Distressingly Selfish

Chanced upon someone writing about how horrified he was by the taking of selfies in public the other day. It's amazing what people can find to bother themselves with, eh? In response I thought I'd post the selfies featuring The Missus and me, taken in the very public space of Jurong Lake Gardens on Thursday morning. Shameless, as ever.

In Living Colour

We thought it would be a good idea to fill our lives with some colour this morning by embarking on a stroll through Jurong Lake Gardens. It worked.

Top Quality

I was astonished and delighted at finding Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy on YouTube the other day. Watching it I couldn't help but think of how much Tony would have loved to see it, him being both a major Gilbert & Sullivan fan and devotee of ML's brilliant Nuts in May.

Every performance in Topsy Turvy is wonderful, but Jim Broadbent's note perfect portrayal of W.S. Gilbert has got to be his finest performance. The sense of emotional depth behind the blustering façade is deeply moving, especially in the final sequence of the film. But then so many details of the movie point the viewer to the rich humanity behind the loving evocation of the 'low burlesque' of the Savoy Operas.

And to think that work of this quality is made so easily available.

Unfiltered

Not sure why I look so grim in the shot above. It was taken on one of the bridges crossing The Liffey back in December when we were having a jolly good time in Dublin. Which is what's so puzzling. I can't remember having anything other than a good time walking into the city, so why the misery? Could have been the cold weather, I suppose, undermining my usual bonhomie. Or maybe I look like a miserable old soul most of the time, and just don't recognise it.

The Positives

Does Antony Beevor's account of Stalingrad say anything positive about human behaviour? In the final analysis, emphatically yes. All sides did terrible things. And all sides were capable of astonishing endurance and courage. And great compassion at times.

Just one random example. Beevor notes the temptation to commit suicide experienced by so many Germans hopelessly pinned in the kessel. the area encircled by the Red Army in late 1942 This included the doctors, who had easy access to the drugs that made this 'easy' in its way. But the doctors felt they had a duty to stay with the wounded. He writes simply, Of the 600 doctors with the Sixth Army, none capable of working flew out.

Considering the hell that the kessel manifested, a quietly amazing statistic.

Earning Trust

It's odd how often my YouTube feed features material which has zero attraction for me. This is especially true with regard to what might broadly be termed commentary upon current affairs. I suppose it's because I try and go out of my way to listen to those whose views I'm not all that sympathetic towards, in order to ensure a degree of balance in what I listen to, that I find myself looking at links selected by the algorithm that are so obviously doubtful in their content as to be faintly depressing to consider. A case in point: over the last few days I keep seeing stuff related to the dreadful murders of the children in Southport that purport to unearth the 'facts' as to the nature of the 'terrorist' act involved. I suspect those coming up with this nonsense are well aware of the degree to which they're twisting the depressingly sad, awful reality of what took place. If not then the degree of bone-headed ignorance involved would be startling even to someone like myself, not exactly optimistic about the capacity of our species for clear and sound reasoning. 

So it's heartening when a link appears up to something of real depth and value. As in the other day when I came across a particularly insightful episode of the Chris Hedges Report dealing with recent events in Gaza. Hedges doesn't exactly hide his political affiliations and I can't say I agree with him on everything, but he clearly knows his stuff and the factual content is convincing even if one may question some of the broader analysis. And the fact that he's interviewing the great Joe Sacco is a guarantee of essential veracity and integrity. 

I can't but notice the deep sobriety of the dialogue. I'm not saying that unhurried seriousness is necessarily a mark of striving for accuracy of reporting, but it helps.

More Sadness

I passed the grave pictured above on the way to Mum & Dad's place of rest last December. I first realised that this is where my Cousin Peter and Auntie Hilda and Uncle Bert were buried at Mum's funeral. We passed it then and Peter's name jumped out at me as we carried her to her resting place.

He was some three years older than me. I didn't know him all that well as a kid, but knew of him - that he was handsome, very assured, an excellent dancer (ballroom style) and doing well at school - enough to get him into quite a prestigious Catholic school in Manchester. I followed in his footsteps to the same school, but not in the looks or dancing, or even assurance, departments. Since he was very much my senior at Xaverian College I rarely saw him there, but he was a friendly enough presence. I suppose I vaguely envied him.

In his early twenties he was blinded in a bad accident. And he died very young, just twenty-seven, a couple of years after I started teaching. I can't remember what his illness was, but it wasn't associated with his blindness. Devastatingly sad. Uncle Bert also had problems with his sight, but looking at the gravestone I realise he lived to a fine old age, almost against the odds. He always seemed less well than Jack & Jim, his younger brothers, who both died in their fifties.

I briefly met Peter's wife back in December, at the gig we attended featuring Clive Gregson. John introduced us. It seems he's known her for some years. Small world, and all that. It was nice to meet her, but tinged with something on the edge of sadness. According to John, she'd been deeply affected by Peter's death, taking years to really get over it.

In many ways we never get over the deaths of loved ones, I suppose; there's something both sad yet strangely happy in that.

On Time

Couldn't get my usual lift to Friday Prayers today since Noi had something on, which means I needed to take to public transport. It's just a single bus journey to the masjid, so not a major problem, but I wasn't too sure of the timing of the particular bus I needed to catch. To be sure of not having to rush around I set off quite early, fortunately not having duties at work, the result being that I arrived a good twenty-five minutes ahead of the azan.

I half-expected a fairly empty mosque, but there was already quite a crowd when I arrived. Must say this was in stark contrast to going to Friday Prayers in the UK. The place I worshipped in, in Hyde, was generally very sparsely attended as prayers began, but then filled up as the khutbah proceeded. Another reminder that whilst the ritual remains essentially the same its 'accidental' features can vary considerably from place to place.

Greatly enjoyed the luxury of having so much time to spare ahead of proceedings today. Not sure how to describe the state this engenders. A sort of relaxed alertness, if that makes sense. A letting go around a firm grasp.

A Road Not Taken

As a little lad I thought I would grow up to be a hatter and work in a factory much like the one pictured above. I know this because I remember writing an essay when I was around seven or eight saying so. The essay was one sentence long and was on the topic What I want to be when I grow up (or words to that effect.) I didn't want to be a hatter; in fact I found the idea of going into a big noisy factory very frightening, but it seemed to me inevitable I would end up in the job because that's what Dad did. Most of the sentence I wrote comprised my explanation of this brute fact.

The factory Dad worked in was not in Stockport (where the Hat Museum is located) but in Denton, where we lived. Wilson's on Wilton Street was a well-known brand until it went out of business in the early 60s, leaving Dad redundant. I'd intended for us to visit the museum in December, but we were too busy and somehow my heart wasn't in it. I took the picture from a distance, the day we went to the panto at the Plaza Theatre. 

So that's a life I never had. Fighting in a war, followed by relentless, poorly-paid factory work, until the work dried up. Lucky me. Unlucky Dad.

Some Comfort

Visiting the grave of Mum and Dad back in December I cried a little. It was a bleak, cold, rainy day, so a few tears seemed appropriate, I suppose, but more than anything else it was the always painful realisation of the relative shortness of Dad's life that somehow hurt. At the time he died I thought of him as an old man; now he seems, paradoxically my junior. And at moments (as the one in December, staring at his age on his gravestone) it seems to me somehow unfair he didn't live to enjoy his 'golden years', to use a clunky cliché. But, of course, given the grim inescapable reality of the deaths of the young, it's foolish to entertain the idea of some kind of unfairness being involved.

But on that bleak day, and today itself, I find considerable comfort in the final line of the inscription: Reunited at Last. On a simple level a genuinely comforting cliché; and. on the deepest level of all, a profound truth. 

No Worries

Stood up a bit abruptly just now after consuming a highly munchable biscuit, following an even more munchable dinner. Felt a bit faint and announced such to the world, manfully adding, Don't worry about me. The Missus just laughed and said she wasn't worried at all.

Sometimes people take me too literally. 

Product Placement

So, what exactly is a lifestyle product and why am I asking such a dumb-sounding question? Well I came across the phrase in a message sent to me by those good people at Starhub (or was it Singtel? - I deleted the message in question without really taking too much in) and was struck by its exclusionary quality. What products would not be lifestyle in nature? It takes quite some figuring out. In fact, I reckon in the final analysis it's stubbornly unfigurable, as it were.

I can't quite remember all the products identified as lifestyle-related in the message, but one was a television. So perhaps such products have an innate sense of prestige and enhance one's life in terms of whatever style it has? But, then, televisions don't seem to me to be particularly prestigious these days when even the grotesquely over-sized are generally affordable. Then I considered the idea that such a product is something one doesn't actually need, so it isn't really necessary for life, just the style of a life. But it seems to me that quite a few people regard a television (or more than one) as somehow necessary. 

Hence I reframed my efforts at coherent thought to consider a product that is more day-to-day than a telly, and more affordable, and settled on a tin of baked beans. Definitely a product, because someone produces it to sell it. And it connects with life, at least my life because I sometimes eat the things. But does possessing a tin of baked beans enhance my life and its sense of style? Not for me, because I don't have a sense of style, being rather pleased about having a life and not a lifestyle (something I've rather complacently posted about, more than a little boastfully I'm afraid, before now). But it's not impossible that someone, somewhere feels that chowing down on baked beans does lend a certain cachet to their otherwise undistinguished existence. And it struck me further that, much as I enjoy a tin of beans said tin is by no means an out and out necessity, so it sort of equals the tv in that respect, assuming the goggle box belongs to someone who doesn't really bother about owning it.

This all means that four paragraphs later I'm just hopelessly confused, but suspect that all products are lifestyle products in some deep (or quite possibly shallow) sense and that my question wasn't worth asking and there's no point in the good people at Starhub/Singtel using the phrase. Must say, I'll bet they're glad they haven't got anyone like me working in their advertising departments.

History Is A Nightmare From Which I Am Trying To Awake - 7

I wouldn't recommend Beevor's account of the battle for Stalingrad to the faint-hearted. The accumulation of horrifying details does little to engender any kind of positive view of humanity. And there are moments when even a hardened sceptic like myself has to reread a sentence to try and assimilate the implications of the plain fact being spelled out.

For some reason this one hit me hard this morning: Sonderkommando 4a, following the Sixth Army's advance, had reached Nizhe-Chirskaya in the wake of XXIV Panza Corps on 25 August, and promptly massacred two truck-loads of children, 'the majority aged between six and twelve.'

I think it's the word promptly that somehow intensifies the horror of the unthinkable. 

Cashing In

We're cashless, said the guy taking my order for a cafe latte at the Tiong Bahru Bakery when I attempted to pass him a ten dollar note. He didn't say this rudely, but there was no note of apology either. It was simply a brute fact. I took out a credit card to pay but couldn't help inquiring as to how I could have paid had I not been carrying a card. He assured me that they would take cash, but only the exact amount. Progress, quoth I, smiling. At which point he sort of half-laughed, recognising my somewhat ironic tone.

I could have gone on to point out that I was sure the shop would claim to be offering their customers excellent service, but, in fact, were focused only on their own convenience in not wanting to have to deal with the complexities of having change available for perfectly legal tender. But I didn't. Because the shop was pleasant enough and he was just doing his job and he already knew the truth of what I was saying and it wouldn't make the slightest difference in our Brave New World.

Cash is no longer king. In this Age of Appearances those really in charge remain happily faceless.

A Sense Of Cheerfulness

We heard the news of Encik Dollah's accident with great concern late yesterday evening and are deeply saddened tonight over his death.

But that sadness is mixed in with the warmth of remembering my time working with him, for more than fifteen years. In all that time I cannot recall ever seeing Dollah upset or annoyed about anything. No matter what he remained cheerful and deeply obliging. If there was any heavy lifting to be done he'd be there to assist despite his short stature. Oddly I assumed he was quite a bit younger than myself, at least eight to ten years I thought. So I was taken aback on reading the reports about his accident to realise I'm his junior by two or three years. I suppose it was his air of carefree enthusiasm as he went about his business that kept him seeming so young. The only guy I've ever heard sing as he emptied bins.

We met quite frequently at Masjid Khadijah for Friday Prayers in my final years at TKGS, and as we worshipped together I caught a rare glimpse of his serious side in his reverence. But even then we'd greet and part with the broadest of smiles. 

Sad tonight, but happy memories. Innalillahi Wainnalillahi rojiuun... Indeed from God we came and to Him we shall return.  

In Focus

It's that time of year (in terms of the Islamic calendar) when I find myself making broad plans for the holy month of Ramadhan, which pretty much coincides with March in 2025 CE. I'd vaguely been thinking about the focus of my reading as the new year came in but it was just yesterday that I realised it was time to reread Ziauddin Sardar's Reading The Qur'an. Apart from a number of fascinating short essays on various aspects of the relevance of the scripture to our contemporary world, Sarder gives a lengthy, close exposition of its longest chapter, Al Baqara, and I need that kind of focus at this point in time. My very keenness to get to grips with his text, manifested in some dipping into its shorter essays today, suggests that paying due attention when I need to won't be too difficult even for an easily distracted reader like myself.

That's a bit of a confession, by the way, the 'distracted' thing. I've been foolishly half-expecting my ability to concentrate to improve simply because I want it to. But if I were commanded to subject myself to a regime of SSR (Sustained Silent Reading), as I've sometimes had occasion to supervise when students have been forced to do it, I don't think I'd do too well. For example, I've read four more of Conan Doyle's tales of the great detective since getting back from the UK and haven't managed to finish one of them in a single sitting. Oh, and I set off on a reading of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad thinking the sheer narrative power of his account of the battle would find me racing through the book at speed only to realise that I'm breaking off after a couple of pages almost every time I pick it up even though it fascinates.

Not sure what happened to the version of me that once felt guilty about reading Stephen King's Tommyknockers over a weekend simply because I couldn't stop myself - and this when I had work I really should have been doing.

Getting The Point

Found myself in a meeting this evening that lasted until 9.30. Weirdly I sort of enjoyed it, I suppose because there was some point to it all. It makes a difference, you know.

Talking Trash

On three occasions this year I've arrived early enough at the basketball courts to do a quick clean-up before my guys arrive for training. Each time the area wasn't exactly a mess - otherwise I'd have got the players to clean-up for me - but there were two or three empty cans up against the perimeter and at least one empty plastic bottle lying around. And each time I've got to wondering how exactly these were left behind. Was it some vague act of pointless malice, from someone who presumably had used the court but thought it best to show they didn't care about the maintenance thereof? Or was it just complete forgetfulness from someone caught up in other more important personal matters when leaving the place who'd neglected to take care of all their 'stuff'? Or was it it somewhere between these extremes?

Whatever it was I can't really wrap my head around the behaviour involved.

And here's the personal conundrum. As far as I can remember I didn't do anything like this as a kid. But I know for certain I was no angel. I can recall in embarrassing detail two anti-social acts I was involved in which were a good deal worse than just leaving a couple of cans around. So there's the possibility I'm ignoring or suppressing what I know to be true of the behaviour of idiotic teenagers (like me) in the interests of building a kind of communitarian mythology.

This is disconcerting. Maybe the sense of guilt lies behind my compulsion to tidy public spaces?

On The Physical

Had an odd experience yesterday. I came back in the evening after a stint at the gym and suffered a severe case of the shivers when I popped into our bedroom to change. The air-conditioning was on and the room was fairly cold, but not enough to provoke my rather extreme reaction. For the next few minutes I felt hyper-sensitive to the fans in the apartment and any feeling of coldness such that I was worried about slipping into a severe fever, but that didn't happen, I'm glad to say. I slept fitfully and sweatily, but I did sleep.

Then today I spent three hours at the National University Hospital undergoing a scan on my liver and blood tests related to that organ. This is part of the follow-up to when I found myself in ICU. My liver wasn't in too good a way at that time but seems to have made something close to a full recovery since and I'm hoping the test results support that observation. The great thing is that at this point in time I am entirely unmedicated, and I'd like to stay that way for as long as possible.

Nodding Off

If I were short of sleep after the first week of work - and I'm not sure I was - I certainly reclaimed the necessary over the weekend. The ease with which I've been toppling over into the Land of Nod is a bit frightening. It's a useful talent to possess, but caution needs to be applied in deploying it too readily. Life does need to be got on with, after all.

In Tune

Prior to a couple of days ago the only version I'd heard of Dylan himself singing Lay Down Your Weary Tune was the one on Biograph. Then I had the good fortune to get to hear the one from Bob Dylan Live at Carnegie Hall 1963 which brought a great, great song alive for me again. The live version seems to me to be more rhythmically alive than the original recording, more unpredictable, such that the listener is forced to engage with the details of the singer's phrasing and the way this intermeshes with the less than fore-square strumming of the guitar. As more than one commentator has noted, the Carnegie Hall version is possibly the perfect riposte to the persistently daft notion that Dylan can't sing. And I'd add to that the absolute proof it offers that, far from being himself rhythmically challenged musically as some misguided souls contend, it's the Bobster who challenges our ears to catch his sense of what is rhythmically possible within seemingly ordinary song structures.

I was further reminded on listening to the live version of the perfection of the lyric. There really isn't a word out of place. Even the repeated poeticism in the chorus, rest yourself neath the strength of strings, works, not sounding at all naively precious (as it invariably does when employed by Dylan-imitators of the period.) You would need to go below the strings in laying down, thus maintaining the integrity of the imagery, but singing 'beneath' would both mess up the rhythm of the line as well as fracturing the aural smoothness with that plosive 'b'. As it is neath nicely echoes the 'th' of strength and its open vowel helps the line sing.

The word is also so entirely appropriate to the world of Scottish ballads that Dylan is conjuring that it would seem odd for the speaker/singer not to employ it. Plus this singer makes it sound like colloquial slang rather than anything to with poetry. It just sounds right, as does the whole song.

Somewhat Soggy

An uncompromisingly wet day here, and it's still pouring down. Wouldn't be surprised if there were floods somewhere on the island.

I was happy to stay indoors, though I did need to brave the rain getting to Friday Prayers. Mind you, with The Missus providing a lift to and from the masjid that isn't quite the challenge it used to be. And praying in congregation in the safe dryness of Masjid Darussalam was probably the highlight of a gently satisfactory day.

A Sense Of Superiority

When we were in the UK in December we managed to catch the excellent tv series, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, made in relation to the Post Office scandal. It made for grimly compulsive viewing. In a very limited sense there was a 'feel good' aspect to the dramatisation in terms of the courage and resilience of Alan Bates and the other falsely accused subpostmasters featured. But it left this viewer facing a genuinely puzzling conundrum: How could those at the highest levels of the organisation have behaved for so long in so thoroughly despicable a manner? What happened to their simple sense of decency?

And then today I stumbled across what I think is the answer, courtesy of a clip from the official inquiry on YouTube featuring the closing remarks of Edward Henry QC. He argues that the board wanted control of their employees and sought this through the Horizon software later shown to be full of glitches. At the point when they could have responded appropriately to the complaints about the failing computer system they did not want to accept the truth about how faulty the software was as this would deny them the control they believed it had afforded them.

This explanation works for me. The great danger for those who are successful is how easy it is to make the terrible assumption that they are genuinely superior to 'ordinary' folk, and fall into the trap of thinking how, somehow, those folk don't matter quite as much as their superiors.

Almost Perfect

In the final chapters of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning Laurie Lee really transcends the personal. The two chapters dealing with his experiences in the little village of Almunecar by the sea afford great insight into just how quickly Spain descended into civil war once the Republic was established and how horribly inevitable that must have felt at the time. Seeing this through the naively innocent eyes of the memoirist adds to the reader's sense of something close to despair as life in the archetypally Spanish village unravels. It's very much a powerfully unnerving contrast to the predominantly celebratory quality of the descriptions of life in the country in the earlier chapters, even when that life is being dealt with at its most poverty-stricken.

And what a wonderfully evocative writer Lee is, whether he's celebrating or casting shadows. There's something to savour in almost every paragraph in terms of striking imagery or fine phrasing, yet it never seems that he's trying too hard. It's clear that this comes naturally to him; it's the way he sees the world.

But I did take slight exception to one usage he employs. In the chapter dealing with the procession of the Virgin in Toro - a typically vivid set-piece - he recounts the townsfolk praising of the Saint thus: so comely, so linda, such an excellent colour... I like comely but since when was linda a word in English? I had to look this one up, and couldn't find it even in the big OED, but fortunately an on-line search pointed to the fact that linda means 'pretty' in Spanish (hence, the English name.) It's a pity he didn't go for pretty, I reckon. A rare misstep. Very rare though in a work that comes close to perfection as far as I'm concerned.

As Usual

I'd had it in mind to write about my stint at the gym this evening before going there. I was intending to write about managing to get back into the swing of things in the week since re-starting regular exercise. The hypothetical post would sound mildly triumphant in a suitably humble and reflective manner.

In the event I struggled more than I did a week ago and was just happy to finish. Which tends to be the way of things these days, now I come to think of it. Reality, as it so often does, bites, and does so deeply.

Casting Off

As I get older (which seems to be taking place all too rapidly these days) I find myself ever more forcefully abhorring the idea of waste and wastefulness - especially my own. So why did it feel so good to throw away so many old, worn-out pairs of sandals, t-shirts and ties yesterday? Not to mention disposing of a fair pile of outdated paperwork.

I suppose it helped me feel lighter, leaner. Just hope the paper gets properly re-cycled and the shirts and ties end up in the possession of some folk who can reasonably make use of them. But the plastic sandals are honestly beyond all redemption.

Sound & Vision

As the new year got underway we were lacking both a television and CD player in our front room. Hakim took back the big tv we'd been keeping for him in order to install it into his newly renovated apartment and we'd previously thrown away the Samsung with the various blotches on the screen. Meanwhile the Bose system for playing CDs had been sturdily refusing to play any for quite some time and we'd taken it for repair before setting off to the UK. We'd thought about buying another player given the high cost of repair but in our Brave New World such players can't be bought in shops any more it seems and I didn't fancy an on-line purchase. We picked up the repaired player again yesterday and bought a new tv, a good deal smaller than Hakim's monster set a day or so earlier. So now we are fully equipped.

We'd not really had time to miss having a telly as we were without for just a couple of days but I was beginning to feel the lack of a CD player. It was easy enough to listen to music from various sources on headphones but I was missing getting up close to what I owned on CD, which weirdly continues to feel more real and there than stuff that's streamed or from YouTube. I'm aware, by the way, that that's a completely irrational notion, but weirdness reigns on that front in my case. 

So it felt like a bit of a relief to hear the sounds from the CDs I'd got hold of in the UK filling the room this morning. All the work of old favourites - the Kid A Mnesia set from Radiohead, and the latest offerings from Peter Gabriel and Richard Thompson - with the older chaps very much sounding like themselves despite the newness of the material. An element of comfort listening here, I suppose.

Which reminds me that in the interests of keeping these old ears suitably keen I need to avoid bunging on music as background and must actively strive to pay full attention, even to what is familiar. Oh, and I must also keep said ears open to new sounds worth listening to wherever I can find them.

Very Much Engaged

Leaving behind what seemed to me the astringent prose of Kawabata's The Sound of the Mountain (I assume it sounds such in the original Japanese) for the lush lyricism of Laurie Lee's As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning was a very good idea for this reader. I'd forgotten just how brilliant Lee is in his memoirs in conjuring place and mood in vivid, convincing detail. The evocation of the relentless Spanish sun and parched landscape surely can never be bettered. He simply takes you there with him as a sort of invisible companion.

But here's a bit of a conundrum. Many years back, after teaching the equally wonderful Cider With Rosie for 'O' level - to English kids - I got hold of Lee's Selected Poems in a Penguin paperback. I thought I was in for riches, but nothing in the slim volume worked for me. And the same is true today. I read a few of the poems on the early pages, composed at the time of the poet's sojourn in Spain, and not a single one matched any of the paragraphs in the memoir. The poem Music in a Spanish Town is about Lee playing his violin on the streets of Cordoba. In As I Walked Out... every description of his playing the violin as a way of earning the pennies he needs to keep going is deeply engaging, yet the poem seemed to me simply okay-ish.

I suspect as I happily read on in the memoir that I'll hardly bother to cross-refer to the Selected in hopes of further moments of reading pleasure. I'm dealing with a surfeit thereof as it is.

Looking Back

Noi mentioned just now that she'd heard something about flooding in Stockport. Since I'd been there in December to watch County in action and we'd enjoyed the Christmas panto at the Stockport Plaza I felt sort of obliged to find out what was going on and came upon this in the on-line version of the Manchester Evening News. Must say, it doesn't sound good for those caught up in the mess created by the overflowing River Tame - which was never much more than a bit of a trickle in the Denton & Haughton Green of my childhood.

In fact, reading about floods in various locations in the land of my birth has become something of a feature of the winters of the last few years. Not sure what climate-change-denialists might make of this innocent but accurate observation. 

When we were in Manchester Noi and I watched a documentary late one night about the floods of 2023 which had wiped away the happy Christmases of quite a number of folks. It felt like uncomfortably voyeuristic viewing, to be honest, reducing the misery of others to a sort of late night entertainment. It's funny to think that as a kid I was rightly reminded of how lucky I was to live in a country that didn't have to deal too often with natural disasters. Innocence lost, eh?

Disengaged

I didn't get all that much reading done in December. I'd intended to read Kawabata's The Sound of the Mountain, which was leant to me by a colleague, but I only finished it yesterday and read the bulk of it on the flight back. I got stuck reading it on the outward journey, bogged down by my inability to sort out the relationships in the family of its protagonist, Shingo Ogata. I suppose I expected something lyrically poetic, in the vein of Snow Country, and felt thwarted initially by the simple ordinariness of the action, or lack of it, in Tokyo. It does have its poetic moments, but these are embedded in what initially seemed to me day-by-day flat dreariness. Later it came to me that that was precisely the point and things picked up in terms of my readiness to apply myself to detail and grasp what was going on. But even then I felt I was missing a lot in the way of nuance. Must say, I'm glad there's no danger of me ever teaching the novel.

A Question Of Balance

My watchwords for 2025: Leaner and Keener.

Leaner, such that the unnecessary is to be discarded; keener, in that the necessary will be paid due attention.

(That sounds more determined than I really feel, but in an Age of Appearances at least I can seek to look the part.)