Best kind of New Year Message

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AI helps out and I'm amazed

This year’s Christmas brought modern-day magic but I was merely a bystander. Here we go.

When it comes to sound reproduction Chez Robinson I’m incredibly finicky. Not surprising, really, given that most installed TV loudspeakers are about the size of a packet of cigarettes. Not much hope for the music generated by, say, a double bass. So I have a pair of triple-speaker hi-fi units properly spaced for stereo reproduction.

But that’s just a start. I also have a set-up which electronically improves the signal that is the heart of the music, or whatever I'm playing. Step up the Marantz amplifier which cost me £500 ($676) fifteen years ago. And, no, this amp doesn’t just make things louder or quieter, it compensates for poor quality of live broadcasts and for recordings made in riveting shops. Also, in my case, it adjusts itself to the different circuitry of the smart TV, the DVD player, a Dell laptop (fed by a chip on to which all the music from my old LPs and CDs was transferred) and two pairs of hi-fi stereo headphones. Plus lots of other stuff which I can hardly spell.

There is a price to pay for all this adaptability; the Marantz is shockingly complicated to use. As was confirmed when one of our Christmas party used their smartphone to control the amp. Yes, it did that all right but getting it back to normalcy was an absolute bastard. Hours passed.

This was Boxing Day (December 26) and the night before had ended round about 4 am. Finally, daughter Occasional Speeder, who’d mumbled that she’d got “some ideas” re. the Marantz, awoke from a deep sleep and addressed the problem. It took some time but finally the sound system blared. But how?

What could be more fashionable than AI? Even so it was pretty slick work. The initial problem with the Marantz was spelled out by OS on her phone screen. Then OS merely photographed the phone screen and presented the image – as a request for help - to something like ChatBot. And AI then recommended the next step. Step taken, another photograph and another recommendation. And so on. Things weren’t all that easy at first but AI sensed OS’s difficulties and urged her to “Keep on trucking”. She admitted she was grateful for this

I reckoned OS deserved the best Southern Rhone red I had in my wine rack

"certain wearied phrases"

We are nearing the date when some of us launch into certain wearied phrases in the hope that those reading them will become happy and/or merry. I am against this practice and have been twitted – misguidedly – on the assumption I’m against humanity (or worse). I’ll discuss this later but there are two rather obvious reasons for re-examining these salutations.

Why pick out this date alone? Might it imply we don’t give a damn about our audience during the other 364 days of the year? Also, if parochially British middle-class, the adjective “merry” can mean “drunken”. Suggesting we approve of indulgence and could also be harbouring a hope that our readers may enjoy good sex on the 25th. Fine, but let’s keep it tightly moored in the harbour.

But chacun à son gout as the French say, although it’s wise to acknowledge that they may not be saying it these days. The French tend to discard colloquialisms on the grounds of old age. Unfrench tourists may get frosty looks when they try to dig them up.

What I truly detest is that these clichés arrive unthinkingly as blog comments. As proof that their launcher has hovered somewhere near the post AND DONE NOTHING ELSE. That they have imitated the way a dog shows he has passed this way. A dubious insurance policy against the possible charge that they can’t be said to have ignored the post.

If the post turns out to be duff either (a) point this out in a literate manner, or (b) say nothing. If the post has benefited you in some way you are briefly in debt to its author; think about it for a minute or two; then transcribe those thoughts. It could be the start of a dialogue and dialogue is what distinguishes us from lettuce-eating slugs.

Have I rained on your seasonal parade? It’s a privilege of extreme old age and you too may make 90 as I have done. Goodness knows, I may even flirt with merriment tonight.

Crusty? Certainly.

Sententious? Without doubt.

Still worrying about what Abraham agreed to do to Isaac?. It never goes away.

Well, will I?

My first singing lesson was on January 4 2016; they've continued weekly with very few breaks; let's say a round figure of 500. Initially they lasted an hour; I upped the fee and V - almost perversely - increased lessons to 90 minutes.

Gradually the songs got more difficult. Recently V launched a very, very difficult song: Der Muller und Der Bach, number 19 in the 20-song Schöne Müllerin cycle by Schubert. I ask myself: will I ever master it?

Listen to it HERE.

See if you can identify why it's so damn difficult. While being musically terrific.

Notes from the fold-up bed (now revised)

I, being old and frail,

And at death’s elbow,

Greeted the bedside clock

For its surprising news

That those warm depths of sleep

I’d left behind, had still

Long hours to run. With blissful

Lack of care I pulled the

Bed clothes up for comfort,

Lost head and face in new oblivion

 

From softness into softness, an unexpected gift!

For age can never guarantee that, eyes now closed

Will bring the healing dark that shuts away the strains

Of living out decreptitude.

 

One yearns for certainties: The childhood cot,

That insulates us from adult’s grim tasks;

The bottle brought to us is never earned.

And we may burble for the aid that’s close to hand.

 

There’s more to come, but not, alas, from me.

I was waylaid and felt th’old devil’s urge

To catch the trope; to write, as is my tendency,

Nouns from verbs while softness waits another day.

Confession: I just couldn't leave it in its tatterdemalion state

Luck be a lady... now and then

Given my age, the cumulative effects of three cancer ops plus an occasional yearning to get smashed on some evening yet to be chosen, it’s not surprising I’m often in the mood to assess events since August 1935. After all, the end can’t be far off now. However, one thing journalism has taught me is it’s more fun – at least for writers – to chew over disasters than happiness. Summarised thus: happiness is self-rewarding whereas bad things continue to give greater interest. In writing that is.

But this is me. Would nearly a century of grief, disappointment, rejection, ignorance, self-condemnation – however wittily written – add up to anything other than a failed life? Heck, I’ve lived to ninety and that’s some kind of achievement. And along the way  lump sums of money have dropped into my lap.

Obviously I need a fresh angle. What about: How often have I been lucky? Mind you, luck demands a jot of qualification. It must be distinguished from rewards I’ve earned. Otherwise the work ethic becomes a bucket-load of shit.

▓▓ For one thing, VR (Veronica, my wife) has been the strongest positive influence on what I’ve become. We met on a blind-date foursome in London. She looked gorgeous - as others will testify - whereas I was only three months into a desperately loveless emigration from the West Riding of Yorkshire, suffering an adolescence which seemed to stretch out into middle age. Do such meetings qualify as good luck? Our shared interests and tendencies later had the inevitability of two jigsaw pieces but even after 65 years I find it impossible to claim I “earned” VR.

▓▓ The RAF forced me into an understanding of the theory, practice and application of electronics. Not to any great depth y’unnerstand, but in the same way a 600-page scholarly biography of Rembrandt might hint at why he’s the world’s greatest oil painter. Post National Service I’ve dipped continuously and enthusiastically into sources of science info of which I understand about 7%. Not much, you say. But much more than the international average.

▓▓ A horror that became a benison. Pursuing a larger salary, and for no other reason, I chose to become editor of two highly specialised magazines whose content I only dimly understood. Quickly I realised both were en route to financial extinction. Trying to escape I applied for a variety of jobs, most quite menial, but was rejected mainly because I was in my late forties and potential employers worried about the pay I would expect. Months passed and my terror grew.

Then, out of the blue, my ultimate boss, whom I’d always seen as a managerial dimwit, offered me the editorship of a magazine devoted to a subject I was very familiar with. And in which I subsequently enjoyed my greatest professional triumphs.

What strange deity had taken charge...?

▓▓ ...That deity reappeared eleven years later. My magazine was sold and my old employer thought I deserved compensation for losing a position which (secretly) I would have paid to occupy. More miraculously, I didn’t even lose the job and merely transferred to the new owner. The goodbye cheque was a biggie and was augmented by the receipt of a pension which started the day I left the previous owner.

▓▓ And the deity reappeared yet again on my retirement. My newish employer celebrated my departure with a shared 1945 bottle of burgundy priced at £546 ($714). Still a personal record.

A note en passant. Perhaps the three events above were “earned” rather than the outcome of pure luck. But their unexpectedness seemed more like the results of chance than of the daily grind.

▓▓ Finally... I only took up poetry comparatively recently. A year or two later, on an occasion unlikely ever again to be duplicated, I had a poem published.

▓▓ Finally plus… Is living to be ninety lucky?

Why I looked crummy serving the Queen

Joining the RAF for two years’ National Service (1955 – 1957) meant I would wear a uniform, a word with several implications. Obedience is one, something I’d never shone at during the previous nineteen years. Another is invariance, a further intellectual discouragement since variety is surely the spice of life. 

Would I disappear into the human sludge that is the ideal basis for a military force? Or would my untamed tongue get me into trouble?

These matters were to some extent put on hold. At a height of 6 ft 1½ in. I was taller than the physical norms of the average recruit and would have to wait months to be properly dressed. In the interim I wore the shabby sports jacket and even shabbier trousers (standard journo turn-out) I wore when I signed on at RAF Cardington. Made marginally more sartorially acceptable when hidden by a khaki boiler-suit.

The new kit took some time to arrive. And six weeks’ square-bashing (Initial training. US: boot camp) wreaked havoc on my “civvies”. But there was one advantage: I was left out of any marching for formal occasions. Think badly stuffed scarecrow.

What happened next was heavily ironic. Against my expectations and my formal education the RAF decided I would train to be a wireless (ie, radio) technician in a course lasting eight months, mostly sitting at a desk wrestling with Kirchoff’s Laws and the calculus associated with the hysteresis curve. By now I was uniformed, but not appropriately. The rest of the class wore Working Blue whereas I wore Best Blue, my Working Blue had still to arrive.

RAF Working Blue. More compact

battledress format, despite its name,

was more fitted for sedentary work

Here’s the irony: Working Blue has a battledresss format jacket ending with a tightly belted midriff. By contrast the Best Blue jacket is much longer reaching halfway down the bum. Battledress or not, Working Blue is much more resistant to crumpling for those doing deskwork. The speed with which my Best Blue started to wear out was horrifying, given that I would have had to pay for a replacement.

RAF Best Blue. Flounced 

bottom half of jacket tended

to get crumpled and worn
when wearer worked at a desk

Happily, Best Blue lasted out the course and I was posted to Far East Air Force there to wear lightweight shirt and shorts. National Service done, I hung Best Blue on my bedroom door back home in Bradford and the moths finished off the abrasivon resulting from desk work at the technical training camp.

CODA: My Working Blue finally arrived but it distorted my appearance: seemed as if my belly started at my sternum and stretched halfway down my thighs. Being a techie helped just a bit.