The Devil In The Details

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?

Unmedicated

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.

A Bit Much

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.

A Bit Noisy

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?

A Bit Frantic

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!

Magnificent Self Control

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.

At Ease

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.

Out Of Nowhere

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.

Reading Lists

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.

Over The Moon

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. 

Stepping Out

Covered over 22,000 steps today and now am feeling it. Deeply cream-crackered, which is not a bad way to be as long as there's nothing left to do but surrender to sleep. Which is exactly what I intend to do in the next five minutes.

An Impatient Patient

Had an appointment this afternoon at the Neuroscience Centre at NUH. It was scheduled for 3.00, but I didn't get to do the screening thingy that they always carry out prior to any procedures or consultations until 4.25, which was quite a wait - and very unusual for the hospital, in my experience, since they nearly always stick pretty close to the actual appointment time. Mind you, the place was packed and I reckon they were struggling to deal with the number they had intended to cater for in their afternoon session. For me it was no big deal as I didn't have anything to rush back to work for and Noi, who'd come along with me, wasn't terribly bothered either. Mild irritation was as much as I could muster.

But one guy, who also seemed to have been delayed, was really upset and started to create quite a fuss at the main desk around about ten minutes before my number finally got called. He was holding up his phone and loudly complaining that the staff had forgotten to notify him that his number had been called, so he'd missed his slot. Initially I thought there was going to be trouble and that the guy was just being more than a bit selfish. Then I realised that he was trembling excessively and in a very bad way. It was clear that he was deeply distressed by the crowds in the waiting area and just couldn't deal with the situation - hence taking himself outside earlier as a way of gaining some control.

The staff dealt with him brilliantly. No fuss at all, no attempt to subdue him; one lady took him to one side and allowed him to keep venting whilst helping him calm himself as much as he could. And somehow he did calm himself which considering his obvious sense of shaky panic took a lot of doing. It suddenly occurred to me that quite a few folk needing to see neurologists probably did need to overcome severe stress just to get themselves into the clinic at all. It turned out that he ended up being screened - essentially just a check on blood pressure - at the same time as myself, in the cubicle next to mine. He was still venting his concerns as that went on and my heart went out to the poor guy for everything he was dealing with.

Anyway, once they'd took my bp things moved very fast. I was supposed to do a memory test (basically a check for signs of dementia) before seeing my doc, but that was abandoned since the doc reckoned I'd most likely ace it so it was a bit pointless. And it was further decided that the medication I've been on related to my epilepsy could be terminated, basically because I was fairly brutal in letting the doc know how unhelpful I thought it was and she was prepared to listen. (It wasn't my usual neurologist, whom, I suspect, may have moved on to another hospital, or higher things, or whatever.)

So all in all not such a waste of time, despite the delay. Sort of a case of 'good things come to those who wait', if we're looking for some kind of message in all this.

Time Found

Managed to watch the entirety of the National Theatre production of Streetcar starring (and I use the word advisedly) Gillian Anderson. Did so by watching just a couple of scenes at a time, so didn't quite get the flow of it all. But that might have been a good thing since it was so astonishingly intense that keeping some distance was sort of healthy in its way. When I watched the final scene today it pretty much broke me up completely. I suppose Ms Anderson was largely to blame: she is so sensationally good that it's impossible for me to imagine a world in which she isn't Blanche Dubois, if you see what I mean.

Just one small example. Her drunkenness, broadly speaking increasing from scene to scene, is note perfect. When Blanche is hammered out of her head in Scene 10 (very difficult to watch, but impossible to turn away from) she just gets every detail of extreme alcoholism right. Depressingly ugly and distressing. It was like watching my sister at her very worst. Just devastating.

To be honest her performance is so strong in its weakness and pain and vulnerability that she blows Ben Foster's Stanley off the stage. But that works so well. This isn't a Stanley with the animal power of Brando. In some ways he's also deeply insecure, a reading that had never quite occurred to me before, but fully realised, as it is in this production, it just feels right.

Not sure I'm looking forward to watching the whole thing in one sitting when we screen it for the kids, simply because I know how overwhelming that's going to feel.

Sweet Sounds

Got up close and personal with the ondes martenot for a very good half-an-hour this morning, having discovered on YouTube Messiaen's sensationally mellifluous Fete des Belles Eaux which features no fewer than six of the instruments. Then moved on to a brilliantly informative account of how Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead fame sort of saved the ondes for a modern audience. To be honest, I think the very existence of Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony, which, amazingly, gets regularly programmed in the concert hall to this day, is a guarantee that the instrument will survive, featured as it is so heavily in that great work. But it's good to know that manufacture of the ondes has considerably expanded since it's become something of a signature of the Radiohead sound post OK Computer.

Back On Form

I was struggling with a bit of a bad back on our final day in Melaka and the days following when we got back to our usual abode. In fact, I avoided going to the gym for three days for that reason and was ultra-cautious when I finally got back on the elliptical trainer last Thursday, setting it at quite low resistance. And I didn't try anything on the weights that evening, or on Saturday afternoon when I had my next session. Actually on Saturday I really struggled trying to complete a sixty minute stint on the trainer, this time on full resistance. It didn't help my morale much that I was still experiencing some back pain then, though it was easing.

So I wasn't expecting much to write home about this evening. Which means that managing some good numbers over the sixty minutes of cardio and coping pretty well with my standard routine using the weights came a surprise. An exceedingly pleasant one.

I have no idea why the sudden return to form came about and I don't intend to think about it too much. But I do intend to enjoy the sense of accomplishment while it lasts.

Suffering

Was thinking quite a bit about trauma and suffering last week, especially in relation to art. Generally exploring the idea of art as healing and how that links to concerns about texts being 'triggering' for some readers. Had one long and illuminating conversation on the topic, with part of the light being shed touching on my own experiences. (The illumination being mine only, I suspect, rather than that of my interlocutor. But that's the usual way of things, I suppose.)

I saw very clearly that the suffering I endured in the course of my protracted visit to what I termed Fantasyland around this time, two years ago, has not resulted, as far as I can tell, in any sense of trauma at all. I know that 'suffering' sounds a wee bit over the top here, but that's what it was, something I generally hesitated to let friends & family know at the time. The experience didn't involve anything quite as extreme as torture porn at its worst, but there were times it wasn't too far off, and the fact it lasted (as far as I could tell) pretty much continuously for some three and a half weeks comes close, I think, to a definition of protracted mental torture. Mind you, all in all it lasted less than a month so, keeping it real, I was a good deal more fortunate than those poor souls whose experience of psychosis literally can be counted in terms of years, or prisoners who are subjected to deliberate mental torture over months and months.

But back to the point: Why no sense of trauma at all? I think the answer, inadequate as it may sound, is pure luck. I'm not built that way, or, at least, my brain isn't. And I'm not implying any particular resilience or ability to rise above pain on my part. In fact, the experience showed me that those are qualities I lack. I was purely a passive sufferer with no direction or sense of agency. Other people saved me - Noi, my friends, the medical team. But the flat truth is I can think about these things now without any feelings of distress at all. Just a kind of somewhat bewildered, puzzled, slightly fascinated, interest.

And that leads me to something else that crystalized for me last week. Those who can somehow carry on when the pain is unremitting are truly astonishing. I'm thinking here particularly of those who endure psychotic states for long periods (for some, forever) without falling apart. (On Friday I was reminded in a confab with a couple of colleagues of another colleague of many years standing, whom I didn't ever know all that well, who went through some kind of crisis a few years back and sort of disappeared. (That can happen in a school with a staff as large as ours.) I saw the colleague just once in the crisis period and was taken aback at the degree of pain written into them. Somehow I'd managed to forget this, until being reminded on Friday. I suppose that's the way we protect ourselves from the reality of unreasonable, unfathomable, suffering. And I suppose it's good that we are able to.)

No Words

I've been wondering whether to make a perspicacious comment or two on the on-going run-up to the election in the US, but couldn't find the words. Then I realised I might as well let First Dog on the Moon do it for me.

Moving On

Noi came across an on-line advertisement for Maureen & John's house at Lord Derby Road just now. It made her a bit sad, understandably so. There are few things sadder than a house abandoned, as it were, and the memories contained within dispersed. But, then, there are few things more open to fresh narratives than a house ready for new occupants to move into.

We endlessly begin again. In new shapes. New possibilities. 

Finding Time

I'm very keen to get to grips with the National Theatre's production of A Streetcar Named Desire, featuring Gillian Anderson as Blanche Dubois which I can now access through the school's account. We're intending to screen it to one of our cohorts in a couple of weeks and I need to familiarise myself with the show ahead of that - as well as being very keen to watch for my own viewing pleasure. But, as is so often the case, I find myself time-starved just when I need the stuff.

Managed the first five minutes just now and it looked great. Simple set and in the round, which shouldn't work but probably will. And the voices, the rhythms, perfect. Actually I can't see, or rather hear, how anything by Williams can possibly work unless you get the voices right.

Mixed Signals

Just munched on a delicious bowl of salad from those good people at the Stuff'd franchise. Felt extremely virtuous and am happy to announce such to the world. But moments after eating the final green bean I felt a distinct sense of guilt. Why so? Reason: the bowl in question is quite big and very plastic - I suspect of the single use variety. And all my attempts at sustaining sustainability have gone (literally) to waste. 

So much for virtue signaling, eh?

Good News

I'm pleased I got to see a few of the finals from the Paris Paralympics on-line but wish I'd made time for more. Great to see my home nation maintain second place in the medals table with an incredible overall total, but just as good to see talented athletes from other nations delivering the goods. Lovely to see the French crowd go barmy over their lads & lasses doing so well.

The coverage in the press was also excellent, especially in The Graun which outdid itself this time round. Good news, for once.

Almost Completely

It's remarkable what a good break can do. In just ten days I completely forgot how physically demanding my job can be.

Unfortunately it took rather less than a day to completely remember.

Night And Day

With no fewer than two eateries adjoining Mak's house, we are spoilt for choice both night and day.

From Below

Picked up my old battered copy of E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class a few days back. Decided to read it again before it falls apart (and possibly before I fall apart also.) It resonates with me as much today as it did back in the 70s. Possibly even more now as I feel I have a wider sense of what history from below might comprise.

Frustration

Question: What is it best to do when you've just lost some 350 predicted grades, assiduously keyed into the International Baccalaureate's online system for recording such, since the system has decided to time you out for lack of activity, despite the fact you've just spent a considerable amount of time, energy and concentration keying-in said grades, which felt like some kind of activity?

Answer: Attend Friday Prayers. And pray hard for designers of online systems. And their victims.

Altered States

Something I've noticed about myself that has become more pronounced in recent years: I feel far more sleepy-headed during holiday periods than when working. This week, for example, it's been a real struggle for me to get going before 10.00 am. I've had to force myself to start marking, and since I've had a fair number of examination scripts to deal with on a daily basis the forcing has been a grim necessity. Yet on an ordinary work day I'm fine getting on with stuff from 6.30 am onwards, with no sense at all of having to force things.

Is it the case that somehow my body 'knows' that, technically speaking, it should be on holiday and is making a less than subtle protest at being made to do stuff it fundamentally doesn't want to?

And another odd thing. I've been sleeping early and deeply these last few days, but I don't wake up refreshed. I wake up wanting to sleep some more. Yesterday I felt particularly thick-headed and had to deal with a very distinct ache running along the jaw-line on the right side of my face. I suspect I'd somehow slept awkwardly face-wise and strained myself somehow. Fortunately the ache has eased considerably today, but getting my quota of marking done was a challenge.

All this has made me think a little more circumspectly about retirement than I was wont to do. When the day arrives that I don't absolutely need to get out of bed I'd better find good reasons for doing so.

Simplicities

Pepperoni pizza and mushroom soup (with bits of garlic bread). At a new eatery (well, new to us) called Mainroad, just off Ampang Road.

Team GB a strident second in the current medals table for the Paralympics 2024.

A family of monkeys in the trees opposite, which are ripe with birdsong in the long afternoons. (The trees, that is; not the monkeys.)

What's not to like?

Beyond Elementary

Took The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes off the bookshelves the other day, having decided it would be interesting to undertake a read-through. The novels and stories are sequenced in the order of publication and it struck me that whilst I knew the canon pretty well, having started reading the tales as a very young teenager, I had no real sense of the development of the body of work as a whole and it would be interesting to acquire a sense of that sequence.

I've been reading A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four over the lest three days and it's quite remarkable how fully formed the Holmes-Watson relationship is from the outset. Doyle established the template right away, from the opening pages of the first novel - or pamphlet, as the good doctor refers to it in A Study in Scarlet. But it's also odd how Doyle seems compelled to give us the rather tedious backstories of the perpetrators of the wicked deeds in both, with the requisite chapters occupying a good half of the first novel, completely derailing the Holmes-Watson heart of the story. Things aren't quite so bad in the second work, but the pages covering Jonathan Small and the Indian Mutiny are still pretty tedious stuff. I suppose Doyle thought his readers wanted plenty of foreign colour, when all they required was as much of No. 221B, Baker Street as possible.

By the by, the foreign colour in The Sign of Four is so racist as to be painful, but this is oddly fascinating in itself - and it puts the racism of Kipling and Conrad into massive perspective (as in, if you think these guys are bad get a load of what the average 'popular' writer of the period with few if any literary pretensions was capable of.) Mind you, Doyle manages to be reasonably even-handed in his treatment of Mormonism in A Study in Scarlet, being quite sympathetic to those undertaking the great migration to Utah, even though he's firm in his negative judgement upon their leaders in the years that followed.

More Heaviness

Just lately I've been noticing quite a few people in this Far Place who are, sadly, carrying a good deal more weight than is good for them. I suppose this sounds unpleasantly critical and self-righteous of me, but what I feel when I observe such folk doesn't feel that way. I hope I observe them with some degree of compassion, understanding and genuine concern. The problem is, of course, that there's nothing I can do to help them, though I'd like to.

What I'd like to say to them directly - but, of course, cannot - is that there is something that can be done when you're overweight and that it's not the natural way of things. Indeed, it can give a life real direction and purpose when you do something about the excess poundage; the feeling of being in control when you do take control is worth the effort of ignoring the promptings of appetite, no matter how impossibly urgent those promptings seem.

I noticed a couple of ladies the other day at the Ya Kun outlet at Clementi Mall. They looked like mother & daughter, with the elder being around 60, at a guess. The daughter possibly some 25 years or so younger. Both were carrying a lot of weight and in the mother's case she was having problems walking, needing the younger's one's assistance. It looked painful for her just to stand and move off from their table and I was struck by just how much intense effort simply walking around the mall required from her. In contrast the daughter looked sprightly, but I'm afraid the signs were there. The physical resemblance was striking but seemed to worryingly foretell more painful times ahead. Yet I felt sure that if the younger one recognised the problem then plenty could still be done to avoid a difficult few years in the future - and that if the elder were to shed some weight in the here and now her difficulties would be considerably eased.

In another time, before the age of the consumer, the quality of life of the two would have been so much better, I suspect. The price paid for the growth of consumerism (as so resonantly outlined by Andrew Marr in his book about my own country) is much higher than its victims suspect.

Heaviness

We travelled north today, taking quite some time to reach Maison KL. Many flags to get through, it being the day after Malaysia's National Day, and heavy traffic on the highway, for the same reason I suspect. But now we're here and all seems reasonably in order. (A working refrigerator is one of life's delights. Trust me on this.)