As If It Really Matters

Coming Unwrapped

2010-12-22T16:21:00.003Z

There are many aspects to Christmas in films and adverts which annoy me. It's always snowing; everyone can sing carols perfectly; nobody wears the stupefied, semi-drunk expression so characteristic of Christmas Day; there's never a vegetarian alternative to a roasted turkey with stuffing up its arse. But one image in particular has an insurmountable gap from reality. The wrapping of the presents.

Picture the scene. There's generally a Caucasian mother and her two Caucasian children. Everyone is smiling. Oftentimes, everyone is laughing. They wrap their presents perfectly and with little effort. The paper is shiny. The bows are immaculate. It looks like fun.

Here's what is always missing from the scene:

a) the initial seventeen hour search for the end of the sellotape

b) the five hour searches for the new end of the sellotape after each strip is cut off

c) the moment when you fail to get the sellotape exactly parallel with the end of the paper, meaning half of it is wasted

d) the realisation that the section of paper you've cut off is just too small to cut the present properly

e) the times when the sellotape takes on a life of its own, whizzes through the air and sticks to your coffee table

f) the Dilemma of the Ends: do you stick them up as well (meaning the present is impossible to unwrap) or leave them flapping loose (meaning the present looks crap)

g) the cussing

Wrapping presents is never fun. Wrapping presents is grim work. It involves a medium designed to be written on and nothing else; and another which most of us have otherwise abandoned, for good reason, once we stopped trying to build Blue Peter models. It also requires the human race to evolve about five more hands apiece. I don't know who first devised this grisly concept. But I suspect it was somebody with the secret agenda of making us hate Christmas. (See also: late night shopping; jokes in crackers; Cliff Richard). In fact, I bet all Bah Humbugs, from Scrooge to the Grinch, were committed Yuletide-philes until they started to wrap their presents. I will develop this theory further in an essay entitled 'Twas The Night Before Christmas And All Through The House Not A Sound Could Be Heard Except The Tearing Of Paper And A Loud Swearword.'

The ASBO Chorus

2010-03-18T16:27:00.000Z

Lying awake at 6am, having been wrenched from happy dreams by the dawn chorus, I decided – No, I'll be precise here. Staggering around in a sleep-deprived daze the next day, mind wandering at random, I decided the following. The dawn chorus is the equivalent of a night club. The attendees kick up a hell of a racket at anti-social hours in the hope of copulating.

I know what people say about bird song. I agree with them too. Bird song can be sublime, heavenly, enchanting. Nonetheless, it is all about bonking. Human tunes can be sublime, heavenly and enchanting too, and most of them are also to do with bonking. I've often wondered why a great majority of our songs are obsessed with love and the attending actions. Perhaps we are unconsciously just mimicking the birds.

We do so in very few other fields. It is frequently said that today's society is highly sexualised. Perhaps compared to the Victorian era; but next to the animal kingdom it is a wet Sunday in Grimsby. And the most debauched, libidinous societies in history cannot match up to, say, the average duck pond. Animals are motivated by two things only: food and sex. That's pretty much it. When they have eaten they want to breed. When they're not eating or breeding they're stopping others humping 'their' partners. They devise elaborate territorial patterns, intricate feathers or furs and, of course, beautiful songs – and it's all about sex. Whereas we have denigrated and marginalised it. A raft of new desires have been created. Sex is either shut into private compartments or defined as perverse.

I quite like the dawn chorus, when the damn thing isn't waking me at some ungodly time. (Dawn, I suppose). But it's amusing how a breed so prudish about sex has treated this shameless display of libido. It's seen as heavenly and put in the same twee category as a sunset or a teardrop. In fact it's a bunch of blokes sat in a hedge bellowing “Shag me! I'm great!” If humans tried it, the police would scoop them up quicker than you can say “Anti-social behaviour order.”

Name, Rank and Serial Number

2010-03-13T13:59:00.001Z

I learned one interesting thing from the trial of Keith Owen, phoney egg retailer. Owen has just been convicted for what must be a very tempting crime. He sold eggs to supermarkets claiming they came from free range hens eating proper grain. In fact, of course, they were from battery creatures gorging chemicals. Owen was given three years in prison and forced to return his £3m profits. What I didn't learn, incidentally, was to whom he gave the money. The government, most likely. the supermarkets possibly. Almost certainly not the customers who paid mark-up prices for his eggs believing the originators bore the fripperies, like feathers and beaks, denied to caged hens.

But what I did learn was how the authorities try to prevent scams like Owen's. Every single egg in Britain is apparently stamped with a unique serial number. Every single egg. And if you have the right databases you can track down the farm where each was laid, the conditions, possibly even the actual mother. Looking at the three eggs left in my fridge, the numbers on two are too smudged to be legible. But here we are on the third: 1UK13714-B/B 18Mar. So with a few phone calls I might be able to find out which chicken squeezed this out of her nether regions.

I'm almost tempted to try. To write a letter of thanks, perhaps, if the egg is particularly good. Or one of complaint if it has annoying features like a thick inner skin, pointing out that the art of cooking eggs is a precise one and the slightest deviation can be disastrous. Maybe, though, I should be apologising to the poor hen, free range though she is. After all, when she laid this egg she must have thought she was giving birth to a son or daughter, the next in the new generation of her proud family. When in fact she was just supplying me with lunch. Not even that: part of a lunch. Together with another thwarted attempt at chicken procreation and some noodles, whose own hopes and dreams are unknown.

To London To See The Queen

2010-02-28T17:01:00.007Z

Well, not exactly. To see my friend Cara actually, who may or may not enjoy being called a queen. And certainly not to see Queen: The Musical, though I enjoyed the bombastic Freddie Mercury statue which some lunatic has erected over the theatre doors. I had a very good day out, appreciating as ever London's beauties and architectural vainglory. A few points stuck out:

Our first stop was the British Museum; Cara's first visit, approximately my fifty first. We agreed it was a little like visiting a zoo. It's fantastic seeing the things inside; but the issue of whether they should be there, rather than their homelands, is troubling. The Egyptian rooms, with their monumental statues and columns, reveals looting on a colossal scale. But the heart of the debate is of course the Parthenon a.k.a the Elgin Marbles. The British Museum was considerate enough to give a short explanation of why Greece wants the exhibits back, and why the Museum is sticking onto them. For the first time, though, I noticed that the cards next to many of the headless statues declared “Head in Athens.” Is this part of a slow compromise? One decade all the heads are returned, the next all the left feet, and so on? Or did Lord Elgin do a hasty raid, unpack the bullion at home and realise he'd forgotten some small but important details?

Equally inevitable was our visit to the Tate Modern. Star exhibit is currently Miroslaw Balka's How It Is in the Turbine Hall. It is basically a vast crate, open at one end. You can go inside; but there are no windows and no lights. It gets darker and darker as you progress until all you can see are the pale faces of fellow explorers. Still you blunder on, expecting something to happen. So it does, when you collide into the far wall. The bunf says How It Is is an exploration of knowledge and uncertainty: do you walk into the unknown or retreat towards the familiar? Cara remarked that is shows modern art's immense capacity for suckering people into doing anything. Even walking through an unlit crate until you hit a wall. Other exhibits included a colossal dining table and chairs, and a film of a masked boxer hitting himself in the face then rubbing his genitals. For sheer entertainment, the Tate Modern is better than a day at the circus.

Less uplifting was the walk there. I generally savour the walk along the South Bank from Westminster Bridge to the Tate. There's a fine panorama of buildings across the Thames, some sublime (St Paul's, Somerset House), some grotesque (Portcullis House). The vessels on the river are nicely varied too, with restored navy ships like the HQS Wellington mixing with rusting dredgers and tugs. On the South Bank itself there are treats like Da Kidz Zone under the National Theatre, the graffiti-bedecked ghetto where hoodies try to do flips on their skateboards and fall over, a lot. But the number of Living Statues on the walk has got out of hand. There ought to be a law: only one pink-painted man per five hundred yards. And another: if you're a Living Statue then you're supposed to stand still. Instead, desperate as competition grows, they've started bouncing around and waving at passers-by; and what's the point in spray-painting yourself gold if you're going to do that? Still, I enjoyed the sand sculptures built on one of the Thames' tiny and filthy beaches. A monument to London's artists grabbing the ephemeral and totally bleeding pointless.

On the subject of Living Statues: walking part the Horse Guards Parade, we agreed that these guards had amongst the worst jobs in the world. Imagine having to spend all day totally motionless, not an expression your face, while all around you gurning yahoos prance about photographing themselves next to you. Though The Horse Guards, I thought, have it better than the Beefeaters. At least they can dream of the day when their horse gets restive and kicks some tourist in the knackers. Cara said she couldn't do the job without music, and we decided that their helmets should be redesigned with ear flaps, to conceal the headphones. Still, we conceded, they don't have to actually do anything. They aren't even guarding the buildings any more. Anywhere these toy soldiers are standing to attention with their pikes and sabres, the actual security men will be lurking nearby, submachine guns at the ready. That's the charm of London.

Venus & Olympia

2010-02-21T13:35:00.009Z

The nude has a long history in Western art. Rampant in ancient Greek and Roman times, it resurfaced in the late fifteenth century. This is fairly surprising considering the restrictions of society at the time. Women's bodies especially were rigidly controlled by religious doctrine. Displaying an ounce more of flesh than was permitted could bring severe punishment. Sex and nudity might have flourished in the unregulated morass of folk tales and ballads. Paintings, though, were censored and often directly commissioned by the church. Priests could condemn a painting for the crime of depicting Biblical characters as real people. (As if believing that anyone in the Bible could actually exist). Yet look what they permitted. The bush, the willy, the whole full-frontal panorama which today would bring immediate banishment to the late-night schedules. There were rules, of course. The nude had to be young, pleasing to the eye. Most of all, she (and it was usually a she) had to be distant. Not contemporary, certainly not Biblical. The reappearance of the nude was part of the Renaissance and she was supposed to remain in the fantasy world of Greek and Roman legends.

The history of the nude is not entirely honerable. The best painters could make her an immediate and plausible figures, allowing the mythical settings to fade into irrelevance. The increasing perfection of the portraits and the meticulous attention to detail was linked to the Renaissance interest in biology. And there is a sensuousness in some works which empowers rather than degrades the subjects. Yet the nude is still invariably part of the old male creator-female formula, with all the corresponding power relations. Rather a lot of artists have taken advantage. A great many nude paintings – and the oeuvre of William Etty springs to mind here – are basically porn. Not always soft porn either. The arch façade of the nude has been used to excuse rape (those unfortunate Sabine women in many works), paedophilia (some of Balthus' dodgier moments) mutilation and snuff. At its crudest, the genre was a painter hiring a local prostitute to pose as Diana and boinking her in the studio afterwards.

Titian may have hired a prostitute too and may even have boinked her. Otherwise, though, his Venus of Urbino is unimpeachable. The mythological title is an irrelevance given to please the censors. This is simply a vivid study of a beautiful young woman. His Venus reclines on a couch, every part of her body a brilliant portrayal of comfort. Her legs cross easily, her heads leans back towards the pillow and her golden hair splays across her shoulders, offsetting her soft pink skin. In the background an older woman is watching a girl rummaging in a chest. An ordinary domestic scene, and its mundaneness emphasises the natural sense of Venus' pose. She has simply dressed as she chose and sees no reason to be embarrassed when we stare in.

Yet the eroticism of the painting can't be denied either. Make what you will of the expression on her placid face – the faintest of smiles, possibly a hint of an invitation? Regardless, our gaze is drawn towards her left hand. On the surface she is just discreetly covering up her private parts. Her fingers are curling inwards, however. Maybe, just maybe, the Venus is starting to masturbate herself. This hint, lying in almost the very centre of the painting, epitomises the whole feel of the work. It is a masterpiece of subtle sensuality; a celebration of a woman perfectly in control of her body, able to present it without humiliating either herself or the viewer. The next two nudes I came across as I flicked through my art books – Francois Boucher's Miss Louise O'Murphy, a courtesan presenting her fat arse for the taking, and Corregio's Jupiter and Io, a woman being raped by a cloud, for God's sake – confirmed how rare a truly erotic nude is.

Three centuries after Titian, the conventions for the nude were still intact. They were especially important to the conservative Royal Salon in France, to whom Manet submitted his Olympia. Olympia was, superficially at least, a deliberate copy of Venus of Urbino – a naked young woman reclining on a couch. But the details which Manet changed and his treatment of the subject make this a very different painting.

Olympia lies as stiffly as Titian's Venus is graceful. One hand clutches a dead bouquet of flowers. A black servant woman is presenting her with a fresh bunch. They give colour to what is almost a monochrome image but they are garish and rather unappealing. An unfriendly black cat arches its back at us; a perennial image of evil. The servant's race is also significant. In the nineteenth century black women were a symbol of, amongst other things, unchecked sexuality; witness the exaggerated buttocks of the Hottentot Venus. And no 'proper' lady at the time would have had a black woman as a personal servant. All the details build a horrible suspicion. This Olympia is not a goddess, she is not even a courtesan. Manet has not just used a prostitute as his model, he has made her his subject. She is a common hooker and the flowers are from her latest john.

And look how she has been painted. Her body is rather scrawny, her pose awkward, her skin pallid and unhealthy. Her eyes are empty and dead. None of the tricks used to portray the third dimension are employed here. She is flat and unnatural, barely more than a blob of paint. In fact, nothing at all has been done to give Olympia beauty, none of the schemes which normally wrap the nude with a spurious respectability. If her vacant expression says anything at all it is: “Tits! That's what you came for, isn't it? Well, here they are. Tits!” There they are, as erotic as a torn-out page of 'Jugs' magazine stuck to a wet pavement in January.

We find it hard now to understand the controversy which Olympia evoked, all the caricatures and criticisms and pure hatred. It wasn't because Olympia was a bare body. It was because she was nothing else. As Gilles Neret said in his excellent book, “Olympia was not a nude; she was naked.” Manet blatantly broke the rules for the nude. Worst than that, he was mocking them. In giving his prostitute the name of a goddess and the pose of a Old Master's beauty, he was implying that all nudes were nothing better than his. Simple porn, the product and satisfaction of male lust. If I was a member of the Royal Salon I would have been outraged too.

Nudes still exist in art today. Thankfully, they very rarely pose as nymphs or goddesses; and they don't have to be Beauty personified. Their bodies have been stretched, distorted, made almost demonic (most memorably in Picasso's Three Dancers). And other women other than the young and perfect are depicted. The most famous in recent years is Lucien Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, an overweight middle-aged woman presenting herself. The Impressionists dramatically widened the possibilities of art. Manet was their leader; and though Olympia is hardly an Impressionist painting, it has all the movement's daring and invention. With a single painting Manet overturned a centuries-old tradition. Flat, awkward Olympia became the future. For all her beauty, the Venus of Urbino belongs to a remote past.

What Nick Thinks

2009-12-02T10:18:00.000Z

Nice to see that our mutual friend, Nick Griffin, will be attending the Copenhagen conference. Not to help save the world, of course. The BNP leader denies that it needs saving. The evidence for climate change, he states, “is somewhat dodgy.” It is an argument also taken by another noted humanitarian, George W Bush. Never mind that by now the scientific evidence for the devastating impact of carbon burning, deforestation, water, ground and air pollution and the rest of the gang is pretty incontrovertible. If a single report asserts otherwise then certain people can challenge the science. As if any yahoo cannot do a dubious study, pull out some random numbers and conclude anything in a report. Griffin's party claims that his presence at Copenhagen will show the BNP “is not only interested in race and immigration.” Well, it will certainly do that. Griffin is apparently not only wrong about race and immigration. He is wrong about the environment too.

In fact, I'd like to know what he believes about everything. The BNP should publish a vast database of his views on their ever-entertaining website. What Nick Thinks. After all, in this world of complex moral issues and contrasting beliefs it is often hard to make up one's mind about issues. This could help. See What Nick Thinks – be it about the Iranian nuclear program, the Schleswig-Holstein dispute or the eternal black socks v. white socks debate. Then take the diametrically opposing stance and there's a very good chance you will be right.

Enough To Make A Lionheart Laugh

2009-11-28T16:32:00.001Z

Also on the subject of ancient kings of England (and yes, I have been reading those Guardian supplements which were probably aimed at children). Richard I died in the siege of Chalus-Chabrol, owned by a rebellious subject, when shot through the shoulder bow a crossbow bolt. The wound didn't kill him instantly, but later became gangrenous and finished the job. Apparently the Lionheart had dropped his guard to break out laughing at the sight of an enemy crossbowman using a frying pan as a makeshift shield. Said archer then promptly shot him.

It makes me wonder how often humour was used as a weapon in warfare. Especially medieval warfare, which was somewhat less disciplined. When we laugh, after all, we are not entirely in command of our bodies. Sometimes we are brought giggling to a virtual collapse. And soldiers often have a fairly basic sense of humour. Were there cases of red noses being worn, fake breasts or (aptly for the times) foam arrows through the head? Did regiments march into battle chanting “The boy stood on the burning deck, His pockets full of crackers...”? Perhaps Richard's slayer intended using his utensil as weapon as well as shield in a full comic routine. There is surely nothing more hysterical than the sight of a soldier scaling a castle wall and being whopped over the head by a frying pan. It could have brought the whole army to its knees.

After the siege succeeded, the crossbowman was executed. I don't know if it happened in suitably ironic manner; egg whisks and wooden spoons being inserted in various orifices, that sort of thing. Probably better that we don't know.

The Tide Of History

2009-11-26T17:39:00.000Z

In the early eleventh century Canute, king of England, took his throne to the beach at Bosham, West Sussex. The tide was coming in. Canute ordered it to stop. The tide appeared not to hear. Canute repeated his command many times but eventually had to retreat because his feet were getting wet.

Canute's intention was supposedly to prove a point to his overly sycophantic courtiers. He was then one of the most powerful men in the world. Not only had he united England, not an easy task in the eleventh century, he had welded it to Norway, Denmark and part of Sweden to build an impressive northern empire. His courtiers were very aware of this and their flattery was grating on Canute's nerves. After all, even he was still controlled by higher powers. God was God and he, Canute, was still just a man. So stop mixing us up, Aelthwan of Glostobchick and the rest of you.

What Canute inadvertently demonstrated was that he was also subject to another force. This is the capricious beast of popular history. Because while we have all heard the story of Canute and the waves, we don't always remember that he knew what he was doing. The version that springs first into the mind is that Canute the Great really did believe he controlled the sea. He got an unpleasant shock when the tide disobeyed him. And so he is relegated into the same zany category as the Roman Emperor Caligula, who took an army to the English Channel, ordered them to what the water with their swords for a while and declared himself Conqueror of Neptune.

We like to cut them down to size, these great figures of the past. Very often the most effective way is to take a single damning fact and wrap it around them like a shroud. Alfred burnt the cakes; Catherine the Great shagged a horse; George III was off his head; Victoria had a face like a slapped arse; and so on. Sometimes it can be a simple as a name. Alfonso the Slobberer could have united or conquered as much as he wanted but that isn't going to be the vision conjured up. Said 'facts' might be exaggerated, distorted or simply invented but that doesn't matter. Proper historians can disprove them over and over again but the stories remain with us. The process might be illogical but it is probably healthy. Disrespect or past rulers encourages irreverence towards current ones; something which cannot happen enough. And we see how they are already being distorted and reduced. John Major stood on a soap box and nobbed Edwina Curry (though not simultaneously); Bill Clinton let That Woman do Those Things to him; George W Bush talked like an intoxicated monkey; Tony Blair just grinned and grinned and grinned. These are the images which our children will learn, unless something more lurid is found. Blair fretted over his legacy in the last years of his rule. Someone should have told him: it's out of your control, Tone.

Canute may not have gone to Bosham at all. It could have happened at Southampton. Or, most likely, not at all. Perhaps he got to the beach, found it was already high tide and just said what would have happened if he tried bossing it around. Or the whole thing could have been fabricated. Possibly by a courtier asserting his king's wisdom; thus continuing the flattery which the parable was intended to banish. It really doesn't matter. Nor, in the end, does the fact that we remember it backwards. Because it just makes a better story, a mad king getting his come-comeuppance; rather than a smart-arse king doing the not-exactly-difficult trick of outwitting his courtiers.

Coniston - 31/7/09

2009-08-09T13:48:00.003Z

Well, the day which seemed unlikely earlier in the week, when it was bucketing it down and I was coming down with cold: Scafell Pike with Christine and Gav. The morning was bright and even Christine remained resolute, despite this being her first mountain for about seven years. There was a horrendously long drive and Gav's style betrays a man who watches too many episodes of Top Gear. But it was worth it when Wasdale came into view. I'd forgotten how forlorn and beautiful the valley is. It's dominated by huge mountains, the most ostentatious being the rocky faces of Great Gable. Half the valley floor is swallowed by the bleak Wast Water; the other section is a labyrinthine of dry stone walls. (Surely the product of a benign but naïve EU grant.) And acting like a lighthouse is the white walls of the Wasdale Arms. (“Home of the world's biggest liar” though they didn't say who.) We parked near the pub and began on a path snaking up the flank of Great Gable. Across the valley, Scafell Pike was looking increasingly impressive; great buttresses of crags with the peak, well, peeking up behind, two gulleys scouring deep wounds into the hillside. Wast Water soon opened up behind us and, finally, the distant gleam of the sea. The path was nicely varied too. A gently rising track; a rather nasty slog across shale; and a good semi-scramble up to the pass of Sty Head. This gave us our first great view of overlapping fuck-off mountains; and if a man is tired of views of overlapping fuck-off mountains, he is tired of life. The route also became unclear here, partly because we had three generations of wayfinders. There was Gav's chilling GPS system. There was Christine's slightly more subjective reading of the OS map. And there was Wainwright offering highly useful advice like “Many good men get lost here.” Eventually we located our path, the Corridor Route which traversed under the cliffs of Great End back along Wasdale. It gave us some good views of Great Gable, which has weird patches of red rock near the top mitigating its grey flanks. Crossed those gulleys, which seemed as impressive at close hand, eating our lunch in one. Hit another pass and, for the first time, the wind. Not the truly malicious wind which tried blowing me off Coniston Old Man but definitely a breeze nonetheless. The way was becoming increasingly crowded, with all routes converging into one. There were a few drop-outs though, and I can't really blame them. The final summit ascent was a bit grim. In fact it was a dreary five hundred foot slog over broken rock, a 'Frodo's trek through Mordor' with additional wind. At least, to my amazement, there was no cloud. We saw Scotland and the Solway Firth, we saw the sea and Sellafield. And finally we reached the summit and saw the world. Well, not really – the light was too bad even for the Isle of Man – but there were some outstanding panoramas of the Lakes at its best. Enjoyed the sights for as long as the gale would permit, then dropped down into the pass of Mickledore. We gaped at a man climbing Scafell by Lord's Rake, an apparently vertical scar of shale. Then we found our way down was almost as bad. It began as an apparent dried stream bed, then widened into a sort of unofficial scree run. The descent finally became gentler but was on one of those god-awful constructed paths, made of stone slabs which are really slippery in the wet. And so, before you could say “This was almost my favourite walk ever”, it started to rain. A lot, for quite a long time. We slogged on for a time, crossing a rushing stream with some difficulty. (All those rocks, bags of extra rocks by the wayside, and they didn't even make any steppy-stones.) Weather and ground seemed to work in tandem on this walk, however. As soon as the track became a proper path again, curling around a hillside back towards the car park, the rain stopped. So we got back to the car feeling knackered but happy. And I achieved my two objectives for the holiday: one day climbing Scafell Pike, one day tramping the hills alone like a miserable old get. And if there's been a large 'pretty good, considering...' factor to this holiday, it was nonetheless still pretty good. The house wasn't perfect – dad was on the phone to the unfortunate landlord this evening pointing out its many imperfections – but it was good enough. Still, I note our plan for future holidays is to get back to Patterdale and Broad How as quickly as possible.

Coniston - 30/7/09

2009-08-09T13:41:00.003Z

OK weather for once so we had a kind of Super Strolls Thursday. First drove up to Tarn Hows, at the top of the Coniston valley. As mum said, it's a kind of mini-Lake District, a little wooded valley with an artificial lake. The best feature are the looming mountains of the actual Lake District all around. We took the inevitable walk around the lake, about two miles all told, with Christine setting Lorna a nature spotting test to distract her from her many – possible apocryphal – stitches. Sadly there wasn't all that much nature to see, with even ducks shunning the lake like it was poison. It started to rain as lunchtime approached, in a rather predictable way. But then it stopped and we got to have a picnic outside the car for once, in a spot with a very good view of Cumbria's Dead Sea. By now the girls were set on the Beatrix Potter Experience. Me, Bill, mum and dad, not wanting to experience that in any circumstances, split off from them. We weren't sure what we did want to do, but after lengthy discussion stayed at Tarn Hows for another stroll. This one was downhill through the woods, alongside another noisy and tempestuous beck. Unfortunately the path was a bit too Alpine for Bill so we soon had to turn back. I darted along a bit further until I got in sight of a road, seeing en route another decent little waterfall. Next we drove over the top into Langdale. This looked more like a proper Lakes valley to my eyes; Coniston is OK but it's a bit too borderland and civilised. Langdale has tiny slate villages, high hills on both sides and, at the head, the rocky and towering Langdale Peaks. We stopped about halfway down and strolled down a path supposedly leading alongside Eltenwater. It actually did everything it could to avoid the lake, though capitulated about three quarters of the way along to give us a trademark water-and-mountains view to photograph. Had tea at a weird café-cum-grocery-cum-outdoors centre, and got home just in time for our usual meal out. This was at the Red Lion, a small and lively pub just down the lane. Pub food too, which meant it was decently priced and concentrated on actually tasting nice, and a “folks from round here” landlord straight from Central Casting. He even had a West Country accent, which was a bit odd. Mum and dad insisted on breaking into a churchyard on the way back, but otherwise a good evening.

Coniston - 29/7/09

2009-08-09T13:27:00.004Z

Mum and dad went off to Walney Island today to get attacked by gulls, which is apparently something they enjoy. The rest of us, noting it was bloody raining again, headed to Barrow for the Docks Museum. Originally one of those “ho ho, let's go to the Docks Museum, that must be almost as interesting as the Pencil Museum” deals, it was now our only feasible wet-weather option left. And it turned out to be pretty good. Though small – it was free – it was lively and informative, and fortunately about Barrow itself rather than just docks. The town flew up out of nothing in the nineteenth century when mineral mining in the Lakes took off and the railways opened up the Cumbrian coast. It also turned its hand to building ships and, more recently, nuclear submarines. But it's been in hard times for a long while, getting bombed to shit in WWII and contracting dramatically due to economics. The museum was also quite defensive about Barrow being a bit of a dump. Certainly, from the bits we saw, it seems largely composed of bleak industrial estates. The weather had cleared up by the time we left, so we decided to head for the nearby zoo. Now, I'm never entirely sure about zoos. The best ones, I think, are like Barrow Zoo, which lets some animals wander all over the place as if they own it. We mocked the signs at the entrance warning us of the wild lemurs. But there the buggers were, scampering all over the playground. In another area emus were wandering leisurely across the path. Otherwise the primates were the star attraction: the spider monkeys scampering over the raised walkway, the gibbon casually making a heart-stopping drop to a branch twenty feet below. Best of all, a monkey lying on a giant tortoise; and giving us a glare which clearly said “Well? Why shouldn't I lie on giant tortoises?” Less impressive were the lions (asleep, as always) and the tiger feeding session, which was a twenty minute lecture followed by a five second glimpse of a tiger eating a chicken. Anyway, the girls enjoyed themselves, and Gemma got a cuddly lemur to compliment Emily's gibbon which she wears everywhere as a sort of rucksack. Lorna has a dinosaur egg but it's not hatched yet, and I'm a bit worried what will happen when it does.

Coniston - 28/7/09

2009-08-09T13:21:00.002Z

Well, the cold has arrived at least. And the rain's back, varying from drizzle to torrent all day. Throw in a tendency of everyone to lose everything and you've got something called 'not exactly a perfect day.' Started with yet another trip to Coniston, this time with some plan to go on the steam launch. But a storm was a-brewing, allegedly, so we had to settle on yet another walk around the village. Said storm never arrived but a lot more downpours did, so it was basically a morning of diving into shops to keep dry. Had packups in the cars, then drove around Coniston Water to the home of the man who looms over the parts almost as tall as Beatrix Potter: John Ruskin. He was buried in Coniston itself, and intended his house on the lake to be one of those Arcadias for thought and enquiry. Apparently it worked so well that late in his life he had to move out of his main bedroom because it kept giving him too many inspirations and doing his head in. I don't know much about Ruskin but apparently he was one of those Renaissance men who dabbled in everything. This included designing some wallpaper and a zither for his house. And very nice they were too. It was an interesting house, the design done more for originality than showing off piles of riches. But it did have an over-reliance on thumping great views of Coniston Water; good in the first room, less so by the seventh or eighth. We went around the grounds afterwards, which proved to be a great maze of zig-zagging paths up and down the hillside. The kids had fun scooting along them doing some nature quiz, the rest of us enjoyed some very weird plants and the rare phenomenon of not getting rained on. Had tea at a converted stable after a 14 hour wait, drove part of the way home, drove back again when dad thought he'd left his Visa card behind (it later turned up in an unexplored part of his wallet), finally managed to drive home. Not a bad day but, as I said, not exactly perfect; and at dinner we indulged in a spot of “At Broad Howe” (the perfect house in Patterdale we'd been for the last three years) “things are better.”

Coniston - 27/7/09

2009-08-09T13:15:00.003Z

Rapid change of plans today. The forecast said the rest of the week will be monsoons, basically. So I decided to get a day's walking done while it was only raining occasionally. Scrounged a lift off Gav to Coniston and set off on the same lane as yesterday. Well, actually I set off on a different lane initially, but all my walks begin in confusion. Crossed the stream on an extremely old and quaint miner's bridge and took a path climbing up the hillside out of Coppermines Valley. Got wet on the lane with the shelter of the trees; got absolutely drenched in another shower on the exposed hillside. The top of my target, Coniston Old Man, was resolutely covered in clouds and I did start doubting my decision. Soon reached the remnants of the old mines, a few interesting derelict buildings but a hell of a lot of spoil heaps too. And what with the parties shrieking up and down the mountain, I was soon agreeing with Wainwright on all points. A reliable sign of old age, I'm told. There were some views as I got higher, allowing me to witness every other part of the country save mine bathed in sunshine. And they vanished as I broke the cloud barrier. Slogged through increasingly grim country; got lost, thankfully surrounded by people getting equally lost so I felt less silly; passed some spots which I'm sure would have yielded spectacular views if, you know. The summit offered uplifting sights of a party of gets taking the only shelter from the phenomenal wind which appeared from nowhere. It now has my fags and lighter, which I dropped in a protracted moment of confusion. The sensible thing would have been to just go back. So I set off on the ridge path, thankfully well marked by cairns, towards Swirl How. And it was odd – the wind, the isolation and the total lack of visibility, or indeed point, somehow made it enjoyable. This feeling rather vanished when I was hit by a shower with drops the strength of a hailstorm. But gradually, grudgingly, the cloud started to lift. Eventually I was getting more views of Coniston; still in sunshine, the bastard. Even better was the sight of the Real Lake District on the other side, a mass of looming peaks. Swirl How was another trudge up but the descent was fun, a semi-scramble down something called Prison Ridge or thereabouts. The pass below was where I originally intended to begin the descent. But that isn't how my walks work and the peak ahead, Weatherlam, looked too inviting. It turned to to be a bit further than I thought but there were even better views, the cloud having lifted from the top of all the peaks. Including the Old Man, but never mind. Descended on a path which simply vanished half way through. You could see where to get to but there were some sharp drops with apparently no safe way down, and all around the hillside there were people staring at it with quizzical expressions. Finally got down, reaching a path curling back to Coppermines Valley and safety. A surprisingly good walk by the end. Less hearteningly, I've got both a bugger of a cold and a seizure on the way.

Coniston - 26/7/09

2009-08-09T13:09:00.002Z

Clichés, clichés. Chucking it down with rain this morning – and I mean real, torrential, start-gathering-two-of-every-animal rain. So this morning the only trip was back to that tourist hot-spot, the supermarket at Ulverstone. Emily and Gemma, incidentally, are turning into right little buggers. They piss about, you tell them not to and they just laugh at you. And I'm babysitting them in a couple of week's time. Anyway, we had one of Christine's trademark enormous buffet lunches, by which time the rain had stopped. There was even a few hints of sun at times. With the Harvey girls repeatedly chanting “Aquarium! Aquarium!” (a place were you can stroke a sting ray, apparently, as if you'd want to) me, mum and dad struck out on our own. Drove along a typical Lakes road – windy, hilly and full of sheep – for a time alongside Coniston Water and finally reached Coniston itself. I swore I'd been here last year but apparently it was an almost identical Lake District town. Namely, fully of walkers and tourists, built in the odd local style of dark stone walls and slate roofs, and overshadowed by a great fuck-off hillside. We started walking along a little lane running alongside an understandably full and roaring stream. There were little waterfalls all along the stream, but I still think the tiny hydroelectric dam at the top was a bit optimistic; it might power two light bulbs but no more. Beyond this, the gorge suddenly opened into Coppermines Valley. This would once have been a standard beauty spot; a wide, shallow river at the bottom, little rocky nodules on the flanks and, at the head, the looming mass of the Coniston Old Man range. But they weren't joking when they named the valley. This used to be a thriving industrial centre. The old mine buildings have been converted into holiday homes and a YHA, but there's still two thumping great spoil heaps in the centre and yawning holes in many cliff faces. Wainwright spit acid at all this, of course, but I think it gives the valley some character. We walked along for a while, dad trying to locate a boulder he climbed on when he was 14. We did eventually see it, but it was laughing at us on the far horizon so we just turned around and went back. The insect problem has been solved by fly paper, temporarily turning this house into a series of hanging graveyards. And how stupid are flies anyway? When they see a strip of paper festooned with corpses of their cousins, why don't they think “This is something to avoid”?

Coniston - 25/7/09

2009-08-09T13:02:00.002Z

So once again it's the Lake District for us. Which has become the new Scotland, which in turn has become the new Cornwall, I guess, which... anyway. The poignant note on this holiday, of course, is that Granddad is no longer with us. An ever-present on these family trips and, for that matter, the one who paid for them all.

Picked up my my parents this morning at the rather decadent time of 10.00. A new route was devised which mainly involved crawling along really slow roads and getting stuck for about half an hour in Harrogate – not a good place to get stuck in any circumstances. We eventually made it up to the Dales, which looked very nice in the clear sunshine. Stopped at a Little Chef which amazed us by not being awful, saw a bunch of cows standing in a lake as a sort of protest, passed a factory specialising in 'wound management' (i.e. plasters). Finally saw the Lakes in the distance and then, after an age, got out of bloody Yorkshire. Had lunch on a tiny road halfway up a hillside with more mountains in the distance – and that's been the theme of the day. We're not at Patterdale this year, right in the heart of the Lakes. We're on the edge, in an area officially known as 'kind of near Coniston', and the 360 degree view of the peaks which Patterdale enjoys is more like 20 degrees. We're also travelling back in time somewhat; the villages we passed through seem to have been preserved in the 1960's without the help of a Sunday evening TV show. Stopped at Ulverstone, the nearest town of any significance, for shopping, drove alone a rather good estuary for a while, made several turns up increasingly narrow and windy lanes and finally found the house, despite the best intentions of the designers. It was allegedly once a vicarage and the Ye Olde aspect is being pushed mightily. Open fireplaces, creaking roof beams, a bath suite that seems to have been pinched wholescale from the Castle Museum and legions of flies in the pantry-cum-kitchen. For once everyone didn't arrive at once. We were here miles before the others, allowing me to pinch the only bedroom with that 20 degree view – of the Coniston range, incidentally. My stepbrother Gav and his kids finally arrived, having got repeatedly lost on the way here. A bit later came my sister Christine and Uncle Bill, who's got a week's pass from psychiatric hospital. And he must have felt he was back there again after I spent a lot of time running after my nieces Emily and Gemma, all of us screaming. Though I'm glad to say the elder girl, Lorna, seems to be cultivating a more restrained, bookish persona. Only another seven years or so and she'll be ready for full teenage angst.

Nature Is Closed For The Forseeable Future

2009-07-15T18:52:00.000Z

Legislation That Seems To Have Been Inspired By An Episode Of The Simpsons Part 512: Arnie 'I'm As Stupid As I Look And That Takes Some Doing' Schwarzenegger has come up with a new solution to California's budget deficit. That's the budget deficit he was elected to solve and which has now grown to $26bn. He's proposing to shut down virtually all California's national parks. Terminate them, if you will.

Now, I'm a little shaky on the American national parks, but I gather that they're not quite like the British ones. They're the only rural places where people are allowed to wander freely, the rest being private farmland with no rights of way. Arnie is basically wanting to close nature.

Two thoughts come to mind. One is that Californians are going to get really fat. Even fatter than they are now. That's what happens when you deny people the chance to exercise. So if obesity starts to suddenly rocket, for once McDonald's Ginormous Size Burgers (or whatever) won't be to blame. It will be Arnie and his superbly chiselled body. The other thought: how do you shut down nature anyway? I guess there are two possible things Arnie could do. He could simply fire all the park rangers, close down the information centres and let the areas become wildernesses again, free to man and beast. Or he could put whopping great fences around them all and shoot anyone trying to get in. Arnie is a member of the Republican Party. Which option do you think he'll choose?

Some of the many criticism of the plans say they are short sighted on economic grounds. Closing the parks will stem a revenue stream for the state, however meagre. Unfortunately I think Arnie is less myopic than people suspect. He will be left with a great deal of land doing nothing, costly to police but much of it in spectacular locations. How soon before he starts accepting bids from developers looking to build yet more Exclusive Executive Housing? And even if California decides in the future that it can reopen the parks, the sold land will be lost forever. A plan worthy of C. Montgomery Burns himself.

Yet Another Gate

2009-07-10T16:56:00.000Z

So that's this week's Grand Villains sorted out. The group who excite days of inflammatory headlines, public – i.e. media – outrage, chin-stroking analysis and calls for regulation, castigation and annihilation. I'm surprised there's anybody left. After expense-fiddling politicians, greedy bankers, crooked TV companies, women in burkhas, children in hoods, worshippers of Islam and (time after time) asylum seekers comes... the print media. The ones who always lead these moral panics. There's a whiff of the French Revolution here, the original persecutors ending up on the guillotine themselves. Though it's rather less bloody, of course, and much, much duller.

Basically, the claims go, the News of the World hired a legion of Philip Marlowes to bug and burgle assorted public figures. Then, when the figures found out, it paid them thumping out-of-court settlements to stop the cases coming to light. Which they have now anyway, largely thanks to the hush money paid to PFA head Gordon Taylor. The BBC has been gleefully leading with the story, probably still sore from the kicking which the NotW gave it over the phone-in scandal and the Queen docu-fiasco. The motive of the Guardian, which broke the story, is slightly different. “Murdoch's £1m bill for hiding dirty tricks” bellows the headline, and phrases like “Murdoch executives” and “Murdoch company” appear throughout. Nobody has yet profited by going after Rupe, as Setanta has just discovered, but the Guardian clearly thinks it worth another shot.

What stands out, as is so often the case, is the absurdity of it all. Gordon Taylor is one of the few high-profile union leaders left and so a hate figure for the NotW. There was conceivably an effort being made to destroy him. A couple of politicians, Tessa Jowell and John Prescott, were also bugged. But so were two agents, Sky Andrews and the egregious Max Clifford. The paper wasn't conducting an investigation into the secret mechanism of Britain here. It wanted gossip and tittle-tattle. Surely it could have just made all that up, as it usually does? Instead, though, it paid a lot of money to private investigators and a lot more to camouflage their actions. Even with Murdoch's funds to draw upon, this is a shocking waste for an industry supposedly in crisis. There is also similarities to the great scandals of the 1990's. From Bill Clinton to Jeffrey Archer, what got them was not the original act but what they later did to hide that act. If everyone wasn't so damn cautious all the time there would be a lot more happiness around.

Anyway, the journalists have been exposed by the journalists. We know how it works now. More papers will probably be pulled into the miasma. The whole industry will don a hair shirt and promise to reform itself. A great many self-righteous articles will appear; Gordon Brown will fire off some pompous sound bites and maybe appoint someone like Alan Yentob as Journalism Tsar. And then the next Grand Villains will appear. Personally I'm hoping for the novelists. They're too smug by half. And they must have done something. Everyone has; which is why these calls of outrage are always so shrill. Get your torches, you vengeful mob, and head off to Bloomsbury.

Rome 16/9/08

2008-10-04T12:22:00.009Z

Well, the Galleria Borghese is one thing I'm destined not to do. Yesterday, like everywhere else, it was closed. Today I climbed up from Plaza del Popola, past the amazing viewpoint over the city and the disturbing beggar who sits on the stairs. Had a pleasant stroll through the Villa Borghese, once a private estate and now a public park. One highlight was the Piaza di Siena, a large oval space where you'd expect a lake or a lawn. Instead there's just a load of packed earth. To add extra surreal touches, parrots were squealing in the trees overhead. Finally got to the gallery to see a sign saying, full, advance tickets only. How can a gallery be closed? Especially this one, it's huge. So had to got to the Gallery of Modern Art elsewhere in the park. It was OK, if rather dominated by some bloke whose one idea was that large means good. There was some interesting pieces behind him, though, particularly from the Italian wave of Impressionists.

Meandered back to Popola afterwards and popped into Santa Maria dei Miracoli, one of the churches which frames Via del Corso. It was a nice, unpretentious little place, another rotunda with refreshingly subdued decoration. I then tried once more to navigate to the Trevi Fountain.
Eventually managed it this time, after losing my way and temper occasionally, and got a surprise. I was expecting, well, just a fountain. Instead it's a huge structure taking up the whole façade of a substantial building. A fountain does form part of it, but is almost incidental. You'd definitely call it baroque, you might easily call it hideous, but it certainly tries hard. Then went another backstreet way back to what I call the Dogs Bollocks of Rome, noting en route an alley which decided it had to have four covered bridges over it. Had lunch on a wall overlooking Trajan's Markets, Trajan's Column, Trajan's Anything Else. If it's Trajan's, as a rule, it's good.

Unable to stop myself I then took a farewell look at the Forum. I said it all earlier, so will just add: the place seems just as astonishing in later views. Then went into the Capitoline Museum. This was allegedly the first proper museum in the world, built in the Renaissance to house Roman relics. The first floor especially is fantastic. Part is housed in an ancient Roman temple, so the air of antiquity is enhanced by ancient brick barrel arched ceilings. There's also galleries overlooking the Forum and Palatine, giving me yet more farewell views of them.. The Renaissance rooms are almost overwhelming, each wall covered in a huge mural which illustrates part of Roman history. They have the famous bronze she-wolf, with its two suckling twins unfortunately added in later times. There's also the huge Marcus Aurelius statue, once housed in the Piazza del Campidoglio until they noticed it was falling apart. A lot of Renaissance paintings are upstairs, which reminded me that one can quickly grow bored of Renaissance paintings. They certainly didn't skimp on the paint though; one canvas must have needed a cherry picker to complete. Fantastic museum, despite the excessively snotty staff.

Afterwards I made a brief call to the Mametine, the old Roman prison. There's just two rooms open, an entrance chamber and a cell underground. It had the grim, claustrophobic air of all old dungeons, with added clamminess to the air. St Peter once allegedly nutted the wall, causing a fountain to miraculously spring up; after long in there I'd have been doing the same. (The headbutt, if not the miracle). Then popped into another church, where the presence of a single genuine worshipper eventually cleared the premises of all tourists. And then there was more wandering of back streets. Rome is a great place for it, with picturesque old buildings lining remarkably clean alleyways. The only trouble is that even here you're at risk of being run over by crazed scooters. The few pedestrian 'streets' are not so much alleys as cracks. Visited another church – if you're low on funds you tend to dive into any open church doors you see – this one a bit more Catholic. A daffy Bernini statue stood up front, and I'm not sure of the old lunatic designed the building itself but he might as well have done. Garish, and over-decorated again, with some beautiful paintings adorning the walls of the many side chapels. Nice to see some stained glass for once. Less sure about what seemed to be the waxed corpse of a past bishop underneath an alter.

Later on I managed to visit the Piazza Navona without it bringing on any seizures. It stands on the site of an old Roman arena and still has the contours, being a huge, sweeping rectangle. Three fountains decorate it. Sadly the central one, apparently the best, was under scaffolding. This, however, was one of the few examples I saw of the alleged Roman custom of keeping all their sites closed for perpetual maintenance. Walked back along the underused Tiber, got another look at the wonderful Sonte Sant Angelo bridge and found a novel way to get lost; following a city wall when I should have been following the Vatican's defences. And that was more or less it. I'm rather aware that each day on this vacation was slightly worst than the previous one. Nonetheless, they had a hell of a high point to descend from. Wonderful place.

How To Not Exist

2008-03-01T14:49:00.001Z

In the absense of any interest in writing new posts lately, here's the opening paragraphs from an old novel I'm clearly not going to finish.

The building where they worked was hidden. The building where they worked had been ordered to not exist.
And this was a difficult feat. Because the building where they worked lay in the most famous segment of Marston. And Marston itself had considerable renown amongst the sterner class of tourist. The building was – or should have been – part of the vista which epitomised the city. The scene which appeared by default in the brochures and leaflets, which summed up what Marston offered its visitors. A sort of composite history, not confined to any one period but incorporating elements from many epochs so long as they were twee and vaguely authentic. An image of history generally given captions beginning with "Merrie" or "Ye Olde."

To the left was the station, a mass of gently curving girders emanating an inexplicable beauty. Equally bizarrely it was one of the largest stations in the land, in a city emphatically not one of the biggest; although it was chiefly full of people trying to go somewhere other than Marston. Stretching out ahead, almost beyond the reach of the eye, tumbling gently down a slight incline, were the city walls. The ersatz city walls, rebuilt by the Victorians, and so given a sombre perfection free of the miserable terror which inspired the original set. Standing, just to continue the jumble of authenticity and propaganda, on tall, functional grass banks which became a beautiful speckled pattern of daffodils every spring. The walls ended at a broad lazy river which was bridged by fussy Edwardian iron. And beyond that, the cathedral. The vast temple, so beautiful that it is hideous and vice versa. The creation of an ancient society which could do nothing well except create vast temples, doggedly rebuilt after the many occasions it had burnt or fallen down. The cause of the city, really, and certainly the donor of its entirely undeserved label of 'city.' The cathedral which waited haughtily for the tiny settlement around it to grow as magnificent as it was. Which waited in vain, even when industrial sprawls elsewhere accidentally shrivelled their own cathedrals into toys; which seemed at times to be considering moving to a more fitting location but finally accepted its role as a very large rock in a small pond. A cathedral still dominating a city which was not a city and which no longer believed in God.

And to the right of the famous panorama? What could you see there? Well, you would have to actually stand there to find out. The vision to the right did not exist in any of the pamphlets. There would always be a careful positioning of the cameras, the focus obstinately fixed onto the centre-left of the horizon. More recently, too, a drag of the mouse and a click of the crop emblem to eliminate any lingering traces. The building standing to the right was a pariah, a solitary outcast. It should not, could not exist.

Dark brown concrete. That was the building's final audacious touch which had made it special. That won the awards on its birth in the 1960's, when hideous architecture was as prized as free love, and which would ensure its revilement forever after. There were many other things bad about the building, of course. The unapologetic bulk of it, standing seven floors high in a mainly double-story town. The asymmetrical sprawl of the place, leaving people uncertain as to whether it was a complex or a single structure; and if the latter, why it bothered being so since this clearly did no good. One of the tallest towers was stuck sort of middle-left, the other some way to the right. Around them were a host of meandering annexes which looked like careless later additions though the building was actually designed as a whole. There was a central courtyard… Or rather, there was a courtyard, with the main reception hiding deferentially in one corner. It may have been in the centre or it may not have been. Nobody was certain where that was or where most of the edges were either.

All this was impressive. Likewise the decision to use concrete, the most belligerently ugly building material ever invented by mankind. And to leave the great walls free of any decoration which might soften their impact just a little. But dark brown concrete? So that, on gloomy mornings, the building squatted like a collapsing star, threatening to pull all the light and facile beauty of Marston into its hideous flanks? That was genius of a sort. It deserved awards. It deserved to not exist.

The timid main reception area, Sushma discovered, was really just a clearing house. Visitors only arrived to receive directions to the smaller receptions of the various companies hidden inside the building which did not exist. These directions were almost always wrong because internally there was no logic either. Few of the companies occupied a single, clearly defined space. They owned little clusters scattered hither and thither. Their territories frequently shifted, like medieval dukedoms in the midst of a convoluted war of religion. Their receptions drifted according to the vagaries of battle and were only ever a desk behind a door. The companies were happy with this state, content, to remain as invisible as their host. They were not the sort to build beautiful headquarters in prime locations, to worry about market penetration and brand diversification. They were small firms selling specialised goods and services which most people had never heard of, would need a long lecture about before they understood them and would buy even then. And the firms simply wished to continue selling their wares to the small cadre of connoisseurs who had always bought them. Such companies seemed the antitheses of modern capitalism. In fact, from one perspective, they represented the system in its most perfect form. They did not sell dreams or lifestyles. They just made money.

Costoq Rail was the largest of them. In the old days when vital services were still nationalised it had technically been part of the state. Always an odd part, however, and lying remarkably far from actual government. It was a self-contained consultancy unit which did small, fiddly things to small, fiddly parts of the railway track. No senior manager had ever learnt whether any of the actions carried out were entirely necessary. However, as they affected huge metal objects which travelled at something approaching the speed of sound, some prudence was considered necessary. The consultancy somehow split from the rest of the railway infrastructure units in the chaos which followed the government's decision to privatise all its essential functions and so leave itself with nothing useful to do at all. The consultants continued doing exactly the same things, only now charged much more for them as they were working for a separate entity. Several years later they were swallowed up by Costoq International, a vague conglomerate going through a phase of 'market diversification.' Namely, swallowing up companies in sectors where they did not belong. So the Permanent Way Design Consultancy became Costoq Rail; thus exchanging a name which none of its employees could say to one which they could not spell. That, so far, had been the only change effected by the takeover.

Or almost the only one. Sushma, who had pulled the above information from the company website after her agency told her about the job, discerned signs of corporate modernity pushing at the old railway mentality. The fact that there was actually a website, for one. Many small engineering firms still jeered at such fripperies. A degree of effort had been made with the reception area too. There was a huge day-glo orange board behind the desk boasting the new company name and logo; which, like most corporate motifs, seemed a product of a junior art class. The website was simply a digital version of the leaflets, however. Both tried reaching out to the public with a few photographs of men in hard hats smiling awkwardly. Then they flung themselves into esoteric descriptions of complicated actions conducted on rail tracks in unfashionable parts of the countryside. And the reception was really just another desk behind a door. Manning it was a genial, elderly lady who greeted the sporadic visitors as if they arriving for a bridge morning, threw occasional homilies at the impatiently waiting Sushma and tried to master Minesweeper the rest of the time.

The room itself was testament that open plan does not automatically result in light and air. Almost all illumination came from the humming tubes set in the dispiritingly low ceilings. Most of the carpet was nasty dark blue. Random strips of nasty dark green and red intervened, as if somebody had decided to redecorate and then ran out of materials or motivation. The stale, chilly air was filled with drones of antiquated computers, the squeals of dying printers. And the chatter of sleepy workers easing into a Monday morning, female voices discussing cruel television programmes, male ones dissecting unjust football results.

With A Bang And A Whimper

2008-01-06T13:20:00.000Z

I got terrified of nuclear war in my early teens. Oddly enough, it was Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Two Tribes video, the one with Reagan and Chernenko wrestling, which sparked it off. For some reason, the sight of two fat, elderly men grunting together in a ring really brought home the threat. For years afterwards I listened trembling for the sound of air raid sirens. I didn't ask if York still had any air raid sirens, which it almost certainly didn't. I just assumed I would hear them. When I though I did one morning, I got a hell of a fright. It just turned out to be one of the new US-style police sirens. They might have warned me.

It was a good period to have nuclear fears, I learned later. In the mid 1980's the Cold War was hotter than any time since the early 60's. All my generation lacked were our equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Or so I thought until watching Channel 4's excellent documentary 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse last night. It turned out we had one after all. They just never told anyone.

The program meticulously plotted the events which created the atmosphere of 1983. Reagan helped start it, of course. After his election he behaved like any unbalanced old gentleman let out of the home, swaggering over the place stroking himself and introducing useful concepts like 'good' and 'evil' into international diplomacy. He ordered missiles to be built which were bigger, faster and painted in the colours of his own penis. He also started the 'Star Wars' program, a plan to shoot down missiles from space. This terrified the USSR as it would totally negate their nuclear deterrent and leave them helpless. The Soviet leadership, if anything even more elderly and senile than Reagan, retreated into full paranoia. Under the quivering command of Andropov, a man I only recall from an unfunny gangrene joke, they ordered their spies to actively search for signs that the West was planning war.

Unfortunately, their intelligence was terrible and ours was little better. Soviet spies performed tricks like count how many lights were on at the Ministry of Defence each night. If a lot were burning, one British commander pointed out, it usually meant the cleaners were hoovering the floors. The spies took it as a sign that our leaders were in there, plotting domination and cackling. We had a single double agent who could actually tell us what the Soviet politburo were thinking. We seemed to meet with him for half an hour once every other month. And staffed by moral absolutists on both sides, the notion of the governments actually talking to each other had become laughable.

In 1983 America invaded Grenada largely to prove they could. The USSR shot down a domestic Korean plane which was simply lost and was already heading out of Soviet air space. And one night a Russian monitoring station received a message from its spy satellite. Five missiles had been launched from America, one after another. The base commander override the message, reasoning that if missiles came they would come 14,000 all at once. He was right to assume a malfunction. The satellite computer had confused missiles with clouds, as one does. But a less stubborn or sensible man might have panicked and started the sequence which led to 'retaliation.' Suddenly the lyrics of Nina's 99 Red Balloons seem slightly less ludicrous.

And in this climate, NATO chose to hold huge war games called Operation Able Archer in west Germany. War games were common enough. They mocked up the conditions of nuclear attack, mainly to test communications between bases. In 1941, though, Nazi Germany had invaded the USSR initially under the guise of war games. 42 years later, the Kremlin decided was being repeated, though not as farce. Intercepted messages between NATO bases were treated as actual orders. The Soviet nuclear bases, submarines and bombers were put on red alert. The West noted these preparations but just chuckled, assuming rival war games. They continued taking Able Archer to its conclusion. As they did, Andropov's finger crept closer and closer to the red button. And then…

Then Able Archer simply ended. The Soviet generals, one assumes, simply dithered long enough to realise their mistake. They all went home again, presumably avoiding each other's faces. The next time the West met their double agent, they found out what had almost happened and got the shock of their lives. Even Reagan decided it was wise to start talking with the enemy again.

That's how our civilisation almost ended though. In a swamp of paranoia, miscommunication, incompetence and macho posturing. With both a bang and a whimper of "Eh? What?" I'm glad of the escape but you have to admit, it would have been fitting.

As If

2007-12-30T11:48:00.000Z

So that time is approaching again. The full list of my 2008 New Year resolutions (working title Things I Will Definitely Do This Year, Honest) has yet to be finalised. But I thought I'd set down the latest draft. In the hope of at least remembering a few of them after January 5th.

1. Get Fat. Obesity is now more reviled than glue sniffing and alcoholism, and is fast approaching paedophilia and heroin abuse. Therefore, fatties are rebels. Fatties are cool. Not quite sure how to manage this, however, given that the things which make you obese (watching TV, eating) are duller than the things keeping me thin (walking, chain smoking). How do they all do it?

2. Talk to more people at work so they don't think I'm a weirdo / dullard / sociopath / all of the above. I may have left this slightly too late.

3. Get addicted to at least one reality TV show. Rather necessary to fulfil Resolution 2, given that they're the only topic of conversation at work. Still trying to decide which one, however. Strictly GCSE Woodwork? Celebrity Big Brother with David Irving and Nick Griffin? How Clean Is Your Car Glove Compartment? It's a tough choice.

4. Spend more time on the things I cite as my hobbies and less on those I cover up. Which translates as: read history books instead of playing online games aimed at 10 year olds. This one tends to feature each year.

5. Stop crow-barring my epilepsy into conversations and then being so stoical that it's impossible to have a discussion about it. Though I've yet to decide whether to shut up about it entirely or turn myself into a martyr. Right now I'm leaning towards the "Woe is me" option.

6. Warn the people about Noel Edmunds. He hasn't changed, you know. He may have tried reinventing himself as a weird numbers freak on Deal Or No Deal. But I saw him on a Sky show over Christmas and he was as bad as ever. The same monstrous ego. The same smug cackle at his own joke. And obviously, the same beard. Stop him now before his terrifying resurrection is complete.

7. Do at least one blog entry a week. My fan base – two people in Sheffield and my mum – deserve no less.

8. Stop doing the same tired old joke about my blog fan base. Besides, I think the Sheffield crew have abandoned me.

9. Finally find out what the bloody hell this 'emo' is. So I can claim to still be 'down' with 'the kids.' Though I'll probably conduct three months of intense online investigations just to reach the same answer as the question about the blues. If you have to ask, you'll never know. And it'll have gone out of fashion by then anyway.

10. Get out and meet people. Yeah. That'll happen.

11. Smoke less, worship God, spend less, work harder, be nicer, greet each day with a smile on my face yah-di-yah-di-yah. See the footnote to Resolution 10.

Oh No They Aren't

2007-12-22T19:06:00.000Z

Perhaps this isn't the right time of year to be doing a piece on arrogance. But I think I've said everything I've got to say about Christmas over the past 34 years. Meanwhile a couple of remarks in today's Guardian caught my attention.

One was uttered by everyone's favourite history bore, David Starkey. Starkey has made a decent career out of sucking up to British monarchs, so it's surprising that he's started laying into our current one. The Queen is a poorly educated philistine, he claims. In a late challenge to the most tasteless insult of the year, he compares her attitude towards culture to that held by Goebbels. By way of evidence, he cites an occasion when he was showing her around an exhibition he had curated. Practically her only comment was to say she needed a drink. (Or at least, to complain her gin and Dubonnet was late arriving, but this is the Queen). Frankly I think it very likely that the Queen is a philistine. It's telling, however, that Starkey doesn't even consider the alternative. That his exhibition was shite and she was trying to avoid saying so. Appreciating culture, apparently, is synonymous with appreciating David Starkey.

The other comment came in a wonderful piece about Santa Claus impersonators. Most were struggling actors, of course, and not happy with what they are reduced to. One moaned "Father Christmas is only one step up from panto." Which surprised me because I though it was quite a few steps down from that. In fact, it's possibly on an entirely different staircase. Pantomimes don't have the greatest scripts but they offer lines a bit more demanding than "Ho ho ho, what's your name, little boy?" Former celebrities banished from television tend to end up in panto; your Bonnie Langfords, your Ronnie Corbetts, your Les Dennis' (or should that be Les Denni?) None, to my knowledge, have been reduced to putting on a beard and getting groped by children in BHS.

Personally, I don't knock those in pantomime. I've been in one myself, while in the Sixth Form. It wasn't easy. There was the experience of playing at Bootham Mental Hospital in front of an audience barely able to feed themselves, let alone know when to chant "He's behind you!" There was the morning after the Christmas party when a severe hangover left me barely able to stutter a single line. There was the performance when hi-larious backstage pranksters replaced the cardboard beanstalk with a giant penis. And they were just the gigs themselves. Getting the thing onto the stage involved daily battles between the fundamentalist Christian directors who objected to every single irreverent joke inserted by the atheist writers. A struggle which turned into an all-out religious war, culminating in the Great Death Song Controversy. It was a tough time.

So if every performance of Mother Goose or Cinderella is half as rocky, respect is due to all those involved. I understand the Father Christmas' looking down on somebody. We all need to sneer at those below us. And this lot need more comfort than most, with work experiences varying from being propositioned by amorous mothers to watching your Little Helpers get drunk and fall in the lake. But they've chosen the wrong targets here. There are still street mimes, after all. There are Sealed Knot Society foot soldiers. There are people who dress up as Romans and give out leaflets. Don't pick on the man in the wig and the 44D bra.

A Clue, My Dear Watson

2007-12-16T13:09:00.000Z

So on Friday morning, I returned to my desk to find I had written 'Grey Owl' on a post-it note. Frowning, I studied the words carefully. The script was definitely mine; and there was nothing else on the note. Given that:

a) We have no suppliers, clients, employees, contacts or enemies whose name fully or partially contains these words;

b) It is extremely unlikely that on Thursday I had heard, saw, thought of, talked about, eaten or copulated with a grey owl;

and c) There isn't technically, or even descriptively, anything such as a grey owl to be found anywhere near where I work;

Well, given all that, the message perplexed me a little.

I threw the note away eventually. And I regret this now. Just in case I am found slumped lifeless over my keyboard early one morning. Then a Poirot-type detective might have found the note and spent weeks trying to tie the words back to my killer. Until he finally reached the conclusion that I did. It is a clue simply of a mind going slowly but inexorably insane.

Not Shaken Or Stirred

2007-12-16T13:06:00.000Z

Watched The Spy Who Came In From The Cold yesterday. Not for the first time and hopefully not for the last. John le Carré novels always worked well on film, where his fine plots and characters aren't held back by his rather mediocre prose. It also helped that they featured some especially brilliant actors. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold starred Richard Burton, a man whose whisky-soaked charisma practically staggers out of the screen.. Later Alec Guinness would make spymaster George Smiley his own and infuse the role with his wonderful brand of sinister melancholy.

However, I also couldn't help thinking that le Carré must be in despair nowadays. His books seemed to be a concentrated attack on the glamorising of spies during the Cold War. A tendency epitomised by James Bond, of course, smirking around in his tux like an aristocrat, shooting or shagging everyone in sight. Le Carré created shabby, melancholic little men; and they knew the truth about their fellow operatives. "Drunks… hen-pecked husbands… civil servants playing Cowboys and Indians to brighten up their drab lives," Burton's character spits. He also sums up the level of morality involved: "Yesterday I wanted to kill Mundt because he was evil and my enemy," he says of a Communist double agent. "Today he's evil, and my friend." Le Carré's approach became popular for a while. Even a writer as mediocre as Len Deighton could put some balance and intelligence into his Cold War yarns.

And now? Spies are superheroes again and every bit as banal. James Bond is seemingly indestructible, each new film as inevitable and over-publicised as Christmas. In Jack Ryan, Tom Clancy somehow created a character even worst; morally impeccable, utterly lifeless. On TV, meanwhile, Spooks and 24 seem locked in a bitter contest to see who can be the most absurd. Cops, doctors and even, for that matter, superheroes, can be deeply flawed and barely functioning sociopaths. Spies have to be two dimensional.

It's unfortunate because a more balanced portrayal is needed right now. One of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold's central themes was that your methods cannot afford to be less wicked than your enemy's. Morality only plays a part in your ultimate goals. And this had grim consequences when the West was just fighting totalitarian regimes who shot individuals they suspected were guilty. How about now, when the enemy blows up groups without caring who is innocent? Have our tactics become more brutal to match? It would seem so, from the accounts which have seeped out from Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. But you'll be lucky to see any acknowledgement on screen.

'The Virgin of the Rocks'

2007-12-09T15:55:00.001Z

In his impressive recent program 'This Is Civilisation,' Matthew Collins explored the different impacts the Greek and Christian religions had on art. The ancient Greeks were obsessed with physical perfection. Their gods and goddesses were supermodels; essentially like us but much more beautiful. This civilisation found both aesthetic and spiritual bliss in a well-proportioned statue of a naked boy. A notion which vanished when Christianity conquered Europe, Collins argued. Not only were statues of the gods condemned as idolatry, the human form itself became problematic. The body was seen as transient, it was the source of sin. So much so that the central image of Christianity became a body pierced and broken so that the spirit could live forever.

I knew which picture Collins would show to illustrate art's dramatic change of direction. There have been thousands of Jesus dying on the cross, but one still stands out. Grünewald, of course. His ghastly Crucifixion which is slapped across the Isenheim Altar. Jesus is twisted unnaturally on the cross, head slumped. His outstretched arms are as thin as twigs, his pierced skin already the colour of rotting flesh. Grünewald embraced the cruellest side of Christianity and became immortal as a result. His altarpiece is frequently used to show the gloom of the Middle Ages, just as Texas Chainsaw Massacre epitomises the 'video nasty' boom of the 1980's; though Crucifixion is more horrific than any of Leatherface's antics.

The gruesome Grünewald is only one part of Christian art, however. And the crucifixion is only one pole of the Jesus story. More artists clustered around the other, the one we are preparing to commemorate: his birth. Here we get not a hatred of the human form but a celebration of it. And with this comes a joyous representation of humanity itself. This happened most vividly in the Renaissance paintings. The Renaissance, of course, was a rediscovery of classical methods and ideals. And the body became beautiful again. More importantly it became living and three dimensional, after the flat mannequins of the Middle Ages. This was partly because of the development of scientific techniques and observation, a tendency which Leonardo da Vinci perhaps took to excess. It was also because of the notion that humans and human relations were worthy subjects of art.

Classical themes also became fashionable again. Such paintings were always a subsection of the Renaissance, though, and often a farcical one. They often feel like the old legends being used as an excuse to create images which would otherwise get the painter excommunicated. Want to show an orgy? Just call it a Feast of Bacchus. Violent pornography or bestiality more your fancy? Then resurrect the Rape of the Sabine Women or Jupiter getting his end off. Titian alone got away with this sort of thing and he only occasionally. The bulk of the Renaissance, and certainly the majority of its masterpieces, were Christian. Partly this was because of the piper's paymasters. Many pieces were commissioned by either Popes or Italian dukes wanting to suck up to Popes. But many artists were deeply religious too, sometimes – especially in Michelangelo's case – taking their devotion to the point of insanity.

So crucifixions dominate, and nativities and pietas and ascensions. There was also another popular theme. Christ as a toddler or a young boy with his mother. This is surprising because of its apparent irrelevance to Church dogma. Jesus rather drops out of the Bible in between his escape from Herod and his reappearance as a smart alec teen showing off in the Temple. Yet many Renaissance artists tried to fill in these lost years. The sheer variety of their images gives us a clue why. Michelangelo shows a muscular Mary leading The Holy Family, reaching up to grab her son. Caravaggio's Virgin and Child With St Anne has Christ helping his mother tramp on a serpent – the symbolic resisting of temptation turned into a nursery game. Raphael's Madonna of the Chair is all protective love, arms wrapped around her rather chubby son as she glares at us suspiciously. Again, the titles of some of these works seem to be a cloak. The images are simply the painters' statements about motherhood, maybe based on memories of their own childhood or observations of their wives. It is worth mentioning that the pictures are filled with love and devotion. The religious settings were probably useful here as well; such emotions are rarely fashionable in art otherwise.

Leonardo da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks is from this tradition. It has a more mysterious feel than many. The golden light which illuminates his characters and the subtlety of his shadows give it a touch of the divine. The darkness of much of the background, contrasting with a bright glow peeking through the rocks in the distance, hint of a grotto cut off from the rest of the world. Otherwise it is a realistic, if slightly stylised, representation of a family at rest.

One puzzling element, distancing it from many Virgin-and-child pictures, is that there are in fact two children. There is no obvious explanation why or even which one is Jesus. Conceivably the other could belong to the girl on the right. She has the look of a servant or a nanny, however. Da Vinci's careful arrangement of figures leaves her on the fringes; and states that the Virgin is the mother of both children. Her arm rests on the shoulders of the praying infant. Her gaze is directed towards the other while a cautioning hand sneaks towards him. This Madonna is much less protective than Raphael's. Leaning against a rock, her expression is as serene as the sunlight. Yet she emanates a calm authority over both children and seems capable of bundling them both up in an instant.

The actions of the children supply the only overtly religious details. One is down on one knee to pray. The other, placed by the water's edge, lifts a hand to bless him. Perhaps the latter is John, rehearsing the moment in later life when he will baptise his cousin. Their relationship is also suggested by Jesus' slightly higher vantage point, a sign of superiority. If so, however, it feels like an unconscious forecast. The children simply seem to be playing, mimicking the actions of adults. They also have the clumsiness of infants. Both appear to be in danger of unbalancing, the prayer not entirely secure on his rock and the blesser leaning rather too far over the water. You can understand why their mother is keeping a close eye on them both.

And the gaze keeps returning to her. She is placed almost dead centre of the canvas. And she rears over the other figures, her head the apex of one of da Vinci's triangular compositions. Not in the way Parmigianino's ridiculous Madonna of the Long Neck does, but in an arrangement which looks both natural and inevitable. This is another common feature of Virgin-and-child pictures. Mary's authority is total. Jesus may be the son of God but, at this stage, he is totally dependent on his mother. Meanwhile poor, divinely cuckolded Joseph barely features. Michelangelo puts him in the background and turns him into an old greybeard to emphasise his weakness. Da Vinci simply excludes him, replacing him with a servant girl.

The Virgin of the Rocks is so powerful because it works on two levels. The lighting and setting give it a mythical aura whilst the details are entirely realistic. In this it follows one a strand of Christianity especially strong in fifteenth century Italy – the cult of the Madonna. An ordinary woman worshipped because of her status as a mother. This was effectively an updating of the ancient tradition of the Mother Goddess – a figure somewhat terrifying but also benevolent and loving. The urge has survived because of our memories of the time when our own mothers seemed to be all-powerful beings who could guard us from anything.

Matthew Collins was partly right. When the Christian artists showed naked flesh, at least outside the classical legends, they tended to punish it. The blinded Samson blundering around the temple, a saint stretched out on a rack, Jesus dying on his cross. Only babies could do full-frontal nudity and survive. The Mother Goddess lost her multiple breasts and gained a healthy set of clothes. The Divine Conception reflects the new squeamishness towards sex – while also continuing the tradition of Jupiter's dubious 'seductions' – particularly when practiced by our own mothers and fathers. But this doesn't mean the human form itself was condemned. The opposite actually happened. The divine became humanised. Jesus was turned into a chubby, clumsy toddler dependent on his mother's protection. And religious art became a study of personal relations, rather than just the search for a perfect set of pecs.

A New Icon

2007-12-08T10:38:00.000Z

I see my home, York, has won another Best City In Britain award. We get a lot of these accolades. Never the Best City To Live In, though. Just the Best City To Visit; and then escape from before you start getting depressed by the lack of, well, anything to do. My joy this time was also tempered by the fact that the award was voted by Daily Telegraph readers. To translate for non-Brits: you've heard of the phrase "just to the right of Genghis Khan"? Here we also say, "just to the right of the Daily Telegraph." Our supporters are elderly colonels who probably like York because it's "not full of all those black chappies."

Anyway, I was mildly interested by the photo accompanying the 'story' in the local free rag. It featured the Minster, of course. You still cannot have a general story about York without showing the Minster. There are laws. The cathedral was relegated to the background, however. Pride of place was given to the York Eye. A city with a history stretching back to the Romans is now epitomised by a damn great ferris wheel.

The York Eye, admittedly, is impressive. Erected a few years ago beside the National Railway Museum, it has been extremely popular with tourists. I gather that it gives remarkable views over what is still a low, flat city. It is also lit up by an ethereal light when darkness descends. You can see part of it over the Bar Walls from my office window. It is a nice spectacle to gaze upon as I work late into the evening and wonder what's happened to my life. Still, the York Eye is only a damn great ferris wheel. Moreover, it looks like all the other damn great ferris wheel which have sprung up across Britain recently; many of which, notably London's, are even damn greater.

What makes a building a symbol of a place? So much so that this one structure can always be used as a shorthand image of the whole city? Size, fame and bombast are sometimes seen as the only criteria. But I think the most important quality is originality. This building has to mean that place because nothing like it is found anywhere else. The Golden Gate doesn't work because, frankly, it's just a damn great suspension bridge. But the Guggenheim has to mean Bilbao, the Statue of Liberty New York and the Reichstag – at least since Norman Foster's deranged dome was added – Berlin.

So the Eye doesn't work as an icon of York. Nor did the Minster, however. Except for connoisseurs, it is indistinguishable from any other gothic cathedral. Or most cathedrals of any age, really – I only know it's gothic because enough books have told me so. It's just the biggest thing we have got. York has never been about size, however. If it was, it would have bothered growing into an actual city, rather than just a town which got a leg-up in status because it has a cathedral. What it does specialise in is quirkiness. There are plenty of structures here possessed by no other city, mainly because they can't imagine why they would want them. Any one would make a fine new symbol of York. As a starter, also giving a neat tie-in to my web site, I nominate A House Called House, the Rock Church or the Hand of Monkgate. And if they are less striking than a ferris wheel, if York becomes less popular and attracts a few less Daily Telegraph readers…. well, we'll just have to cope.

Wanna Buy A Sort Code, Mate?

2007-11-25T19:37:00.000Z

After the disappearing tax discs (see my previous post) identity theft is in the news again. It is one of those things, like avian flu or bio-terrorism, that never entirely goes away despite its lack of substance. Whenever nothing much is happening and we're starting to look too contented, journalists always get one out of the drawer and whack us over the head with it. The term is a dramatic one but doesn't really mean the theft of a whole identity. Sometimes passport forgery is involved. Mostly, though, it just means somebody getting access to your bank account. But maybe that's all our identity is supposed to be reduced to: our savings. In the same way that 'lifestyle programs' tell us not how to style our life but how to spend our money.

The Guardian, which is supposed to know better, has been getting in on the fun. An investigation yesterday found that not only are account details being stolen, they are offered up for barter on the internet. One can apparently sidle into certain websites and thence into chat rooms. There one meets dodgy characters operating from "frozen Siberia" who offer a whole range of sort codes for a fistful of Paypal credits. Why do all the cybercriminals seems to be from Russia, incidentally? Admittedly it's a rather impoverished and lawless country, but surely some American or British criminals are muscling into the action? I suspect that some are, but use fake Russian names to give them extra credibility. Just as no spam scam is taken seriously unless it's Nigerian.

Anyway, the comedy of the story comes from the apologetic last paragraph. The Guardian's journalist bought the details of one account. A week later, he was still waiting to receive said details. This probably happens a lot: one hundred per cent of the time seems a good guess. After all, if you're a criminal with genuine account details before you, would you just sell them on to receive a fraction of their value? Or if you did sell them, wouldn't you first empty them right up to their overdraft limit? And then have a good laugh at the buyer? A lot of chat rooms resemble bad nightclubs. The ones which The Guardian is shrieking about is a seedy East End pub holding a ferret-faced man with deep pockets. He claims the gold necklaces he's offering you are genuine. He hints they are stolen. But what he's really got is the meeting of fairground trinkets and a lot of yellow paint.

Crooks con other crooks. I'm glad that it still goes on. It's an ancient practice, understandably so. One danger, that of being reported to the police, is removed. The other used to be that of the conned tracking the conner down and beating him to a bloody pulp with baseball bats. But now the miracle of the internet protects the grifters from that as well. After all, they are all hidden in frozen Siberia.

25 Million To One

2007-11-21T20:31:00.001Z

The latest big story in British politics involves records. Most of the recent ones have done, actually. We have an abeyance of glamour right now, with too few ambitions and not enough crooks. Even the change of Prime Ministers earlier this year was so protracted and predictable that hardly anyone noticed when it finally happened. Instead we're supposed to get excited about numbers. Someone in government is always counting heads wrong or not counting them at all. The opposition parties scream for punishment and the rest of us wonder why we're supposed to care. The new story is more enjoyable, however. Because of its clarity, because of some of the actors involved. And also because for once it doesn't involve immigrants, so the criticisms don't carry the tang of racism.

A month ago a tax officer put the records of every person affected by child benefit claims – all 25 million of them – on two CD's and posted them to the audit office in London. They never arrived. And that, with brilliant simplicity, is all that has happened; or failed to happen. The CD's may be in the hands of master criminals even now ransacking the bank accounts of the unlucky claimants. They may be buried in a sorting room staffed by morons. They may be in Roswell, or in the pockets of Elvis or Lord Lucan. I suspect we'll never find out. In a nation awash with little shiny discs, finding them will be like looking for a needle in an entire pastoral vale, never mind a haystack. Twenty five million to one sounds about right for the chances.

TNT were the couriers who lost the discs. Even apart from the punning possibilities, this gave me a laugh. TNT are one of those companies bursting with both arrogance and idiocy. We once used them to send a package to Ireland and it turned up in Italy. Given this, the police should think alliterative and look in Luton, Leamington or Latvia for a parcel supposed to be in London. The fact that it was dispatched from the town of Washington is also fortuitous. Grand statements like "Police are raiding the Washington offices" can be made. Even though they're only referring to some scrubby little place in darkest Tyneside.

Sadly, there are signs of the story running out of steam. The head of the Inland Revenue has already resigned. Gordon Brown has already apologised. Clearly annoyed at having his demands met before he could demand them, David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, was today reduced to insisting that Brown apologise again and again. Possibly once an hour on the hour, with the chiming of Big Ben. Action could be taken against TNT but that's probably too much to hope for. They handle all the Inland Revenue's post. If the tax office announce they're cancelling the contract there are suddenly going to be disgruntled TNT employees facing redundancy all over the country, each with sensitive documents in their vans.

What the episode has shown, once again, is how technology facilitates incompetence. Before computers, 25 million records would have filled a room. A lorry would be needed to move them, perhaps a whole convoy. Losing a giraffe would be easier. Now they can be burned onto two drinks mats and just slip away, lost amidst the second hand Coldplays and the Twenty Soul Classics Free With The Times.

Lake District - July 7th

2007-07-28T20:48:00.000Z

To finish on a brighter note: Felt better today, Lorna's forgiven me. And at breakfast Emily delivered the best line of the week:
Emily: I want some toast!
Christine: What's the magic word?
Emily: No poo-poo in the bathtub!

'No poo-poo in the bathtub' was apparently the first, second and third rules of the house; though I gather all were broken on occasion. It's been a good holiday overall; just overshadowed by last year which was, frankly, a hard act to follow. The weather was the main bugger. After leaving the others me, mum and dad drove back up the valley aiming to walk around Brothers Water. And guess what: it started peeing down almost immediately. Walk curtailed, we left the Lakes and it dried up almost immediately. We ate lunch in County Durham sunshine, albeit also in a gale, overlooking the sparkling Tees and a ruined abbey. It's very bad organisation really, the part of England with the best countryside also being the wettest. It should rain most in Essex and Kent where there's no reason to go outside anyway. Add that to my extremely long list entitled 'If I Were God…'

Lake District - July 6th

2007-07-28T20:46:00.000Z

Bleuch. Felt a cold starting last night. It really kicked in today, with all the flu-like paraphernalia which accompanies the early stages of my colds. What's annoying is that no other family members have colds, and I've barely been in contact with anyone else this last week, so where did it come from? Can you get bird flu from being pecked by swans? Anyway, we drove to Windermere yet again in the morning, to go to the same visitors centre we frequented last year. It's not a bad place actually. The house is a small but baroque whitewashed manor, the gardens multi-functional but mainly woodlands. The girls mucked around in the adventure playground for a time, we strolled through the woods, more stones were hurled into Windermere, we had lunch. Would have been very pleasant if it wasn't raining and if you don't have a cold. We went to another lake afterwards. I decided another slo-mo walk through drizzle wouldn't be much fun so stayed in the car, then caught the first lift back. Went to bed for a couple of hours afterwards and Lorna got into a strop with me because I wouldn't play the damn cock-a-doodle-do game with her. Not a good end to the holiday.

Lake District - July 5th

2007-07-28T20:44:00.000Z

Well, that was an experience. My first proper day's mountain walking alone ever, not hindered by less fit and/or reckless sensible family members. I can definitely say I exploited the lack of both restrictions. Last year I did St Sunday Crag alone in an afternoon, which was absurd. The thought of ruining a great walk by going at a ludicrous pace has haunted me ever since, and I was determined to do it at a proper speed now. And I did start off relatively leisurely, circling round the foot of a hillside on a nice track. A short, gruelling haul then brought me above some crags, with the usual wonderful views of Patterdale and Ullswater behind me. Climbed gradually up the side of a steep hillside with Grisedale, another narrow, pretty and largely deserted valley, to the right. Sadly by now I could see the cloud on the mountain tops ahead was sometimes lifting, sometimes dropping but not, overall, going anywhere. And as I made the final ascent up to St Sunday Crag it stooped to embrace me like a lover. All I could do at the top was try to remember the fantastic views I'd glimpsed all too briefly the previous year. The plan then was to carry along the summit ridge to, finally, get up Fairfield. I then made a discovery, however. Walking alone through mountain clouds freaks me out. It's a completely irrational fear. The path was clear enough. I just hated not seeing what was on either side of it. Even though the choice was between fairly steep drops and very steep drops, and even though it was, in fact, a simply enough task to avoid actually dropping down any of them. At one point I got so spooked that I turned back for a minute. The cloud then lifted again, however, I saw into the void beyond (fairly steep drops, for the record) and could continue. Nonetheless, I decided to sod Fairfield once again and descended a precipitous little path to Grisedale Tarn.

The sensible option now would have been to make a leisurely stroll down the other side of Grisedale. Instead I opted for an absurdly ambitious circular route, beginning with a peak with the suitably ridiculous name of Dollywagon Pike. Climbed up to it via a steep, zig-zagging path. Fairfield remained stubbornly in the mists but the mountain on the far side of Grisedale Tarn made an impressive sight. A party of loudly shouting urchins were in the distance, a helicopter inexplicably carrying two large cylinders in a net went overhead, but thankfully both soon vanished into the valley beyond. Down came the cloud again as soon as I got some height and I started to feel put upon. But it continued ascending and descending, sometimes allowing an impressive vista of that far valley and the mountains beyond. Dollywagon, High Crag and Nethermost Pike all came and went fairly quickly. I didn't technically climb any of them, the path passing just below the summits. Even I, though, am not daft enough to scramble over shale and rock, risking a plummet down the cliffs on the far side, just to add three names to a list.

And then came Helvellyn. It's odd climbing Helvellyn this way. In the normal ascent from Patterdale, you're slogging up for hours and it's looming above you the whole time. Here it suddenly leaps out at you, announcing itself with the demonic line of jagged rocks which is Striding Edge. Ate lunch close to that ridge, telling myself that there was no way on earth I was going down on it. The final climb up to the summit was short and the scene up there familiar. A trig column, a sheep and a hell of a lot of cloud. Shortly afterwards, my irritation turned to panic again. I'd intended going down by Swirral Edge but couldn't work out where it began. Though there was a cairn, I couldn't see what lay beyond it. As with Monday, it could just have been another warning/evil cairn. Then the cloud abruptly lifted again. And it was glorious. The views were amazing. Striding Edge and the sheer cliffs beneath Helvellyn's summit were on one side; a row of mountains basking in an unearthly light rose up on the other. More practically, I could see where I should be going – or so I thought. Trekked down what felt like Swirral Edge, a passable but impressively narrow ridge which gradually broadened out as it descended. But the path then stopped running parallel to Striding Edge and started climbing another hill, neither of which were according to the map. A bunch of jokers on top of that hill reassured me that I was on the right route. However, after spying an abandoned old dam across the stream below and deciding the puddle beneath Helvellyn's flanks was in no way the Red Tarn, I realised I was in fact coming down into the wrong valley. After another few moments of panic, I assured myself I'd still get into Glenridding, just down the road from Patterdale. My impressive navigation continued after I'd zig-zagged to the foot of the valley. I followed an old industrial track for a while, then decided I needed to be on the other side of the stream. This required a scramble down to the water, some perilous leaps from stone to stone, another scramble up the far side. Consulting the map again, I noticed there was a perfectly good footbridge further on. Oh, and my original path would have served perfectly well anyway. Hey ho. Glenridding valley, incidentally, is less picturesque and more interesting than most in these parts. This is due to parts of it having been quarried to fuck at various times in history, leaving gaping wounds in the cliffs. There was a very odd little settlement too; a sprawl of buildings which resembled an old mining village, except that they were all new and pristine. I somehow made it to Glenridding itself without getting lost again, winding through woods and past a pleasant looking campsite. Was about to start tramping along the road to Patterdale when, luckily, dad's car drove past and stopped and I piled in gratefully. To paraphrase Harry Pearson: a walk with everything except full-frontal nudity.

Lake District - July 4th

2007-07-28T20:42:00.000Z

Never sure if I just perceive that everyone else is in a bad mood at a certain time and go into a sulk in sympathy; or if I just go into a sulk independently. Regardless, I was in a sulk for much of the morning. It didn't help that we went back to the same town by Windermere (Bowness, I think) that we went to on Sunday. Which we hated then and vowed never to return, and hated last year and vowed etc. Hung about for a while again and had coffee at the same nasty café. The swans, though, cheered us up later. A mother, rather than chasing away anyone who ventured near her cygnets, had turned the brood into a tourist attraction. One swan was sat in a puddle, somehow not noticing that the largest lake in England was about ten feet away. And several more surrounded me pecking hopefully at my pockets while a juvenile tried grabbing the cigarette from my hand. (Typical bloody teenager.) We went on a Windermere cruise afterwards – again like last year, though at least from a different place. The ride might have been pleasant if it wasn't windy and raining. It was, however, so I stayed below deck most of the time. Windemere's an odd lake really. Sometimes it looks like Loch Ness, a big, grim stretch of water surrounded by mountains. At others it's more like the Thames around Marlow, the banks covered with garish mansions and privilege.

Had lunch at a rather exasperating parking place, then some of us drove back to the house to do some walking. I set out on my own again, intending to go up Patterdale for a while and then climb up to Anglesey Tarn. This had to be hastily amended when I realised the 'path' I'd seen on the map was just a boundary marking. Headed up the valley anyway on a pleasant track, through farms and patches of woodland, passing a barn full of weird angora goats. Turn around when I reached the sprawl of barns which is the 'village' of Hartsop, doubled back for a while and then climbed up to Bordale Haus again. This was supposed to be a gentler climb than the one from our house, winding gently across the hillside. I suppose it was overall, though the last stretch was a hell of a slog. Turned the other way once reaching Bordale Haus to climb a 'peak' called something like Stony Spiky Crags. What it actually was was a big grassy nodule without a path or any clear summit. Once again, though, good views from what I decided was the top. Dad's birthday today so we went on our customary meal out. We'd intended to go to the White Lion again but it was pretty much full, so called at the Patterdale Arms hotel instead. I feared this would be too snobby. You can only get so much upmarket in Patterdale, however, especially as we slummed it in the bar, and it was actually pretty nice. Fortunately we left just as the coachload of cheery pensioners from Leeds were rolling up.

Lake District - July 3rd

2007-07-28T20:40:00.001Z

Had a couple of hours to myself first thing this morning and the weather was decent, so I thought I might as well do Plaice Fell properly this time. Yomped up the steep climb to Bordale Haus, the 'damp little gap' and another sharp ascent up to a secondary summit. This took me onto a patch of moorland festooned with jutting outcrops of rock. Lovely views, to Patterdale and Ullswater on one side and a rather empty valley on the other. Not especially peaceful, however, thanks to the bird life. Not just the inevitable skylark, the bird which doesn't know when to shut up, but a great flock of crows which rose up cawing belligerently in a Hitchcock-esque fashion. I made the little scramble up to the rather ostentatious chimney which is the summit of Plaice Fell and enjoyed the views down to the lowlands bathed in sunshine. A feature we haven't really experienced here; I got drenched in a rather predictable shower on the return journey.

Got back to the house just as Auntie Margaret and Uncle Steph were rolling up. They were just visiting for the day, happening to be in this part of the world on the slow trek around England which is their springs and summers nowadays. They seem in good enough spirits, all things considered. Their brass band is doing well too, even putting up a reasonable showing against the powerhouses from Yorkshire and Lancashire; where, I'm happy to report, all the brass bands come from. We had one of Christine's gargantuan buffet lunches and sang Happy Birthday to Bill, who turned 64 today. (Hopefully this Beatles milestone will encourage him to stick to lowlands walks.) Afterwards we drove to Glenridding, a village at the head of Ullswater. Inevitably it's a tourist-cum-walkers haven. It's never too crowded though and the houses, somehow all built entirely of slate, look grim enough to prevent excessive quaintness. We braved the rain for a stroll, watched a wedding party getting drenched (file under 'Looked Like A Good Idea On Paper') and walked through a nice meadow to the lake itself, which naturally gained a few more rocks courtesy of Emily and Gemma. Messed about the house for a long while afterwards, me mostly filling in the time by chasing after Emily roaring. Not the most eventful day but very nice nonetheless.

Lake District - July 2nd

2007-07-28T20:37:00.000Z

Walking day today, at least for those of us – me, Gav and Bill – still able to climb mountains. And not all of the trio are, in fact, really able to do that, but more of that later. Set off from a pub just beyond Brothers Water, walking up a pretty and largely deserted little valley. We were going parallel to the main road for a while but it was inaudible, drowned out by the torrent which was Caiston Beck. Today it was mostly dry with even, God help us, a few patches of sun. Last night it rained like a bitch, however, and as a result the water was flowing down any depression in the ground with stones at the bottom. 'Pivers' we called this combination of path and river, or possibly 'strath;' though on occasion they became paterfalls.

Fortunately the ascent wasn't too steep, up the valley until we left the official river behind and reached a pass at the top. Had lunch and did a steepish little climb to what may or may not have been a summit. Got into a bit of cloud here, just thin enough for us to realise how great the views would have been if it wasn't for the damn cloud. The idea originally was to do Hart Crag, with Fairfield an additional extra. But we were going so slow that we abandoned even Plan A, leaving Hart Crag as a final peak looming over us. Unfortunately me and Gav couldn't work out where the Softie's Path began and tried relying on cairns to guide us. These just led to the tops of cliffs; and overhanging, life-threatening cliffs at that. We couldn't decide if the cairns were meant to say 'Danger! Cliffs!' and were, by an oversight, made indistinguishable from the ones proclaiming 'Follow Me! Safety!'; or if they were, in fact, evil. Finally we found the actual path, which was blindingly obvious if only we'd waited a little longer. Somewhere amidst all this blundering about I think we climbed Dove Crag though it's hard to be sure.

The path, and sometimes strath, down was one of those constructed stairways which theoretically make it easier but are agony on the knees. It led into a very nice, narrow gully with another beck gushing along the bottom. This valley, Dovedale I think, was even more desolate, with only a couple of barns which even estate agents would struggle to sell as 'fixer-uppers.' Sadly my enjoyment was hindered by Bill's worsening condition. We've been here before. He's got Parkinson's, he's in his mid 60's and he patently can't do mountain climbing anymore. He was barely able to walk for the second half today, swaying and falling over constantly. There was a terrifying moment when he plunged sideways and briefly disappeared down the slope. Luckily he only fell a few feet and had only vanished into the bracken. Still, for his own safety if nothing else, he needs to be told: that's it. Eventually we struggled back to the car, completing quite a short walk which somehow took us over seven hours. Lorna seems addicted to playing the 'Cock A Doodle Doo' game with me, a rather tedious imagination game she concocted based on the concept of cockerels crowing in the middle of the night. Though there are some interesting spins; I liked it when the hens we bought to lay us breakfast eggs instead hatched a thousand chicks which blocked out the sun.

Lake District - July 1st

2007-07-28T20:34:00.000Z

A nice change in the weather today; torrential rain all the time replaced by torrential rain half the time. Mostly starting just as we were getting out of the car, but hey. Another radical break with family holiday traditions was that we stayed out the whole Sunday rather than rushing back for lunch. We didn't explode. First drove to Windermere, to the same touristy little town we stopped at last year; and I still can't remember the name. Wandered down the same lane, fooled around the same beach and I got pretty much the same photos of Emily and Gemma lobbing stones into the lake. Had coffee, hung about for ages outside a remarkably ghastly little shopping arcade. Then drove a short way along the lake for lunch at a picnic resort. Great drops started falling when we were part-way through, sending us scurrying for the shelter of the trees; it just needed ants attacking the sandwiches during the first half to complete the cliché. Afterwards we caught a care ferry across Windermere – or perhaps another lake, even mum seemed confused by the layout sometimes and she was navigating – in what looked suspiciously like sunshine.

Our next destination was Beatrix Potter's former house – no doubt we'll be digging up the bones of Wainwright and Wordsworth later in the week. (Although Wainwright's ashes were apparently scattered all over Haystacks, something which made me determined to never climb the mountain again.) I wasn't enthusiastic about this and, hey, I was right. The house itself was nice enough, a trim and well-proportioned structure albeit covered with the sort of quaint ambience you'd expect. Unfortunately they've recreated the traditional lighting inside, a nice idea but it meant you could barely see a damn thing. One semi-visible exhibit I enjoyed was a publisher's letter accepting one of Potter's stories – 'Wee Little Fairy Boots' or something' but rejecting several others. Reasons given were that they were "not topical" or "obviously a children's story", suggesting that Wee Little Fairy Boots was a sophisticated modern satire. Drove an adventurous route back, along roads inundated by flood waters and up the lunatic haul to the Kirkstone Pass. Stopped for a few minutes there, parents trying to find ravens/peregrines/some other damn tweety thing, me staring at the grim black clouds lapping at the cliffs about twenty feet above.

I sprung out like a jack-in-the-box almost as soon as we got home to climb some, if not all, of Plaice Fell on my own. The usual wonderful views soon emerged; the head of Ullswater at one end of Patterdale, squat and rectangular Brothers Water at the other, a patchwork of dry stone walled fields in between, the Helvellyn valley beyond managing to be both bright and deluged. To climb Plaice Fell you toil across the hillside, over assorted gushing streams in this weather, reach a damp little gap in between two peaks and wonder what to do. I headed left for the summit, feeling a little silly climbing a mountain in the late afternoon but muttering over and over "You don't need a reason to climb a mountain, you need a reason not to climb one." Then the rain started, I had my reason and so turned round. This may be a reason I mention over and over in this diary.

Lake District - June 30th

2007-07-28T20:26:00.000Z

In the absence of any more snide articles about David Cameron or religious fundementalism, or any desire to write them just now, I'm descending into the most despised area of all blogging. Namely, publishing my holiday diary to a vast audience who don't care one bit. The question 'have I no shame' has finally been answered.

Patterdale 2007

Right then. The family holiday is in the Lake District this year. Which isn't as epoch-making as it would once have been because we did the same last year. Same family members, same part of the world, same valley, even the same damn house. Only I was too lazy to write a diary then, so this one will have some semblance of originality. The house is called Broad Howe, a whopping great early 20th century micro-mansion with all sorts of unexpected chambers and a kitchen big enough for a banquet. It allegedly stands on land owned by Wordsworth, who planned to build on the plot but couldn't be arsed, though I'm not convinced by that rumour. The trio of Wordsworth, Wainwright and Beatrix Potter loom over the Lakes like Titans and all roads must lead to them. (There may have been a mixed metaphor in there). The valley is Patterdale, which stands at the head of Ullswater. It's absurdly picturesque, particularly where we are. The slopes of Plaice Fell, which I climbed last year and fully intend to climb again, rear up behind us. An anonymous but impressive nodule dominates the view across the valley. Striding Edge would be visible just beyond if the cloud wasn't so low, which it always damn well is. Strange that when you come back to a place there's all these details you'd forgotten but recall when you see again. The little lumps just outside the gardens, for example, the tree trying with insane if admirable determination to grow on top of a rock. I do, however, remember the streams of sodden walkers trudging past the gates with grim expressions; and remember the feeling of smug relief that I'm not them.

Set off from with mum and dad from York about 10-ish. It's quite a short drive, though took longer than expected due to most of the road network apparently being replaced. Had coffee at Scotch Corner, at a Moto enlivened by a vast Geordie hen party. Turned westwards across the Pennines, the scenery getting more impressive. And grim – as I've hinted, the weather today alternated between heavy showers and light showers. More is forecasted and, what with the recent floods, Peter yesterday advised be to get onto the highest peak and start gathering two of every animal. First to hand would apparently be llamas and Highland cattle, which seem to have appeared in a great multitude across the northern English countryside. Had lunch in a particularly heavy monsoon close to one of the various half-derelict castles which lurk around here. Later stopped at Penrith, a sort of junior market town, to do some shopping. I took against Penrith actually, though on reflection that was solely because somebody had turned the signs to the toilets around. Still, prejudices have to come from somewhere; and it is a miserable little hole. Got our first views of Ullswater shortly afterwards, which is always nice to see. It's admirably basic, a big, grim and largely empty slab of water with cliffs running almost straight down to the water's edge. We drove along the sliver of land wide enough for a road, stopped for tea at an aggressively quaint café at a National Trust place, saw a lunatic swimming the lake without a wetsuit, stopped yet again at a tourist/walking resort to solve the Great Potato Crisis. (Which I'm really not going to relate here). Amazingly, our next stop was actually our last. My sister Christine and her twin daughters Emily and Gemma were already there. Christine's husband Gav, their eldest Lorna, my uncle Bill and my Grandad rolled up not long after. The twins, being about two and a half are remarkably mobile these days, more so than most of the rest of us. Though they're still young enough to be amused by silly faces; luckily as that's pretty much the only string to my bow. Especially since the Roaring Game, as practiced with both them and Lorna, was vetoed by mum and anyway seems to be knackering my throat.

Yet More Pointless Self-Indulgence!

2007-05-20T16:05:00.000Z

Until I think of something worthwhile to write about, a first XI of my all time favourite football players. Bear in mind that I only really started watching in 1990 and only feel a strong bond towards people I've actually seen play. No doubt Pele and Alfredo di Stefano were better than, say, Matt le Tissier, but I've only got other people's word on that.

Goal
Dean Kiely
I was always going to be hopelessly partisan somewhere so I might as well get it over with. Kiely was part of the triumvirate of great York City players who took us from the depths of the fourth tier to near the top of the third in the early 1990's, knocking Man Utd and Everton out of the League Cup for good measure. (Jon McCarthy and Paul Barnes were the other two titans, incidentally). The big clubs were always sniffing around him but he somehow got sold to Bury, revealing a chronic lack of ambition by both us and him. He did eventually get to the Premiership, a key member of the Charlton side who punched above its weight for many seasons. In truth, Kiely was never the greatest keeper in the land. He had to pretend to be Irish just to get some caps and even they rarely used him. It's telling, though, how quickly Charlton declined after Alan Curbishley lost faith in him and flogged him to Portsmouth. What's happened to York since his departure, meanwhile, is far too painful to relate here.

Full Backs
Cafu
A marked contrast to his long-term full back partner, the flashy and useless Roberto Carlos. Rather than showboating Cafu simply worked his flank tirelessly; always skilful, sometimes dangerous but never forgetting he was part of the team. He was actually rather better at supplying his strikers with crosses than protecting his own goal. You don't want your Brazilians to be too defensive, though, and better managers like Phil Scholari could adjust to their full backs effectively being wingers in disguise. Cafu played in three consecutive World Cup finals, winning two of them. After his final one, in 2002, he was literally put on a pedestal and showered with thousands of origami swans. And why not?

Paulo Maldini
Emerged in the late 1980s as an assured, stylish and handsome star. Absurdly he's still around today, and preparing to play in yet another Champions League final, albeit somewhat slower and a little less handsome. Maldini epitomises all the virtues of Italian football, the qualities we wished it would show all the time: elegance, astuteness, composure on and off the ball. He won a bucket-load of trophies at Milan and God knows how many Best Groomed awards. The only blemish in his record is a poor showing at most international tournaments. His worst was probably 1998, probably because Italy were managed by Cesare Maldini. Little Paulo had to endure the worst nightmare of all grown up men: getting yelled at from the touchlines by his dad in front of all his mates.

Central Defence
Franco Baresi
Maldini's defensive ally for Milan and Italy for many years but, in some respects, his total opposite. Baresi had a lined, pock-marked face straight from the Middle Ages, possibly a Pieter Brueghel painting of carousing peasants. And he could represent the dark side of Italian football. He wasn't thuggish and certainly not theatrical. But if he wanted to stop an attacker then that attacker would get stopped, by whatever means available. Often a glower alone was enough to make people pause. In the early 1990's, there were few sights on a football field more terrifying than Franco Baresi in a strop.

Des Walker
Some central defenders are praised for their passing and composure on the ball. Which is fine, but not what they're paid for. They're there to protect their goal; and few could do it better than Walker in his prime. "You'll never beat Des Walker" the Nottingham Forest fans sung in the late 1980's and early 90's, a period which also included England's surprising appearance in a World Cup semi finals. He had a single-minded approach to his role, doubtless fostered by Brian Clough screaming at him whenever he dared cross the half-way line. But he wasn't dirty, able to rely on his anticipation and phenomenal pace. Sadly the second half of his career, after he left Forest, was a disappointment. Opponents of Sampdoria and Sheffield Wednesday found they could now beat Des Walker with relative ease. Still, as my friend once said, he was always just a few inches of hair away from looking exactly like Jimi Hendrix.

Midfield
Zvonimir Boban
Boban's biography would be as much a recent history of the Balkans as anything. In 1989 he entered Zagreb folklore by aiming a dropkick at a Serbian policeman when a Dinamo-Red Star match turned into anarchy. Then followed years of international exile thanks to the civil war which that riot heralded. Finally he emerged, no longer a Yugoslav but part of a new entity called Croatia. And he was a key part of the Croatian side which romped to the 1998 World Cup semi finals, as much a nationalistic campaign as a sporting one. Not necessarily all praiseworthy. But Croatia were admirable in their bloody-minded determination to make the world respect them. Also in the way they achieved this through sporting brilliance rather than just tiresome aggro. Boban was the most technically gifted of the bunch, a wonderful passer who liked to lurk dangerously behind his strikers. He did good service for Milan for years too, ironically forming a fine partnership with the Serb Savicevic. Nowadays Croatia have lost all the fervour of a new nation and never get anywhere.

Matthew le Tissier
A wonderful anachronism in the 1990's. He stayed loyal to one club his whole career, the relatively humble Southampton. He played football out of a dream rather than a coaching manual. And in an era of muscular pretty boys he was laid-back, often overweight and always hideously ugly. The much-derided Alan Ball found the best way to handle le Tissier; just give him the ball as much as possible and let him get on with it. The result was a stream of brilliant individual goals – some so good they were almost farcical – and a generally mediocre Southampton side consistently finishing high up in the league. England, of course, messed it up. Le Tissier was always played out of position and scapegoated at the first opportunity. As a result, he only won nine caps and we always exited tournaments early. He departed with a typical fairytale flourish, however. Southampton's last ever game at The Dell, and who comes off the bench to score the winner in the last ever game of his career? Well, it was never going to be Francis Benali.

Georghe Hagi
The 'Maradona of the Carpathians' first caught my eye when Romania faced Argentina in the 1990 World Cup. Not only did he have a great nickname, he comprehensively outplayed the original Maradona. Hagi remained at the centre of a string of stylish Romanian sides over the next decade. He was a standard midfield genius really, capable of orchestrating his whole team and opening up the meanest defence with an inspired pass or bendy free kick. Oddly enough, his brilliance only really showed at international level. Another fine tournament would lead to another move to a big club. Hagi would soon fall out with his employers and get kicked out to somewhere like Brescia. Then the next tournament came around… The one exception was his Indian summer at Galatasaray, who he inspired to the 2000 UEFA Cup. He got sent off in the final, mind you, but that was mainly due to the theatrics of 'Honest' Tony Adams

Stephen Gerrard
Only just got onto this list, with two factors counting against him. His protracted struggles against temptation whenever Chelsea make an offer; and his poor showing at international level. But so far he's always resisted the evil West London-Siberian alliance in the end. And if his failures for England are genuine, he can at least claim the excuse of ten team-mates under-performing alongside him. In a Liverpool shirt, Gerrard can be phenomenal. He's capable of destroying the opposition through sheer force of will. The cup finals against West Ham and Milan epitomised his value; a belligerent determination to triumph which dragged his whole side forward. There's also something endearingly juvenile about his constant runs into the box, his attempts to do almost everything. Watching his workrate makes me think that some modern players deserve, if not their full salaries – who the hell does? – then perhaps a tenth of them at least.

Attack
Hristo Stoichkov
Think 'Bulgarian' and you probably picture somebody poor, humble, inconsequential. Then you've got Stoichkov. A petulant, brutish bully, he had explosive pace and a phenomenal shot but often just seemed to terrorise defenders into getting out of his way. He swaggered into the highly impressive Barcelona side of the 1990's. With Romario alongside him and Johan Cruyff in charge, it's a miracle that even the Nou Camp was large enough to accommodate their egos. Stoichkov also led Bulgaria to the semi-finals of the 1994 World Cup. En route they knocked out Germany in one of the most emotionally satisfying games I've ever seen; definitive proof that classic Teutonic arrogance had been surpassed by new egos from the East.

Gabriel Batistuta
Unlike Stoichkov, and unlike Maradona who he replaced in Argentinean hearts, Batistuta wasn't about attitude or politics. He was about goals, basically. And he scored a phenomenal number of them from an absurd range of angles. He didn't dribble through whole defences like Henry or Weah, but nor was he simply a goal-hanger. Just give him the ball a reasonable distance out and he'd probably score, however implausible this appeared. My favourite of his was for Fiorentina against Argentina. Batistuta receives the ball but the angle is tight, there's no immediate danger. A second later, Arsenal are a goal down and heading out of the Champions League. And off the field, despite looking like a rather bad rock star, 'The Archangel Gabriel' lived up to his name. (Though presumably didn't tell any virgins that they were pregnant with Our Saviour.) Sadly his trophy chest remained rather empty, thanks to his loyalty to Fiorentina and playing for various Argentinean sides never quite as good as they first appeared.

Substitutes from: Oliver Kahn, for being the goalkeeper I should have chosen rather than Dean Bloody Kiely. Marco Materazzi, for scoring in the 2006 World Cup final, scoring in the penalty shootout, having a shot cleared off the line and getting headbutted by Zidane (but otherwise enjoying a quiet game). Ronaldinho, for being both brilliant and the most butt-ugly marketing icon in history. Zinedine Zidane, as Ronaldinho but read 'second most butt-ugly marketing icon in history'. George Weah, for being a wonderful individualist who actually wanted the job of running a basket-case like Liberia (even if the Liberians didn't want him.) Oliver Neuville, for looking and sometimes playing like a frustrated insurance salesman in a Billy Wilder satire. Roberto Baggio, for being the tragic hero of 1994 and the only man ever to get away with wearing a ponytail. And so and so on…

Stomach Churning

2007-05-14T18:24:00.001Z

Another reason for friendly bombs to fall on Slough. Masterfoods, makers of Mars, Snickers and Twix amongst others, have started introducing rennet into their products. Rennet is made, charmingly enough, from cows' stomachs. Some cheeses have it too, some prefer a vegetarian substitute. When the latter is used it makes absolutely no difference to taste or texture. But now, for no good reason, you can't be a vegetarian and eat a bloody Snickers.

As I've probably mentioned before, I despair of capitalism sometimes. Not because of it's greed or callousness – it's supposed to be those things – but because of it's incompetence. We live in an age of targeted marketing and saturation-bombing advertising and zippy-zappy internet techniques to get us to buy things. And why bother? When a huge company just fiddles with its recepies to exclude millions of people from its potential market.

In Masterfoods' defence, they don't seem to fully understand the issue. A spokesman said only "extremely strict vegetarians" would be repelled while "a less strict vegetarian should be fine." Now, look. Not eating stomachs isn't just a stance taken by the fundamentalists. It's not on a par with only consuming fruit which has fallen naturally from the tree. Not eating stomachs is pretty much at the heart of the matter. Oh, and in case you were wondering, we don't eat hearts either.

I think Masterfoods have taken Dylan Moran's line a little too seriously: "I'm a vegetarian but I'm not a hardcore one. I mean, I eat meat."

The Subcomandante and the Siren

2007-05-14T18:14:00.000Z

Why do writers of romantic and erotic fiction do it? Surely even a job at Burger King would be less miserable. Grinding out tale after tale of unlikely and generally undesirable liaisons between gimlet-eyed men and feisty but sweet-hearted women. Some authors are single mothers, I suppose, tied to their homes by their children; some pensioners likewise by their infirmities. And a few are Latin American revolutionaries trying to support the struggle of an indigenous people against an unjust social system.

Like Subcomandante Marcos, leader of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico's Chiapas region. Famous for sporting a quirky balaclava-and-pipe combo, he's got a new book coming out soon. It won't be Mexico's answer to Das Capital. With endearing honesty he admits his motives and adds, "There's no politics in the text this time. Just sex." The Colombian guerrillas sell cocaine to fund their rebellion. This seems a healthier option. Well, more or less healthier, all things considered.

I assume Marcos is using an assumed name on the book cover – or rather, another assumed name. He's a man rather protective of his identity. And 'The Princess and the Pauper by Subcomandante Marcos' doesn't really have the right ring to it. Which raises the intriguing question – is he the first to come up with this idea? Or are some of your Isabella Heavingbosoms and Otto von Shagathons also courageous rebel leaders in disguise? I'd like to think so. Though, of course, others, maybe be supporting less worthy causes. There may be neo-Nazis and genetic cleansers paying the troops by writing of fiery but forbidden love. Defenders of copyright are always telling us that bootleg films and albums often support hardcore criminal activities. The same warnings should go through your mind the next time you consider buying a Mills & Boon.

Giant Heads In Vases

2007-04-23T19:06:00.000Z

How good exactly is the new Doctor Who? That was one of those hypothetical questions. The only answer any sane man can give is 'extremely'. Its inventiveness, humour and unabashed absurdity make it the best light entertainment show the BBC has produced for years. The best anyone has, almost. It's not quite at the level of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the Hamlet of far-fetched drama, but sometimes it comes close.

Last week's episode, for example. This addressed one of my regular complaints – that the Tardis rarely bothers leaving Earth, or even London, anymore. Well, it kind of did. The strange planet it landed on was actually New Earth. Specifically, of course, New New York (or Really New York or something like that). It's a start, I suppose.

Incredibly New York, You Don't Get Newer Than This, has a problem, naturally. Remember all those clichéd sci-fi cities with rocket cars whizzing joyfully through the sky? Forget it here. The rocket cars are all stuck solid in a three dimensional subterranean gridlock. Whole lives can be spent travelling two miles on the motorway. Actually reaching your destination – well, that concept's so implausible that few even contemplate it. Instead the Promised Land has become the motorway fast lane where, legends say, you can almost reach 30 mph.

Unfortunately the legends also say that monsters live in the fast lane and these ones are true. Specifically, giant crab type things which live off the billowing clouds of exhaust fumes. It's not explained why they also attack cars but, well, they're monsters aren't they? And there's worst. There are no destinations any more. All of New Earth has been wiped out by a mutant happy drug. The only power left is supplied by a giant head in a vase and his catwoman attendant. (And this is why I keep banging on about Doctor Who; I can't over-emphasise how much pleasure I got from writing those last two sentences.) All there's left is the motorway.

That's one of the great things about the series. It takes a fairly obvious piece of satire and then turns it on its head. The remnants of a civilisation survive precisely because they're in a permanent gridlock. The motorway has saved them. And, by extension, cars are good. Which other wannabe fashionable show would have the nerve to say that nowadays?

There's parts of it that are less good. Forty five minutes is still too short for a whole story. In particular I'd have liked to find more out about these people stuck permanently in their cars. Not why some were half-cats – a surreal touch better for its lack of explanation. But why they were all so patient. There was no cussing or honking of horns. They even broke off occasionally to sing hymns. It certainly distinguished them from the motorists of old New York. Or even, for that matter, Really Dead Old York.

I've also still got misgivings about David Tennant as the Doctor. At times he attempts Christopher Ecclestone's intensity, at others he goes for a Tom Baker-esque eccentricity. Really, though, he's just a slightly more interesting Peter Davison. And as it's biologically impossible to be less interesting than Peter Davison, that isn't saying much. Freema Agyeman, despite being remarkably attractive, isn't my favourite either. She's settled in quickly but only by making herself a Billie Piper clone. It seems that for the foreseeable future all of the Doctor's assistants will be bright, brassy Cockney girls; just as they always used to be simpering things only good for screaming.

Side issues, however. Doctors and their assistants come and go. The series will remain great as long as there's Russell T Davies' scripts, funny, inventive and never quite going where you expect. Plus, of course, giant heads in vases and their catwoman attendants.

This Our Manifesto

2007-04-19T16:59:00.000Z

The exceedingly weak joke made at the end of the last post and all the fuss made over what's-his-name's code of conduct for blogs – you know, the one who keeps getting himself photographed holding a hammer looking really, really hard – has made me think about this blog. Not rules for it as such but an ethos, an underlying meaning. After all it's been going for over a year, with over 70 posts now and about 2 semi-regular readers. (One being my mum.) What, condensed, are the messages I am trying to say?

After skimming through past posts, I think I am conveying 5 central points to the world:

1. Art is nice
2. Capitalism is nasty
3. George Bush – booooo!
4. The kids are all right
5. God exists (probably)

And of course the central point, one which unites most blogs throughout the world:

I have slightly too much free time

Freedom!

2007-04-19T16:47:00.000Z

Just spent the last three days in hospital. To be specific: fastened to a machine in a solitary hospital room, a camera following my every move and a microphone capturing every sound. About twenty electrodes were superglued to my head, another four selloped to my temples and shoulders. I wasn't allowed to leave the room throughout. I did leave it once, in fact, storming out on Tuesday after a dispute with the nurses far too lengthy and dull to relate here. But I returned quickly and otherwise I was good. All this was a test to find out why my brain keeps going wrong, basically; if I really do have epilepsy or if I have to tear up that membership badge and join a far more exclusive club. Or so they said. As these hospital tests get increasingly baroque, I'm getting the feeling that they've just given up and are messing with me.

I've yet to learn the results, thanks partly to leaving the hospital a day earlier than I probably should. However, you always learn some things from these experiences. Here are a few of my reflections:

Nurses are genuinely nice. All of them, without exception. The ones on Ward 38 of York District Hospital at least. Or rather, nice to your face – I overheard one, forgetting that my room was opposite the nurses' station, slagging me off to her colleagues. But I'd been a stroppy bugger just before and, in her place, I'd have said a lot worst.

Staying in hospital is embarrassing if you're not sick. And you're not sick really if you have my level of epilepsy. (Or whatever the hell it is). You have a few periods of lying helpless and twitching, and the rest of the time you're fine. So it's awkward when nurses, due to aforementioned niceness, are forever popping in to pour you glasses of water or adjust your bed. They probably get affronted too when you keep telling them you can do it all yourself. And then they slag you off behind your back.

Always being on camera makes you want to do terrible things. Rubbing my genitals in my case, I'm afraid. It was a constant temptation whenever I was lying on the bed. And it's not something I want to do normally – I'm lying on my bed right now and I don't feel the urge at all. Perhaps it was just a need to shock and get away with it. If I'd given in – and I didn't once, I'm glad to say – and been confront ed about it, I could just have yelled "There's something wrong with my brain! Why do you think I'm here?"

Hospital cleaners have a different status to other cleaners. Whenever I see them in offices or hotels or wherever, I feel sorry for them. They're doing a rubbish job for little money. Whenever I saw the woman who cleaned my room, I envied her. After all, she wasn't hooked to a bloody machine with fifty wires glued to her bloody head.

Hospital rules can be a little rigid. When they finally unplugged me, they sent a porter with a wheelchair to take me to the room where my wires would be removed. I told him I really didn't need a wheelchair. He replied that if sent with one, he had to push his target back in it "in case something happened." So if you saw a youngish man being wheeled through the corridors today, don't feel sorry for him. The look of acute embarrassment I wore wasn't the product of mental disorder. I was just embarrassed.

I smoke because I like to. I was a bit apprehensive about all those cigarette-free days, of course. As it turned out I coped absolutely fine, thanks in part to some seriously out-of-date nicotine gum pinched from my dad. And when I stepped off hospital grounds today, I instantly lit up. It was lovely; and so is the cigarette I'm smoking right now.

Freedom is wonderful, especially when abused. Upon getting home, after washing half a gallon of glue out of my head, I popped to a nearby shop for a minor purchase. Then I popped to another nearby shop for another minor purchase. Then I popped to yet another nearby shop for yet another minor purchase. Just because I could.

Being in hospital turns you into a self-obsessed narcissist. All the fussing over you, all the questions about yourself… it's natural, I think. This my excuse for lapsing into archetypal blog territory right now. Back soon, I promise, to dissecting trivial stories in The Guardian and musing on paintings I know nothing about.

Betrayals

2007-04-09T14:40:00.000Z

The Easter story has always been the best in the Bible. There is, as mentioned below, death and rebirth. There's blood and sacrifice and suffering and blood. There's a great deal of blood, in fact. It's no wonder that Mel Gibson, in his Passion of the Christ, was able to make a previously unseen link between the Gospels and Quentin Tarentino.

More importantly the Easter story also has a wide range of human actions. Mostly of the worst kind. There's the fickleness of crowds, the feebleness of conciliatory politicians. There are crises of faith everywhere. There's even a crisis of faith from the son of God, for heaven's sake; an astonishing passage even in a text which breaks many rules of what you should do when establishing a new religion. Above all else, there are betrayals. Judas', of course. Even though Jeffrey Archer is currently peddling line, I still believe that Judas has been slightly harshly treated by posterity. He was basically a cipher after all, taking Jesus to a death which was necessary for human salvation. Besides, Judas wasn't alone. Everyone let Jesus down ultimately.

The Easter story has also inspired the best art. There are some decent images of Jesus' birth. But all painters of the Nativity succumb, to one degree or another, to an impulse known as "Ooooh, it's a liddle baby!" This sort of tweeness isn't possible in the cynicism leading up to the Crucifixion, the brutality of the event and the miracle afterwards. Pieter Brugel lashed out at the crowds in The Procession To Calvary, his astonishing depiction of the Crucifixion treated as a Sunday outing. (Pontificated on in more detail in an earlier posting.) Caravaggio played to his strengths too, showing a dark and disturbing Flagellation Of Christ by two satanic guards. Blood is missing from Andrea Mantegna's painting but only because it's all already drained from The Dead Christ; Jesus is as grey as a crypt, four gruesome holes in his body. There isn't, in fact, much optimism in most of the Easter paintings. The focus is on what we lost, not on what we've supposedly gained.

Especially in one of the defining images, Leonardo's The Last Supper. The last stage in Jesus' fatalistic trudge towards his death. The painting captures perfectly the poignancy of the event; and it anticipates the betrayals to come. Leonardo was superb at the precisely ordered group portrait and here it becomes more than an academic demonstration. Jesus sits at the head of the table and the centre of the picture, surrounded by his disciples. He sits alone, however. Those nearest him are leaning or even recoiling away. The ones on the fringes are staring at him, gossiping amongst themselves; but nobody is addressing him directly. He has lost them and he knows this. His face downturned, he spreads his hands out hopelessly. Jesus seems to be asking, what more can I do for you? Die for them – and Leonardo paints this as if it means he's failed.

It's a very human story, the Easter one. There's no constant interaction with a booming voice from the heavens. There's just a religious leader, a little too perfect for his or any other time. One who's betrayed and finally, torn apart by pain, seems to lose his own faith. It's a tragic tale too, the triumph of malice and avarice, and sometimes the Resurrection almost feels like a happy ending tacked on rather artificially. That's not the proper interpretation, I know, but maybe it's an excusable one. Because we do betray our saints and we do excuse our crooks. (Hello Mr Archer and pass on my regards to your new best mate, the Pope.) We do fail because of pettiness or greed or cowardice. We do it all the time and that's probably why somebody had to get himself nailed to a cross to redeem us.

All Your Easter Eggs In One Basket

2007-04-09T14:35:00.000Z

It was just a story heard in a pub so I'm not sure if it's true. I'd like to think so, however. A supermarket recently claimed we had forgotten the true meaning of Easter eggs. They symbolise the rebirth of Christ, apparently. And so, by extension, buying and gorging mounds of chocolate at this time of year is our holy duty. Actual Christians complained about this so loudly that the supermarket was forced to apologise.

We thought that they weren't creative enough. They could have said, for example, that the crucifix was actually oval shaped. Or perhaps Jesus himself was. Why stop, too, with appropriating eggs? Take the Easter Bunny, for example. Perhaps this came about because when Christ rose from the tomb, he hop-hoppity-hopped away from it.

Of course eggs and bunnies aren't Christian images. They are pagan ones, just like holly and mistletoe and fir trees. There was a festival at springtime and another in midwinter long before Christianity emerged. They were linked directly to the seasons and their symbols reflect this. The winter ones are reassurances, plants which remain green when everything else has died. In spring comes a celebration, images of life and rebirth. The eggs are obvious, a more direct and less gooey substitute for the womb. The Easter bunny began as the March hare, which was rather mystifyingly given great significance by the old religions. The two are linked, incidentally; it was believed that hares hatched from eggs. Which were laid by lapwings, it seems, on the basis that both creatures live in fields. Clear logic was something else yet to appear in these societies.

It's obvious why the early Christian church appropriated the old festivals. The missionaries were doing a selling job. They wanted to give people something clearly recognisable and which didn't interfere with their pleasures too much. The Nativity didn't quite fit with the old solstice festival but did offer a cause for a straightforward celebration, something always needed in the middle of a grim winter. The Easter story, meanwhile, is perfect for spring. At its heart is death and rebirth. Jesus falls, lies in a tomb and rises again. You can take that, on one level, as a metaphor for the crops withering in autumn and miraculously springing to life again when the seasons change.

There are some Christians who don't like this. Now they've got the old festivals, they want to strip the last remaining pagan symbols from them. Get the Christmas trees out of Christmas, the Easter eggs out of Easter. Let's focus on what really matters. This always strikes me as rather ungrateful, turning on your sponsors when you no longer need them. It's a peculiarly irreligious attitude too. After all, holy events aren't just ones which happened two thousand years ago to a narrow cast of characters. Look at other images of Easter: daffodils, blossom, fluffy chicks. They can be rather hard to take on a full stomach, but in their purest form they are symbols of life. Life suddenly bursting out, life at its most unexpected and glorious. And if you can't see the touch of God in these constant miracles, what exactly is the point in believing in Him?

Well Duh pt. 67

2007-04-05T17:40:00.000Z

There's been two poll s recently which studied, as Basil Fawlty would say, the bleeding obvious. A couple of months ago, The Guardian discovered that parents didn't know what their teenage offspring get up to. Mums and dads seemed to assume their little angles were sharing cups of Horlicks and playing pinball at the youth club. Instead said angels were, of course, drinking, taking drugs and fornicating with each other. This week a poll of teachers announced that schoolchildren were influenced by what they saw on television. They especially liked repeating catchphrases, the more antisocial the better.

Well, to mimic a thousand American programs, duh. I'm not sure who conducts these surveys or why they don't use a simpler methodology called 'remembering their own childhoods.' Of course teenagers break the law and don't tell their parents. It's half of the essential teenage experience. (The other half being getting depressed and telling absolutely everyone about that). When asked if she knew what I used to get up to my mum replied, no, and she didn't want to either. May this attitude be passed down many generations.

And schools are awash with bad imitations of Catherine Tate and Little Britain today? I recall being swamped with equally dreadful ones of Mr T, Lenny Henry (in his early "Ohhhhh-Kaaayy" years) and Neil from The Young Ones. Children find something they like and mimic it. It's a natural habit and, as this post has oh-so-subtly demonstrated, not confined to the young. Anyway, what do teachers expect children to talk about amongst themselves? Their bloody maths homework?

I do, however, applaud them singling out Catherine Tate's snotty girl character for special criticism. The one with the phrase "Am I bovvered?" as the sole 'joke' in each and every sketch. I know somebody who repeats this often and gratuitously, to the dismay of all around him. That person is my sixty year old father, but that's beside the point. Ban it from our screens. Ban it now.

Widening The Gulf

2007-03-29T17:56:00.000Z

So, let me se if I've correctly interpreted the stance of the British tabloids? It's morally repugnant for Iran to parade the fifteen captured British Navy personnel on television. And yet it's perfectly decent to splash pictures from that broadcast all over your front pages? Thus causing the families of the sailors, especially of Faye Turney who seems to be made the star of the show, considerably more distress?

Of course, the hypocrisies of the British media are being dwarfed by others. It's OK to patrol the waters of a country you illegally invaded on the whim of America – as long as you stay out of the waters of a country you're merely about to invade on the whim of America? Mohammed said women in public must cover their heads, but would have nothing to say about a woman being displayed as a trophy of a war that's not even started yet? It's a squalid affair and getting worst each day. And, whatever occurred in the Shatt al-Arab waterway last week, it should have been over by now. The diplomats ought to have sorted it out between themselves, quietly and behind the curtains. That's what they're there for. But Blair blundered in, strutting about in front of the EU leaders. So Ahmadinejad had to start blundering and strutting in response. Two weak men mainly held up by bluster, and they've quickly reduced it to the level of the playground. "They were in my waters." "No, they were in my waters" etc. And trapped in the middle are the only real innocents; because whichever bloody waters they were in, they would only have been there because they were sent.

However this mess resolves itself, Ahmadinejad is likely to regret it. It's unlikely to start a war on it's own. Britain isn't Israel. We don't care enough about our soldiers to fight for them. But it's got the blood of the tabloids up. They didn't care much hitherto about Iran building nuclear reactors or funding Hizbullah or any other tricky issues. Humiliating a young British woman though – that they can understand. Ahmadinejad is already being manoeuvred into the role of Brutal Arabian Dictator which was forcibly vacated by Saddam Hussein. That his name is hard to spell and even trickier to pun with could cause problems. The fact that he was actually elected could cause some qualms too, albeit rather less. That shouldn't stop the journalists, however. When they want to make someone a folk devil they usually get the job done. With the headline "Who do you think you are kidding Mr Ahmadinejad?" The Sun has already begun the Hitler comparisons.

Why should Ahmadinejad care about this? Because it will make the task of selling an Iranian war to the British public considerably easier. The one honest reason for invading Iraq, after all, was "Saddam is nasty." And a real tabloid clamour may even push a British government into attacking. Blair has always capitulated to the newspapers on all major issues sooner or later. David Cameron goes even further, making the improvement of his image his sole consistent policy. The capture of one boat won't start a war, but suddenly it feels like the build-up to one.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

2007-03-27T16:38:00.000Z

I saw Rick Witter on Friday night. It was a bit dispiriting. You may recall Rick Witter: former schoolmate of mine, former lead singer of Shed Seven, former pop star. He wasn't on stage when I saw him. He was just having a drink in the Punchbowl, a smart but not especially fashionable pub in York city centre. Nor did the place exactly erupt when he walked in. The only people who seemed to recognise him were me and my friend; and that's just because we went to school with him.

"He's keeping it real," my friend suggested. But I've never been in favour of celebrities doing this. Like royalty and football players, they have a template they should adhere to. When Witter goes out on a Friday night, he ought to step large. He should be sniffing coke in a London nightclub, berating his agent who's angling to book him a place on Celebrity Big Brother. Not having a drink in places like the Punchbowl in provincial little York, along with the rest of us tossers.

The more depressing thought is that maybe Witter has no choice nowadays. It's been a while since Shed Seven split up, I know, and his new band don't seem to be going anywhere. I'd always assumed, though, that he was still lit up by the half-glow of former celebrities, still getting a few invites and bookings. Maybe not. His life might have become an arc so perfect that even Hollywood screenwriters would reject it as unrealistic. And he's back precisely where he started, the point most of us never left anyway, wondering if his years of chart stardom were just a dream.

An Anti-Social Crime

2007-03-22T18:49:00.000Z

The Guardian recently highlighted a new phenomenon on our streets, comical and disturbing in equal measure. The Mosquito, an ultrasonic device which apparently emits regular, high-pitched beeps only audible to the under-25's. It is designed to be fitted to shops and the like, and to make any loitering teenagers so annoyed that they will eventually skulk off. The aim is to stop them indulging in that act which has so blighted our cities – Hanging Around and Sometimes Swearing.

This is amusing because I can't imagine for a second that this dog-whistle-in-reverse can ever work. The human ear changes a little as we age, I know. But is there really a switch that suddenly flicks on one's 25th birthday preventing you hearing anything above a certain frequency? And even if the science holds, the effect surely won't be what is intended. If youths are ever annoyed by something, youths with enough time to identify the source and a propensity to petty vandalism – well, that object is going to become a lot of serrated metal and cut wires fairly soon. Besides, who's to say that teenagers will be repelled by repetitive beeps? This is, after all, the generation which rediscovered the joys of illegal raves. They just need to bring along a beatbox and the Mosquito will supply the soundtrack for their evenings.

More disturbing is the intention. Mosquitoes aren't burglar alarms. They aren't anything to do with crime prevention. They are designed to deny people access to areas which are supposedly open to the public. Not all people either – note the targeting, even if it doesn't work in practice. Mosquitoes are the next stage in an increasingly vicious campaign against youth. It's a war which has included Asbos – punishments which don't require convictions or juries or proof – and a Prime Minister talking about the handily nebulous idea of "anti-social behaviour." Now it's going to the next level. Excluding teenagers from the streets entirely, only one step away from blanket curfews.

The posters for Mosquitoes apparently show a hoodie screaming in pain. Of course they used this image. The hoodie, an object rivalled only in modern demonology by the burqa. (Why is our society so reassured by the sight of human hair anyway?) The icon of the "feral gangs," in the words of the Daily Mail, who have taken over the night time streets. Not by committing crimes all that often, you understand. But simply by the foul act of Hanging Around and Sometimes Swearing.

Moral panic towards the young is nothing new. Stanley Cohen coined the phrase in his analysis of the huge campaigns whipped up against tiny groups of mods and rockers in the 1950's. But it seems particularly intense at the moment, when hysteria is so fashionable but the choice of targets are so restricted. If journalists want to frighten their readers but don't want to seem like racists, they usually have to pick on teenagers.

Asked if they support devices like the Mosquito, people often cite their own nervousness towards groups of teenagers. They usually seem a little awkward saying this, however. There is some recognition that it's silly to be scared of undernourished youths in silly jumpers doing nothing more than HASS-ing. And it is irrational. It's a phobia and it can be beaten. The first step is to keep the Daily Mail and their ilk a safe distance away. Perhaps with some sort of ultrasonic device.

King Balthazar

2007-03-09T19:10:00.000Z

Some hobbies are only ever interesting to their followers. Others occasionally throw up items of fascination for the rest of us. Birdwatching is a good example of the former. When someone remarks that they saw a grey-breasted winchat on Kirkham Ings I find myself, as PG Wodehouse used to say, waiting for the punchline. The twitcher's life, chasing after obscure dippers and plovers blown off course onto ghastly beaches on Teesside, can only be experienced from the inside. It's all just names and numbers to the rest of us. Especially as the birds concerned are usually just little brown tweeting things.

Genealogy is the same most of the time. I'm sure I would have loved to meet my great-great-great uncle, even if he had been a birdwatcher. But I'm not that interested in his life. He would have been a tailor or a minister because nearly everyone's was. Or a blacksmith or a farmer or so on. Taken as a mass, the facts of ordinary people can form social history. On an individual level there's some interesting stories to b found. But generally, families aren't enthralling. They drifted around the country getting on with things, occasionally reproducing and/or dying. Genealogy is the collection of names, knowledge for the sake of it.

Occasionally, though, surprising ancestors can be found. Like those of the magnificently named Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon. Historians are now fairly sure that Balthazar would be heir to the throne of France, if only there was still a throne of France. Which is hinted at by his name but not his person – a very Indian looking Indian lawyer living in Bhopal. The link seems to come from a rather demented sixteenth century nephew of Henry IV who 'swashbuckled' – i.e. blundered – around the world and founded a long line of Indian Bourbons. Somehow they survived, too obscure for even Robespierre to track them down and eradicate them.

Balthazar himself doesn't seem too excited by the revelations. Not surprisingly given that a) the last proper King of France got decapitated and b) there's no money. "Bourbon on the rocks" he calls his family, which is quite a good joke for someone with royal blood. Though he's filled his house with French geegaws, he isn't given himself airs. Tess of the D'urbevilles' life was ruined by genealogy. The discovery of a distant connection to the local wealthy family filled her father with pretensions, starting the chain of events which eventually destroyed her. Any daughters of King Balthazar will probably escape the same fate.

The Man From Another Planet

2007-03-01T18:40:00.000Z

I'm currently enjoying the second series of BBC1's light drama, Life On Mars. For those who don't know it, John Simm plays a Manchester cop catapulted, for reasons yet to be made clear, back to 1973. Most of the comedy comes from the conflict between Simm's modern methods and those of his old-fashioned new colleagues. It's a contrast of TV clichés really. Simm's careful, forensic approach to crime-solving would get him a role in CSI: Salford. The other coppers, beating up suspects before sinking ten pints in the local boozer, would just have to change their accents to walk straight into The Sweeney. Simm is keeping his origins secret, incidentally, explaining his unorthodox style by saying he comes from Hyde. This is presumably a regional joke which gets them roaring with mirth on the East Lancs Road. I don't get it, personally.

My main objection to the show, however, concerns the title. It's clever enough. The Brave Old World which Simm lands on is made to look so thuggish and unrefined that it does seem like another planet sometimes. David Bowie's song Life On Mars was also released in 1973. Another notable event that year was my birth. So I've got to accept that during my lifetime, every facet of society has changed almost beyond recognition? Nothing seems all that different, to be honest.

It's going to get worst too. The decade of my adolescence, the 1980's, is currently very recognisable. It's the era of choice for the retro-bars. This is actually quite fun; I can tell people that I hated leg warmers and the New Romantics at the time and hate them just as much now. But they're going to go out of fashion soon and stay out this time. The magazine editors will move on to the 1990's and start pretending they love ripped jeans and Britpop. And the whole of my childhood will sink into an incomprehensible murk, as distant from modern life as pantaloons, rationing or Glenn Miller.

The Long And Short Of It

2007-02-23T18:14:00.000Z

When The Guardian recently polled possible future leaders of the Labour Party about the Iraq occupation, some surprising divergences emerged. Not in what they said, which was all pretty much what you'd expect, but in how they said it.

The biggest contrasts were between Peter Hain, Northern Ireland Secretary, and John Reid, Home Secretary. Hain's replies were multi-sectioned wonders. They weren't that badly phrased but they just never ended. On the issue of when British troops should withdraw from Iraq, for example: "We should bring our troops home as soon as the situation on the ground allows and not stay a day longer than is needed to enable a safe handover to the Iraq people and their democratically elected government."

And that was before he started squirming. Asked if an enquiry about the war should be held after Tony Blair leaves office, he really lets go. I won't quote his last sentence in full. But it's got over 60 words and turns, apparently spontaneously, into an epic saga detailing all Blair's achievements in office. It's no wonder Hain has been a success in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists must agree to anything just to shut him up.

John Reid, meanwhile, simply answers "No" to three of the five questions. Even when he bothers with actual sentences there are mitigating circumstances. Saying "when the time is right" in response to the British withdrawal seems uncharacteristically chatty. But he was actually just repeating one of the three options given in the question. Effectively his answer was "Box C please, Noel." As for claiming "I cannot answer a hypothetical question" when asked if he would support a future military strike on Iran – well, it's hard to see how this could have been phrased more concisely. "That's a hypothetical question" would raise the rebuttal "So what?" "I don't know" was what he was really saying, but that would make him look at fault rather than the interviewer. And Reid is a master at transferring the blame.

Opinions will vary on whether he appears succinct or arrogant, whether Hain comes across as an intellectual or a windbag. But I can guess who's won the support of your standard lazy journalist. Reid has given them some neat soundbites in the past, mainly about how bloody awful his Home Office is. If he gets into Downing Street, though, they may have to put in some effort to fill their column inches. With Hain, they'll just have to switch the microphones on and sit back.

Empires

2007-02-17T13:54:00.000Z

Currently ploughing my way through one of Livy's histories of Rome. It's an interesting experience, a book fascinating and tedious in equal measure Reading more than ten pages at once puts me to sleep, but I always feel regret as I slump into unconsciousness. Both reactions are probably because Livy, born around 60BC, pretty much cast the mould for the classic historian. He wasn't interested in gender relations or economic structures or the plight of the working man. His one comment on social conditions was a hint that, in 180BC, Rome was still a bit of a dump. He was a fan of Big Men & Battles. Every siege of every scrubby little fortified town in Greece and Asia Minor is faithfully recorded. And his analysis of the characters of the Big Men is restricted to what speeches they made at key moments, renditions which go on for pages and pages.

I'm not sure how Livy knows these speeches so well. One, for example, was delivered as a general was preparing to flush out some barbarians from a mountain chain in the middle of Turkey. It's unlikely that a clerk was faithfully jotting down every word. I suspected that Livy invented most of them. But then a blitheness about the veracity of accounts is also a feature of traditional history. This has some advantages. Livy was exploring what was then relatively uncharted territory. When modern historians do the same (looking at the 7th and 8th centuries, for example), they spend most of their time moaning about the paucity of evidence. Livy just gets on with it. His only comments on methodology is to occasionally observe that one historian claims 40,000 enemy soldiers were slaughtered in a battle, another that ten men were slightly wounded and two more contracted nasty head colds. It's worth noting that nobody complains about the lack of sources for Roman times. After all, we have Livy. Who based his statements on… what, exactly?

Like all historians from history, Livy comes with a Handle With Care notice. He was writing as the Imperial structures were first solidifying under Augustus. Like many men at the time, he saw this as degenerating the Roman spirit. Accordingly, he sometimes over-exaggerates the dignity and grandeur of the Republic as he analysis its rise. No modern historians carry such a warning, incidentally, even though their works are increasingly subjective. We just have to remember that all interpretations are filtered through Western, capitalist, democratic minds. But Livy's approach is definitely indicative of his culture. His belief in his, often unsubstantiated, statements mirrors the confidence of the Romans. Yet this self-assurance rarely, under the Republic at least, transformed into vanity and certainly not into a dubious concept like destiny. The Romans believed they would become greater and greater, but also believed in planning for this. So they painstakingly laid out a baffling network of structures across the Empire. This meticulousness is copied in the dense mat of facts which Livy rolls out.

All histories carry parallels and warnings about modern times. Rome under the Republic was an oligarchy not a democracy. It was also a rigidly stratified society which accepted slavery as a natural condition. But the extent to which they limited the potential power of any one individual was remarkable. The highest office, that of Consul, could only be held for a single year, was hemmed in by other institutions and was always shared with another Consul of equal rank. Compare that with the Emperors who came later, enjoying untrammelled authority and turning themselves into living gods; or even with our own presidents and prime ministers. One result was a dearth of hero-worship which puts our set-'em-up-and-knock-'em-down ethos to shame. Scipio Africanus, greatest general of the Republic, who defeated Hannibal and all his elephants to save Rome – even Scipio spent his last years pursued by an embezzlement charge. He just got off through the force of his reputation, and by dying rather opportunely, but it was a close thing. Livy seems both disapproving of this treatment and also rather awestruck that it was ever possible. We can link this restriction of the individual with the lack of personal vanity in politics, the faith in institutions rather than destiny. And also conclude that the approach was the right one. After all, the Emperors didn't build most of the Roman Empire. The legions of prosaic Consuls did that. Those flashy demi-gods we love so much just inherited it. And then let it, piece by piece, fall apart.

One of the central events in this volume of Livy is the Second Macedonian War. Threatened by the ambitious Philip of Macedon, the Greek states – nominally independent but clients of Rome – appealed for help. The fascinating part of the war isn't Livy's interminable accounts of the numerous battles but the aftermath of Rome's victory. It promptly withdrew all its legions and garrisons and gave the Greek towns their independence back. Livy is as entranced by this benevolence as the grateful Greeks. The propagandist in him coming to the fore, he doesn't mention the economic interests which Rome was protecting, nor their concerns that if Philip conquered Greece he would turn to Italy next. Nonetheless, you can only be so cynical about the event. Rome had performed an action atypical of any era. Starting a war to preserve another country's autonomy and not welching on the bargain afterwards.

It reminded me of America in World War II. They never really had to enter that conflict. Pearl Harbour could just as easily have frightened them into doing a deal with Hitler. They came to Britain's aid, though, and they liberated Western Europe and then they left again. Well, sort of. I wonder what would have happened if they had withdrawn as thoroughly as the Romans pulled out of Greece, if the Soviet Union had done likewise after emancipating Eastern Europe. It would probably still just have been a matter of time. After all, Rome's hold on its Greek clients grew firmer and firmer until they were just vassals in an empire. But maybe right now we wouldn't be where we are. With America convinced it has the right to do whatever it wants anywhere in the world, with all reason subordinate to the ideology of its greatness. Led by an enfeebled Senate and an Emperor of with the common sense of Caliglua and, on occasion, the sanity of Nero.

Montgomery Bush

2007-01-27T13:34:00.000Z

Reading today of the US government's idea to build giant mirrors in space, to reflect back the sun's rays and so reduce global warning, I wondered three things. A) whether this is April Fool's Day; b) why Americans prefer doing something, however barmy, to doing something else less, however easy; and c) where I'd heard this plan before. Finally I answered the last question. It was on The Simpsons. The dramatic two-parter where Mr Burns built a device which blocked out the sun from the town of Springfield.

His motives were similar to George Bush's, though less ambitious. Monty Burns wanted to increase dependence on his horribly unsafe power plant. Bush wishes to protect the rights of all polluters everywhere. I also wonder if the President is considering some of the other radical eco-solutions from The Simpsons. In another episode, Springfield got so horribly polluted that they just packed the whole town up and moved it somewhere else. Is Bush already scouting out other planets and collecting tugships and an awful lot of rope?

Mr Burns was eventually thwarted when he was shot by the Simpsons' baby, Maggie. I'm not, of course, suggesting that America's toddlers take such a radical step. But the current climate in Washington is so surreal, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens anyway.

Blinding Faith

2007-01-26T19:14:00.000Z

So much for having the coolest Archbishop in England. When John Sentamu came to York, I thought we were getting something. The man from Uganda was a former victim of Idi Amin, a campaigner against racism and capitalism's more brutal excesses. He started well too, speaking wisely about faith and compassionately about job losses in the city. But he seems to be stumbling on the subject which trips up most of his church. Homosexuality.

The government is finally looking to bring Catholic adoption agencies into something resembling the modern era. These agencies have been freely excluding couples who can provide a happy, supportive home to orphans but happen to be of a shared sex. It's ludicrous that they have been allowed to do this for so long. As Harriet Harman said in an uncharacteristic moment of insight, "You can't be a little bit against discrimination." Labour has been hitherto largely because of a sustained lobbying campaign by church members, including some in the Cabinet. In one of those heart-warming examples of how bigotry can unite rival churches, the Anglicans have sided with their former Catholic enemies.

The Catholic defence is the usual one. Homosexuality is against the teachings of their church, full stop. Essentially each man is pointing up the hierarchy and saying "It's his fault," until the chain of guilt leads all the way to the man in Rome. Who could, I suppose, say he's just following lessons learnt when he was a young lad in the Hitler Youth. Protestants never have that excuse. So, in eerily similar statements, John Sentamu and Rowan Williams are citing freedom of conscience. Personal ethics are at stake, they say, and these should never be a matter of legislation.

Williams has caved in so often on the matter of homosexuality that the Health & Safety Executive now warn people not to stand too close to him. But, as said, I expected more of Sentamu. Never mind that all freedoms are always going to have parameters set by the government, that some individual consciences are basically evil, that Idi Amin probably thought he was following his when he locked up Sentamu. That's obvious enough, though possibly not to the Archbishop. What Sentamu maybe should have considered was whether his conscience was telling him the right thing.

What exactly is the defence anyway? It isn't the Canal Street cruisers which the adoption agencies are excluding. It is couples who can prove they are in a stable relationship and can provide a prosperous home. This isn't fair on the children being denied that, never mind the couples themselves. And what the hell is the issue with homosexuality anyway? It's condemned in the Bible a couple of times. Many things are and are freely indulged now, even by churchmen. It prevents the couples from breeding naturally. Well, the days when the human race needed to go forth and multiply are over. With over 6.5 billion of us in the world, perhaps we've multiplied a little too much. Some details in the Bible are antiquated. It's time to stop clinging onto them and focus on the main message. Gay couples can show devotion and fidelity, to each other and their families, and that's in line with God's teachings. He didn't say He was the God of Love, only to add "Oh, except for these kinds…"

The steps should be: work out if your conscience is correct. Then defend its freedom. Sentamu needs to be careful. Soon he'll be saying that government policies are political correctness gone mad, and then there will really be no hope for him.

'Nighthawks'

2007-01-25T17:14:00.000Z

Can you be a great artist without leading a classic artist's life? Edward Hopper thought so. He had perhaps the least eventful existence of any successful painter. It was entirely spent in the same city, New York, and mostly even in the same studio. He started as a commercial artist and made the transition to an independent one with absurd tranquillity. He married his wife Jo in 1924 and saw no reason not to stay married to her until his death forty three years later. There was no apparent turmoil, no flamboyance and no self-destruction.

Of course you don't need any of that if you're brilliant – which Hopper certainly was. Its absence, though, might influence the sort of art you create. Hopper became known as a 'neo-realist.' His scenes, apparently only one stage away from photography, are of mundane little nooks and corners, the unremarkable sidestreets of the modern world. A better word for him is actually a 'hyper-realist;. There is nothing dramatic or beautiful to distract us from his visions of normality. We are forced to focus on the real world as it is – and see the truths he has subtly placed inside.

Nighthawks is effectively a picture of two halves. The left hand side gives a classic Hopper image. Though he painted some pastorals too, he tended to focus on towns or cities. And they are urban landscapes from which all trace of nature has been removed. Take The City, where the flat tops of the buildings compose a new form of terrain which stretches to the horizon. His cityscapes lack something else too. Namely people, the things for which they were supposedly created. The shops in Drug Store and Early Sunday Morning apparently serve nobody and are served by nobody. They have no function. Likewise the dark street in Nighthawks. It could have been made picturesque or menacing. But it is simply empty in every sense, a place without a soul, and so becomes almost pitiful.

The other half of the painting is dominated by the harsh glare of the coffee house. Hopper could do light and shade better than anyone since Caravaggio. He used them quite differently, however. Caravaggio was theatrical, his striking beams of light piercing thick pools of gloom and illuminating every wrinkle of his actors. Hopper's lights are generally weak little beacons standing alone. The lamps of the petrol station in Gas, struggling to keep at bay the threatening shadows of the night forest. And those of Nighthawks' coffee shop, which is revealed to be almost as empty as the street outside. It is the epitome of bleakness. Blank walls, an unpainted door, the only adornments the two water heaters and a few scattered utensils. If we saw this place in real life, we would walk straight past. But now we are forced to stare inside.

Four figures are there, a surprisingly high number for Hopper. More typical is how he has placed them. None are looking at each other. Nobody ever does in his works, not even the young lovers on a Summer Evening. One man is turned away, half his body and apparently all of his mood swallowed by gloom. The couple in the middle may be together but there is no connection between them. The woman examines her fingernails in a classic posture of boredom. She seems thoroughly uninterested in her partner, who in turn gazes out at us with disappointment on his sharp features. The only figure who is at all animated is the bartender, pausing in a task to stare out of the window. Follow his gaze, though, and you see he is looking at nothing at all – just the empty street.

This purposelessness is everywhere in the scene. These are not nighthawks engaged in illegal pleasures or depraved hedonism. They sit in this drab little room because they have nowhere else to go. They are alienated even from each other; their loneliness emphasised cruelly by the line of empty bar stools in the foreground. Each one, you feel, comes here every night to sit in silence. And when the place closes they walk home alone through the empty streets.

What can you do if you're an artist who has never experienced true tragedy? You can try to do this if you choose. Create horribly believable visions of explicable, everyday misery.

Another Galaxy

2007-01-12T20:12:00.000Z

David Beckham has never really fitted in. He emerged with a batch of talented young players at Man Utd in the mid 1990's but was never quite part of the gang. 'Fergie's Fledglings' (and journalists were rummaging frantically through thesauruses to find an alliterative collective name to match The Busby Babes) were mainly local lads with sensible haircuts. They scurried about a lot and played short passes. Nicky Butt was a fine example, a tireless perpetrator of actions tactically critical but invisible to the naked eye. Beckham was always too southern and too flash. From his ludicrous lob of Neil Sullivan in 1995 to his juvenile red card in the 1998 World Cup to his Spice Girl marriage and bewildering array of hairstyles, his career was a constant scream for attention. Nobody was surprised that he became the first of the brood to flee the nest – or possibly be ferociously kicked out of it by Alex Ferguson.

At Real Madrid, though, he went to the opposite extreme at the wrong time. His 'private' life briefly supplanted the most tiresome of soap operas, largely thanks to an imperfect understanding of how a mobile phone text function works. He rarely shone on the pitch, however. Beckham arrived during the era of the galacticos, superannuated stars who did absolutely nothing of value but looked great while failing to do it. Here the epitome was Roberto Carlos, a hilariously inept defender whose sole function was to violently thump free kicks 50 yards over the bar. Beckham just couldn't compete. Shunted from his favourite right midfield slot, he tried proving his worth by scurrying about and playing short passes. Even his hair grew more rational. He turned himself into Nicky Butt.

Hopefully he will find a proper home at LA Galaxy. It hasn't started well, however. When news of his contract - £70,000 a day, a virgin sacrifice tied to the rocks each month and all the ambrosia he can drink – came out, Beckham assured us he wasn't moving for the money. He was attracted by the massive potential of the club and the massive potential of football in America and so on. And who in his new homeland was he trying to convince here? Fans of LA Galaxy, a team which sounds like an especially annoying nightclub, and the rest of the MLS will react like everyone in the football world – a sceptical roll of the eyes so violent it risks straining a muscle. They are only a small group, however. Most US football fanatics care solely about the Latin American countries where they were born or the high school team which their daughter plays for.

Many Americans do like money, however. They like celebrities too, and they especially like celebrities who flaunt their money shamelessly. Beckham needs to go for this market if he wants to make himself a genuine star in the States. He should wave his contract like a talisman and pretend that being the highest paid player in history magically makes him the best. He should cruise the chat show circuits, he should build a Beverley Hills mansion which makes Beckingham Palace look tasteful and humble. It's likely to help football in America. Previously a stunted, stigmatised immigrant, the sport is suddenly offering the absurd salaries of basketball and attracting the corresponding attention. LA Galaxy's attendances will surge, part of the new crowd being enthusiastic teams of auditors wondering how the hell they can afford it. And if Beckham really gives it his best, if he pushes his image to the max, perhaps nobody will notice that he's an ageing trundler who can manage about three half-decent crosses per game.

Speak Softly And Carry A Big Neocon

2007-01-07T17:01:00.000Z

I knew it couldn't last. From the start, George Bush's presidency has been marked by a refusal to compromise. To enemies, to different viewpoints, to the basic framework of common sense. Undeterred by the fact that he won his first election through methods which would have embarrassed the yellowest of banana republics, he instantly purged Washington of liberals and replaced them with fanatical, often barely sane right wingers. That set a tone which rarely altered. Whether invading Iraq because he wanted to, refusing to rebuild New Orleans because most of the people made homeless were black or trying to appoint to the Supreme Court a woman with little judicial experience but who used to dangle him on his knee when he was a wee wee boy, Bush's shamelessness has been almost breathtaking.

Last November, though, the tone abruptly changed. The White House was embracing centrist policies, we heard. It was embracing the forbidden delights of bipartisan policies with both arms. It really, really loved the Democratic Party. This sudden passion possibly came because said party now controlled the Senate and could, if it wished, starve Bush of all funding and put his friends on trial for an astonishing array of misdemeanours.

For some Republicans, the conversion appears permanent. Arnold Scharzenegger, for example, has convincingly reinvented himself as a liberal eco-warrior. (Though the wording of his latest announcements, where he compared himself to Saul on the road to Damascus, hints that he may have damaged more than his legs in his recent skiing accident). Perhaps Bush also meant what he said for a while. Something inside him seems to have snapped, however. He listened to James Baker's recommendation for a rapid troop withdrawal from Iraq and negotiations with Iran and Syria. He listened and laughed quite a lot in private and is now preparing an alternative Blueprint For Peace. We don't, as yet, know for definite that Bush intends throwing pretty much the entire American army into the Middle East. But there are clues in Friday's reshuffling of the top military personnel. The two generals currently in Iraq, both sympathetic to Baker's report, are being withdrawn. In their place comes David 'Ripper' Petraeus and William 'Fallout' Fallon (I may have made these nicknames up myself), men renowned for tearing their enemies to bits and dancing on the fragments.

I knew it couldn't last and I'm quite glad it hasn't. In today's grey world, with identical parties battling over miniscule issues and careerist politicians propelled entirely by image, we need people who refuse to taint their beliefs. The American neocons, together with the Muslim fundamentalists, are one of the few significant groups left who are driven by ideology. Both have overlooked a few small points – that the aim should be to build a utopia rather than a dystopia, that the destruction of the world is not actually a good thing. But nobody's perfect.

Yo Ho Ho etc.

2006-12-23T13:46:00.000Z

I was going to write a much longer piece about Christmas. The theme would be The Irrational Yet Immutable Rituals And How They Make Christmas A Vibrant And Thoroughly Modern Festival. The title needed some work. And now I realise that I can't be bothered to finish any of it. There's presents to wrap, bells to ring etc. So instead, here's three aspects which to me epitomise the true spirit of the holiday.

1. Mashed Potatoes Nobody ever wants to eat the things. We've got turkey, sausages and stuffing on our plate (or in my case, a rather wonderful nutloaf). We've got sprouts and roast potatoes too, we've got figgy pudding to come and we've been gorging on chocolates all day. To a very full stomach, a white and largely tasteless lump doesn't really have much appeal. We take a tiny spoonful each and the vast majority gets thrown away. But if you leave out the mashed potatoes, everyone would complain. They are part of The Meal, they must be there. And I would complain as loud as anybody.

2. Santa Claus. Santa Claus is a god, let's make no mistake about that. He flies across the sky, he has supernatural powers, he enters our homes, he even has his own mantras. Most importantly, he makes moral judgements and rewards or punishes accordingly. Yet, though Bart Simpson said Christmas "celebrates the birth of Santa," he was generated by the festival not vice versa. He only became a central component after it was relatively mature. And after his one night of power he sinks back into the Arctic ice for another year. His jurisdiction is also limited to the very young. We are expected to believe in him absolutely for our first few years and then reject him as an essential part of maturing. And his sanctions only take the form of presents or the lack thereof; Black Peter and his club were given the boot a long time ago. Compartmentalised, materialistic, even partly designed by a fizzy drink corporation – if you ever wondered what sort of deity modern society would create, look no further than Santa Claus.

3. The Media Build-Up Some rituals shift over the years, others stay the same. A while ago the favourite was Santas Behaving Badly. Jolly men in red suits would have a few bevvies and start fights, or urinate in the street, or enter a stranger's house to take away rather more than a glass of sherry and a mince pie. Nowadays we hear a lot about councils in Tamworth or St Albans refusing to put up Christmas lights lest it offends the three Buddhist families in their ward. Nobody really cares, even the people in the affected towns. But they're always seized on by national papers on permanent PC Watch as symbols of our national decline. Other stories have an eternal appeal. Babies abandoned; old people abandoned; holidaymakers stranded in airports. "It shouldn't happen over Christmas" the writers wail, apparently believing that natural laws decree everyone should be happy and loved for one particular day a year. These tales always play well, tapping into the Victorian sentimentality which is still vital in shaping the festival. But they forget that the most striking image of Christmas is still one of absolute poverty: a stranded mother giving birth in a stable.

A Million To One, They Said

2006-12-10T17:11:00.000Z

Greeted last week's news that there may be running water on Mars with a blend of excitement and frustration. Excitement because water is a basic prerequisite of life. And if some is still flowing on Mars' surface, rather than being locked up in permafrost around the poles, then living organisms could be existing around it. They won't be much, of course, just some rubbish form of algae. But life on another planet is still a major discovery; and life on Mars, because of H G Wells and David Bowie, especially evocative.

Frustration because nobody's actually sure about the water yet. They've just studied patterns of rock falls and concluded they were most likely caused by a stream which quickly evaporated. Then again, maybe they weren't. They could also have been made by rocks just, you know, falling. The only way to be certain, it seems to me, is to actually put somebody on the surface and ask them if anything's bubbling out of the ground. Instead NASA continues to rely on vague, blurry snapshots taken by unmanned probes. Logical deduction based on partial evidence is sometimes a necessary part of science. But there really is no substitute to actually being there. After all, in 1492 a Genoan set off westwards from Portugal with all existing knowledge telling him that he wouldn't hit land before India.

And the chances of the life on Mars being human seem remote right now. It hasn't gone well in recent decades, our great conquest of space. We got to the nearest possible destination and then just stopped. All recent shuttle voyages have been devoted to repairing the International Space Station. The ones which go ahead, that is, because the shuttles seem to be falling apart even quicker than the ISS itself. The ISS is a promising development, and a great name, but I'm not certain what actually happens there. Probably more pictures taken of distant galaxies from which scientists can make remarkably dubious deductions.

I know space travel costs a lot. And the American government needs their funds to meet their core aims: making billionaires even richer and knocking the Middle East to pieces. But mankind, we're always told, is supposed to be an explorer. Not just a peerer and a guesser. I'm also worried that if we ever do make contact with intelligent life from the stars, the prediction closest to the truth will be Douglas Adams'. Where we're irritably told by the aliens that their plans for demolishing Earth have been on public display at Alpha Centauri "only four light years away… If you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your lookout."

Tolerance, British Style

2006-12-10T17:10:00.000Z

Tony Blair's latest contribution to the multi-culturalism debate could have been worst. The language was less than diplomatic – essentially "Respect our values of tolerance or piss off home, you dirty wogs." But there's nothing wrong with his central message, that Britain shouldn't welcome people who then go on to actively hate Britain.

What puzzled me is how he segued into the issue of wearing veils in public. There may be an automatic link between women covering their faces and men planting bombs on public transport. I've never seen it, though it seems obvious to Blair. Also a matter of "plain common sense" for him is that Kirklees Council was correct to fire a teaching assistant for refusing to remove her veil in the classroom. Being able to see somebody's face, he implied, is essential to the pedagogic process. Now it's been a long time since I was a pupil, but I don't recall the details of a teacher's face being very important. Unless they were especially unusual, of course, in which case you got to make fun of them. The correct posture in the classroom was to gaze apathetically at your desk. You tried not to look at the teacher at all. That only encouraged them to ask you questions and nobody wants that.

Women wearing veils should only be a concern when they are forced to do so against their wishes. Many aren't. And even when they are, these sweeping bans punish them rather than those bullying them. Being denied access to Jack Straw's constituency offices, which Blair also defended, is one thing and rather a blessing in disguise. But being fired for wearing an item of clothing central to your culture? It's not really British tolerance at its most impressive.

Time To Roll The Credits Please

2006-12-02T21:48:00.000Z

We've all seen Hollywood blockbusters like this. They start well enough; taut atmosphere, sinister bad guys, menacing soundtrack. Then they just seem to lose it. Everyone's killing everyone and a plot to blow up a small municipal bookstore somehow becomes something threatening the whole galaxy. There's nothing to do but wait for the villain to die his third and final death so the credits can arrive.

So it is with the Alexander Litvinenko story. For a while it was possible to ignore the human tragedies or broader political implications and just enjoy it as a rollicking good yarn. The beginning was intriguing enough: a former KGB agent poisoned in London, most likely by the modern equivalent of the KGB. For days one astounding revelation followed another. They culminated in the news that Litvinenko had polonium-210 slipped into his sushi and the maginifcent Guardian headline 'The Radioactive Spy.' But once again, things have gotten out of hand. The so-called radiation 'trails' appear to have ended up covering most of Europe. Now Litvinenko's associate, Mario Scaramella, seems to have been poisoned too and you wonder where things are going to end. It's no longer possible to willingly suspend disbelief; or indeed the question "why didn't they just shoot him for Christ's sake?"

It began as a John le Carre and has turned into a James Bond. And anyone who's seen Casino Royale, or indeed any Bond film made in the last twenty five years, will know that's not a compliment. At this rate matters will culminate in Big Ben exploding while the hero (John Reid played by Sean Connery, possibly) rescues the woman in the nick of time. We needed a break from David Cameron, Pete Docherty's 47th drug bust and the Iraqi 'Not A Civil War, Not On Your Life' insurgency, but this is a bit much.

'Flatford Mill'

2006-11-26T15:35:00.000Z

My parents had John Constable table mats when I was a child. Serious critics tend to excuse the great artists when they become consumer goods, saying it's a simple case of a glorious vision being perverted. My opinion is that the artists who get picked usually deserve it. Buy an Impressionist coaster set and you'll probably get Monet's water lilies, not Degas' vaudeville girls. Canalletto's Venetian picture postcards make good mouse mats, Caravaggio's dark melodramas don't. The people who produce these things knows that what sells in the home furnishing market is the idyllic and the bland. There are a lot of Constable table mats.

Flatford Mill has been chosen here but any number of Constable's works would have sufficed. He followed a template with minimum variety. In the foreground are generally one or two small figures. Few details can be made out on them. We learn little from even the most careful study. They are Rustics and their job is to look quaint. Constable put them to work on varying rural tasks which his aristocratic patrons liked to see doing so long as the labourer is not themselves. Here they are performing something mystifying involving boats. Elsewhere they might be fishing or driving a cart. The figures by Flatford Mill are young boys, which was a common Constable trick. Children look quaint almost by default. And they exude an innocence which seeps out over the whole painting and smothers any questions about the facts of rural life.

The figures, though, are shrivelled by their surroundings. This is a device sometimes to stunning effect. See Fragonard's Grand Cascade At Tivoli, for example, to see a demonstration of humanity's insignificance compared to nature, or Goya's Colossus for our helplessness in the face of disaster. But it doesn't quite work when the landscapes are as tedious as Constable's. What does he give us? Blue and green, green and blue. Green grass, blue sky, blue river, green leaves; the green of the trees even reflected in the blue water. There is a small brown patch in the foreground, some tiny red cottages in the distance and this is quite radical for Constable. He rarely admitted any breaks in his verdant utopias. No acknowledgement, for example, that sometimes leaves fall off trees, grasses parch and the sun occasionally sets.

And the eye searches for relief in the colour scheme because so little else is happening at Flatford Mill. Nobody is coming to intrude on the boys. No wind rustles the trees. No birds fly across the sky. All is neat and tidy, perfectly ordered by the artist. This is a flat and lifeless scene, removed from reality and stripped of any deeper meaning.

There's nothing wrong with creating from the imagination or even following a template. Lowrie, for one, basically painted the same picture his whole life and it was always several steps from sanity. But Lowrie was interesting because nobody had done anything quite like him before. Many had prior to Constable, even more have since. He either had the least fertile imagination possible or he let it be filled by others. The ruling classes, basically. His paintings are embodiments of the laziest clichés about England. The 'green and pleasant land,' that evocation of timeless plenty which is forever used to excuse all our failings. I can't look at Flatford Mill without remembering John Major quoting Orwell's grisly lines about spinsters cycling to village churches. Or The Day Today's spoof propaganda film: a jolly policeman smoking a bifta while a voice drones "This is England. And it's all right. Everything's all right…"

Everything isn't, of course. It certainly wasn't in 1817 when Flatford Mill was painting. A godless alliance of capitalists and aristocrats were stripping the last few rights from the rural poor. The happy, faceless peasants which Constable painted were being thrown off the land and into the workshops and proto-factories which comprised the first, worst stage of the Industrial Revolution. His scenes were outdated even when he painted them. But at best he ignored these changes, at worst he ignored the agents implementing them. As a result he gave us unnatural nature scenes and social commentaries with no social worth whatsoever. On to the dinner table with them all, where at least they can perform one useful function.

A Glorious Revolution?

2006-11-16T20:28:00.000Z

Currently reading The Glorious Revolution, Edward Vallance's account of the events in 1688 which replaced James II with William and Mary on the British throne. Vallance is a revisionist to some extent, of course. Any historian who doesn't at least claim to be rewriting history won't find a publisher nowadays. He points out that the Glorious Revolution wasn't exactly a revolution. Though it had wide support in a Protestant England terrified of the Catholic, authoritarian James, it was basically a Dutch invasion which led to the crowning of a Dutch duke. (Mary was co-ruler only in name, partly on her own insistence). Most of the gentry went over to William's side when his armada landed. James was rather inconveniently left without an army and fled without a fight. But he would have probably lost anyway.

Nor, Vallance, states, was the 'Revolution' very Glorious. Outside of England it certainly wasn't bloodless. Rebellions against William in Ireland and Scotland culminated in the massacres of the Boyne and Glencoe. The Scottish resistance rumbled on for half a century until the final bloodshed at Culloden. No sooner was William comfy on the throne then he began a war with France which Britain could neither win nor afford. Vallance is also sceptical that 1688 marked, as is generally asserted, the birth of English liberty. William paid a little more attention to Parliament but only after packing it full of loyal Anglicans. Free speech was growing at the time, especially in the coffee house phenomenon, but in spite rather than because of government policy. The English Bill of Rights was certainly feeble compared to the American version. It was simply a reaffirmation of existing liberties, which were remarkably few. Unlike forty years earlier, there was no belief that the country could actually do without a monarch.

Vallance also gives a partial defence of James II. He wasn't trying to forcibly re-convert Britain to Catholicism, as was often claimed. His only legislation tried to reduce the civil but systematic discrimination against Catholics. His less laudable actions, from butchering the followers of a feeble uprising to rigging parliamentary elections, were fairly standard for the time. But his brusque personality and habit of increasing his standing army excited fears of absolutist rule, quite apart from his religion. I would have probably shared this paranoia. James was becoming increasingly authoritarian after only three years. Who knows what he would have been like if power had time to corrupt him properly?

Anyway, his true character is beside the point. Most people didn't want James. There was an energetic attempt to exclude him from the succession during the last years of his brother's reign. They stuck with him for a while, saw he was apparently as bad as they thought and simply replaced him. Britain still had to have a king, it seemed, but Britain would have the king it wanted. The notion of a divine right to rule died abruptly. And I think that the modern British attitude to its monarchy began to be created in its place. You can see a line, if not a direct one, leading from the Glorious Revolution to the events in Westminster this week. Where an overdressed woman announces the legislation to be introduced by 'her' government – yet is still only a hired orator for the elected rulers.

When A Shite Is Not A Shite

2006-11-11T15:56:00.000Z

A linguistic dispute is currently raging in English football. On Wednesday referee Graham Poll denied Everton's claims for a penalty and then dismissed their striker James McFadden. McFadden, he alleges, called him a "fucking cheat." The striker has denied the charge. He was abusing the decision, not the referee himself. Furthermore, the phrase he used was "fucking shite."

It's an interesting defence given that McFadden was sent off for foul and abusive language. Effectively he's saying that his crime is twice as bad as originally thought. But of course he was actually punished for abusing the referee, not for cussing. The 'foul and abusive language' charge is only ever used tactically. If footballers were red carded each time they swore, every pitch would be cleared of players within five minutes of kick off.

So let this be a lesson to all you youngsters. When you swear at a referee, which you almost certainly will, speak loudly and clearly. Just in case, use a word that states you may still love the sinner while hating the sin. McFadden has demonstrated the dangers of "fucking shite." "Fucking shit" may be misinterpreted as "fucking tit," "fucking crap" as "fucking twat." I personally recommend "fucking bollocks." A little clumsy, perhaps, but guaranteed to ensure you stay on the pitch till the final whistle.

Guy Fawkes' Night

2006-11-05T18:08:00.000Z

As a child, my favourite part of Guy Fawkes' Night was probably the gingerbread men. They had to be eaten in a particular way, naturally. You bit the arms and legs off first. Then you munched through the torso until all you had left was a decapitated head. This would be consumed with painstaking care, ideally the eyes left till the very last.

Nowadays my favourite part is explaining the festival to foreigners. "Fawkes," I say, "Was a Catholic who tried to blow up King James and his parliament. He was caught, and he and his accomplices were executed in an especially gruesome fashion. So now every year we make effigies of him, throw him on a bonfire and watch the fucker burn. Then we let off fireworks in celebration. And we let all the kiddies watch." If my audience doesn't look suitably horrified, I go on to tell them about the gingerbread men.

Every year there are protests about Guy Fawkes' Night. Especially in York, where Fawkes was born and raised. Local voices are always calling for him to be shown more respect, unabashed that our second most famous son was a rather dim wannabee mass murderer. (Our most famous, the Emperor Constantine, did actually manage to kill a lot of people though was considerably brighter.) I suppose these have some validity. In these religiously sensitive times, it's not good to be ceremonially burning a prominent Catholic. Though things have improved slightly; originally the effigies were of the Pope rather than Fawkes.

But the night isn't really about the thwarting of some remote, half-baked Catholic plot. That's just become the modern peg for an older urge; just as the birth of Jesus and the switch of calendars are to some extent for Christmas and New Year. Guy Fawkes' Night is about defying the season. The nights are encroaching, the chill is mounting. For one evening we like to build great beacons against the darkness. And against the creatures once thought to lurk there. It's probably no coincidence that Guy Fawkes' Night lies close to the older festival of Halloween. The ghosts who emerge are supposed to be vanquished by All Saints Day the following morning. Just in case any aren't, however, here's a barrage of bangers and rockets to scare them off.

Most countries have a night when they let off a barrel load of fireworks. The British may have chosen an especially perverse excuse for ours. But it's really no odder than the Americans or the French letting off their fireworks in the middle of summer, when they need them least of all.

Nine Films To Never See Even If You Live To A Thousand

2006-11-04T14:54:00.000Z

Guys and Dolls
Let's be clear: all musicals are bad. Especially trying, though, are musicals based on stories which totally corrupt the whole damn point of the original. Liza Minelli turning Goodbye To Berlin into Cabaret sets the teeth on edge. But this one really wins the award. Damon Runyan's short stories are minor classics. He wrote of hustlers, gangsters and whores, their tawdry menace never quite dissipated by his humour and unique literary style. This can not, I repeat not, be represented by a man in spats swinging round a lamp post singing "Luck be a lady tonight."

Absolute Beginners
Whereas this has a whole-hearted awfulness which transcends the commonplace awfulness of the musical genre. It is a film you watch in fascination from beginning to end, wondering how anyone could possibly have created it, produced it, acted in it. I mean, did nobody realise? There is an earnest plot detailing the rise of the far right in England and that's interspersed with a seemingly infinite number of scenes where Lionel Blair gets kicked in the goolies. And those are the best bits. My mind has blotted out most of the rest.

Pretty Woman
On this, the first and last words belong to Bongwater: 'Richard Gere with his oh-so Zen films and their oh-so Zen messages like: Hey, it's fun to be a prostitute! I wish I could spread my legs across Hollywood Boulevard! Because that's all we want, isn't it girls? Sucking and shopping, sucking and shopping… But it's the feel-good movie of the year, it's the feel-good movie of the decade, it's the feel-good movie of the millennium!'

Charlie's Angels
Probably not the worst Hollywood blockbuster but the one which really snapped my patience with the whole bloody business. The stubborn refusal to even consider anything original. The smirk-smirk, 'we're so clever' (just not clever enough to do anything original) treatment given to modern updates. And above all, the damn slo-mo everywhere. I mean, why do they think action is more exciting if it happens in slow motion? It doesn't. It's just slower. If this film had proceeded at a normal pace, it would have been over in 40 minutes and I might have used that extra hour of my life productively.

Four Weddings And A Funeral
In the early 1990's the British film industry finally seemed to be going somewhere. Pictures like The Full Monty and Trainspotting showed very different visions but ones both true and unique to the county. And then came Hugh Grant and Richard Curtis came along, and the template clanged down again. The whole of Britain reduced to a cliché; and not even our cliché of ourselves but America. A land where every Englishman is foppish and posh and rich and white. I still don't know from where I found the willpower to watch this dreck to the end. And though I've never dared watch them, I've heard Notting Hill and Love Actually are even worst.

Battlefield Earth
You probably didn't see this, put off the bad reviews, but may have thought, "Well, I bet it isn't that bad." Well I say unto you: it is. If anything, it's worst. There's regular hilarious sights of Fat John Travolta in a monkey suit. There's a nonsensical plot from insane cult leader and Travolta's guru, L Ron Hubbard. And there's somebody screaming "NO-O-O-O-O-O!" pretty much every ten minutes. Even if nothing happens to make them scream "NO-O-O-O-O-O!" they still do it. Perhaps they just realised what sort of a film they were stuck in.

Barb Wire
Remember Pamela Anderson, that icon of the 1990's? The woman who, thanks to constant cosmetic surgery, became a creature of long blond hair and massive lips and massive breasts and not much else? All men were supposed to lust after her but really she was as sexless as a piece of plastic; which was what she largely was, after all. This was her attempt to launch a movie career. She plays an in-your-face bar owner in one of those post-apocalypse wasteland deals. That was the by-line at least. Actually, it's just Casablanca. Not at first, admittedly; the transformation only happens gradually. Half-way through you start thinking "Hang on, this is a mite familiar," and by the end it only lacks Dooley Wilson tinkling away on the piano. Even her porno film with Tommy Lee would probably be more appealing. And thus ended Pamela Anderson's movie career.

Havana
And the Casablanca rip-offs roll on. Maybe I shouldn't lump this in with Barb Wire. But while that felt like it lasted about three hours, Havana actually has the nerve to actually be almost three hours. And it feels longer. All for a plot which every living creature on the planet knows the end to anyway. Perhaps they needed the time to cover the full astonishing gamut of Robert Redford's facial expressions: the concerned frown, the comedy flinch and, er, the other concerned frown.

Sleepless In Seattle
If I were God… Ah, if I were God. If I were God and I saw this, I'd forget any promises made with rainbows. I'd wipe the whole human race out and not make any exceptions this time. I'd make a new dominant species based on – well, lizards, birds, cockroaches, anything. Just as long as they were physically incapable of ever producing synthetic sentimental bullshit like this.

The Stink Of Old Suez

2006-10-24T19:01:00.000Z

History can be a great comfort sometimes. Ever think, for example, that we've reached at the absolute nadir of Western-Middle East relations? That the 2003 invasion of Iraq was an unparalleled mixture of cynicism and incompetence? Then just learn about the Suez Crisis forty years ago and you'll realise that things, unbelievably, have actually been worst.

I always knew Britain's botched invasion of Egypt, after Colonel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, was a mess. It put a definitive end to both the dwindling British Empire and the (never very high) reputation of the then Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. But before I watched BBC2's excellent documentary Suez: A Very British Crisis, I didn’t realise how ludicrous things got. The trouble for Eden was that he was itching to attack Egypt as soon as the Canal was occupied but had no actual excuse. No British citizens were massacred, no ships were stopped from entering the waterway. France, though, came up with a Cunning Plan. Israel was persuaded to launch a sudden attack on Egypt, something it was prone to do in those days. French and British troops would then intervene as peacekeepers to protect the Canal; incidentally reoccupying it in the process. Butter, even in the desert, wouldn't melt in their mouths.

Fortunately this scheme got the dexterous planning it deserved. Suez... was full of hilarious and scarcely believable little details. America getting so exasperated by the secrecy that it sent U2 spy planes over its staunchest ally, Israel. Nasser coolly surveying British jets bombing his capital while Eden bricks it before a BBC broadcast. French pilots scrambled and not actually given maps of their destination until they are in the cockpit, which is so dark they almost can't read them.

The purest farce, though, came when Britain, France and Israel met in the suburbs of Paris to finalise their scheme. Israel sent their Prime Minister, who hated Britannica and was soon calling her an "old whore." Britain was initially represented by Selywn Lloyd, a Foreign Minister who "often had trouble relating to foreigners." After some tough negotiations, the diplomats nipped out to a nightclub where they watched a performance of the can-can. Finally a treaty is drawn up and signed. Eden was horrified when he learns of this, written documents understandably not fitting in with his concept of secret plots. He sent some flunkies back to Paris to try and persuade the French to burn the papers. They were put in a stateroom and the door was locked for several hours, for no discernable reason.

Shimon Peres, a junior member of the Israeli delegate, chuckles mightily when relating all this to the BBC cameras. I don't blame him. To call it redolent of a Yes Prime Minister episode is too complimentary to the actors. It's pure PG Wodehouse. The only difference being that Anthony 'Bertie' Eden didn't have a Jeeves to rescue him.

Thankfully. It's frightening that people like this got into power but would be even more terrifying if they had succeeded. And, as I said, the episode is slightly comforting. Today's rulers may not have much understanding of their job or their electorate, but at least they have a vague grasp of reality.

'The Night Watch'

2006-10-06T18:55:00.000Z

This probably isn't my favourite painting. But, outside the more demented fringes of surrealism, it has to be the one which gives me the most enjoyment. I can never look at it without raising a smile, partially patronising but mainly one of simple happiness. This is partly because of Paul Kidby's pastiche for the Terry Pratchett comic novel of the same name. But it's also because of what the original seems to show and what it really does reveal.

In a way, The Night Watch is one of Rembrandt's more constrained portraits. He was always a commercial artist dependent on patrons. In 1642 the Militia Company of Arquebusiers in Amsterdam commissioned him for a group portrait to hang on their headquarters' walls. An unflattering representation, one assumes, would have meant no cheque for Rembrandt. So he was not free to subject his models to the pitiless scrutiny he inflicted on his parents or, for that matter, himself. The Company is shown as a sturdy, impressive group of men striding out of the door and presumably to battle. Their Captain his instructing his lieutenant, the light playing over them to emphasise the red sash of one and the golden clothes of the other. The smartness of their attire would have been important to the Company. They were not just soldiers, they were declaring to the world – they were gentlemen too. In the background their troops prepare themselves; cleaning muskets, beating drums or just brandishing pikes. Even the ordering of the figures, a marvel of technical composition, had commercial considerations. Each man was given a prominence according to how much he had paid.

It was hard, though, to stop Rembrandt telling the truth. Some of his patrons were still painted with brutal objectivity; see the wizened merchant's wife Margaretha de Geer, for example. Two golden figures actually catch the eye in The Night Watch, and only one is a soldier. The other is the rather chubby young girl to the right of centre. It is generally thought that she, and the chicken which hangs from her belt, is a symbol of the company mascot. But she could just as easily be somebody's daughter who has wanders in. Regardless, her effect is to immediately undermine both the hierarchical structure and the militaristic statement of the group.

Look closer at the soldiers and these crumble further. Only the lieutenant is actually paying any attention to the captain. The rest are just getting on with their tasks as it suits them. One cleaning his rifle with a self-absorbed expression, one peering at his as if it has jammed, one raising the standard with a slow, ostentatious flourish. A few – the couple on the far right, for example – are simply gossiping. The lack of homogeneity becomes a problem too. There are one or two helmets on display, but the rank and file are almost as dandified as their officers. Some are youths, others white-bearded men. Rather than an army, this looks like a group of men playing at soldiers.

They were, of course. By the 1640's, 'militias' like the Company of Arquebusiers had lost all their original functions. Established to uphold the newly won Dutch independence, they soon became nothing but gentlemen's clubs. Pride and tradition kept them maintaining their training, their weapons and their military etiquette, but they were no more menacing than the Sealed Knot Society.

The Night Watch bears superficial resemblances to another masterpiece featuring a mass of pikes, Velasquez' The Surrender of Braga. Its meaning, though, is the exact opposite. Velasquez showed the Dutch and Spanish generals reaching an apparently amicable settlement. Yet the deportment of their respective troops shows that the former are really capitulating to the latter. What seems like peace is actually conquest. The Night Watch only came seventeen years after the events depicted but belongs to a far more optimistic era. Peace and prosperity had finally come to the Netherlands after their grim, protracted independence war. Rembrandt shows both erupting in what is supposed to be a statement of military might. This is what always makes me smile. That the men shown have reached a place comfortable enough to let them mess about a bit.

Some Vague Thoughts On The Ten Commandments

2006-09-30T21:27:00.000Z

The Ten Commandments fall into two basic types: technical and general. The former, which also appear first, concern the nature of worship. None of that fiddly business to do with transubstantiation and rosaries, which caused so many people to kill one another later. Just a few basic ground rules. The second sort deal with how we should relate to one another rather than directly to our God.

The first commandment is, I confess, one that gives me some problem. Worship no other gods but me, said the Lord. I don't find it troubling directly. I've never felt any great urge to bow down to Buddha or Vishnu or the rest of the gang. And it's an understandable law, of course. God was speaking to what was basically a group of ragged asylum seekers lost in the middle of a desert. He would have wanted to remind then of the point of their exodus, why they had left their relatively comfortable old lives. From this perspective, it is essentially no different from a manager telling his players to be loyal to their team.

It is still rather draconian, however. And it's a commandment which has been used to justify crusades, holy wars, forced conversions; basically, a great deal of evil committed in the name of the Lord. It set Judaism and Christianity apart from other religions of the ancient world right from the start. Worshippers of Vesta, say, wouldn't deny the existence of Jupiter or Dionysus or deny the rights of others to worship them. But for the Jews and later the Christians, there was only one God and this commandment backed up the claim. Or they may have done, after it had been tweaked a little. I've got two Bibles; the King James version first produced in 1611 and the more modern Good News. The latter goes with a simple 'worship no god but me.' King James, though, has 'no god before me.' This seems a slight softening of the instruction; interestingly, done at a time when softening of anything wasn't exactly common. It hints at the practice more common in ancient times, when a certain god was given pre-eminence by particular groups but many others were also acknowledged. And that lets in the potential for ecumenicalism and tolerance in our times. I don't know precisely how the original Hebrew should be translated. But it seems likely that even a God emphatically laying down the law wouldn't expect His followers to cast out all their practices. Even if that meant allowing them to at least acknowledge other deities.

The second commandment, about not bowing down to graven images, seems a simple reinforcement of the first and so logical enough. In fact, though, the commandment doesn't simply prohibit bowing down. It also bans making 'any likeness of anything that is in heaven, or anything that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.' What we have here is basically a universal condemnation of all representative art.

The one always used to puzzle me. Mainly because the very places which told us to obey all God's rules are themselves defying one. The churches with their stained glass likenesses of things in heaven (the angels, for example), on earth (Adam and Eve, the creatures on Noah's ark) and even in the sea (the whale which gulped down Noah). You could say that the abstract paintings of Jackson Pollock and his like are actually less blasphemous than all so-called 'religious art.' And I still can't find a solution to the paradox except for this one. The commandment is just ignored. It may have had a little influence, I suppose. Perhaps it is the reason why the God of the Bible, almost uniquely of all deities worshipped, is almost never pictured directly. It has become to describe Him mockingly as being a white-bearded man sat on the cloud. But this is the product of a very limited number of images; most famously Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco. Far more common is for God to be depicted through the proxy of his son. But Jesus, of course, is someone 'that is in heaven' himself, except for the short period when he was 'in the earth'. Judea-Christianity has simply bypassed half of the second commandment. In terms of both the success of the religion (for no faith can spread without strong images) and the enrichment of society in general, this was a very wise decision.

The commandment ends with a familiar carrot-and-stick message. Defiance will bring punishment upon you, your sons, your sons' sons and so on. Obedience will lead to great rewards. It's a little strange that God puts this here, rather than at the start or end of the whole list. Perhaps He anticipated that this instruction would be an especially tricky one to enforce, given humanity's perennial love of pictures. The wording, in one translation at least, is also interesting. Good News has Him simply calling Himself 'the Lord your God.' According to King James, though, He claims to be 'a jealous God.' If the latter is correct, it's rather a strange thing to confess to. Jealousy is a weakness. It is one of the deadly sins and actually condemned in the last commandment. Perhaps nothing more was intended than to reinforce the heinousness of bowing down to another deity. But I like to think that God could be admitting to a very human foible in the midst of one of the greatest moments of His power.

Of all the commandments actually acknowledged, the third which prohibits taking the Lord's name in vain has to be the most regularly violated. Nearly everyone does it, and does it at least once a day. And in an amazing variety of ways. The English language alone has been considerably expanded by blasphemies, from classics like 'zounds' (i.e. 'God's wounds') and 'bejesus' to modern favourites such as 'Jesus H Christ.' (Incidentally, what does the 'H' stand for? Holy? Hallowed? Henry? I think we need to know this.) Occasionally I try to prise out the exclamations which form such a regular part of my speech. I find, though, that this makes me swear rather more – "For Christ's sake" becomes "For fuck's sake," for example. And in one more indication of the inherent secularism of our society, this brings me rather more criticism than actual blasphemies. I suppose the solution is to stop cursing entirely. On the other hand, I'm only human. For fuck's sake.

The fourth commandment requires us to labour for six days and rest on the seventh, to mimic God's rapid creation of the world. This is really a combination of the 'technical' commandments and the more general ones. It's an excellent idea for many physical, mental and social ones. It has also fundamentally affected the structure of western societies From here came the concept of the weekend, the moral approval placed on (limited and carefully controlled) idleness and, ultimately, the modern leisure industry. And the instruction continues to have an influence, even on atheists. Sunday trading laws have been gradually chipped away by the greed of retailers and the timidity of governments. Saturday has joined Sunday as a day of rest for most of us. But Saturdays still tend to be when we do most of our household tasks; leaving Sunday devoted to pleasure. Unfortunately, our definition of enjoyment nowadays often requires others to work. Somebody has to play the football games, run the rollercoaster rides or staff the DIY stores. Our rest often isn't especially restful any more and can rarely be carried out alone.

We generally get told that we should spend our Sundays at church. However, this is simply a convention first created by expediency. Sundays used to be the only time people were released from their labour long enough to worship. Nothing in the actual commandment requires it, beyond the rather vague notion about keeping the day 'holy'. It could be argued that Sunday should be the one time people avoid church. Because their attendance requires the clergy to work, thus disobeying one of the commandments they are advocating.

Now we get on to the commandments dealing more with how people treat one another; as essential to a proper religion as the mechanics of worship. Honouring your father and mother used to be emphasised especially, and no wonder. It was always a handy reinforcement of traditional patriarchal authority. However, to honour (or even, to use Good News' interpretation, 'respect') doesn't necessarily mean 'automatically obey.' I've always seen it as saying we should try to both love and like our parents. So we should, even in this era of looser familial relations. Except, possibly, for those unlucky enough to have been mistreated by theirs. The end of the commandment hints at one reason why. There is a promise that if you obey you will long enjoy 'the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.' I don't think this is just God using the carrot again. He is reminding us exactly what our parent gave us. Life, and so, at the start, everything. So respect, as DJ's used to say, is due.

'Thou shalt not kill,' according to King James, comes next. Anti-abortionists are very fond of this one. It is the only piece of text in the whole of the Bible which justifies their creed. I think, however, that we need to be careful how freely we define it. Push it in other directions and it becomes a commandment supporting pacifism or vegetarianism. And neither of these are supported elsewhere. Some of the disciples, for example, were fishermen, which requires killing on a rather regular basis. And the God of the Old Testament was always telling his followers to smite their enemies, even when He wasn't doing the smiting Himself. The narrower translation in Good News, 'Do not commit murder,' seems truer in this instance. Which doesn’t seem enough for many people, including me, but there you are.

The next two commandments instruct us not to steal or commit adultery. God hasn't supplied footnotes in either instance. Frankly, they don't need any. Just say no, kids.

The final pair are perhaps the subtlest ones. Both recognise that harm can be done to others not simply through the direct means of assault or theft but through simple speech as well. Particularly number nine: 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.' The precise wording makes it seems a very limited instruction, simply prohibiting committing perjury in a court. I think, though, that this can be legitimately extended further. Do not slander somebody, or libel them, or spread rumours or lies about them. Don't say a word about them, basically, which you don't believe to be true. And this could include false compliments and flattery, which themselves can be damaging. If you stick to this notion of falseness, however, not all methods of harm are excluded. You can probably insult somebody, providing you genuinely believe in the insult. This is a commandment against gossip rather than bad manners, one which exhorts honesty. Which makes it an excellent rule to follow.

At school, we were told that the final commandment was said to be against coverting thy neighbour's ass. I suspect this was done to give bored children a cheap laugh. (And how it worked.) In fact, the list of things not to desire is rather longer: 'thy neighbour's house… thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's.' It's against envy, basically, chiefly though not specifically relating to possessions. I don't think that this instruction was put last because it was seen as the least important. Rather, it underlines the whole list. Jealousy can cause us to break all the other commandments. It can lead us to theft and (when one starts coverting wives) adultery most obviously, but also to slander, dishonouring parents, even murder. Greed can make us work on the Sabbath. Ultimately it can create a god other than the one who speaks in the Bible.

Which it has done, of course. Perhaps we covert even more regularly than we blaspheme or represent the things of the earth. We covert every day and we are told it is right to do so. The whole of modern consumerist society is based on coverting. We're told to buy one thing after another not because of their worth because somebody else already has them. Even if the 'neighbour' in question is just a person in an advert with a pleasing smile, the principle is the same. I don't think that it's just uneasiness about the word 'ass' which makes the religious right gloss over this final commandment.

Finally, what isn't in the Ten Commandments? A ban on abortion for one, unless you add some words which aren't actually there. Nothing about homosexuality, sex outside marriage or single mothers; those who take up religion as an excuse to hate other people have had to root through St Paul's letter tray to excuse them here. There's no mention of drugs or cigarettes, which is understandable as neither to the people in the desert at the time. Nor of alcohol, less so because it emphatically was.Less encouraging are other omissions. Assault which isn't intended to cause death. Rape. Kidnap. Prostitution, pimping, usury, arson, blackmail, bullying… and those are just off the top of my head. A man could live a life which is evil by every definable standard and still claim not to be breaking any of the Ten Commandments. Which leads to the thought that the list can't be used alone to form a set of laws, either religious or civil. It can't even be the keystone, as the Constitution is in America. Too much is vague where it should have been precise, too much is specified when it should have been left open. God's instructions to Moses were a starting point and nothing else. Little wonder that His son later felt the need to come down and sort a few things out.

A Thin Story

2006-09-23T13:28:00.000Z

London Fashion Week used to be marked by endless accounts about how silly the clothes on display are. The dresses are just as daft this year. Nobody's taking any notice of them, however. Instead, all focus is on those wearing them and their resemblance to living skeletons. Many journalists are concerned that teenage girls will take one look at them and instantly embrace anorexia and/or bulimia. Interestingly, this comes in the midst of a more sustained moral panic about obesity. Again, the primary focus is on teenage girls. But, just for the moment, the greatest threat to Western civilisation isn't being five pounds overweight. It's anorexia, and it's all the fault of those evil models.

These public outrages tend to happen in isolation. Few ever try to link them up. Nobody has suggested, for example, that some may be encouraged by the models to shed a few unnecessary pounds. Or that another possible cause of anorexia is every branch of the media constantly screaming "You're a lard arse!" Or even that models, together with actresses and female singers, are possibly so thin because gossip columnists slap the 'fat girl' tag on them as soon as they try looking remotely normal. Journalists need simple wrongdoers and this can never be other journalists.

As a result, women's bodies have become a constant subject of public debate. Perhaps, as a heterosexual male, I shouldn't mind this too much. But I'm also a heterosexual male who likes to read some actual news occasionally; like who my country's at war with this week, for example. Anyway, this isn't the GQ-style "Phwoar, look at the jugs on that" sort of enjoyable nonsense. It's the endless tutting of elderly, prudish tongues. The only reason it isn't accompanied by claims of "When I were a lad, models looked like real women" is that this would be too obvious a lie. Models have always looked the same; Twiggy didn't earn her nickname for nothing. Not only is this 'story' not news, it isn't even new.

Incidentally, for any journalists who really disapprove of London Fashion Week: It isn't like Miss World, which survived for decades without coverage. The only people who care about it are other journalists. If you ignore it for long enough, it really will go away.

Huh?

2006-09-17T11:40:00.000Z

OK, so let's see if I'm interpreting the latest ICM poll, as reported in today's Sunday Mirror, correctly:

45% of people want Tony Blair to resign immediately. That's double those who chose the next most popular option, for him to do a full fourth term. About the same number want Gordon Brown to be the next Labour leader, and therefore Prime Minister. Nobody else comes anywhere near Brown's popularity. Yet 57% believe Blair makes a better premier than Brown would. In other words: there must be a substantial number of people out there who think Tony Blair should hand over power right now to somebody who would do a worst job.

A couple of weeks ago I said the Blair-Brown contest was the dullest political feud in English history. I take that back. Now it's just getting plain surreal.

Health Forum

2006-09-14T18:16:00.000Z

Regular viewers of this blog (not that there are any; even my mum only dips in sporadically) may notice a change in the links opposite. HealingWell is out; Health Forum is in. My new favourite only started on Monday, so far offers naught but message boards and a chat room, has about 15 members to date and boasts a frankly rubbish name. But I really can't recommend HealingWell anymore, save for nostalgics wanting to experience old school totalitarianism.

Earlier this week a good friend of mine was banned from HealingWell. This followed an argument in the chatroom. It was sparked off when a newbie insulted a friend of hers without justification. I don't know exactly what was said. But 'exact' seems a redundant concept when all my friend was told by the site administrator was that her behaviour was 'inappropriate'. HealingWell, presumably, frowns upon people defending those they care about. Her friend was banned as well, for being around at the same time I guess. The site administrator didn't even have the courtesy to tell her why. He got in touch with me after I sent him an extremely snooty email complaining about his decision. This appears to be a man who is impressed by pomposity. He had full logs of the argument, he said, and I didn't know the full story. As he didn't even summarise his side of it, this has to be one of the feeblest defences I've ever heard.

And last weekend the epilepsy forum moderator was summarily removed from her post by the same administrator. She wasn't given any warning beforehand or, again, much of an explanation afterwards. Her crime appears to be to have taken a weekend off to spend with her family. The next day in the chat room she told a member that she'd been fired rather than quit. In a private conversation, incidentally - but the administrator reads logs of these as well when the mood takes him. He read this one and she was also banned from the whole site. Forum moderators are volunteers who give up a lot of their time and have to put up with a lot from snotty buggers like myself. This one had done the role for two years and, you would think, deserved a little more respect. Now I notice that some of her recent postings have been pulled off the forum. Had she been anything of a dictator, I would say this was exactly like a fallen Soviet leader being airbrushed from history.

I know about the rights of administrators to make these decisions and, right now, I don't give a toss. Sites like this are supposed to be for the benefit of their members. This particular member is disgusted and I'm not the only one. So if you have a medical condition you need help with, check out the Health Forum. You'll be part of a new venture right at its inception, you'll get to talk to kind, sympathetic and often very funny people. And I promise, eventually us disgruntled old HW members will calm down and stop slagging off our old site.

The Diddy Men

2006-09-10T22:02:00.000Z

I see Sean Combs, aka Puff Daddy aka whatever else he feels like that week, has been prevented from yet another rebranding exercise recently. An obscure British DJ noticed that Combs was about to take his own stage name. He threatened the American millionaire with court, winning exclusive rights to the alias and his legal costs in the bargain.

An uplifting story, until you see the name they were disputing. Diddy. I mean, Diddy? A name which, unless I'm mistaken, was first coined by everyone's favourite wacky tax evader Ken Dodd. Is this what rap, a genre which once gave us magnificient creations like Queen Latifa, Niggers With Attitude and Grandmaster Flash, has sunk to? Or has this unsettling undercurrent always run through it? Perhaps the cataclysmic East-West rivalry between Tupac Shakur and The Notorious BIG in the 1990's was really over who had the right to change their name to Flopsy-Wopsy.

Name calling has always between an important part of rap. But for God's sake, boys, stick to calling one another hoes and muthafuckas. It's far more dignified.

Stasis

2006-09-10T17:43:00.000Z

Recently I've actually been warming to the Conservative Party. Not, of course, because of Cokehead Cameron and his 'Tony Blair without spin (or policies)' appeal. But because the Tories would have sorted out a leader as divisive and redundant as Blair a long time ago. A few secretive meetings and said leader would be floating in a gutter with a knife in his back. Then we wouldn't have had to endure a week as monumentally fatuous as this last one. And journalists, instead of spending their time gossiping in Westminster bars, might actually do some proper reporting. For example, telling us about what appears to be an actual war being fought by British troops in Afghanistan.

Which would be a bit tough on the journalists, of course. But the Blair-Brown feud grew tedious about five years ago. There's no word for it now. The nadir (to date; I'm sure it will sink lower) had to be Charles Clarke criticising Brown for laughing after a meeting with Blair. This would be an astonishing non-story whoever said it - but Charles Clarke? The man booted out of the Home Office not because he'd been shagging his secretary but because he was simply no good at his job. Why does he imagine anyone cares now what he thinks about anything? More to the point, why do they?

Clarke's fall partially explains why there's no end in sight to this business. None of Blair's allies, the people he might have willingly handed power to, have lasted the course. Alan Milburn was even less competent than Clarke. David Blunkett has become a highly entertaining disaster area. John Prescott gave up long ago even trying to persuade people that he has any credibility, Peter Mandelson likewise for honesty. Only Gordon Brown has remained. Who was actually promised the job, who has propped up this Labour administration from the start but who, judging from the way he's treated, seems to have stolen Blair's lunch money when they were at school.

And until he finds a sucessor he trusts, Blair clearly doesn't want to go. Every piece of ground he concedes on the issue is miniscule and reluctant. He says he will go in a year. He hasn't actually set a date though, because apparently he wants an orderly transition. Normally that requires actually knowing when the transition will occur, but I'm not sure that that really masters here. In a year's time he'll probably say he'll go within a year again, and this time promising not to cross his fingers. Meanwhile Brown daren't act openly while he's still so obviously the only one who will benefit. It's considered acceptable to have naked ambition in Westminster. But acting on it is still seen as bad form.

So here we're all stuck. Blair and Brown, Brown and Blair. The one a fraction to the left of the centre ground or the one a fraction to the right. Perhaps the most long-lasting, subtle and, above all, spectacularly dull feud in the entire history of British politics.

Write And Wrong

2006-09-05T18:00:00.000Z

The other night I had two conversations about writing with two people holding remarkably different opinions. One of them, a marketing man, believes that you should always identify your target audience before beginning. This will give you the ideal tone, style and even subject for your creation. A piece of writing is simply a product and its sales potential must be built in from the start. The other person is working on a novel which is effectively an autobiography. She has only considered getting it published in the sense of deciding that she doesn't want to ever get it published. Too much of the content will be painful and personal. The idea of some stranger reading it might preventing her from writing the truth.

I instinctively side with the latter extreme. Not just because reducing literature to a commodity is creepy – though it is, of course – but because I don't see the point in it. You can never really know what that target audience thinks. You can only presume, on the basis of what they've read before. So you have to give them the same again. The whole idea of writing being a way of expressing your unique self instantly vanishes. Instead it's just a glorified copy and paste exercise. If you're writing a book then you're no better than those Mills & Boon hacks putting flesh on the same rigid skeleton. If a web site, your output is just a flagpole on which to hang those income-generating banner adverts. Which is fine for some. But I already earn a living doing tasks I don't give a toss about. When I go home and put pen to paper, or fingers to keys, I want to please myself.

Up to a point. I write novels which will almost certainly never get published. Mostly because they're bad, of course, but also because they straddle several genres in a manner which satisfies nobody except me. Yet, unlike my friend, I would like to get the things sold eventually. I may do nothing to facilitate this once they're finished, but the intention is always lurking in my mind as I'm writing them. (And of course I've had the usual day dreams about getting rich from them, of quitting my job after telling my boss, in a tangle of mixed metaphors, what it is and where he can insert it.) It helps, this thought. It makes me sharpen my style, lengthen my descriptive passages, develop my characters more coherently. When I'm writing entirely for myself, I get lazy. The notion of a panel of waiting judges forces an effort I don't want, but nonetheless need, to make.

The idea of an audience has also pushed me in new directions. I generally say I started this blog to express thoughts which will just knock around my head annoying me until I write them down. Not wholly true, actually. They always fade eventually even if I leave them alone. And I never used to be motivated to do anything with them. This post – and every single other one on this blog – proves I still don't exactly take my ideas to reasoned conclusions. But these are lengthy and lucid essays compared to the incomprehensible paragraphs I used to scribble down and shove to the bottom of a drawer. My web site, too, was originally intended to be a dumping ground for miscellaneous stuff I'd already produced. Yet it's encouraged me to start work on some of the abandoned pieces again. Especially my ill-considered York guide which is now perhaps a quarter instead of a tenth complete.

Why? Because of that notion of a reader. Even if said reader is only a bored student who will scan a few lines, sneer and move on, it somehow gives my work a greater purpose. A reader, moreover, who I will never meet, will never even learn about. And that removes the risk from the process – an anxiety which has largely stopped me showing anything to family or friends. I try harder because I think I'm being judged. But I'll never, thank God, learn what mark I get.
I don't think I'm alone in feeling this. The combination of publicity and privacy has helped drive the blog phenomenon, encouraging thousands to home-publish their private diaries and poetry. Look further and you see the same mood in chat rooms, personal web sites, message forums, artificial 'friend' sites like MySpace. It neatly captures where we many of us stand as individuals. Willingly isolated and yet still craving for greater connections with society.

In other words: The middle ground I occupy, compared to the two extremists I talked to, is basically the correct one. So nyaahh.

D Minus For Effort

2006-08-31T16:49:00.000Z

More and more I think a lot of features of the natural world are just ludicrous. Life's supposed to be a trial, I know. But some things just seem sloppy. So I'd be grateful if God, evolution or both could sort out the following:

Clouds on mountains

The only point of mountains is the view you get from the top. Half the time you don't get one because of the damn clouds. And the higher the mountain, so the better the potential view, the more likely there is to be clouds. If we must have clouds anywhere except the sky, let them go down to the plains. There's nothing to see there anyway.

Pain

Yes, I know. Pain is useful because it's a warning. But I think we've reached a stage in our development where we recognise that blood spurting out of our skin, say, is a bad thing. And for the less visible bodily malfunctions, some sort of bell or light device can surely be devised. Anyway, it's not as if we actually do anything when we feel pain. We just take some painkillers.

Moths

They come out at night and then just fly for the nearest source of light. I mean, really. If you like the darkness so much, stay in it. And if you prefer light, why don't you just come out during the day? It's pretty much everywhere then.

Snot

I challenge anyone to find a point to this. If it's actually a punishment for something humanity's doing wrong, fair enough. Tell us what it is and we'll repent. Otherwise we rather need those nostrils to breath through, thank you very much.

Volcanos

The most fertile soil is found on the slopes of volcanos. So everyone farms there and lots of people die whenever there's an eruption. Oh the irony etc. What's wrong with putting the best land in the safest parts of the world? And anyway, why should being covered with molten rock make soil fertile in the first place? It's absurd when you think about it. (See also: why should being covered in cow crap make soil fertile?)

Pandas

Even nature commentators, trained to adopt tones of awe when telling us how something can eat beetles, sound exasperated when they get to the pandas. They only eat bamboo. They only eat a certain type of bamboo. And bamboo is rubbish for nuitrition. Plus, they seem to hate sex. This is a species yearning for extinction and perhaps we should just let them get on with it.

Ducks and pigeons
Both are phenomenal flyers. Ducks can reach the fastest speeds in the world; flocks of pigeons can swoop and soar in beautiful formations. Why, then, do they all spend most of their time waddling clumsily along the ground getting in our way? Go to your strengths for Christ's sake.

Sleep
What guarantees that you won't get to sleep? Thinking about going to sleep. Actually meaning to do it. You can only get sleep if you forget what you're supposed to be doing. It's survival of the absent-minded and explains an awful lot about our species.

The New Religion

2006-08-24T15:46:00.000Z

Reading back on one of my old blog entries, during a period of naval-gazing excessive even by my standards, I realise I was rather hard on religion. The modern Christian church, I wrote, repelled me because of the large numbers of bigots it still attracts. Thinking about it, I realise this was based solely on what I've read in the newspapers about Christianity. An argument which is only acceptable if we can assume that journalists are empirical and rational reporters of truth. But what's been my actual experience of practicing Christians - and those of other faiths? That almost all are tolerant and clear-minded, strong in their beliefs but unwilling to impose them on others. The bigots come in other hues.

A lot of my group discussions about religion have been like this. A careful, thoughtful examination of contrasting opinions. And one voice which states "I think religion's a load of bollocks." It starts early and continues striking as regular as a clock. Even when the owner is assured that you heard him/her the first time, they continue. Because they feel that this statement which should be the start and end of the debate.

Press them a bit harder and things get no better. This sort of person isn't just an athiest themselves, they're outraged that anyone is anything else. Science, you will soon hear, has proved that religion is a load of bollocks. Believing something just because it's written in a book is ludicrous. Uh huh. Unfortunately much scientific 'fact' is in fact just hypothosis, much of it gets disproved later and the first civilisation to offer rational alternatives to religion, the ancient Greeks, got virtually everything hilariously wrong. There's also the problem of where the athiest actually learned so much about science. Did they actually do the experiments themselves? Or did they, well, read about them in a book and put their faith in them? Plus I'm not sure that a great deal in the Bible, say, has been comprehensively debunked. The world took rather longer than six days to create and that's pretty much all you can say. The best science has been able to do is prove that miracles are extremely unlikely. I think people always knew that. That's why they called the things miracles.

Oh, and there's the killing. This is the fervent athiest's next and apparently irrefutable argument. People kill one another because of religion so it should be abolished right now. Well, yes, it has caused a lot of bloodshed. And people also fight wars because of political systems, property, territorial boundaries, ethnicity and trade. Often these are the sole cause and religion is just used as fancy dress. So we'll get rid of all of them, shall we, and go back to living in the ocean. People fight wars for a lot of reasons and one of the most common is intolerance.

Athiesm has become an alternative religion in western civilisation over the past two centuries. It has its prophets (the Enlightenment thinkers) its holy books (Origin of Species or, to those of a certain hue, Das Kapital) and its icons (the DNA symbol, the Genesis-refuting dinosaur bones). It has the vast majority of its believers perfectly willing to accept that others may have different opinions. And it has its bigots spitting venom at the heretics - and being especially bitter because they can't even threaten anyone with hellfire.

SOAP Operas

2006-08-15T19:11:00.000Z

So brace yourself for the imminent arrival of Snakes On A Plane, perhaps the most eagerly anticipated dreadful movie of all time. Whatever its faults, and they promise to be legion, you have to admire the honesty of its title. Like Nick Cave's 'Murder Ballads' (basically lots of ballads about murders), SOAP does exactly what it says on the can. There's a plane and there's, well, snakes on it; and that seems to be the extent of the plot. Star Samual L Jackson reputedly vetoed all attempts to make the title more sophisticated. It's not On The Waterfront or Casablanca, he objected. It's Snakes On A Plane. And so it is.

This rumour surfaced in the internet frenzy which SOAP's whole-hearted dreadfulness has inspired. Hype which has allegedly affected the 'script' itself. Discussing ways in which SOAP might be made even more terrible, somebody suggested Jackson should say "I want all these motherfucking snakes off this motherfucking plane." Lo and behold, the line has appeared in the final cut.

If true, I know how this anonymous contributor must feel. A little bit proud, a little bit awestruck and remarkably depressed. I sometimes feel that researchers follow me around, noting my sarcastic suggestions for lousy TV shows and then turning them into reality. If so then I'm afraid Celebrity Big Brother is one of mine. So too is that program where bossy women go into people's homes and inspect their toilet seats for stray pubic hairs. And watch out in the future for Hitler's Fattest Nazis ("Heinrich Himmler. Fifteen stone of pure evil!") Grumpy Old Celebrity Chefs, A Sticky Situation (where poor people are tarred and feathered by rich businessmen, the last to lose consciousness winning a million pounds), Ready Steady Sell Your House! and When Colonic Irrigations Go Wrong.

Obviously I'm just being paranoid. However awful we imagine films and TV can get, they always outdo our expectations. I'm reminded of the satarist who, hearing that Kissinger had won the Nobel Peace Prize, announced his retirement because he could never invent anything as twisted as reality. (I can never remember his name so assume he made good on his promise). We're virtually past the level where any sort of parody or mockery is possible. Just enjoy the descent, I suppose; and don't assume that SOAP is the lowest Hollywood can ever sink. There's a long way to go yet.

Profile Of A Moron

2006-08-14T18:05:00.000Z

A phenomenal amount of shite has been written and spoken since the dismantling of an alleged terrorist plot at Heathrow last week. But Lord Stevens in the New of the World wins my award. Seeking to keep our airplanes safe while avoiding huge delays caused by the stringent security procedures (and these delays continue to dominate the headlines, probably because journalists worry that they themselves will be affected) he recommends 'passenger profiling'. Namely, only men of Asian or North African appearance should be searched rigorously. Because they're the only ones who have been involved in bombing plots to date, so will presumably be the only ones who ever will be. The only problems Lord Stevens anticipates with his plan is liberals bleating accusations of racism.

Well, I'm a liberal and I'd like to bleat an accusation of racism. Mainly because the plan is, in fact, racist. I've another problem with it too, however. Islam is a largely racially based religion But it's quite sucessful at finding new converts from various walks of life. Jemima Khan and Muhammad Ali, for example, would slip through this meticulous 'profiling.' And the recently converted are more likely to be amongst the most fanatical. Any 'Muslim' psychotics would be delighted if Lord Stevens' cack-handed plan was implemented. They'd just have to find a particularly white or black fellow psycho, load him up with explosives and be fairly sure he'd pass through airline security unchallenged. Lord Stevens doesn't seem to consider this. He does mention that Israel uses passenger profiling "and they've got probably the safest airports and airlines in the world". Something which must be of great comfort to the people of Haifa right now.

Lord Stevens, incidentally, used to be Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. One reassurance during these unsettling times is that he no longer is.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2006-08-06T16:19:00.000Z

On the surface, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is claiming to have the three most clearly delineated roles in film history. It’s simple. A good man, a bad man and an ugly man – respectively Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach. Their roles is even announced by captions at the start and end of the film, albeit in Spanish. As the plot develops, though, the walls start to dissolve and this infantile moral clarity becomes something rather more interesting.
Wallach is Tuco, the Ugly Mexican bandit. A cursing, capering goblin of a man, “known as The Rat,” only rescued from total absurdity by his lethalness. Any miniscule shreds of dignity he briefly manages to collect are quickly lost. Take the three-cornered showdown at the denouement. Eastwood gets to shroud himself in an enigmatic poncho; Van Cleef has a cool all-black ensemble. Wallach must make do with a scruffy maroon jacket splitting open at the seams. Even his very status is ludicrous. The Good and the Bad are binary opposites of the moral scale; the Ugly is a jokey alternative which doesn’t even belong on it.
In most films Tuco would be played solely for laughs before meeting an untimely death. But Sergio Leone actually makes him the undeclared star of his piece. Eastwood may take top billing but Wallach has the most screen time and the most rounded character. Only he, for one, has a proper name. Eastwood and Van Cleef are only known by nicknames, Blondie and Angel Eyes, which aren’t even particularly accurate. Wallach’s constant mutterings almost serve as old-fashioned soliloquies to share his thoughts with the audience; a marked contrast to the legendarily taciturn Eastwood. And, unusually for a Leone character, Tuco is given a background and a family. The scene where he meets is estranged priest brother and learns his parents are dead is one of the most powerful in the film. Wallach is almost shamed into repentance for a second by his brother. Then he comes back with the angry speech, “In our village, if one did not want to die of poverty, one became a priest or a bandit. You chose your way, I chose mine. Mine was harder.” Tuco is not set apart from the moral scale after all. He is actually a battleground of values, a struggle epitomised when he finds a wagon full of corpses. Instinctively he crosses himself like a good Catholic – and then gets on with looting the bodies.
Eastwood is The Good. Of course Eastwood is The Good. But precisely how Good is he? He doesn’t seem to loot corpses but does make fresh ones out of living men with no apparent compunction. We first meet him making a living by turning in outlaws for the bounty and then rescuing them from the noose. Only the greater brutality of the Civil War seems to shake him into something resembling humanity. “Never seen so many men wasted so badly,” he famously mutters as he watches the savage battle for the bridge. Afterwards when he meets a dying Confederate soldier, he covers the boy up and gives him a last smoke. (Cigars seem to be Eastwood’s sole way of expressing kindness. He offers them to Wallach on the two times they are starting to build a proper friendship.) But this strange version of last rites is an aberration, not an epiphany. Hearing Wallach ride away to try and grab the gold, Eastwood immediately strides off and starts firing cannons at him. It’s also worth noting that Eastwood started the double-crossing which constantly mars their partnership, robbing Wallach and leaving him trussed up in the wilderness. And that in the film’s spectacular climax he appears to be inflicting a particularly macabre fate on his ex-partner, only to turn it into a particularly macabre practical joke. Sergio Leone always liked to subvert the image of cowboy as image of moral rectitude which John Wayne epitomised. In this respect The Good, The Bad and The Ugly stands on a line beginning with A Fistful of Dollars and ended by Eastwood himself with Unforgiven.
Lee Van Cleef, at least, is fairly unambiguously Bad. Leone was always more comfortable with pure evil than pure good. It’s interesting, though, how peripheral Van Cleef is to the film. After introducing himself with a flurry of murders, he vanishes for a long time. And he needs a great deal of effort to intrude on the quest-cum-vendetta of Eastwood and Wallach. In both For A Few Dollars More and Once Upon A Time In The West, the whole purpose of the story is getting revenge on Gian Maria Volonte and Henry Fonda respectively. Van Cleef is just another contender for the chest of gold. One defeated, moreover, not by a quick draw buy by a piece of trickery. Eastwood secretly empties Wallach’s gun before the three-way shootout. This leaves him free to focus on Van Cleef whose concentration is divided. You can almost feel sorry for Angel Eyes as he falls into his handily open grave. He was at least willing to fight an honest duel at the end. The Good man had other plans, however.

The taming of the old West has entered American mythology. The conquering of its last frontier, replacing an anarchic land where the gun is king with the rule of law and symbols of Eastern civilisation. The theme winds around many Westerns. Only the treatment has shifted gradually. Originally it was celebratory, represented by heroic, blue-eyed Americans vanquishing evil Red Indians. By the 1950’s the tone was becoming more melancholic, particularly in John Ford’s films; realising that freedom, too, was being sacrificed. Finally the outright cynical came to the fore, in Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West and Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid.
The old West is dying in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly too. Or rather, thanks to the Civil War it is being ripped apart and only desolation is appearing in its place. An innkeeper, rejoicing in the imminent victory of the Northern because he can make more money from them, anticipates the greed which would finally conquer the frontier. But he doesn’t benefit, his inn being quickly destroyed by a stray cannonball. A wagon miraculously appearing in the desert turns out to be full of corpses. Leone fills his landscapes with ruined buildings and subverts the symbols of law and society. A train ploughing majestically through the wilderness is also an instrument of torture for a Confederate spy tied to the front. Eastwood, who makes a living cutting nooses, ties one around Wallach as a grim practical joke. A bridge, that most basic achievement of mankind, is the reason for a pointless battle and the loss of thousands of lives; its destruction is the cause for celebration. One of the few structures which remains, a monastery which cares for wounded soldiers, seems almost grotesque in context. Wallach flinches in disgust when he sees the scenes of solace inside. He would be more at home in the graveyard where the film ends. There is a wide, empty space in its centre where the final shootout takes place. That would be where the church ought to be. But there is nothing. The whole area is just a disposal area for corpses, the graves marked by the most rudimentary of signs.
Passing away, too, are the personifications of civilisation. There are a few symbols of moral rectitude and none suffer happy fates. Two are doomed army commanders, one the victim of gangrene, the other slowly poisoning himself with alcohol before a bullet quickens the process. Both, incidentally, are fighting for the North. The Union is dying even as it wins the war. The only institution still standing by the end is the church, in the shape of Tuco’s brother. But he is left severely compromised, surrendering to anger, knocked to the ground by Tuco and, in his final shot, begging futilely for forgiveness. Even commercial greed and evil cannot stand up to the savage force ravaging Leone’s world. Van Cleef starts the film as a hired gun. At the end of his introductory sequence, though, he double-crosses the man with the gold and dispatches him. Similar fates meet the families trying to manipulate Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars, the rail baron who thought he controls Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West. The values and morals of the old West may have vanished from Leone’s films. Brute force, though, still rules supreme.

A recent poll put the score from The Lord of the Rings as the best ever written. It’s a decent little tune, I suppose, if rather derivative; rather like the trilogy itself. But the result simply shows how much poor memories influence surveys. Nobody who has watched a Sergio Leone film in the last ten years could have voted for any other. Many movies, including The Lord of the Rings, are improved by their scores. For all its many other virtues, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly simply couldn’t exist without its music.
Ennio Morricone worked on all Leone’s major films. The professional harmony of the pair was legendary. One Once Upon A Time In The West, Morricone wrote the score first and Leone instructed his actors to modulate their movements around it. In one scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Eastwood holsters his gun then Wallach spins his spurs to announce his unexpected appearance, the sequence perfectly spaced by the famous signature riff. Sometimes, with their sparse dialogue, Leone’s works seem more like a ballet than a film. Or as one critic described Once Upon A Time In The West, ‘a dance of death.’
There is a sense, too, of the pair trying to outdo each other. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was easily Leone’s most ambitious piece to date, transcending the brutal revenge tales of the other Dollars films. And Morricone tried to match him on his flight upwards. Leone piled layer upon layer, creating a plot which was both an intricate, ingenious device and a simple extended duel. Morricone built fantastic, almost unearthly compositions, employing choirs, trumpets, steel guitars, a number of instruments I can’t begin to name. Every sudden shift in mood is followed perfectly by the score. The poignant suffering inflicted by war, the tension of the gunfight in the deserted town, the savage march through the desert; most memorably, the quirky theme tune announcing every plot twist or black joke. Even these, though, are overshadowed by the film’s astonishing climax.
Morricone gives us two compositions for this. Each begins quietly then builds gradually into an amazingly stirring chorus. Keeping pace with him, of course, is Leone’s direction. As the music swells, the camera moves faster and faster. The first crescendo leads to one extended blur of movement. For the second there is a series of repetitive images appearing and vanishing quicker than a blink. The effect is amazing, the film leaping out and bludgeoning you into submission.
What, though, is the story behind these monumental crescendos? A man running through a cemetery looking for a grave which is supposed to be full of gold and isn’t. And then three men having a fight over a rock supposed to have a name written on it; which, as it turns out, it doesn’t. Squalor, basically, greed and trickery. Cinema is often accused of manipulating the emotions of the audience. Leone and Morricone both manipulate ours as much as they can and all to spring another practical joke on us. At the end of each sequence, Morricone’s music is abruptly cut. There is a quick fumble of movement and the issue is resolved. Reality hits us between the eyes. And in the sudden silence, we realise exactly what we were gaping at a second ago.

Hatred

2006-07-29T14:22:00.000Z

A friend recently said he wished he understood more fully the latest Israeli/Lebanese bloodbath. My response was that it's fairly simple. It's about hatred. Religion, territory, race and water to some extent; but primarily about hatred, mutual and unquenchable. This was a slightly drunken men-in-a-pub conversation we were having, but I'll stand by that assessment. The only way to comprehend the motives of the main participants is to realise that they just hate each other, and probably always will.

My friend was also searching for an analogy. I'm also going for a simple one here: the school yard. One boy kicks a bigger boy without provocation. The big boy responds not with another kick but with a savage, unrelenting assault. That's what happened on the Gaza Strip. The Hizbullah attack on the Israeli barracks only varies in that it seemed to be an attempt to rescue the first boy as he fell bleeding to the ground. Interestingly, Hizbullah rejects this interpretation. They claimed they had been planning their raid for months. But then Hizbullah have never been easy with any justifications that a sane man might recognise.

The only strange part of this depressingly familiar cycle of events is that it's possible to sympathise with one of the governments involved. Lebanon can't have expected Hizbullah to suddenly strike after years of dormancy. They can't have expected the Israelis to respond by bombing not just Hizbullah positions but pretty much the whole of Lebanon. The excuse given for the second is that Hizbullah forms part of the Lebanese government and there's been no attempts to disband the organisation. But like it or not, Hizbullah remains very popular in south Lebanon and some of their representatives tend to get elected. And a direct move against them would have probably pushed the country back into civil war. I think Lebanon has had enough of that for the time being. Defending the Israeli reaction is like saying they would have been justified bombing Britain if the IRA killed any of their soldiers in the 1970's and 80's. Sinn Fein, after all, technically formed part of the British government; they had elected representatives in Westminster even if they chose not to take their seats.

The British and, especially, American response is another reason to sympathise with Lebanon. A democracy, a democracy striving towards peace, being bombed by a neighbour for actions it didn't carry out. They might have expected a little protection from America, the self-appointed guardian of peace and freedom. Not when the aggressor is Israel, however. Even though Lebanon is a largely Christian nation and the Bush administration contains some serious anti-Semites. Still this golden rule cannot be broken for America: Israel Is Always Right. This is one detail I do wish I understood better. Bush lives in a world of black and white, good and evil. So why does he side with Israel even when they blatantly break his own infantile rules? Perhaps the reverse of hate is being shown here. Love, which excuses and blinds whenever necessary. Or perhaps it's because this is the school yard. And nobody should expect the biggest kid of all to play fair.

Not Fit To Speak

2006-07-20T21:54:00.000Z

I did promise I wouldn't use this blog to whitter on about my personal life. (On the basis that total strangers reading it wouldn't be interested and I didn't want them knowing anyway). But since this particular episode concerns web use, I though it might be worth relating.

I'm a member of the epilepsy section of HealingWell, the health site with a link opposite. Recently a 12 year old girl did the standard introductory post to the forum - 'Hi, I'm new here, got epilepsy, don't like it, can anyone give advice' etc. Rather than helping, the forum moderator instantly put up a message telling her that she was too young to post anything. Then the site founder weighed in with the announcement that US federal law required all contributors to be 13 or older. I don't know what happened to the poor girl, but assume she instantly had her membership revoked.

Rather irked, I put a post of my own. I told the girl that there seemed to be an age limit to receiving help and support and suggest she come back in a year when her right to exist might be acknowledged. Slightly sarcastic, I know, but not especially offensive. I'm informed that some of the site regulars put up similiar posts, albeit phrased more moderately. I never actually saw them, however. Less than a day after I kicked off the debate, the moderator struck again. She deleted all the criticism and replaced them with a huffy message of her own which said that negative or unpleasant posts wouldn't be tolerated. Looking on the site today, I see that the whole thread has been wiped off.

An amusing episode on one level, less so in other ways. I don't know if the moderator emailed the girl to guide her to a children's site where she could post. (Unlikely, according to one person). I also don't know who thought to pass a law shutting children out of sites not about sex or violance but helping people through a pretty unpleasant medical condition. It's also hard to get past the censorship issue. We weren't mocking or insulting anyone. We were challenging the rules of the site. Print magazines and newspapers frequently carry letters criticising their own content. But it seems that in the free, untramelled internet, that's just something you're not allowed to do.

Record Breaking

2006-07-19T15:16:00.000Z

As I gradually melt into a rather putrid pool, I read that this is the hottest July in Britain 'since records began'. I thought it might be. Every month seems to be the something-est one since records began - the hottest, the coldest, the wettest, the sunniest, the darkest, the fattest (particularly common in these obese times) or just the nicest. We're rarely told whose records they are or when precisely they did begin. I suspect they're reset every few years so that every month, like every child in a talent contest, can have a prize.

If the heatwave continues, be sure of another story re-emerging soon. Some, perhaps, all of the water companies will announce that their reservoirs are empty so can everyone please stop turning on their taps. And then the reaction. How much of the water from said reservoirs is actually distributed around the country through holes in leaky pipes - usually around a third - and why nobody spends any money fixing these pipes. Spokesmen from the companies will give the usual response, which can be summarised as "You think we're wasting a lot of water this year? That's nothing to how much we wasted five years ago." But just once I'd like one of them to stand up and scream, "So we're cutting back on essential repairs to maximise profits? We're a private company. That's what we're supposed to do. If you don't like it, you shouldn't have sold off the bloody water industry in the first place."

If that happens, and if the government responds by re-nationalising the water companies, they may make it the sanest month since records began.

A Levy On The Lords

2006-07-15T15:51:00.000Z

As the 'loans for peerages' scandal gets more melodramatic and the Metropolitan Police show their theatrical side again - thankfully without shooting anyone this time - a question keeps running through my head. Why does anyone actually want a title? None of my circle, which includes not just raving lefties but a few raving righties too, believe they have any prestige attached whatsoever. Several centuries of mockery have seen to that, notably PG Wodehouse and all his 'Lord Wotwotleighs.' A knighthood might, just conceivably, be desired. It would put you in the same company as Alex Ferguson and Bobby Robson, after all. But a true peerage involves sacraficing your name, one of the most crucial parts of your identity, and instead calling yourself after a piece of scrubland in Northamptonshire.

There's still a small amount of political power attached, I know. This can easily be removed by doing what should have been done a decade ago i.e. properly reform the House of Lords and make it an elected upper chamber. Even if this ever happens, though, a small group of people will still be clamouring, and paying, for titles. The rich businessmen who have the Humvee, the private jet and the mansion by the Thames and want to get one status symbol ahead of their peers. A claque who have almost entirely separated themselves from the rest of the country.

Lord Levy - an unfortunate name in the circumstances - the Labour Party and the Conservatives may have broken the rules and even the law. But have they actually done anything damaging? In the 'cash for questions' affair of the 1990's, Tories recieved personal bribes to manipulate Parliament. Here it's political parties getting money to fight elections - quite important to democracy, incidentally - in exchange for glass beads. They're fleecing some very dim men who can certainly afford to be fleeced. It's probably the only way to persuade these men to keep their money in the country and invested in something remotely useful, so how wrong is it?

The honours system has always been a phenomenal scam. It was only ever intended to formalise bribery and patronage. Lord Levy's crime isn't to pervert this system, as some have said, but to operate it in perhaps its most perfect form.

A BBC Announcement

2006-07-06T20:51:00.000Z

As a BBC-style add-on to the last post, I should say: If anyone suffers conditions described in the poem below, please click on the Healingwell link to the left. You will receive lots of useful advice and meet all sorts of nice people. And a few self-important bloggers, but that's the internet for you

Yet More Poetry

2006-07-06T20:41:00.000Z

More than my usual reservations about this. It's an attempt to tackle a 'serious' subject with very limited tools. And I'm still slightly worried that, for once, I might offend people I don't want to offend. But after taking council from someone brighter than me, I'm posting it anyway. All I can say is that the second stanza is an attempt to describe what epilepsy appears to be doing to my mind when I'm having a seizure. It's a personal account and nothing else.

Sticks and Stones

No: that isn’t it.
That’s not the worst thing at all.
The taunting or the fear
Or the names: epi, spasmo.
Jokes about frothy lips.
I’m supposed to care?
Those who matter won’t make them
And anyone who does
A great excuse to loath them
As they should all be loathed.
So bring it on, archaic stigma
For I have studied you
And I will hit you right back
And I hit below the belt.

But something hits me harder
With its sticks and all its stones
They penetrate my thickest skin
Strike deep inside my being.
No words left to deflect them
No words left at all.
Just primeval rituals, ancient hopes
Expressed in gibbering prayers
That next second or next minute
The blows will start to fade
And mankind will creep back slowly
To this dumb, misfiring ape.

Reasons To Be Slightly Less Miserable

2006-07-03T18:53:00.000Z

To all fellow England fans gripped with feelings of despondency and déjà vu after Saturday’s game, a few consolations.

1. We’re one of the eight best teams in the world. You can’t really argue with that now. Not after we’ve been quarter finalists for pretty much every tournament over the past millennium. And it’s not too bad, is it? We don’t have the largest, richest or most fanatical population in the world so we shouldn’t really expect the best team. And don’t try the counter-argument of how we invented modern football. After all, nobody expects Thomas Edison to design the best light bulbs any more.

2. Wayne Rooney got sent off for a proper foul. If you’re going to regress into childhood, go all the way. Stamp on somebody’s goolies. Don’t, as Deco did, just hide the ball behind your back and say “Nyahh, you’re not having it, nyahh!” What sort of a career-defining moment is that to look back on?

3. We’ve found out what Owen Hargreaves actually does. This used to be one of the great mysteries of science. The origin of the universe, the behaviour of an electron and the purpose of Owen Hargreaves. Some of us were getting ready to dismantle the Bayern Munich midfielder, possibly without an anaesthetic, in an attempt to find out. But now we know. He scuttles about the pitch and deputises adequately for superior players when they’re injured. Now the great minds can turn to the next question: If Jermaine Jenas is in a squad and nobody notices, does he really exist?

4. Frank Lampard. He’s had more shots on goal than anybody else in the tournament. And he inspired the most oft-quoted obscure fact of the tournament: that he’s had more shots on goal etc. Compared to these two achievements, his inability to hit a cow’s arse with a shovel is fairly trivial.

5. England have caught up with modern tactics. In 1998 France won the World Cup by not playing any decent strikers. Four years later, half the teams in the tournament were trying to emulate them. Clearly Eriksson saw this as the way to go when he selected two crocks, a juvenile and a freak of nature as his squad’s attack force. Portugal probably only beat us by taking the next step: going a large section of the game without any centre forwards at all.

6. Theo Walcott had a really spiffing holiday. He made some fantastic new friends. He sat on some excellent benches. He got some great photos to show his mum. Best of all, he didn’t have to do any work at all!

7. Steve McClaren is bursting with ideas. Every game was spent scribbling down notes and holding them in front of Eriksson. He only broke off to mutter intently in his boss and soon-to-be predecessor’s ear. We shouldn’t, at this stage, be too worried by the fact that Eriksson apparently paid him no notice at all.

8. There’s no single scapegoat for England’s exit. Which means no weeks of hate campaigns and (very) thinly disguised xenophobia in the tabloids. Attempts are being made to find a villain. Blame has swirled around Rooney (for stamping on someone’s goolies), Carvalho (for allowing his goolies to be stamped on), Ronaldo (for being an annoying tosser) and the Argentinean referee (for being Argentinean, presumably). But the lack of a single target suggests the real reason for our defeat lies elsewhere. We lost because we weren’t good enough. Accept it and move on.

The School Of Athens'

2006-06-21T20:46:00.000Z

'The School of Athens' probably isn't Raphael's most famous work or even his best. But it has to be my favourite, probably because it's the most fascinating. Its visual impact is immediate. The great decorative arch which stretches from one side of the canvas to the other. Framed inside a perfect symmetry of curved ceilings which recede towards the far gateway. Pillars and statues of Greek gods lining the walls, gentle patterns of light and shade, the whole scene coloured a warm gold. Both glorious and accessible, this is Greek architecture at its most impressive.
But the surroundings never overwhelm the inhabitants. They form the most fascinating study. Raphael shows us a busy crowd scene, addictive in its variety and charming in its realism. Plato and Aristotle are entering from almost the very centre of the canvas. A line of fawners greet them. A youth seems to have been rushing up to join them before being distracted by the splendour of the building. Beside him is a bald and scantily clad man, allegedly Diogenes, lost to everything except his pamphlet. The aged Euclid teaches geometry to a party of children in the right of the foreground. His counterpart on the other side of the foreground delves into his book, seemingly trying to ignore the crowd clustering around him. There are details like this all across the painting; the two men clad in purple and gold robes collaborating on some work, the girl looking up rather resentfully at her companion leaning over her and so on. This is a diverse, energetic group united only by their love of knowledge. It is Raphael's homage to the ideals of ancient Greece.
In a way this isn't surprising. The Renaissance was a re-discovery of the classical era, a belief that ancient knowledge surpassed the contemporary forms. But The School of Athens is still an atypical painting. While Renaissance architecture, initially at least, was just straightforward copies of Greek and Roman styles, the classic influence on painting was more oblique. The likes of Raphael and Leonardo used it to perfect form, lighting and perspective. But they mainly used these techniques for the Biblical themes which dominated medieval art. The classical mindset only directly entered art through re-enactments of some legends. And the dominance of naked Goddesses of Love and rape scenes here show their real attraction for painters. Raphael was one of the view who created a vision of what he believed the long-lost age of enlightenment to be. And this wasn't the usual wistful images of fallen pillars but a vibrant, exciting reality.
Yet The School of Athens isn't simply a look back into history. Figures from Raphael's own world enter the painting. The regal Plato is actually a portrait of Leonardo. Michelangelo, meanwhile, is Heraclitus, brooding, gloomy and isolated. (A statement of how the pair were viewed in their own time; both geniuses but one a saint, the other a sociopath). Bramante, disguised as Euclid, Sodoma and Raphael himself also appear. This is not post-modernism, though that annoying phrase would be slapped onto a similar trick today, nor is it just a wave to friends. It is a manifesto. With uncharacteristic stridency, Raphael is declaring the precise aims of his artistic movement. To recreate and resurrect the wonders of this revered epoch.
And it is, for all its realism, a utopian painting. None of the severely compromised Athenian state can be seen outside. There are tiny patches of clouds and blue sky, nothing else. It may easily be a meeting in Heaven of philosophers who, after all, came from a diversity of eras. And it is easy to see the attraction for Raphael. The two chief thinkers may be entering through a small line of worshippers; and Aristotle even has the features generally ascribed to Jesus. They do not control the scene, however. Compare it with Raphael's The Disputa, an equally epic vision where every figure is precisely ordered in relation to Christ. Most of the School of Athens are ignoring the entrance of their supposed superiors. One, Zoroaster, observes with considerable scorn. And the great men themselves are only concerned with their own discussion. It is a vision of liberty. Of rigid authority replaced by the free expression of liberty. The favourite of princes and Popes, as placid as Michelangelo and Caravaggio were furious, Raphael still created one of the most subversive visions of the whole Renaissance.

Back In The 'Real' World

2006-06-17T11:57:00.000Z

The press in Britain talk about the months of Parliamentary recess as the 'silly season'. Bereft of truly important stories, like Brown & Blair having another hissy fit or David Cameron cycling to work, journalists have to fall back on writing about fluff like murders, kidnappings and wars. Politicians, meanwhile, sometimes try to 'bury' bad news on days they know it will be ignored. A Labour Party wonk, for example, notoriously advocated releasing some unflattering statistics straight after 9/11. So far the World Cup has seen a combination of the two. A time when some really odd stuff pops to the surface, hoping everyone is looking elsewhere.

The Queen told a Groucho Marx joke during her 'official' 80th birthday celebrations. I don't know why we should celebrate her 80th birthday at all, let alone twice, but I'm eternally grateful to be able to write that sentance. The Queen told a Groucho Marx joke. Just think of that for a moment. The one about getting old being easy providing you live long enough, for the records. Personally I'd have preferred the one about not wanting to join a club which accepted her as a member. I wouldn't want to join a club which accepted the Queen as a member either.

Continuing on the topic of snobs, the Royal Institute of British Architects has discovered it has a budding Albert Speer in its midst. Peter Phillips, a contender in its upcoming presidential elections, is also a member of the ultra-right British National Party. The puzzling thing here is that Phillips - who denies he is a racist, naturally - went as far as to stand for a BNP candidate in local elections in 2003. Now I thought party candidates, even council ones, got their names published and tried to achieve a certain amount of publicity. Yet Phillips' fellow architects are howling that they've only just been made aware of his political views. Proof that unless it's got a portico or a flying buttress (another phrase I love to write) then an architect just can't focus on it.

But the best story recently has been The Guardian newspaper announcing that it's bought a smallpox DNA sequence over the internet. The Guardian, for any American readers, is the Bible for left-wing, socially concerned, hand-wringing liberals like myself. And now it can make smallpox. It claims that the purchase was only made to expose lax regulations, and that the sequence is actually perfectly harmless because it has something called stop codons built into it. But I like to think that just a hint of a threat was intended too. Perhaps not coincidentally, The Guardian carried an interview with Mel Phillips the same week. Phillips is the voice of the Mail, a foaming critic of Muslims and asylum seekers and people with dark coloured skin in general. So perhaps, after the interview, The Guardian took her aside and said, "Mel? Guess what's in this test tube. Now do you really want to carry on calling for Somalis to be thrown into the gas chambers..?"

More bloody football stuff

2006-06-06T20:07:00.000Z

To continue the increasingly tiresome build up to the World Cup, a list of my favourite moments from recent tournaments:

1990 World Cup Argentina v Cameroon. Cameroon defending their lead and not too fussy how they do it. Caniggia streaks towards goal and is faced with a long line of flailing legs. He hurdles one, two, three! and then the fourth finally catches him and brings him down to earth.

1992 European Championships England v France. France’s hardman, Basile Boli, lays a headbut on England’s, Stuart Pearce. Pearce gets up with a look of such glowering malevolence that they haven’t dared repeat it after the watershed. He looks at Boli – then slowly turns and walks away. An entire continent breaths out again. My generation’s equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1994 World Cup Bolivia v Germany. Bolivia 1:0 down. At a crucial stage in the match, enter Marco Etcheverry. Their hero and inspiration, out injured for months, returning to save them. Five minutes later he kicks somebody and is sent off. Bolivia lose the match and exit at the first stage.

1996 European Championships More a quote than a moment. Told that his team is playing well, a Scotland supporter remarks, “Unfortunately we can’t score. Before you think, ‘Pah! A mere detail. But unfortunately it turns out to be quite a central element to this sport.”

1998 World Cup Iran v US. America trailing. To avoid endless Iranian gloating about beating the ‘Great Satan’, they go on all-out attack. Which means putting every player in the last third of the field, heedless of concepts such as ‘counter attack.’ Chiefly amusing for Alan Hansen almost exploding with rage afterwards: “I have never seen anything like that in world football”, “It’s the back four of the Marie Celeste” etc.

2000 European Championships Spain v Yugoslavia. A match which, as Harry Pearson remarked, “had everything except full-frontal nudity.” The highlight: Raul scores. Runs screaming down the pitch, a journey which takes him past Dragan Stojkovic. Stojkovic, who had been using the game to regress back to childhood, completes the process to stick out a leg and trip Raul up.

2002 World Cup Hard to get past memories of the final celebrations. Brazil enter into a long group prayer. Cafu, veteran of three finals, finally emerges and is literally put on a pedestal. He lifts the cup and is promptly showered by “two million origami swans.”

2004 European Championships England v Portugal. England losing. Owen Hargreaves, the bit player’s bit player, sender of endless sideways passes across midfield, suddenly hears the voices. He sees the chance to enter the fields of glory. He surges forward, past one player, gets about 8 yards and falls over.

Regression

2006-06-05T16:40:00.000Z

Hadn't watched any of this Doctor Who series before the weekend. After Christopher Ecclestone quit, I figured, it would quickly descend from last year's impressive heights and become the sort of silly-but-innocous drama the BBC spits out without trying. How wrong can one cynic be? Saturday's episode reached an truly epic, monumental level of silliness.

They found the Devil. That's not bad for a storyline, is it? No more tired old Daleks this time. Lucifer Sam himself. And please note, any theologians: he doesn't live in Pandemonium or the darkest recesses of the human heart. He's in the centre of a planet which orbits a black hole. Be told. Given that he's awoken by a team drilling through the planet, it could also be a useful campaign slogan for environmental groups. Open that mine, they could tell the government, you won't just destroy a precious eco-system, you might rouse the Devil. And we're not speaking metaphorically, either. We really do mean the Devil.

Mind you, he might turn out not to be the Devil after all. This series has the Scooby Doo approach to anything supernatural. The only difference is that the hoax is generally perpetrated by carniverous aliens, rather than the owner of the old fairground wanting to sell the site for housing. But the thing rising up through the ground looked right. He had the laugh. And he could possess people, giving them cabalistic writings all over their skin, glowing red eyes and the ability to breath in a vacuum. If he's not the Devil, I don't want to meet the man who is.

The Doctor's other problem is that he's lost the Tardis. He always seems to be doing this these days. Given how distraught the prospect makes him, you'd think he'd take more care of the damn thing. Insisting on valet parking wherever he lands, for example. Not just dump it in a broom cupboard for it to be hit by an asteroid and pushed into the centre of the world. AA would tell him the same thing.

That wasn't his main concern by the end of the episode, however. It was that he was about to die horribly. I'm glad that about the return of some proper Doctor Who cliffhangers. Several simultaneous scenes in which everyone is about to die horribly. And just as things are at their absolute worst, the theme tune kicks in. Even though I knew at the start of the next episode the Doctor would quickly save them by fiddling about with his sonic screwdriver, it always used to scare the bejesus out of me. It's nice to report that nothing has changed.

Roy Of The Rovers Stuff

2006-05-29T13:58:00.000Z

So the World Cup is almost here again. The newspapers and magazines are swelling up with fawning profiles of usual famous names – Ronaldinho, Henry, Gerrard, Ballack et al. But you might as well throw all those away. Judging by recent tournaments, the eventual heroes of this World Cup won’t be the superstars. They’ll be plucky US college boys, scurrying Mexican wing backs, pacy Angolan strikers and a lot of other people no-one has heard of.

Take the first game of the last World Cup. Henry and Zidane played off the park by El Hadjj Diouff – or Who Who Who? as he was then known. That set the tone for a competition where the finest playmaker wasn’t Beckham or Veron but some prematurely balding Turk. Or the European Championships two years ago, dominated by a lot of Greek defenders and a podgy Scouser with tragically fragile feet. What happens to all these stars nowadays? Do they under-perform or are they just not all that good to start with?

They have a standard excuse. They’re tired after a long, arduous season. Each and every one of them. The magazine When Saturday Comes made the point that there are actually less games in a standard season than there used to be. What has increased for the top players is their off-field commitments. The parties, the book signings, the commercial promotions. They’re part of showbiz now, after all, and that can be exhausting. And it does something to their motivation. Celebrities have their image to protect; and the activity which first made them famous can become rather damaging to this image after a while. Actors, once they reach a certain level, never play anybody in a film except themselves. Too demeaning otherwise. And the top footballers look uneasy about putting on silly shorts and kicking a ball around. They’ll carry on doing it as long as they have to but they don’t want to give the impression that they take it seriously.

Plus the fact that the World Cup is less of a giant supermarket than it once was. Clubs are generally too smart now to snap up a player simply on the basis of three to six games crammed into a month. Most of the big deals have already been done. Take Andrei Shevchenko: worth £35 million, yet to kick a ball in a major international tournament. But for the less famous players it is still a time for opportunities. Some of Shevchenko’s Ukrainian team mates will know they could achieve a little of his prominence next month. The likes of Togo and Angola will have noted the impressive deals the Senegalese won for themselves after 2002. These are the people who have a reason to try hard.

Of course, a few football-related motives still remain. The one big name who actually delivered in the last World Cup: Ronaldo. After a mysterious medical ‘episode’ wrecked his final in 1998 and injury most of his career since then. He had something to prove. As did his opponents in the 2002 final, the Germans. Written off by everyone as a bunch of useless journeymen, they pulled themselves through the tournament with an impressively bloody-minded belligerence. So perhaps that’s the way to get the stars to perform this time. A little less adulation beforehand and a lot more sneering.

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things

2006-05-20T20:22:00.000Z

In case I don't get chance elsewhere, a list of some of the aspects of life that I truly, truly hate.

People Who Think Food Is Important
Not those fussy about what they eat for health reasons, though they can be tiresome too, or on ethical grounds, though we are slightly worst. But the ones who confuse cooking with creativity and art. And who sneer at anyone who, after a day at work, doesn't spend 2 hours in the kitchen working through a recipe like a trained chimp rather than, say, doing something with their brains. Eating isn't culture. It's a necessary bodily function. One does it and moves on. You don't get articles in magazines telling you of places to take the perfect poo or implying the French and Italians are superior to us because they're better at going to sleep than we are.

The Fact That The Wind Always Blows The Rain Into My Face
I mean, it always does. It's not just the speed I walk either. I turn a corner and see the rain shifting direction accordingly. I try to avoid the common trap of believing the whole world just exists for my benefit; or more accurately, exits to mildly annoy me. Then it starts to rain again and all my religious and philosophical creeds are shattered. Plus my face gets wet.

People Who, Upon Learning That Being An Epileptic Means I'm Technically Disabled, Instantly Ask If I Get A Special Parking Ticket
If you get epileptic seizures on a regular basis then you're not allowed to drive. Duh.

Key Changes In Ballads By Boy Bands
Always the same time: 51 seconds before the end of the song. A pause. Then, though you desperately hope it won't happen, the key change. And the singer always has a note of smug triumph in his voice afterwards, as if he's performed a feat of unique brilliance. He hasn't. He's changed key.

Old People Not Bothering With Manners Just Because They're Old
They push in to the head of queues. They talk to you when you clearly don't want to be talked to. Most of all they stop and stare at you, blatantly and without apology, when you walk past them in the street. And they probably complain how rude the young people of today are. Admittedly, if I ever get to be old myself I've no intention of bothering with manners either.

Happy Endings Grafted On To The End Of Sad Or Nasty Songs
Pushing Tin being a case in point. John Cusack's character drives himself into a nervous breakdown. It's the story arc. It's the whole point of the film, you would think. Then, ten minutes before the end, he's suddenly working a reconcilliation with his nemesis and getting back with his estranged wife. You can almost see the head of the studio putting the gun to the director's head, releasing the safety catch and ordering the rewrite.

People Saying How Good The Eighties Were
Again a caveat: I've been looking forward to this. I waited patiently for the Fifties and Sixties to become passe (which happened at the end of the Eighties), for the Seventies revival to blow away (around the time of the Millennium). Just so I can say, firmly and categorically: I was there during the Eighties. It was crap.

"Opinionated weathermen telling you it's going to be a miserable day. Miserable for who? I quite like a bit of drizzle, so stick to the facts"
Actually I nicked that from Half Man Half Biscuit. But I lifted the title and idea for this post from them too, so I suppose that's OK.

Half Decent FA Cup Final Shock

2006-05-14T11:13:00.000Z

First my complaints about the FA Cup final. Penalties are no way to decide a trophy. They aren't even very interesting any more. And if we must have them, let's just skip straight to them after regular time ends. Extra time is almost always just half an hour of exhausted players whacking the ball up and scuttling half-heartedly after it. On that subject: why were Liverpool and West Ham so ridiculously unfit? Even before the 90 minutes were up there were half a dozen players going down with cramp. At times the pitch looked like a Black Death re-enactment. A standard piece of 'action' towards the end was a man staggering forward, getting a cross in and instantly collapsing, clutching his calf. Finally, Leslie Garrett, if you're reading this: the last line of 'Abide With Me' is "Abide with me." It isn't "Aaaa-biyiyide wi-yi-yi-yi-yi-th muuu-ye-ye-ye-ye-ye." If you can't hold a note for more than two seconds, don't become a singer.

Otherwise it was a fantastic game. 3:3 and all the goals were entertaining. Carragher doing an Ali Shuffle to neatly slot the ball into his own net. The otherwise brilliant Reina spilling a weak shot right into Ashton's path. Cisse pulling the score back to 2:1 and bringing the game to life again. Gerrard finishing a training ground move with unnecessary venom. Konchesky totally mis-hitting a cross and then watching the ball inexplicably loop into the top corner. Finally a half-fit Gerrard (cramp, of course) receiving the ball about 30 yards out, being too knackered to do anything other than whack it and somehow score. In general, two sides stubbornly refusing to admit defeat and, for once, translating this into an urge to play good football rather than clatter each other.

The FA Cup deserved a final like this. The much-overrated tournament has been surprisingly wonderful this year. Think of Liverpool's 5:3 win over Luton in an earlier round which featured one of the most hilarious goals ever - Alonso scoring from the half way line after the Luton keeper had rushed up for a corner. A dreadful Coventry side coming back from 2:0 down against Spurs to win 3:2 thanks to a previously and subsequently unknown Dutch striker. Burton Albion holding Manchester Utd, Nuneaton Borough - whoever the hell they are - doing likewise to Middlesborough. And Chelsea losing. Not the greatest game ever but Chelsea losing in any circumstances always brings cheer to the soul.

I can't welcome this totally whole-heartedly. There's going to be an awful lot of rubbish written about this year's FA Cup in coming years by the romantics, the self-appointed defenders of football's soul. They always hold the tournament up as somehow purer than the league or European competitions. While the latter are wholly commerical nowadays, they claim, the FA Cup is still true to the spirit of football. This has little to do with reality. Organised by the grasping Football Association, the Cup embraces sponsorship in almost every form and many of the tickets for the final are given to corporate clients. And for all the talk about the Cup being a great leveller, look at the winners in recent years: Liverpool twice, Arsenal three times, Man Utd once. It's no less the property of the big clubs than the Premiership. I suspect a lot of the 'romance' is because it was originally contested by public school sides, not those grubby northern clubs who went on to form the League and create modern football.

But the game at its best can still silence all the caveats. Watching a mediocre stopper like Danny Gabbidon humiliate Liverpool's millionaire strikers, or Steven Gerrard beligerrantly pull his side forward, I was reminded why I keep getting drawn back to it. We just need a decent Champions League final now and I might even start looking forward to the World Cup.

Shameless Self-Publicity!

2006-05-07T08:51:00.000Z

If I've been a bit tardy with my posts recently it's for the following reasons: a) I still have half a life left and b) I've been using most of that to set up my own web site. So far it's a dumping ground for any assorted pieces of writing I had hanging around my drawer. It may become more focussed later, may change function entirely or may continue as it is. And while I wish I could promise that the appearance will improve, it will probably just go through various types of dreadfulness. Anyway, the link is on the right and just to hammer the message in:
http://www.whyisthishere.co.uk

Entirely Bad Poetry Part 3

2006-05-07T08:47:00.000Z

For Mandi Ann, who expressed touching but baffling fondness for another of my poems. This one'll learn her.

The Confessional

We sit, he and I
And sit
Like lovers struggling to speak their hearts.
Head of Finance and his vassal (me).
The talk starts of promotion prospects
Relegation fears, crossbars hit
New strikers bought, misfiring men ditched
Until we remember where we are
And why.
Performance appraising reviewing assessing
Or: adding up the sums.
Six months in six mumbled words:
Works hard, hits targets, bit careless
Then questions from the home psychiatry kit.
Do you enjoy your work?
(Yes, lucky there's so much of it)
What particular problems are there?
(Head of Finance can't manage staff)
What do you like the most?
(You let us manage ourselves)
Where do you see yourself in a year?
(If I could plan I wouldn't be here, doing this)
I only speak the expected triteness, of course
And perhaps he is concealing similar
Caustic indictments of me.
Just give us a confession booth
And maybe we'll spend the hour stripping souls bare.
But really, no silent truths compress the air.
Mediocre work done in a mediocre fashion
Will never inspire great rhetorical passion.
So we sit, he and I.
And sit.

X Rated

2006-04-27T21:24:00.000Z

And continuing the subject of lardiness... There are certain things which I would prefer not to even contemplate. One of these emphatically is what John Prescott does with the parts of his body which are below his stomach and above his knees. I concede that the story of his two year affair with his secretary is, just about, in the public interest. I see how it contributes to the general picture of a government in moral and political decline. But please, in the name of God, no more details. I haven't been this revolted, or this amused, since the John Major-Edwina Currie story broke.

Fatheads

2006-04-27T19:30:00.000Z

Apologies for turning this into a regional newspaper for a moment, but here goes. One of the lengthier rows rumbling about York has concerned the Barbican Centre. Originally this was a perfectly decent public baths. Then they put a god-awful 'leisure centre' around it, mainly a place for archaic rock bands to strut their creaking limbs. The process was like a pearl being created in reverse - the precious stone emerging first then the shit building up around it. The whole mess understandably went bust a few years ago. Now they've decided to revive the leisure centre but leave the baths closed. There are still two public baths left in York. But as one was poorly built in the 1960's and the other has been around since the 1900's, they may have to be closed at least temporarily to stop bits of their ceilings occasionally dropping into the pools.

There's one consequence to York having no public baths left. Children are going to get fatter. Swimming is wonderful for children because, unlike most forms of excercise, it's actually fun for them. You get to fart around and pretend to drown your friends. If you ever run out of ideas most pools have notices of prohibited actions - ducking, bombing etc. - to work through. And you lose calories at the same time.

There's a lot of fuss about fat kids at the moment. They're fatter than ever, apparently, and getting even fatter every second. The usual dire warnings about diabetes and heart disease are issued. And the usual culprits are found - junk food and computer games. Basically, the solutions are to stop children eating and doing things they enjoy. It's about controlling them even more. But children, unlike most adults, will actually do healthy - if not necessarily safe - things out of choice as long as they're enjoyable. They just need access to the opportunities, and those are vanishing more and more.

Football is another example. Not the creepy organised leagues where parents bawl their frustrations at their offspring but spontaneous, unsupervised games, a cross between sport, gang fight and shouting contest. Most school yards and fields in the country are, each morning, still taken over by our allegedly Gameboy-devoted generation kicking tennis balls at each other's heads. After school, though, they're a bit stuck. I used to play on the street a fair bit. It probably wasn't safe then and certainly isn't now, with even the quietest lane taken over by rat-runners. I used to break into waste ground too and it's hard to see any waste ground left any more. Playing fields are the only option left. And with councils and schools merrily selling them all off to balance their budgets and feed the housing boom, that's not really much of an option either. Near York's 1900's baths there's a scout hut. There used to be a playing field behind it. Now there's yet another housing estate. Called, in what must be a deliberate wind-up, 'Greenfields.' 'Greenfields' where there used to be a green field. Ha bloody ha.

Children rarely walk to school any more. Their parents, either paranoid about paedophiles or having enrolled them to a school on the other side of town because it has fractionally better grades, all drive them. They can't swim. They can't play football. And now the moral panic has decreed they can't engage in their only other pleasures - dicking about on the Nintendo, stuffing chips in their face and growing monumentally obese. It isn't much of a life.

There Is No Title

2006-04-22T20:34:00.000Z

I was going to start this by apologising for not posting any entries for a week or so. Then I realised the comment would be addressed to my regular readers. And, of course, there aren't any. The only people who ever glance at this journal are those idly hitting the 'Next Blog' button, and they will only be scanning it to decide that theirs is much superior. Which, judging by my own research, it will be. The girl writing from Prince Edward Island, Canada, lost a lot of points by using a yellow font on a pink background, while this has a much classier template. But then she could offer in-depth reports on the state of the discos on Prince Edward Island, Canada. All I can manage is snide comments about stories I've read in The Guardian.

Or in this case, nothing. If I'd been a bit more organised I could have done a piece on Easter weekend. There would have been a hi-larious stint on the two dominant themes of Easter - chocolate and crucifixions - and how they might be combined. A little bit about staying the weekend with my grandad, who is not going quite as strong at 87 as we'd like him to be but still getting around quite well without a stick. And something on the dreadfulness of Luton, the town where he lives, and how he used to travel the world seeing beautiful sights and always had Luton waiting for him at the end of it all. But Easter is, as they say, so last week now. And I've nothing else to offer. So this has to be another blog entry about writing, or failing to write, a blog entry.

OK, I promise: In a day or so's time I'll try to get round to slagging off the Queen like any normal Englishman.

Arrivederci Silvio

2006-04-11T21:43:00.000Z

It's times like this that I knew Latin. Silvio Berlusconi, who turned virtually all Italian media into his private messengers, who wound webs of scandal around himself so thick that they've even trapped Tessa Jowell, who undermined Italy's crusading anti-Mafia magistrates because they went after his friends, who allied himself with neo-fascists to keep himself in power, who basically built a fiefdom in the style of a Renaissance prince with patronage even thrown in (Paulo Maldini v Raphael , the Sistine Chapel roof v the 1994 European Cup winners - it's a close call)... Yes, that Silvio Berlusconi is out on his arse. By the slenderest of margins. And he's claiming dirty tricks have been perpetrated. It's like the 2000 US elections but with the good guys winning. It's also incredibly funny.

So I wish I knew Latin because there has to be some pithy phrase which sums up. All I can think of is et tu Brutus which means something else, though may be a sentence heard amongst the Italian right in the bitter coming weeks. I'll just have to content myself with saying 'he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.' And laughing a great deal.