The Years

In recent times I've tried to make it a habit to read Donne's The Anniversary on this date. I loved it, and everything else by the great Dean, when I first read it aged sixteen. But now it means so much more. In fact, I sometimes wonder if it isn't more real to me than it was to its writer. I can recite most of its lines with utter conviction, especially, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again / Years and years unto years...

Error Alert

I've been marking a variety of scripts from schools all over the world just lately and there've been the usual blunders here and there to provoke the odd chuckle. Coming across a reference to Cherry Orchard a novel written by Tolstoy elicited a wry smile, but the smile sort of faded as I found the error repeated, except crediting the text as a play, and one or two even giving it its full title, which was a bit of relief, in every script I marked that mentioned it from the school involved. Which led me to the inescapable but horrifying conclusion that this was what their teacher had told them. Did no one think to look at the cover?!

Just Waiting

I was waiting for the azan to complete its winding course before the maghrib prayer today and found myself thinking of the suspension of time that is manifested so often in Islam. No muezzin is going to hurry unduly to conclude the call. The spinning out of the familiar formula is part of the deep satisfaction of the procedure - hence the sublime ornamentation within those cunning arabesques.

Then Noi announced that her ustaza told her you didn't have to wait for the azan to finish but could pray right away, as soon as it was time. I felt oddly disappointed to be deprived of my waiting - but we decided we'd better check this one out with Rohana, Noi's partner at her prayer classes, as to whether she misconstrued her teacher. I've never seen actually seen anyone start to do the prayer within the timing of the call to prayer, and neither has the missus, hence our conservatism. But wouldn't it be nice to find out that you can start earlier, but then decide not to, on the grounds that some things simply should not be hurried?

Country Roads

This week's all country - and highly enjoyable - American Idol finale got me thinking about how I broke through into appreciation of the genre. As a youngster I just didn't get it, and never owned a bone fide country album until well beyond university. I suppose singers I really admired who were obviously country influenced took me closer - like bits of Springsteen here and there - and Dylan, of course, and the Stones in mellower moments. And I kept company with a few guys at university who were real fans so I'd come to some understanding of the power of names like Emmylou Harris and James Burton. I remember going along to a Mike Nesmith gig (yes, he of Monkees fame, latterly a fine solo artist with a distinct country bent) at Sheffield University's Student Union with a bunch of rabid fans from Liverpool of all places. Very pleasant, but hardly earth-shaking.

But the killer for me was Elvis Costello's Almost Blue. The penny dropped. Sometimes you don't need to be too clever. Sometimes the feeling's enough. And having a good year for the roses is one of the fundamentals of this life.

Homeward Bound

As a lad of fourteen or fifteen I couldn't wait to get out of the house. I know that because I spent long stretches sleeping at Auntie Norah's simply because it wasn't our house. And by seventeen I was managing to disappear for weeks at a time. It wasn't that I was unhappy at home, far from it. But bored, certainly. In need of experiencing the big world out there.

Now I've experienced the big world I reckon it's okay, in its way, but not always up to all that much. And a heart needs a home, as Richard Thompson so shrewdly pointed out. And since mine has got the missus in it, and enough books and music to last me pretty much the rest of my days, I'm more than happy to take refuge in it.

The Hard Stuff

There's a particularly idiotic bit of reasoning by analogy which irritates me to the point of subdued fury whenever I hear it. It goes something like this: put people under pressure and they turn out refined like diamonds.

I think I'm reasonably, though not wonderfully, good at dealing with pressure and I can tell you I don't feel remotely diamond-hard when I survive the stuff. I just feel vaguely stupid for having carved out a life that sometimes subjects me to it. And when I see its ill-effects on others, something I've been horribly aware of just recently in quite a few cases, I feel a kind of quiet despair that we've managed to constuct a world in which we routinely arrange for people to be miserable and then blame it on some supposed defect of their characters.

We're not a hard species. We're soft and squishy and easily bruised, even if we pretend not to be. And that's good.

Forever Young

Realised the other day that it's the greatest living American's seventieth birthday round about now. It seems to me extraordinarily difficult to believe that Dylan is now officially well past it. Because he isn't. His work of the last decade has been that of a man in his creative prime, except it's better than that, because it speaks with the voice of hard won maturity (and a million or so cigarettes, plus quite a few less legal substances.)

This all bears out a point made by a singer from another age, that if you're not busy being born you're busy dying. Now I wonder who that might have been.

Stirring

The Toad work being monstrously bloated at the moment, it has not all been beer and skittles. Indeed, such pleasures have been unceremoniously locked away in the interest of simply coping.

But there have been odd flashes of light in the gloom. One yesterday in the midst of a particularly vapid letter read out to inpire myself and my colleagues. It didn't exactly have the desired effect, though working well as a soporific, but I stirred from my less than dogmatic slumbers to register the word functioncentric - if word is what this wee beastie is.

Small pleasures indeed.

Perched

I've tried to avoid crowing about the sealing of yet another Premiership title by the most under-rated version of the Mighty Reds seen in recent years. But I can't resist anymore. So:

CHAMPIONS!!!!

But having said, or rather shouted, that, I can't help but feel depressed at the idea that a fine manager like Ancelotti will be shown the (rotating) door. The logic of this escapes me The supreme lesson in continuity, Sir Alex's years of dearth at Old Trafford seems to have been forgotten or ignored by all. Except maybe Arsenal, and I suspect they may well benefit from their patience next year.

Idol Thoughts

We've enjoyed this season of American Idol despite missing a few of the early programmes at the time we were leaving the Mansion for the Hall. It's been a relief to have had a few contestants who have genuinely warm voices and sound comfortable in their mid to lower range. And this is why Scottie should win - because he actually sings melodies, sounds relaxed and has real warmth in his voice.

Isn't it odd how little charm there is in modern popular music? - despite its many other good qualities. I like a sense of intensity - Springsteen-style - but there's such a thing as trying too hard.