Prog On

Even as I write this I'm mentally goofing off, in auditory fashion, by revisiting the early 1970s via Steve Hackett and his band's brilliant recreation of an early Genesis gem: The Fountain of Salmacis. I'm not sure if the original band played this when I first saw them live in the Free Trade Hall at the time they put out Nursery Chryme, but I do know I played the track over and over once I acquired the album (usually playing air drums or pretending to be Peter Gabriel. But let's not probe overly deeply into my embarrassing youth.)

By the way, for any appreciative youngsters out there who've clicked on the link and enjoyed the splendour of it all, I'm sorry you weren't around in that era. A great time to be alive for anyone with keenly open ears. 

A Bit Of A Mix

A long day featuring a bit of everything, with a couple of hours still to go (if I last).

Made an early start at 5.00 am watching the England - Norway quarter-final down in our Staff Lounge. Frankly I thought Norway were the better team for much of the game, especially after the cagey opening, about 30 minutes in, when they went to a high press against a shaky England defence. Still, a win is a win, and winning like this is a sign of a squad who've adapted to the demands of tournaments. Then stayed on for the Argentina game and ended up happy that we're avoiding the very handy Swiss team. I'm convinced they would have edged the encounter if it weren't for the (deserved) sending off of the daft Embolo. I reckon this version of Argentina is vulnerable and might just decide not to turn up for the semis if Messi is marked out of the game.

After that it was time for a bit of IB marking whilst listening to a slice or two or three of Bill Frisell - and wondering why I don't listen to a lot more. Oh, and I caught up with the zzzzzzzs for an hour or so whilst The Missus worked her magic in our kitchen.

She confected a delectable chicken curry to help feed-up niece Fafa, to whose place we went in the late afternoon to make the acquaintance of the 12-day-old Dahlia Arissa, who doesn't look like anybody yet, as far as I can see, but sort of resembles everyone, except me, of course. I spent some time chatting to her in my best Manchester accent in an attempt to introduce her to the joys of being a Citizen of the World. But she didn't seem overly impressed. 

Refreshed

Woke from a cobwebby night's sleep in need of mental cleansing and found it in a morning stroll around West Coast Park with The Missus. We'd planned originally to go to the Botanic Gardens, but it was drizzling when we set off and we felt more assured of the necessary spots in which to shelter if we went to the closer and more familiar location and I'm glad we did.

Actually it looked like we might have had to abandon the jaunt some ten minutes after arrival when the light drizzle threatened to metamorphosise to heavy rain, but we took cover at one of the bicycle rental places for a few minutes and the rain eased. To tell the truth, walking in the drizzle was distinctly pleasant and I wouldn't have minded a couple of hours of it, but the light rain itself petered out quite quickly and, despite the overcast skies, we enjoyed a dry late morning.

In the interests of full disclosure, I need to tell you that we punctuated proceedings by stopping off for teh tarik and prata at Niqqi's Cheese Prata shop at the bottom of Clementi Road around the halfway point, which definitely hit the sweet spot. So, all told, a highly successfully outing with nary a cobweb left in any corner to worry about.

Getting Political

Finally the Clacton byelection back in the UK affords me a rare opportunity to make an unequivocal political declaration of allegiance: Ich bin ein binliner!! 😁

Frankly Speaking

Caught up in the iron grip of Zola's Germinal for various reasons, but essentially because it's just so darned good. (That wouldn't score well as lit analysis, but I don't care.)

Was intending to write a post praising Zola for his frankness in the novel regarding matters of sexuality, especially the unashamed promiscuity of many of his characters and his directness in depicting such. Indeed, the text had something of a revelatory quality to me in that regard since I couldn't think of a single British writer of the nineteenth century writing in such a manner.

But a couple of days ago, quite by accident, I came across a comment in the introduction to my Penguin edition of the novel, that suggests the writer is not being honest in his depiction. The editor, Roger Pearson, (who provides an excellent intro & notes, by the way) notes that contemporary documents about the mines provide nothing to support Zola's account. The suggestion is that Zola felt it was a kind of Naturalistic truth that the miners would behave in such a fashion and he imposes his assumptions upon his characters.

Must say, at this point I have no idea where the truth lies, but I'm fascinated by trying to find out more. Having said that, I'm rather more fascinated by getting on with Germinal to find out what's going to happen to Catherine now she's nearly died in the mine and Chaval, her sort of husband-cum-lover - and not a nice guy - has briefly been genuinely loving to her.

Lost And Found

Keys are very important things. A truth made accessible simply by losing one or more of them. It's been a long time since I was foolish enough to mislay a set, but over the last few days I made up for that by conspiring to lose keys of some importance twice, in the same key pouch ironically, though the keys were quite different.

First of all I managed to lose the keys to the apartment, last Thursday, if memory serves. There I was at my desk, packing my bags in the afternoon and looking forward to getting back a bit earlier than usual, when I put my hand in my pocket to check for my key pouch only to discover an airy nothing. Well, that's not entirely accurate. There was a white board marker lurking there, but no pouch. Which was impossible since I only ever put the keys in my pocket or in my briefcase. So I checked my briefcase, knowing they weren't in there, and, no surprise, they weren't. Showing something close to iron self-control I managed not to explicitly panic and thought hard as to the last time I was sure the pouch was in my possession - i.e., lodged neatly in my trouser pocket.

And here comes the happy part. I recalled definitely having them with me roughly two hours earlier in our Staff Lounge. At which point I mentally retraced my direction of travel since that time, which had been worryingly many & various, but I knew the winding path for sure. Which I then began to follow, estimating it would be quite some time before I could retrieve the keys which, with naïve confidence, I assumed I would be able to based on the fact the keys were not likely to have fallen through a wormhole in space. Hoping against hope they would be somewhere in the Staff Lounge, most likely on the table at which I'd been sitting, I opened the door only to view an empty table in the distance. Downcast I approached thinking it highly unlikely they would be on the floor below the chair in which I had been seated - and there they were, to my considerable relief, ending some five minutes of minor, muted but real, panic.

And then, just yesterday, I found a way to experience another stressful five minutes, this time involving the key to our 'cage' for basketball - a spot for storage of all sorts of basketball-related doings, which I was due to open in the afternoon when the guys would be practising out on the courts. I store the key in a little box on my desk, and that's the only place it ever goes. Which meant the fact it simply wasn't there when I looked for it in the late morning was inexplicable. Which meant I needed to ask a colleague if we had a spare, which we didn't, which was embarrassing and further meant I needed to borrow his, which was even more embarrassing, and now getting complicated since I'd need to return his key and somehow get another for myself.

But the key was definitely gone, since there was no alternative location possible. But then I thought of my key pouch as it suddenly occurred to me that the last time we'd been practising at the courts was Friday when I'd gone back to prepare for setting off to Malaka; and possibly I'd not followed the usual routine of going back to my desk to store the key safely; and possibly I'd stored it safely in my trusty key pouch and just forgotten; which was what had happened as I opened the pouch to find the 'extra' key inside. Relief, of the considerable kind, yet again flooded all my bits & pieces, and I quickly returned my colleague's key before I managed to mislay that one.

So an utterly trivial narrative to reinforce two very important points. Hold firmly onto your keys everyone. And don't panic when eventually they go missing, because they always will. 

Justice Served

On a fairly busy day I only managed to catch-up with the World Cup news in the late morning. Must say I felt a strong sense of satisfaction upon seeing that Belgium had really done the business over the USA. Quite some surprise also as it had looked like the light of Belgium's golden generation had completely dimmed. Nice to know that it might just shine long enough for them to beat the odds in 2026.

But it was my satisfaction over the US getting a pounding that took me by surprise. Early in the tournament they'd impressed me and I'd genuinely been hoping for them to go far as an 'outsider' team. So what had changed, I asked myself. And the answer came readily. The blatant disregarding of well-established international rules as to the non-negotiable suspensions of those who'd been unfortunate to get a red card, that's what.

Interestingly, I noticed that the vast majority of commentary I read on the game on social media reflected the same feeling.

Something Left

Caught the last twenty minutes or so of the England vs Mexico game live this morning, in the jovial company of a lot of rightfully noisy boarders watching events at the Azteca ensue on the big screen in our Staff Lounge. I think the atmosphere if anything served to intensify the tension I felt as Kane was subbed & the 3 Lions moved to a back 5. Something in my mind was telling me the creaking defense would not be able to handle the more than handy Mexican movement upfront, and when the (astonishing)11 minutes of extra time was declared (which somehow turned to 12 and a bit more) I thought the team would never see the game out without conceding. I was delighted to be wrong - and that being very wrong indeed given the relative comfort of the final minutes.

This version of England seem to handle adversity with some room to spare: the very real problems of playing at high altitude; the aggression of the crowd; the (deserved) loss of a full-back. And since they're likely to face even more troubles moving ahead, that augurs well.

I suppose that in a small way I felt the positive result made me just that bit more motivated to do my thing at the gym in the afternoon and rise above the circumstances of considerable physical decline. Unexpectedly, I actually felt okay on the elliptical trainer rolling out my 60 minutes at full resistance and thought I might have put in good numbers when I speeded up for the last couple of minutes. But it turned out that the numbers were very average and I was gasping more than somewhat after my foolish sprinting. I'm feeling it now, to be honest. The sense that there's really nothing under the bonnet. 

I'm pretty sure the England boys have got a lot more left than me, though. So that's something to hold onto.

The Hard Life

There's much to admire in the sheer energy of Zola's Germinal, its powerful sense of the moral necessity of recording in sometimes overwhelming detail the bleakness of the lives of most of its benighted characters. And, once the narrative picks up with the story of the miners' strike, there's something genuinely gripping in the unfolding of the fates of its many characters. Though I'm not holding out much in the way of hope for them at the halfway point of the novel.

It's taken me quite some time to get towards the end of Book IV because, for all the energy of its telling, the grimness of the subject matter doesn't make for an easy read. I feel I need to be at full attention as I go since anything less than complete absorption will be an injustice to the writer and his suffering creations.

But that's not to say there's nothing positive about the text. The simple fact of their survival engenders respect for even the least of the inhabitants of Village Two Hundred and Forty. And there are striking moments of genuine pleasure in life scattered in the novel that often beguile, even in the most desperate circumstances. Etienne's discovery of the semi-feral Jeanlin's hideaway down the abandoned mineshaft won't be easily forgotten by this reader. It has something of the quality of myth about it.

Sort Of Stopping

Arrived here in the very early hours of the morning having managed to nod off somewhat in the car. Then enjoyed a few hours of sleep, though awoken before the time for the prayer at dawn by the fierce air-conditioning in our bedroom here. And then managed a good hour and a half back in the land of nod before getting up and ready to attend the wedding.

So I'm really not too sure why I felt so deeply wrecked once we got back here after eating & drinking & chatting and the usual wedding stuff and completely crashed out for a couple more hours. But I'm glad I did!