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.

A Puzzle

Enjoyed an excellent game of rugby in the afternoon at the National Stadium. Also managed to enjoy a coffee & tea as I watched, which is a lot more than I managed to get hold of watching Stockport County back in December in the bracing cold of Manchester.

Meditating on my experiences watching footy & cricket & rugby over the years has brought a perplexing question to my mind. It has occurred to me, rather suddenly today, that Dad never took me to any of United’s games when I was a kid, though he was a big fan. In fact, I can’t remember him going at all to games, though he would have only been in his early forties in the period I’m thinking about. And that's the age when Saturdays are often set aside for the Big Game.

I remember him going to a match (I assume involving Man Utd, though I'm not sure) with a couple of my uncles when we were on holiday in Blackpool once and Mum and various aunties not approving. The men played a bit of prank when they got back, pretending one had incurred a black eye in a fight, and fell about laughing at the ladies when they were being rebuked, suddenly revealing they’d made up the whole thing, and the ‘injury’, which they neatly faked, wasn’t real. But that’s the only time I can recall him actually going to a game.

So what was stopping him?

I sort of took it all for granted back then as just the way things were. But age can do strange things to you, I find. You start questioning the 'obvious' of all those years ago. At least, that's what I'm finding myself increasingly doing.

At A Cost

Reading an excellent piece today on the environmental costs of generative AI on the Channel News Asia website has made me a bit guilty about posting that rather funky, if unflattering, portrait of myself yesterday at this Far Place, since, as you may have guessed, some version of AI played a considerable part in its making. I'm not sure that the fun involved was worth adding to the pace of climate change, even if it only involved the teeny-weenyest bit of speeding up of what now feels an inevitable process. It's the sense of complicity in destroying the planet that's worrying, but, then, that's true of pretty much every aspect of my (and yours) over-privileged existence.

This all put me in mind of a talk I attended last year related to the wonders of AI in general by some professor chappie who knew an awful lot about how AI actually works. Early in the talk he spelled out the environmental costs - not quite as brutally as in the article, but still in a stark manner. This was something I had no inkling of then, and wish I still didn't now. But having referenced the costs his obvious enthusiasm regarding the possibilities of AI took over, and he appeared to overlook the problem. (Sad to say, the talk didn't stand out in terms of joined-together thinking.) And finally things took another turn in the Q & A following his concluding points as he pointed out that the plans for a new data centre in Singapore doing the business related to artificial intelligence will means it functions as part of some kind of virtuous cycle of energy such that nothing really gets lost, somehow or other. The thing is, though, that there wasn't time for him to expand on that since his talk had overrun. And I can't see any real reference to this development in the article. But maybe I misunderstood the prof, or don't really grasp the details in the CNA piece.

To be honest, the prospects for mitigating the ill-effects of the use of generative AI in terms of the environmental costs look pretty bleak, even though folks who know about this stuff appear to be trying to do something. I just can't see that that something will be anything like enough of a something to be meaningful.

A Portrait Of The Teacher As An Old Man

The not terribly flattering representation of my good self above was captured & created by its makers last Wednesday at our Professional Learning Day. Must say, I look to be engaged in a great deal of learning judging by my expression of severely rapt concentration, I'm sure you'll agree.

By the way, the wording represented on my rather spiffy hoodie is entirely incorrect, a sign that at least one of the creators of the image must have been hallucinating. The letters should (obviously) read MUFC. And the 'Old' place is 'Trafford', not some ancient 'university'.

Something Missing

Got a lot done today, including managing to find time for a conversation about Joyce's Ulysses. That alone made it feel like time well spent. But a pity I didn't carve out a space to read a page or three. Still, can't have everything, eh?

Living Dangerously (Sort Of)

I'm in one of those periods when I enact my rather pitiful version of living dangerously. How so? Let me give you two 'real life' illustrations, Gentle Reader.

Number One: At one point today I found myself moving particularly quickly to get to an important 'event' on time. This involved moving down some stairs. Fortunately I had the wherewithal to remind myself that, within recent memory, I've come pretty close to losing my footing doing the same thing and was lucky not to have taken a pretty significant tumble. I happened to chat with a colleague about this a few weeks back who referred to having done something similar and he was telling me that with age we can have problems with what is termed 'depth perception' by those who know these things. His advice to me, and mine to him, was to keep hold of the nearest available handrail when we feel we have no choice but to move at speed. Today I took my own, and my colleague's, advice and all was well.

Number Two: In the early evening I discovered that I'd somehow failed to take note of an important event (not in inverted commas this time as it really is an event in the usual meaning of the term) taking place over the weekend at which my presence is a must. As I get older I'm increasingly forgetful, which can have its advantages in terms of not worrying overmuch over stuff, but has the built-in disadvantage of being professionally a bit risky. Anyway, said event is now noted and I'll be there, God willing.

So there it is, my version of living on the edge. Nothing really happened, but it was exciting in its way, as you may agree. (But do feel free to disagree. I won't take offence.)

Normal Service Resumed

I went back to reading The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes after Ramadhan reached its happy conclusion and now have around fifteen tales left to go before I can say I have completed the canon. Unfortunately there's something of a critical consensus that by the last couple of collections, His Last Bow and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle had run out of steam - and, possibly, real interest in his creations - and was running on empty. I'm five stories into the penultimate collection and I can see what the critics mean.

But having said that I must say that the fourth of the novellas featuring the Great Detective, The Valley of Fear, which I read back in February, struck me as being the best of the bunch. This is despite the fact that like A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four it features the clumsy telling of an extended back-story after Holmes has solved the initial mystery. In this case, though, there's a genuine puzzle as to how exactly the characters in the back-story relate to those in the first half of the murder mystery, and the pay-off of the ending is strong and satisfying. Plus the writer invests his fearful valley in the United States, which features in the second half, with real menace such that the reader doesn't miss Holmes & Watson (who aren't there, of course) at all.

I suspect I won't really miss them either once I get to the end of the clunky, chunky Complete. I seem to have been reading it forever, even though it's been only some seven months (with two month-long breaks, I hasten to add.)

No Fooling

Lots to do, so essentially a serious day. Was witness to the usual kind of folly encountered in my line of work. So managed a smile here & there. But not enough to provoke actual laughter.

Funny how, as a child, one spent a fair amount of time just laughing. Funny that nothing is quite so funny any more.