its walls the shop announced itself as a One Stop Fulfilment Centre. (I'm not making this up.) It struck me that even the Vatican doesn't go as far as that. Some danger of over-promising there, I gently suggest. Though the set-box is working, at least for the moment. Not sure I feel exactly fulfilled, however.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. It's just that mine is right and yours is wrong.
Chanced upon a fascinating account from Donald Hall, the American poet, regarding his interviewing of Ezra Pound, the even more famous-cum-notorious American poet and fascist sympathiser. Hall is wonderfully balanced on the subject, showing great generosity of spirit towards the deeply flawed genius.
I'm troubled to some degree though by some of the voices in the Comments section accompanying the video. Pretty much anything featuring Pound on YouTube gets these weirdly admiring comments relating to his economic ideas and disabling prejudices. And the funny thing is that the stuff that features Pound directly, on camera or just his spoken voice, immediately comes across as more than a bit off to any discerning listener. Given the choice of spending time with one of these writers I know which one I'd choose (and benefit from listening to.)
I was talking today to a colleague who's been dealing with a severe sleep disorder for the best part of the year. It's quite remarkable that the colleague in question has dealt with this so well that I don't think anyone else suspects there has been a problem. Indeed, I wouldn't have guessed had I not been told. I can remember only one morning in the whole year when they looked somewhat out of sorts, and I only noticed that because it seemed to me so atypical.
The ability of people to deal with quite extraordinary personal difficulties and somehow transcend them continues to surprise me, even after many years of encountering such. It also continues to puzzle me why organisations develop so-called 'systems' that assume people can be relied on as high-functioning machines that rarely if ever malfunction.
Our capacity to switch off and sleep (and possibly dream) tells us, thankfully, otherwise.
Over the weekend I also finished reading Ted Hughes: Collected Poems for Children. Definitely a book I'll go back to over and over. Such a pity that the wonderful, sympathetically imaginative, illustrations by Raymond Briggs only apply to a limited range of the text. If they'd been featured on every page I think the volume might have been acknowledged as one of the greatest ever 'books for kids'. As it is, it's breathtakingly rewarding. Part of me suspects that some of TH's poems for younger readers might out-live his work for adults.
Actually on putting the book back on my shelves I immediately felt like taking down my copy of What is the Truth?, but since I'd just read the poems involved in the Collected that seemed a bit like over-doing it. Though I would like to read it soon and remind myself of how the connecting prose narrative works.
It looks like the poetry book that will be coming off the shelves is my Henry Vaughan: The Complete Poems, in the Penguin edition I got hold of in the late 1970s. I was thinking of holding back on the read-throughs of my various collecteds / completes after struggling a wee bit earlier in the year on the epic Robert Lowell reading, but I feel I've got my breath back after reading the Hughes (as I suspected I might.) And I'm still holding off buying any new books until I finally retire. Though if I see any exciting single volumes when we visit the UK that resolution may just crumble - hence the fact that I'm officially putting the Vaughan on hold until the new year.
I'd forgotten, if I'd ever realised before, the quiet power of the ending of E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. The extraordinary resilience of those at the bottom end of English society is obvious throughout the book, but it needs stating, and the great historian does so memorably in its final pages: They had also nourished, for fifty years, and with incomparable fortitude, the Liberty Tree. We may thank them for these years of heroic culture. No reader will quarrel with incomparable given the mass of evidence Thompson puts together over 800+ packed pages. And the idea that a culture can be in some sense heroic also convinces.
And this is only one of two endings. My edition, published originally in 1968, has the lengthy postscript added to the first edition of 1963 - happily so. Although much of this is dedicated to Thompson answering back some of the criticisms of his early reviewers, the inclusion of an extract from a note found in the pocket of a young 'reformer' in March 1817 is inspired: All the way we have come we have been Garded by the Soldiers and a Grate Many have gon back agen... We se very plane the are Determined to stop us, a great many of us as been put in prison in nearly all the towns we have come throw - thear sordes gliter round our heades but the thing is as it is... Tell all the men that I ham in good spirets as ever tho I do not know but I may be in prison ten minetes from now. I ham a trew Reformer yet and I do not Care who knows it.
It's reassuring to know that through intelligent listeners like Thompson we can still half-hear the voices of others giving access to worlds not quite beyond our understanding, which allow us a better, richer understanding of our own.
00.35
It's ether very late on Friday night or very early on Saturday morning, depending on you look at it. And Noi is just boarding a flight in Doha. Which means things will be back to normal in some nine hours or so.
A consummation to be wished, as one might say, if one talked posh.
10.30
Pick-up at the airport went smoothly. But this is what was being served at the CBTL in Terminal 1:
Quite late in the evening, after a spectacularly busy day, I somehow remembered something I'd been listening to a year ago to this day. Playing it again it sounded somehow even better to these old ears than it did before. Strange how every now and then something transcends the everydayness of it all.
Put in a good shift at the gym in the late afternoon. And have eaten reasonably moderately today. So not too bad.
But didn't get all the reading done I would have liked, even though I had a reasonable amount of free time. Sadly I remain much better at just wasting time than I would really like. So not exactly good.
But, on the balance, okay. (Those of my teachers whose reports read Could do better really knew what they were talking about, I'm afraid.)
I ate more than I really intended to at a lunch for my department in the very early afternoon. We were treated to a buffet at the Jen Hotel - which I've never heard of before - and since the grub was delicious and there wasn't much else to do I really tucked in. And then in the evening Fifi, who's sort of looking after me in the absence of The Missus, delivered to the kitchen counter a very decent kebab, with fries. Somehow I found room for this, but I'm now feeling the effects.
And what are they? Well I'm too full, too heavy, and too tired to care too deeply.
It occurs to me that I very rarely indulge to this extent and I'm grateful for a routine that manages to keep food in proportion. After all there's so much of it and it's so easily obtainable for the likes of me that it's not difficult to imagine living far, far too well. Tomorrow is set to be a lean day with an extra intense visit to the gym to try and set things right.
It's the time of year when most schools in this part of the world get on with the planning of what they would like to happen in the year ahead. Time was when schools and the individuals within them would essentially plan to repeat what they'd done well and cut out the stuff that just didn't work. Nowadays the emphasis seems to be on planning to do new stuff to prepare for an unknowable future which involves re-writing or re-positioning whatever was being done on the grounds that somehow this is no longer relevant. Even though chances are that people will end up wisely repeating what works.
It's a curious exercise. Exasperating if taken seriously; mildly amusing if dealt with sensibly. Actually I suspect that quite a bit of what I was doing in 1979 was better than the stuff I get up to these days. But no one wants to hear that.
At some point last year it seems I had the good sense not to put my name down for marking for the November IB session. I'd managed to forget this and have been half-expecting an email to tell me to brace myself for a load of scripts. But since no such email arrived and the actual English examination papers start on Tuesday next, it occurred to me I might not have anything to be concerned about, a fact which I just confirmed by checking in the IB website covering such matters. It's not that I was dreading the marking, but the realisation I won't be tackling the marking on top of everything else I need to get done before we set off to the UK at the end of this month is very welcome indeed.
If I could celebrate I would, but without The Missus to celebrate with that would be pointless. So I'll just quietly enjoy the moment.
Realised as I was on my way to the gym just now that I wasn't looking forward to the experience. Usually the difficulty of a session only really becomes apparent to me once I've started, but I suppose I'm more ready these days to accept the grim reality of what it means to stretch myself physically ahead of the event. I'm wondering if at some point this kind of realisation is going to deter me from going at all, but that certainly isn't the case so far. The mild suffering seems rather to validate the experience.
One thing that I never feel these days is the mild high people claim that is supposed to result from the release of all the endorphins. Once I've got back and showered I just feel relieved and very tired. But that's quite pleasant in its way.
Now moving into the final sections of E.P. Thompson's magnum opus. His discussion of the development of a Radical Culture amongst the nascent working class serves as a reminder of how important the establishment of a cultural climate is and how vital the articulate consciousness of the self-taught was in English history. And how quietly heroic.
The extended quotations in these pages often make for gripping and illuminating reading. And it's possible to hear something genuinely fresh and individual and real in spite, or possibly because of all the errors: I dinna pretend to be a profit, but I naw this, and lots o ma marrows na's te, that were not tret as we owt to be, and a great filosopher says, to get noledge is to naw wer ignerent.
Enjoyed a jolly good time at the Victoria Concert Hall this evening. The SSO put up a baroque night. Every piece was immediately accessible in terms of rhythmic spring and tunefulness, which was a good job in my case as I was only familiar with one of the concerti played - that being the third Brandenburg, which I know very well indeed. In this case familiarity did not breed contempt. Quite the opposite - I loved every moment.
And the price paid for this surpassingly excellent experience? A mere fourteen dollars. I got hold of the last of the cheap seats, and at the rate for senior citizens. Of course, it doesn't speak well of my character that paying so little actually added to my enjoyment, but I'm just keeping it real.
I'm so used to thinking of Patrick Magee's performance in Krapp's Last Tape that watching John Hurt in the role earlier today felt strange, as if not quite right somehow. And the pacing of the piece captured in the Beckett on Film collection seemed very slow indeed. But I think I now prefer the Hurt version.
Magee was brilliant, but his Krapp was a wonderful grotesque, a kind of monster. Hurt is brilliant in a quieter way - the switch in his voice from the old man to the younger versions is remarkable - and he terrifies in his ordinariness.
It's snowing in Norway. It isn't in Singapore. In fact, it's typically hot here. I have a photo from Noi to prove this. (The snowing bit, not the heat.) But for some reason I can't download the thing from my phone to my laptop to show it to the world. Not that the world cares over much, I suppose.
Postscript:
I'll need to read Volume 1 of David Hawkes's translation of Cao Xueqin's classic The Story of the Stone (a.k.a. A Dream of Red Mansions) ahead of being involved in the teaching of the text in 2025. This is a wee bit intimidating and very exciting. The intimidation comes from the fact I know hardly anything of the cultural context of the novel and the excitement from the same rather embarrassing piece of information, with the add-on that I'll need to find out something and quickly so. With this in mind I gabbed the Penguin Classics edition from the shelves of our department cupboard, handily situated right behind my desk in the staffroom, and this will accompany me to the UK in December.
As will a copy of Yusnari Kawabata's The Sound of the Mountain, which appeared on my desk a month or so ago with the gnomic message: It's about aging and dreams. I think you might like it. Oddly enough, I reckon I will.
So that takes care of that major aspect of my holiday planning. I doubt I'll try and take any CDs, except perhaps the Dylan Christmas album which has become a happy fixture of my December. (I'm thinking of making John & Jeanette listen, but that's something I might just relent on. There are limits as to what one might reasonably inflict on one's hosts, and the Bobster in Holiday mode is, sadly, not for everyone.)
Thought I'd take some small advantage in Noi not being around for a while by playing some stuff on DVD that wouldn't exactly fit our usual routines. To this end I got a four disk set of Beckett on Film from the library at work. Kicked off my viewing today with the version of Endgame thereon and was entirely blown away.
This production featured Michael Gambon as Hamm and David Thewlis as Clov. As you might guess they are sensationally good. Definitive in the roles. Very funny and very sad at one and the same time. It really worked as film as well with the director often exploiting extreme close-ups in an almost painterly way. Nagg & Nell in the bins looked quite extraordinary. Not just old but in something close to a state of decay.
As with any really good production of Beckett, the viewer ends up feeling something like extreme despair but in an almost cheerful way. I suppose it's the very existence of the play that does it.
Saw Noi off this afternoon from Changi Airport on her Norwegian adventure. Felt a bit low afterwards, at something of a loose end. Decided to go to a concert performed by the students in our music programme. This was an excellent idea.
If kids performing creative wonders doesn't lift you then nothing can.
Bit of a funny day. Nothing really taxing about it. Yet, at 1.20 pm I really didn't want to keep walking around on my first shift of invigilation. And at 5.30 I really, really didn't want to carry on shopping at the supermarket with Noi. Following which I very much didn't want to do my scheduled stint at the gym at 7.20. And, finally, I could hardly stand to get going on the Isha' Prayer at 9.20.
Somehow managed them all, and am glad I did so. Not exactly a triumph, but a lot better than a defeat.
For the first time in a while Noi and I managed to get out for afternoon tea. She took a break from making her curry puffs and I managed to pull myself away from pressing workaday concerns, which, for once, were not pressing enough to pin me down. Actually this tea only involved tea as I forewent munching on a curry puff outside given that the curry puffs at home were several times more delicious.
But I was delighted to find we went to exactly the right place for a splendidly hot and genuinely large teh tarik gajah. We found this at the hawker centre on West Coast Road, I think it's called Ayer Rajah Hawker Centre. The stall at which the wonderful drink was available was number 67 - that of Abdul Aziz. I'm not sure if I've referenced this stall before in my Mr Teh Tarik saga (not having posted since back in very early 2022 when we were out and about at Geylang Serai) but it doesn't matter if it's a repeat since the teh in question is worth the repeated emphasis involved.
By the by, when we went out it felt like a surpassingly hot afternoon. We could barely sit in the overheated seats of the car when initially setting forth. There was a surprisingly large crowd at the centre, given it was a weekday afternoon. I suppose folks were sort of enjoying the relaxing quality of the heat. It was heartening to think that people were able to find time to warmly chill in this most busy of cities.
One of the many contradictory aspects of my character is the fact that whilst I have very little time for academic literary criticism in general, I can really enjoy and read with enthusiasm odd examples of such on a seemingly random basis. Case in point: a little book fell into my hands a couple of days back entitled How To Read Joyce by one Derek Attridge, Professor of English at the University of York, as it turns out, and I think it's a great read.
I thought I recognised the prof's name when I was passed the book. I checked in the library and he's the editor of the nifty Cambridge Companion to Joyce which I'd been browsing in fairly profitably earlier in the year. There's a particularly good essay on Finnegans Wake in there, but not written by the editor. However, in How To Read... he writes excellently on a few excerpts from the Wake and, in the book in general, every analysis he provides of the passages he selects is both illuminating with regard to the passage in question and the broader work.
The simple notion behind the book seems an extremely useful one to me - look closely at carefully selected passages from the author in question to help explore profitable ways of reading them. I suppose it fits my notion of reading lit in general: read closely and sympathetically and enjoy what you read. That's all the Theory I need.
By the way, on the last page of the short tome the prof identifies what he terms the indispensable values Joyce celebrates in the Wake. These are the fruits of living in this fallen world: generosity, creativity and laughter.
Now there's a list to live by.
Yesterday, to my gratified surprise, the Blu-Ray player that decided to break down after swallowing my precious DVD of King Crimson at their seven-headed finest, for some unknown reason sprang to life, coughed up the trapped DVD, and has been functioning quite normally ever since. (Actually, I suppose the fact that I unplugged it and then plugged it back in might have helped, but a post-mortem on events isn't necessary so long as things are reasonably back to normal.)
In celebration of the fact that I was able to enjoy the great music all over again, I started playing the concert from where I'd broken off with the band themselves starting up again after an interval. They resumed with The Letters and The Sailor's Tale and I have to say that I was stunned by just how amazingly good the performances were. The sheer range of expression on the former was jaw-dropping. I mean, it's always been a dramatic sort of piece but the way the musicians negotiate the movement from the gentle, tender, delicate opening to the all out furious grieving of Mel's protracted saxophone work-out is astonishing. Even though I've listened a number of times to this line-up playing the song I'd never quite realised just how ferociously busy the three drummers get in the central segment, I suppose because they are just so controlled in their fury. And the segue to the instrumental, one of Crimson's very finest, is just perfection. Oh, and the ending of the Tale, for which the audience wisely remained silent, with Bill playing those repeated fading mellotron chords as if some great sea creature is passing away, is a surpassing example of less meaning more.
The thing is, you can focus on any one of the players at any time with the realisation that whatever they are doing is just so uncannily right, even when they are doing nothing except listening to the others and watching intently.
It certainly put me in mind of the need to try and explore more of the island in our final months here. We're not going to have too much time to do so before the end of this year, what with our December visit to the UK, but I'll be on the look-out for an opportunity or two or three come November.
Anyway, I posted some highly random shots of stuff we found ourselves looking at above. I suppose I should develop greater powers of observation, but it all looked pretty good to me.
I've been trying to figure out exactly when I first read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of the master detective of all master detectives, the inimitable Sherlock Holmes. I think I was in my early teens, though I might have been younger. And I think I picked up various of the collections from the library, where Doyle's works were easily available. And not just the Holmes stories; I recall fair amounts of Brigadier Gerard and Prof Challenger.
In those long ago days I would struggle to figure out the solutions to the various mysteries and I distinctly remember the excitement each adventure engendered and a vague sense of dread related to quite a few, as if they were tales of the supernatural. Now the excitement has gone, and the dread, and the desire to out-do the great man, or figure out how he was going to figure it out. Now it's all delightfully familiar and more than a bit kitsch.
But I'm more aware now of the quite brilliant variety of the stories. They don't follow a formula. The sheer variety on offer in the first actual collection, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, points to where Doyle's real genius lay as a great story-teller. I'm about to re-visit the Speckled Band, and I can't wait, even though I know what's in store. Possibly because I know what's in store.
We'll be zooming in on John & Jeanette later this evening to update ourselves on stuff going on in the UK ahead of a trip back we're planning for December. Most likely we'll stay in their place in Romiley for a few days and possibly travel down to the house in Devon, which is where I think they are at the moment. Noi is also talking about going to Wales & Ireland when we there as she wants to travel around a bit - which considering the fact she's off to Norway in a week or so with a few of her chums confirms her globe-trotter status. Personally I'm quite happy to just relax, but there is a kind of happy excitement about imagining journeys and making plans.
Postscript: Well we had a good natter and things sounded tickety-boo all round. But it seems the big cities in the UK are getting more than a bit run-down and discipline in schools more than a bit doubtful. Makes us count our blessings being able to enjoy our lives in this far place.
Still happily reading E.P. Thomson's The Making of the English Working Class at a very slow pace. Am now at the central chapters dealing with The Transforming Power of the Cross, a brilliant account of the interplay between various religious enthusiasms, especially Wesleyan Methodism, and the lower classes from 1790 - 1840 (or thereabouts.) When I first read the tome decades back I found this the most striking and engaging chapter and the same is true today, except that, if anything, I find it more powerfully engaging and oddly moving in its evocation of the deep need for meaning and purpose in the lives of the oppressed and, to some degree, the betrayal of that need.
The section on the greatest Prophetess of all, Joanna Southcott, is particularly fascinating. How did people fall for this nonsense? As always, easily.
But who can reasonably resist her deranged poetry?: Who is he that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah; that speaketh in righteousness, mighty to save all that trust in him; but of my enemies I will tread them in my anger, and trample them in my fury; for the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.
I knew the day was going to be a busy one when I set off for work this morning. What I didn't know was quite how busy. Which was a good thing as I had nothing to worry about when it started and no time to worry as it was going on. And now I'm just too tired to be bothered to worry about anything.
Of course, tomorrow is another day. Whatever that might mean.
I was playing the rather splendid DVD from Crimson's wonderful live set Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind the weekend before last when the Blu-Ray player I was using suddenly decided not to work. The DVD is still inside it as the machine just shut down and refuses to open the rather nifty little sliding tray you put the disks in to play them. I was left flummoxed, and still am as I've really no time to attend to failing electronic devices.
In fact, the list of failing, or failed, devices we own is now fairly extensive. The television in Maison KL gave up the ghost this year and is in sore need of replacement. Similarly we removed the tv set here since the number of odd blotches on the screen made it difficult to watch anything. This was temporarily replaced by Hakim's huge set which he's waiting to move into his new apartment when it's ready, but that should be soon, so we'll need another replacement for that. The set-box we got from Singtel has not worked for yonks, so we've been watching Starhub, which suffices for now, but we're still paying for the Singtel so we need to do something about that. And the Bose CD player has been refusing to play CDs for around a month, though the radio is working, so that's something.
I've got a feeling I've missed some other defective item, but that's enough for now. I have a vague feeling that things used to last longer, but if they ever did those days are long gone.
Some guy calling himself Rael, presumably in tribute to Peter Gabriel's persona on The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway uploads these brilliant 'imagined albums' on YouTube. Not quite sure how he does it, but it seems he that gets hold of all sorts of material from bands, like Genesis, aligned to certain periods of time, stuff like demos and radio sessions, and then tweaks them to create 'what might have been'. So Cynthia's Dream is what might have been released, instead of Nursery Cryme, if Anthony Phillips had stayed in the band. It features three of the songs off the real album, these being Musical Box, Harold the Barrel and Harlequin, and a load of other interesting material and is a treat to listen to. Especially if, like yours truly, you saw Genesis live in this period and fell in love with them.
So listening to the imagined album was generally a nostalgic experience but, quite to my surprise, it was the version of Harlequin that packed a wallop for me. It's not exactly regarded as a classic track in the actual album version, and I don't think it was performed live by the band, but listening to the 'new' version, which features the voices of Gabe & Phil Collins more upfront than in the original, I was struck by just how lovely a song it is and how evocative of something I can't quite explain. Except a very young Brian felt it deeply and the older version sort of plugged back into that for a glorious four minutes or so this morning.
A fab evening at the Victoria Concert Hall was just the ticket after an artistically heavy week. The proceedings kicked off with something from Hans Werner Henze that the programme notes claimed to be angular and harsh, but struck me as darkly beautiful. Noi managed to nod off so it couldn't have been overly abrasive. Then came a big slab of Papa Haydn, a piano concerto and a symphony, which is always a very good thing. I knew the symphony well (the A major Fire Symphony) and it's a bit of favourite of mine and familarity bred the opposite of contempt. And finally Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite which I thought I'd recognise but didn't. I felt happily stupid over this gap in my musical knowledge, the suite being obviously delicious, and I intend to make a much closer acquaintance with the piece over the next few days. As I will with the Haydn concerto.
The very fact of Haydn's existence makes me feel better about the world somehow. A sort of assurance that at the back of it all everything's really okay, even if it isn't.
Two novels I don't think I'll ever read again: Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and Paul Lynch's Prophet Song. Just too painful. I'm trying not to think of the final pages of the eighth chapter of the more recent novel. And failing.
Indeed, the moral power of the book is haunting me, as did that of McCarthy's great work. In McCarthy's case it was like looking into the deepest places of cruelty and pain in the human heart and not being able to see much else. Lynch's novel is more ordinary, in a sense. This is just normal life in a typical city in the developed world when things start to fall apart. And the suffering engendered becomes painfully real because it is so ordinary and you can't not think of the pain of all refugees fleeing anyplace and what's happening in Gaza and Lebanon even as I write and what happened in Pinochet's Chile, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the moral imperative is to do something about this, fueled by the outrage, the fury, you can't not feel.
Kafka: A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. Prophet Song is exactly that.
I was right yesterday about Prophet Song. Devastating.
But the hour is getting late and there is no time to process this today. This is not a time to talk falsely. Tomorrow, perhaps.
I stumbled across something I wrote late last year in praise of Miles's album Tutu, with specific reference to how great it was to listen to it in the gym. Somehow I'd forgotten this, but I thought that in view of my previously expressed enthusiasm I'd give it a spin on the workout I'd planned for this evening.
So spin it I duly did and found it engaging enough for the first couple of tracks. Next thing I know I'm into the last five minutes of my stint on the elliptical trainer and am zoning in on a very busy blues piece having zoned out completely on a good 45 to 50 minutes of Miles giving forth. I'd been thinking about some stuff at work as I was peddling up the endless hill and got completely lost in it.
Must remember this next time I make a claim to being a reasonably good listener. Only some of the time, I'm afraid, even when what I'm listening to is a slice of perfection.
Acquired
my week to a view diary for 2025 yesterday. It’s the same edition as the one I’m
using this year , which means that, like this year’s, it will be most likely
falling apart by October 2025. But I don’t mind. As long as it gets me through
each working week without my missing anything of crucial importance to my
working life I’m fine.
As with last year, getting my hands on what I’ve come to regard as foundational to my routines makes me a happy soldier. But I must confess that looking at all the pages waiting to be marked by doings that will need to be done is a little intimidating. I’m assuaging the mild panic engendered by reminding myself to live in the moment. Or, rather, live a week at a time with the odd glance into a future that will soon turn to messy pages.
And I mustn’t forget there’s a fair amount of 2024 that still needs negotiating. It may be all downhill from here, but there’s a lot of slope ahead.
Just finished reading the Under the North Star section in Ted Hughes; Collected Poems for Children. Hughes at his considerable best, I reckon. Brilliantly observed animal poems, some with that sense of the abstract that characterised the 'newer' style in some of the Wodwo poems, but more immediately accessible. And wonderful touches of humour.
I assumed before I embarked on a reading of this Collected that I would be in for delight on every page, and that, happily, has proved to be the case.
These days I can't drive at all since the authorities wouldn't renew my license due to my being 'labelled' an epileptic. (I'm quoting my brain doc there who distinctly put the term in inverted commas when he told me the diagnosis.) I sort of feel the loss, but, on the other hand, Noi is an excellent driver and it's nice to be chauffered all over the place. (And Fifi is fine as well.)
The positive side of my incapacity came home to me today when I was driven to Friday Prayers. The azan is a bit early at this time of year and we arrived a little bit late. Now in the old days I'd have been rushing to park and then would have run-walked across the carpark to arrive a wee bit frazzled. Today I got dropped right outside the back entrance to the masjid and enjoyed a leisurely stroll of less than a hundred yards. And after, of course, a lift back during which I could do the necessary adjustments for getting back to work.
I enjoy a challenge, but sometimes it's nice to feel deeply at ease.
A trip back to Manchester & Environs & probably a few other places is pretty much confirmed for us in December. The last time we were there was back in 2019, pre-pandemic. I can't say I miss my homeland, but I'm looking forward to a drab December in my fashion, and I think Noi is distinctly enthusiastic, as is her way.
I've been keeping up with a funky little series in the Graun, entitled Where tourists seldom tread that explores towns with hidden histories. It's been a reminder of just how much I don't know about the UK and how many places I've never actually been to. Part 10 has a few paragraphs on Stockport which made me more than a little nostalgic for a spot I can't recall taking Noi to see. According to cousin John we're likely to grab some tickets for a Stockport County home game and the County are attracting bigger crowds what with their recent successes. (In case you're wondering, a trip to the Theatre of Dreams is definitely not on the cards, even if we could get tickets, which we can't, given our recent tribulations.)
And I fancy a visit to the Hat Museum. Almost obligatory for someone whose dad was a hatter, until the industry abruptly collapsed. But that's another story.
A moment of illumination early this morning. Around 6.35. I'm watching Sky News and they're doing the review of the press in the UK. The talking heads are discussing events in the Middle East and behind them a large telescreen is filled with shooting stars above a city, the same 30 seconds of footage looped. These are missiles coming down but being intercepted by other missiles. At the same time I'm reading a story from the Graun on my phone about some Brit celebrity's arc of redemption as he appears on a ghastly-sounding reality show about being stuck alone on some kind of island. At the same time as I'm half-watching the goggle box and reading off my phone I'm figuring out how to negotiate the first two hours of the day and how I'll get some marking done in the cracks.
Then I realise there's a noise in my head. I suppose I'm speaking metaphorically, but it felt loud. So I stopped reading. And I stopped thinking. And I listened to the guy on Sky who was talking some sense about the madness, and the act of attention was soothing. It lasted about three minutes, and then the day really started up.
I suppose a lot of people hear the noise as they divide their attention between all that demands it. Maybe they don't know there's genuine peace if they choose to step out of the storm?
I began marking some material today relating to African cinema when it suddenly occurred to me that if asked to place Nigeria on an outline map of the continent I would struggle. How can I have got to my age without a general working picture of that part of the world?
And how can I possibly criticise teenagers for the occasional glaring gaps in their mental pictures of the world and its storied history?
Sometimes it's salutary to turn one's gift for sarcasm on oneself. Even when it hurts.
Making slow but sure progress in E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. 'Sure' in the sense that a slow reading allows for assimilation of the often compelling detail of what it was like back then. And still is today, in so many ways.
Here's a little something from one J. Smith's Memoirs of Wool, published in 1747:
The poor in the manufacturing counties will never work any more time in general than is necessary just to live and support their weekly debauches... We can fairly aver that a reduction of wages in the woolen manufacture would be a national blessing and advantage , and no real injury to the poor. By this means we might keep our trade, uphold our rents, and reform the people into the bargain.
Thompson doesn't tell us anything about J. Smith but I reckon we can safely 'aver' that he was one of the masters from the upper classes happily looking down on those suffering below. His voice reminds me of those I hear today who favour austerity and an end to unions organising for the rights of ordinary folk to protect them from from creeps like him and those who regard themselves as somehow superior to those who have to genuinely labour manually for a living.
Nothing much changes, eh?
Noi was just asking me if I am still taking the pills my neurologist put me on to guard against epileptic seizures. My happy answer came in the negative. As I referenced back on 19 September I managed to persuade my new brain doc that it would be reasonable to terminate the treatment that I'd been pretty cavalier about on a few occasions anyway. I was a good boy and obediently reduced the dosage, as instructed, to one a day for five days and then stopped. And how do I feel? As right as rain, that's how.
I just don't like popping pills, for whatever reason, even if they're doing me good. And I'm pretty sure the epilepsy ones weren't doing anything for me at all. So now I'm happily unmedicated as nature intended.
Stumbled across an excellent podcast yesterday going under the moniker The Rest is History. The particular episode related to the French Revolution and was extremely informative. So far, so very good. So where's the downside? There's always one somewhere.
Well, in this case not really. Except for a suspicion lurking in the darker part of my mind that the riches so readily available to me through various media could easily become overly rich. And I could find myself drowning in all the choices. And panicking that I can't cope with everything on offer.
My strategy for dealing with this threat is simple. I'm very good, at least for now, at putting off the day when I consciously immerse myself in material I'm longing to swim in. And I don't go looking in a methodical way for anything new. I let it come to me by chance. The strategy, primitive as it is, seems to be working. The challenge will be in keeping it up in a world that's becoming more interesting and exciting than ever.
Another understated heading. I'm not referring to any specific noise today. It's been busy, but calmly so. And the noise I'm hearing now is Cream live at the Albert Hall in 2005. So, by definition, good noise.
But yesterday, in the middle of all the frantic franticness, there I was in SAC. Awash with all the little blighters from Year 1. (SAC, not me.) And I'm suddenly aware, queuing for my tea, that the noise level is dangerously high. Not quite as bad as Deep Purple live at Belle Vue, circa 1971, when they were the loudest band in the world and set young Brian's ears ringing for about two days. But getting there, and in closer proximity than Ian Gillan, Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Paice, Jon Lord and Roger Glover ever were.
Funnily enough the sheer intensity of the racket in SAC had a calming effect in its way. And the tea helped. Assailed as I was, I was somehow outside of it all. Still can't understand how the kids inside it all didn't seem to know they were in the eye of their own storm. The joys of youth, eh?
I got up quite a bit earlier than usual this morning knowing the day was going to be not just unreasonably busy but close to impossibly busy. (The heading above is an understatement.) To be honest, days like this are rare, but they do happen and you've got to be ready for them if you're going to stay reasonably sane.
Now I'm old enough to appreciate the nature of these occasions I've developed the ability to put aside a very tiny part of my mind to sort of monitor what's going on. There's a kind of fascination in realising just how useful basic routines are in holding things together at the same time as being aware of how even the most routine behaviour is under threat of being derailed due to unforeseen circumstances (which manifest with an eerie certainty just when you can't afford the time to deal with them.) It's also very helpful to be able to walk at high speed and ignore urgent messages which aren't quite as urgent as the urgent messages that arrived 60 seconds ahead of them
I think tomorrow will be calmer, but I'm still getting up earlier because you never know. All quite exciting really!
I don't know about you but I get more than a little fed up when a remote control for some electronic device suddenly stops functioning because the batteries have taken it upon themselves to leak but the stupid thing gives no indication that the batteries are running down; in fact in darker moments I find myself harbouring the thought that our mighty Tech Overlords those nice people at Starhub may have designed the stupid thing to fail so you have to buy a new one. And don't get me going on the fact that when you try and start the set-box it's incredibly difficult to find the manual controls on it and when you try to change channels it's, again, incredibly difficult to do so because you can hardly see the stupid controls on the stupid box and they work at an incredibly slow speed. First world problems eh?!
So I'm not going to rant about this stupid situation. Except for just a bit.
Over and out.
Life is never exactly easy, is it? I don't think it's really meant to be. But after hot lentil soup and accompanying crusty bread it gets pretty close.
Listened to Crimso's improv Starless and Bible Black for the first time in years today. When I first heard it, as the title track off the album, I thought it was an actual composition, as opposed to an improvised piece, which I'm guessing would have been true for the vast majority of listeners back in 1974.
And even though I know it was improvised on the spot I still can't get away from the half-belief that it was carefully composed. Astonishing. The way those guys somehow knew what each of the four was about to play.
Also astonishing to think that David Cross came to be regarded as the weak link in the band. His work on the keyboards and violin, so sympathetic to everything else that's going on, is what elevates the whole to the next level, the highest level.
Above all, this is a brilliant example of what can happen when people listen to each other.
I think I first read E.P. Thompson's magisterial The Making of the English Working Class around 1978, just after leaving university. I know it made a huge impact on me in terms of its explanatory power. But I suspect I rushed through it somewhat, driven by the excitement of the discoveries I was making.
I say this since I have a strong sense on rereading it some forty-something years later that I'm taking in a lot more of the fine detail this time around. This is particularly true of the various lists that Thompson provides. Reading Perec's Life: A User's Manual taught me the immense value of even the most random-seeming list, and I find myself deliberately slowing down when I encounter a list like that enumerating some of the products of Birmingham's skilled artisans around 1807: buckles, cutlery, spurs, candlesticks, toys, guns, buttons, whip handles, coffee pots, ink stands, bells, carriage-fittings, steam-engines, snuff-boxes, lead pipes, jewellery, lamps, kitchen implements. As Thompson notes, the list in itself evokes an intricate constellation of skills. A sort of lost world, in its way.
Back in 1978 I suspect I would have just glanced at the list and impatiently took it in as a kind of whole with little or no sense of the particularities. Now the whip handles alone fascinate.
I've been taken by surprise at the sheer number of poems Ted Hughes wrote for Moon Whales and other Moon Poems. I've never actually owned a copy of the collection, though I'm very familiar with a number of the poems from encounters in various anthologies, and I've always taken it for granted that the original book was about the same length as Meet My Folks. But reading the Moon poems as they are sequenced in Ted Hughes: Collected Poems for Children it's obvious that this book was not intended in any way as a kind of companion to the earlier publication.
Indeed, the general tone is quite different. I think it's reasonable to say that Meet My Folks is essentially comically cheerful. Moon Poems is often downright disturbing. The rhythms are more obviously galumphingly broken; the images surreally weird so that what might have been intended as funny isn't, except in a funny strange way.
As evidence, the opening lines of The Snail of the Moon:
Saddest of all things on the moon is the snail without a shell. / You locate him by his wail, a wail heart-rending and terrible...
Not sure I'd want to read that out to a class of ten-year-olds. But I love reading it to myself.
