Fear and Clothing in West Leicester

OK listen up: there is no such word as ‘loath’.  Got that?  THERE IS NO SUCH WORD AS LOATH.  So don’t let me catch you using it, under any circumstances.  All right?

Need clarification?  OK here it is: there are two words which are almost universally confused.  They are ‘loth’ and ‘loathe’.

The first, ‘loth’, is an adjective.  For example, ‘I was not happy to do it; I was loth to do it.’   Meaning: reluctant.

The second, ‘loathe’, is a verb.  Example, ‘I can’t stand bad grammar.  I loathe it.’  Meaning: to hate.

These are almost never used correctly.  Even so august a figure as John Humphrys in his book ‘Lost for Words’ committed the crime.  What can I say?

Just do it right.

Right?

Mark had a good birthday yesterday in spite of himself: Ceri brought cakes just to piss him off; and to make his day completely miserable I cooked dinner and got a DVD for after.  It was Tim Burton’s ‘Sweeney Todd’.  It’s done in Burton’s distinctive style, starring Helena Bonham Carter (looking very like the Corpse Bride in some shots) and Johnny Depp as the eponymous Todd.  It’s very dark, but cathartic: like Tiresias, Todd doesn’t recognise his own wife and daughter and ends up killing the very people he came back to avenge.  Alan Rickman is good as the villain although he does no more than reprise a hundred other sinister characters he’s played (with Timothy Spall that made three Harry Potter stars in this); and the film comes to a shocking climax: the scene where Todd dances with the pie-woman and ends by tossing her into the furnace is brilliant.  Johnny Depp and HBBC * sing their way through some excellent lyrics and great overlapping songs.  If you haven’t seen this, go get it on DVD.  Now!

Hm.  I may end up having to apologise to the weather people.  After a week of sun there’s been a rather spectacular return to form with the weather here: not quite as bad as it has been, but certainly gloomy with some heavy showers.  I’m glad I made the most of last week by sitting in the sun every day.

Someone suggested that the lurgy I had might have been hand, foot and mouth disease.  I don’t think so as my hands and feet did not come out in a rash.  My clothes, however, have come out in spots.  Which is where we came in…

Apparently JK Rowling’s new book is out soon.  Must try to get hold of a copy…

OK not that soon – 27th Sept.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Casual-Vacancy-J-K-Rowling/dp/140870420X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343721497&sr=1-1

*Helena Bloody Bonham Carter as we used to call her in her E M Forster days, though now I like her a lot better.

Kirk out

Do the bonjela jive

Here’s how: get a nasty virus which gives you lots of painful mouth ulcers.  Smear some bonjela on each one.  Wait till you feel the heat.  Then start to move: squirm in your seat, punch the air, and as you feel the heat rising get up and jive.  Twist, turn, flail, grab handfuls of your hair and pull them out, stamp your feet and yell ‘Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!’ like the Bee-Gees in ‘Stayin’ Alive’.  Do this for several minutes or until the feeling wears off.  Subside into the nearest armchair and weep.

Moan softly for about half an hour or until someone makes you a cup of tea.

Repeat every six hours.

Happy Birthday Git

For!  It is Mark’s birthday today and as usual, he is being totally miserable about it.  I can’t get to the bottom of this: it’s not about getting older, so I don’t know what it’s about.  He just rumbles on about celebrating on one day being arbitrary.  So I’ve written him a poem refuting every point he makes on this very silly subject, and here it is:

On Perversity

I know you don’t like birthdays

and you’re scared to death of verse

you don’t want cards or coffee

you’re anniversary-averse:

so what gift greater could there be

than that of birthday poetry?

……

It’s arbitrary, you insist

to pick on that one date,

but that’s when you came to exist;

became a neo-nate:

has daylight not begun to dawn?

Perhaps you just don’t know you’re born?

…….

Today is a convention

a day of more than birth

a sign of your retention

your hold upon the earth

your failure to sod off and die –

although I sometimes wonder why.

…..

And I foresee that when you die

you’re gonna leave a will

instructions: nobody’s to cry

or hold a funeral

but, disregarding what you said

they’ll come, just to make sure you’re dead.

…….

I know that you can cope with it

just smile and say ‘I do’

or something more appropriate

like ‘thank’ put next to ‘you’

and be the hero of the hour;

be the sweet and not the sour.

…

You might even enjoy it –

you never know.  I’m serious.

You’re 45?  Get over it

you’ve made me all imperious.

Hung up on birthdays?  I don’t care.

Joyeux ******ing anniversaire!

…..

Saw some Olympics yesterday.  Enjoyed the swimming and the rowing in particular; found the fencing somewhat abrupt and hard to get into.  Apparently we won gold in the women’s swimming, which is great.  I’m slowly getting into the Olympics now.

That’s it.  I’m recovering slowly.

Kirk out

Oh Danny Boyle…

I have very little experience of Olympic opening ceremonies, though I did watch a bit of the Beijing one – so I don’t have much to compare it to, but I have to say that unlike my namesake the Queen, who seemed totally pissed off by the whole thing, I was quite bowled over by the London 2012 opening ceremony.  The beginning, a sort of potted scooping-up-the-topsoil of our history, was a little bizarre: I didn’t know what to make of Kenneth Brannagh as Isombard K Brunel AS Caliban (but then I’ve never known what to make of Brannagh as anything), and at first I thought ‘oo-er; I’m not sure about this’, particularly when it appeared that the Queen in the James Bond sequence was in fact – well, the Queen.  Weird.  But the potted history was followed by some great music and dance sequences and some very moving set-pieces.  It must have been difficult to know who to leave out and risk offending: though JK Rowling had a word there was no Dr Who: however, at odd moments the Olympic logo in the sky looked like a set of stray Mysterons, so that was something.  I also hadn’t realised that GOSH is an acronym for Great Ormond St Hospital; the centre of one of the great set-pieces featuring a lot of children in beds, subsequently interrupted by a flock of umbrella-flying Mary Poppinses.  (Thankfully Dick van Dyke stayed at home.)  The Queen looked so fed-up during most of this that the camera stopped focussing on her; not that there was any shortage of things to focus on.  Every one of these set-pieces was the equivalent of a two-hour stage play in terms of organisation, and not a thing went wrong.  In fact, what was remarkable was the absence of cheesiness: one reason why Danny Boyle was a good choice (think ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ rather than ‘Trainspotting’.)

Then came the teams; we skipped large swathes of this (watching on iplayer, natch), though it was oddly moving and not at all pompous – in fact at times you could have wished for a little more gravitas as many of the athletes were chewing gum and grinning into the cameras, and just about all of them were recording the event with a camera in whichever hand wasn’t holding a flag.  Perhaps it was this that made the Queen unhappy – for whatever reason she looked particularly miffed at this point.  At such moments you find yourself wishing for the Queen Mum instead, smiling radiantly throughout.

Ah well.

What was truly extraordinary, however, was the lighting of the flame.  Each team as they had come in, planted the flag on a hillside.  This had formed the stage for the first set-piece, being presumably a bit of the Green and Pleasant stuff.  Each team was also carrying something lily-shaped and made of metal – and these were placed into a holder to form the final Olympic flame.  Seven or eight athletes then received torches from former Olympians and with these they set light to the outer circle of these lily-shapes.  Gradually the whole thing caught alight, and then in a stunning display of pyrotechnics, rose up into the air.

Truly brilliant.

Paul McCartney sang the whole thing out with Hey Jude – sadly he wasn’t in great voice, prompting Chris Conway to remark that he had not hitherto realised the greatness of Ringo Starr’s vocal talents – but never mind; the whole thing was more moving and more stunning than I can convey here.  Well done Danny Boyle – and the most impressive thing of all?  Not a corporate logo in sight.

Kirk out

racked on a bed of pine

I have been unwell for a couple of days; hence no post yesterday: it’s a sort of virus-y-type-thing with sore throat, mouth ulcers, fatigue and enough snot to sink a battleship. Sorry, but there it is. I have spent the last couple of days hobbling between bed and garden chair where I have been reading Val McDermid and making feeble groaning noises. Haven’t seen the Olympics opening ceremony yet – will probably catch up today. The general concensus seemed to be that it was rather good.
I shall be going back to sleep now for a bit.
Kirk out

Review of Val McDermid’s ‘Star-Struck’

I read this over the weekend and enjoyed it a lot, though I have to say it’s very different from her police-based novels.  The word ‘smart’ could have been invented for her heroine Kate Brannigan, just as the word ‘soap’ could have been invented for Coronation Street: however the soap featured in the novel is, according to the disclaimer, emphatically NOT Coronation Street; * nor is it any other soap known to mankind.

Yeah, right.  It’s just a series set in the North where characters meet in the local pub and call each other ‘chuck’ as though their lives depended on it.

The style of narration of this book deliberately – and slightly tongue-in-cheek – apes the smart-arse, wise-cracking style of the traditional private eye.  (I’ll never forget the line in one such film, ‘I was gonna kiss her with every lip on my face’.)  The beginning of the book in particular bristles with such sentences:

She crossed the room slower than a three-toed sloth

He thought he heard a bottle of Pils calling his name – sounds more like a crate shouting its head off

He screwed his face up like a man eating a piccallilli sandwich.

He tried to look innocent.  I’ve seen hunter-killer submarines give it a better shot.

Various plots interweave in this story: death-threats to a star of the soap; the mysterious killing of an astrologer, the leaking of soap storylines and the activities of a friend of Brannigan’s which are just the wrong side of legal.  I just about kept up with them as she is not quite as complex as Ian Rankin (and not quite as good, though that’s barely a criticism since Rankin is the master of the genre).  Brannigan’s personal life, a relationship with a man called Richard who has his own house and his own life, is quite semi-detached.  This befits the genre I guess – personal relationships always coming second to work – but I wondered whether that distance was down to McDermid’s inability to portray a heterosexual relationship from the inside.

* A friend of mine used to say the theme tune to Corrie sounded like a chorus groaning ‘He-ere we go again!’ as a million grannies lower themselves into armchairs to watch.

So I enjoyed this book – though not as much as her others which focus on the police – sitting outside and turning the pages under the sunshade as the garden was baking yesterday.  Mark ventured a toe out of the door.  ‘Blimey, that sun’s hot,’ he said.

‘Don’t touch it then,’ I quipped.

Oh, how we laughed.

Oh, and yes – we haven’t had to wait long for another ‘weather-disaster’ story: apparently the swifts have given up on Britain and gone back to Africa.  The BBC made it sound like some kind of economic disinvestment, as though a delegation of insect-eaters had come to a business convention and gone away disgusted: somewhat appropriate, as the next guest, their economics editor, announced that outside of the two world wars, we are in ‘the worst recession in a hundred years’.  Now, no disrespect to anyone who’s suffering (and we’re suffering as much as anyone) but that is utter bollocks.  What about the 1930’s?  Even the early eighties were worse than now, I’m sure of it.

What do you think?

Definitely, right?

Today I shall be mostly – trying to recover from a bad night.

Kirk out

PS I have had a couple of emails from the people at St Peter’s Edmonton – apparently our parents are still remembered there and they pray for them once a year.  They don’t have any photos of the vicarage at the moment as it suffered some damage and is being done up, but she will send me some when it’s finished.  She also remembers John and Carol Dixon, who we used to go and visit in (I think) St Alban’s.  Apparently John died recently.

The Power of Bad News

Why is it that the news media always accentuate the negative?  Take the weather: in May it was unseasonably hot.  What did we get?  Dire warnings about drought.  Then we had six weeks of rain.  Did they rejoice?  Did they hell – all we got were dire warnings that it would rain until September, be the worst summer ever for crops, etc etc.  And now we’ve had a few days of sun, are they happy?  No – but since they can’t say anything dire, they are silent.  I predict, however, that it will only be a few days before the Bad Weather – that is, the Bad Weather News – crops up again.  It will either be a reprise of the ‘terrible rain’ scenario or something awful to do with the combination of heavy rain and sudden sun.

You just wait.  Oh, actually, you don’t have to.  Because today they are predicting a plague of flying ants.

Whereas what I want is a plague of spiders to eat up all the fruit flies in my kitchen.  They come out of the compost and short of burning joss-sticks I don’t know what to do about them.  We don’t use fly-spray – nasty stuff.

Personally, I’m enjoying the good weather and reminding myself to make the most of it as we don’t know how long it will last.

But as to news: why IS it that the media always focus on the negative?  I think the reasons are two-fold: first, that a constant run of ‘good-news’ stories is the hallmark of a totalitarian state where the media are controlled by the government, and they clearly want to be seen to be democratic: and second, because – as Douglas Adams cleverly spotted, Bad News is a force in itself:

‘Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of Bad News, which follows its own laws.’

http://www.phnet.fi/public/mamaa1/adams.htm

Kirk out

Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? No – it’s Supernan!

The children were watching Supernanny last night – or a variant of it where children with extreme problems need sorting out.  Actually it’s the parents who need sorting out – one child had only ever eaten custard creams in his ENTIRE LIFE and was now seven years old: another was incapable of doing anything they were asked to do.  What is wrong with these people?  Have they never heard of hiding the custard creams?  Of witholding all treats until the dinner is eaten?  When I was a child I was forced to eat everything on my plate – and while I think that was too controlling on my mother’s part, there is a principle here.  We have become the anti-Victorians: too scared to discipline children lest we should damage them, we are now a society where parents should be seen and not heard.  Far from damaging children, disciplining them (to a reasonable extent) is the only way to ensure they can function around other people and be in control of themselves.  The alternative is a nation of Dudley Dursleys.  Yes, babies should be fed on demand – at least for the first few months – but after that it does them no harm to get used to more regular eating patterns and into a sleeping routine.

Here’s the programme anyway:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/jo-frost-extreme-parental-guidance/4od#3240748

On holiday we watched a fascinating programme about an experiment with a call centre where parents were allowed to take their babies into work.  It was done in a very democratic way with an initial two-week experiment and then a vote from all staff about whether to continue.  A lot of sceptics were converted, and many people said that the presence of babies in the office calmed the more aggressive tendencies of some of the sales staff.  Ha!  I knew it.  Whether this would work if rolled out across the country, I don’t know – but I certainly think children (and old people) ought not to be corralled in homes and nurseries but to be part of society.  I definitely think workplace nurseries are a great idea.

All of this begs some big questions.  How do we function?  How do we organise society?  What should the roles of men and women be?  I mean, I’m all for women having choice (not that they do, at the moment, since we’ve gone from not having the choice to work, to not having the choice to stay at home) but shouldn’t men have the same choice?  Perhaps they do – but we must try to be fair, if only to avoid the possibility of an anti-feminist backlash.

It’s a very difficult thing to do, to treat everyone in society fairly.  But it’s a noble aim and we need to keep on trying.  And to show I mean business, here’s a bit of nepotism – a forum promoting Mark’s book:

http://thebluecaterpillar.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=crafts&thread=796&page=1

Hmm.  That link doesn’t seem to be working.  Let’s try again:

http://thebluecaterpillar.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=crafts&thread=796&page=1

OK sorry – can’t get that to work.  You’ll just have to copy and paste.

Kirk out

With Bach you can Hear Yourself Think

Yes, Mozart’s divine and Beethoven’s brilliant but you only get an ‘oo’ with Ty-phoo.  Sorry – an ad got in there by mistake: it wanted to come in, so I let it.  It’s the way to write poetry, you know, letting things come – as Pooh explained to Rabbit who, however, didn’t understand as he never let things come to him but always went and fetched them.  The simple, child-like brilliance of Winnie-the-Pooh never ceases to amaze me: there’s no heavy-handedness, no exposition; but in that simple exchange between Pooh and Rabbit there’s a whole world of art and philosophy.  Are you the sort of person who lets things come – or do you go and fetch them?  Nowadays we’re all suposed to be Rabbits – go-getters, self-starters, self-motivated, self-energised, self-promoting, self-aggrandising little market forces.  All of us.  And those of us who are Poohs and think we should wait and let things come to us, are elbowed off the pavement by all the rushing Rabbits.

But Bach!  Last night I went to Manderley again (see?  there it is again.  Let’s assume the Turkish cafe is called Manderley, which it isn’t – and continue.)  Last night I went to the Turkish cafe again for another musical evening.  They are very welcoming there and unlike the Swan and Rushes which has now pissed off two discussion groups, not merely concerned with how much money they are making out of everyone.  It was a great evening with a smorgasbord of musical instruments, including a Brazillian gourd-on-a-stick; several other stringy-thingies, pipes, whistles, a flute of wood and a keyboard.  I did two songs; ‘The Ballad of the Bowstring Bridge’ and ‘Rye Harbour’ – and a German woman played Bach on a keyboard.  It was one of the preludes – and it brought back to me that whilst most music stirs the emotions, Bach stirs the brain.  When you listen to Back you can actually hear yourself thinking.  It’s Maths-on-a-stick; it’s musical philosophy, it’s art and science and everything and it’s Bloody Brilliant!

Get some today.  You don’t have to go and fetch it – it’s right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KQW2YnCUrE

Rabbit-food

All of this Pooh and Rabbit stuff is really about lateral versus logical thinking.  It’s lateral thinking which allows us to sod realism and go for the impossible (‘soyez realistique – demandez l’impossible’ as the French say).  If I’d been realistic I’d never have achieved anything: if I’d listened to that voice in my head which says ‘that’s not going to happen’ or ‘that’s unfeasible’ or ‘that is not a reasonable use of your time and resources’ I’d never have done anything at all.  It’s like listening to the weather forecast: not two weeks ago they were SURE that we weren’t going to get a summer.  It was going to rain until September, they opined – and not as lyrically as Carole King.

Ha!

Going to go outside and enjoy the sunshine now.  And before I go, here’s Peter looking rather fierce at Saturday’s barbecue:

Kirk out

Really out.

LOL

Giving Umbridge

Today I’m practising freaking people out by making that little, high-pitched sound that Dolores Umbridge makes when she’s completely enraged: something between a cough and a giggle, it indicates that you’d Better Watch Out because Dolores has got it in for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHi6tO9lPAY

It’s interesting to note the differences between the book and the screen characters – Emelda Staunton’s Umbridge is silkier, more smoothly-spoken, more self-contained than the squat, toad-like figure which crouches in the book.  JK Rowling must have had Phillip Larkin’s Toads in mind when she described her:

http://blue.carisenda.com/archives/cat_philip_larkin.html

I don’t know why, it’s just that Umbridge seems to embody the repellent characteristics of ‘work’ as described by Larkin, though what he mostly describes – or speculates on – is how to live without work.  We’ve all done that.  Some of us are doing it even as we speak.

LOL
Mark’s book was admired at yesterday’s barbecue and passed round like a new baby: several people have now requested signed copies.  Comment below to get yours or go to Lulu:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-a-ure/you-couldve-thought-of-that-a-compendium-of-ideas-which-havent-been-thought-of-yet/paperback/product-20266026.html

They’re selling like hot cakes.  Well, quite warm cakes anyway.

Barbecue yesterday went OK – the weather for once was good and we sat outside to eat.  Met some interesting friends of Alan’s including one lady from Edmonton.  Edmonton was where I lived till I was eight: she knew the church and the school and everything.

I’m hoping to post a photo later.  Of the barbecue, that is.  Not Edmonton.  But just in case you’re interested, here’s the place in Edmonton:

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=st+peter%27s+church+edmonton+n9&hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&rlz=1C1CHFX_en-GBGB442GB442&biw=1600&bih=785&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=OHTqzuVcm1atsM:&imgrefurl=http://www.stpetersedmonton.org.uk/html/contact_us.html&docid=4FhvADqhYjbWzM&imgurl=http://www.stpetersedmonton.org.uk/assets/images/st_peters_church.jpg&w=448&h=298&ei=V8ELUKncLoTQ0QXltfyrCg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=574&vpy=156&dur=168&hovh=183&hovw=275&tx=126&ty=112&sig=113336206087840141744&page=1&tbnh=136&tbnw=187&start=0&ndsp=29&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:79

I can’t find a photo of the vicarage, though I do remember the road at the top was called Bounces Rd, which I thought very funny.

Happy Sunday

Kirk out

Pining for the Fields

I know you’re all dying to hear what I’ve been reading: well, since going away I’ve read ‘The Uncommon Reader’ by Alan Bennett; ‘Spies’ by Michael Frayn, both of which I’d read before, and a Val McDermid which I hadn’t.  I found the Val McDermid in a bookshop in Yarmouth selling new books for 90p (‘Yes, 90p!’) each.  Bankrupt stock, I assume – and since they had a further special offer of 3 for £2.25 I bought two others, one Faber and Faber by an author I didn’t know and one other which escapes me at the moment.  ‘Ah, so people do buy by publisher,’ commented Mark, causing the bookseller to smile.  From the bookshop we went to Yarmouth Market and bought sherbet lemons from a very surly Italian who claimed I’d asked for ‘sugar lemons’ which they did not have.  He didn’t like it when I contradicted him.  ‘The customer is always right,’ I commented to Mark.  Yarmouth is OK once you get away from the front, which is one long line of flashing lights: there are some good shops though sadly the best little alleyways are full of closed-down premises: then there’s the historic South Quay, always referred to as the ‘Historic South Quay’ lest you should be in any doubt that it is – well, Historic.  It may be Historic but it didn’t look terribly so: it would have been interesting to visit some of the museums and find out more but instead we found a lovely cafe there where we spent so much time that we were too late to go to the Nelson Museum.  And so the long walk home, along the road as we’d come via the beach (sand, pebbles and dunes higher up) and through a succession of formal gardens only to be caught in a thunderstorm which soaked us to the skin.

http://www.great-yarmouth.co.uk/things-to-do/South-Quay.aspx

The caravan itself was good: three bedrooms, a shower and living-room area with dining-table, on a well-appointed site with swimming-pool (we went every day) and flumes (great fun), restaurant/bar with pool tables (Daniel played astonishingly well, I recovered my previous form; but Mark seemed to think he was on whites instead of yellows) and the site just a dyke away from the beach.  Another day we walked along the dunes where there was a good variety of plants, also some fungi.

But the books!  Yes, the Val McDermid: I was happy to find one of hers I hadn’t read and basically devoured this one in about 24 hours.  Called The Torment of Others’, it’s a sexual serial killer story.  There are several red herrings and I didn’t guess the real culprit but when it was revealed I’m not entirely sure I bought it: though a good plot twist I’m not certain it totally works.  But the story carries you along well enough for that not to matter.  Or not much.

The Michael Frayn I’ve read before: it’s very reminiscent of ‘The Go-Between’ – you might almost say derivative – and has all of the ponderousness of that novel’s narrative.  In the end I kept thinking, ‘oh, for god’s sake, get on with it!’ and couldn’t help thinking that this was really a novella stretched out to novel length.  It’s about two boys spying on a woman during the war and misunderstanding what they’re seeing.  Still, in spite of the pace it’s worth a read for the gripping narrative in some passages and the suppressed menace in the character of the woman’s husband.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/08/guardian-bookclub-spies-michael-frayn

And so back on the coach where one of the sights on the way home was a boat sailing through the fields.  We did not take a photo since the camera is apparently just for keeping in a bag, not actually for using.  Perhaps Mark thinks it will ward off the evil eye.

Kirk out