A Moment In Time

On an unreasonably tough working day, when the time, and most things, seemed generally out of joint, a warmly comforting four minutes listening to Blur's Out Of Time served as a happy reminder of what's real in the world. I've never seen the accompanying video before, or heard the extended intro to the song, and both added to the sweetness of it all.

Footsore

As I noted yesterday, I will suffer manfully and not complain here about the three sore toes on my left foot. So disturbed was I yesterday by them that I foolishly ascribed them to the wrong foot; hence today's pointless clarification. But I promise not to refer to the topic again, at least up to the time I can no longer actually walk. Then I'll moan like crazy.

Funny the things that command our attention even when we're trying to manifest the wisdom of age. Or, at least, the illusion of such.

Definitely Awesome

I'm sure you'll agree that simply referencing the detection of ripples in space-time is a sure way of putting the remainder of our petty concerns into perspective. With that in mind I'll forego complaining about the soreness of three of my toes on my right foot, which I'd originally intended to post about. And the next time you're thinking about referring to someone or something as awesome, please bear in mind black holes colliding violently. Definitely WOW! eh?

With Intention

Recently I've found myself mulling over a lifetime of listening to recorded music and how I've developed particular interests in genres at different times without quite ever casting off any of these completely. Also how I've listened in different ways through what might be termed different platforms at different periods of my life. I've got a feeling that I won't be buying any more CDs in the future, this being tied to how I've been accessing 'new' music of late, and how the means of access has affected the nature of my listening.

Of late I've found it necessary to listen full on, with intensity, for the experience to be worth anything to me at all. The days of casual listening to something in the background appear to be at an end. Which sounds sensible in its way. But leaves me with a sense of something lost that I can't quite articulate for myself.

I suppose what used to be easy just isn't anymore.

Easing Up

Decided to take a bit of a risk yesterday evening and went to the gym. I've been struggling with a very iffy left leg all week and avoided exacerbating what I assumed was a muscle strain by fore-going any midweek exercise. My avoidance strategy seemed reasonably successful as the discomfort had considerably reduced by Friday morning. But enough lingered to make it a fifty-fifty decision later in the day.

It turned out to be the right decision, I assume, because my sixty minutes on the trainer have not resulted in any kind of further pangs today. Indeed, the discomfort has gone completely. And I'm particularly congratulating myself on having the wherewithal to reduce the resistance on the machine and deliberately ease up for the session. An earlier version of myself would have been very reluctant to make any such concession - and probably would have knackered himself completely. This older version appears to be wiser. You learn a lot from impending decrepitude.

Not So Jolly

In the local news today, a story about the Jollibean franchise being in financial trouble, it seems. Some employees haven't been paid their salaries for some months, and outlets are suddenly closing without warning, leaving the staff involved high and dry. Sadly looks like there is some possibility the workers are not going to get remunerated for their recent labour. Reminded me of Ted Heath's long-ago and faraway comments regarding 'the ugly face of capitalism'. All this in stark contrast to the fact that Jollibean always seemed to me to be doing well, with no shortage of customers.

I'm afraid this sort of thing is by no means unknown in this part of the world. One of Noi's family in Melaka was suddenly 'terminated' by his employers (a school) a year or so ago without receiving payment for the final months he worked for them. Unfortunately the bad guys were lawyered up and he wasn't and isn't. What to do? as they say.

Made me realise my own good fortune in never having had to deal with this kind of rip-off from any of my many employers since I was fifteen. Even when working weekends for Manchester Contract Cleaners, not exactly the most reputable company in the north of England, I got the cash without question.

Genius

Encountering excellence - and beyond excellence, actual genius - in creative work is a great way of dealing with the trials of life. 

I was reminded of this truth today when I chanced upon an excellent video essay on the crafting of the music for the soundtrack of Kubrick's The Shining. It's only in recent years that I've become aware of just how much the music adds to the visceral horror of the movie, but now I've heard it I, happily, can't unhear its brilliance. And the video makes us aware of a magical truth: the synchronisation of music and image and the rest of the soundtrack wasn't planned in the conventional sense. It just sort of happened, I suppose because bona fide geniuses were at work.

And to think that when I first saw the film I wasn't really impressed by it. (Evidence, if necessary, that I'm certainly no genius.)

Exercising Patience

I found myself needing to exercise patience on several occasions today. As a teacher this comes with the territory. But several decades into the job I still need occasionally to force myself to do so. Over time it gets easier. But, in my case, it's rarely easy. Hence the need for 'exercise'. Those who think of patience as a kind of passive virtue are massively missing the point. (Or maybe they're naturally good at it? I know I'm not.)

No Happy Ending

Got home latish & decided to watch a bit of Sky News. This featured much coverage of on-going events concerning the Post Office Scandal in the UK, which I referenced here back in January in relation to the excellent series Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which was the best thing we saw on the telly back in the land of my birth last December.

Despite the obviously urgent need to do something to resolve the suffering of those sub-postmasters caught up in the terrible events, it turns out that many victims are still seeking compensation and a significant number either took their own lives or came desperately close. This makes for difficult viewing, part of the difficulty being trying to imagine the extremes of stress that must have been involved.

All very depressing. But, then, so much of the news is these days. 

In Good Order

It's always good to have a holiday early in a term, and even better to spend the free morning wandering around a well-maintained park, of which there's an abundance in this Far Place, I'm happy to say. Noi and I took ourselves off to West Coast Park, which is just around the corner, and enjoyed randomly wandering its lanes and clocking up our steps for the day. We're very familiar with its nooks and crannies, of course, but delighted to discover a new area that those who look after these things have recently developed in the form of a little urban farm. All very jolly and very worthy.

Indeed, I'd venture to say that the development of the parks on the island in the decades I've been here is powerful evidence in itself for good government. I suppose some folk would say these common spaces are over-regulated, but I for one am happy with the orderliness of it all. And I suspect the trees & flowers & plants & birds & assorted wildlife don't mind it at all.  

Remedial Action

I hadn't intended to spend time today cleaning CDs and the shelves they are on and attempting to prevent the shelves from becoming even more tottery than they are. But that's what I found myself doing in the middle of the day, partly on a whim, but, more importantly, because it really needed doing. We've been lucky over the years that the shelves for books and CDs we bought a long time back when we lived on Still Road have lasted reasonably well, but it's starting to look like their days are done and today's remedial action was somewhat overdue.

Noi and I agreed that a lot of this furniture will need to be discarded once we make the big move to Malaysia, but in the meantime we need to make do with what we have, which means making it work for a few months more. I'm not entirely sure that the most tottery of the CD cases will last that long, but it's worth trying for.

Not unlike going to the gym, I suppose; trying to eke out a few more years of bodily function at a passable level. Though, I must say, tonight's session made me feel as tottery as the shelves we were trying to bang into shape earlier in the day.

Not Worth It

When I picked up Mark Sedgwick's Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order I thought I was in for a quick and rewarding read. But it was not to be. I spied the Pelican edition on the shelves at Wardah Books on my recent foray there, recognising the name of the writer from a website I chanced upon some months back that dealt with thinkers like Rene Guenon and Frithjof Schuon, names that frequently cropped up in the works of Islamically related writers I enjoy. I've never really pursued the work of these guys in any serious sense and assumed that Sedgwick's book was going to give me the direct introduction I needed to their exciting ideas. But the problem is that I've not found the ideas themselves, as summarised in the tome in question, at all exciting. Or convincing.

To be honest, their notions come across as over-generalised with little foundation in the complex details of the cultures with which they deal. It's all been more than a bit 'pie in the sky' - fine sounding, but of limited substance. But how exactly do you know all this?, I've found myself asking, page after page.

Funnily enough, the best and most convincing thing I've read so far concerns the work of Jordan Peterson of all people, in the form of a neat summary of the Prof against Political Correctness's understanding of hierarchies of competence and critique of the notion of white privilege. I'm not exactly a fan of Peterson, but if he gets anything right (and I think he often does) this is top of the list and important to appreciate, especially for wooly-minded leftist activists who are overly in love with their own righteousness. 

Anyway, I'm still a way off finishing Sedgwick's book and hoping to find a few more insights that will make reading it worthwhile.

Replete

Noi conjured up her patented salmon dinner this evening. Difficult to think of a better way to finish the working week, so I'm not bothering to think at all.

Worth Forgetting

Somehow in my dotage I managed to completely forget that we have a school holiday next week, on Monday, to celebrate the Youth Day decreed for this Far Place. Must say, the pleasure of remembering was worth the minor inconvenience of forgetting the occasion.

A Lost Cause

Got involved in a genuinely interesting meeting this morning throwing around terms like 'AI Slop'. Realised I had a better understanding of the perils of misinformation in the media than any of my colleagues, which is particularly ironic since they are the ones who are facing years of dealing with this in the classroom (if schools don't turn a blind eye to the phenomenon and try and find ways of educating against it) and I'll soon be observing the war on ignorance from the sidelines.

I like to think that people of goodwill will find some way of dealing with the challenges ahead. But deep down I can't see any way of avoiding catastrophic defeat in the conflict.

More Pieces

Back to the gym this evening, my usual gym, that is. I didn't particularly enjoy working out at the hotel in KL, though I was pleased to be able to get something genuinely physical done. To be honest, I can't say I enjoyed myself this evening, but being back on a machine and working with weights that I understood lent me a greater sense of focus and, I suppose, purpose.

In the end though it boils down to putting the pieces together, each step forward, each lift adding something to one's sense of well-being, even when that piece hurts; overall seeking to cultivate a feeling of unhurried but purposefully active patience.

In Pieces

Starting a new term and remembering to put things together bit by bit by bit by bit. And then another bit.

Of Good Cheer

Driving through Alor Gajah the other day Noi asked how I thought it compared to Denton & Hyde in terms of the essential health of the township. We both thought it came out of the comparison well. There's no sense of the death of the High Street as in so many small towns in the UK. No boarding up of shops and vacant spaces appearing. Quite the opposite. And I'd say the same is true of Tampin from what we saw of the town last night. If folks are struggling here, and I'm sure that's true of at least a few, probably more, it isn't visibly manifesting as a general sense of economic woe. And similarly this morning as we were eating a late breakfast at Warung Nek Muna's next door, the crowd there, with lots of small children in tow, appeared full of vim, ready to get on with the business of living in cheerful fashion.

Mind you, I'm inclined to think that a bit more attention being paid to reducing the general amount of litter defacing the streets and drains would add even more good cheer.

Not In Fashion

Drove out to Tampin this evening, quite a distance from Alor Gajah. Enjoyed ourselves at the Kayo Cafe with Yazir & Wan & Maya. An old-fashioned place for an old-fashioned dinner for old-fashioned kind of people.

Left Undone

No work could be done at Maison KL today as it's a public holiday here in Malaysia. But Ah Sing reckons he needs a couple of weeks more to complete all that needs completing and to put things back in some kind of order. So we made our way to Melaka in the afternoon, figuring that Noi will make her way back to the homestead some time in late July when all's done to re-establish ordinary life.

We're lucky not to have strict deadlines on our domestic arrangements over here. We've got a range of places to retreat to when necessary, which is an unusual privilege, to say the least. I really don't mind if we're still putting the final touches to the place as late as December this year; I'm pretty good at delaying gratification.

Questions Of Value

Decided that I need to consciously restrict myself to watching material of genuine value on YouTube. To that end I thoroughly enjoyed an illuminating lecture on Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time this evening, learning a lot about the exact circumstances in which it was composed and how the great composer understood the notion of time in relation to his own music. Unfortunately I also watched some celebrity-related rubbish in the course of the day which I'm too embarrassed to link to. It's so easy to be shallow, eh?

Visiting

Drove over to Shah Alam today to see Sharifah & Hamza. Sharifah isn’t feeling too well at present. She’s been bruising easily and her blood count doesn’t look good at all - now awaiting the results of further testing. We’re hoping for the best.

Managed a thoroughly cheerful evening despite our concerns, so in that sense all is well.

On The Floor

Work on the new floor in the house proceeds apace with quite a number of the tiles now in place. Must say, I'm happy to be away from it all for the moment, though it will be nice to get back to life as usual. We're hoping to do so by the end of the week, though I suspect it'll take until the year's end to get everything in real order. Good to have a project to look forward to, I suppose.

Street Life

It's warm of an evening in the city, which makes walking pleasant from my point of view - though I think Noi has her reservations about over-doing it. It's also refreshing to walk around without coming across too many folk who are obviously struggling. Hope this is a sign that most of those at the bottom are being provided for, one way or another. Across three evenings we've probably walked by around ten people who looked like they didn't have anywhere to go and might well be spreading themselves out on or around the pavement. None of these looked particularly vulnerable, and one can only hope that looks weren't deceptive. 

Mind you, there were small children involved in three cases with the young women looking after them seeming to be surrounded by and guarding their few possessions. But the kids looked well cared for. Somehow this didn't seem as desperate as it perhaps should have done.

The Big City

Took a stroll this evening to Bukit Bintang, generally taken to be one of the most happening places in the city. The experience served to confirm the obvious. We are small fry in a very big place. This is massive, perspicaciously noted Noi as we drank a cuppa in a shopping centre known as The Pavilion:

Mind you, it was interesting to note that the room for prayers in the centre, tucked away down a long corridor off the 4th floor, was relatively small. Presumably this was not one of the designers' priorities. 

Keeping It Real

Put in another shift at the gym in the early afternoon and did not enjoy it at all. Which is making me wonder if I'm setting the resistance too high on the machines I've been using - varying the trainer of choice today. The sense of the effort required to get the wheels turning feels similar to the setting for my usual machine (which is the highest resistance available for that version of the elliptical  trainer) but after a time keeping going on these different machines takes quite some doing. I don't mind the idea of making an effort in the interest of keeping reasonably in shape, but I'm not sure it should feel quite so forbidding. Indeed, I'm sort of surprised I've managed a full one hour session today and Thursday.

For the last fifteen minutes today I kept myself going by visualising myself slurping down epic amounts of cold water as soon as I got back to our room. And I can assure you the water tasted especially good when I was able to make the fantasy real.

Bad News

It's a measure of just how cut-off from the life of the world we used to be when spending time in Malaysia that I can recall not actually being aware of the 2003 invasion of Iraq until the Americans were several days into their assault. Oh for such innocence again.

Now both Noi and I seem to be picking up on every nuance of what's going on in the Middle East, which engenders a curious low-lying, simmering anger in us both. The anger of helplessness in the face of brazen injustice. 

New Numbers

Noi took care to book a place for us to stay in the city with a gym attached and I dutifully made my way there this afternoon. There were two elliptical trainers, both by the same manufacturer as the one in the gym back in our usual Far Place (Star Trac) but with very different controls. So I spent much of the session adjusting, with some success and much exhaustion. Probably a good sign.

The read-out on the machine of my choice gave useful info on my heart-rate, which peaked around 162, averaging 155-160. I'm not sure exactly what this means but since I survived the session I'm assuming the numbers are okay. I seem to remember hitting something like the same figures on the old machine that eventually collapsed pre-pandemic.

Lost And Found

These days we negotiate the busy highways of the Malaysian capital using Google Maps to find or lose our way around. (Roughly 60% finding to 40% losing.) We found our way back to the big IKEA store at Demansara fairly easily this evening; but getting back to our current HQ on Lorong P Ramlee turned into a bit of an epic. Distinctly over-exciting for our advanced years.

Happily the present IKEA is pretty much the same as the older version, from which we purchased quite a number of items a quarter of a century ago when we first put Maison KL in order. Nice to be able to half recognise some aspects of the past. I suppose they couldn't think of any painful ways to improve the place and so resisted spoiling it.

Seeking Refuge

We've got away from Maison KL for a few days, being temporarily resident in a place adjacent to the KL Tower. It's good to get away from the mess, though we'll be regularly visiting it to make sure the disorder is in some kind of order. Glad I'm not the one digging up the old floor and replacing the tiles. That looks like genuinely hard work to me. And demanding of real skills.

Upside Down

We finally got started on repairing the tiled floor in the living room. Or rather, our contractor Ah Seng and his merry men got started whilst we sheltered from the attendant noise by retreating to the upper floor of the house. Tomorrow we intend to get even further away as the hacking and racket continues. Basically we're ripping up and throwing away the whole floor as we just can't get matching tiles to fill the space where the damage is.

Glad this has started since we've been delaying forever. Glad when it will be over and normal service is resumed, though that's likely to be quite a way off.

All Change

Popping across to Wangsa Maju in the early evening, Noi and I experienced one of those ever more frequent moments in which we expressed startled surprise at what was for us a sudden change in the skyline to which we've been accustomed. Coming up the hill adjacent to the supermarket on Bukit Antarabangsa neither of us was ready for the two large blocks of flats in the distance beyond the houses on the roadside opposite the emporium. Where did they come from? said both of us simultaneously.

This helped us prepare for the many changes we witnessed in Wangsa Maju itself, rendering what had been fairly familiar interiors not so.

I know change can't he helped, but I can't help wish it could be.

Wasted

I'm in the rare position of not having any genuinely pressing things to do, for a few days at least. Very nice. Except that I'm contriving to almost entirely waste the time granted. How so? Well, today I found myself watching a couple of documentaries on YouTube related to various versions of substance abuse & the attendant addiction. I learnt nothing that I didn't already know about the sadness, despondency and sheer waste involved - which felt just a bit ironic.

I suppose part of me watched the on-going misery with a complacent sense that at least I've managed not to mess up my life so spectacularly. Which doesn't speak well for me at all, I'm afraid. 

In Contrast

I'd been half-intending to finish Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet - A Novel of the Plague before setting off for KL. But I didn't, allowing myself to be side-tracked by Robert Philip's A Little History of Music. It wasn't that I put Hamnet entirely to one side, but I deliberately spun out the last third of the story, the segment following the boy's death, slowly reading a few pages at a time to take in the rich detail offered. I suppose I was to some degree distancing myself from the inherent sadness of the text.

In contrast, Philip's survey of music through the centuries never rose to the level of the gripping, but was easy to manage. Briskly informative would be a fair description. 

I finished both today, gaining something from each in its way.

Not Quite In Control

We had a new car radio system installed just over a week ago. The previous system worked through a touch screen that suddenly opted to turn temperamental, and we'd been putting up with the inconvenience for a few weeks when it further opted not to function at all. So we decided enough was enough and we'd get something new and a bit more state of the art.

That was all well and good but what I didn't expect was something so state of the art that operating it would be an art in itself. If I tell you that it took me until today to figure out how to switch the thing on and off you'll have some insight into the complexities involved. I will say I was happy to get the system to link to my phone from Day 2, but I still don't know why it sometimes decides it isn't linked and refuses to do anything about this. Though it will happily re-link when switched on again, as it did just now.

Having said all that, the actual sounds coming issuing forth when all is well are great. Just played Stevie's Fulfillingness' First Finale and the drums & bass sounded epically clear & precise. I never realised that what Stevie plays drum-wise on Creepin' is so complex. It takes a great dark, slinky sound to a new level - a neat discovery after more than half a century of very happy listening.

In Retreat

The kind of day when the world is just too much. No adventures necessary. We stayed happily at home. Even then bits of the world dribbled in through the usual channels, as they usually do.

The one I opted to listen to featured a surpassingly beautiful meditation on the theme of today's post. Something worth listening to in all the noise.

Friendly Faces

Met up with Nahar & Yati, and their youngest daughter Zahra, just now in Far East Mall. They're over in KL until Thursday, just for the fun of it. Since we managed to meet up with Boon & Mei last Saturday evening at Fafa's housewarming that means we've been able to catch up with our old chums at the right time, just as the holidays begin. A timely reminder of what life is for. (And I don't mean just eating grub together, important as that is.)

Here, Eventually

Somehow this morning I managed to forget to complete the digital arrival form I need to do before the Malaysian Immigration will let me in to their fair nation. Fortunately the guy on the booth checking our entry was the epitome of patience and didn't complain at all about the hold-up as I did the necessary on my handphone. Completing the form on a phone adds considerably to the bureaucratic torture by the way as hardly any of the drop-down thingamajigs work, but we managed eventually. I say 'we' since the officer himself took my phone to complete the address in Malaysia section for me after the phone resolutely refused to accept any info on the subject from me. The whole experience reminded me of one of life's great truths: the little people caught up in the impossible bureaucracy of their organisations are without fail incredibly helpful.

By the by, we entered our northern neighbour complete with working VEP (which we astonishingly settled about a week ago) and sailed through various toll gantries paying through our e-wallet (working!). So the actual journey up the North-South Highway was a delight. (Except for the massive jam after Ayer Keroh which slowed our arrival in these parts by a good two hours. But you can't have everything.)

But now we're here and it looks like the house is working and we can finally rest. So good night all, and sleep tight. I know I will.

Finishing Off

Almost finished the job-list for the first week of the vacation. Now preparing the on-going list centered on what we need to do at Maison KL, where we'll be off to tomorrow morning. There's always something, as Mum used to say in an irritated manner. I know how she felt, though I'm trying to be happy about the fact there's something rather than nothing. 

The Right Place, Again

Eid al-Adha, 1446

It wasn't overly crowded at Masjid Darussalam this morning whence Noi and I went for the second shift of prayers for Raya Haji. So, in contrast to last year, I found myself reasonably up front and centre for the proceedings. I suppose I feel at home for congregational prayers just about anywhere, but when they are enacted in the place I'm most familiar with the comfort level is palpable.

And later we're off to a very new place for house-warming at Fafa & Idham's recently acquired apartment. Hope they'll be happy there. And comfortable. The omens look good. 

Wobbling

14.40

Just got back from Friday Prayers where I started to feel the effects of today's fast. I'm not used to this, and I've got a fair few scripts from IB to deal with this afternoon. Hope I remain clear-headed!

17.20

I'd forgotten just how sharp a first-day-of-fasting headache can be. Now unfortunately remembering.

22.00

Given the crashing headache I was dealing with as I broke today's fast, getting to the gym later was to some degree unexpected. In fact, I'd sort of convinced myself I wouldn't be going at that point. So now I'm reflecting on the power of habit and just what you can convince yourself can be done just because you've done it before. A key aspect of the challenge of fasting itself, by the way.

Lacking Intensity

I've reached the part of Hamnet that deals with the boy's death and funeral, and it doesn't make for easy reading. Except it's so well written that it's distinctly pleasurable to read.

I think it's the intensity of the writer's apprehension of the world that does it. The novel is life-affirming even at its darkest since each detail is so vivid and alive. Even the dead body of the child. 

I felt a bit flat this afternoon, probably the result of dutifully ploughing through some unrewarding marking, and the contrast with the vividness of what I was reading was marked. But in some ways, possibly most ways, I was happy to settle for my shallowness.

Widening Horizons

We've been switching on our twinkling lights this week, since these are the early days of the month of Zulhijjah, leading up to Eid Al-Adha. A pertinent reminder of a larger world elsewhere and deeper concerns than cleaning bookshelves and marking scripts. Also a way of invoking memories. Not that I've forgotten anything of what we were so fortunate to experience some nine years distant. 

Working Up A Sweat

Spent much of the day perspiring. Even marking IB scripts with a standing fan pointing in my direction was enough to evoke a mild dampness, and when it came to getting the bookshelves vacuumed my t-shirt blossomed with wetness, as did my shorts. My growing sweatiness reached a peak at the gym and since then I've been going easy on trying to get stuff done. Mind you, there's still plenty in store for tomorrow, though I've decided already to adjust my marking targets in a downwards direction. After all, I am on holiday. I think.

In View

As a bit of an experiment the other day I searched YouTube for versions of Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony. It turns out that there are lots, confirmation that the Internet can be a good thing when it wants to be.

The stimulus for my search was finding in my feed a link to a particularly fine version of the masterpiece performed by the Budapest Festival Orchestra. This both sounds good and looks fantastic due to some excellent camera work. The shots of individual players are cunningly selected to illustrate facets of the music, particularly those of the soloists. The visuals make everything sound clearer to a non-musician like myself, if that makes sense. 

And seeing it in action, as it were, I finally have begun to understand why the ondes martenot sounds so beautifully expressive. 

Hearing Restored

The stars aligned last night. I was happily expectant regarding what was in store with reference to Tunggu Sekejap: The P. Ramlee Suite but in the event was completely blown away by the show. Everything about it was sensationally good, starting with Julian Wong's commentary on his wonderfully engaging music. But there was so much more than that going on, not the least a sense of generosity on all sides - performers and audience - that was obvious as soon as the show started. Everyone was there for a good time, and more. The more being a kind of reverence for the magic of creativity at every level.

One of my best nights ever in a theatre, and that's saying something.

And lovely to hear Noi gently singing along to every recognisable melody.

In Tune

And yet another show. Tonight we're off to Wild Rice@ Funan for Tunggu Sekejap: The P. Ramlee Suite and I'm looking forward to more than a few good tunes. A nice way to round off what has been quite a celebratory day in its way. 

Its the start of the June vacation, for one. And I got a clean bill of health from my back doc this morning, for two. And, for three, Noi and I are happily recalling 31 May, 1997. The start of something special.

Hard Of Hearing

The show I watched on Wednesday night was Phantom of the Opera, accompanying some classes who were attending. I got the impression that the students were impressed, and rightly so, given the stellar production values. But it left me cold for some reason. I suppose the fact I've seen it twice before and knew what to expect didn't help. And I've never really bought into the storyline. The first time I saw it I remember thinking that it would have been a good idea if the phantom did away with the good guy instead of the entirely predictable ending we got. The thinking man's musical it isn't.

But the first time round I enjoyed the music, with which I was pretty familiar from recordings owned by friends like Tony. I was impressed by the seemingly effortless flow of memorable, lush melodies. And I went on Wednesday determined to listen closely to details of the musical arrangements. Only to find it all somewhat banal, a bit flat, more than a bit predictable. 

Something's changed. My ears, I suppose.

Keeping Going

I once surprised an ex-student when I told him that the thing I thought was most important in a teacher was the capacity to keep going regardless. Some years later I find I haven't changed my mind. The thing I did best today was unheroically to just keep going. That meant hitting my target for marking at 9.30 pm. Happy to say I got there in the end.

Not So Routine

It's very odd for me to be out on a Wednesday night in the middle of the working week; and even odder for me to be at the theatre watching a show, without Noi next to me. She was, and is, at the airport, seeing off one of her chums.

And another odd thing: I can't really say I had a great time watching the show in question, well-crafted and well-performed as it was. But it was good to see a lot of people around me, young ones at that, clearly having a good time. Which is all that matters, really.

A Matter Of Routine

Noi got back from Melaka, where she'd spent last night and the morning, in time for the Maghrib Prayer and then we chatted about stuff, as usual, ate together, as usual, and watched a bit of the telly, as usual. So a perfect evening, as usual.

Magic

As I mentioned a couple of days back, I enjoyed reading Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet - a novel of the plague, about the death of Shakespeare's son (sorry, no spoiler alert, but it's obvious) whilst basking in the weekend sun. But, in truth, I've been enjoying reading it whatever the circumstances since it's just so very, very good. How does the writer know so much about what everyone back then was thinking and what really happened? It's magic - but sleight of hand magic, not the real thing (as practised by Agnes - Ann Hathaway, that is) in the book. She doesn't know (Ms O'Farrell, that is), she couldn't know, but she does. And now, so do I.

What she could know, of course, are the details of daily life in the England, the Stratford, of 1580-ish to 1596 (I think.) She'll have done her research, I guess, but magically it doesn't read like research.

Literature = magic that works. (Like Science, but better in terms of actual spell-casting.)

Sunstruck

14.40

It's hot here, very. And I mean hot in that uncompromisingly saturating way that marks High Summer in a Place that has no real seasons. I'm sure most folks are grumbling about the sweatiness of it all. But I love it. Must be my reptilian blood. I can see no other explanation. 

Walked across around noon to my workplace and then over the road for a cuppa and a read at the eatery there. Soaked in the warmth gleefully.

18.15

And it was not exactly cool in the gym just now, despite the air-conditioning. Struggled to get a super-sticky t-shirt off after getting back. And now struggling to get another couple of hours of work done to ensure I hit the ground running for the week ahead. But I'm not complaining. (Well, I am, to be honest, but too loudly, I hope.)

20.40

Cheese and tomato sandwiches appropriate for a warm evening now being addressed. Decided to stay cool by listening to Allen Toussaint laying down some New Orleans funk. Loudly. (Good job The Missus is not around to give feedback, eh?)

Wandering

Made my way up to Holland Village in the middle of the day, in between bouts of marking of the international variety. A good way to shake out the cobwebs.

And it looks like the cobwebs are being shaken around at the village with a new shopping precinct opened now at the back of the old hawker centre. As usual it features the same outlets you see in every mall. Lots of coffee shops. So I took a perverse delight in supping on the cheap stuff from one of the old hawker stalls. Enjoyed reading my book there - Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet, in case you are curious - and generally not being part of the crowd.

Now back in my very comfortable, though slightly lonely, homestead and just played a touchingly late version by a very elderly crowd of Pogues of a great song of exile. Suits my outsider mood. Just temporary (the mood) as are all things.

Quietude

Noi has travelled north to Maison KL with her chum Rohana, leaving me to get on with negotiating the final days of the term. I'm guessing that Rohana makes for better company than myself, weighed down as I am with the Toad, work. So good for Noi!

And not too bad for me, thank you, as she's left me with more than ample provisions and an unstirred silence in which to work - and occasionally fill with varieties of splendid noise. 

And now I'm off to munch on a delectable shepherd's pie. Not bad, eh?!

Out Of Time

My latest stint as a marker for the International Baccalaureate Organisation is now underway. And I'm reminded right away of what a small world it is in terms of reaching to help colleagues in various nations deal with the vicissitudes of maintaining the same standards when grading essays; and what a big world it is in terms of everyone being in their own time zones. Not easy to keep up a dialogue in such circumstances.

Beauty

I've done a lot of thinking over the years about the nature of Art and its place in our lives. I'm not saying my thoughts have had any great depth and, to be honest, they've usually been the thoughts of others that I've temporarily purloined and played around with. But there has been a lot of them.

What I've never really addressed though is the relation of Art to Beauty. In fact, for years I've been entirely content with Joyce's alter-ego Stephen's exposition of Aquinian aesthetics to poor Lynch on that long-ago night in Dublin. Wonderful, compelling stuff, but not exactly developed at any length and cogent in a more poetic than philosophical sense. But for the last two or three years as the concept of Beauty has become more important to me in a religious context I've felt the need to do some serious reading and thinking (second-hand as that thinking is likely to be) on the subject.

So it felt like a more than fortuitous coincidence that on my recent foray to Wardah Books I spotted Roger Scruton's Beauty - A Very Short Introduction on the shelves. Scruton is a thinker I have enormous respect for, and have learned a great deal from, despite my fundamental disagreement with his politics. I snaffled the rather handsome looking volume and have been reading it enthusiastically for the last week. It's obviously brilliant; indeed, so good that I'm reading it too fast and intend a slow reread in June when I have time to follow his arguments closely. I suspect I'm likely to emerge a true believer, despite the fact that Joyce hasn't been referenced yet. Or Aquinas, if I remember rightly.

Still, with around 30 pages left, there's time.

Greed

Suddenly felt a powerful impulse to reread Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu the other day. Similar to the impulse to reread Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. Irresistible. But delaying until retirement when I'll want to read everything I've ever read all over again.

I usually don't think of myself as a particularly greedy person. But I am.

Slowing Down

We watched Episodes 2, 3 and 4 from the fourth season of the explosive spy thriller Slow Horses over last Friday, Saturday and Sunday. One episode per day is as much excitement as I can take at my age. And now I need a break of at least a week to get into shape for the end of the drama. Thankfully my life isn't remotely as exciting as that of the denizens of Slough House. I might have made a reasonable detective. But never a spook.

In Balance

Just got back from the gym feeling rather pleased with myself for getting in a session during what's proving to be a very busy period in relation to the Toad, work. In fact, this is the best time of year for reflecting on how much balance I'm achieving in my life since it is so busy. If I can reasonably claim to be achieving a modicum of balance in the second half of May, then things can't be all bad.

I think I can claim something like complete success in integrating physical activity into what might be termed my 'schedule' in recent years. I aim to get to the gym three times a week, for a solid hour on the elliptical trainer, and I've kept that up for pretty much a year and a half. I'm no longer thinking in terms of extending the number of minutes I spend peddling away now that I'm regularly hitting the weights, following the cardio bit. Rather I'm looking to increase the intensity of the work-out using the weights, having read a lot of late about how we old folks need to be focused on weight-training.

Anyway, all is well on that front. Now whether I'm achieving the balance I want in terms of exercising the old grey cells is another question. The answer is that I'm not. But I am managing to keep some kind of life of the mind going even now, and things will get better in June, and were a lot better in the early months of the year. Comparing how things are in May 2025 to the average for May in the pre-pandemic years suggests I'm getting something right. I just need to build on it, once I'm clear as to what it is.

Finally?

After months of trying, and getting closer and closer, we finally have an appointment to pick up whatever it is they give you to show you have a VEP to get entry for our car into Malaysia. Oh, and we've paid for it as well. It says so on the receipt. Surely nothing can go wrong at this stage?

It speaks little for my character that I'm fairly sure it can.

Worth Listening To

A restful Friday Prayers was the highlight of a busy day - not an infrequent occurrence at the end of the week. Today was particularly memorable for a striking khutba, which was easy for me to follow in translation since I found myself positioned right under one of the screens giving a translation from the Malay.

Some excellent advice on Preserving Marital Bonds. Like all the best advice the points sound cliched. Deep down, we all know this stuff. But putting it into practice is where the challenge lies.

Good News

Nice article in today's Straits Times about the launching of Bookshop.sg. Very much hope these guys are successful. My intuition tells me this is of greater importance to the future of this Far Place than many of its citizens might realise.

On the whole I'm a cynic when it comes to the world of business. But this strikes me as business at its best.

The Start Of Something

Back in the deeply dark days of the pandemic Robert Fripp released, through You Tube, a series of very beautiful soundscapes, one a week, for fifty weeks. It struck me then as an act of extraordinary imaginative generosity. A practical way of making the world a better place. Now, some five years later, that seems to me even more the case. 

Today I listened again to the opening Pastorale, Music for Quiet Moments 1. Glad I did.

More Rubbish

Spent a very satisfactory few hours at the Choa Chu Kang Sports Centre in the early afternoon, the highlight of my visit being watching our guys play out another solid victory in the quarter-finals for Basketball. But generally it was good to see a lot of youngsters from various schools having a jolly good time showing off their talents and letting off steam. 

One downside though, and do excuse me for being unbearably petty. I really need to ask: Who thought it was a good idea to make all the drinks machines at the location cashless? I ask this since I'm afraid I failed to get the drink I sorely needed in the humid centre, when I would have succeeded had simple cash been acceptable. Actually I paid my $2.50 for the drink I fancied through Pay Now, but it took so long to arrange the payment that it seems the machine cancelled my order and refused to give me access to the bottle I'd paid for. And there was no one to make a protest to regarding this injustice.

Let's face it: Modern life is rubbish.

(And, on another related note, we still can't register an appointment for the VEP thing despite remorselessly uploading everything the system asks for.)

Not Close Enough

It was just a week ago that I thought we were on the verge of getting an appointment with those who know about these things in Malaysia to install the device thingamajig that would signal our possession of a Vehicle Entry Permit for our motorcar. We had downloaded a Vehicle Registration Confirmation Slip and just needed to do something fiddly with a TouchNGo eWallet and that was it. Except it wasn't.

We did the necessary with the eWallet and actually put some money in it. But the website for the VEP kept telling us we still needed to do this. Then, after a couple of days, the website appeared to accept the fact we had an eWallet. Unfortunately it then informed us that we had failed to register the vehicle, despite the fact we had the confirmation slip. It seems we hadn't uploaded an insurance document, even though Faris had done this for us. Or, rather, that we needed to upload a pdf version. Which we have now done. But we still can't get an appointment as they need a copy of my passport and ID. Which we uploaded more than a week ago.

This is all quite exhausting in its way but, fortunately, doesn't count for much of anything at all since vehicles are being allowed into our neighbour without the entry permit since to all intents and purposes the Immigration Authorities at Tuas don't care.

Passion Play

Completed another excellent book today, and another disturbing read. I've been aware for some years now of the broad outline of the events which led to the tragedy of Karbala and the dreadful death of Hussein, the grandson of The Prophet (may peace be upon him.) Now I know a good deal more of the details, and I'm not sure that such knowledge is necessarily a good thing, though it's certainly a necessary thing. Lesley Hazleton's clear and compelling account of what took place in the years 632 - 680 AD in After the Prophet proved easy to read yet painfully so. I finished it at Holland Village outside the Tiong Bahru Bakery at 4.00 pm feeling dangerously, publicly moved.

She makes a case for equating the story with that of the Christian passion in terms of its deep and abiding power. And, now in some sense 'knowing' both, I cannot but agree. 

At An Extreme

I wondered last weekend whether I might finish Yan Lianke's The Four Books before the working week began. It was proving a fascinating read. I wasn't at all sure I had a solid grasp on the allegorical elements of Yan's account of the years of the Great Leap Forward, but the broad outline seemed clear enough and the surreal power of the plights of the various characters stuck in the Re-Ed camp by the Yellow River was clear enough. The novel won the Franz Kafka Prize in 2014 and that was obviously a fitting award.

Up to the final seventy or so pages I'd found Yan's story easy enough to read in the sense of not being too overwhelming in its sense of outrage over the historical events involved. I suppose I'd been half-expecting something along the lines of Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle and was a touch relieved to avoid that level of intensity. But what started to slow my reading down last weekend was the advent of the famine resulting from the insane agricultural practices that the second half of the work turns its attention to; quite simply, I found it difficult to deal with pages evoking the grim reality of starvation on a grand scale.

So I've spent the week dipping into the ensuing horrors attendant upon people starving to death, finishing the novel today negotiating depictions of cannibalism made all the more horrendous due to the deliberate blandness of the descriptions thereof.

I've never read anything quite like this before. Brilliant stuff. But close to unbearable.

A Wonderful Secret

In my early teens the director Ken Russell was a big name in cinema, for the Brits at least. It's a lasting regret of mine that I've never seen his highly controversial movie The Devils since I loved Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudon on which it was based. Thinking back, I was too young to get in the cinema to see it when it first came out and I don't think it ever made it to the goggle box. But Russell's wonderful films based on the lives of various composers were usually repeated on the Beeb and, in that sense, easily available.

Now, of course, the wonders of modern technology mean that we're just a couple of clicks away from being able to watch nearly every single music-themed offering from Russell on our personal devices (though The Devils remains, probably sensibly, out of reach.) And just today I discovered there are more such films than I realised when The Secret Life of Arnold Bax popped up in my YouTube feed.

For once the algorithm got it right. Glorious stuff.

One Of Those Moments

I'm writing this in the brief pause between two bowls of porridge. Consuming them, I mean. The Missus asked if I wanted more after I dispatched the first hot, supremely tasty, bowl and, nothing loath, I readily assented to seconds.

What's not to like, eh?!

A Bit Of A Risk

I'm glad I've never been placed in any position in which I've had to make genuinely momentous decisions. In general I think I get a lot of things right; but I'm keenly aware this leaves room for getting a fair number of things wrong.

I'm pretty sure that if I had things my way as dictator of the world I'd prohibit the ownership and possession of smartphones for anyone fourteen or under. An article relating to such a ban appeared in The Graun today, and confirmed me in this belief. Must say, even if I knew this was likely to turn out to be a wrong-headed decision, I reckon I'd still go ahead and make it. The glimpse afforded of a saner, safer world would be worth the opprobrium likely to descend on my old grey head.

Convinced

Zoomed through Ibrahim Abdul-Matin's Green Deen over the weekend. Not quite what I expected. I assumed I'd be getting a fairly systematic exposition of the case for a sort of environmentalist view of Islam and was given no such thing. The writer makes the assumption that there's no real case to make as the fundamentally 'green' outlook of Islam is obvious, a no-brainer, if you like. And he's right. 

What we get is a simple, deliberately, relentlessly repeated sequence of ideas revolving around the key terms: tawhid, ayat, khalifah, amanah, adl, mazin to hammer the obvious home. And this works brilliantly, such that the reader is more than happy to then read of the practical applications of real environmental action as seen in the writer's country, the USA, with a few supplementary examples from other nations.

So the book turns out to be a kind of inspirational yet practical manual of how to get green stuff done. For this reader that seems to be exactly what is needed in his life, in which he's well short of doing anything significant. So far he's just been paying lip service to an area of his life that demands far more.

A Very Minor Triumph

It is with some small astonishment that I herein record I have very nearly managed to do the necessary regarding the infamous VEP (Vehicle Entry Permit) for our journeys to Malaysia. We had dutifully got our VEP prior to the pandemic, but at that point never had to make use of it. When we were told around the middle of last year that the whole thing would have to be re-done in order for us to be allowed entry by November 2024 we suffered a mild panic, like most drivers here did, knowing that the process was likely to be difficult. In the event the process proved pretty much impossible for us since actually having recorded the data for our vehicle under the old system turned out to be a major obstacle for obtaining a ‘new’ VEP due to the software systems involved turning out to be spectacularly incompatible. But, happily, entry to Malaysia without the VEP has been easy since the Immigration there just seem to ignore it, so it’s been business as usual.

However, we are nothing if not persistent and when Noi suggested we ask Sanusi to have a go getting the VEP for us it struck me as a reasonable strategy. So last Saturday we were pleased to host not Sanusi himself but his son and daughter, Faris & Idora, and Idora’s husband. Amazingly they were able, after a couple of hours' work, to get us registered for the thing, though an important step involving something called a TouchNGo eWallet proved beyond their considerable powers. And then today, against all odds, I got the wallet thing to work.

We haven’t actually got the device to stick on our car that we need to acquire yet, but it’s close. So close.

Another Walk In The Park

Spent a highly agreeable morning at West Coast Park, followed by a rather jolly cuppa & prata at our favourite eatery on Clementi Road. Lots to appreciate in the park, including an unusual profusion of chickens & their chicks. And a fairly recent phenomenon: the fascination of watching folk who appear to be filming themselves for what I believe is known as 'social media'. One young lady, dressed to the nines, seemed to think she was performing on the catwalk of an expensive and expansive fashion show. Highly expressive.

Election Fever

We're sort of watching the coverage of the GE here on the goggle box as I write with a reasonable amount of interest. I don't think there are any big shocks but I don't know enough of the details to know what exactly might constitute a shock. When one considers the out and out idiocy of some recent results in supposedly politically sophisticated nations, it feels reassuring to be located in a Place that a sort of healthy if unexciting rationality holds sway.

Actually the best result of the day for me has been the numbers I posted at the gym when I visited just after mid-day. It seems I'm fitter at this grand old age than at any time in the last twenty or so years. A bit selfish of me to be more concerned with this than national affairs - but just keeping it real.

On The List

I've slimmed my list of current reading to just four tomes, and one of these is a long term project, this being Finnegans Wake. (I might finish Joyce's final masterpiece/folly in around five years based on current progress. I'm in no hurry.) I'm also resigned to sticking with Henry Vaughan: The Collected Poems, finding enough pleasure here & there in the early stuff to make it worthwhile, despite the temptations offered by John Clare (and others.)

And now I've got Sherlock Holmes out of the way I'm full on with The Four Books by Yan Lianke. I'd not heard of one of China's most acclaimed writers before which is deeply embarrassing. He's good! Very readable. But I still wanted to make room for some non-fiction running parallel to my main read and settled on Ibrahim Abdul-Matin's Green Deen which I picked up at Wardah Books the other day. Very clear and, again, eminently readable - and, deeply practical; possibly a necessary book for me at this stage in my life.

So lots to occupy me over the long weekend. And beyond.

Ups And Downs

What an odd concoction as a writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was. Genuinely gifted and splendidly clumsy. I'm not at all sure he had any real awareness of his considerable strengths and alarming weaknesses. In his brief Preface to The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, his final and very mixed offering of tales concerning Holmes & Watson, he refers to his more serious literary work, as if convinced of his having some kind of genuine status in the world of letters beyond the brilliance of his creation of the mythic pair. (Astonishingly he chooses to write two of the tales in The Case Book with Holmes as the narrator, when even the most obtuse of readers would be able to tell the writer that's two too many.) Indeed, the poor man lists his works in history, poetry, historical novels, psychic research and the drama in the sad belief that his stuff would somehow survive the ravages of time. As a youngster I really enjoyed The Adventures of Gerard and, I suppose, thought the tales were as well established as those of the Great Detective, and much funnier, but even those are pretty much out of print these days.

Since I finished the beefy Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes today I thought it might be appropriate to say something of the writer at his best, and worst, with a single example of each. Actually I was a bit surprised at just how much I enjoyed the tales in the final collection considering what a poor reputation they have amongst the Holmesian cognoscenti. I've got a feeling that The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger isn't highly thought of, never having seen an adaptation on telly and being aware in reading it that as far as I can tell there's little actual mystery for Holmes to solve. But I loved the evocation of the circus milieu at the centre of the story and the mythic power (there I go again!) behind the characterisation of the titular heroine. I found myself watching my own cinematic adaptation in my mind and knowing the tale could be made to work on screen. Very jolly stuff, indeed!

In stark contrast I was taken aback by the virulence of Conan Doyle's racism in his portrayal of the negro boxer, Steve, in The Adventure of the Three Gables. I think it's a reasonable argument to note that the writer's racist essentialism is never exactly far from the surface in his writing, but the ghastliness of the descriptions of this entirely minor character took me aback, and I'm not claiming the moral high ground of twenty-first century political correctness cum wokeness here. I've never read anything close to just how bad this is in, say, Kipling or Conrad. The good doctor had a deep personal problem, I'm afraid, and it tarnishes his work.

Radically Cool

I'm sure that at some point in the not so distant past I posted something in this Far Place related to how the wonderful Stevie Wonder (see what I did there?) embodied the notion of cool musically, and in various other ways, in the long ago and far away 1970s. Fortunately for me, and you Gentle Reader, that sense of cool is still in evidence on the WWW in terms of various musically informed coves posting some of his great live performances of the period.

So I'm more than happy to repeat my praise for the Great Man and provide a link to a transcendent take on Living For The City which I reckon is better than that on the album. Much as I love Stevie's own drumming on the original, the guy in the video (whom I can't identify, I'm afraid) blows it out of the park, as they say.

And the back-up singers are seriously to die for.

Not So Good

Heard some bad news about a former colleague in relation to her severe health problems this afternoon. I remember some years back seeing her with some frequency in the gym at work, trying to put into action what her doctor had then recommended, and doing so with some success. A pity it wasn't enough to put all to rights, but that's how it is. Life is deeply unpredictable.

We are left, as so often is the case, with prayer. Part of its necessary power.

Lights Out

Another very busy day. And a highly satisfying one. It helps a lot when the team you're supporting clinches a national championship. (I'm not talking Liverpool here, by the way, just in case you think I've lost my usual sense of grounded rationality.) 

Sadly, though, it's the final day of Syawal & we'll putting away the twinkling lights for another eleven months or thereabouts. But best to look ahead at the year in store than dwell on former glories, eh?

Cause For Good Cheer

An entirely splendid sort of day so far, with a prata dinner treat still to come! 😁

Must say, I'm more than a bit stoked by the birthday books. A few weeks or months of deep reading pleasure guaranteed therein.

Apologies over the legs above. Not my fault.

Back Again

We made our way to Arab Street this afternoon for the second time in two days, and I found myself back in Masjid Sultan for the Asr Prayer, still enjoying the carpet therein. Actually the main purpose of our visit wasn't really to pray at the mosque, enjoyable though that was, but to pay a visit to the rather splendid Wardah Books on Bussorah Street. (After quaffing the cup that cheers, that is.)

Happily the shop appears to be thriving, with a new space opened upstairs and a generally more spacious feel than the last time I was there. I've been avoiding going there for some little while now. It's just too tempting in a way that the much larger Kinokuniya outlet at Takashimaya somehow doesn't manage to be. But after passing it the other day my resistance crumbled and I just knew I needed to browse there for an hour or so on the morrow, which I did most profitably. The owners seem to know exactly what will appeal to me, both in terms of the Islamically-themed stock (the majority of the books) and the more general stuff.

The recent announcement of a new branch of Kinokuniya hasn't convinced me that they intend to expand. I suspect we might be in for the closure of the larger pre-existing outlet some time next year, which will mean the city being reduced to just two bookshops. Quite an embarrassment really. But as long as Wardah is around it will help considerably to reduce the pain.

Sitting Still

A day of motion with an hour of stillness, spent in Masjid Sultan, at its centre. Nice sense of diurnal symmetry. Suddenly realised when in the mosque that it was my first time there for Friday Prayers and decided to make the journey more often. The lovely carpet alone would make it worthwhile.

More Wonders

Another unreasonably busy day. But luckily my little world kept spinning equitably, despite turning a little too quickly for comfort. In fact, it slowed down very nicely in the mid-afternoon to accommodate a lovely cup of tea with The Missus followed immediately by a highly satisfactory game of basketball. (It helps when your favoured team win, and win well, doesn't it?) 

World Of Wonders

Carol Rumens has managed it yet again at her wonderful Poem of the Week feature in The Graun. She's picked an absolute belter from the peasant poet, and for some reason I can't figure out the poem in question, which I'll title The Old Pond, though it hasn't really got a title, is entirely unfamiliar to me despite the fact that some of the comments BTL suggest it's well-known. Mind you, it being unfamiliar is quite wonderful in its way since it meant that on Tuesday I could genuinely experience that full-on utterly enchanted and blown away feeling I plugged into so regularly as a teenager.

But here comes the problem, which I seem to remember outlining in a previous post centred on another gem from Clare. I now really, really, really want to get stuck into the closest thing I've got to a Clare Collected, but am committed to reading my Henry Vaughan: The Complete Poems. And that's chugging along nicely, but it's not exactly inspiring since I'm diligently working my way through the early derivative stuff and work in translation which is good in an average sort of way as opposed to the wonderful 'metaphysical' religious poems which are, as stated, wonderful.

Isn't it extraordinary to have so much to wonder at? But, in its way, not such a bad thing to delay gratification and settle for enjoying something craftily put together? Yep, I'll stick with HV for now. I think.

Footsore

It's a bit petty to moan about sore feet, regardless of the fact we have little choice but to stand on them, walk on them, run on them, etc. If feet aren't foundational, I don't know what is. But, as I said, no one likes to hear someone moaning about their feet.

And, in my case, the situation is even sadder. It's not so much my feet as the toes on the end of them, and, more specifically the three toes in the middle of my left foot that I've come here to moan about. They've been sore for ages and I reckon they're going to stay that way. My feet are just too wide, to the point of looking deformed as The Missus has rightly pointed out, and they've been that way since I was a little lad, who needed a special fitting of shoes on account of this. But now, in age, the toes seem to be unnaturally rubbing against each other a lot of the time, especially if I'm walking at speed, and they're continually sore in an unpleasantly burning manner. 

Fortunately when I'm completely focused on something else - rushing to a classroom, keeping going on the elliptical trainer, shouting on the touchline - the pain fades, forgotten. But, unfortunately, it always comes back. Pretty glum, I suppose. Except for one saving detail. Pain that's peripheral, on the end of one's foot, can hurt like crazy, but it remains on the edge, almost as if it's an afterthought, something that doesn't quite belong to the body. In stark contrast, internal pain (I imagine, never, thankfully, having really suffered such except for the odd really bad aching stomach) is somehow at the centre of the self, powerfully destablising.

So, a bit of comfort there, cold in nature, but enough for now.

Wise Words

A very great man once said: Football, bloody hell, eh?!

Today a not-so-great man said: Basketball, bloody hell, eh?!!!

Just saying.

Top Notch

I've been cheerfully startled at the quality of the stories in Yusuf Idris's The Cheapest Nights. For quite a few years now I've naively assumed that Egyptian lit starts and ends with the brilliant Naguib Mafouz, with Nawal El Saadawi offering a powerful by-way into particularly feminist concerns. It turns out I'm definitely wrong on the first count (and most likely patronisingly all over the place on the second.)

There are fifteen short stories in the collection from Yusuf Idris and they are all beautifully crafted, but at least five strike me as absolute classics of the genre, up there with Joyce, Chekov, Hemingway and the like. If I were pushed I'd say that The Dregs of the City, in its evocation of the hopelessness of the poor quarter at the back of the mosque of Al Azhar, comprises in its 40 or so pages an urgent social critique that outdoes that of any equivalent writer from the west. The thing is that somehow he makes us understand that the denizens of the neighborhood in question are not hopeless at all because Shohrat, the servant and unwilling lover of Judge Abdallah, who journeys into that forbidden territory in search of her and his missing wristwatch, is more than a match for him, despite the degradation he visits upon her. The tale escapes summary and easy understanding, a notable characteristic of so much that is in this slim volume.

I suppose I think of Naguib Mafouz as a writer in the tradition of Dickens, considering the sense of The Cairo Trilogy as a sprawling epic featuring real 'characters' in the old-fashioned, but eminently valid, sense of the word. Yusuf Idris strikes me as his antithesis, based on what I've read so far: brutally focused and, somehow, cold in his analysis, yet wonderfully non-judgmental. I'd love to read more, but I've got a feeling that not much of his stuff is available in English translation.

Oh, and by the by, I'm guessing Wadida Wassef's translation for the Penguin Classics edition is excellent since it reads so well.

Visiting Hours

Spent a few hours out today engaged in visits for Raya. Actually we only went to Kak Kiah's and then dropped Hakim off at his new place, where we scoffed some pizza, but it still felt like a typical busy day in Syawal. A lot of fun in its own way. Better than work, I must say. But then most things are.

Bad Boys

I find myself thinking more and more of the days of my youth, often in the late evening and if I wake in the middle of the night. The period around 1970 tends to dominate, I find, in terms of the deep resonance that much of the quality music of that period held for me. I was finding my way as a callow teenager and beginning to form actual tastes, with a sense of excitement in my self-awareness that I was doing so.

Spurred on by a sudden memory last week of hearing Pete Townshend's The Seeker for the first time I recently listened to it again and was struck by just how obviously wonderful The Who were in their considerable heyday. It seemed axiomatic to me and my mates back then that Townshend represented the best of pop/rock and needed to be looked up to, as did The Who in general. And since I think exactly the same today this does seem to point towards the wisdom of youth. To be honest, it wasn't exactly an opinion I had conjured for myself. I soaked it in from all around me.

Just after enjoying replaying the song and video (which I don't recall ever seeing at that time) I got to thinking of a curious sort of coincidence. All the Big Four British pop/rock bands of the 60's had their Bad Boy sort of creative-thinker-cum-guru figure, in their own way. Townshend for The Who. Ray Davies for The Kinks - with the bad-boy-ness sort of split, Oasis-style, between Ray & brother Dave. John Lennon for The Beatles - with the creativity bit divided between him and Paul, but not the bad-boy-ness. And who exactly for The Stones? Well, initially Brian Jones, I suppose. But then it's Jagger and Richards - and, in the final analysis, I reckon it's Keef on his own, Mick being fundamentally the conventional capitalist, despite appearances. And, if I'm not mistaken, Peter, Ray, John and Keith all attended art school. (Though I might be wrong about that. I'm too lazy to verify, and it's a nice thought anyway.)

Real News

Very much enjoyed seeing a story relating to life beyond our solar system making it to the top of the news in the Graun today - the online version. It would nice to think it was the headline story in the print edition, but I doubt it would have pushed to one side the depressing stuff that passes itself off as international politics these days.

Must say, if there is Life on Mars, as a very great man once memorably asked in the days of my youth, they must be looking at us and thinking what a god awful small affair we've made of it all down here.

Conspiracy Theory

For the last two days for some reason best known to itself The Universe has been conspiring against me. Every time I've tried to get on with my marking, trying to hit tight, unforgiving deadlines, a minor crisis here and a slightly less minor one there has derailed me for long enough to build a sweat. Not sure what it's got against me. The Universe, I mean.

I explained the situation to The Missus earlier and even she nodded in sympathy, rather than subjecting me to her usual scepticism regarding my wilder knowledge claims. Mind you, she was sort of grinning as well. Odd, that.

Fullness

15 Syawal, 1446

Thought I'd put today's date according to the Islamic calendar as a reminder that we're at the halfway point of the month following Ramadhan and, in terms of the lunar month, that entails a full moon. It certainly looked full to bursting this morning, amiably glowing above my place of work, almost lighting the way. (I'm positively waxing poetic, eh?)

Anyway, it looked good to me. Just saying.

Yearnings

Reading in the news this morning that reggae singer Max Romeo has died triggered an odd reaction in me. It took me back to disco night at Hyde Town Hall in 1969, listening to what was then the singer's notorious banned single Wet Dream, only played twice on the BBC before their ban on it, and watching a line of very young ladies (probably around my own age, maybe a year or so older) dance to it in a very sprightly manner.

I don't think that up to that time I'd ever heard anything quite so explicit, and found it very edgy indeed. The fact that the girls dancing seemed to react with a kind of rhythmically engaged indifference added to the odd power of my feelings: sort of excited, perplexed, disturbed and a bit frightened by it all. I can actually conjure a vivid image of the moment & the dance even now; but today, this morning, as I did so, it all seemed just a bit sad and very charming.

And the same is true to some degree of what I felt on reading All On a Summer's Night by Yusuf Idris from the collection The Cheapest Nights which I referenced yesterday. Except beyond evoking sadness and charm the brilliantly crafted story had a most powerful impact on me in other ways when I read it this morning, just before reading the news. At one point, indeed, I thought it might take a turn towards brutal horror when the group of young fellahin on which it focuses are denied any release of the sexual urges that torment them and turn on their companion for setting them on fire with his entirely false account of an encounter with a very generous lady in a near-by town. But they hold themselves back, just, from beating him to death. And the story is as comical as it is sad. Inevitably so, I suppose, when dealing with the yearnings of very young men.

So, an odd parallel, though the young Brian was dealing with his inchoate urges at just thirteen years old (if I've got my sums right) and Idris's young men are clearly just that - men - and deeply confused, deprived and dangerous ones.

By the way, since my bit of reading in the early morning it's actually been a day of almost non-stop work, which I suppose is no bad thing when you consider the dark places music and fiction can take you to.

Not Much Choice

Am attempting valiantly, but somewhat vainly, to kickstart my reading of fiction over the weekend having stalled over the last week or so. But I'm a bit stuck as to whether to devote my full attention to the short stories in Yusuf Idris's The Cheapest Nights or get moving into the twelve tales in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, having now completed His Last Bow. Must say, I enjoyed the last two adventures in Conan Doyle's penultimate collection which seemed to me a fitting conclusion in aesthetic terms to his saga of the great detective. The shift to the third person narrative in the titular tale works really well and the valedictory tone created is genuinely satisfying. But I suppose that the aesthetics of it all had little to do with keeping a popular readership satisfied and it was inevitable that the stories would keep being churned out long after the edge had been well and truly blunted.

On the other hand the six stories I've read so far from Yusuf Idris being entirely fresh to me - never even having heard of the writer until I was given the volume as a gift a few months back - are all 'edge' as far as I'm concerned. But it's a bleakly uncomfortable kind of edge such that finishing one harsh little parable leaves me with little in the way of excitement to get on with the next, despite the obvious quality of the material. I wonder if the stories are popular in Egypt? The blurb tells me the writer is acclaimed and well-known in his native land and I think I can see why from what I've read so far.

Perhaps I'll just keep ping-ponging between the two writers. There's a kind of entertainment value to be found in doing that sometimes.

Something Wise

Received a message and picture in the very early morning, before doing the Dawn Prayer, concerning our feathered friend above, a wild owl, having found its way into our premises. Was hoping to see it for myself once I set out to work, but by then it was raining heavily, so that put an end to that project. Sorry to have missed it, but glad it was here. A blessing of sorts.

In Surplus

On days when I feel swamped I sometimes get to wondering - only briefly, if I have time - whether our Tech Overlords realised that the fruits of their work were likely to be poisoned; that too much information isn't terribly healthy for our pitifully limited species. If they did, then that tends to suggest they are really rather wicked; if they didn't, that suggests they are more than a little foolish. Either way, it's not such a good look.

Luckily I don't have too much time to dwell on the unpalatable. And now I'm off to get back to the toad, Work, on another less than profitable information-related task.

High Energy

I was feeling a bit listless around 8.00 this morning. That was a bit odd as a meeting I'd been scheduled to attend was canceled leaving me with some unexpectedly free time. Normally I'd have been happily celebrating, but then came this mild slump. I tried the reliable remedy of a cup of hot, sweet tea and that certainly brought some cheer, but didn't really deal with the energy deficit, if you know what I mean.

Then I found the solution. All it took was 4 minutes and 30 seconds of The Clash blasting out a thunderous Clampdown live at the Lewisham Odeon and normal service was restored. It kept me going for the rest of the day, in fact. Everyone should try it!

While It Lasts

I reckon I got thinking about Dad's lack of attendance of football matches in his middle age yesterday because somewhere in the back of my mind was the fact that today is the anniversary of Mum's death. She lived almost four decades longer than her husband (sounds odd to me, thinking of Dad in that way) but I don't think she ever got over losing him - though she did find plenty to enjoy in those years.

I'm guessing she really enjoyed her final job, as a barmaid at Denton Working's Club, for example. She only started that job after his death, actually partly as a way of being allowed into an exclusively 'men's club', where a lady had to be in the company of her spouse to get in. Part of her enjoyment was being good at the job - a natural for the banter at the bar and brilliant at serving quickly, and working out the cost of a complicated round at high speed. I watched her in action more than once and was impressed.

And another thing. I think she got a kick out of being a very senior barmaid in terms of her actual age, being aware that nearly all those customers who didn't know her well, and hadn't known Dad, thought she was a lot younger than she was. If my calculations are correct, she worked until at least 70-years-old. Possibly longer. She once told me about joining in gleefully with some fellows at the bar in praise of a lady, who was younger than her, as 'wonderful for her age'.

Sad, but inevitable, that age caught up with her eventually. At some point the job just became too much for her, I think. But it was good while it lasted.