West Coast Ramblings

In Praise of Louis Armstrong

2011-11-16T20:57:00.000Z

What is it about the music of this man that captivates me. I've been reading a biogaphy of Louis recently and it has taken me on a journey through his life and music. For a long time I've had the set of Hot Fives & Sevens recordings and that for a while seemed to be all I wanted to know of Louis Armstrong, that joyous, primitive but exquisite sound. And I seemed to be thinking that everything after that was just that old hammy Hello Dolly/What a Wonderful World pop stuff.

Luckily I bought Terry Teachout's great book, and it took me deeper and allowed me to appreciate Satchmo's later ensemble work, especially with the All Stars. The Town Hall concert in New York in 1949 was something of a rebirth for Armstrong and, after reading of the trauma that he went through when his lip split some years earlier, it's a joy to hear him here on top form physically and musically.

I'm not a musical expert. I don't play an instrument or even sing well but I know what I like and I like the simple joy, sorrow, pathos, excitement, and naked humanity that Louis Armstrong expresses in his instrument and his voice. There's nothing more profoundly beautiful in the world than West End Blues from his Hot Fives & Sevens days or most anything on the Town Hall concert recordings. Later there is the better quality recording of the All Stars at Boston Symphony Hall and the sheer good feeling coming from that is also terrific.

So that's what's enervating me at the moment. How about you?

I'm Back

2011-08-07T21:57:00.003Z

It seems that I need to carry this on. I have a need to record my way through life before I forget it all. I'm just back from a very swift trip to Korea and while I was passing through Glasgow Airport I bought Any Human Heart by William Boyd. It was an amazing read and by that I mean I read it almost without pause from Glasgow to Seoul, on the way to the hotel I was staying at overnight, in the hotel while I lay in bed, on the job I was attending, until it was all over. I'll write more about it later when I have time to review my feelings for it.

Another book I have read recently is One Day by David Nicholls.

A lovely book about the enduring and sometimes quirky relationship between two people who meet a Edinburgh University in 1988, and then have what can only be called a love affair over the next twenty years. More later.

A New Year - A New Beginning

2010-01-02T21:30:00.001Z

2010 - It's a big number, and getting bigger every year funnily enough. I finally shook off the post-festive lethargy today and got the bike out. After a small adjustment I was quickly onboard and speeding towards the cut-off road to Loch Thom. The roads were reasonable and I was soon turning down the B-road towards Dunrod Farm and the hills of my youth. It was nice to be out again and testing my wind and muscles. I'd forgotten the feeling of pushing, stretching and gasping for air but eventually I was in my stride and pushing uphill past the Shielhill Glean towards Loch Thom.

The day was quiet and traffic was almost nil, just one car coming the other way as I was getting near the loch and I only had the tinnitus in my ear for company. That was irritating as the day was so tranquil and the scenery so still and frozen that it would have been nice to hear the quiet. Anyway, pressing on past the loch there was only an idiot and his dog testing the ice to see how thick it was, by walking on it and seeing how far out he could go. I felt sorry for his wife and young son watching him from beside the car, and the dog who didn't know any better, but for fuck's sake - what a tit!

All the way round the loch the road was intermittently snow-covered but no big problem. It was just a great day to be out in the country - up there with the world to myself. Sublime. Pity I didn't have my camera with me.

Sixty - It's a Dangerous Age

2009-09-20T18:46:00.006Z

I'm sixty this year, in fact in June past. It's the kind of number that makes one pause for thought. The usual topics come to mind; the flabbing body, the turkey neck, worries about the prostate (already realised in the case of my older brother), retirement, the older years if we live long enough or too long, mortality; What does it all mean? Is there a life after death? And so on. It takes up a lot of time this thinking and I don't have a lot of time. I'm too busy working or practicing golf or riding my bicycle, but working mostly.

Anyway what seems to occupy most of my thoughts, other than, strangely enough, sex, is religion and the spiritual. Recently I have taken to attending, when I'm able and not travelling or have other pressing commitments, the Tibetan Buddhist Centre in Glasgow. I go there on a Wednesday evening after work and spend an hour meditating. Well that's not strictly true. An hour meditating is beyond my capability, but it's an hour long class for beginners. And, incidentally, it's an introduction to Buddhism. I say incidentally because they are not in the least proselytising. They (and I've not met all that many of the regulars) seem a very nice bunch of people. I've occasionally attended a class given by a real monk (albeit he's from Dundee and not Lhasa). As religions go it seems, how shall I put it, the least dictating.

Apparently there is a stricture (maybe that's a bit strong as I can't see these nice people being strict in the way we would normally think) against alcohol, but they were recently giving a party to mark a new chapter in the running of the centre and the invitation definitely said BYOB which I'm sure means bring your own bottle. OK it doesn't specify what should be or not be in the bottle but if it wasn't optional surely they would say. The thing is due to being abroad on business I couldn't make it so I didn't find out. If anyone's got any helpful information on this I'll be glad to hear from you.

I'd previously been guided that Buddhism is not a religion as they don't deify a superior being, i.e. some god or God or Allah or the Duke of Edinburgh, but that it is mainly a way of life as set out be a living and long dead person, viz. the Buddha. This is complicated by the fact that they believe in a life after death which is hopeful but confusing. If anyone's got any helpful information on this I'll be glad to hear from you.

Good night and may your god go with you, as Dave Allen used to say.

Why Not Give It A Go?

2009-08-30T20:40:00.002Z

I've had this blog blocked for some time now, nearly a year, and I think it may be time to dip my toe in the blogosphere again. What do you think?

A Good Ride

2008-09-15T18:55:00.011Z

Taking a leaf from The Ill Man's book I wended my way down the coast yesterday - to Largs. I wasn't looking for antique football parks but. No, I was merely stravaigin' on the bike. In the old days when my older brothers were stalwarts of the local cycling club scene one of the main training runs was commonly known as the Kilbirnie Circle. Namely, Greenock to Largs, up the Hailey Brae towards Kilbirnie, on to Lochwinnoch - stop for a break - and up the south Renfrewshire hills towards Kilmacolm, bypassing Kilmacolm to enter Greenock's east end. All in all about 50 miles.

Not that I was in "training" mode, no I was, as previously mentioned, in stravaigin' mode. So no hurry, just a leisurely ride down the coast, nearly getting shoved into the hedge on the stretch between Wemyss Bay and Largs. This is not a bicycle friendly country as far as most of the roads are concerned and we have a long way to go to even approach continental Europe standards for provision of dedicated cycle paths. Anyway Largs was successfully achieved and in the traditional way of things I had a cup of tea and a scone at Nardini's at the Moorings. The old Nardini's seems a long way from re-opening.

As I was propping my bike up at the window on my way in these two other cyclists were just coming out and as one of them was remarking on my bike as the kind of touring bike he would like (i.e. the flat bars) we got chatting. They were doing a Land's End to John O'Groats run and were heading for Invereray. Their intended route was via Kilcreggan but I advised them the more logical way would be the Western Ferry to Dunoon and up Loch Eck side to Loch Fyne. So off they pedalled and I had my cuppa.

Next to Pencil Point:

Which some of you may know commemorates the Battle of Largs in 1263 when a load of teddy boys from Greenock were chucked out of the dancing at the Moorings and, in a febrile lather after listening to the hip sounds of the Henri Morrison Swingstars, set about a crowd of the locals outside of Macari's chippy.

Then up the excruciatingly long and steep Hailey Brae and the road to Kilbirnie. Not much to hang around in Kilbirnie for so onwards to Lochwinnoch and the lovely wee Junction Caffe where they very earnestly boast of their Fairtrade credentials. Anyway they serve good nosh in a lovely atmosphere. Lochwinnoch is nice and avoids the overly picture postcard look of many Scottish villages.

The next part of the journey is mainly just the long ride home. Lots of ups and downs and I enjoyed slip-streaming on the wheel of a club rider who passed me at a rate of knots, giving me good incentive to see if I could match him. I did stay on his wheel for a while but it was hard work and I wasn't disappointed to see him turn off for Kilmacolm as I headed on to Greenock.

Luckily the good weather held out and the final run in from high above the east end was exhilirating. A good two mile free-wheel downhill into the town centre. A lovely end to the day, well the hot bath afterwards was anyway.

By the way, my camera seems to have developed a tendency to give every picture a blue-ish hue. Anyone know why? It's a Canon PowerShot A630. Maybe it needs a technical looking over.

The Gathering - A Lost Cause

2008-09-12T07:19:00.003Z

I wasn't getting on well with reading The Gathering by Anne Enright. Somehow I've been too busy recently to do justice to it as it is a book which demands the reader's attention. I was working my way through it in a kind of haphazard fashion, with week-long gaps between reading sessions and then, with a quarter of the book to go, and just when I was really getting into it, I left the damn thing on a plane.

So I picked up The Outcast by Sadie Jones and I have finished that inside of a week. A fairly good read which did take a long time also to really engage with me. Ultimately though I don't feel it lived up to the blurbs. Richard and Judy's Book Club can go fuck itself.

At this moment I am sitting in Gothenburg Airport and Cold Light by John Harvey is on the table beside me. I don't know this author nor have I heard of his Resnick character, a morose English policeman, but I'm looking forward to finding out more. This book was first published in 1995 and references to Brian Clough as manager of Nottingham Forest (although he retired from the post in 1993) rather date it. Anyway a good story is a good story no matter what the setting.

Gotenburg to Oslo - Done It - Bought The T-Shirt

2008-08-31T10:00:00.004Z

We're back. Arriving at Prestwick on Friday to a heroes' welcome, the hero being my Scots-Italian buddy who, though suffering from Crohne's Disease which debilitates him sorely, overcame the odds to lead us in to Oslo on Wednesday night.

This was, I think, the greatest adventure of my life. We cycled from Gotenburg to Oslo in five days, taking one day of rest on the gorgeous island of Valon on Sweden's west coast archipeligo. I was so fortunate to have seven great guys for company and we have raised a pile of money for CHAS, children's hospice foundation which does great work with terminally ill kids and their families.

Do I feel good? You bet.

Please visit http://www.chas.org.uk/ to see the work that CHAS do, and remind yourself how luck you are.

It's All Go

2008-08-20T16:19:00.002Z

Well bugger me. It's been over a month since I last updated the blog so I'm feeling guilty not informing the world of my intricate little life.

Thing is my reading has taken a back seat while I am in training for a marathon charity cycle ride. Marathon is the word but it's not in Greece; it's from Gotenburg to Oslo, a distance of about 350 km.

So watch this space. We take off for Gotenburg on 22nd Aug. and we start the cycle on 23rd. I'll try and blog some pictures and stuff when I get back. Oh, and the charity we're supporting is CHAS (Childrens' Hospice Association Scotland).

Take care and see you soon. By the way - do you like my new bike?

Why Don't You All Fuck Off!

2008-07-24T16:02:00.003Z

And think for yourselves. The number of people googling "show how attributes traditionally associated with masculinity and femininity are contrasted in Pygmalion" or Medea or whatever and reaching my pathetic little blog has reached ridiculous heights. I swear if it wasn't for something what I wrote over two years ago, which was a load of old shite by the way, then I would have no hits at all.

So, stop googling and trying to blag a pass off of other buggers efforts by cutting and pasting and start doing some real research. Talking about a load of old shite, it used to be if you googled that that I was second in the hit parade. No longer, I'm glad to say. Anyway that's what I get for not heeding the advice of someone whose name escapes me; don't blog your OU efforts as it's against OU rules. So be careful out there. Now, fuck off.

Fragment

2008-07-20T21:26:00.014Z

I remember ....

I remember a time around 1965 when I was on a bus with my first real girlfriend. We were sixteen and had spent this Friday night at the movies. I guess the time was around half past ten or so when we boarded the bus at the town's main bus station, elegantly situated next to the abbatoir. This was a time when few people of my acquaintance owned a car and bus travel was not just a convenience, it was one of life's basic necessities. The bus station had a row of about eight stances, the closest one to the abbatoir door being Grieve Road, then Braeside, Fancyfarm, Larkfield, Branchton and so on, these being Greenock's outlying council housing schemes.

At that time of night, in my memory it's autumn and chilly, the bus shelters were packed inside with queues of hopeful passengers tailing outside and usually on a Friday night a one-legged man would be playing the clarinet on the traffic island opposite. In those days the pubs shut at ten o'clock so he could usually count on a generous audience as the crowds waited for the buses home. He played the kind of tunes popular to the over forties of that era, people who had experienced war and rationing and who worked and endured and got through things together.

After a while our bus arrived and we rushed on and secured a seat upstairs not far from the back. Of course upstairs was the smoking area and the atmosphere was a fug of cigarette smoke, beery breath, Soir de Paris, and Old Spice. There was a group of older men and women at the back of the bus and some of them were neigbours of my girlfriend. There was a bit of friendly banter directed towards us and generally a bit of taking the mickey out of me for being shy and gauche with my first real girlfriend.

As the bus trundled through town's dark streets the crowd upstairs began singing. The song took over and soon almost everyone upstairs was happily belting out an old classic called Dear Hearts And Gentle People It was one of those scenes which seemed, just for a fleeting moment as other passengers joined in the song, to capture the feeling of a community full of hope and love for each other. I know that I am idealising something which, even as I was experiencing it, was changing. Post-war deprivation had developed into the relative prosperity of the fifties and early sixties and for a while there was a kind of stability and comfort in full employment and affordable housing. Greenock's shipyards, sugar refineries and mills were booming. There was a promising future ahead for the young people on that bus, or so it seemed.

I miss them, those dear hearts and gentle people who lived and loved in my home town all those years ago. I miss the factories and the shipyards and wee men in bunnets and tackety boots, who worked in hard trades like moulder and boilermaker and welder and shipwright. That's what people had back then; work and self-respect. Because the promising future slowly evaporated as the yards, mills and sugar refineries closed down and twenty years after that Friday night bus journey the destination posted on the front of that bus had become a byword for deprivation and drug dependent hopelessness.

Masculinity & Femininity

2008-06-27T08:14:00.002Z

There must be a new OU session starting. I'm getting a lot of hits from Google searches from "Masculinity & Feminity - Pygmalion - Medea" and such like. So there's a lot of visits to my previous page

I'm sorry it hasn't been too illuminating for you eager students, but nice to have you visit all the same. As Garrison Keillor says -Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

Nuala O'Faolain

2008-06-10T20:00:00.007Z

I've just begun to re-read Are You Somebody by Nuala O'Faolain. I loved this book and was sad when I read that Ms. O'Faolain had died (obituary).

It is a book of searing honesty and pathos, and I'm re-reading it partly as a result of a converstaion I had with the writer . He was telling me that, after a long run of writing science fiction which had attracted no real audience, he had decided to write a memoir. Well, I thought it would be a brilliant memoir as he has lead the most fantastic, not say bizarre, life. The gist, he explained, was how he had arrived at the place he is now, i.e. a tent on Loch Lomond-side.

Anyway, not to pre-empt The Writer's memoir, I loved Ms. Faolain's book because of her ability to bear her soul on the page. She was hurtful to no-one, except perhaps herself, although that would probably be inevitable, re-visiting as she was many painful memories. I believe it was, ultimately, cathartic and redeeming.

I hope The Writer reads the book and takes it to heart , like I did.

End of Intermission

2008-06-08T19:17:00.005Z

Hello again. I've not been away, I've just been blogging lazy. You know how it goes, you just can't get past that feeling of ennui, and it's just too much effort to open the laptop and log in. It happens to the best bloggers and goodness knows I'm far from the best.

I've edited the list of books read and it's not very impressive, is it. Anyway fuck it, I enjoyed them. Except Island of Terrible Friends by Bill Strutton. This book was published in the 1961 when the World War II was fresh in people's minds and there was a market for memoirs and biographies of the great war heroes. I remember as a boy being an avid reader of the biographies of war heroes like Leonard Cheshire VC and others. Anyway this book was the story of a surgeon, Major James Rickett,based on Island Vis off the coast of then Yugoslavia during the latter part of the war when the Yugoslave partisans, backed by units of allied troops, used Vis as a base for harrying the Germans on the adjacent islands of Brac, Hvar, and Korcula as well as the mainland around Split.

Frankly it was a poor read. I learned almost nothing about Major Rickett other than what he did, and that he was a brave and professional surgeon and soldier. The author treats his subjects with a superficiality that is deeply frustrating and one wonders why, when (as stated in the acknowledgement) he was greatly assisted by Dr. Rickett and his wife, he never got past recording events to ask about the lives behind them. Nevertheless it was in other ways instructive in its descriptions of the occupation of Vis by the partisans and their allies and the bravery of their actions in the the campaign to defeat the Nazis in Yogoslavia is reflected in some measure in the book. About the inhabitants of Vis, i.e. the native islanders I learned nothing at all, which is a pity as that is what I'd learn a little more of when I bought it.

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwen

2008-03-15T18:49:00.006Z

I enjoyed this book. It was short and pacey and an enjoyable read from start to finish. I see it is described as a novella, which is probably right.

It was odd in some respects as, although it was seriously written it seemed, to me anyhow, not to quite get to the point. It describes the sexually repressed Florence and her hopeful and patient husband, Edward on their wedding night. Florence, for reasons which are never even touched on, finds the thought of sex repellant.

At the start of the book the author has a laugh at the expense of the sex education manuals prevalent in post-war Britain. This is sharply described with quotes such as;

Not long before he enters her ... or, now, at last he enters her ...

Florence asks herself ... Was she obliged on the night to transform herself for Edward into a kind of portal or drawing room through which he might process?

But the lightheartedness is mixed with fear and anxiety as we come to realise that the marriage of these two people who love each other so much is doomed. From their stilted conversation at dinner, while two awkward boys keep po-faces as they serve from a trolley in the corridor, to the farcical and disastrous end of their attempt at love-making takes one hundred pages or about two thirds of the book.

Without the quality of writing and the tender sympathy that McEwen brings to it, it could have turned out cloying and embarassing but the blurb writers have it correct. It is "exquisitely crafted", but as I said at the beginning, I wonder if he has avoided something darker. By that I mean the reason behind Florence's fear and loathing of even the thought of the sex act.

What can it be? There is an unspoken suggestion - no, not even something as strong as a suggestion, something much more ephemeral - of an unhealthy relationship with her father. Her mother is described as a driven politically aware, career-minded woman with little time for her daughter, whereas her father was a "business man" who took her on holidays "just the two of them" hiking in the Alps, the Pyrenees. Maybe I'm reading too much into that but I do feel that McEwen has ducked the issue.

I bought the book off of the best-seller shelf at Menzies as I'm a sucker for a blurb. Maybe I'll try Atonement, I don't know. Meanwhile I'm now reading Island Of Terrible Friends by Bill Strutton. This is the true story of a British army surgeon who set up a field hospital on the island of Vis during World War II. I visited Vis a couple of times during my sojourn in Croatia between 2004 and 2006. I was captivated by the place and its history so the places are very real to me although the events are not. I can relate though to Strutton's desciption of some of the residents and partisans. Anyway, more about that when I've finished it.

Then We Came To The End - Joshua Ferris

2008-02-17T19:49:00.002Z

I gave up on The Third Woman - by Mark Burnell. It was too convoluted for my tired brain. So now I'm on to Then We Came To The End - by Jushua Ferris. I might have given up on this too but my resolve has kept me with it and I believe that it is being rewarded. It's been a slow start but we're into the substance of the book now and I'm beginning to enjoy it more.

Part of it's strength, for me. is that it is a book about a set of characters completely outside of my experience - it's set in a Chicago advertising agency - and I feel I'm being drawn in. Hopefully the effort of sticking with it to now will be rewarded.

The Truth

2008-01-19T21:26:00.002Z

I'll just have to be open with you. My last post, Crime Story, is not fiction. It actually happened. Not exactly as I portrayed it but essentially yes, two cops did apprehend me outside the Daily Record print works in Hope Street in...let's think...must have been 1967. And it was about one or two in the morning, but I wasn't thinking about getting a lift in the paper delivery van to take me back down the road; I didn't know you could do that at that time, I found out about that a year or two later, and her and me did get a lift from Glasgow to Greenock, after we'd hitched up from London, in the very van. But that's another story.

So there I was, gazing in the window at the old printing machinery when these two cops came up to me and said 'What were you doing in that doorway, son'? It was the night that I met Billy Connelly . Well I say I met him, a friend of mine was trying to persuade him to help him to set up a folk gig in Ardrossan. My friend knew him and was hoping that Billy's rising celebrity (this was long before he first appeared on Parkinson by the way) would be just the thing to give the project a boost. I was just kind of hanging around on the fringes of the group looking, I hoped, part of this cool scene.

We were in the Tunnel Bar which was built into the railway arches near to the old St. Enoch station, Howard Street or thereabouts if you know Glasgow. The place was mobbed with hippy, folky types who had all decanted from the regular folk-scene haunt of the Scotia Bar on Stockwell Street. There had been some kind of falling oot with the landlord of the Scotia and the folkies had all walked out in a huff and took over the Tunnel Bar. So there we were, guitars, banjoes, melodeons, penny whistles, all Aran jumpers and wispy beards, giving it laldy with our non-conformist "folksongs". It was all very progressive, and more than a touch precious.

Anyway the whole scene going, it seems, was not going down too well with some of the Tunnel Bar regulars because, as the night was drawing to a close with a final chorus of The Wild Rover or whatever and the barman was shouting last orders (this was the time by the way when the pubs in Scotland shut at ten o'clock so at ten to ten they would clatter a bell or flash the lights just to be sure you got the message), there was what I can only describe as carnage brought down on our hippy heads. The barman, who must have been in on the thing, flashed the lights but paused in the task and for a longish period - it was maybe only thirty seconds but it seemed like a fucking eternity - he kept the lights off and, while it was pitch dark, apart from the glow from the few illuminated beer signs, a hail of empty glass tumblers were flung across the room in our direction. It was fucking mayhem. Women were screaming, I was fucking screaming, glass was smashing off the walls behind us and it was total panic. I dived under a table and mercifully the lights came on and it stopped.

When I stood up there were these two guys, that it was only two came as a shock, but there they stood, between us and the door, a beer tumbler in each hand. 'C'mon ya bastards!' Fuck only knows what it was about us that annoyed them but they were determined to make their point. Maybe they just took exception to the long-haired flower children taking over their pub. I mean the place was the kind of tip that you almost had to be thrown into but it was their territory and here were these fuckers with mandolins cluttering up the place and singing depressing dirges about the highland clearances. Come to think of it they could have had a point.

I can't exactly recall how we got out of there, but we somehow ducked out past the nutters and found ourselves on the street, a rough dozen or so, and it seemed that miraculously nobody was seriously hurt. Some cuts and grazes and guitars rattling with broken glass inside them. Anyway there we were, timmed out into the street but relatively unscathed. This guy was waxing on about how this was just another manifestation of conformist society's inability to tolerate the new free-thinking, free-loving generation. 'They don't like our long hair, man' he said to me but, glancing at my prematurely thinning pate and short back and sides, he hesitated and said 'Or our clothes'. And then he said 'Are you going to the party?' Well I wasn't but I was now. I looked around but the friends I had come with had disappeared, maybe they were still in the pub.. ach, fuck it. So we dived in to the St. Enoch subway station and headed for the west end.

And that was how I ended up in a flat somewhere in Glasgow's west end, having blagged my way in to this party. It was great, I'd finally made it, in with the in-crowd. And the women! I was in heaven and the beer was free. I kind of lost touch with the people from the pub and was beginning to fear I was looking conspicuous when this girl grabbed - I mean it, she really grabbed - me and pulled me into a cupboard. Without preamble we were necking (you remember the term?) furiously. She was the loveliest creature and she had picked me! But before we could take things a stage further the door opened and this guy, who apparently owned the flat and who was getting a little pissed off about all these gate-crashers drinking his beer, told us to desist our filthy goings on and get out. It transpired that the girl was a gate-crasher too so we had to go.

There we were out on the street with libidos on the boil and nowhere to go. She (I don't remember her name, I don't even know if I asked what it was) was a nurse and she shared a flat with another nurse who was at home and that, apparently, put the flat out of bounds. Maybe her flatmate wasn't the free-thinker my companion was, anyway look here; we're in the region of Kelvingrove and here's a gap in the fence which leads us to a dark path down through the trees beside the River Kelvin. It was a fairly mild and dry night and.. ach we were young and randy, even if it had really been a night of smirr and freezing cold I still think we'd have given it a go. Anyway not much later we re-emerged, her with grass on her arse and me with grass on my knees and elbows.

She gave me her phone number and I gave her mine and we promised to keep in touch, and I bummed the cost of a taxi from her to get back to Central Station and she told me sweetly how she knew what it was like to be financially embarrassed. That was the first time I had ever heard that euphemism and it would forever remind me of that moment, long after I had forgotten almost everything about the girl who said it. We kissed goodbye and I rode the taxi back to the Central Station.

I stood looking up at the destination board and I could see that the last train to Gourock had left twenty minutes ago. Well you know the rest. Oh aye, the body. When the polis man gave it a shove with his boot an old drunk woman emerged from under the pile of rags that was covering her and mumbled 'Fuck ye waant? Lay's alane'.
'Right, son. Make yerself scarce' said the cop. So I did.

Crime Story

2008-01-12T22:47:00.000Z

I stood looking up at the destination board and I could see that the last train to Gourock had left twenty minutes ago. I tried looking at my watch again and then looking up again at the board but the facts refused to change. The train was still gone and I was still stuck in Glasgow Central with an expired day-return ticket and no money in my wallet.

I looked around me at the other people on the station concourse. Some lucky ones had grabbed a seat on one of the few benches that British Rail had deigned to provide. They obviously didn’t want to encourage the dossers. I leaned against a pillar and waited. I didn’t know what I was waiting on, inspiration maybe. What the hell was I going to do all night? Where would I go? And how was I going to get home in the morning with only a dud ticket to my name? I waited patiently but answer came there none.

The platform information above me was gradually petering out. A few last minute lucky travellers rushed past to board the final trains out of the station. The concourse was virtually empty now and the floor sweeping machines were out brushing up the days detritus. The transport police were now beginning to appear in numbers for the final clearout of the drunks and dossers. I thought I’d better make a move before I was lifted and headed out of the station towards Hope Street. As I passed the Central Hotel the revolving door threw out a group of young people, three couples, about my age, affluent and handsome, laughing and kissing as they fell into taxis, oblivious of the rest of the world, insulated from the cold. I hated them.

I crossed Gordon Street and walked up Hope Street with no plan of where to go, just knowing that I had to keep walking to keep warm. By this time it was about one o’clock, the streets were quiet and the rain began to fall. When I say it began to fall that would suggest it was subject to gravity. That would be normal rain. This wasn’t normal rain, it was smirr. People who are not from Scotland would perhaps call it Scotch Mist but people from this part of Scotland anyway call it by the name that describes both how it looks and how it feels, smirr. Rather than just fall to the ground and get out of your way, smirr hangs around and tries its best to be friends with you. No matter that you hurry on past to get out of its damp grip it just won’t take the hint. It persists, enveloping, infiltrating your clothing until you’re just a heap of wet rags with water running off your nose. But I wasn’t that wet yet although I soon would be if I didn’t find somewhere to go, out of the smirr.

I crossed Hope Street and wandered back down towards the station. A drunk man was leaning against a building, his body at and angle of forty five degrees, his chin slumped on his chest as he contemplated the colourful circle of vomit he had just created on the pavement. He looked up at me as I passed as if he wanted to share the wonder of the moment with me. I hurried on before we had the opportunity to become acquainted. A little bit lower down Hope Street I came to the offices of the Daily Record and Sunday Mail. I paused in front of one of the large plate glass windows, gazing hypnotically at the printing machinery churning out the early edition of the Mail. As I paused there it suddenly stuck me. What an idiot! The newspaper van. I remembered some guys at work telling how they skived a lift off the paper van after they’d missed the last train home. It would be leaving in an hour or so, dropping off the papers in Greenock by about five o’clock. Maybe I’d get lucky.

I turned away from the window to look for some access to the rear of the building, to where I guessed the loading dock would be, when suddenly my arms were pinned to my sides and I was pushed forcibly back against the plate glass.
‘What were you doing in that doorway, son?’
Two big guys in plain clothes, somehow it was obvious to me that they were policemen, held onto me.
‘What doorway?’ I said. ‘I wasn’t in any doorway.’ I stifled the instinct to cry out for my mammy.
‘Aye ye wirr! The other cop snarled into my face. ‘Let’s go and have a wee look.’

The two cops marched me back up the street, each keeping a firm grip of a wrist and an elbow. We came to a doorway. A less than salubrious old red sandstone office building. Above the arched entrance a faded gilt sign - Waterloo Chambers. The doors into the building were set back from the street inside a deep unlit entrance. In the gloom I could see, lying on the tiled floor, a body.

What An Accolade!

2008-01-05T23:22:00.000Z

If you type "old shite" into Google, West Coast Ramblings comes second. How good is that!

A Star Called Henry - Roddy Doyle

2008-01-02T22:19:00.000Z

I’ve just finished A Star Called Henry. What a cracking read; the narrative just fairly gallops along and the imagery is so clever and engaging. I felt as if I was being swept along in a torrent of language, imagery.. testosterone. The pace is tremendous.

Our hero, Henry, is the son of Melody and Henry Smart. Henry Sr. is a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and part-time assassin for one of Dublin’s power-mongers. Melody is a broken woman, laid low by the loss of too many babies and a life of grinding poverty. The life of grinding poverty is a little at odds with the fact that Henry Sr. is never out of work but we take it as read.

The story takes us from Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century and starts with young Henry’s imagined tale of his maternal grandmother’s early days in the city:-

She might have walked from Roscommon or Clare, pushed on by the stench of the blight, walked across the country till she saw the stone-eating smoke that lay over the piled, sagging fever-nests that made our beautiful city, walked in along the river, deeper and deeper, into the filth and shit, the noise and the money. A young country girl, never kissed, never touched, she was scared, she was thrilled. She turned around and back around and saw the four corners of hell. Her heart cried for Leitrim but her tits sang for Dublin. She got down on her back and yelled at the sailors to form a queue. Frenchmen, Danes, Chinamen, the Yanks. I don’t know. A young girl, a waif, just a child, aching for food. She’d left her family dead in a ditch, their chops green with grass juice, their bellies set to explode in the noonday sun. I don’t know any of this. She might have been…

Henry conspires to imagine the legend of his parents and grandparents backgrounds while, simultaneously constructing the legend of himself. His story sweeps through Ireland’s fight for independence, and crucially the events of the occupation of Dublin’s GPO during the 1916 Easter Uprising. Henry is “there” fighting alongside, and rutting lustily in the basement at the height of the battle, with his old schoolteacher, the feisty Miss O’Shea.

Doyle places Henry at the heart of these historical events and we can view them and the major players, Michael Collins, Joseph Plunkett, Patrick Pearse etc., through the prism of Henry’s “eye-witness”. This allows Doyle to impose his own interpretation on these historical events, the main players, and their consequences and this becomes especially important when the novels characters provide their own justification for engaging in some terrible and murderous acts. I was especially taken by Henry’s fellow rebel, Jack Dalton, when he and Henry were discussing the outcome of their “struggle”.

- It’ll soon be over, I said.
- I will in its hole, said Jack. – You don’t honestly think that, do you?
- It had crossed my mind, I said;.
- Uncross it then, he said. – We haven’t a hope, man. Am I depressing you at all?
- No.
- Good. We cannot win and winning is not our intention. What we have to do, all we can do, is keep them at it until it becomes unbearable. To provoke them and make them mad. We need reprisals and innocent victims and outrages, and we need them to give them to us. To keep at them until the costs are so heavy they’ll decide to go. But we’ll never beat them.

You'll note here that the innocent victims and the outrages are to be given to the rebels by the Brits and I wonder if Doyle has the airbrush out here. Otherwise that is as good a rationale for terrorism as you’re likely to come across anywhere and Doyle, through Henry, continues to make the point when Henry is engaged in training of his guerrilla fighters in Ireland’s far west.

This is a great book. A great read with everything you would want in a story - love, romance, sex, war, grief, and finally redemption. Doyle has a way with narrative, and this story, unlike some of his others, is mainly narrative with less dialogue than we expect of him. The novel is written in the first person with Henry Smart as the narrator. I like the style of Doyle’s books whereby he eschews quotation marks in dialogue in favour of just a simple – at the beginning of the line to show us the character is speaking. It makes the process simple and, I think, contributes to the pace of the story.

Reading

2007-12-30T22:14:00.000Z

I've been visiting one of my favourite blogs more often recently and I have to say it really is staggering how kimbofo does it. She keeps up not just Reading Matters but two other blogs as well, to an exceptional standard, as well as holding down a job and apparently being gifted in many other ways. She's an inspiration and I'm saying that because she has inspired me to get off my fat arse (well, my pert and attractive arse actually) and get some serious reading done.

Now kimbofo has apparently got through on average more than a book a week for the whole of 2007. I know I can't do that but.. maybe I can manage a book a fortnight. I know some of you may think it a philistine kind of excercise, to just crank out pages as if they were something in a mass production process (Come to think of it, that's just what they are most of them) but I feel that if I don't get down to it in that kind of way then I'll never get anywhere.

My problem is not my schedule or my work or anything else; it's me. So having identified the problem I'm doing something about it. I remember I once posted some (whisper it) New Year's resolutions on this here blog but I can't find the fucker so I must have thought it too embarassing and deleted it. Anyhoo, I'm not making "resolutions" this year, I'm just trying to catch up.

So I've given myself a start. It's still a day or so to go before 2008 actually (and it seems, improbably) arrives and I've got a good start into A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle. This comes hot on the heels (by my standards) of Paula Spencer which I picked up at a ludicrously high price when I was stuck in Gothenburg airport with not even a newspaper to read. That was just excellent; I think I finished it just as we were landing at Glasgow. I was amazed at how immersed I was in the thing.

So there you are, readers. That's the plan. Am I not just precious?

This I Know

2007-12-28T23:34:00.000Z

The only person who ever made me unhappy - was me.

Well Give Me That Old Time Religion

2007-12-23T00:52:00.000Z

I see he's converted to my old religion. Praise the Lord again. In that way of speaking he has when he's taking a long time to get to the point he said, of sending troops to Iraq:-

"In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people... and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."

I mean, it's pathetic. He might as well have said, "A big boy made me do it and ran away." Other people of course being GWB. The man's just spineless.

Image taken from:- www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/tony-blair-2-halo.jpg

The Shortest Day .....

2007-12-22T21:41:00.000Z

.... has passed. Praise the Lord!

Winter

2007-12-19T23:30:00.000Z

I hate winter. That's to say I hate the winters I normally have to endure - I mean just cold wet, miserable weather - if there is a snowfall it is usually a one day thing quickly followed by rain and slush. I just hate it, the mud, glaur and shittyness of it. But I do like real winter, you know the kind of winter you get if you're lucky enough to live somewhere like ... New York. Now that's a good winter. Freezing cold enough to stop the trains and snowfalls that smother the whole state.

Have you ever experienced that magical moment when you get up in the morning and you look out of the window, and the snow is just fucking car-deep. There's that glorious light refelecting off of the new snow and if you're really lucky it's still coming down in lumps. You leap with tingling anticipation to the TV and the announcer is announcing in drama-laden tones that the trains are off. Yippee! Quickly check the cupboards - food enough, coffee to brew, bread to toast, fridge full of goodies. A whole day - a whole glorious day ahead of doing nothing but looking out of the window at the gorgeous streetscape, brewing coffee and reading. Bliss.

It's happened to me only a couple of times, three at most; twice when I was living in Hoboken and once was in Riga in Latvia one October about ten years ago. I was staying in a hotel then in the old city centre looking out onto streets devoid of trolley cars and people struggling to get to anywhere, and I just sat at the window and smiled like I had won the lottery. I think it's the cosy, trapped inside, back to the womb, kind of feeling that I really like. It's a feeling best experienced, in my opinion, alone.

Back And Hopeful

2007-12-08T20:33:00.000Z

I thought it was time to get back to the blog. I hope you haven't all deserted me although, as you've been unable to read this blog for so long, I'll be surprised - not to say flabbergasted - if anybody comes along to read it at all.

Never mind there comes a time when a man has to do etc. etc. And I need to something other than work and sleep. I've been away from the blogosphere for so long now I'm sure that a so much has moved on and left me behind. It's good to see my old friend Lingo Slinger is going on from strength to strength. She always satisfies.

So here we are... Looking forward to Christmas? Well we're getting all set and hopefully it will be a peaceful and loving festival. I'm very ambivalent about Christmas. On the one hand I hate the commercialisation of it (although I'm not at all religious so why should I care), but I do like the togetherness of it and the hope that comes up within me that differences can be put aside and families can be ... one.

Dreams

2007-05-12T22:10:00.000Z

I suppose I'm like too many other people who believe they lead unique lives and have such an interesting story to tell. The point of this blog, at one time, was to tell some of the stories which are inside my head. Trouble is making that journey from my head onto the screen. I have spent more years than I care to think about travelling and, in the course of that you cannot fail to rack up experiences, good and bad, forgettable and unforgettable, memories warm and cringe inducing.

So does anybody want to know? That's not the correct question, is it? The question is; have I got the talent to communicate? That's the nub. That story below there - the one about me and Allie nicking the Good Companions tent and taking it off to Blairgowrie berry picking. That was the start of a great wee adventure for two boys. It was, for me at least, one of those defining experiences of childhood which, even now over forty years later, I can still recall with a clarity that startles me. I can remember so many of those small things that separately don't amount to much but strung together could make an interesting narrative, if only I could.

In those days there was not the proliferation of street lights that we have now and, when you looked across the Clyde from Greenock to Helensburgh you could clearly see the main street leading out of Helensburgh. The street lighting over much of the town did not make much of an impression to a watcher across the river but Sinclair Street with its bright yellow lighting stood out tracing a path from the coastline north and east towards Loch Lomond. For a boy with a fascination for maps this was intriguing. Like a life size map was laid out in front of me, drawing me in, leading me towards the distant hills.

Much of my life has been like that, looking from where I am wondering what it is like somewhere else. It's an itch I like to keep scratching. Or at least I would like to. Anyway, here we were disembarking from the Gourock to Helensburgh ferry and making our way with high hopes and blissful naivety towards Sinclair Street and the road north to Loch Lomond, Crianlarich, Lochearnhead, St. Fillan's, Crieff, Perth and, finally, Blairgowrie. It's not a great distance, maybe just over a hundred miles; you could drive it in a couple of hours. But for us it was like embarking on a safari or a trek to India. I don't remember discussing it with my mother, but I suppose I must have. I guess she thought that as I was going with Allie then itwould be OK. He was a sensible boy, a year older than me and with an air of maturity beyond his fifteen years.

Ramblings

2007-04-21T20:30:00.000Z

I've been contributing here so infrequently I think some of you (my fondly imagined regular audience) may think I've given up altogether. Well here I am; back again. I don't often comment on current affairs but one or two items just got my goat recently and, while the last thing that I want to sound like is yet another why-oh-why merchant, I would like to express myself. It's what a blog is for after all.

I'm not going to refer, except very briefly, to events at Virginia Tech. What can anyone say about that, other than how inevitable it was that the crazies of the US gun lobby would come out and declare that such an event would not have been as bad if the campus had not been decreed to be a gun free environment. So that's what they want is it? A world where it is the norm for everyone learning or teaching or working at a university is armed with a gun?

No, it's not that event which has, well depressed me really. If something is almost guaranteed to upset me it is cruelty to children. And this past week we've had the sight of four odious slags avoiding a jail sentence after being foung guilty of cruelty against two toddlers in their "care" who they forced to fight each other, until the little boy and girl were so upset they tried to get away. But these slime were so entertained by what the kids were going through they goaded them on as if they were directing a dog-fight.

That they were not sent to jail is a scandal. The judge should think shame on himself. They"did not pose a danger to the public". The man is a fucking cretin. They sure posed a danger to the children they were supposed to be looking after, and they should be properly punished for it.

And now this. Oh I know there are cruelties and misery being heaped upon children the world over every minute of every day but sometimes something happens that brings it into sharp focus. The fat slags of North Prospect, Plymouth have more in common than they might think with the Taliban.

Lawrence Donegan

2007-04-02T22:10:00.000Z

Maybe I should start a Lawrence Donegan fan club. Only of his books though; I'm no great fan of his weekend scribblings for the Herald. I've just finished No News At Throat Lake which is just a great read. I'm not surpised as Four Iron In The Soul was just the absolute definition of unputdownable. Maybe I'm overdoing the hyperbole but I think the man is the master of making the prosaic memorable. It's been a good number of years since I read Four Iron In The Soul, nine or more in fact, but the pleasant memory lingers on. I also read California Dreaming and, although I didn't think it had the depth that Four Iron had, it too was an unfailingly good read.

I love non-fiction of the class that Donegan can produce. Although he is not a travel writer in the same way that you could describe Paul Theroux or Eric Newby, in my humble opinion he is their equal in the art of human study. I see, looking at the fly-leaf, that he wrote Throat Lake in 1999 and I wonder at his lack of such good product since. Am I being unfair? I see there is something called Quiet Please about marshalling at the Ryder Cup. It's not brilliantly reviewed on Amazon but if I can find a second hand copy I'll be happy to read it.

My real point here is that I wonder if there are other readers out there who think that Donegan is under-achieving? Let me know; in fact, Lawrence, please pitch in. You're too good to be languishing in whatever place you are just now. I love your writing and I need more.

The Grass Is Riz

2007-03-28T08:29:00.000Z

Isn't it great! The clocks have sprung forward and by some miracle of time and arithmetic it's still light when it's nearly eight thirty at night. So last night I bounded home and dragged the golf clubs out, and me and the big fella had a five hole tournament. He won at the last hole, but who cares - it was great. Summer is almost on us.

It's so long since I posted on this blog I'm feeling guilty. Somehow I've been running out of the energy and, as I'm doing this at work, I'm getting whiplash looking round for people coming at me from behind to discover me on the blog. Anyway, I'm here and I'm energised so the blog is not yet totally moribund. I'm back and I'm busy.

How Are You Irish?

2007-03-07T12:07:00.000Z

Here's a nice picture, brings back good memories.

The beach at Bol.

In Memoriam

2007-02-24T20:38:00.000Z

I like to come up to my son's bedroom occasionally and read. It's a nice loft conversion and it's quiet, with sometimes the only noise being the gentle patter of rain on the roof windows or when his beer fridge cuts in. It's a real boy's bedroom although at twenty one, going on twenty two, you'd think it's time he put aside the Star Wars posters ... or the special issue light sabre lying on its mount next to the certificates he got for being his high school sports champion three years in a row. He's a boy (I know he's a man but I always think of him as a boy) who likes to hold on to the past.

It's not always pristine but he's usually pretty tidy and the general impression is one of organised clutter. His shelves are filled with things he's collected over the years and which he cannot bring himself to throw away. Every small thing is invested with some precious memory of some special occasion. There's the baseball he bought when I took him and his brother to Yankee stadium; the golf ball wedged in a rock with the legend 'Play it as it lies' from our visit to the USPGA headquarters in Far Hills, New Jersey. A lot of the books we bought for him, but which he never read because he was never much of reader, are here because he hasn't the heart to throw them out.

In a corner is the Captain America outfit that his best friend, Jack, wore to another pal's 21st birthday party two weeks before he was killed in a road accident. There too are Jack's football training shoes, the left one worn out near the instep where he contacted the ball to make it curve goalwards. He was good at football and so many other things. There's his old fleece that he wore almost every time we saw him when he came by our house on the way to a bounce game at the park. I went with my son after Jack died to his flat where he picked up these mementoes of his best friend. He buried his face in the fleece and cried so much and I tried to comfort him. And all I could think of was how I would feel if it was him and not Jack who had been taken away and I do not know if I could live with that pain. We have to live with our selfishness.

And now I cannot bear to look at that picture I took of the two of them that night, my boy dressed as Superman and Jack as Captain America. They looked - it's so cruelly ironic - invulnerable. But our children are not invulnerable and bad things happen. I am blessed, I know I am, but I am also afraid.

Berry Picking

2007-02-11T19:58:00.000Z

Berry-picking, said Allie. It seemed like a good idea to me even although I had only the vaguest idea what it meant. At fourteen most things to do with happenings outside the boundaries of Inverclyde seemed to me wonderfully exotic. A weekend camping trip to Dunoon was an adventure and a summer camp to Torquay seemed like a trip to another continent.

My mum didn't have much but she always did her best to get together enough money for us to go to the summer camp. It wasn't going to happen this year; the hard times were even harder and in that year of 1963 Allie and I were not going to be part of the expedition to England's south coast. We would miss it; the adventure of the long train journey, getting off the train at Torquay in our kilts and, rucsacs on back, canteens clanking, marching in step from the train station to the bus station to catch the bus to Watcombe. And the campsite, on a hillside just above Watcombe Beach was perfect. A paradise, with beautiful girls on the beach and a general store where we could buy John Players Tipped without having to worry about no-smoking laws for under-sixteens.

But in fairness to our widowed mothers Allie and I decided we couldn't afford, or we couldn't ask our mothers to afford, to fork out for the cost of the fortnight in Torquay; we would strike out on our own, maybe just hang around the local Scout camp, which was free and only cost the fare on the bus to Inverkip. And then we had a stroke of luck. One weekend we were mooching around the local camp headquarters hut and for some reason we were allowed into the back storage area unsupervised. Scrabbling on to the roof of the lockers we came across a tent, a nice condition Black's Good Companions two man job. Without a moment's anxiety we had it out of the hut and pitched on our site as if we'd owned it for years.

In those days of canvas tents you had to waterproof them, so that's what we did and now being owners of a tent we could go somewhere. Which is when Allie suggested berry-picking. It seemed to make eminent sense. We could earn as much as a pound a day! At least that was what Allie said and he seemed to know all about it, having been told about it by someone who knew someone who had been there a couple of years ago, maybe. Actually I didn't hesitate; Allie was about a year older than me, and generally took the lead in whatever scheme we were involved in. So we set to making plans on how we were going to get to Blairgowrie, the epicentre of berry-picking; fortunes awaited us.....

Imagine!

2007-01-21T21:59:00.000Z

It's sometimes strange what people type into Google and find West Coast Ramblings. The most common search phrase that finds my blog might be 'An analysis of a poem by Keats' or 'TMA02' or some such associated with my OU studies and it's nice to see new visitors, isn't it. Imagine my surpise therefore when I discovered I was up there on Google for the search phrase 'Imagine all the proddies', because that is exactly the phrase that someone has typed in and found me. What do you think it means? Did John Lennon write another version of his most famous song especially for the Catholic/Protestant divide?

I was born and raised in the West of Scotland and although raised a Catholic I never identified with that section of the populace who were descended from the Irish Catholic. There were at my school more Dochertys and Gallaghers, O'Neills and McLaughlins, than there were more commonly perceived Scots names such as McDonald and Mackenzie etc. They were still running a weekly bus between Glasgow and Donegal in those days. But although many of my classmates aligned themselves as being Irish first, Scots second, Celtic supporting etc. I really never, except for a period when I used to take advantage of a free entry into Parkhead after shaking a collecting tin for one of the local priests, I really never felt myself to be in the same mould so to speak. Well I didn't have the genetic background for a start; my mother's side were originally Scots and Welsh and my father's lineage goes back to the Cromarty Firth area for some hundreds of years.

I suppose I must have made a conscious decision at some point that if I was going to support any team then for me it felt better to support the local team, Greenock Morton, and so I could stand aloof from all that Rangers/Celtic/Proddy/Catholic crap that so many people wanted to hang on to. Serving an apprenticeship in the local shipbuilding and marine engineering industry in the early sixties I was nevertheless exposed to anti Catholic bigotry and in my naievete my reaction was bemusement, perhaps even bewilderment. Still I was never tempted to react either by pretending to be what I wasn't or by going to the other extreme and adopting the green and white of the Catholic bigot.

We've moved on from those days and now although Orange marches and Irish republican marches in the west of Scotland are not entirely a thing of the past they, and the people who promote such things, are increasingly irrelevant and in the general perception so insignificant as to be nearly moribund. And a good thing too.

Anway the number one result for the Google search 'Imagine all the proddies' will take you to a letter in the on-line Scotsman which begins thus:

It was deeply disappointing to see Sam Galbraith's comments that Catholic schools are the "root cause of sectarianism" (your report, 26 December). As one who travels frequently in other European countries, and has seen separate Catholic schools in action with none of the prejudices that exist in Scotland, it is clear bigotry is bred in the home and the community.

Now I can't say I know Sam Galbraith but I used to live in the same scheme as him and looked up to him when I was a Boy Scout and he was a charismatic Venture Scout. His career as a consultant neuro-surgeon, Westminster MP and cabinet minister in a sense mirrored the heights he scaled as a first class mountaineer. He went to Greenock High School, the local 'proddy' school as we used to think of non-denominational schools in those days. And I agree with him; I just hate this separate school system we have in Scotland. It is divisive and it is also simply unfair. There is no justification for it and it should be scrapped. And it would be except for the disproportionate power wielded by the Catholic church in central Scotland local and national politics. I bow to no-one in my support of people to practice their religion but that religion should stand on its own two feet and not depend on an unfair advantage in order to achieve a dominant position in society.

This is a secular society and our schools should reflect this. Fuck religion. Now I welcome your comments on the above but here's a challenge for you; if you wish to offer an argument in favour of separate Catholic schools you are not allowed to use the word 'ethos'.

The Dreaded Lurgie

2007-01-20T00:39:00.000Z

I got en email today from my friend the writer. Fuck; now I'll need to write back.

A Load Of Old Shite

2007-01-11T21:07:00.000Z

Hello, as Clairwil, is wont to open her spiel with. I'm just logging in to let you know I'm still alive and not lying rotting behind the sofa, pierced through the heart with the sharp end of a baldy Christmas tree. No, I'm still here, just a little plagued yet with post-festive torpor. However I thought I'd shake myself to bring you my latest pearls of wisdom. Naw, I won't. I hate that stuff -

What abaht that Beckham? Million dollars a week! Fucking ludicrous.. blah blah blah.

The lumpen proletariat seem to like it but it's not me. I'm not your common or garden ranter, I'm a thinker, we're working on a higher plane here. So to get me in the mood I've got Ravi Shankar on the turntable (virtually speaking as I nicked it off the internet) and I'm sitting here in the lotus position while I consult my muse.......

Well my muse has told me to fuck off and leave her alone, as she's busy with the other lesbites, so I'll just have to get on with it myself. Anway who needs muses, a wee whisky is just as good and leaves a pleasanter glow.

I was thinking of doing another OU Course. This time another wee 10 pointer, Start Writing Poetry, but I left it too late to start the Feb. course so I'll need to wait now until May. Bummer but there you are. If I really intend to start it and if I really mean to make a good go of it I'll need to do a lot more writing than I'm doing at present. I know this but it's extremely difficult to achieve.

I know I've whinged on before about how busy I am and all that but it's no excuse really. I need to just get on with it. Pick a topic, batter out the words, Bob's your uncle. Couldn't be easier, just have to avoid sounding like all the other why-oh-why merchants who populate the blogosphere. I know, I'll start off with a haiku, three (or fewer) lines of no more than 17 syllables in total;

sitar bends sound

fingers fly

peace descends

Global Warming

2006-12-23T23:25:00.000Z

I'm writing this while relaxing in my own comfortably large carbon footprint. Like an old relaxed pair of slippers my carbon footprint allows me to stretch out here in the front room while a real coal fire burns away decoratively in the hearth, Christmas fol-de-rols packed along the mantlepiece above, even though the temperature outside is more like September than darkest December. The stuff - as we gardeners call it - in my garden is still growing. This really pisses me off. I don't even approve of it growing in the height of summer when I have to get out there with machete and industrial strength weed killer to keep it under control and now, when I'm expecting some respite, it looks as if this close to Christmas Eve I'm going to have to cut the fucking grass! And there's a climbing thing next to the wheelie bins which is like a fucking triffid, it's indestructible. You think you've dug it's fucking roots up but it still comes back leeching up the walls. It's going to come through the bedroom window one day, I'm sure.

And we've had rain recently which if we get it again we'll have to upgrade the common or garden gutters to monsoon ditches like we're living is Singapore instead of the west of Scotland. The only good thing about all this is that we get spectacular film of calving icebergs on the National Geographic channel which is just as entertaining as watching skyscrapers being demolished. We've just got one of the new high definition tellies and the other week we were watching Planet Earth with David Attenborough speaking in reverential tones while hundreds of male Emperor Penguins huddled in the deep Antarctic winter incubating their chicks while the female was off at sea enjoying herself. The freezing males might have welcomed a bit of global warming. Now don't get all upset. I'm not personally in favour of the planet overheating. I'm an Independent reader, a more bleeding, bleeding heart you will not find. I just like a coal fire. I haven't the room for a nuclear reactor, which is probably the best alternative but the neighbours might frown on mushroom clouds coming out the chimney.

New Look

2006-12-17T00:20:00.000Z

How do you like the new look? I hope to add some meaningful content soon to justify the superficial snazziness.

What Everyone Wants To Know

2006-12-10T21:13:00.000Z

There are, according to my tracking thing, two things everyone wants to know; (1) an analysis of the Keats poem When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be and (2) what is the ending of Nick Horny's novel How To Be Good all about?

You would be amazed (slightly) of the number of Google searches with these two subjects which hit my blog. Well I am amazed because I never thought that the reach of this blog could be so extensive. Unfortunately the answers to these two literary quests is a little beyond my reach. I had a stab at the Keats and ended up sounding like Brian Sewell, so much so that I had to take the piss out of myself in case people thought I was a right ponce.

Clearly though, the demand for clarification of the ending to How To Be Good impels me to give it my best shot, so here goes. By the way I know that Nick Hornby never fails to keep up with this blog so Nick, if you're there please feel free to comment, mate.

The gist of the novel is Dr. Kate Carr's struggle to hold her family together while dealing with a husband who is going through a spiritual crisis. The book begins as Kate is engaging in a bit of extra marital, more as a way of trying to obtain some warmth and loving affection in the face of a marital relationship which is already at breaking point. David, Kate's husband is a writer who earns his main income from penning a column for the local weekly paper as 'Holloway's Angriest Man'. Not to go over too much the synopsis, as this post is aimed at people who have already read the book and know fine what it is about, but Kate's affair fizzles out and she and David, for the sake of the two kids, Tom and Molly, try to come to some kind of accommodation with one another.

In the meantime David strikes up a relaitionship with a faith-healer named GoodNews. GoodNews moves in with David and Kate as he and David evolve various schemes to make the world a better place. The major scheme that the pair come up with is finding homes for homeless youngsters by persuading their neighbours to make better use of their spare bedrooms. The whole thing is told in Kate's voice and Nick Hornby deserves great credit in making this first person female narrative come off so well. Some of the narrative, such as the description of one of the homeless kids desperation to make the scheme work, is achingly tender and other parts are laugh out loud funny. It is really a good read, as you can see here

But the ending. Let me set this up and if you've not read the book, too bad. Kate and David finally have their own house to themselves (and the kids) as GoodNews has moved out. They are more tender with each other and David has come to some kind of realisation as to how he should be leading his own life. Kate has not shaken off the melancholy which events have visited upon her but she is coming to terms with herself and is beginning to enjoy a lot of the things which she has been putting aside for too long. The children, so beautifully characterised, have been through too much and it seems the family is now more together than perhaps they have ever been.

The last part of the final chapter takes place in a dark stormy night.

For the last three days, it has been raining and raining and raining - it has been raining harder than anyone can remember. It's the kind of rain you're supposed to get after a nuclear attack:

Hornby sets a scene of an almost apocalyptic storm going on outside while inside the family are safe within their solid walls, safe together after all the storms of the preceding months. This is contrasted by Kate pondering:

It feels like the end of the world. And our homes, homes which cost some of us a quarter of a million pounds or more, do not offer the kind of sanctuary that enable us to ignore what is going on out there: they are too old, and at night the lights flicker and the windows rattle.

Safe then, but still vulnerable. And just as they are eating, water starts to pour into the kitchen under the French windows, serving as a further reminder of the forces outside. David digs out a cycling cape and goes upstairs to lean out of a window and try to clear a gutter choked with leaves and rubbish. They get a broom and David leans out further to try and clear the blockage. The final chapter:

'Stop, David', I tell him. 'It's not safe.'
'It's fine.'
He's wearing jeans, and Tom and I grab hold of one back pocket each in an attempt to anchor him, while Molly in turn hangs on to us, purposelessy but sweetly. My family, I think, just that. And then, I can do this. I can live this life. I can, I can. It's a spark I want to cherish, a splutter of life in the flat battery; but just at the wrong moment I catch a glimpse of the night sky behind David, and I can see that there's nothing out there at all.

It ends right there and I wonder, why did he end it end it like that? Why didn't he stop with the phrase 'a splutter of life in the flat battery'? And David perhaps shouting out 'Its cleared.' That would have been the expected ending. In fact that's the kind of ending he was leading up to all through the book, and the only reason I can think of that makes some sense of how it finished on that last desolate note was Hornby's realisation that he was being conventional and predictable. I think he was being capricious even with his readers in not giving them what they were expecting. The result is unsatisfying, you feel cheated somehow, ultimately let down. So, Nick Hornby, explain yourself or I'll steal all the future books you ever publish.

S.N.A.F.U.

2006-12-07T21:35:00.000Z

Well I thought I was being smart, trying to change my template, but look what I've done - deleted all my links to my favourite blogs. What a bastard! Now I'll have to do them all again, well maybe not all but certainly my real faves like Lingo Slinger, Emerald Bile, Clairwil and Ill Man. It's such a twat because it will take ages. Has anyone got tips on how to do it quickly and easily? Something called Blogroll? I'm fucked if I know. Please help!

I'm Back

2006-12-02T14:17:00.000Z

I need to do this. I've had a good think and it seems to me that the thing I like to do is blog. I know it aligns me with all you deluded saddoes out there who think that the world is interested in your small, intricate lives but that's a price I'll have to pay to ensure that the world, the -- how shall I put it? -- the zeitgeist -- can share in my general wonderfulness.

So, I'm back. (Smiles beamingly down on the assembled hosts). At this particular moment, sitting in the quiet kitchen of my life, looking out over the townscape of my past, I don't have a lot to say. However that state of blank, idea-less, Homer-Simpson-esque mindless numty-ism has never deterred the vast majority of the blogging sphere - the so-to-speak blogosphere (that's clever, I think I'll copyright that) so it won't stop me now.

Anyway, what's it all about? I hear you say. Well it's not all about me. Of course some of me has crept in here from time to time and no bad thing. But I'd just like a wee change of direction. Nothing radical, just a gentle nudge on the tiller as old Ted Heath was likely to say. Maybe a bit less of the diary style and rather more reflections on life and the pursuit of happiness. Actually I don't know if you can successfully pursue happiness (there you are right there, a little reflection without hardly even trying!) because the more you pursue the more elusive it becomes. Happiness happens to you, comes to you, when you are not pursuing it. Once you know the secret of how to want what you have, you've cracked it.

Goodbye For A While

2006-09-29T19:32:00.000Z

This blog is closing down. I thought I'd let you know because a lot of you have given me some lovely feedback over the past couple of years. So goodbye for now. I'm afraid that there is too much else going on in my life and I can't give the blog the direction and input that it needs.

I'll be back sometime but for now I need to give it a rest. In the meantine I can re-assess the situation. Thanks for all your comments, visits, and warm thoughts. See you later.

Getting Out

2006-09-16T20:47:00.000Z

It's Saturday night and we're having our usual night in. The old dear is downstairs douring away over the ironing, the oldest is upstairs with one of his mates putting away a few lagers before they go out to meet the other mates in the pub, and the youngest is god knows where doing god knows what (I do worry though). And I'm here listening to my Atlantic Gold compilation which I bought just yesterday. And if there is a better piece of music than Otis Redding singing 'I've Been Loving You Too Long' then I've not heard it, and I don't think I'm likely to.

I'm thinking I might take the bike up to Loch Lomond tomorrow; put it on the rack and drive up to Drymen and explore up the east side of the loch. You get as far up as Rowardennan, or maybe I'll go on to Ptarmigan Lodge for a silent pee. Last week I was over on Bute and I really enjoyed that.

I cycled down to Wemyss Bay and fortunately I just missed the ferry. I say fortunately because it gave me the opportunity to have a bacon roll in the old-fashioned cafe at the pierhead and read the Observer sports pages before the ferry returned. Rothesay looked great in some places and dilapidated in others. Too many neglected terraces tell a story of genteel decline. I took the road south towards Kingarth which took me on a loop round the south of Bute, the back into Rothesay and a pause for re-hydration. Passing Zavarone's Ice Cream Parlour I biked out of town and north to the ferry from Rhubodach to Colintraive. This was a treat. I love ferries and this five minute journey is a wee classic. It's only about 300 metres from one side to the other and the scenery around is gorgeous.

After Colintraive the road goes north towards Strachur but there's single track moor road over to Dunoon via Glen Striven which was do-able despite me not having the use of the big sprocket on the back wheel. Being on top of the moor was lovely, I had the world to myself ... apart from the occasional passing car. By the time I got to the ferry at Hunter's Quay I had covered 53 miles and my arse was aching. It was a good day though.

A Great Feeling ...

2006-09-08T20:47:00.000Z

... now that it's over. The colleagues and I had a fine time last Saturday riding round Arran on our bicycles. The day started off pishing with rain and we were well soaked by the time we reach Kildonan at the south end. But we were making good progress and feeling good about the success of our fund-raising. Then near-disaster; my chain slipped off the rear cogs as I was changing gear and the derailleur got chewed up and snapped. Bastard thing was totalled. We pulled into a house by the side of the road and the old couple and daughter there provided us with shelter in their shed while we tried to think out our next move. Eventually, while we were scratching our heads and thinking that I would have to retire altogether, the old guy, Terry, volunteered to drive me and my bike back to Brodick.

The colleagues pressed on regardless and I was whisked back to the Cycle Shop in Brodick which was fortunately open. Within half an hour the mechanic there had fitted a new derailleur and I was in a taxi van heading over the String Road in the middle of the island towards Machrie. We caught up with the others just north of Machrie and I was back in the game.

I was absolutely delighted to be re-joining them as I would just have hated to have to quit, having got this far. Anyway we were soon enjoying better weather as we cruised up the west coast towards Lochranza. Which is where is situated Arran Distillery where they make a fine single malt. We had a wee look round but didn't get the full tour as it was near the end of the day, but we bought a bottle of the ten year old just in case we needed a nightcap back at the digs.

After the distillery we were back on the bikes for the long drag up the west side of Glen Chalmadale. This is a near two mile gradient rising to about, fuck I don't know. Anyway I was nearly pegging out by the time I reached the summit. And then! What a fucking rush freewheeling down the other side towards Sannox. It was mental! We were nearly clocking forty miles an hour. If we had come off we'd surely be brown bread. But it was great. I felt terrific at that point which was just as well because eight miles further on as we dragged our sore arses over the finishing line at Brodick I was well knackered.

But we did it, and we have raised over £2,500 for Cancer Research UK. Not bad, eh.

A Great Response

2006-09-01T11:46:00.000Z

So far we have raised over £1,400 for Cancer Research UK. The progress bar on www.justgiving.com/roundarran has burst through the £1,000 target. This is so rewarding and really puts the wind at our backs for the run tomorrow.

The training is going ...

2006-08-29T15:08:00.000Z

... not too bad considering that we have so little spare time for it. Take last week-end for example. I was due to fly out of Prestwick on Sunday for a business trip to France. The colleague and I planned to do a 40 mile run round the back roads of Ayrshire on Saturday, so I booked into a hotel in Prestwick for the Saturday night and took the bike down on the back of the car. So we set off on the road to Straiton and Maybole, good hilly roads to get the lungs working, and then down towards the coast road between Culzean Castle and the Electric Brae.

All in all it was four and a half hours in the saddle and the after effects were not too unbearable. So now we're looking forward to this coming Saturday for the main event. We reckon to leave Brodick at 11.00 a.m. and head clockwise round the island. If we complete in the time we think we will need then we'll be back in Brodick by 6.00 p.m. It will be a great achievement just to finish on the same day, for me at least, so wish me luck.

Give A Little - Make A Difference

2006-08-23T19:57:00.000Z

If you are a generous caring person then the chances are you're all used up with giving. Because there are too many demands on your time, your money, your self. But here's a thing; I am going to be breaking my arsebone riding 57 miles around Arran in the hope that others will make my efforts seem worthwhile. Please don't let me down. If you want to support Cancer Research UK and also support me and the colleagues in our sponsored cycle then visit www.justgiving.com/roundarran and donate a quid, a dollar, or a rouble, and help to make a difference.

A Ride Would Be Good

2006-08-22T22:02:00.000Z

Well it's developing. The Round Arran Challenge or Blazing Saddles is getting closer. The training is well under way and myself and the colleagues are working hard on building up resistance to saddle-ache.

The venue of Arran could not be better, well it could be flatter but this isn't Holland is it. We've booked into a B & B in Brodick for the night of Saturday 2nd Sept. and hopefully we'll be back there after the round island cycle in good order for a pint or two. Well it would be a real bummer if we were so fucked by the end of the day we couldn't enjoy a celebration.
The plan is to ride anti-clockwise and get the hilly north part over first. Frankly I don't think it'll make that much difference but you have to have a plan don't you.

I've put a couple of maps here for you but mostly I've put them here for me. I love maps, and I love maps of islands. They remind me of Treasure Island and I could spend hours poring over them imagining where the treasure might be hidden.

I used to spend a weekends on Arran when I was a youth. We used to camp outside of Brodick and the favourite pub was the Ormidale Hotel. I got thrown out of the place once for dancing on the table. This bloke called Fisher Gilmour who owned the place took a dim view.

Anyway I'm going to set up a donation opportunity for you all to support Cancer Research UK. Kat gave me the idea of a page on justgiving.com. As soon as it's ready I'll let you know.

I'm in Love ...

2006-08-14T21:26:00.000Z

with my Apollo Cafe 2. I know it's only a bike but what a wonderful piece of machinery it is. 21 speed Shimano gears with revo-shift, lightweight aluminium frame, front suspension, seat suspension, och just all the bells and whistles you could wish for, including a bell! But that's not the point. The thing just beguiles me with it's ability to make me feel good.

It was stuck in the coal cellar for eighteen months, lying neglected with deflated tyres and not even cleaned of the muck I had subjected it to on its last run out. Then my colleague started talking about how he had always wanted to cycle round Arran. Well I was really energised by that for some reason. Whether it's because Arran is one of my favourite places or whether it was just the idea of the challenge, I don't know but before I knew it I was dragging the thing out of its dark hole into the sunshine of the back yard, pouring 3-In-One onto the chain and gears, buffing with a cloth, and preparing to mount.

Despite the lay-up she whirred along like a sewing machine. A scoosh round the coast road past the Cloch lighthouse on Sunday morning was just idyllic. Joggers jogged past smiling; Maw, Paw, and the weans cruised by in the old family jalopy, the sun shone on all who were skidging church. It was a perfect day. And the bike made me a part of it.

You see the thing is, I work too much so I need some antidote to work and a day on a bike ... well a good day on a bike, I wouldn't want it to be pishing down ... is the perfect antidote to work. And work is the main reason I can't keep up this blog the way I would like. I mean it's just not possible. Here's a typical day for me:
06.30 Alarm goes. Up, bath, breakfast, cuppa in bed for the wife.
07.30 In the car, up the M8.
08.00 Arrive in office. Open computer - on the batter.
10.00 Tea at desk
12.00 Lunch
12.30 Back to desk - continue on the batter.
15.00 Tea
15.15 Meeting - yadda yadda yadda.
18.30 Start to clear up.
18.45 In the car, music up to max volume, yaaaaa-aaaah!!!!

Five fucking days a week, I shit you not. I know it's no way to live but that's the way it is, and I actually enjoy a lot of what I do, it's just I've got very little time to myself. I'd love to just spend ages and ages doing my OU thing (did I tell you I'd passed that BTW? No? Sorry.), keeping a nicely creative blog going, writing pithy short stories, meeting fellow bloggers in Babbity Bowsters for a pint (Oh so yoo-oo-'re Ill Man, yes you do loook a little pale ...). I mean look at what interesting lives all these bloggers are leading. It's fuckin' cuttin' edge stuff ... Tommy Sheridan and bits oot o' the paper and, and ... aw sorts. It's jist awesome, and here's me.

So a bike is good. Gets ye oot. (I''ll need to get a grip here. I'm starting to sound like Billy Connelly). Anyway here's the plan. We're gon'eh cycle round Arran for charity. September week-end. All the way round Arran (57 miles by the way) in aid of cancer research. Do you think I've got it in me?

How To Be Good - Nick Hornby ...

2006-08-10T19:40:00.000Z

... has an ending which seems to have intrigued more than a few people; in fact unsettled may be a better way of describing some people's reactions. Now I would like to explore this a little further, and I have been asked to but ... I'm afraid that, unlike in those halcyon days of a few month ago when I was living the ex-pat bachelor life in old Dalmatia, I am now chained to a desk for eight to ten hours of the day and when I get home of an evening it's all I can do to rouse myself occasionally from my armchair to tap a few words once a week into this blog. And in any case I've forgotten how the ending went so that's not much use. But I will re-read this book and try to shed some light on the author's purpose. Don't hold your breath though, I may take a while.

So that's where you come in. Have you read the book? How did you like it? Was the ending good for you? Did the earth move? Let me know and share with others, you'll enjoy the experience. And don't be shy of giving the ending away, who cares.

Sepia-toned Soldier

2006-08-04T21:13:00.000Z

You look out of faded pictures
Through wars and years long gone.
I try so hard to see into your eyes
To try to know you again.
But it's 1935 and you're in India,
Shoulder to shoulder with your mates,
Royal Scots, Pontius Pilate's bodyguard,
And you can't see me yet.

You're a hard wee man and
you're not looking too far ahead.
There's soldiering to do and
Battles to fight,
Mates to lose.
A girl to meet,
Five sons and a daughter to grow,
But you can't see it yet.

You can't see me in 1960
helping you to pee into a bottle
Because the cancer that's killing you
Has stripped the muscle from
Your sturdy soldier's body.

I wish I could see you now
Just so I can tell you,
I'm okay.

Analyse This

2006-07-29T20:51:00.000Z

A is for asking - what's next?
B is for breast - me on yours, you in mine.
C is for careless - in both of its senses.
D is for don't - just don't.
E is for echo - echo.
F is for - who gives it?
G is for God or god.
H is for home - sleeping alone.
I is for ignorance - who cares?
J is for jealousy - mine not mine.
K is for kindness - it's all.
L is for lambs - of God or god.
M is for me - only me.
N is for normal - normally.
O is for open - openly.
P is for pen - and words - please come.
Q is for quick - being cut to the.
R is for resolve - I will, maybe.
S is for sex - sugar.
T is for tangled - tortured.
U is for under - an obligation.
V is for veneer - thin.
W is for wonder - if I can.
X is for ex - except I don't.
Y is for you - or you.
Z is for Zen - Ommm.

Acknowledging Lingo Slinger's idea

Fresh Bile Once More Available

2006-07-27T21:34:00.000Z

They're back. And I'm back too. For the last two weeks I've just been concentrating on being a dad. The boy's and I have been farting around Split together and also doing some strenuous outdoor things on the islands. Our first day together in Split coincided with the ex-pat's five-a-side kickabout so the boys joined in. Then the next day we went over to Brač to start a five day sea-kayaking adventure. We were lucky in having for our guide the coolest guy in Split. Pačo is an old acquaintance of mine from my visits to Twins Caffe Bar on Split's riva. He was our constant companion on kayak trips to the Pakleni Islands and down the south coast of Hvar to Sv. Nedelja. This was basically a rock climbing camp with a small lodge for overnight stays. We climbed the 600 m peak of Sv. Nikola which was absolutely gruelling in the heat we're getting this summer.

After the hill climbing being in the kayak was positively relaxing although paddling 20 km or so up the coast was no walk in the park, if I can put it that way.

Sometimes a dad has to do a bit of hard work to let his kids know he's there for them. And it's not always quality time that matters, just quantity time.

So that explains my absence from the blog, in case you've been wondering. I'll catch up soon.

What's Happened To Emerald Bile?

2006-07-09T09:00:00.000Z

Does anyone know where Noreen and Ball Bag have gone? Please submit your conspiracy theories here.

So it's near enough midnight ...

2006-07-07T19:50:00.000Z

... last Friday night and I'm sitting on the roof terrace of the Caffe Bar Libar chillin' with the dudes , or whatever the expression is, and I get a call from my colleague in Glasgow.
"West", he says urgently. "You've got to go to New York and sort out the mess on" ... (names the place where the mess is occurring).
"But I'm just about to get into a higher gear here!" I protested. Anxious faces turned towards mine as my consternation communicated itself to the assembled company. They sensed that something was going on which could put a dampener on the party atmosphere. They drew closer together, gaining comfort from each other as events unfolded.
"It's all arranged, West, your ticket is booked, Split to Frankfurt ten o'clock tomorrow morning, just enough time to sign a few autographs at Frankfurt, then it's next stop New York. The Big Apple's waiting West baby, start spreading the news".
"Are you fucking mental!" I screamed. "There's stuff to do here, babes to service, conquests lining up." But he was gone, the die was cast.
"What's happening West?" Spokesbabe number one asked tentatively, her eyes downcast. The others hung back, waiting.
"I'm sorry babes, I've got to go. It's New York for me."

And so I departed old Dalmatia prematurely. The late Friday night/early Saturday morning high jinks at the Club Tribu just about did for me. Honestly, the next day I thought I was going to peg out, but once I had rehydrated and medicated myself with half a pharmacy I summoned the strength to get out to the airport and was off, in shambling order to New York via Frankfurt.

After the mess was sorted out I made sure to head back down to Manhattan. I arrived there last Monday evening at about seven thirty. Just enough time for a long soak and then a short stroll down to Thirty Second Street to get the subway to my spiritual home, Hoboken.
I lived there for six months from October 2002 and I just love the place. I got off the PATH and strolled down 1st Street to call in at the Nag's Head Pub run by Barney Finnegan, the most disagreeable pub landlord I have ever met. Unfortunately Barney was not at home so I had a quiet pint of very agreeable Guinness and headed off to the Scotland Yard Bar home of the Monday Night Blues Jam with Big Ed Sullivan. I used to go to the Yard religiously every Monday and I'm glad to say that nothing had changed. It was still great. Christine was still behind the bar, Big Ed was still running the show, and great musicians like Arthur Nielsen and Dave Gross, the wunderkid. And so many other fine musicians, most of them enthusiastic but gifted amateurs. The regular drummer is good and really can drive a good rocking blues number, but there was also another, younger guy there who showed some unexpected subtlety in that company. Great music, and all for the cost of a few beers and show your appreciation in the tip jar.

Next day it was down to Macy's for the shopping and another chance to soak up NYC. Being as how it was the Fourth of July the place was relatively quiet, as the office workers had abandoned the canyons for the day and left the place to the tourists. A handbag for the lady wife, a Boston Celtics vest for the sprog, and two original 1960's Superman comics for the wasting asset. And so to the airport, relax in the business lounge, a few glasses of wine, board the plane, dinner and a few more glasses of wine. I slept like a baby all the way to London.

Paddling Like Fuck

2006-06-29T21:42:00.000Z

I'll be seeing you soon. Don't think I'm giving up or anything. Work is overwhelming at the moment but it'll settle down and we'll be back to abnormal. I'm going back to the UK on Wednesday next and that is the end of my sojourn in old Dalmatia. I'm going to miss this place. It has captured a special place in my heart and ... well I'm going to miss it. I've had a great opportunity to meet a lot of nice people, get to know a special place and soak up a different culture. My only regret is that for a large part of it I could not share it with someone I love. There's a saying - a worry shared is a worry halved. I also think that a pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled, and if that is doubled twice it is quadrupled. Singular pleasure seeking often leaves one feeling empty.

So it was a particular pleasure for me to share a kayaking trip to Brač with a colleague. I'll try and give you some idea in a future post as to the distance covered but I'll tell you now. It was a fucking long way. But good, you know how good you can feel when you have really achieved something. That's how it felt.

It's All In The Mind

2006-06-19T20:24:00.000Z

“Wait, get up a minute.” Said George.

Hank paused. He looked over at George and he could see the sweat running down his oil-stained face. Henry eased himself out from under the car giving George space to do the same.

“Where are you going?” Asked Hank.

George wiped his face with an oily rag.
”I need a drink of water.”

Hank looked at the transmission assembly lying on the trolley-jack, then he looked at the clock.
”But we've not finished yet.”

George started walking towards the office.
”I'm too hot.”

Hank sighed. We’ll never get this finished tonight, he thought.
"OK, bring me one too." He shouted.

I just thought I'd try that to tease you. What did your imagination tell you the poem in the previous post was all about? Well we know where Lingo Slinger's head was.

Whatever ...

2006-06-17T07:14:00.000Z

... comes into my head in the next two minutes. I'm going over to Hvar today. It's apparently beautiful but then to me all islands are beautiful, especially all islands in the Adriatic. I'll hire a scooter and tool around and see where the spirit takes me. That's the joy of life isn't it? Not knowing what might be around the next corner. Or maybe it's a curse - not wanting what you have but always wanting something else which you can't quite see clearly but you know it's always going to be just out of reach.

Enough of this middle-aged angst which is so boring. I hope that Lingo Slinger did good at the poetry slam. Here's one from me:

Wait, get up a minute.
Where are you going?
I need a drink of water.
But we've not finished yet.
I'm too hot.
OK, bring me one too.

Is Human Life Sacred?

2006-06-14T18:08:00.000Z

That was the philosophy question in the final assessment for my OU course in the humanities. Now I know that I'm not supposed to post these TMA's onto my blog but I'll get away with this, mainly because I posted it off without copying it and now I've only got a vague recollection about what I actually wrote. So let's consider - what do we mean, first of all, by sacred. I always like to get back to basics with these things so let's take the dictionary definition first:

sacred a. 1. Consecrated or held especially acceptable to a deity, dedicated or reserved or appropriated to some person or purpose; made holy by religious association, hallowed...

I believe that it is in humankind's instincts to hold human life as sacred and I would extract from that dictionary definition the part - dedicated or reserved to some person or purpose. It seems to me that most people hold human life to be sacred whether or not they believe in a deity. So what, you might ask, is the purpose to which I think human life is dedicated to? It is simple self-preservation.

We studied early on in the course the philosopher Rousseau and he spoke about society obeying the general will. Most people would see sense in this idea as the alternative to rule by consent is anarchy, and in a state of anarchy we are at peril. So we live in what we commonly call society. In most cases this is based on small groups such as the family, then the neighbourhood, the town, the province and then the nation. We expand this co-operative network by forming alliances, commonwealths etc. and finally a body such as the United Nations.

The link here is that we wish to protect, firstly ourselves, then our family, then out neighbours and countrymen, and then our allies and international neighbours. Our instinct for self-preservation is not therefore just a narrow, selfish impulse. By holding other human life to be sacred we protect ourselves. That is society. Maggie Thatcher tried to tell us different:

And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. (M. Thatcher 1987)

If we look after our families and our neighbours we live in a social world, a society. The poor old cunt didn't know what she was saying. Of course there are instances of killing but these are mercifully few compared to the billions of lives being led by people in harmony with one another. Making war is not our natural instinct, making love is. All human life is sacred and we don't need a religion to make it so. And that is not to put religion down as such. Often religion is nothing more than unscrupulous people seeking power over others but it can be a force for good, and I believe that this is so when it is directed inwards. When a person studies his own inner self, call it the soul if you like, then he is more able to see the value of others and to cherish the beauty and diversity of his fellow humans.

A New Beginning

2006-06-10T09:08:00.000Z

As you may notice from the comments below the gorgeous, pouting Lingo Slinger seeks to rouse me from a prolonged torpor and get on with this blog. It seems also to me that it is time I got on with the rest of my life, not just the blog. The reason I have been slumbering this long, or reasons I should say, is that (a) I have been busy with work (b) I have been reconsidering the future content and (c) pure fucking laziness. So there - now you know.

So now I've spent all this time reconsidering the future content, what have I decided? Not a clue. Hopeless, all this reconsidering when you fail to come up with something substantive. Never mind, I'll write about nothing until something comes up. (Why don't you sit on my lap Miss Jones and we'll see what comes up).

Thing is, I've got writer's block and I did want the point of this to be an outlet for creative writing. And now I just have to fall back on bashing away at the keyboard until something happens. My time in Croatia is coming to an end shortly, in about three weeks. I'll be packing up the office soon and getting ready to hand over my apartment. I will be sorry to go as I've just fallen in love with this country. The old town of Split has been my home for the past year and a half but all good things must come to an end eventually. There's a nice community of ex-pats here and I'll miss that. Friday nights in the Caffe Bar Libar have been especially pleasant and the genial host (hosts are better if they're genial as if they're not then they're generally surly) Kristijan has become a good friend. It's one of the nice things about Split that the people here are very fond of their town. There's a poem inscribed on a small obelisk near the old town centre which I think sums this up very nicely. I liked it so much I had to learn it off by heart in Croatian.

Ne treba
Nikamo ici
Nigdje drugdje
Traziti
Sto jest
I tu je

Basically the poem says - You don't need to go anwhere, to look elsewhere, what you want is here. Perhaps in another life all I want would be here but I'm not a Splichian so I'll seek elsewhere. Some day I may find it.

Just as a matter of interest ...

2006-05-27T09:30:00.000Z

... here is an interesting blog giving some figures comparing the current situation in Iraq with the situation three years ago when the great Commander-In-Chief enthralled the world with his grasp of military campaigning.

Mission accomplished ...

2006-05-23T21:20:00.000Z

... as the banner behind George W. said on the USS Abraham Lincoln. With the same breathtaking hubris I can also point to a job well done. I have just completed AZX103 An Introduction To The Humanities and, like the great Commander In Chief, I like to bask in the applause while the going is good. And, also like George, I'm getting the photo opportunity set up before I know the final result. Why waste time waiting for the marks to come in, let's get the party started.

I am just glad that it is now over. I posted my final TMA today by courier and I just hope it gets to the right place. Some confusion arose when I was trying to figure out who to send it to. The very specific instruction sheet gave one address in Milton Keynes. However there was included with it a pre-addressed envelope for the purpose of enclosing the same TMA and it had a different address in MK. What to do? Well I phoned the OU Student Support lot and the woman on the other end gave me yet another address. Well, fuck it I thought. I just went with the first one given on the instructions and hoped for the best. All very confusing.

Will I do another one? I had the notion before I started this that I might use this as the basis for a degree. I'm not so sure now. My work life and private life would have to be a lot more tranquil than it is at present for me to be able to do another 60 pointer properly. It was enjoyable even though I was doing it more or less totally on my own. The on-line tutorials were almost non-existent and the conference was dead despite my early efforts to inject some life into it.

I did learn some stuff about art appreciation and expressing myself which I can perhaps build on and that is a real positive. It is good to tackle some thing new and get satisfaction knowing you've made a decent fist of it. It was fairly basic stuff but, hey, it still required a lot of effort so good for me.

The question now is - now that the OU is out of the picture for the while - where does the blog go? Looking through past posts it is a bit of a dog's breakfast. The OU provided a thread but there's a lot of other stuff which doesn't really sit readily beside it. I'm not sure now. I know that nobody out there gives a shite but the blog does serve a useful purpose for me so I want to do it well. I reckon I should follow the fragrant Lingo Slinger's example and get more short fiction down. That will maybe stand me in good stead if I ever get round to doing A215, you never know. And on reflection it's good for a body to be able to rant about politics every once in a while. It also feels good getting my views out there where they might meet up with some similar opinion and take energy from that and grow and ... wow, gee whizz! Who knows where it might all end up!

Teethmarks On The Clenching Bar ...

2006-05-21T20:03:00.000Z

... is the working title for my autobiography. You need to know, of course, what a clenching bar is exactly to get the full impact. It's a piece of nautical equipment, a sloping bar or hand-hold, bolted to the bulkhead adjacent to the toilet bowl in a ship's toilet. It's there for when the ship is rolling or pitching violently and you need a little assistance in keeping your arse tight to the cludgie. But sailors have another function for it and that is for when one is afflicted by the trots, gippy tummy, Ghandi's revenge, the squirts, or whatever other fragrant name you wish to call it.

Thus - the clenching bar, there to grip tightly as you give your bowels that extra squeeze, hoping your arse is not about to fall off, while you sit there, eyes bulging and sweating like a rapist, resolving never to spend another night drinking Tiger beer and eating dodgy noodles on Bugis Street, before staggering back to the ship at half past three in the morning, just in time to go on watch at four o'clock. And then, just when your ring is scorched to a white heat by the passage of the undigested raw chillies you somehow thought were a good idea twelve hours ago, you stifle your screams by biting down on the clenching bar and you wonder - Why did I ever come to sea? And then you remember. It was for the uniform, the foreign travel and the chance to see exotic places, meet new people, the glamour. And then your travails for the time being are over and you hitch up your breeks and sweat-soaked boilersuit and head back down to the heat of the engine room.

What's Happening With The OU?

2006-05-12T11:20:00.000Z

You might well ask. I'm back in old Dalmatia once more and have run out of time for the latest TMA. I did ask for an extension (again) and I fully intend to submit something. I've now got the weekend to get it done. The Swinging Sixties - Eng-ulland swings like a pendulum-doo, Bobbies on by-sickles two by two - and all that bollocks. We'll just have to give it a go, see what happens. Then the final TMA just when I've got a trip to Trieste coming up. Ohhh n-oooo!

There will be a pause ...

2006-04-30T20:17:00.000Z

... in transmission. This blog is shutting down for a while. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Where were we ...

2006-04-22T20:09:00.000Z

I had a quick trip home over the Easter weekend and now I'm back in sunny Dalmatia. The weather is distinctly summery and the riva never looked nicer than it did today. Last night there was a bit of a gathering in the Bar Libar just off the riva where the ex-pats of Split normally spend a drunken Friday night. Oddly enough (?) I was in the thick of it and when someone suggested we decamp to a night club I was up for that too. Big mistake, however when we arrived at the Tribu it was around two thirty in the morning and we were only there half an hour when they decided to close. Stephen then announced "No problem, I've got a bottle of Glenfiddich at home." I really should know better than to try and keep up with these youngsters but it's true what the say - There's no fool like an old fool.

The result of all that is that I have been feeling so crapulent all day. So I'm in no great mood to be creative. Anyway I just want you to know. Do you see that prominent peak in the picture, the pointy hill about a third of the way in from the right hand edge? I've climbed that. It's about the same height as Ben Nevis. I felt worse this morning than I felt the morning after I climbed that bugger. Now I'll have to get into some kind of shape for playing football tomorrow. It's a hard life trying to enjoy yourself sometimes.

George W. Pants Like A Dog

2006-04-13T22:04:00.000Z

This guy is more toe-curlingly embarrasing than anything Ricky Gervais, of The Office, could ever make up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyAaAI1qG-A&eurl=

Resolution & A Cultural Revolution

2006-04-13T17:31:00.000Z

Now referring back it seems I am falling by the wayside, sorry about that, I did also say I would avoid cliches like the plague and falling by the wayside is so-oo cliche. No, what I am failing on is my resolution to post an entry at least twice per week. Now that is a big ask, as some cliche addicted football commentator would say.
(Yes, beating United on their own turf Ron, it's a big ask of any team but Rovers covered every blade of grass tonight in their efforts, literally.)
In my own defence I will say that the work is getting in the way of my leisure pursuits but I do need to buckle down. I'm giving myself a push because I know I can do better, and it's not just on this blog. My last TMA to the OU, while utter crap (see below), was nevertheless an attempt at creativity and that is something that I need to be if I am to retain any real sense of purpose in life.

I look at other blogs, you can see from my links list the kind of stuff I like to read, and I envy these guys their staying power as well as their talent. I am just reminding myself here one of the main purposes of this blog was to track my progress in the OU course, An Introduction To The Humanities and, while I started off well in this, I have not really followed through. One reason for this was a message I received from a well-wisher advising me that, according to the rules of the OU, I was not allowed to post up my completed TMAs. Thank fuck for that I hear you chorus. Well maybe so but it did fill space.

Filling space is not my objective. Using space creatively, that's the point. The next part of the course is entitled; The Sixties - Mainstream Culture And Counter-culture. If there is a subject which should be close to my heart it's the Sixties. I was sixteen years old in 1965. I had already left school and started an apprenticeship in a heavy engineering factory on the Clyde. I still had hair and it was fashionably long in the style of Charlie Watts. I had a girlfriend after going through school feeling myself the object of ridicule of every group of girls who looked in my direction. There was a wonderful new invention on the horizon called lager. The outlook for my self-esteem was rosey.

So it should be a doddle. A few reminiscences on factory life, growing up on a tough housing scheme (Actually it was quite a respectable housing scheme with well tended gardens and the most trouble we got into was for banging on old people's doors and running away), youthful fondling in the park, a first holiday abroad in Majorca with Harold Wilson's maximum £50 spending money (unbelievably there was still some left over after a fortnight's excess).
Instead we get questions like this;
How useful is the term cultural revolution when applied to the Sixties? Support your answer with examples from each of these disciplines ; History, History of Science, Religion, Music and Art. Not more than 2000 words.
The easiest part of that is the 'not more than 2000 words'. That means anything from 200 to 2000, right? I should say not, the fuckers. There might have been a cultural revolution in San Francisco or Ibiza, but not in Greenock. We were too busy serving our time and looking forward to the seventies when we would be journeymen and out of there. The Sixties (with the capital S) only happened retrospectively as far as I was concerned.

Now I'll have to really trawl through the course material and try discover what it all meant. I've got until the 5th of May to get it done by. Wish me luck.

Carnaptious ..

2006-04-07T14:33:00.000Z

.. is a fine word. It's an old Scottish expression that means grumpy, but something slightly different from just grumpy. There's a sharp edge to it, as if it's someone who's slightly high pitched, shrill. It would suit someone with a beaky nose and a pointed chin. Now I have been characterised as carnaptious once or twice and, I dare say, that was fair comment in whatever the circ's were at the time, although I don't have a beaky nose and pointed chin. We can't be sweetness and light all the time, especially if we are Scottish. It's inbred, this dourness (and if there is anyone out there who pronounces dour as "dower" I'm going to have to give you a slap. It rhymes with whore).

So why do you need to know this? Well, no reason really. I've just submitted my latest Tutor Marked Assignment and it was crap. Capital C, capital R, capital AP. I really did not have a lot of excuses. I did beg for a few days deferral as I was so busy travelling and such, and I got the few days grace. But I was ill prepared. So I'm pissed off, and if you meet up with me in the next few days you might find yourself asking - What's up with that carnaptious old git?
On the other hand you might see me sipping a pina colada on someone's balcony declaiming to all and sundry on the foolishness of people who worry too much. Why can't people be more relaxed, and so on. My guess is the latter.

Paul Story - A Farewell

2006-04-02T07:05:00.000Z

Here I am back in my little bijoux flatette in the cultural heart of old Dalmatia. During my recent travels back from the Far East I met my body clock going the other way, so now re-united I with myself I can concentrate on the job in hand, viz; this wee blog and my OU TMA (see below).

Before I get started on other things I have to tell you about some changes now afoot in our small but perfectly formed ex-pat community here in Split. On Friday night we all foregathered in the Bar Libar just off the Riva, and adjacent to the church of St. Francis, to say farewell to The Writer. He's been here nearly two years now (I think) and he's now decided to take himself back to the UK on a publicity tour. It was a happy and, at the same time, a poignant occasion because in many ways Paul was the hub of the community, a fixture at his favoured table outside the Backpacker Cafe, either tapping away on his portable keyboard/PDA set-up or receiving visitations from his many friends, rather in the manner of the Oracle bestowing wisdom on the seekers of truth.

Luise and Kristijan had gone to some trouble to ensure that the walls of the caffe-bar were festooned with farewell banners and joshing messages and we were all there to give him a good send off. Brett made a fine speech and Paul responded with startling verbosity. Some tears were shed and much drink was taken. We'll miss him. So if you're wondering what Paul's writing is all about, visit his website. And if you see him in the UK buy him a drink, he's usually thirsty.

A Spring Morning - Omuta, Japan

2006-03-22T21:34:00.000Z

Some of you may have wondered where I've been all this time. Most of you couldn't give a monkey's of course but then neither do I, give a monkey's that is about those who couldn't give a ... for fuck's sake, what am I raving about. Anyway, here I am in all my soft cuddly gorgeousness, back with a new blog to delight your eminences, if you would give me your attention for a few moments more.

I am going away. Now I don't want you all to gather round weeping and wailing. You'll just have to accept it and get on with your own lives. I'll be back eventually, perhaps in about two weeks but I'm not sure. I'm off to Korea in the morning, not for long, just a day or two there then I'm sailing (although not by wind power) to Japan. Another day or two there then it's back to Croatia in time for the good weather.

So! Interesting little trip. I should try and get some pictures of the strange and enigmatic orient to entertain you on my next post. Would you like that? I've been to Korea and Japan before, many times, and I do like it out there. It's so ... how can I put it? Different! That's the word. By jove sometimes I surprise myself with my perspicacity.

But you do see some "different" things out east. The people there have a different take on things. It is another world. I'll give you an example. I was walking along a downtown street in Omuta one quiet Sunday morning. It was a nice, sunny & mild spring morning and I came across an old man sitting on a small folding stool, his knees were up around his chin. He had an easel in front of him and he was painting a small watercolour scene of the street and the buildings, the level crossing and the sky, and he was so old and hunched over the easel, and he was trembling. He had Parkinson's disease or something and he trembled so much I wondered how he could possibly achieve anything. I couldn't help but stop and wonder at him and I wanted to get a better look at the painting. It was just a beautiful splash of colours and shapes, the blue of the sky, a red banner outside a store, white lines suggesting the level crossing gates. He had not captured the form but he had captured the feeling of that morning perfectly. The old man looked round as I looked over his shoulder, and he gave me the loveliest smile. I felt blessed.

Look after yourselves, and I'll see you when I get back.

The Good Fight

2006-03-12T22:55:00.000Z

The following letter is from today's Sunday Herald (the Glasgow-based quality newspaper, sister publication of The Herald). I don't know the story referred to but I do admire the way Dr. McLachlan takes the paper to task for its sloppy use of language. More power to him.

Imprecise meaning
THE story by Aasmah Mir about her return from London to Glasgow is called: “Return of the prodigal daughter” (Seven Days, March 5). Why? “Prodigal” means “wasteful” but there is no suggestion in her article that she is or was wasteful. In the biblical story about the wasteful son, the wasteful son happened to return. Has this created the false impression that a prodigal person is one who returns? Not all prodigal sons or daughters return. Not all sons and daughter who return are prodigal. The prodigal son was so called because of his prodigality, not because he returned home.
It is obvious that words can change their meaning and that misuses of language can become, through their frequency, correct uses over time. However, to say that the rules of language can change is no reason for disregarding them or acting as if they had already changed.
Dr Hugh V McLachlan
School of Law and Social Sciences
Glasgow Caledonian University

Isn't that a treat?

Paradise

2006-03-10T21:57:00.000Z

We played golf at Turnberry yesterday. The boys and I were celebrating the wee fella's fifteenth birthday. I could tell he was excited about it by the way he'd been planning for over a week what he was going to wear. He's not normally the voluble type, and you have to know how to read the signals to know how he feels, but it was a dead giveaway when he laid out his all black Tiger Woods outfit, including his newly shined black school shoes which he will never in a million years wear to school.

We've had a few great golfing days out, the boys and me, over the years. I suppose the first biggie was when I took the big fella to Troon in '97 for the Open which Justin Leonard won. We arrived at about seven thirty in the morning, in time to see Jack Nicklaus on the practice ground with Payne Stewart. How poignant that image is now. We walked the whole course that day, sometimes stopping to watch the players come through, sometimes following one of our favourites like Jesper Parnevik or Seve, or Barclay Howard, the leading amateur.It was the Saturday we went down so we could watch the final day on the Sunday in the comfort of our own front lounge. The big fella was just twelve then and he lapped it up. A golden day.

The next was the open at Royal Lytham in 2001. We went down on the Friday and stayed two nights in Blackpool. The big fella's mate, Seve (real name) came with us. The wee fella was ten years old and would not be left behind. I spent more time that day trying to keep tabs on him than watching the golf. The big fella and Seve had a ball chasing autographs, although there was a tense hour at the end of the day when they were late meeting up with us at the agreed time, and I was running between the mobile police unit and the rendezvous point. Sometimes you could just murder your kids and save the lurking paedophiles the bother. We spent the last day at the Blackpool amusements. The two bigger ones went on the big dipper and I had the dubious pleasure of nearly shitting myself on this infernal thing called the Coca Cola ride with the wee fella. Ironically it was the only ride we could go on together because the wee fella passed the height restriction. First of all you were flung forward and whipped round in a corkscrew motion till you thought your head was going to fly off, and then it mercifully stopped. Just as you were thinking - Thank fuck for that - and about to loosen the safety harness - the bastard took off again backwards ! And whipped you round again back to the starting position. I'll tell you something for nothing, I was crying tears of relief when I got off. And I never did find my 'Open 2001' cap which I'd forked out the better part of ten quid for the day before. You don't normally see chinstraps on baseball caps .. pity.

St. Andrews last year was special. The wee fella and I had two great days. A B&B right in the middle of the old town, a few steps away from the first tee on the Old Course. All that atmosphere and history. It's a wonderful place to visit. I love it that you can just walk right on to the famous turf. There is a public right of way across the eighteenth fairway. Try that at Augusta or Pebble Beach. St. Andrews is great. Then we had a game on the Duke's Course. I won. No, only kidding. I don't remember the score, just that we enjoyed the game.

There's something about golf that can bring people closer. I find it difficult to define. Maybe it's because you don't have to say too much. You can enjoy the game and each other's company and the pleasant surroundings. And when you're walking down the eighteenth fairway it's the best feeling when your boy puts his arm around your shoulders and says 'This was a great day, wasn't it, Dad'.

TMA 07 - Masculinity & Femininity

2006-03-04T18:47:00.000Z

Just to keep you up to date with what I'm not working on, I have to do the following for submission by the 31st March:

In no more than 1500 words, with careful reference to two of the following works, show how attributes traditionally associated with masculinity and femininity are contrasted:
Pygmalion - A Play by George Bernard Shaw
Medea - A Tragedy by Euripides
Don Juan - A Symphonic Poem by Richard Strauss
Wide Sargasso Sea - A Novel by Jean Rhys

Now I know what you're thinking; the boy can do this, no bother. Your faith in me is touching but, faithful blog-readers, I'm going to have to cut myself some quality time if I'm to make any impression on this. We shall see but it's looking good so far. The dear wife has taught herself to do the ironing one-handed so I'm relieved of those duties and, as I've bought her a new ironing board, then surely a mere broken wrist won't hold her back from producing crisp white shirts for the wee fella to play football in, leaving me to concentrate on the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

The preceding paragraph illustrates attributes traditionally associated with masculinity and femininity. Discuss, not more than twenty words.

Are Specs Wearers Being Ripped Off?

2006-03-02T19:26:00.000Z

I went looking for new glasses today. I've got this pair of vari-focals which I'm increasingly having to wear full time, and I need a pair of plain long vision goggles for when I'm on the golf course. So, having determined that my local branch of Vision Express could do the whole thing inside a working day, off I toddled.

The young man with a stiff neck and an odd sideways way of walking, who served me, allowed me to browse around the frame display on my own. Now I know that the UK is one of the most expensive places to buy spectacles in the world; I know this because I have bought them in various places like Dubai, Bahrain, the USA, etc. but the price tags were ... well, I just thought, ludicrous.

"How much are these?" I asked, indicating a frameless pair.
"One hundred and eighty pounds for the frame, plus your lenses".
That's what he actually said - "for the frames".
But there are no frames, it's just two legs and a bridge, there's fuck all to it! The material must only weigh about twenty grams, or less. When you add it all up it's nearly three hundred quid, call that four hundred and fifty dollars. Is it just me? I mean, why are we putting up with this shit?

When I expressed my views on this Great British Rip-Off to an inattentive audience at the family dinner table, I was reassured that I would be accompanied by the oldest boy to the spectacle emporium the next day to choose a frame, as a precaution against me running amok and breaking someone's head against a display stand. I can't fucking wait.

Blether

2006-02-28T20:22:00.000Z

I get quite a lot of hits from people doing Google searches for keats - analysis - when - i - have - fears - that - i - may - cease - to -be and of course this links to my post some time ago on the John Keats poem. This was part of an answer to an OU TMA and I wonder if its popularity (maybe 'popularity' is too strong a term) is due to a number of new OU students looking for inspiration. Of course my comments in italics at the end of the "analysis" were meant to be an iconoclastic blast to balance the stuffiness that went before. It surprises me that, apart from the fragrant Lingo Slinger who shared in the joke, no-one has seen fit to take me to task for this little bout of ribaldry. I must try harder, it seems, if I want to elicit some response from my fellow students of poetry.

This post will be a lot about not much. I have been inspired in this by Lingo Slinger who does nothing so well, if you see what I mean. There have been a few things on my mind recently but such have been 'events' that I have had no time to string a credible sentence together, never mind a paragraph of the necessary polemic to satisfy your slavering maws.

I was reading, a few days ago, Stephen Fry's compendium of his various newspaper columns, Paperweight. A glorious read and one of his creations, Professor Trefusis, goes on about turning places of education into places of training. "Training is what you give to a dog", he says, if I can paraphrase somewhat and, although the context was the Thatcher era, the sentiment and thrust of what he (Fry) was expressing is still very relevant today. How I wish that education could be a means of liberating our childrens' minds and not, with the constant emphasis on "vocational training", a means of shackling them to the values of commerce.

All that may seem a tad precious from someone who earns his living in the world of commerce, whose profession is engineering and not art history or somesuch, and who worries that his sons will be able to survive in the real world after school and university. Maybe so, but whatever my sons study (one is doing Business Management at uni and the other is in High School and, now that professional golfer is looking somewhat elusive, tells us he wants to be a carpenter) whatever they study, I want them to have a real understanding and appreciation of the creative arts at an age when they can take it further if they are inclined. And not have to wait as long as I did before studying something I'm really interested in for itself, as opposed to its value to my so-called career.

Long Time No Blog

2006-02-27T11:35:00.000Z

Sorry for being so out of touch. My dear wife broke her wrist last week and I had to hurriedly return home to take care of the ironing. Anyways here I am back in Bonny Scotland (How about that rugby result by the way!).

Apart from this dismal news (she's on the mend though), the real good news is that I achieved another unbelievable 80% for TMA 06 Religious Studies. I wonder what has got into my tutor, the delightful nonogenarian, Dr. Matilda Clench. Frankly, I think she's losing it. All that single malt can't possibly be good for a body.

As for the next TMA, well I don't have a scooby doo once more and the reason is that, in my hurry to depart sunny Split, I have left the timetable back in my apartment. So if there is anyone out there who knows the details of TMA 07, perhaps he/she can email it to me.

TMA 06 Religious Studies

2006-02-19T20:38:00.000Z

You know that feeling you used to get when you were thirteen years old and just fresh out of the confessional on a Saturday morning. You proddies won't know what I mean but it was like you were walking on air. The weight of guilt had just been removed from your immature shoulders and you could start afresh. A new sin-free life was ahead, you were re-born. Actually what then transpired was that you could be a saint for thirty six hours while you got communion on Sunday morning, and then your hormones would get fed up creating ungodly boils on the back of your neck and reassert themselves in your genitals and you would have a good wank on Sunday night before your big brother got home from the pub and staggered into the bedroom and found you with his secret (he thought) collection of jazz mags. You remember that feeling? Well the feeling you get after submitting a Tutor Marked Assessment that you've laboured for two weeks on is nothing like that.

The Gordon Brown Mystery

2006-02-15T16:22:00.000Z

What the fuck is Gordon Brown up to? He wants to establish cadet forces in schools across the UK. He wants to have a flag waving 'national day' so we can take the Union Jack back from the National Front. And he wants us to have, in addition to Remembrance Sunday, a Veterans' Day, as another way of enforcing our support of our troops, and to celebrate our "symbols of Britishness". I just don't get it. How is it that Gordon Brown is starting to look more like a Thatcherite Tory than a radical, modern, liberal Labour politician?

I have no argument with supporting our troops, either active or veterans, but do we really need another day especially for this? Or is it just another way for the government to persuade us how vulnerable we are in these increasingly nervous times, in order for them to secure their policy agenda while sidelining real debate on public security. Things must be bad, look at how many police/soldiers we need on the street - end of discussion.

Cadet forces in schools? Now I really don't get that at all. Is that what our schools are for? To raise the next generation of soldiers? I beg to differ. Schools are for the liberal education of our children. They should not be hijacked by any politician for any purpose. He's got a fucking nerve even suggesting such a thing. And that's the mystery. How did Gordon Brown, brought up in the Labour movement, a man who said recently, regarding fatherhood:

"It is incredible to watch a young child develop and change every day. It does make you think all the time what parents need - they feel under pressure because they want to do the right thing, and as a father I understand that."

how does he come to the conclusion that forcing our kids to become army cadets, and march across school playgrounds with wooden rifles at the slope, is doing the right thing?

The Accolades Just Keep Flooding In

2006-02-13T22:44:00.000Z

I'd like to thank my agent - Morrie, you're the best; my scriptwriters who really put in some good work for very little recognition, good going guys - just don't ask for more money- har har! Only kidding. And all the other people behind the scenes without whom all this would have been possible. I love ya all. And finally I'd like to thank the nine people who voted for me over on A Mischief Of Magpies, well actually (blushing fiercely) the other eight, who made West Coast Ramblings their Blog Of The Week. Please support them and nominate your BOTW for this week's poll.

How To Be Good - by Nick Hornby

2006-02-13T21:49:00.000Z

I've just finished reading this. A truly great book. I love Nick Hornby and just devoured Fever Pitch when I read that some long time ago now. This novel is written in the first person, the narrator being a woman doctor, Katie Carr. I was a wee bit disconcerted with this initially as I cannot help myself from, in a first person narrative, half identifying the narrator with the author. I know this is silly but I always feel that although the assumption may not always be true for my purposes as a reader it may as well be. In any event Nick Hornby's narrator soon assumes a life quite separate from the maleness of her creator. It is superbly written.

The story hinges around the marital crisis of Katie Carr and her husband David. They have two children, Tom at ten years od and Molly, eight. The ideal 'nuclear family' to all intents and purposes until Katie becomes less and less in love with David, and David becomes so self-absorbed that he fails to notice. Katie embarks on a brief and regretted affair which becomes a catalyst, rather than the cause, of the marital breakdown.

The voice of Katie is brilliantly presented. Her journey through frustration, anger, grief, rebellion, and resignation is told with humour, wit, and heart-rending honesty. There are piercing arrows of truth spoken throughout. I'd love to just cut and paste it on to here so that you can all enjoy it but instead I'll give you a snippet from towards the end. Katie has reverted into a world of her own. She has become a reader again after a long time away from reading for leisure. She has chosen a biography of Vanessa Bell, the artist sister of Virginia Woolf. According to the blurb on the cover Vanessa Bell has lead a 'rich and beautiful life'. Katie buys the book to see how this is done. Here is what Katie discovers about reading:

It is the act of reading itself that I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already. Janet's bedsit seemed enormous when I moved into it, enormous and quiet, but this book is so much bigger than that. And when I've finished it I'll start another one, and that might be even bigger, and then another, and I will be able to keep extending my house until it becomes a mansion full of rooms where they can't find me.

There is such a sadness in these lines but the book is leavened throughout with the humour that you would expect from Nick Hornby. That is what makes it so successful. The characters of Katie and her odd 'nuclear family' and their strange lodger who heals the sad people of Holloway by laying on his hands, these people come to life and pull you into their story until you cannot tear yourself away. You will love it too.

How To Not Study

2006-02-10T10:56:00.000Z

The upcoming TMA (that's Tutor Marked Assessment to the uninitiated) poses the question:
How far do you think observing a religious activity, such as a festival, can help you to understand the part a religion plays in the life of an individual or a community?

To be honest I haven't a got a scooby-doo. I suppose that if you look at the Hadj for example then the sheer scale of that activity, with over 5 million people visiting Mecca annually, then you can draw some conclusions regarding the individuals who take part and, possibly, the communities from which they come. The event can therefore, for the sake of this excercise, be viewed from two perspectives; firstly as a major part of the Islamic religion and secondly as a component of the spiritual life of the individual pilgrim. As to what these conclusions will be ... well you'll have to wait and see. I'm going to try and get busy on this over the weekend but you know how it goes, temptations of the flesh and all that (I should be so lucky).

Talking about pilgrimages; everybody should make at least one visit in their lifetime to Croatia. I hate working here but it's a great place to visit. Last night, as happens every Thursday, there was live music in the caffe-bar below my apartment. On the basis that I won't get to sleep anyway with the noise coming up through my bedroom floor, I usually go down there and enjoy the music. It's a regular trio, one guy on acoustic guitar and vocals and two other guys providing counterpoint. The music is Croatian folk music with a heavy emphasis on sentimental Dalmatian songs about travellers far away from old Dalmatia dreaming about the olive groves, sunshine, and friends back home. The whole bar joins in and it seems to me that there is not a song in the trio's repertoire that everybody doesn't know off by heart. Still they never seem to tire of listening to them.

The trio (Trio Bura) finished up about midnight and were taking it easy at the table next to ours when unexpectedly they started forth singing unaccompanied in the classic folk style here called 'klapa'. One friend of theirs joined in and we now had the pleasure of a klapa quartet. It was so spontaneous and unexpected, and the quality of their voices was just superb. They sang, I think, four songs in this manner and I have to say it was an unalloyed joy to be there. Lovely people. You should come over here some time and see for yourselves. It's a pilgrimage you would really enjoy.

Shucks, you people.

2006-02-08T17:10:00.000Z

I've been out of touch for a bit, and I've not been able to get internet access since last Saturday. Thanks to all the commenters to my last post (and to previous ones). Especially thanks to all those who voted for me on Blog of The Week at Mischief Of Magpies. It's nice to know that you care.

Hegemony

2006-02-03T20:43:00.000Z

hegemony: n. Leadership, especially by one State of a confederacy. (The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1977 ed.).

I used to wonder what that word meant. Admittedly my dictionary is an old edition but it has taken on a new meaning over the years since 1977. I think it's because the Chinese used to use it a lot to complain about Soviet expansionist policies in the dark days of the cold war, and they also used it when talking about American influence in other cultures. Too many Macdonald's hamburger joints around the world became the symbol of 'American hegemony". The symbol of too many shite hamburgers being sold also but I digress. Anyway, are we bothered?

I was reading this on Harpowoman's blog the other day and she made me think of how I feel about America. I seem to be drawn to the subject more these days and I think it needs some consideration. I lived in the US for a year from October 2002 to October 2003. The first six months our office was in New York on W.34th Street just opposite the Empire State Building. What a fantastic place to go to work. I lived in Hoboken, NJ, birthplace of Frank Sinatra which some call a mini Manhattan. Every morning when I got out of the PATH station and turned into w.34th I would remind myself to look up and enjoy the view of that beautiful building. You will not, I told myself, take this for granted. All around me were NYC's famous landmarks; Macy's, Broadway, the Flatiron Building, 5th Avenue, Greeley Square, Yellow Cabs, New York's Finest, Keen's Steak House, Irish Bars owned by real Irish. I used to imagine looking down at myself from a height as if I was watching the realtime movie of my life. How could you avoid that feeling in New York. You see the place so much in movies that to me it was like walking through a movie set. I loved it.

We moved after six months in New York to Houston, TX. What a fucking awful place. But wait, stop here! Pull over! It's an Irish pub. The Harp on Richmond provided a welcome as warm as the Playwright on W. 35th. The Guiness was fine and although you had to drive to get to the place my apartment was only ten minutes away. But that's not the best part. The Blues. Man they had some great blues bars down there. The Big Easy was great. They had blues almost every night of the week and occasionally they hosted the monthly jam of the Houston Blues Society. There were many others; Cosmo's, The Sherlock, The Cosmopolitan. There was never a night when I couldn't look up the listing in the local free paper and find somewhere to go and listen to the blues. I was in hog heaven, to coin a phrase.

One Sunday I happened to see that there was a gig on in Mr. Gino's down on the southside. From four PM it said. Now the south side of Houston, outside of the Loop is not my natural habitat. I'll be honest, you could get mugged down there and that's not because most the people around there are black. No, it's because some of them are bad. Anyway, going on the premise that God looks after naive Scots and dingbats (both categories into which I fit) I motored down there and parked nearby a scrappy looking building with a neon sign, doing no good in the bright sunlight, indicating Mr Gino's. Inside was dark and cool and a five dollar cover was extracted as I crossed the threshold. There was a four-piece ban playing on stage and on guitar was an old guy I later learned was Mr. I.J. Gosey. The band were great and the people dancing were a sight to see. You know that kind of get down dirty dancing that looks so cool to uptight wee Scottish guys like me.

I stood at the bar and enjoyed a few beers and the guy behind the bar, Mr. Gino (for it was he) was really friendly, and the beer was the cheapest I had enjoyed since arriving in the US. So after a while I loosened my grip on the bar and wandered over to where I could get a better view of the stage and the dance-floor. I think it's fair to say old I.J. Cosey (pictured) is ever so slightly elderly, but man he rocks. They played all that good old stuff, and tunes I'd never heard before and the joint was jumping. I was on my own and being the only white person around, except for the keyboard player who I'd seen playing before with another band, I guess I kind of stuck out. But nobody bothered me and I eventually I thawed out and just enjoyed the atmosphere. When I.J. and the band had wound up Mr. Gino introduced me to them which was really nice. I went back a couple of times after that but by then my time in Houston was winding up and my live blues life was coming to a close.

Fond memories which contrast with other aspects of the US which I hate. The bad does not in any way outweigh the good but boy I can get riled when I think about how some Americans view the rest of the world. And (don't get me started) when the call themselves the "finest nation on earth", or the "greatest country in the world" I could boak. And it's not just people with over-muscled necks who say this. Politicians, so-called fucking statesmen say it as well. What do they think they are? That kind of ignorance of the rest of the world just used to take my breath away. Now I'm used to it and almost come to expect it from a nation who could elect a President (Leader of the free world? Don't make me laugh) who once declared that the person he most admired in history was Nolan Ryan (he's a baseball player). The thing is a large number of Americans don't give a shit about the rest of the world because as far as a lot of them are concerned it hardly exists except as some kind of irritation that they need to just ignore and it will hopefully go away. It's not isolationism, it's ignorance. And all that indoctrination that goes on about honour to the flag. Oh say have you seen that star spangled flag wave ... There's so many stars and stripes around the place it's like the people are brainwashed into flying flags. It's not patriotism, it's zomby-ism. You know what they should do with flags. Burn every last one of them, Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes and fancy yellow fuckers with rum barrels and palm trees on them from wee far away places in the Pacific. People should be actively discouraged from standing behind flags. We should not be standing behind anything, we should be out there embracing each other.

Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace.
(c) John Lennon

OU TMA 06 Religious Studies OR History of Science

2006-01-30T20:02:00.000Z

This TMA is a choice between these two subjects. A 1200 word essay is required and I'm way behind on the studying. I reckon I'll plump for the Religious Studies question which is:
How far do you think observing a religious activity, such as a festival, can help you to understand the part a religion plays in the life of an individual or a community?

Now so far I what I'm thinking is this. 'Read the question'! See it's not about religion per se, or a religious activity, or an individual, or a community. It's about how far I think the mere observance of a religious activity can help me to understand the part a religion plays etc. So we're separating the study of religion from religion itself. OK it's blindingly obvious to you lot but it helps me if I spell it out in front of me like this before I get my teeth into it.

So where should we proceed from here? Well tonight is Monday and there is usually live jazz on in the pub downstairs, so I think that is where I will proceed. In the meantime I want you lot to study this question carefully and give me your answer in not more than 1200 words. And NO TALKING! For god's sake Lingo Slinger pull your skirt down, we can almost see your breakfast! Twenty Major! Put that cigarette out or I'll have to tweak you. Clairwil! Leave Nogbad alone! Do stop snivelling Nogbad, it's pathetic. No Larnach, you can not sit next to Bluefluff. Yes I know she's your friend. No Bluefluff you cannot sit next to Larnach. Now heads down people, I'm off to the pub. Barker! You're in charge.

The Real Reason For The War In Iraq

2006-01-26T11:19:00.000Z

I want you to imagine a pipe. It’s a big open-ended pipe and here’s how big it is. It’s so big that Shaquille O’Neal can stand inside it wearing a top hat. In metres it’s 2.4 m diameter or, for you Americans, it’s 7 feet 10 inches. Now, let’s get Shaq out of the way because we don’t want him to get injured, because down this pipe we are going to send crude oil. This crude oil will flow at a speed of 3 m/sec or 6.7 miles/hour, a fairly fast running pace, and it will fill the whole diameter of the pipe. So this is what I want you to visualise, a pipe 7 feet 10 inches diameter flowing full bore with crude oil, every minute of every hour, of every day of every year, on and on without cease. It flows like a river, it gushes continuously, it roars forward, a cataract of black oil. Just imagine what that oil would look like as it cascaded out of that pipe. Think of the sheer ear-drum shattering noise, the earth-shaking vibration, the awesome power of it.

The quantity that flows through this pipe is 10,178,711 barrels per day. Every day, on and on. This is, on recent average, the amount of crude oil that the US imports every day, continuously, year after year, and the trend, rather than decreasing, in these days of worrying middle east politics and global warming, and so on, is increasing. Of course there is not a single pipe. There are a number of them, from Canada for example, plus the oil imported, largely from the Middle East, by the huge tankers that berth at LOOP off the coast of Louisiana, and at the offshore lightering areas off of Galveston, plus the smaller tankers, relatively speaking, berthing at shore facilities on both coasts. The US in fact only produces just over 5.5 million barrels per day, so it relies on imports for about two thirds of its needs.

Now let’s add this up in cash. We need to keep it on a daily basis because if you try to think of it yearly it’s just crazy. Let’s say a barrel on average costs $50. In fact today it’s about $65/barrel. So 10,178,711 times 50 = $508,935,550 per day. Have you got that? Half a billion dollars a day! That’s what’s flowing out as the crude flows in. Now I believe the US has a trade deficit of about 49 billion dollars. That’s about 100 days of crude oil imports, actually it’s a lot fewer than that if we keep to a realistic oil price. Is anybody making the connection here?

Of course the US needs energy to produce goods and to keep the economy moving, but does it need so much that it hurts? It hurts the economy and it hurts the environment. It seems perverse to me. And do you know what is really perverse? If a US politician wants to make himself unelectable he just has to stand up and say that gasoline is too cheap and that there is a crying need to put more tax on it and to consume less.

And here’s the real truth behind the war in Iraq. GW Bush has no idea how to run the country without this huge oil consumption. In his term imports have continuously risen to these levels, and they just keep on climbing. And now this and this.

The growing economies of India and China are taking more and more out of a finite supply, pushing prices higher and creating supply problems in the medium to long term. Where does it end? The gloomiest scenario is a world economic collapse and further turmoil in oil producing areas such as Iraq. It’s not too far fetched to say that Iraq is only the beginning unless the American public wakens up to what is going on, and unless American politicians start telling the truth about how vulnerable the country is to depend so much on imported oil. While Bush is in power? Fat fucking chance. You need more? Read all about it here.

Now think of the torrent of oil flowing today into the US, over 10 million barrels a day, and picture it slowing, stuttering, trickling and then .. stopping.

A Love Of Language

2006-01-25T21:39:00.000Z

Rendition (noun). Interpretation, rendering of dramatic role, musical piece, etc. (Concise Oxford Dictionary).

Some people call me pedantic. Now I take some pride in that. It means, to me, that I pay attention to detail, that I like all my commas in the right place, that I don’t like unnecessary apostrophe’s, that I like words spelled correctly. I like that in me. What’s wrong with wanting to be correct? What’s wrong with having a love of language, and wanting people to have some respect for it? And this love of language extends to wanting other people to mean what they say, especially politicians. But they are devious bastards those people. Their deviousness knows no bounds. They will take a word, a perfectly innocent word, and give it a meaning that none of us will ever have imagined could be associated with that word.

How can anyone do that? How can anyone just stand up at a meeting and say:
“You know, Mr President, I think that it’s a wonderful idea, but what we’ll do,see, is just to keep it sweet with the media people, if they ever get to hear about it (har, har!) is, we won’t call it ‘transportation of suspects to another country in order to torture them and cover our tracks’, see that’s just too many words. No, we’ll give it a simple title that couldn’t possibly offend anybody. Let’s say, I know - rendition!”

Rendition! You’ve got to hand it to them, the devious, black-hearted fuckers. This is a word that reminds people of a poetry reading. How far away from torture can you get! It was bad enough when poor old Dan Quayle tried to tell a class of school kids that potato ended in an ‘e’, but this is beyond an outrage. They are fucking with our language and they can not, they must not get away with it. This is what we used to tut-tut about in our superior free-thinking, western liberal way when the Soviet Union was extant. Wake up for fuck’s sake! Especially you people with the vote in the home of the fucking brave! A lie is a lie. And the biggest fucking lie of all is that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. No, that's just an insinuation they want people to believe, the biggest lie is that they are in Iraq to free it from terrorism, to give the people democracy. If it wasn't so tragic you would have to laugh, but if they keep repeating their lies in language nobody understands anymore, they'll get away with it.

Listen to language. Listen to language like this:

And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son ?
And what'll you do now my darling young one ?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
And the executioner's face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my songs well before I start singin'
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
© Bob Dylan

Social Anthropology

2006-01-23T08:41:00.000Z

I've got to admit that I like"Irish" pubs. And I mean, by those inverted commas, even those whose only claim to Irishness is a Guiness tap. For example I was in one in Rijeka last week called The River Pub and it was full to the brim with all that shite that you'd never see in any self-respecting bar in Dublin. You know the kind of thing; old pressing irons and broken sewing machines, copper kettles and saddles and any kind of a thing that looks vaguely rustic, not to say rusty. Well that was the River Pub, choc-a-bloc with "Irishness". But here's the thing. On the wall upstairs was a huge picture of Winston Churchill. Now I'm no expert on Irish history but ... well you get my drift. Anyway the whole place just looked fucking stupid, but I liked it anyway. It wasn't even owned by an Irish person, it was owned by a Croat and the barmaid had not a word of English, or Irish I'll bet. But the place had a nice atmosphere and the music was good old rhythm & blues.

And then I get to Trieste and find out that there's an "English" pub. The "London Pub". Now what kind of a shite name is that. Anyway it does serve good Guiness and there was the best selection of malt whiskies on the gantry that I've seen outside of Glasgow. So we tried some, and then we tried some more, in the interests of scientific research you see. And we discovered a very strange thing. That no matter how much we hated this "English" pub, and no matter how much we absolutely detested the fact that they put so much fucking herbs on your steak that you couldn't eat it, that we began to like this place too. And the barman, who last night was the surliest bastard you could ever hope to punch on the face, was now just the nicest person who ever graced this good earth. And he even gave us a scarf, courtesy of Guiness, to keep the cold wind at bay while we wound our way back to the hotel. Now is that not amazing?

TMA 05 - He's Pulled Out The Big One!

2006-01-17T11:23:00.000Z

80% for TMA05! Can you believe it? It's true dear blog readers. I have surpassed my own highest expectations and now sit astride an average of (let me see, times that, divided by thingy) 68%! Now I know you all knew I had it in me but I have to say I'm chuffed to bits with this mark. It just goes to show, there's the odd little nugget among the dross. And it does give one a boost for the work ahead. The next modules are on religion; bring it on.

Actually the next modules are intriguing and, given the time to concentrate, I should find them interesting. Unfortunately (getting my excuses in early) I am travelling to Trieste tomorrow and I'll be there until maybe middle of next week, which means that work will be getting in the way. It's almost impossible for me to sit down and study in a city that's new to me. The least I'll have to do is find out where the Irish pub/s is/are. All in the pursuit of the my ancillary studies in social anthropology of course. I'll keep you posted.

It's Done & Gone!

2006-01-13T15:27:00.000Z

For better or worse, it's gone. So what was my answer to this? Well you know I can't give away too much. The OU takes a dim view of people publishing TMAs on websites or such so I'm going by the rules ... but! Well I can give you a few hints.

The first part:
Discuss the relationship between individual freedom and social responsibility as represented in the Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Well, piece of piss. You just read the thing and you discuss it. You look a bit fucking loopy though, sitting alone in a room declaiming to no-one at all, but that's what you got to do. And then you put it down on paper, as it were, via your keyboard. And you conclude, as any right thinking individual would, that Rousseau was one mixed up muddahfuggah. But you can't write that down because they would take an even dimmer view of that; so you make something up. To the effect that Rousseau believed that an individual can be free, and live according to his own needs and desires, while at the same time obeying the rules and laws of the state, as long as that state is based on legitimate authority, i.e. not a king's assumed authority. Well that was the gist.

So how about the paintings? For a start they are different in context and in content. The first, the David, is a clear representation of a scene taken from the story of the founding of the ancient Roman republic. Let me guide you here to improve your education to the level of mine. And here. So it's an ancient story which can easily be seen as an allegory for the contemporary events of David's life, vis. the French revolution.

This picture by Friedrich is a different sort of a fellow altogether. It may, or not, depict a scene from the artist's imagination or it may be drawn partly from memory or some other source. It is, though, my impression that this is a very personal statement. The picture is not meant to provide an overt message, like the David, but rather to invoke a mood or state of mind. There is a melancholy air about the work but it's very enigmatic. Very, I would say, open to the individual viewers interpretation, rather than presenting a clear message from the artist.

Please don't think I have any confidence that my view on these two great paintings would carry much weight with any half educated art historian, but I hope I make a reasonable point.

Now it's Friday, the week-end starts here. Out for a pint tonight, and then I'm visiting Rijeka over the Saturday and Sunday. Vidimo se! By the way there is a fantastic fine art web-site here. The images are large so if you've got a nice big flat screen monitor, enjoy!

I Only Look Worried.

2006-01-09T20:27:00.000Z

Where do I begin? TMA05 due in on Friday and not a fucking clue.

(a) "Discuss the relationship between individual freedom and social responsibility as represented in The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau."

And that's only the half of it! The other part is:
(b) How far is it appropriate to bear the same concepts in mind when considering Jacques-Louis David's Brutus and Caspar Freidrich's Wanderer Above The Sea of Fog respectively?

I feel like a fucking wanderer above a sea of fog myself! I'll tell you how far it is appropriate, mate. Not very. But they don't want that, do they? No - you've got to waffle on for 600 words for part (a) and another 600 fuckers for part (b), checking the word count every two seconds while you circumlocute like Stephen Fry with a drink in him; till you don't what you've said but the verbiage count is spot on. And there it is, padded out with shite like 'the dichotomy presented to us has to be resolved by intellectual analysis' and 'when we consider, as consider we must, the metaphor within the metaphor'. Should be good for a bare pass. What more could we ask for?

Charles Kennedy Resigns.

2006-01-07T21:52:00.000Z

So Charles Kennedy has resigned. While this is some kind of a sad conclusion to his reign as leader of the Liberal Party it is also an important waypoint in his battle with alcoholism. And in the end that is the more important matter. I believe that he was doing himself and his family no good by trying to cling on to a position which could only bring more pressure on him, and thus increase the likelihood that drink would regain the upper hand. When it comes down to it there is every reason for those closest to alcoholics to be pessimistic about a successful outcome in their fight against the demon drink. I have witnessed at close hand the losing battle, over a long long number of years, of a close relation against alcohol addiction, and it is totally demoralising to be close to such relentless self-destruction. There are, of course, those who do prevail and I fervently hope that Charles Kennedy will be one of those.

It is not entirely surprising that Charles Kennedy tried to live up to what he saw as his duty to the party. I believe he is that rarest of politicians, a man of great integrity, and therefore he put his party before self. It was a mistake, but that is in the nature of the illness he is fighting. Lack of judgement comes hand in hand with alcohol addiction. Now that he has made his decision I hope that the press and the public will give him credit for his bravery and his integrity, and the space to find some healing. And let us not forget the quality of the man. He has been a Member of Parliament since he was 23 years old. He is yet only forty six. He'll be back.

New Year Resolve.

2006-01-02T21:07:00.000Z

This is the time of year when we all should resolve to do better so, not to let the opportunity pass by, here are my resolutions:-

I will stop contemplating my navel and concentrate on other more attractive ones.
I will pay more attention to the whereabouts of my glasses.
I will walk away from people who look at my shoulder or close their eyes when talking to me.
If someone does that interrogative inflection when they are actually making a statement to me I will kick them in the balls.
I will drink less alcohol and more milk.
I will blog at least twice per week.
I will read more books.
I will give up pocket billiards except during business meetings.
I will stop saying ‘fuck’. No I fucking won’t.
I will not engage in sadism, necrophilia or bestiality, because that would be like flogging a dead horse.
I will be better organised for my Open University course.
I will be nicer to people who are important to me.
I will weigh 4 kgs. less by June.
I will lower my golf handicap by 4 strokes.
I will campaign tirelessly to eradicate unnecessary apostrophe’s.
I will avoid cliches like the plague.

So I'm doing my bit. Are you doing yours?

Animals Kneeling???

2005-12-29T22:56:00.000Z

Someone, you won't believe this but I swear it's true - someone found my blog by doing a Google search for, and I quote - "west country poem about animals kneeling"! Now I'm a liberal kind of bloke. I believe that there is room on this planet for almost all the various shades of wierdo that you would be likely to meet but; what kind of a sick mind would dream up a poem about animals kneeling! And what kind of a sick mind would want to read it. So I did a quick Google search myself and, my God I can't believe what I saw! These people need help, and it's not confined just to the sheep shaggers of Aberdeen. By the way, does anyone know the full text of this poem, out of curiosity?

Meanwhile - it's the time of year when we should all be planning our New Year's Resolutions. I want you all to think about this because that's what the next post will be about.

Why Does Mary Have To Be a Virgin?

2005-12-25T20:20:00.000Z

We went to Mass yesterday. It was the vigil Mass for Christmas. Anyway this time of year, like no other, there is heavy emphasis on the virginity of Mary the mother of Jesus and I ask myself; why does this have to be?

If I point you to some internet-based information from the BBC then this is about the only page you will find on this subject, from a Google search, which is not apparently written by a bunch of ranting lunatics. On the BBC site you will find the following:-

The Gospels of Mark and John and the letters of St Paul do not mention the Virgin Birth. It is only included in the later Gospels of Matthew and Luke, although both give very different accounts. Professor James
Charlesworth says: "Should we take it literally, symbolically or metaphorically? Christians lineup behind every one of those".

If Mary’s pregnancy was not divine, who might have been the father of her child? As an unmarried mother-to-be, Mary was in a perilous position – Joseph could have had her banished or even stoned to death. But, according to the New Testament, Joseph was a good man and he did not abandon his young fiancée.

Historians have looked for reasons to explain Joseph’s loyalty and sympathy towards Mary. One second-century historian claimed that Mary was actually the victim of a rape by a Roman soldier called Panthera and, indeed, many women at the time would have been raped by soldiers. However, that story is much more likely to have been circulated falsely in an attempt to discredit the growing Christian movement.

Biblical historian Mark Goodacre concludes: "The Christian in me wants to say that it is quite likely to be God because I like the idea of a wonderful, miraculous birth – something supernatural … happening right there at the origins of Christianity. The historian in me does have some problems with that and does wonder
if Joseph is the better option."

Now the above is quite rational and does not try to come to any forced conclusion. So why does the Catholic Church insist that Mary was a virgin? Take this extract from the Catholic Catechism:-

People are sometimes troubled by the silence of St. Mark's Gospel and the New Testament Epistles about Jesus' virginal conception. Some might wonder if we were merely dealing with legends or theological constructs not claiming to be history. To this we must respond: Faith in the virginal conception of Jesus met with the lively opposition, mockery or incomprehension of non-believers, Jews and pagans alike; so it could hardly have been motivated by pagan mythology or by some adaptation to the ideas of the age. The meaning of this event is accessible only to faith (my italics), which understands in it the "connection of these mysteries with one another" in the totality of Christ's mysteries, from his Incarnation to his Passover.

It seems a little forced to me, and it goes on:-

Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, "full of grace" through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

Again, is this not a contrivance. "Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware..." It's balderdash! It is either evident or it isn't. If it was not then fair enough. I personally do not believe that the story of Christ has to depend on the fact or otherwise of the Immaculate Conception. His teachings do not depend upon it. So why construct this legend, this myth. What purpose does it serve? Let me say right here that I have not (yet) read The Da Vinci Code. I haven't had time but I believe it fleshes out the argument that the whole issue of the Immaculate Conception is a vast conspiracy in order to cement the concept of male superiority in the Church and thus in society. You can let me know.

My basic problem is that I don't believe in the virgin birth, and I want to know why I should have to. Is there anybody of rational mind out there who can answer my question without saying "It's a mystery"?

TMA 04 History - Result! Yesss!

2005-12-23T21:33:00.000Z

Well now gentle readers, I know you've all been on tenterhooks since I posted my script on Robespierre, my History TMA 04. I was too. I had to ask for a postponement I was so behind, and so last week-end I spent two days just hanging around my apartment in my shorts getting stuck in. And it's paid off. 74%! Is that not amazing. I am stunned. I can only presume one of two things, either (a) I am a genius or (b) the good Dr. Clench is so intoxicated with the holiday spirit that she is giving out presents to idiots like me. Since (a) is out of the question then it must be (b) - quod errat demonstrandum. Or maybe I'm a genius.

Can we keep up this momentum? Who knows, we shall find out in due course. Anyway I want you to do something for me. I've already had some kind comments from Straddle Pipping Reel, who is also doing this course. That was great, and by the way good luck to her (I think she's a her), so if you've had your mark for this TMA let me know how you got on. And even if you're doing something different in the OU let me know as well. Good luck and hope to hear from you in the comments part below.

High Flight - by John Gillespie Magee Jr.

2005-12-20T07:36:00.000Z

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of; wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sun-lit silence. Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air;
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark nor even eagle flew;
And while, with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God

This poem, which I've known and loved for a long time, is featured in the Writer's Almanac this morning. Garrison Keillor reads it in the kind of downbeat manner which is at odds with the sheer exhiliration of the piece. Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr. died in a training accident in December 1941. The poem was sent by Magee in a letter to his parents about three months before his death with the note; "It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed. I thought it might interest you." The scribbled poem was "High Flight."

Whenever I read this poem I always think of Magee's parents. He was only nineteen when his plane crashed, in England, in a training accident. You can see from his picture that he was a handsome boy. And how gifted he was. To lose such a beautiful child must have been truly devastating. Why do I dwell their loss? I suppose that it is because I have two sons of my own. My oldest is about a year older than John Magee was in 1941, and the younger boy is just fourteen. And it's every parent's fate that, whenever we reflect on such tragedies, be it airmen in war or schoolchildren abducted by evil men, or any of a million other terrible things which could befall our loved ones , we feel these as though they are happening to our own. Glimpses of horror visit us and we push them away before they overwhelm us. And then we want to hug our children to us and tell them we love them and just ... be careful, OK! And they look at us as if we are the child and tell us not to be silly, and they walk out of the door and down the street as if they own the world, like John Gillespie Magee Jr. owned it in September 1941.

I'm Reviewing The Situation

2005-12-19T13:46:00.000Z

I received a comment from Straddle Pipping Reel (What the handle refers to, fuck only knows.) on the subject of plagiarism. That's not the situation I'm reviewing by the way. I'll get on to that in a minute. Anyway, plagiarism is not something that bothers me. This blog would provide meagre pickings for anyone looking for OU glory. They're welcome to it. Anyway, if you have come on to this blog because you are an OU student and you are looking for inspiration then please feel free to critique my posts. That's what they're their for. If you are an OU tutor or any kind of a high heid yin then your advice would also be welcomed. As for the rest of the mince that I throw up, have a go at that as well if you like. Just don't take it too seriously.

I've been thinking about these various posts that I've been doing and, to be frank, I'm a bit bothered. I think they were starting to go in the wrong direction. Too serious, not enough laughs, too up my own arse, if you get my drift. This is a journal, as well as place for me to fuck around in. And a place where I can practice the act of writing; not the art, the act.

Some of you may notice that I have edited out parts of previous postings and I have removed one altogether. I did this because I want to feel relaxed about what I do here. It's meant to be fun after all.

I'm going back home for the holidays now. I won't be back in Dalmatia until the New Year. You all have a nice holiday if you're having one, and if you're not ... then don't.

TMA 04 - History - Robespierre's Journal

2005-12-18T22:47:00.000Z

We were asked to come up with an 800 word essay on the following extract from Robespierre's journal. It was written in autumn of 1793.

"Principal measure of public safety. it will be necessary to send through all the republic a small number of strong commissioners, armed with good instructions and above all good principles, to reduce public opinion to unity and to republicanism - the sole means of ending the Revolution to the profit of the people.

These commissioners will above all concentrate on discovering and inventorying men who are worthy to serve the cause of liberty. To purge the surveillance committees, we must produce a list of all their members, their names, occupations and addresses ....

We must revise the list of the leaders of the counter-revolution in each locality ....

Overturn the decree of the municipality which bans the saying of the mass and vespers. it does not have the right. It is a source of trouble."

Hardman, J. (ed.) (1999, 2nd ed.) The French Revolution Sourcebook, (London, Arnold, p. 198)

The questions were -
What kind of primary source is this .... ?
Particular words or phrases requiring elucidation.
What can we learn with respect to Robespierre and the French Revolution, distinguishing between witting and unwitting testimony?

I hated doing this at the start. I was under pressure at work and could not concentrate on it. Once I was able to give it the necessary time though, I enjoyed it; almost, but not quite as much as my last on the Colosseum.

Fuck This For A Game Of Soldiers

2005-12-15T21:14:00.000Z

Actually the title of this post has nothing to do with what I am going to write. Why do I say that? Well, because at this moment in time (waffle) I have no fucking idea what I am going to write. The OU course is going badly at the moment. Work is taking up all my time and something happened on Monday that has been at the forefront of my thoughts at all times of the day. It was very upsetting and the result has been that I cannot concentrate on a thing. It's receding into the background now and hopefully it will die a natural death in due course. So - what to do?

There's a Tutor Marked Assessment (TMA) due in on Friday on the French Revolution and I've hardly done any work on this part of the course so far. I am so busy at work that when I come back to my apartment at night I just want to relax or, when things get too fraught (like on Monday) go out on the screaming piss. It's hardly conducive to good studying.

I was worrying about this because, having made a decent mark in my last TMA, I wanted to keep up the momentum. I knew if I cobbled something together at the last minute for this it would be shite. So I girded my loins and called Dr. Clench. The conversation went something like this:
"Hello Matilda, it's West Coaster"
"Oh! Hello West. How are ye getting on?"
"Oh, it's going fine. I'm very busy and I'm trying to keep up with the studies and you know the work is frantic at the moment we're right in the middle of a .."
"You need more time for the TMA."
"That would be great Matilda, just through to next Monday."
"Well, I'll let it go to the following Friday. How's that?"
"Brilliant!"

You know, I don't know how I ever had a downer on the old bird. She's first rate. The trouble is that, as I said, this part of the course is about the French Revolution and I've just got no interest in the thing. Bunch of fucking plebs chopping the heads off a load of poofs with powdered wigs and rouge on their cheeks. I think I'll just crib the whole thing off the internet. And that is what someone is doing on my site! I was looking at my stats and one of the search phrases was "Critically evaluate the relationship between form and function in three aspects of the design and construction of the Colosseum."

That is precisely the phrasing of the question for the first part of TMA03. I wonder if whoever looked at my page just cut and pasted it and called it his/her own work. Do people do that? They do, don't they, the plagiarising bastards. Oooh-er!